The Four-Night Run

by William Lashner

  The story he dreamed had the sort of deep strangeness characteristic of dreams, with switches of setting and plot that had no internal coherence. But there was running in it, and a gun that wouldn’t go off, and a woman with long dark hair, and a boy who watched him and followed him and tugged at his shirt. Tugged at his shirt. And in the dream there was something drifting between the three of them, around Scrbacek and the woman and the boy, a purple haze floating through all the shifts of place and incident.

  When he did wake, finally, when the Nightingale pulled at his shirt and woke him and told him the exact room in Casinoland where Cirilio Vega had run off to, Scrbacek would forget all the settings of his dream, all the incidents, he would forget even the woman and the boy, forget everything except that which had swirled around him. It was like smoke, this swirling thing. It rose and fell with the ebbs and flows of the ocean. It snaked its way into his throat and down until it pierced his heart. And it stayed with him after he awoke, and it followed him through the rest of that day and the night to come, a night full of discovery and terror and violence, a night that would change a thousand lives and end more than a few of them.

  And this is what he felt from the swirling thing in his dream, each component keen as the blade of a freshly whetted knife: he felt regret, desperation, confusion, need, fear, desire, hope. It was a potent cocktail, though he couldn’t recognize the combination, because he had never felt it before. He didn’t know where it came from, and thought, maybe, the flutter in his stomach was merely adrenaline pumping through his veins. But he was wrong. It was the purple haze he had felt in his dream. Regret, desperation, confusion, need, fear, desire, hope. Take dark rum, curaçao, lime juice, sugar, a splash of grenadine, shake it with ice, serve it with a lime wheel, and what you get is a mai tai. Take regret, desperation, confusion, need, a splash of fear, shake it with desire, serve it with hope, and what you get, pure and simple, is love.

  And from where the hell in a place like Crapstown did ever he find that?

  FOURTH NIGHT

  40

  DOLORES ROSAS

  Dolores Rosas, the former Dolores Jepsen, the former Dolores Delossantos, though only for six months before that louse slinked out and knocked up her best friend Jeannie, the former Dolores Macklin of West Orange High School in West Orange, New Jersey—Field Hockey 9; Best Buddies 9, 10; Library Aide 10; Affiliation Club 10, 11; Italian Club, 11; Joseph Delossantos 11, 12—Dolores Rosas waits beneath a flashing sign with an arrow pointing straight down at her head.

  PARK HERE. PARK HERE. PARK HERE.

  She holds a brown paper bag to her chest and taps a shoe nervously upon the cement as she waits. The doubts about what she is doing whisper madly in her ear. She tries to banish the voices but fails.

  PARK HERE. PARK HERE.

  If the tragic patterns of her adult life could be distilled into one moment, it would be this: standing outside a run-down pile of cement, holding a brown paper bag filled with false hope, ignoring the doubts as she waits for a man to ask too much of her while he brings nothing but trouble.

  PARK HERE.

  By the time Dolores had finished her shift at the casino and reached J.D. Scrbacek’s office apartment three nights before, the fire trucks were already there, the ambulance and police, a small crowd of gawkers that had seen the flames or heard the news on their police scanners. She had rushed under the yellow tape, past a police officer, to a firefighter with the clean shape of a mask on his otherwise filthy face, and asked if anyone had come out of the building.

  The firefighter shook his head.

  “There was someone inside. J.D. Scrbacek. The lawyer. He was inside, waiting for me.”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am. We didn’t find no one. Let’s hope he left before it started. Why don’t you talk to Captain Beckman over there and tell him what you know. He’s the one writing up the report.”

  But she didn’t talk to Captain Beckman over there, sensed somehow that it wouldn’t be wise to officially connect her name to Scrbacek’s. Instead, she took a last lingering look at the fire, clutched her arms around her chest, and walked slowly back to the casino, where she caught a bus to the employee parking lot, climbed into her wreck of a car, and drove back to her small apartment to confront another night of nothing. The papers all said J.D. was missing, and she knew what that meant. It meant that her last hope for something different than her past was missing, too, and, like J.D. Scrbacek, presumed dead.

  She was aware how sad a case she was, resting any hopes on the likes of J.D. Scrbacek, whose deadened eyes seemed to fire only as they scanned the exaggerated curves of her body. There was something curiously empty about him, as if nothing inside was firm enough to hold an imprint. The moment she left his bed at dawn, dipped down to slip on her heels, quietly climbed down the circular stairway and out of his building, that moment any impression of her similarly slipped out of his life. And, in fairness to J.D., he never pretended it was anything more. He didn’t ask about her day. He didn’t ask about her daughter. He would see her and pounce, and after, amidst the tossed sweat-sodden sheets, when she tried to raise their talk to something more than ordinary chitchat, she found his concentration faltering as he slipped into sleep. He longed only for her body, she knew, not her immortal soul.

  But could she ever expect anything different? Who knew better than Dolores that there was nothing the least bit extraordinary about her immortal soul? And to have a body men longed for, wasn’t that, after all, why she had suffered all the operations?

  She was married to Sammy at the time. “What about looking like that?” he’d say, holding up the foldout of one of his magazines. “I know a guy who owes me a favor.” Or he’d say, “You know, your thighs, they’re getting a little chunky. I heard it don’t even hardly hurt.” Or he’d say, “And tell the doc with what I’m paying for them injections, he ought not to be scrimping on the collagen.” She hadn’t wanted the operations, had been scared of the knife and of that little vile vacuum, but when Sammy Rosas asked, she had silenced the doubts that were whispering like a chorus of madwomen in her ear and said yes. Anything to keep him happy and home, even as she knew he was cheating all the time, even as she knew he was soon to be out the door.

  When she had looked at herself in the mirror after the surgeries, she wasn’t sure who was looking back. Is that you, Dolores Macklin, or is that someone else, some Sammy Rosas sex-fantasy blow-up doll come to life? She should have listened to the mad whispering doubts that were not so mad after all, but what could she have done then? Reduce the tits? Enlarge the nose? Thin the lips? Thicken the thighs? And, of course, it had its uses, this new and improved thing that stared back at her from the mirror. Every night she served her drinks to gray-haired men with too much money. They would notice the improvements, and it might spark something, anything. Everyone could use a little insurance.

  And then along came J.D. Scrbacek.

  At first, it suited her fine that he was only after her new body, because, to be frank, after Sammy Rosas, with his bad knees and forty-five-inch waist and soft dick, it was nice to be with someone younger, harder, who didn’t make her do all the work. But then she began thinking of J.D. at off moments, looking for him her entire shift on the floor, feeling disappointed the nights he didn’t show, which was most nights. The gray-haired men still made their passes while their wives were off at the slots, but she wasn’t interested anymore. She had a man on her mind.

  When she was with J.D. Scrbacek, somehow she felt full of possibilities. It wasn’t money she was after—the gray-haired men had enough if that was all she wanted. And it wasn’t to snare herself a lawyer husband and to thereby rise, somehow, into a higher level of status—because, honey, after all she’d been through, she could care less about either status or a husband. No, it was something far richer than riches: the hope that a relationship with a man could be other than domination and casual cruelty, punctuated by bad sex. And somehow, in J.D. Scrbacek, she had seen that possibility.

&nb
sp; He was gentle, except in bed, which suited her fine. And he didn’t carry the same controlling arrogance of her other men, even Bert Jepsen, Charlene’s father, who had seemed so nice and steady after the disaster of Joey Delossantos, but who had turned out to be the most viciously controlling of them all. Somewhere beneath the hardness he feigned, Dolores could see in J.D. Scrbacek the necessary kindness of a nurturer. He’d be a good daddy, J.D. would, someday, and maybe that was what she was looking for—someone to support her emotionally even as he threw her ankles over his shoulders and kept her bouncing deep into the night. Someone who would allow the Dolores Macklin of West Orange High to step out of the false shell that had been constructed around her and maybe make something new of her life. That was the possibility she felt when she was with J.D. Scrbacek, a last chance, burned all to hell in the fire.

  Until he called, just this afternoon. J.D. Scrbacek had called and asked her to meet him here with the stuff in the bag. The whispering doubts told her it could only mean disaster, and yet how could she refuse? She had a man on her mind, and, as history had proven, when the former Dolores Macklin had a man on her mind, she was lost.

  PARK HERE.

  She is waiting, beneath the flashing sign, wondering if he will really show, and then there he is, turning the corner and walking down the sidewalk toward her, a ragged figure, body hunched, face tilted down, hands jammed in jean pockets, torn and ratty raincoat trailing behind.

  She drops the bag, runs up to him, says in a rush of words, “J.D., J.D., my God, it’s so good to see you, J.D.,” tries to throw her arms around his neck, but he dodges away and moves on past.

  “Follow me” is all he says, without lifting his face, before he turns beneath the neon arrow and disappears into the garage.

  She is stunned for a moment, dumbfounded, and then she does what J.D. had scrupulously not done, she twists her head from side to side to be sure no one is watching. When she turns her attention back to the garage’s entrance, it is empty, as if J.D. had been merely a mirage. But he hadn’t been a mirage. She walks back to the bag, stoops to pick it up, enters the cement structure beneath the neon arrow. Beyond the ticket machines she sees the door of the stairwell slowly shut.

  He is waiting for her inside the doorway, smiling. “Hello, Dolores.”

  “J.D.?” It is clearly J.D. Scrbacek staring at her from the stairs, one foot higher than the other, but there is something different, too. He is unshaven, his hair is greasy and mussed, his cheeks are red from sun and dark in patches from bruising, there is a dirty bandage over his nose. She has never seen him so unkempt, but that is not what is different. It is something in his eyes. They hold a purposefulness she has never noticed in him before. He doesn’t let his gaze perform his typical rove over her body, despite the time she spent before the meeting opening the top of her jacket to reveal her revealing work halter. Instead he looks into her eyes, as if, for the first time, he is actually looking at her, not at what the surgeons have done to her.

  “Did you bring what I needed?”

  “Yes. I did, yes. The razor I already had, and I went to the mall at the LondonTown Pier for the other stuff, but I had a devil of a time finding someone who would let me—”

  “Good,” he says, cutting her off and beginning to climb the stairs. “There’s a bathroom up here on the fourth floor. We can get ready there.”

  “J.D.? What’s happening here? Tell me what’s going on. I need to know what you are getting me—”

  He turns around and puts his fingers to his lips, and she quiets. “Fourth floor,” he says softly.

  When she reaches the bathroom door, he pulls her inside, closes the door behind her. The room is cramped and desolate, thick with stink, the toilet stuffed with gobs of toilet paper, a bare roll of brown paper standing on the edge of the filthy sink. She cringes from the smell and holds her arms tight to her body, making herself as small as possible in that fetid space. He takes the bag from her and rummages inside.

  “Let’s see what goodies you brought.” He pulls out the pair of reading glasses she picked up for him at the bookstore in the mall. The rims of the glasses are dark, the lenses thick. A large tag still hangs down from the bridge.

  He puts the glasses on and blinks wildly. “I can’t see a thing.”

  “You said as powerful as they make.”

  “So I did. How do I look?”

  “Like a nearsighted computer geek who still lives with his mother.”

  “Perfect.”

  “What’s going on, J.D.?”

  “I’m getting ready for Halloween.”

  “Take off the damn glasses and talk to me.”

  He slips the glasses off his nose, carefully folds them, and returns them to the bag. “I’m in serious trouble, Dolores, and the man responsible is in room 2402 of Diamond’s Mount Olympus. I have to get inside that room, find out who is behind what’s happened to me, and figure out a way to turn the tide. The problem is, I’m being hunted like a cougar, so I can’t just stroll in on my own. I need your help.”

  “How serious are they about finding you?”

  “Serious as a bullet in the head.”

  “And so naturally, you thought of me.”

  “I finally realized that in the whole of Casinoland, you’re the only one I can trust.”

  She tilts her head at that and can’t suppress the smile. It’s the nicest thing he’s ever said to her. For a moment a rush of emotion silences the whispering, and she takes a hesitant step forward, another, and then wraps her arms around his neck.

  “Oh, J.D. I was so worried. When I saw the fire. And then you came up missing. And there was talk of you being a murderer, which I knew was a lie. And I thought I’d never see you again. J.D.” The tears come. She wipes her nose on his filthy jacket, hugs him tighter. “If anything happened to you, J.D., I don’t know what I’d do. I missed you so much, I was so worried, I . . . I . . .”

  She stops speaking when she realizes that he is not hugging back. By now, the old J.D., the two of them alone in a sordid little room like this, would already have his teeth in her neck as he dry humped her against the door. But this J.D. is doing nothing. She lets go of him, takes a step back, and wipes her face, smearing mascara on the back of her hand.

  He is staring at her, right into her eyes, like before. “Stop it,” she says. “Stop looking at me.”

  “You normally like it when I look at you.”

  “Not like that, like you’re looking into me or something.”

  “It’s just you’re a very sweet woman, Dolores, and I feel bad about how it has been between us.”

  She wipes beneath her eye with a thumb. “And how has it been between us?”

  “I don’t know. You know.”

  “Tell me, J.D. Tell me what you feel bad about. No, forget it. Please don’t. Just tell me how it’s going to be after all this crap is over. Tell me that.”

  “Not like it was.”

  “Does that mean better, J.D.? Are you going to take me out to dinner some night, maybe a show? Are you going to take Charlene and me to an amusement park come Sunday? Are you going to maybe stay awake until I show up one night? Tell me how it’s going to be.”

  “While on the run, I . . . I . . .”

  “Go ahead, spit it out.”

  “I saw an old girlfriend.”

  “Oh . . . my . . . God.”

  “What?”

  “He’s going to give me the old-girlfriend speech. Please, dear God, anything but that.”

  “And I think I have a son.”

  “A son. And he thinks he has a goddamn son.” She stops her performance, wipes her nose with her palm, looks up to J.D. “A son?”

  “I think.”

  “You’re not certain?”

  “I don’t know. All I know is that I saw her and the boy, and I started feeling things I haven’t felt in a while, or ever.”

  “And so you and this old girlfriend, you just hit it right off again? The two of you are smack back i
nto the swing of things?”

  “She hates me. She told me to stay the hell out of her life.”

  Dolores wipes at her nose again and looks down at the black smear on her hand. “I’m a mess.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “Is she pretty, this old girlfriend?”

  “Yes, but not like you.”

  “So let me get this straight. You roped me into getting you all this stuff, endangered my life and my job, brought me to this shithole, all just to break up with me?”

  “I need your help, but I wanted you to know.”

  “Next time, use the phone.” She spins around and opens the door. “I need some air.” The door slams shut behind her.

  At first, she is bent with disappointment, overwhelmed with frustration, crying and banging her fist on the cement walls outside the bathroom. But the former Dolores Macklin, while quick to lose her head over a man, is also quick to recover after it all goes bad, has always been tougher than anyone had ever credited her for, has grown even tougher doing the single-mom bit. And so by the time J.D. Scrbacek comes out of the bathroom, bag in hand, she is able to stare at him for a long moment, her arms crossed and eyes dry, before breaking into laughter.

  “You should see yourself,” she says.

  “I told you, I can’t see a thing with these glasses.”

  “Well, that’s too bad, J.D., because you are quite a sight.”

  He has shaved off his beard into a goatee, enhanced by the hair-in-a-can she found that he has carefully sprayed atop it. With the fake teeth she bought, he looks like a bad Jerry Lewis movie. And then, of course, he wears the dealer’s outfit she scrounged for him, the crucial thing that was so difficult for her to find. The shirt and pants are so big they blossom out of the fancy vest he wears. With his glasses and his hair hacked short and blackened he appears so hapless that the sight of him eases whatever pain she is feeling at being unceremoniously dumped just a few moments before.