Hunter sits across from Chase in a booth at an IHOP on the Strip. He has a show at Treasure Island in an hour and is in costume minus the eye patch.
“Did you tell her you don’t want to move to New York?”
“She said she could ‘see us’ there.”
“So—adios California? Hola New York?”
Michele calls and Chase doesn’t answer it and she doesn’t leave a message. It rings again and it’s Michele and again Chase won’t answer. It rings once more and he stares at the display until his eyes cross. Exasperated, Hunter snatches the cell from Chase’s hand, flips it open, and calmly says, “He doesn’t love you and never will, so get over it.”
Chase reaches for the phone but Hunter pulls back.
“You lose, bitch!” Hunter yells into the cell and when he hands it back to Chase Michele is still there. Chase listens for a minute before simply saying, “I just don’t think so.” He clicks off. He stares at Hunter. Michele wanted a ride to Public Storage to get cash. Michele wanted Chase to go with her to a house in the Lakes where Bailey’s dealer lives.
Hunter stares at Chase evenly before speaking. “Dude, I understand. Even for me, it’s hard leaving. I want out, but honestly, I’ve got a rent-free room at home with a private bathroom, a car, central air, and DirecTV. I’ve got a pool and cash in the bank and free food. I feel like shit when I don’t get callbacks from schools and I can’t even get an interview for shit teaching jobs like yours. But I’m comfortable. Day-to-day, there’s nothing I have to worry about. I mean, I want to get the fuck out of here, too. I just don’t know where to go.” Hunter thinks things through. “But the Sun King suite at the Palace? Very nice. Hmm. I’d sleep with dudes to live there.”
“Michele needs—”
“Michele? Forget it. You can’t do anything about that.”
“About what?”
“The problem with her plan and why she’s not going anywhere.”
“Why is that?”
“She likes mints on her pillows.”
“Michele asked me to ask you how Brandi was,” Chase says. “Why would she do that?”
Hunter suddenly has to stare out the window. He reaches for his glass of water and takes a very small sip and returns the glass to the table but doesn’t let go of it. He sighs. “What did that bitch say?”
“It doesn’t matter what she said Hunter—”
“Oh fuck that fucking bitch—”
“That girl is still in high school, Hunter,” Chase says.
“She’s seventeen, dude. So? What does that make me?” Hunter asks defensively. “Age of consent.”
Chase sucks on an ice cube. “How much have you spent?” Chase asks this but knows the answer. According to Michele, Hunter is one of Brandi’s most lucrative clients. According to Michele, Hunter spends at least four or five hours a week with her. Most of this is paid but some of it is not, which suggests to Michele that there actually might be something more going on: the hint of an emotional attachment.
“Brandi is what she is.”
“And what is that, Hunt?” Chase asks.
“A girl who doesn’t make me feel like shit about myself.”
“Don’t you think there’s a reason why?”
“I don’t think about things like that. I can’t look at it that way.”
“Do me a favor,” Chase says, sucking on another ice cube, then spitting the ice cube back into the glass. “Don’t call Bailey. If you want to see Brandi just do it through Michele instead.”
“You of all people shouldn’t get judgmental on my ass,” Hunter says. “I might use Bailey’s services but dude, you’re driving them around—”
“But I don’t do anything with them, Hunter.”
“No, you just deliver them.”
Chase can’t sleep but he’s too tired to sketch so he watches KLAS news: seven dead coyotes hanging from a clothesline in the backyard of a house in Henderson. A man tells the reporter that he’s doing his part to keep the children safe. Chase sips a Corona and turns off the television during a story about teenagers assaulting tourists at the MGM Grand. With the TV off there’s only the sound of the air conditioner humming as Chase spends hours online. He Googles the name of the artist he read about last month in The New York Times because sometimes reading about him motivates Chase, though more often than not it overwhelms and depresses him, which automatically pushes him toward porn sites, and while masturbating to the stuff he downloads, he wonders why these girls are doing this and why are they all so young? Sirens wail outside. A couple has a brief fight next door. It’s after two when Chase checks the Vegas forecast though he knows what it will tell him. Chase calls Julia. She doesn’t pick up. He leaves no message and waits for the phone to ring. He’s sad, though not surprised, when it doesn’t. He sends her an e-mail:
Jules,
7-Day Las Vegas Weather Forecast
Monday 110
Tuesday 110
Wednesday 112
Thursday 112
Friday 113
Saturday 114
Sunday 114
Heat Alert and Air Quality Advisory until further notice. WTF am I still doing here??? This is June. Summer in Paradise. Think I’ll take their advice and stay inside. Lots of painting to get done for The Show that I hope you want to come to. Are you foolish or brave enough to come back? Have I scared the h*ll out of you yet? I’ll understand if you’ve got laundry to do or a headache. I could use a small farmhouse in upstate New York or Montana right about now. All trees and hills. God I miss you. Wish me luck!
Before logging off, Chase checks MySpace. Michele told him Brandi and Rachel and some of the other girls have pages and their sites are monitored to make sure they’re not disclosing anything about Michele or Bailey or the business. Brandi’s page is a blur of pink with red and blue hearts. She has 445 “friends.” The reason: her pictures and home videos. Chase can’t download any of the videos but the pics are accessible. The pics are all of Brandi and her friends, mostly at a party of some kind, holding bottles of beer and smoking cigarettes, Brandi in a string bikini, Brandi in her underwear. A column of various messages runs down the left side of the page. Inside a small black square icon it reads “Fuck With Me and I’LL FUCK WITH YOU” and below it “don’t hate me cuz you ain’t me, BITCH!!!” and then some personal note in her own words to all of her “peeps” and “niggas” and “gangstas,” and she thanks God and her mom and pop and steppop and cousins for “everything.” And on the right side, where Brandi’s 445 friends have left messages and pics, there is one from Rachel: “Omg Bran!!!! I luv u soooo much Bitch!! This summer’s off the hook—cha-CHING!!! met sum cute guys and they wanna take us to Tabu l8tr and smoke a little 420 b4. And u r so right m’s a nasty lil slut and you can’t trust the bitch. But as u say—we got that all figgered out. Call u l8tr—luv ya lots <3.”
Chase attaches the page to an e-mail, which he sends to Michele. Michele is online, too, because before Chase can log off he gets an immediate response. Michele says it’s old news and under control. And she also needs a ride tomorrow, early, and she booked it, not Bailey, and she wants Chase with her. In bed, before he falls asleep, Chase masturbates to images of Michele in her low-rise jeans but they don’t work and only Brandi naked, on all fours, by a pool, her ass pushed up in the air, her body dark (except for that one place) and glistening with oil is what finally makes Chase come.
Chase just lies awake in his bed the next morning. In the cool quiet of the apartment he stares at a crack in the ceiling over his bed. He’s been following its progression for months now. The symbolism was alarming and made him tense. He would be unable to fall back asleep if he woke up and saw the crack in the ceiling. (He was also afraid of what was in the crack.) And for a while he was convinced the crack, thin and meandering, was growing. But now he doesn’t care. He would call someone about it if he were staying in Vegas, but since he’s not, there’s no point.
The pounding on the door is Michele.
It is just after seven and the orange light from outside seeps through the venetian blinds. Chase lies still, following the crack.
Michele starts calling his name. “Charles, open the door.”
Last night Chase promised to go with Michele this morning for the “wake-up” at Mandalay Bay. She’s been filling her days with more appointments that Bailey doesn’t know about.
This is the money that Michele can keep for herself. She wrote in the e-mail last night that the transition would be easier if Chase were staying for the rest of the summer. “Transition to what?” Chase said the words out loud as he typed them.
When Chase lets her in this morning Michele has to tell him to get dressed.
He pulls his shorts off and walks naked across the room to his dresser to find something to wear—a defiant gesture that makes him feel sexy, even though Michele is not paying attention.
Michele complains that Chase never returns her calls since Julia visited and if he wants to officially dump her as a friend, just do it.
Chase tells Michele that he’s been painting a lot and then asks how the after-hours party was last night and if Hunter showed up.
Michele startles Chase when she shouts, “Why are you avoiding us?”
But she doesn’t wait for a response. She types a message on her new Treo and mutters to herself, calling whoever she’s texting a fool. Michele talks to herself as she types: “Because Bailey, you fucking dipshit, she’s fifteen years old and we don’t need any more girls and this is your fucking problem and besides you got her from a Craigslist ad and the tweaked-out Goth look isn’t working. So no, I won’t fucking train her. You should feel free though.”
“And last night in the suite?” Chase asks lightly when Michele looks up.
“What about it?”
“How was it?”
“Tense.”
Chase asks what made it tense.
“Bailey.”
“How did he make it tense?”
“He got drunk and accused me of stealing from him.”
“Well, can you see how he could define it that way?”
“It’s not stealing if it’s mine. They’re my girls and my appointments and it’s my time.” Michele sighs. “Anyway, he was wasted and accused two other girls there of stealing. And threw you in for good measure. Then he kicked everyone out. Except Hunter, who got a bloody nose and bled all over the white comforter, then slipped Bailey five hundred dollars for the room for the rest of the night with Brandi.”
“That sounds like so much fun.”
“I think that may have been the last party for a while.”
“I am not sorry to hear that.”
“Hunter is.” Michele turns to him. “Hey, I liked your idea.”
“What idea?”
“The idea of running it out of Rachel’s place. I think you’re right. I think Rachel and her brother would go for it if we made it worth their while.”
“Jesus Christ,” Chase says, whirling around. “I wasn’t serious, Michele.”
While Chase sits in the sun waiting for Michele he calls Julia. Their conversation is brief. It revolves around her ideas about New York and Chase’s “stubborn” and “irrational” resistance to moving there. Chase regrets making the call. Then he tells Julia that he regrets making the call. Julia says the feeling is mutual.
Julia asks why he even bothered. Chase doesn’t give a reason because he doesn’t have one. Sometime around ten o’clock— after Michele is finished with the oncologist from Denver— Chase calls Julia back at a red light on Tropicana.
“Why do I call you when I’m like that?” he asks tiredly.
“I don’t know.”
The light turns green. Julia says something Chase can’t hear. He’s barely listening.
Chase is thinking of Michele in the Mustang after the appointment this morning. He’s thinking about Michele trying to count out loud and losing track and then counting a third time. He’s thinking about Michele saying, “Fuck this” and jamming a handful of twenties that turn out to be $320 (Chase will immediately re-count the money when he gets home) between his legs and saying nothing else. Chase is thinking of that drive all the way to Bailey’s house in Summerlin because there were too many people in the suite. Michele had simply muttered “thanks” at the house in Summerlin when Chase dropped her off after the silent drive. Gray mornings in the Mustang with nothing to say were not unusual for them now.
“I shouldn’t have called you like that,” Chase says to Julia while steering the car with a hand resting in his lap. He’s making his way home.
“You exhaust me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Why do you do that? Why do you call and tell me those things? That you can’t do what couples do? That you can’t move forward? That you can’t make commitments? That New York is impossible?”
“I don’t know” is all Chase wants to say.
“What am I supposed to do with that? You tell me we’re rushing things. That you can’t see yourself in New York. That I’m the one who’s misguided?”
“I said it was a potentially misguided move.”
Julia exhales loudly.
“Don’t, Julia. Just don’t sigh, as if the whole world is—”
“Handle it, Chase, please,” she says. “That’s all I want. I just want you to respond the right way. It’s not complicated. But I really need to know that you can talk to me.”
“I’m getting some good work done here.” It’s a lie but it’s all he has.
She says her orientation was fine. She says she was surprised when he didn’t ask how it went the last time they spoke. She sounds agitated. Chase starts to mention his show again, and being preoccupied, and he apologizes but the words come out sounding defensive and petty.
After a long silence Chase asks, “Hello?”
“I’m pregnant, by the way.”
Chase pulls into a CVS parking lot and lets the engine idle. He doesn’t say anything. Morning traffic rushes past on Maryland Parkway. The sun is burning through the low gray clouds. He sinks into his seat. A faint ringing begins in his left ear and then moves to the right.
He swallows. “Okay,” he says.
“Okay? Okay what?”
“Nothing. I said okay.” He’s trying to piece things together. “I mean, what do you want me to say?” He clears his throat, trying to loosen the tightness in his voice. He sits up straight. “What are you thinking? Is there something you want me to say?”
“Not really.” Her voice is softly condescending.
“Do you seriously think we can handle this now?” he asks.
“Yes,” Julia says. “I do.”
“But not really,” he says. “You don’t really think that.”
“Yes, I do,” she says. “And it’s fine. We’ll be fine.”
“It makes no sense.”
“What doesn’t?”
“This happening now. You can’t want this.”
“We’ll be okay.”
“You’re so sure about things, Jules. You think things always work out. How are you so sure this will work out?”
“Why are you so sure it might not work out?”
“Things don’t always just work out. Okay? Life doesn’t just work out, Julia. Not everyone can handle everything just right.”
“We can,” Julia says. “If we’re together, we can handle everything.”
He falls into a dazed silence. He’ll hate the baby. He’ll hate Julia. He’ll feel smaller and pettier than he does now. He’ll be cornered. He’ll drown in New York. “Where, Julia? Where are we going to do this? In a one-bedroom apartment? Where the hell will it sleep?”
“Some people can handle this, Chase.”
“Some people can’t handle half of it, Julia,” he finally says.
“I don’t know what that means.”
The air conditioner broke and Chase is awake most of the night. He lies on top of the sheets in his basketball shorts, running through the same cyc
le of thoughts. He tells himself Julia really doesn’t want this now. It’s too soon. How can she be doing this? She’s just starting her career. Chase tries to think of ways he will guide Julia to the appropriate decision without appearing to do so. He sits up in bed suddenly, agitated but clearheaded. He writes a long e-mail to Julia explaining everything. During the typing of this letter his cell rings and he checks the call and it’s a girl who needs a ride and after a brief flash of hesitation Chase writes this detail to Julia. He writes about all the calls coming in from teenage girls who need rides to hotels or houses or apartment complexes so they can fuck men for money. He feels an adrenaline rush as he types this. He doesn’t judge himself. He poses open-ended questions about the situation as though there’s something ambiguous about the truth, as though what is going down is actually open for interpretation. He rereads the e-mail and spell-checks it. It’s better-written than he first thought and he now feels that he has control over everything between them. And once he sends the e-mail events will unfold as they were meant to. Nothing will be held back. Nothing will be hidden. It feels good to express it all. Chase tells himself: this is the truth and this is real and this has to be done. When Chase finishes the e-mail (he prints it out because he’s that proud of it), it’s nearly four pages long and single-spaced. When he rereads it again he realizes that a page and a half of it is about Michele. And that isn’t the point. So he deletes the entire thing.
The Delivery Man Page 15