“High school was fun wasn’t it? So what brings you out here, old man?”
“I came with Hernandez, but I don’t know a soul in there.”
“Do you want to?”
“Maybe that tall blonde in the overalls. Did you see her?”
Persell nodded.
“Well? What’s the story?”
“She’s Karen’s cousin from Las Vegas. She left her husband or something. But don’t get your hopes up, man, she hasn’t even so much as talked to anybody all night.”
“I was just curious.”
“So Gleason, we going to see you at City College again next month?” Johnson asked.
“I don’t know. It’s getting harder and harder to fake it. I’ve been there two and a half years, and I’ve got less than thirty units. I’m thinking I should maybe look more into a professional field,”
“Professional, huh? How about something in the medical field like cattle insemination? You ought to mingle inside with the cowboys. They could probably clue you in.”
“That’s close,” I said. “But I was thinking more about urine analysis. Quite a growing field, and it sounds pretty interesting. Just think of all the things you could find in people’s urine. I wonder how you get started in that?”
“You probably have to start out as the guy who cleans all the used cups.”
“You want a little apprenticeship work now?” Persell asked. “Follow me. I’ll start you off.” He walked a few steps to the other side of the guy still on his knees on the grass. Persell pulled out his dick and started to piss right next to him.
“Nay, I’m into more structured learning experiences.” I killed off my beer, refilled my glass and filled one for Hernandez. “It’s been lovely guys, see ya.” I walked back into the house.
I went back through the room with the pool table. As I came up to the steps into the hall I noticed the front door open and a parade of people, two abreast, streaming into the house. There was a lot of noise and energy. All the voices mixed with laughter so you couldn’t really understand anyone.
“You should have kicked his ass Tim,” a short guy wearing a cowboy hat said to the mean-looking redneck who earlier had been contemptuously eyeing Benny and me. I saw him look right at me, a look that could only be described as full of both thought and malice. “Shut up,” he said to the short guy in the hat before he turned left and led everybody back into the big room.
I waited, standing in the hall sipping my beer until the line of people moving in ended, and then I crept down the hallway and went out the front door.
Out in the driveway, I pinpointed my car and saw that Red’s truck was gone. I knew something was up with all the commotion and Benny and Red gone without a word, but I was in enemy territory and my last thought was to stick around to investigate. I killed off one of the beers I’d been carrying, tossed down the cup, got in my car, started it and began to drive, but the path was blocked with other cars slowly pulling out to leave ahead of me. Instinctively, I turned to my left and followed down the other curve of the driveway in the dark, feeling it must have been a big horseshoe shape with more than one way to get out.
Slowly moving down the straight line of asphalt my headlights suddenly caught then closed in on a silhouette moving toward the main road, moving swiftly and with purpose on the strip of grass between the driveway and the big fishpond. It was the blonde in the overalls, stomping off to parts unknown. I slowed as I approached her. Normally I would have just driven by, but here we seemed alone, both abandoned, just the two of us isolated in this wide secluded space with only the light from my weak headlights and the full moon. I drove slowly beside her, leaned over, and rolled my window down halfway.
“Need a ride?”
“Fuck off!”
I hit my brakes, stopped, opened my door, and stood outside my bug. “Hey, sorry, I didn’t mean nothing. I was just trying to be nice,” I said over the roof of the car.
After about three long strides she caught up to me and stopped.
“Hey, look,” she said. “I’m just tired of assholes and jerks, so just push on, okay?”
“Sorry.” I climbed back into my car and started to put it in gear when she leaned sideways and looked at me through the window that was halfway down.
“Are you and asshole or a jerk?” she asked.
“Probably.”
She stood with one hand gripping the top of the window, just staring at me for a few moments before she spoke again. “I suppose if you were a real asshole or a creep you would have said no.” She opened the door and sat down next to me. “Come on let’s go.”
I put the car in gear, took off, made a right off the property and headed back towards town. She slouched in the seat and just stared straight ahead. After about a mile I asked where she wanted to go.
“Huntington Avenue, the other side of Jensen.”
“Are you sure? That’s like the worst part of town.”
“Of course I’m sure,” she snapped at me. “Don’t you think I know where I’m going?”
“That’s about six or seven miles away. You were going to walk there?”
“I would have made it.” She continued to stare straight ahead.
I kept trying to steal glances without her noticing. This close she looked even better than she had before, her skin smooth and taut, her features even and sharp. I tried to get something on the radio but couldn’t get anything to come in clearly. My tape player had been busted for about six months all it did was eat the old cassette tapes I had. I suddenly wished I had put out the money to put in a CD player, though I never had felt that way before. I came to a stop sign, made a left, put it through the gears and into fourth, looked at her briefly again then back at the road. “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but what happened back there? I was in the backyard.”
“Two fucking jerks were going to fight because one of them came up and talked to me, and I hardly even know the big creep who thinks he owns me or something. I hardly knew anyone there except for my cousin and a couple of her friends. Jesus Christ, I came here just to be bored to get away from arguments and fighting and craziness, but it follows me like a plague.”
“I guess being a beautiful chick ain’t as easy as it seems.” I surprised myself with my candor. She looked at me without a smile then turned away. “Was one of them a kind of big Mexican guy who really didn’t look Mexican?”
“I’d say he was more Spanish than Mexican. He was kinda cute with blue eyes. He came up to talk to me, and the other guy, Tim, this big grit ball friend of my cousin, suddenly decided he was my protector or something. I swear. I don’t know what’s wrong with these people. First they started arguing, and then they went out into the front yard, and they were going to fight. I just don’t believe this shit.”
As I drove along I could clearly picture what she had just described.
“Well, if it makes you feel any better they probably weren’t really fighting over you. They were just using you as an excuse to fight. And actually, down deep they really didn’t want to fight. They just didn’t want to back down. You see backing down to these guys is actually worse than a good ass whipping. A lot worse.”
“I thought you said you didn’t see it?”
“I didn’t. But I didn’t need to. The Mexican guy is a friend of mine. The other guy I didn’t see until about a half an hour ago, but I’ve seen guys like him a thousand times. I grew up here. I know what these people are like. They’re real predictable, even when they’re trying to be unpredictable.”
“Is there beer in that? Can I have some?”
I handed her the plastic cup. She downed it in one gulp and tossed the empty cup out the window. “I want to stop at a store.”
“There’s a seven-eleven on Huntington that’s probably still open. If they’re not being robbed.”
We came out of the darkness of the country into the relative brightness of the city.
“So, what was the fight like?” I asked.
�
��It was funny actually.”
“Funny?” I knew Benny and remembered the sadistic look in the big redneck’s eyes. Just the thought of those two going at it was almost gruesome, funny was the last word that came to mind.
“I was screaming. My cousin Cathy was screaming. They were circling each other, getting ready to punch each other when out of nowhere some guy who looked real drunk came running up and jumped on Tim’s back. While Tim was trying to shake him off, your friend pulled the guy off, punched him in the head then drug him away and that was that. That was the end of it.”
“Did the drunk guy have red hair?”
“Maybe, yeah I think he did. After your friend drug him away everybody calmed down, but I was so pissed off I just had to get away. People are such assholes. I hate the whole human race.”
I pulled into the parking lot of the convenience store. I was a little leery of two sleazy-looking Indians sitting on the cement next to the pay phone at the end of the building, but the blonde got out of the my car without a worry and walked into the store, so I followed her inside.
She walked right to the back and started staring into the cold box. Pulling off the thing that held her hair in a ponytail she shook out her mane until it touched both her shoulders. She looked down at me since even though she was only wearing flip-flops she was an inch or two taller. “What’s your name?”
“Billy.”
“Billy, do you like Coors or Bud?”
“I don’t care.”
She grabbed a twelve-pack of Coors. Marched up to the counter and set the beer down. “Let me have a pint of tequila, the gold.”
The clerk in an orange 7-11 shirt was fat, probably in his early thirties with dull eyes, and the skin of his face pulling down towards his chin. He set the tequila on the counter next to the beer. “You got ID?” He looked at her then at me.
“Show it to him Billy.”
It seemed so natural to follow her instructions, it didn’t occur to me that I wasn’t of age until I handed over my license, and just then I looked at the clock over the clerk’s head; it read one-fifteen. I was twenty-one by over an hour.
The guy studied my license like it was written in Japanese.
“This ain’t going to work. You have to wait until six this morning when we start selling again.”
“But it’s the twenty-fourth, I turned twenty-one over an hour ago.”
“That ain’t the way the law works. You got to wait.”
“But ”
“Hey!” the tall blonde’s jaw dropped as she looked first at me then at the fat clerk.
“This guy is legally legal and you’re turning him down? How do you figure?”
“That’s the law. Don’t blame me,” he said as he handed my license back to me. “You got to wait until the next business day.”
“I do blame you.” She braced her hands against the counter and leaned forward. “We’re here in this shitty town out in the middle of nowhere, and you’re screwing with us over with some technicality like you’re going to get busted or something, get real.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No you’re not. If you were you wouldn’t be acting like such an asshole in the first place.” She slapped a twenty down on the counter, grabbed the beer and slipped the bottle of tequila into the hip pocket of her overalls. “Let’s go.”
Again I followed her instructions like I had no choice, walking as fast as I could, trying my best not to break into a full sprint. Once outside I jumped into my car, started it, forced it into reverse and prepared to make the quickest getaway possibly. The whole time thinking the clerk was right behind us with either a baseball bat to smack me or at least a notepad to take down my license plate number. The blonde finally came up to my car, opened the door then stopped.
“Wait.” She set the twelve-pack on the seat. “I know he owes me some change. I’m going to get some smokes.”
“I don’t think we should…”
“Don’t worry.” She pushed the door shut and casually strolled back into the store.
I didn’t have a clue as to what I should do. My first thought was just get the hell out of there and save myself from a bunch of trouble I didn’t deserve. I almost started to leave. In fact I actually backed the car out and turned it around, but something held me. I didn’t know this crazy woman, and I certainly didn’t owe her anything, certainly not six months in the slammer for robbery or whatever other charges the county sheriff could cook up for good measure. But something held me. I sat with the car idling, staring at the store’s swinging glass doors.
She slowly came out of the store, walked around the back of the car, and got in. “No problem, let’s go.”
I took off, made a left out of the parking lot, and looked at her only after I’d driven about a quarter of a mile. She was just sitting there quietly, looking out at the night.
“So what gives? What happened? Was he calling the police?”
“No problem.” She turned and smiled. An expression that made her look like an entirely different person. “I just told him I thought he was so nice overlooking our little problem that I was going to drop off my brother, and then come back and give him a better blow job than he could ever imagine.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” her voice was soft as she spoke slowly. “He gave me all my change, two packs of smokes and a free lighter.” She smiled again. “You can’t beat that.”
I just shook my head. My blood pressure must have lowered, because I felt more relaxed. I kept checking the mirror every ten seconds, ready to be red-lighted and pulled over at any moment, but there were no headlights behind or in front of us. Mine was the only car on the road.
“Tell me when we get to Jensen. I know how to get where we’re going from there.” She reached back, pulled two beers from the package, opened then both and handed me one.
“Can I ask how old you are?”
“Nineteen. How old do I look?”
“You seem older than nineteen.”
“I know I don’t look my best.” She pulled at the chest pocket of her overalls and looked down. “I’ve been painting.”
“Like pictures?”
“Like walls. My Auntie was going to pay some guy to do it. Shoot, I need the money worse than him I’m sure.”
“I hate to paint.”
“Not me, give me a roller and let me at it. Nothing to it just hump those walls, baby, hump those walls.” She uncapped the tequila, took a big swig, and handed me the bottle. “Here.”
I took it, looked at it, but tried not to smell it. I just tilted it back, took a big pull, and held out the bottle until she took it back. My throat, chest, and then stomach burned.
She took another drink, chased it with her beer then offered me the bottle once again.
“No, I’ll wait. Jensen’s the light right up there. Where are we going?”
“To my cousin’s. Make a right at the light then take the first right, another right, and then a left.”
I didn’t mention it, but I knew we were headed to the worst part of town, our little taste of the ghetto in the desert. In just a few minutes we were right in the middle of it, dark streets with old worn houses and run-down apartments, old beat-up cars and older cars turned into low-riders with perfect bodies and shiny paint jobs. I knew in this neighborhood you wouldn’t find any kids named Ashley or Brittany or Ryan or Josh, they’d all be Juan or Wang or Tawana or Maria.
“Your cousin lives here?”
“Park behind that white pickup.”
“Are you sure she’ll be awake?”
“He’ll be awake. He doesn’t sleep much, and he goes to work real early.”
I parked in the dim excess of a weak streetlight. The only one I could see in either direction for a hundred yards.
“Come on, grab the beer.” She got out, slammed the door and starting walking up to a small apartment complex that looked abandoned.
What was I doing with this girl? She was beautiful and crazy and se
emed nothing but trouble. I knew I should just drop her off and get the hell out of there. The last thing I wanted to do was leave my car parked on this street, but I was like a zombie who couldn’t say no, and now it seemed I had no choice but to pursue her. I locked both doors and followed until I was standing next to her as she banged on the weathered door of one of the apartments.
“Who is it?” the question came in an incredibly deep voice came from the other side of the door.
“Rita.”
The door opened, and there stood a giant with a full brown beard and long greasy hair to his shoulders. He had to be close to seven feet tall but with arms, neck, and chest thick even in proportion to his height. He had on just jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt. Single-colored tattoos decorated his arms, shoulders, and neck. “Come on in, baby.”
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