by Jeff Johnson
I could hear the big guy panting. He stood there for several long seconds while I held my breath. Then he kicked the last guy once in the gut and started walking toward the truck stop.
I waited in the lee of the truck axle, watching his retreating legs. He didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry. One of the truck drivers groaned and then made a terrible, high-pitched keening sound. I peeked around the edge of the muddy wheel and watched the Russian enter the truck stop. He looked around the diner and then calmly made for the restroom when he didn’t see me.
I scrambled over and checked his car door. I hadn’t heard the beep of an alarm, but I cringed anyway as I grabbed the handle. It was unlocked. I dug my keys out of my pocket and picked one at random, the key to the laundry room at my duplex. My hands were shaking as I rammed it deep into the ignition and snapped it off with a violent jerk. I scrambled out and slammed the door, then sprinted back into the gloom behind the semis, moving fast, back toward the gas pumps. I paused in the lee of the last truck. My car was less than fifty feet away.
I watched as the man in the tracksuit made his way through the place, head swiveling back and forth. Everyone inside looked relaxed. The brief episode in the parking lot had gone unnoticed thus far. I watched as he finished his casual inspection and glanced out at my car. Satisfied that I wasn’t in it, he walked slowly back out into the rain toward his Lincoln. He knew I was going to Oregon and probably reasoned that he could wait up the road until I passed and catch me there. The Cannibal Country no-man’s-land around the Oregon–California border was a perfect place for a fiery high-speed wreck with a few bullet holes tossed in. Any law enforcement would just write it off and go back to donuts and Internet porn if he tossed a couple of bags of meth around the wreckage, which was the cop-tool brand of clever they had rolled out thus far.
When he was close to the Lincoln, I made a mad and silent dash to my car, key already in hand. I was in and peeling out in reverse in seconds. I cranked it hard right and stomped the brakes, then slammed it into drive and floored it, rooster-tailing gravel with the headlights out. I looked up just as he slammed his car door. I didn’t know if he could see me as I roared past, if he looked up an instant after his key wouldn’t go into the ignition and he realized he was trapped in the middle of nowhere, but I shot him the bird and almost lost control of the BMW. When I flicked my eyes over the rearview the flash of tableau was perfect. My would-be murderer was standing with the car door open, staring. Behind him, the dirty kid and the waitress were under the awning. He was pointing. She was on the phone.
I ripped out of the parking lot and down a long empty road and up the on-ramp before flicking on the headlights. There were no other cars on the road, so I pushed it up to eighty-five and hit the cruise button and tried to catch my breath. I lit a cigarette and cracked the window. Smoke swirled into the night and I suddenly, inexplicably laughed. And I couldn’t stop. After a long minute I hit the changer on the CD player and cranked it up. Doobie Brothers boomed out of the speakers.
A few miles later, two highway patrol cars roared past me going the opposite direction, sirens wailing and lights flashing, followed a mile or so later by another speeding patrol car and the first ambulance. I clicked the BMW up to ninety. The level of trouble I was in had just gone up significantly, I knew. But there was no telling what was going to happen anymore, so I was back where I belonged.
My apartment had been dusted.
I dropped my bag on the floor by the door and went straight to the refrigerator. There was a note from Delia, written in her perfect Palmer script.
“Dearest Dickhead, I got you beer and there’s a Reuben from Ken’s in the fridge. You better have brought me something really fucking good. Like a dildo full of Mexican jumping beans or a cowboy hat with horns. Welcome home, D.”
I got a beer and poured myself a shot of Corner Creek, then went and sat down at the dining room table, which shone with a gentle gloss and smelled like a lemon polish I didn’t have. Both of the cats jumped up, sniffed my drinks and my forehead, then lay down, purring and yawning, like I’d been gone for an hour. Delia spoiled them so thoroughly every time I was gone that my absence was probably a plus in their worldview. When I’d gone to Seattle for a few days last summer, she’d made tiny paper hats for them and sent me dozens of pictures on my cell phone. It almost seemed like they were posing for her.
I took my boots off while I drank and then restlessly prowled around the place in my socks. The bed was made, the bathroom was spotless, the towels folded in three like in a good hotel. Everything was exceptionally clean. There was nothing for me to do. I always cleaned when I got home, as a way to reclaim my space. I felt like I was living in Delia’s place, which I could only imagine as I’d never been there. I was living in Delia’s place, decorated with all my stuff. Somehow it didn’t bother me that much.
I wandered around a little, sipping beer and snooping around my own place, looking for signs that Delia had been probing around. I had plenty to hide, but most of it was so confusing that I could hide it in plain sight, which I did. I drifted over to the armoire, opened it, and peeked in. Still messy. No sign that she’d been there. Too bad. Then I went over to my curio cabinet and opened one of the glass doors. Everything was where I’d left it, so I opened the other door. There were dozens of objects, but one of them had been moved. It was one of my favorites and I’d sketched it many times, but not anytime recently. She evidently had. I took it out and studied it.
It was a small brass cannon, Civil War. A toy. The spokes on the two wheels may not have been period correct. In fact none of the features were probably accurate, but it looked like a Civil War–era cannon, and that was all that mattered to me. It would have looked okay on a pirate ship, too. The little brass man who loaded it probably had a little brass musket. The lines along the barrel had a kind of perfect flow. The nub at the base was like the nipple on a pacifier. I put it back and closed the doors.
In the living room, I took my sketchbook out of my bag and flopped out on the couch, my drinks on the polished coffee table on coasters I’d never seen. The street was quiet outside. The cats lay down around me and I drew sketches of them wearing an assortment of comical hats. As I did, the yellow lines faded from the inside of my eyelids and the drinks smoothed away the rumble of the road in my bones. I let my mind wander a little over the collection of the ideas I’d entertained since the truck stop trick.
Trouble was going to follow me all the way into Old Town, I was sure of it. Absolutely certain. The only question was when and in exactly what form, how large and how tight. I was betting on either fast and brutal or some kind of esoteric rich guy tactic designed to flummox a dumbass of my description long enough to go for a sterile solution.
In the morning, I decided, I would play the king one more time. But this time not with an army of rag tag orphans. I smiled grimly as my gritty eyelids stuck. This time I’d mobilize all of it. Every gutterwad junkie, every scuzzy shitbag I’d terrified into smiling at me, every customer with grit, and of course the prostitutes. The worst, mouthiest, most violently insane prostitutes Old Town had to offer were a match for anything under the moon. And I let them use the bathroom at the Lucky. I had a real army at my disposal this time, a spooky one comprising the most desperate savages and purely venomous, murderous psychos available, every one of them looking to put a scar on the face of gentrification, The Man’s face.
Dong-ju’s face.
Old Town looked just as I’d left it when I got there in the morning. The same group of black guys were hustling the corner of Sixth and Couch, way late or switching to the day shift. Lenny Bobo, almost dead but smart as hell, his laughing fat protégé Tony, some fresh ex-con named Onion Max with roaches in his soul, and Bob, who had the malt liquor shakes and a bad cough. An old guy with wild hair and destroyed skin named Carlos was railing about something, shaking one skinny fist at the sky. Business people skirted through the hookers who had struck out the night before and been turned out a
gain for the early bird specials. A big and tall tranny named Brenda was among them, reputedly a hardcore blowjob mystic who could fit a beer can in his/her ass for twenty bucks. Flaco’s was closed.
It had only been a few days, so I hadn’t been fearing some kind of remarkable civic transformation. When I cut the engine in front of the Lucky, the only change I felt was that my shoes had already let in a little rain and I’d forgotten to shave. The Lucky’s sandwich board was out and all the interior lights were blazing. Delia’s red Falcon was parked out front and so was Alex’s old Jeep. I could see Delia through the big picture windows, vacuuming the lobby.
“Mr. California,” she said as I entered. She clicked the vacuum off and started winding up the cord. She was wearing a fetching ensemble of shiny black plastic pants, pumps, and a child-sized tuxedo shirt that showed off her belly button and the wing tattoos ramping up from her camel toe. “How are Pinky and Dillson?”
“Fine.” I set my bag down. “Thanks for taking care of everything.”
“They’re like our babies,” she said, beaming up at me. “Assuming you had motoring sperm and I could give birth to anything but a chupacabra.”
“Natch. What you been up to?”
She shrugged. “Stickin’ it to the man, dodging the crabs, running your life for you. The uze.”
I winked at her and carried my bag into the back. Alex was sitting at the light table working on a design and listening to his iPod, probably so Delia wouldn’t talk to him. I patted him on the shoulder as I passed and sat down at my desk. My schedule said I had two appointments, the first at one, the second at four. Both of them had been lined out already, so I’d be shading and coloring all day, which I preferred. Outlining a big tattoo, for me, is a boring drag. The really fun parts were drawing it in the first place and then making it pop, bringing in the light and dimension. I’d gone through phases where I felt the exact opposite, so I’d reverse it again.
For once Delia wasn’t blasting some kind of music warfare that I’d have to shut down and endure the wrathful aftermath, which could sometimes last all day. Her new crush was Empire of Shit, a local punk band who made amazingly crappy live recordings, possibly on a cell phone. Instead we listened to Slayer, which I could only just tolerate. I gloved up, dropped some tubes I’d scrubbed out a few days earlier into the ultrasonic to blast out anything I might have missed, tossed the gloves and washed my hands, then gloved up again and set up my station. All of my gear was in two easy-to-clean metal boxes. One held dozens of small plastic bottles of pigments from various companies, the other all of my sterilized, packaged tubes, needles, and a bank of five tattoo machines.
Some tattoo artists collected tattoo machines, which always struck me as a waste of money. Five good ones were probably more than anyone really needed, especially if you could tune them properly in a short amount of time. Beginners and small-time operators often hoarded a large collection of the expensive things, most of which they only used once or twice before going back to the ones they were the most comfortable with. Like many professionals with more than a decade’s experience, I preferred to spend that money on bad women.
Delia was set up at station one and Alex was in station two, leaving me room in my favorite corner, the one farthest from potential battle at the door. They both had early appointments, so once they were working I answered the phones and talked to the walk-ins. The iPod hooked up to the stereo had gone from Motorhead to jazz. People were laughing and having a good time. The vibe, that hard to generate mood, was growing storybook, when Delia switched the music back to her new fave.
“Empire of Shit is getting—” I began.
Delia screamed, a high, piercing shriek of harpy warfare.
“—to be one of my favorite bands ever,” I finished. She glared at me. The room slowly unfroze.
The ultrasonic dinged. I rinsed the entire thing out and ran the tubes once more through straight water and then bagged them and popped them in the sterilizer. As I did, I looked at the maintenance record on the bulletin board above it. It was Nigel’s job to change the water and run the mineral descalant through the autoclave at scheduled intervals, but I sometimes did it if he’d been really busy. The fumes were murderous, rumored to take months off your kidneys with every whiff. He’d changed the water yesterday, the record marked in his tight, even script.
I reflexively checked a few other things, even though I didn’t have to. An artist reusing needles often scraped them through the Alconox, a white powder that went in the ultrasonic. I checked it for lines. None, and I felt bad. The encounter with Bling had left me suspicious.
There were a ton of ways to bust an artist on the grift. The ones who were always low on ink but never borrowed any, who ran everything really close to the wire, were almost always cheating. When they were counting pennies, usually most of the pennies were mine. The artists who took heavy deposits and were hard-ass, merciless sticklers about them, penalizing any customer who made one of a thousand errors, like showing up ten minutes late or canceling by leaving a message after hours, were playing the same scam as the banks, so they obviously couldn’t be trusted. I didn’t dig further than the Alconox. The people at the Lucky didn’t deserve my paranoia, especially considering what I had to tell them later.
Everything was cruising along nicely, so I popped out for a smoke. Flaco was open, so I strolled over to catch up on the local news.
“Nice day, eh boy?” He leaned out his window. We watched cars hiss through the rain together for a companionable minute. Most people walked past with their heads down and their hands in their pockets. The new people, the vanguard of the yuppie expansion wave. The Old Towners were furtive and hugged the walls, or marched with their heads high, or zombied straight forward, or danced or capered or prowled. An endless variety of locomotions. A cold wind ripped along the street. I eventually turned to Flaco and nodded. Flaco showed me his gold teeth.
“Just made some lengua,” he reported. “You want?”
I made a gimme motion. Flaco’s lengua, like the goat or the brains, were only recommended by him when they were especially good. He saved anything teetering on the edge of food poisoning for the gentry. I watched him work, rubbing my hands together and blowing on them.
Flaco piled glistening brown slices of the rich, stewed tongue on a couple of doubled-up junior corn tortillas and sprinkled them with cilantro and onions, topped with a squirt from one of his squeeze bottles of sweet chili BBQ sauce and a final squeeze of lime. He slid them out on wax paper with a flourish. Two bucks.
“How’s Dmitri?” I asked. I picked up one of the juniors and bit into it. The tongue was so tender it fell apart, except the tiny ribbons of chewy buds, left on for texture. The BBQ chili sauce had a long, seedy burn. I leaned forward to spare my shoes. The drops of grease and sauce whipped away in the wind.
“Loco.” Flaco watched me eat with a tiny smile on his wizened face. “He came sniffing around yesterday. Fucked with Gomez. I think your sweet little Delia charmed him into guilty penis confusion. The Lucky was spared.”
“Really?” That was news. I snagged the second taco.
“Oh yes. He came out of Gomez’s very angry and went into the Lucky, but Delia had him right back out, doing her happy dance. He was fawning over her like a bad grandfather when he left. You know she goes to the same gym as my neighbor’s daughter?”
“Didn’t know that,” I replied. I finished the second taco and Flaco passed me a tiny, worthless napkin. I scooped up the wax paper with it and shot the wad into Flaco’s empty trash bucket. It blew right out and disappeared.
“Loco, eh?” I tossed a fiver deep into the counter.
Flaco nodded, snatching it. “Yes, my friend. He gives me the sleepless nights.”
“Seen Monique?”
Flaco shook his head in disgust.
“Smiles? That scuzwad Barnie?”
Flaco tossed his head. “Holed up in the Burger King. Too fuckin’ cold out there.”
“Cool. Do me
a favor and keep an eye out for expensive cars full of great big guys with guns. Tell Smiles the same thing, Barnie too. Tell everyone. The Lucky has rich meat swinging its dick at us. Finders keepers. They carry fat rolls and who the fuck cares if they go missing ’cause they’re way out of towners. Plus, whoever helps the Lucky, well, let’s just say what goes around comes around.”
Flaco raised his eyebrows. “Free food money. And a lucky charm.”
“Bingo,” I said. “Later days.” Flaco saluted with the fiver.
“Better lays.”
My one o’clock was a woman named Mary Little. She was in her late twenties and very trim, wearing Columbia sportswear on her day off. She worked as some kind of MRI specialist, or maybe she was a physical therapist. To my great shame I’d always been powerfully attracted to her type: the no-makeup hiker chicks who drove Jettas and wore sensible clothes, had good educations and a nice family in Boston. I smiled at her, because a hug would have obviously been out of line. It was one of those moments when I wished I smoked weed and smiled more.
“Hi.” She shook her hair and took off her raincoat. “I heard you were in California?”
“Totally was,” I replied. “Thanks for being easy.” She was one of the people who had to be rescheduled. I was glad Delia had been kidding about the scalp lancing cover story.
“Whateva,” she sassed. “My aunt Judith was in town anyway. We did the whole Portland thing.”
“Saturday Market, Voodoo Donuts, shit like that?”
“Bunch of little foodie places I’ve never even heard of. She watches the food shows.”
We chatted about nothing at all while I set up, taking my time. Delia powered down her chatter and watched me, occasionally smirking. She knew about my uptown girl fetish and thought it was wildly entertaining.
Mary was heading for divorce and she was a hopelessly polite shit talker, the worst combination in ex-wife material. I set up my shader and all of my ink caps, nodding and occasionally sighing at the list of her husband’s atrocious sins. He wanted to have kids. She had her career to consider. There were glass ceiling issues in the bedroom. He watched sports. He liked his car too much. His sister was a bitch. He wanted to get a dog if they didn’t have kids soon. He was needy.