She got out of bed and started dressing. “Fiction writers want the reader to believe their lies. But memoirists just want to believe their own lies.” She paused, lost in the middle of a shabby hotel room in a strange city. “I don’t know what’s real about me anymore. And you know the worst part? My parents love me unconditionally,” she said, stepping into her skirt. “No matter how hard I try, they won’t hate me.” She asked if I had any money, fifty or sixty bucks.
I gave her a hundred.
She wadded the money, put it in her purse. “You seem like a nice guy and all, but this isn’t going to work out between us. You just don’t seem”—she searched for the word—“generous.”
“I just handed you a hundred dollars.”
“Maybe generous is not the right word. Rich is probably better. You don’t seem rich, and I need someone who’s not only willing to give me money, but has money to give. I mean money money. You know, real money.”
Now I was insulted. In an odd way, I liked ES and wanted her to like me.
She finished dressing in silence. I drove her to the bus station. “So, why don’t you give me your phone number,” I said, dropping her off.
She looked surprised. “Why would I do that?”
And now I was wandering into her homeland: Memphis. I wanted to see her; I didn’t want to see her. She was the first real connection I’d made since Sarah. The prospect of stumbling across her rumbled strangely in my stomach, making me sick with excitement.
I drove the four hours straight and parked my car near Beale Street. I strolled around a bit, grabbed a pulled pork sandwich, then texted Higgles: ELVIS HAS LANDED.
Instructions came an hour later. The address was outside the city, in a suburb called Cordova.
Not knowing Memphis, I decided to grab a cab. The cabbie let out a short, hard laugh when I told him where I wanted to go. “Six Flags over Jesus,” he said, heading toward the highway.
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll see.”
I saw. Our meeting spot was a church. Three towering crosses, each four stories high, marked the exit where it sat. They could be seen from three miles away.
The cab cruised through a crowded parking lot and dropped me off at the entrance where a poster advertised a Mozart’s Requiem sing-a-long. Five dollars. The woman at the door handed me a score. “Soprano, alto, tenor, or bass?” she asked. She squeezed my bicep. “You look like a tenor, but I bet you’re a bass in bed.”
I thanked her, though I didn’t know why.
Signs divided the space into four sections. Sopranos sat to the far right, bass to the far left. Altos and tenors made up the middle.
The place was near full, a sea of short-sleeved plaid shirts. Even the women wore them. It seemed a bad joke, all that plaid.
I scanned the room, each section, looking for Higgles.
Nothing.
Finally, I saw someone in the bass section waving at me. Higgles. Gaunt and sickly, he’d stripped at least thirty pounds since I’d seen him in Brighton. His face was filmed with a milky sweat. He always seemed to be sweating.
I took a seat beside him on the hard pew. He smelled of heated coins, metallic and foul. His once close-cropped black hair was now shaggy. Neither of us spoke for a minute. Finally, I said, “You look like shit.”
“Tahiti does that to a man,” he said, flipping through sheet music. “You know, I have no idea what I’m looking at.”
The conductor’s voice boomed through the speakers as he introduced the soloist for the evening. The organist hit a G flat and the crowd opened their throats to match the note. “Are we really planning to sing along?” I asked.
Higgles glanced about like he was just now noticing where he was. “I was told there’d be snacks,” he said, standing. “I thought they’d serve snacks.” He motioned me to follow. “Let’s find some privacy.”
Higgles directed me to the men’s restroom, which was empty.
Higgles kicked open a stall, dropped his pants, and sat down on the toilet. The door stood wide.
I turned away.
“Did you know I was married once?” he asked. “Had myself a little lady, a house. We even talked of starting a family.”
“You’ve told me.” I wasn’t in the mood to bond. Strains of Mozart filtered in, pitching and driving as the organ moaned along. “How did you know where I lived?” I caught glimpses of him in the mirror. “Close the stall door, would you? You’re making me uncomfortable.”
He didn’t close it. Spinning the toilet paper roll, he mittened his hand. “So you want the good news about our next freelance project?”
“Good usually comes with bad,” I said. “You know, I’m still waiting to be paid in full for all these other jobs.”
“We’ll even up, cousin—once this job is done.”
“I get paid before I do another job.” I asked again, “How did you find me?”
“You’re like a comet.”
“Why, because I burn bright?”
“Because you’re constantly casting off bits and pieces of yourself,” he said. “You leave a trail that anyone can follow.” He flushed the toilet, buckled his pants, and exited the stall. “The others aren’t too happy.”
“What others?”
“The ones wanting retribution on the Africa job.”
“Retribution for what? The Africa job fell through.”
Higgles suddenly seemed exhausted, like he’d been playing at something for far too long. “Listen,” he said, leaning against the sink basin. “Staying low-key and cautious is smart, but stop trying to be invisible. It’s good that you can be found. People get suspicious if you’re invisible. Only the guilty hide.” He studied himself in the mirror. “The good news is you’re going to Korea. The bad news is that the fallout over Africa has turned into something bigger than I expected. A lot of pissed-off people, the kind of people you don’t want to piss off. But nothing we can’t handle, right?” He laughed. “Do you know what my first real paying job was?”
I didn’t.
“Robbing mailboxes.”
This whole “pissed-off people” bit worried me. Who was pissed off, and why? I hadn’t done anything. “Yeah, well, you seem like the kind of guy who’d steal fabric softener samples,” I said. Our eyes met in the mirror.
“Not my style.” He smiled. “I only hit the big boxes, the blue ones on the corners. And I’d only hit them once a year. Mid-April.”
The cruelest month. I thought it through. “Tax returns.”
“Yahtzee.” Higgles turned on the faucet.
Address, social security, name, financial info. “Identity theft?”
“That’s long-haul stuff. I was a sprinter. In and out,” he said, washing his hands. “I’d cash the tax payment checks written to the IRS.”
“How?”
“How indeed.” There was a childlike glee in his face. “That was the brilliant part.” He pulled a marker from his back pocket, wrote IRS on the mirror. “Simply changed the ‘pay to’ line.” He deftly made the I a capital M, placed a period after the S and then added a name. IRS now read MRS. SAMANTHA SMITH. “Then I’d get my little lady to make a visit to the bank.”
His eyes coldly met mine in the mirror. “But they caught on. Now all the tax checks are made out to the Treasury Department.” He pocketed the marker. “God, I’m hungry. Let’s get out of here.”
Out in the parking lot, he hotwired a Honda Civic.
We drove back into Memphis, to Corky’s, a barbecue joint. “The blooming onions are fantastic here,” Higgles said, ordering double of everything, more food than he’d ever be able to eat.
I ordered a beer.
“Let me tell you a little something about this game,” he said. “It’s all about salvo chasing.”
“Meaning?”
“The enemy fi
res at you,” he said, making a pistol with his fingers, “then notes how far to the right or left of the target it landed, whether it was too long or too short. He makes adjustments. And while he’s making the adjustment, you race to where the shot just landed.”
“Because he’s not firing there again.”
Higgles tapped his nose. “You catch on fast.” The food arrived and he set into a bowl of chili. “Tell me about your childhood, your aspirations.”
Fuck you, I thought. Higgles already knew everything about me. He was just bating me about like a wounded mouse, letting me run a distance before pulling me back.
I told him details from Ray-Ray’s life.
“Iranian?” He acted surprised. “You’re pretty light skinned for an Arab.”
“A Persian. And my father’s side was famous for their light skin. The Ivory Wonder they called him.”
“Huh.” He sat back in his chair, folded his hands across his stomach. “So being Iranian, I guess you can speak whatever that language is that they speak there.”
“Fluently,” I said. “In fact, I use to be a translator.”
“Really?”
I nodded. “For the UN.”
“Wow, the UN.” Higgles eyed my skeptically. “Did you ever get to meet anyone famous?”
“The Ayatollah.”
“The Ayatollah?”
“We were drinking buddies.”
He acted confused. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who’d drink.”
“You’d be surprised.”
He picked at a piece of blooming onion. “I already am.”
Flagging the waiter, he asked for everything to be wrapped to go. “God, I’m stuffed. Couldn’t eat another bite.” He’d barely touched his food. “Enough of this chin-wagging,” he said once the table was cleared. We got down to business. Seoul, Korea. He sketched out the particulars of the new gig on a napkin.
“What’s the take?” I asked.
It was solid. Not a new Lexus solid, but solid all the same. “That doesn’t include what you owe me, right?”
He sucked his teeth. “About what I owe you—”
“No ‘about’ bullshit,” I said. “I get paid or I don’t play.”
He glared at me a moment, then pulled an envelope from his back pocket and tossed it on the table. “What’s fair is fair, I guess.”
I took the envelope and peeked inside. A stack of hundreds. “Do I need to count this?”
“Only if you want the practice.”
I pocketed the money.
The bill came. He got up to leave. “So we’re good to go on Seoul?”
I thought it through. I tapped the table with my knuckles. “We’re clover.”
“I’m confident you can find your own way home, yes?” he said, leaving his bagged food on the table. Leaving the bill.
On his way out, I saw him pick up the entire bowl of mints at the hostess station while the hostess was seating a couple and walked out with it.
I ordered another beer but didn’t drink it. My thoughts flowed back to ES. This was her hometown, where she’d been weaned. I knew all the clubs she’d done her coke in, knew all the beer shacks where she’d had clumsy, drunken sex, where she’d found her eternal love at happy hour and then lost it at last call. I knew where ES had crashed into the sharp rocks of life. And I knew I had to find her. It’s an odd feeling knowing all about a person you don’t really know, feeling a closeness to someone you spent only a handful of hours with.
I left Corky’s, left the food, and found a low-lit, foul bar with a great jukebox. I looked for ES, thinking, somehow, she might be sitting on the stool waiting for some guy to buy her a drink. Waiting for some human connection.
That was why ES lingered in my mind, I realized. While she wanted to be anonymous and unknown, she’d revealed a bit of herself the evening we’d spent together. Our time together was far from soul-shaking, but something had happened. Brief and raw, it was like live wires sparking across each other, making a small seared mark. There’d been a human connection, something I wanted to explore further.
I pulled out my phone, decided to give her call. “Hey, remember me? I’m here,” I’d say. “Why don’t we hang out a bit?”
But I realized I didn’t have her number. I couldn’t even look her up in a phone book.
I didn’t know her name.
◉ ◉ ◉
Initially, it had been about the money. I needed it. But once I had it, had squirreled away more than enough to survive on for some time, I realized I was doing this for something else altogether. Something I couldn’t clearly define, but something money definitely couldn’t buy.
Chapter 40
Seoul was simple. I landed, had a traditional hanjeongsik meal that left me with a bellyache, made the pick-up, and then was viciously beaten down by my contact. I barely escaped with the package, let alone my life. Fourteen hours after touchdown in Korea, I had twelve new stitches in my head and I was winging my way back Stateside.
Back at my house in Kentucky, I sent the package to a PO Box Higgles had set up in Seattle. A week later, I got my cash.
Creeped out by the stains on the ceiling and absolute silence at night, I ditched my old place and got a Craigslist sublet in Cincinnati, one that that overlooked The Great American Ball Park, home of the Cincinnati Reds.
A week, then three passed. I had nowhere to go, nothing pressing to do. Up for gig, I texted Higgles. No reply.
So I waited.
Another two weeks. Nothing. I kept trying to convince myself that I was safe, that there was no way Higgles would find me. Still, it was like waiting in a dentist’s lobby. I dreaded what was coming, but I wanted it to arrive quickly so I could have it over and done with.
I thought of heading elsewhere, maybe back to Seattle. But I stayed, figuring whatever was to happen, this was as good a place as any.
Fall, then winter took hold. The Ohio River froze over in rough jags. The icy air sliced through my clothes no matter how many layers I wore. The apartment never got warm.
Christmas came and went. I read, ate a lot of chili, drank too much beer. It’s startling how quickly you can get fat. By late January, climbing a flight of stairs gave me heart palpitations, the sweats.
I needed a distraction. I needed a friend.
Rick served as both.
We met at an art opening. He’d come for the free cocktails, for the opportunity to meet women. I’d gone for the free cocktails, women, and to see the work.
As I studied a canvas of a naked man being attacked by geese, Rick sidled up next to me and held out a cocktail. “It’s more lighter fluid than alcohol,” he said by way of introduction, “but it’s free.” He stuck out his hand. Rick Flowers.
Sharply dressed, manicured, buffed, and plucked, he was as finely kept as an orchid. There was a story there, possibly something interesting. He told me he was a musician, had an album out on a major label that had been a critical charmer. Reviewed positively in all the magazines, it had hit the public consciousness like a birdbath launched into the river; it sank away instantly, selling fewer than three thousand copies.
“I’m more than just some guy on a guitar,” he said. “What I do is art.” He flicked his hand toward the works on the wall. “Unlike this stuff, which is average work at best. This artist is pure gimmick. She uses brushes made from her own pubic hair.” He shrugged. “It sells, though. I’ll give her that.”
He asked if I liked sex.
“Depends,” I said.
“On?”
“Who it’s with.”
He nodded. “Sagacious.”
I expected a proposition. A blowjob in the bathroom? A quick trip to his place where he’d strip out of his Armani motorcycle jacket and bespoke pants?
Instead, he nodded at my glass and said, “Another drink?”
Standing by the makeshift bar, he pointed out a woman. “Yea or nay? She wants to have sex with you but…” He spun a story. With one woman, there was a fifty-fifty chance of catching a debilitating STD. “Blind for life,” he said, “and a nasty rash on your face.” Another, a violent boyfriend just out of jail. “He’ll be home in less than an hour and the girl is a blabbermouth, will tell him everything that happened.” A third, enduring the public humiliation of being arrested naked in a Port-o-Potty.
Sex couldn’t just be sex. Each encounter had to have a threat to it, some danger had to be involved.
After he’d spun obscene tales of all the women in the gallery, he set his empty drink on floor and said, “Gotta cut. But let’s meet tomorrow at Marco’s Gym. It’s down the block. We’ll do a workout. A run, some weights.”
He gave me the gym’s address and a free pass, set up a time, then slowly made toward the exit, stopping to chat up a woman along the way. In less than two minutes, she was heading out the door with him.
The next morning, fatigued from a night of jerking awake at the slightest noise, I dragged myself down to Marco’s Gym to meet Rick.
“That’s right,” he said, struggling to place me. “The guy from the art thing last night.”
I spotted him on the benchpress. “That whole scene was gay. I probably seemed a bit gay, but it’s all part of the game. Camouflage, you know?” he said, sliding on another twenty-pound plate.
“What do you mean?” I scanned the weight room, looking for—what? A glaring eye, a menacing smile, a man lifting weights in dress shoes. Something out of place, I guess. All I saw was a gym crowded with sweating, grunting guys.
“At all those things, art shows or cafés or poetry readings, you have to act emo and harmless to disarm the women. At clubs, it’s different. The women are different. You have to be more direct, more aggressive. Basically, you’ve got to mirror the situation you’re in.”
As we ran on the treadmills, Rick overshared, telling me his process for picking up women, the situations and lines that were fail-safe. He was like his own reality TV show, irritating but intriguing, and always entertaining. He was honest, if somewhat vile, and made me feel we had a special bond, that he was sharing things about himself he shared with no one else. He probably made everyone he knew feel that way.
Where Night Stops Page 11