“Yeah, but there is still a lot more I could ruin.” I said with resolve and finished my food.
It was getting dark as we headed out to Fred’s rented car. I remained quiet on the way over to Wendy Forsyth’s. Thinking, wheels turning, formulating idiotic plans.
I glanced in the mirror behind the sun visor. Bags under eyes? Check. Torn tweed coat? Check. Scratches on face complete with dried blood? Check. Bloody bandage on neck? Check. Irresistible charm? No where to be found.
I hopped out of the car in front of Wendy’s.
“Write your cell phone number down for me,” I told Fred.
“You borrowed my phone and lost it.”
“Oh, are you in the book in Nashville?”
“Yes, but don’t call me. I know you’ll get me in even more trouble.” Fred held up his arm as he said this.
“Sorry, Fred. I’ll be in touch. I have an idea for you.”
Fred rolled up his window and pulled away. It had gotten dark at some point. I squinted at my watch but could not make out the time. I walked toward Wendy’s door.
Her neat suburban rancher seemed to glower at me. A sense of dread swelled in me like an undercooked hamburger. I needed to think. I could walk home and not bother Wendy. It was getting late though and there was a late October chill in the air.
I leaned against her mail box and thought. Fatigue settled onto me like a summertime fishing buzz. I fell asleep for an indeterminate period. I startled awake to the sound neighborhood dogs barking. I straightened my wobbly legs and stood. I reeled, then careened, then calmed down and just shivered for a minute.
I took a deep breath. A steam cloud puffed out when I exhaled. For a moment I thought I smelled a truck stop. It was only me though. The rat poop, brambles, bacon/sausage grease combined with cigarette smoke and sweat had me smelling ripe. No turning back now, I headed down the sidewalk toward Wendy Forsyth‘s house.
I was becoming increasingly nervous and still questioning myself. Should I even be at Wendy’s place in my present state? I shook my head trying to clear it. Thoughts rattled like mismatched, out of tune, wind chimes.
I knocked on the door and Wendy opened it. She was beautiful, wearing a soft robe with the belt untied. I could get just a peek of some sheer, pink fabric showing. I attempted to straighten up.
“Rust, what you are doing here?” She looked at me like I was a stranger. This was a mistake.
“I was in the neighborhood and I thought I’d…Wait, What I mean is, I have had a horrible day, I lost my car and I needed to see you. I missed you. Can I come in?” This sounded desperate, maybe even whiney, and in a way it was. I stepped forward.
“You could, but you knocked on the window.” Wendy frowned, but she still looked cute. I looked down and saw my Bostonians deep in the dark grass and mulch of her foundation flower bed. “Go over to the front door.”
When Wendy opened the door, the robe was tightly closed and she held herself with hands in her armpits for warmth. I knew I had made a mistake. I needed to get out of here before I ruined this thing in its infancy.
“Wow, you’re a mess,” she said, taking a half step back.
“Yeah, and I know I probably don’t smell too good either. I think I stepped in something in the yard.”
“What did you step in; a boxer’s spit bucket? Well come on in, it’s cold.” Wendy backed out of the way.
After kicking off my shoes on the porch, I walked into her darkened den and sat down on the rug, leaning back against the front of her sofa. Shadows played through the room and Wendy walked to her rocker and sat down.
“I know I shouldn’t have come, it was wrong. I wasn’t thinking.”
My mouth hit autopilot and before I knew it I had regurgitated the whole story of the day. Wendy softened a little, but was still mad.
“You have the reverse Midas touch with cars lately, don’t you?” I could just make out her faint smile in the shadows of the den, but there was still tension.
“Yeah, since I am going to buy my third car in as many weeks tomorrow. Listen, I should go. Can you call me a cab?”
“Okay, I was gonna ask you to stay, but I’m not really into sleep-overs when my daughter is here.”
“Yeah, I know,” I held my head in two shaky hands while Wendy called the taxi company. Could I return to zero any quicker?
The smart thing would have been to go home. I have been doing the opposite of smart these days so I didn’t go home. I considered going to Orby’s, but I could not face Tammy McHenry after today’s debacle.
“The Bistro by the Bijou, please,” I told the driver.
Fatigue won out over worrying and I dozed off again in the darkness out the cab. The driver woke me rudely, addressing me as “dude.” I paid up with a scowl and hoisted myself to the sidewalk in front of the Bistro at the Bijou.
The Bistro sat next to the Bijou Theatre, the lesser of the two downtown theaters. The much larger, fancier Tennessee Theatre was a block away and played host to a higher caliber of entertainment. The Bijou, by contract, was now up for grabs to the highest bidder. They featured dance school recitals, low budget plays and concerts of all sorts.
The Bijou Theater is old and interesting. Years ago, during a low point in Knoxville’s moral time line, it was used as an X-rated movie house. The Bistro at the Bijou- the pub that adjoined the Bijou’s lobby- was once rumored to be a brothel. The floors above, that supposedly had housed busy harlots, were now converted to small condos lived in by yuppies who liked the exposed brick and the ghosts of whores in the two-hundred-year old building.
The Bistro’s bar still featured a huge oil painting of a reclining nude female with long dark hair and mammoth breasts. She would be considered fat by today’s standards, but she was attractive in a sort of Renaissance way. The artist had posed her outdoors on a chaise with lush gardens pressing in towards her.
It was this painted woman that I focused on as I waved silently to the hostess and blinked my way to the bar. I sat down at the bar, took my focus away from the painting and put it on Manny the bartender. He nodded and brought me a Bass Ale, which was not what I wanted. However, I nodded in thanks to him anyway and he left to fill the waitress’s orders for drinks in the dining room. Manny was an ass. He tried to make each bar patron feel special by having their favorite drink ready for them. He may never forget a face, but he always gave me a different drink, sitting it down in front of me with a knowing smile, thinking he had it right. I didn’t feel like protesting, or even speaking until I had some alcohol in me. I had wanted the Guinness.
As I swallowed the cold brew I could feel my Waffle Hut dinner making its way through my gut. It did this the way a loose bowling ball would slowly fall down an old wooden staircase. The Bass Ale did little to stop its progression. Something would have to give and soon. Right then Manny returned.
“How you doing, Rust?” Manny smiled and shook his flap of dark bangs to one side. He leaned across the bar to talk to me.
“Well, I lost a girl’s truck. She is gonna be really pissed at me tomorrow,” I wasn’t lying either. Tammy had put her faith in me. She had even had sex with me on her porch swing. She would be more than disappointed.
“Dude, that makes two of us. This girl I just stopped dating, I left her car for dead, and she is beyond pissed.” Manny raised one eyebrow in a GQ way. “I am between cars, see? Sharon had this old International Scout or Bronco or something. Good looking 4X4 with huge mudders. Not your normal chick car, but she was a helluva redneck girl. She’s going to UT, studying psychology.
“Anyway, she lets me use her car to make a beer run from a little party we were at in the Fort. Well, me and the fellas took the Scout down to the Ag campus mud flats on the way and almost got it stuck. I guess really you could say we did get it stuck. I had it rocking back and forth trying to get it out and was just starting to get traction when, whamo! I ran out of gas. It got real quiet in the bog and we had to think about what to do. Oh man.” He looked down.
&n
bsp; “Well, what happened?”
“Well, we walked back to the Fort carrying a bunch of heavy beer and Sharon cussed me like a dog and I haven’t been back since.”
“I’ll be right back,” I slid off my bar stool and went through the side door into the lobby of the theater. I spent several minutes fouling the air and water of the Bijou’s bathroom. I was beginning to feel human again, but I was pretty sure that would pass, too. I washed my face, which still had a bit of blood on it. Patting down my hair, I left the bathroom a new man.
I cut through the smoke in the dining area to the bar. Manny was still there, with a fresh drink for me.
“I got you another drink, your usual,” Manny smiled, pleased with himself.
“What is it?”
“A New Castle Ale, of course, silly,” Manny shook his head. Then he split to go to talk to some waitresses.
The deep mahogany glow of the ale was enhanced by the ambient lighting of the old bar. The soft yellow lighting left plenty of warm shadows and dark corners. The tarnished tin ceiling and dark burl wood of the walls embraced me and the tiny bubbles rising through my brew captured my attention.
Variations of this feeling kept repeating as I poured three or four pints down my neck. Manny put another one down.
“I joined the new health club and was doing pull-ups. I was thinking about how the hero in the movies is hanging from a cliff by one hand and holding a damsel’s hand his other. I can’t even hold up my own weight with one arm, much less hold up a chick’s weight, too.
“And Harrison Ford can?” I disagreed. “That’s just movie magic, that’s all.”
“Not true! He can do it, he has arms like anchor chains.”
“Geritol, Zocor and piano wire, that’s his movie magic.”
“That’s harsh, dude.”
“So, what happened to the Scout?”
“Oh, it’s still down in the bog last time I checked.”
“And the girl?”
“She hates me. I heard she’s a lesbian now and her parents bought her a Range Rover.”
This reminded me that I was without wheels and would need to go to the car dealer again tomorrow. My luck being what it was, I planned on going super cheap with this car since the last one hadn’t made it through the month. Ugh. A monster wave of fatigue hit and my head slumped forward.
“Manny, get me a cab would you?”
Rust out.
Chapter 33
A sound began to waver on my aural horizon. It snaked through my psyche and found its way to my core being, and then increased its decibel level to a head-spitting volume.
I slowly realized that this sound was only a ringing phone hammering on a bad headache. Both things would eventually go away. One of them I could stop immediately.
“Hello.”
“They have both trucks now, don’t they?” Snapped Tammy McHenry. Women always know.
“Yes,” I sighed. Telling her this would have been hard, so I was actually relieved that she knew the trucks were gone. But how did she know?
“I knew it!” her anger sizzled down the phone line. “The guy who has been following me everywhere stopped, so I figured that truck was gone. Oh, you have let me down! Just like Travis and every other man I’ve known. You screwed me and then you caved. How much did they pay you? A thousand? Two thousand? Ohhgg!”
The idea of selling Tammy’s truck to Slink and Partee had not even occurred to me until just then, but it seemed like a logical conclusion for Tammy to reach. Unfortunately, I could not convince her that I was still her gallant knight as I was limited to one word sentences by my sodium pentothal / Waffle Hut/ New Castle Ale hangover.
“No.”
“No? Oh, they paid you even more? I see. Well, Rust, that is just weak. I needed you, you caved. Typical man bullshit. ”
“Coffee,” I said involuntarily, as though gasping for air.
“Hell no, I won’t see you for coffee or anything else. I am screwed now ‘cause the cops think I’m a flake and the only guy who does believe me is a weak-ass.”
“Wait.”
There had to be a one word sentence that would explain that I had not given up. One word that would show that I knew how important these trucks were to Tammy, and possibly to the entire human race. Nothing came to me. The old noggin was stalled. My thoughts were doing a drunken square dance that turned into a mosh pit.
“Well, I can’t do anything but wait, now. Although I doubt I’ll even get another chance like I had with these trucks. Bye, Rust. Oh, and in case you haven’t figured it out, you’re fired!” She hung up.
After Tammy’s depressing call, I was roused by a series of calls that culminated in me finally snapping out of it and doing something.
I woke from a blissfully ignorant doze to Saturday’s harsh reality. Oh that warbling, beeping sound, make it stop.
“Hello.”
“This is Detective Stratton calling. Could I speak to Russell Stover?”
“It’s me,” I rasped this out as one word, like ‘smee’.
“Seriously? You sound like some old dude today. Let me guess. Smoked and drank to much last night?” I could hear his sarcastic smile through to line.
“Yep.”
“Knew it. Well, your lungs weren’t all that got smoked last night. Oakridge P.D. found your car parked on the side of Illinois Avenue at three a.m., torched. They said it was charred black front to back, and still smoking. Remains of three melted gas cans were found. I had it sent to the Knoxville impound if your insurance adjuster needs to see it.”
“Bummer.”
“So did you have a hot date last night?”
“Funny,” not really what I was thinking.
“You want to tell me why all this bad shit is happening to you?”
“Later.” I could not face Stratton right now. I hung up.
Where I really needed to be was the kitchen, where any good day begins, but I ended up in the bathroom. After a fierce battle with my gut and the invading New Castle Ale, my Waffle Hut meal finally gave up the ghost and split. I wiped my chin, stood up, washed my face then shuffled to the kitchen.
Aspirin, Pepto, coffee, coffee, coffee. I was feeling better, but the sight of my pearly white UT coffee mug still freaked me out a little. It had previously been like a good cast iron frying pan, never once washed. Grandma Tuttle had changed all that with one SOS pad. Thinking of Grandma cracked the wall of numbness and guilt began to leak through.
The phone rang again but was now sounding more like a plain old phone. Still annoying though.
“Hello, there.” Now up to two words per sentence, baby steps.
“Andrew Chandler, here. Good morning to you.”
“Morning, Andrew.” Two words were much easier, even natural.
“Pinkerton has e-mailed and said that you were not successful in recovering the purloined truck and now the enemy has both trucks. Most unfortunate.”
“It’s terrible.”
“Yes, it is,” the sympathy in Andrew’s voice sounded genuine. “That’s why I called. You know there may be a way you can locate both trucks in hurry. An astral phenomenon or energy transfer of this magnitude must leave some kind physical quantum fingerprint, if you will. Something that can be measured and maybe tracked.”
“You’re right,” Wheels were beginning to turn.
“Yes, Rust. But I do not know what it is that you would need to look for. I just think there must be some kind of tell-tale sign when the trucks switch places that would allow you to locate them.”
“What next?” Give me something, anything.
“I think you should try to track down the young scientist who crafted this device and quiz him on how you can locate the trucks.”
“Good idea,” I moaned. Andrew said goodbye.
“Later, Dude.”
I passed out one more time.
Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. I know that as hard to read, but imagine having to hear it with a rhino of a hangover. I stared at the recei
ver; the number calling me was my own cell phone number. Still in a stupor, I answered the phone.
“Hello,” I gargled, back to one word sentences again.
“Now who’s the bitch? We got your trucks, your cell phone and your car. Used that wannabe cop car for a weenie roast last night to celebrate. Don’t even think about trying to trace this call because your phone ain’t no phone no more. Goodbye asshole.”
I was trying to think about how to say good bye and also cuss him using only one word, but all I could hear was a rushing sound and then a metallic crunch, a sort of a grinding under foot sound. Oh, well.
Chapter 34
A new day. It was late October. I sat on the back porch with my dog and my pearly white coffee mug. My big chance. I could not continue to inspect mobile homes and not find Tammy’s missing trucks for her. I thought and thought. I thought about how I was going to make all this right. I needed wheels.
Bandit followed me as I shuffled into the house. I went to the laundry room. I removed the dog’s dirty old bandana and tied a clean one around his neck. He seemed pleased enough. I showered, shaved my face and my tongue and braced myself for my continuing adventure.
“Hi, Jim,” I said to the car salesman.
“Name’s Bernie.”
“I bought a Crown Vic from you last week and you said your name was Jim. What gives?” I asked angrily.
“I can’t have my ex-wives knowing how many cars I’m selling so I give every other customer a different name. How’s the Crown Vic doing?”
“It burned.”
“You know they told us never to ask people how the cars we sell them are doing. Now I know why,” he gently rubbed his forehead. Another day, another hangover. “So, now you need another car?”
“Yes, I’d like to see the cheapest thing you have that will crank. Cars are only lasting me one week now. I can’t afford to spend a lot.”
“That’s gonna take some walking, the nicer stuff is at the front.”
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