“Johnny Cash?”
“Yeah. His last album is sooo mournful. It lets me release my grief in small, beautiful doses.” She undulated her hand through the air in front of her. “In sad, perfect waves.”
“I’ve never listened to him.” I rested my chin on my knee, started fiddling with my shoelaces.
Faith tucked a strand of curls behind her ear, but it sprang loose again. “There’s this Trent Reznor cover on his new album that’s just awesome.”
“Really? That greasy guy from Nine Inch Nails?”
“Yeah. You should check it out. It’s called ‘Hurt.’”
“‘Hurt’? I don’t know if I really need any more of that in my life at the moment.” I thought she might laugh, but she didn’t.
“It’d be good for you. Stop you from being totally washed away by grief later on.” Faith gave me a long look. White teeth. Wet lips. Soft eyes.
I didn’t bother mentioning that lately what was threatening to do me in didn’t feel much like grief. And I didn’t mention the angry, icy interlude outside Delaney’s door earlier in the evening. What I did was smile, all calm and cool, and tell her, “I feel pretty okay right now.”
“Right this minute?”
“Yeah, right this minute.”
“Me too,” she said, pushing herself off the floor and flopping onto the bed.
Fang was spread-eagled on the other double, apparently catching up on the sleep he’d missed. I tried half-heartedly to get him over to one side or the other, but he wasn’t budging. Witnessing my predicament, Faith said it would be okay if I crashed with her, provided I kept my clothes on. Even though the bottoms of my jeans were still damp from the snow, I accepted her terms and conditions and crawled under the covers.
I knew nothing was going to happen, but still, lying there beside her, I could smell her sweet, minty hair, could see the bedspread rising and falling on her chest, and my cock stiffened, confident it could take over from here. I rolled onto my side and discreetly inched my hips away, trying to put some distance between my stiffy and the girl, while battling back with thoughts of old, naked chicks.
Faith wasn’t making things easy. She turned to face me and propped her head on her elbow. Her breath was warm on my face. Her lips were right there. I gave up the struggle.
“You know,” she said, “Stan loved doing the T-shirt thing with you. Afterwards, he always said there was something about you. He thought you were pretty cool, pretty funny, in this really selfmocking sort of way.”
“Are you joking?” I said, knowing Stan wouldn’t think I was pretty anything if he knew I was lying in bed beside his girlfriend harboring a huge hard-on. Still, I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t pleased to hear that my dead buddy had told Faith a couple good things about me.
“No, I’m not joking. And don’t take this the wrong way or anything, but he also said you aren’t nearly as dumb as you pretend to be.”
“Listen, it’s no act. My parents had me tested. I scored slightly higher than your average sheep. It was a little disappointing for them. My parents, I mean. Not the sheep. The sheep were thrilled. Anyway, my mom had me X-rayed after that. Turns out my brain is the size of a corn kernel.”
“Popped or unpopped?”
“You see? I was too dumb to even ask.”
She laughed, a clear, perfect laugh, then gave my shoulder a gentle push. “All joking aside, I know what he meant. About there being something about you. I can see it.”
She reached over and ran her finger along my cheek, so lightly, so softly, I had to close my eyes and bite back a moan. Then her hand trailed lower to settle on my chest. For the few seconds it rested there, I lay motionless, living in the press of skin beneath her palm, sensing something big behind every beat of my heart.
Then her hand disappeared and Faith rolled away. She dropped her head onto her pillow and was quiet for so long I thought she was asleep.
It would have been nice to just lie there and think about what had just happened, but I had other matters to attend to. I reached down to straighten out my cock, bent uncomfortably inside my jeans. I had just slipped my hand inside my pants, where, seriously, it had lingered for only the briefest of seconds, when, eyes wide, Faith turned to face me.
“Luke?” she said in this real low voice, testing to see if I was awake.
“Yeah?” I said weakly, torn between the pleasant, fleshy sensation under the covers and the fear that Faith might flutter the velvet cloak to find me masturbating beside her—something I felt that, while not explicitly stated, would definitely have been included on the list of things not to be done while lying in bed beside her.
“I know this sounds weird, but do you think Stan somehow hooked us up?”
“What?” I managed to get my hand out of my pants, hoping Faith didn’t hear the waistband on my Calvin Kleins snap as I came up for air.
“Well, you know how we were both supposed to be at the concert with Stan, right? So maybe tonight he was looking down, checking out the Peppers, and he just kind of …” She brought her hands slowly together, pressed them palm to palm in an innocent, prayerful display of flesh on flesh. “I don’t know. The Palace is a pretty humongous place to just bump into somebody.”
I was suddenly exhausted, lungs squashed flat, limbs too heavy to lift. I barely managed a shrug of my shoulders, a nothing shake of my head. “I don’t know. I find that hard to believe. Then again, my life has been so insane lately, nothing would really surprise me.”
“Yeah,” she said slowly. “And the Palace is huge.” I could almost see the idea rolling around her brain, like a hard, round candy, trying to find a place to stick.
“Yeah, it is,” I said, not wanting to disappoint. “Good night, Faith.”
“Good night. And Luke?” She lifted her head so we were looking at each other across the short, dim distance between us.
“What?”
“Thanks for dancing.”
About a billion things shot through my head right then, honest, uncool, brave things I might have dared if I was someone else. But I wasn’t.
“No problem,” I said, like I’d done her some big favor.
I checked out the clock on the bedside table—it was 1:09— before locking eyes with Fang. It gave me a bit of a shock, really, because I’d sort of forgotten he was, like, one bed over. Staring right at me. Not even pretending to be sleeping. I snapped my eyes shut, trying not to imagine what he’d been thinking, huddled up under his red velvet bedspread while we’d been talking and laughing a couple feet away.
Regardless of the warm body beside me, or the voyeur across the runway, I must have conked out pretty quick, because when I woke up screaming, the clock read 4:17. It took a couple seconds for me to realize where I was, to recognize Fang as the lump in the bed opposite and Faith as the tangle of dark hair on the pillow beside me. Neither of them was moving. My nightmare hadn’t scared them awake, so I had plenty of time to replay it.
In the dream, the elusive Astelle Jordan was no longer missing. Instead, she was tied to a bed with a pink sweatshirt stuffed in her mouth. Her long, curly brown hair hid most of her face, but it didn’t matter; I knew it was her. She was so small on the bed, so light, she barely dented the mattress. Her one arm was bent the wrong way, like she had an inverted elbow, and I was on Fang’s bed, with a phone in my hand and my mother’s hysterical voice was everywhere and the fat guy was on top of Astelle and I watched him rape her. When he was done with that, he untied her mangled arm. It took him a long time, he was swearing and his thick fingers fumbled to work the knots loose and I couldn’t take it anymore because she was choking on the sweatshirt and crying and finally I had to help him. The knots fell apart in my hands, the rope fell apart, and he wrapped his fat hands around Astelle’s neck and squeezed until the room crackled with the snap of fragile bones. Then we were arguing, and I ended up throwing all this money at him, but he was never satisfied and he was getting really mad, screaming at me to check Astelle’s pockets, but her
clothes were all twisted up and I was on the bed, I couldn’t move, I was frozen on the bed, watching as he dragged this heavy log of a plastic shower curtain trailing brown hair out one end across the honeymoon suite, pausing to give me a big white smile on his way out the door.
It didn’t make for an easy night. All those vivid details were pretty hard to get past. Especially with Faith lying beside me in that bed, lost in a tangle of long dark hair. In the deep gray of a motel room dawn, with my imagination in overdrive, it was difficult not to confuse her with the dead girl in the dream. I fixed my eyes on the ceiling and faked Zen for an hour or two, until finally I couldn’t stand it any longer.
I reached over, hand shaking, breath suspended. Carefully, I brushed her hair from her face. She squirmed a little and her lashes fluttered. I squeezed my eyes shut to hide my tripping heart. But before I did, I saw it was Faith. Of course it was Faith. And I slept.
SIXTEEN
Everyone in the honeymoon suite was pretty quiet that morning, which suited me just fine, being completely bagged and all after spending a good chunk of the night wrestling the wrong girl. What little conversation there was focused on the state of the roads. The cable was back up and a local station gave the all clear on highway driving. Faith yanked the curtains open on a startling blaze of light, and said it looked like the donkey track out front had already been plowed, so it was decided by one sweet voice and a couple of grunts that we’d get up and get going. Everyone took a turn in the can. Mine was brief—I mean, if I was too cowardly to reach out and touch a sweatshirt, you’ve gotta know I skipped the shower, with its killer curtain, altogether. Still, I couldn’t help noticing how the curtain was hanging loose at one end, the holes at the top ripped right through, as if someone, sometime, had given it a good yank and pulled it down fast.
I splashed some water on my face, scrubbed my teeth with one finger, battled my mop, then bailed out of the bathroom. Faith was on the phone with her parents and Fang was already clearing off the car. I headed out to settle up on the room, using hand signals to assure Faith she didn’t owe a thing.
Outside, the sun was hanging in an unblemished sky, turning the Red Carpet Inn and the surrounding woods—perfect for stashing a body—into a real winter-wonderlandish affair. It was still cold, however, and I puffed out a couple frosty clouds on the way to the office. I was hoping to leave the money on the counter and split, forget the change, but it appeared Fatty was an early riser. I could see him through the window, crammed into his polyester uniform behind the desk. For a second I considered stiffing him, but seriously, I didn’t want to be involved in some humiliating fat-guy-staggering-across-a-slushy-parking-lot chase scene, didn’t want to have to explain that spectacle to Faith. Besides, there was this sick trickle of curiosity pumping through me, the same stuff that has everyone rubbernecking at a crash site or devouring the details of the latest, greatest murder. I knew I was going into the office to take a look at the nightmare felon, no sense pretending I wasn’t.
“Morning.” The big boy smiled widely as I stepped inside. I knocked the snow from my shoes then planted myself in front of the desk. Except for a new red shirt and name tag—apparently the freak of the week would respond to the name Frank—the guy looked pretty much the same as he had the night before: weird, white, warped.
“Someone didn’t get a whole lot of sleep last night,” he said, giving me a knowing wink.
“Don’t start with me, man.” I pulled my wallet from my back pocket and laid Fang’s two fives on the counter.
Frank paid no attention to the cash. Instead, he started swinging his hips back and forth, humping the desk. “So, how was she, huh?” he panted between thrusts. “Was she a good ride?” He laughed a big wet one.
“Don’t,” I snapped. The word bounced off the mirror, ricocheted around the room along with a sweatshirt, a rope, a rape, a shower curtain.
“Okay, okay.” Frank pumped his meaty hands through the air, letting me know I should keep it down. “I was just joking.” Like last night, the transition from pervert to pathetic was quick. His eyes flashed to the mirror. He checked out the door behind him. When it stayed shut, he shot me a nervous smile and grabbed the money. He had to suck in his gut to open the cash drawer.
I was about to stick my wallet back in my pocket when I saw the thick edge of pink paper inside. I glanced at Frank making change. I fingered the folded paper. A car door slammed, an engine sputtered up a roar. Out the window, a puff of blue, transparent exhaust wavered behind the Sunbird.
“You like pretty girls, right, Frank?” I asked quietly.
“I sure do,” he said, chuckling. “I sure do.”
“Want to see one?” I pulled the paper out of my wallet and unfolded it slowly.
“Oh, yeah!” Frank shoved my change at me then leaned over the counter, engulfing the lower deck with his rolls. “Let me see her, let me see her,” he panted, reaching for my coveted piece of porn.
I surrendered the flyer.
His eager smile kind of crumpled when he saw the big MISSING at the top of the page. He threw me a worried glance, then started reading. I watched him closely, but he’d barely even skimmed the thing when the door behind him swung open and a tough, skinny old bag in a Red Carpet uniform stepped in beside him.
“Morning.” She nodded at me, then at him. A red tide rose from the collar of his shirt and his shoulders crept up, like a kid expecting a cuff to the back of the head. The lady, the manager according to her tag, stopped short. There was a bit of an uncomfortable silence as we held our places. Her eyes darted from me to Frank and back again before settling on the sheet of pink paper. “What you got there?” Her voice was tight with suspicion. She snatched the paper from his hand, scanned it quickly. “This yours, Frank?”
“Nope,” he said quietly, shoulders still raised.
Eyes narrowed, she thrust the flyer back at me. “I don’t know what you’re up to, kid ”—she spat the last word out like some poisoned turd—“but I want you outta here.” She gave her arm an angry shake. Astelle quivered in front of me. “Go on, now. Get out.”
I grabbed the dancing girl and bolted. As I made for the car, I spun around once, took a few shuffling steps backwards through the slushy lot. Inside the office, the old broad’s face was pressed in close to Frank’s. Her hands flapped overhead, her mouth a dark hole, a distorted circle of abuse.
THE ROADS WERE BROWN with sand and clear of snow, the driving dirty but easy. Five minutes after we left the motel, we were on the highway. Flickering images of the Room 14 festivities, combined with lack of sleep and the sizzling winter light, were leaving me two seconds behind real time and completely out of sync with the people in the car. It didn’t really matter with Fang.
She was concentrating on the road and on what had really landed us in the car together. If we’d danced around Stan last night, today she put him smack in between us, like some dashboard statue of Elvis. She laid out their whole happy history, told us how life had seemed so wide open with Stan, and how even now, even after two months, she couldn’t really believe he was gone. I nodded along, trying to tune in and camouflage my uneasy amazement at how goddamn freely she spoke about stuff. There was just no small talk with her. I was thinking maybe she did it by pretending Fang and I weren’t there at all, but then she suddenly looked right at me—dazzling, eyes brighter than the sun—and asked, “Did you ever go to Stan’s house?”
I had to think about it for a second. Stan and I had done all the T-shirt biz at my place or down at Hank’s, and we’d played b-ball in the back parking lot at school and hung out at Delaney’s, but I couldn’t remember ever going to Stan’s. When I told her this, she nodded, said she’d only been once, about six months after they started going out.
Apparently it had been a huge deal, had taken ages for Stan’s parents to even agree she could come over. Then Stan’s father had barely said hello and his mother was this really timid thing who’d passed around potato chips and acted like everything wa
s cool. After a really rigid dinner, Mr. Miller had read a passage from the Bible then tried to get a discussion going. Faith had been freaked, but Stan and his mom seemed pretty used to the whole deal. Mr. Miller had listened to their interpretations of the reading with this condescending smile on his face before explaining the real, approved-by-Christ lesson meant to be taken from the passage.
“The entire time I was at Stan’s, Mr. Miller acted like I didn’t even exist. But right after the Bible reading, he turned to me and told me he hadn’t asked me to participate in the discussion because I wasn’t a practicing Christian. I’m pretty sure it was the only thing he knew about me, or at least it was the only thing he cared about. Anyway, after pointing out what a heathen I was, he started ridiculing my name, saying how ironic it is that someone like me, someone with ‘no faith in Christ’”—she lowered her voice to mimic Stan’s dad—“‘should have been bestowed with such a name.’ Then he asked if I’d care to tell him what, if anything, I did have faith in.”
“So, what did you say?”
Faith tapped her fingers on the steering wheel and dropped her head to one side. I didn’t know what she was mulling over, but I tried to think about what I’d say if some asshole put me on the spot like that. Other than the Put Your Faith in Foster’s logo I’d seen at Hank’s, I couldn’t come up with much.
“I told him I had faith in myself,” she said, which was sure as shit better than my masterpiece.
“And? What did he say?”
Faith shoulder-checked before swinging the Sunbird into the center lane.
“He laughed,” Faith said with a tight smile, stepping on the gas. “He just laughed and laughed.”
Faith was quiet after that, and surprise, surprise, Fang wasn’t saying jack. Pressed against the window, he stared at the dirty cars shuffling around us like they were the most intriguing things he’d ever seen. Personally, I wanted to talk about something besides Stan and the Millers, but everything I contemplated was either stupid or boring or both. I guess if I’d been daring I could have countered Faith’s story with one about my family’s religious rituals.
Anthem of a Reluctant Prophet Page 13