by Rob Pierce
I broke the cap on my bottle, held it out to her like she might say yes, and took a slug while her head shook. I held the bottle in my lap. “You might wanna grab that damn mineral water, then. It’s not like I’m in a hurry to leave.”
Valerie didn’t know anymore. She had to be prompted on everything. Maybe she was no genius when I met her, but she was a damn sight smarter than this. Then that asshole Lucas left her with two kids, but there were a lot of assholes like that. At least they left. This Peach motherfucker—he came, he raped, he conquered. I poisoned the sonuvabitch, but I didn’t punish him. I didn’t even give him justice.
***
“You gotta get out more, Val. I don’t know how you live like this.”
“Ain’t a thing to know, Dust. I get my checks and cash em.” She had her water in a tall glass now. She set it down on the long table in front of the couch and took a seat across two cushions. When I first met her we were kids, and she’d lean back relaxed on a couch that size and cross her legs. Now I didn’t think she could, either cross her legs or relax.
“Still.” There was no table close enough to the recliner to set my bottle down. I held it. “It can’t be good to stay in here.”
“Nothing’s good, Dust. I’ll get out when something is.” She stopped, close to tears, shook her head and leaned forward, grabbed the tiniest sip from that water cup. How she stayed off booze was beyond me.
“You’re strong, Val. But how you carry this… it’s gonna kill you one way or the other.”
“Sometimes I wish it would. I wish I could pick the way.” Val looked around the small, clean room, stopped a moment at the window looking out on the yard. She batted her eyes a couple times and looked again at me. “Maybe I did,” she said.
“This isn’t a choice. It’s a five-year-old disaster and you’re still at the scene.”
“Nowhere I can go gonna make it go away.”
“You don’t get out and take care of that yard, the neighbors gonna make you go away.”
“Shit, I had a boy takin care of that. He stopped comin round a few months back.”
I shook my head. “Well, no kid’s gonna want that job now. Need a fuckin machete to clear that.”
“Sounds like someone you’d know.”
“Tell you what. I’ll clear that yard for you. Once. Then you gotta hire some kid to keep it up, or do it yourself.”
Val looked at me with a little bit of a grin. “Or what?”
I glared at her grin until it went away. “Don’t disappoint me, Val. Okay?”
Her face was blank. This was the easy part and she knew it. “Okay.”
“One more thing. When I go to the hardware store, you come with me.”
Val flattened that bigass t-shirt across her broad belly, brought her lips together tight and stood. “Or I disappoint you.”
I took a slug from my bottle, never took my eyes off her.
“Damn you, Dust.”
I figured that was the best yes I’d get from her and I grinned. She walked out of the room.
“Where you goin?”
“Gettin my shoes. If we’re gonna do this, let’s get it over with.”
I shrugged. It was late enough I wasn’t going to finish checking escape routes today anyway. Tools today, yard work and escape routes tomorrow.
***
I walked into the apartment and Theresa knelt next to the door, wrapping up the vacuum cleaner cord.
“You hungry?” She straightened up and kissed me. “How come you work all day and you come home tastin like scotch?”
“I got a good job.” I smiled, but she looked serious. “You know, there’s a lot of stress in what I do. Sometimes I gotta wind down.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes you wind down too much.”
I nodded. “That’s why I gotta do this, get back to my regular work. This steady shit, it wears me out. So I gotta work again tomorrow, research the real job. Plus, I got a yard job to do.”
“What? Like weeding? Don’t give me that gangster slang, I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“You’re way on edge. Here.” I reached inside my coat and held out my half-empty bottle. She waved it away. I unscrewed the cap and took a drink, moved on to the couch. “No slang on the yard job. Friend of mine has physical problems, I said I’d do the yard.”
Theresa walked away from the vacuum, looked down at me on the couch. “The yard. That the same as her yard?”
I stood up. “You should have a drink. It ain’t like that.”
“You spend one night God knows where, you take a day off and go drinking with I don’t know who, and now you’re gonna do some woman’s yard. Fuck you, Dust.”
“You wanna meet Valerie? You think I’m fucking fuckin Val?”
Theresa brought a finger up fast to her lips. “Jeremy’s home,” she whispered. “Watch your language.”
“Fuck,” I said, “I didn’t think I was loud. But you should see Valerie. You should see you.” I walked into the kitchen, grabbed two tall glasses and split the rest of the scotch into them.
“Sit down.” I put an arm around Theresa. She shrugged and I dropped my arm but she took the glass I handed her. We sat down, not exactly together but next to each other.
“What I see is you,” she said. “You make it hard to see us.”
“You mean us as a family, right? I never had much luck with family. Not the one I was born into. I don’t think that one counts. One abusive dad and me, everyone else ran like hell. Abandoned. That’s a thing parents do to their kids.”
“You know that’s not what I mean.”
“It doesn’t matter what you mean. That’s what my family was. I wanted something better, but that was what I got. So my friends growing up—I always liked them better than my dad, but I couldn’t make them mean more. He was always there, I could never get away. Even when I got older and moved out, he always stuck with me. That’s family—the shit that never goes away.”
Theresa looked sympathetic but only for a second. “What about Valerie?”
“When I was a kid, she lived down the block. She was always okay for a girl, then we got older, and she got too big to be popular. I wasn’t popular for other reasons. We hung out. She was my first girlfriend that mattered. That didn’t last, we were fucking teenagers for chrissakes, but her next boyfriend was this prick Lucas I used to run with. So I’d still see her a lot, at parties and shit. She was like family, if I could choose family. Lucas, too, except he was like a cousin you’d hang out with when he was around, not miss when he wasn’t. Me and Val always had something, from when no one else liked either of us.”
Theresa didn’t look like she was on my side yet. I took a long drink, set my glass down.
“So today you happen to run into her. And she’s single, I suppose.”
“Like no one should be.”
“Meaning what?”
Meaning I’d said as much as I wanted about Val. And I hated that I was about to say more. “She’s my friend, and the husband who left her was also my friend. I never met her kids.”
“Her husband took them?”
I lowered my head, shook it, raised it again. “There’d be hope that way.” My mouth was dry so I took a drink, but I also felt empty. I took another drink, but I knew it wouldn’t fill me.
She should have known better but she asked. “There’s no hope?”
“She’s home alone one night. With her kids. There’s a break-in. The guy kills the boys and he rapes her, beats her up and leaves her with her dead babies while he robs the place.”
“Oh Jesus.”
“She still lives there. I do what I can.”
***
I saw the apartment as Theresa’s now, not ours. I was a guest while she worked out whether she believed me. And she had a son, and part of my job was to keep the two of them ignorant, for all our sakes.
I trusted Theresa as much as anyone but Rico—she would never betray me intentionally, he would never betray me
unintentionally. But if Theresa knew something, the cops might get it out of her. Rico wouldn’t rat me out because my crimes were smaller than his, and with cops you always trade up.
I left the house early Sunday. I’d study escape routes first. Val’s yard would take a few hours, good for thinking. I’d go over each route a dozen times in my mind before deciding which bank to rob. The rush of the robbery is a beautiful thing, but there’s something to be said for bringing the money home. Wherever that was.
I wasn’t done with Theresa and Jeremy, and I easily could have been. I drove through the downtowns of small towns, streets nearly empty on a Sunday morning, drove to their banks and away again, out their narrow main streets and narrower back roads, memorizing all I could of where I’d leave, planning where I might disappear.
For now it was back on the freeway and on to Valerie’s.
It was winter but plenty warm enough to be outside. Maybe Val thought I’d encourage her to sit on the porch and talk with me while I worked, but that was the last thing I wanted. I’d gotten her out of the house and into the hardware store already. Today’s good deed was taking care of her yard. I rang her bell so she could unlock her shed, where the tools were. Outside of that I wanted nothing from her; I couldn’t do therapy seven days a week. I was there if she needed me, that was all.
There was an out-of-control tree at one end of her property. It needed a chainsaw taken to it, and that was how I would’ve liked to start, but I had to make my way across the yard first. Small weeds had bloomed into major obstructions. I went at them with large clippers, cut through closely grouped branches until the near side of the yard was no longer tall. I grabbed a shovel and dug out everything thick and low to the ground. I’d go through this a tool at a time, look quick at what was needed then clear as much as I could as fast as I could. There was a six pack of beer in an ice chest on the porch, but I wasn’t thinking about that yet, and I barely thought about the work at all. I thought about banks and how there were no good places to hide near any of the ones I’d looked at yesterday and today. And how this place was just down the coast from all of them, and no one I knew had this address. There’d come a day when I might stay here a while. I’d make this a damn pretty yard.
***
I’d told Theresa that Davis was still after her, but I wasn’t sure. Davis wasn’t done with Theresa or he wasn’t done with Jeremy, I didn’t know which. I knew he’d be back. I drove north thinking about that, how the man had reason to fear me but I had a feeling he wasn’t scared. I drove fast with my windows down and The Stooges’ Funhouse blaring, guitars and screams and sax and drums roaring back at the wind.
It was dark when I parked but my eyes felt bright. I’d sweated all day and my clothes were stained brown and green and I carried a full bag of liquid groceries. I opened the door and was hit by the smell of meat cooking. I walked into the kitchen with a smile, set my bag on the counter and would’ve kissed Theresa but she wouldn’t turn from the stove.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Stew. A lotta stuff been sittin’ around.”
“Good. I like a lotta stuff.” I smiled and handed her a beer and she smiled back. She opened hers, I set one on the counter for myself, and I put the rest away. There was a bottle of scotch too. I put that in the cabinet and grabbed Theresa’s ass real quick, let go.
“You have a good day?” she asked.
“I like planning,” I nodded, “and I like working.”
She nodded back. There was no point asking me about what I was planning, and the yard work I did for Valerie wouldn’t be a real interesting topic. Theresa turned her attention back to the pot of stew.
“I picked up Jeremy a couple hours ago,” she said. “He had a good time at the tournament.”
Meaning he hadn’t won, I supposed, and I supposed I should give a shit about that, and I would if it wasn’t for Davis. But she said he’d had a good time, and I’d seen him that time I’d picked him up. He hadn’t won then either, and it didn’t seem to bother him a bit. I didn’t know if I should train him to be a winner—and God knows how I’d do that—or if that was a thing he didn’t need to be.
I realized it had been a minute and she was waiting for an answer. “So, uh, does he ever go with friends?”
“He sees people he knows there. He’s friends with some of them.”
“But he only sees them at the tournaments,” I said.
“Doesn’t seem to be anyone from his school. Definitely not from this neighborhood.”
I nodded. The kid could use a normal social life, which maybe meant hanging out with his peers. “He still gets home from school later than I get home from work,” I said. “He’s doing something afterwards.”
“Yeah, well, that’s good. Maybe he plays something besides cards.”
“I saw him playing football one time. He wasn’t that good but he seemed to like it. Maybe I can help him get good.”
Theresa stirred the stew, dipped a spoon in and took a sip, added some salt. “So long as it’s something he likes.”
“I won’t force him to have fun. I’d like to keep up the boxing lessons.”
Theresa drank from her beer, didn’t look at me. “It’s good he can defend himself.” She took another drink, like she was stopping herself from saying more.
She probably had doubts, but she didn’t put them into words so I didn’t have to argue. I took my own drink, finished the bottle, grabbed another. The stew wasn’t ready yet. I walked down the hall to see how Jeremy was doing.
I knocked on his door.
“Who is it?”
“Who the fuck ya think?”
“Come in.”
I opened the door. He lay on his belly on his bed, piles of cards spread out in front of him. He looked up at me and smiled.
“You love those cards, don’tcha?”
“It’s fun figuring out my best deck.”
I grabbed the little wooden chair from his desk and set it next to the bed, sat down beside him. “You find out something you need to change?”
“It’s hard to know until you play it in a game.” His voice was serious, his eyebrows came together. “But like, I was playing James today, and he had these two cards, and they work together—I’m trying to say this so you’ll understand it—and I have those cards but I didn’t know they worked together like that. So I didn’t have them both in my deck.”
“So now you’re putting them together in your deck.”
“Yeah, but that means taking something else out. You can have more cards in your deck, but the best players only use forty. That way you have your forty best cards.”
I understood that much, but only so long as he didn’t go into detail. “So, what are you adding to your deck, and what are you getting rid of?”
“If I keep this deck, I only have to get rid of one card, but I haven’t decided which one. I’ll show you the ones I’m thinking of. Or, I might do a different deck.”
I smiled to myself and I smiled at him. Those smiles weren’t the same but he smiled back like he saw the one he wanted. He started telling me the differences about four cards that all looked the same to me.
***
I had to fill my nights with family, fill my days with work, fill every hour until it was Saturday again and I could get back to researching banks. As bad as I wanted a robbery, I wouldn’t rush one. Bad planning gets you in prison. I’d done okay my first time inside, but it wasn’t my idea of fun.
Fun would be the First Bank of Edgarsville, provided I liked my second look as much as I’d liked my first. My main concerns were the back roads out of town. So few cars took those roads that even if I switched cars I might look suspicious just being there. I had to drive deeper into the back roads, see if there was an alternate route or a place to hole up. Either way, I liked that Edgarsville bank. Hit it late enough in the day and there should be a decent amount of money, it was the only bank in town. Even smaller than the last place I’d hit, so even less security.
/>
I worked my days on the job, went home and worked my nights at the apartment, getting closer to Theresa and Jeremy, keeping my mind busy but not busy enough. I wanted other things. By Thursday night, I needed out. I called Rico.
“Not The Wheel, though,” he said. “I need a place of my own.”
I’d have suggested somewhere else if he hadn’t. I hadn’t seen Olive since our one nighter, and I didn’t want to. “You name the spot,” I said.
***
Rico didn’t like nice places. “The drinks cost more, and the women all say no.” So we met at Sparks, which was not nearly as well lit as the name implied. It was dark and it was nothing but a bar. If you wanted to eat, you’d better like pretzels.
We strolled to the far end of the bar, where we could see everyone coming in. The bartender was a surly old guy with a pocked face, blond hair, and a Hawaiian shirt. I guess the surfing career didn’t pan out. We ordered two beers and he grunted and turned away.
“That asshole,” Rico said, when the bartender walked down to the opposite end of the bar to fill our glasses. “I love him.”
“He’s just another guy who’s fucked.”
“Reminds me I’m not. I love that.”
I looked at Rico. He made good money, but I didn’t think too many people would envy the way he lived. Definitely not this guy behind the bar. Rico was ugly and he worked hard, and too many people wish they were pretty and didn’t work at all. Fuck them. I liked working because it kept me from thinking, and looking good was just another way of hiding from how you lived. Which means I’d do it if I could. Some things aren’t an option.
There were men at the bar down near the door, no one at any of the little tables alongside and behind us. “No women here,” I said.
“I only need one,” Rico answered. “And my odds are a lot better if she comes here than if she goes anywhere else.”
Rico was probably right about that. He was a thirty-five-year-old ex-con and he looked it. He wasn’t pretty like those “bad boys” the women in the trendy places might go for. Hell, I’d done time with him, and Rico scared me.