by Rob Pierce
Plus now I couldn’t tell her the worst things about my life, because they were less than hers. She hadn’t done anything wrong and her husband left her, not that he would have been any help when Peach broke in, but something would have been different. Maybe her boys would have lived. Instead she watched them die, there wasn’t a damned thing she could do.
“I didn’t do anything either,” I said. “It wasn’t my fault, like it wasn’t…” I wanted to talk about my innocence, my dad, but she cried and I shut up. Everything was too late.
“And Jeremy didn’t do anything,” I mumbled. “I have to do something.”
Val looked up. “What? To who?”
She knew what I meant without an explanation, without even listening.
“There’s a guy.” I shook my head. “You know, some guys are just wrong. I’d see it in my dad’s eyes, then he’d turn his head and hit me again. Like he had to take me by surprise.”
“You,” she cried, “you never loved…” Tears came down some more.
“I wanted to.” I didn’t know what else to say. I looked down at my drink, then it was out of my hands, the glass in both of hers, and Val pulled it back and took a solid shot. She coughed and coughed, and she spat out a little, but mostly she swallowed it. She never drank.
“I can’t do shit,” I said, and took my glass back, “about what happened to you. I did what I could. And I wish I could stop with hating my dad. That don’t work either. It’s more complicated. Fuck.”
Val nodded, like I’d clarified something. I knew she hated and she’d been raped and neither of those was the worst thing that happened to her: she lost her boys. Me and dad was a different thing. He beat the shit out of me, tried to scare me into staying. I was all he had left.
When Val was my girlfriend, she was my family. I never wanted to go home. She always needed something from me, not only protection, but I knew how to give that too. She was a little heavy in high school, and some kids said shit to her about it, but not while she was going with me.
Now she was really large, and we sat next to each other on the couch, but I didn’t give a shit she was fat. I put my good arm around her. Maybe if we were together I’d care how fat she was. I didn’t know. She was my friend, and she needed an arm. I knew that much.
***
It was late. Valerie slept. I sat up watching Bonnie and Clyde. Great movie, but the whole idea of being a famous bank robber—no thanks. I didn’t like my job enough to die for it. I didn’t even want to go to prison for it. I’d already done time, for assault, and if I went back they’d put me away for a while.
That Tenny gig must have made me stupid. I never should have tried the robbery tired as I was. That crazy woman in line distracted me. I should have walked away right then. Another bank, another day. Instead I took a bullet and spent half what I stole getting it out. Now I was stuck at Val’s watching videos I’d seen before, because the painkillers made it too hard to follow anything new.
The hallucinations weren’t as frequent as when I first got back from Carver’s, but that little guy in Bonnie and Clyde, sometimes I saw him and he was driving a getaway car, sometimes I saw him as a dwarf and I knew he rolled dice and fucked little boys.
I’d cut way back on the morphine because the first couple days I took more than I was supposed to. The pain from the wound was worse this way but Val kept me supplied with scotch, so most of what I saw was really there, I just saw it blurry. The occasional hallucinations were only partly caused by morphine. Seeing a dwarf was something I was really going to do. And I didn’t know what I’d do when I saw him. It depended on what he convinced me he hadn’t done.
***
My job was supposed to be robbing banks. Even if this last one didn’t work so well. It was the fucking steady job that screwed me up, wore me out. I owed Tenny a couple weeks’ collections, then I was out. And this other stuff, with Jeremy and the dwarf, with Val: those felt like causes, but I couldn’t save anyone from the world.
And this thing with Theresa. Maybe that was part of my problem too. Steady job, steady woman, all this shit was slowing me down. I wasn’t supposed to stay in one place, do one thing. Theresa had a hook in me, and maybe that was weakness, or maybe she wasn’t fucked up and I’d never been with anyone like that before. I’d figure that one out after I was done with Tenny.
It was morning and I was between movies. Val walked in before I got off the couch.
“Hey,” she said, blinking behind hair that fell on her face, “you want coffee?”
I glanced down at my glass of scotch. It wasn’t empty yet, but what the hell. “Alright,” I said, and slugged back the scotch.
“And eggs?” she said over her shoulder, walking into the kitchen. She wore a giant robe that covered everything. I was glad.
“Maybe a little.” Now I wished I’d waited on the scotch. The coffee would be a couple of minutes.
“You feeling any better?”
“Can’t sleep without morphine. Good thing those Godfather movies are long.”
“They should sort movies by length in the video store. Cater to insomniacs.”
I looked at my empty scotch glass. “Coffee ready yet?”
“Nothing’s that fast. Hang on a minute.”
“I need to get better. I need to go back. I need to start over.”
She looked over her shoulder again. “Start what over?”
“Business.” I smiled, drunk maybe, but not stupid. “Not life. I’m not crazy.”
She turned back to the coffee and shook her head slow. “Oh, you are. Not always in a bad way, but you are.”
I forced myself off the couch, staggered to the DVD player and changed the disc. “You going anywhere in the next couple hours?”
“No.”
“Watch a movie with me.”
***
Val lay there under the blankets and I lay beside her. I didn’t remember what happened but it wasn’t hard to figure. I was on meds, she was on hope. We were both fucked up.
I supposed with the scotch and the morphine I couldn’t control what I’d done, but I controlled how much I drank. When I was a boy and my dad beat me, maybe then I was a victim, but as old as I was now? Whatever I did I somehow chose.
I sat up, looked over at Val. She was out and I was hungover, bells in my head ringing like a church. I got out of bed, found my pants and shirt on the floor and pulled them on.
I looked down at Val’s face. She was fat, not ugly. The face I liked when we first met was lost in excess flesh, but it was her attitude that drove me crazy. In a bad way. I walked into the kitchen and started some water for coffee.
I put a one cup filter in a plastic cone and started a cup.
“I’ll take one of those,” Val said.
I didn’t turn my head, could tell she stood a few feet behind me, found another cup in the cabinet and put it on the counter next to mine. She only had one cone, so I could only make one cup at a time.
She stood back there, didn’t step closer. I didn’t want to face her, I had physical pain and that was enough.
The water boiled and I poured some into the first cup, opened the fridge and got out some half and half. Val stood a couple steps to my left. She caught my eye but I was practically blind. I shut the fridge and turned back to the coffee.
“You don’t look so good,” she said.
I coughed and something came up. I shook and spit into the sink. “Never felt better.” I lifted the coffee cone, looked into the cup, set the cone back down and poured more water.
“Is it because of last night?”
Now I supposed I had to turn around and look at her. I spoke to the wall instead. “It’s how much I drank.”
“What about the rest?”
Fuck, she didn’t want to hear that I didn’t remember. Guess that didn’t matter much. Whatever I said, it wouldn’t be what she wanted to hear. I checked the coffee, dropped the soaked filter in the trash under the sink, grabbed another filter and started mak
ing the second cup.
“What about the rest?” she asked again.
I poured some half and half into the first cup and took a drink. Hot coffee to a hangover: there is a God.
But there’s a Devil too. I set the cup down. “Everything was good until I woke up.”
Val’s lips moved, like the beginning of a smile. “You don’t remember, do you?”
I passed her the cup, started making my own. “Not a fucking thing.”
She sipped at the coffee, looked at me the whole time. “So what do you think about it?”
I shook my head, no smile. “It’s fine, it’s fine. Everything’s fine.”
She stood there and looked. I thought she might throw her cup at me. She didn’t drink from it or set it down, she just looked at me and held it.
I was her last boyfriend before her husband, but I hadn’t fucked her since high school. A lot of things had changed since then, but they were mostly her things.
“So it won’t happen again,” she said.
“I’m nobody’s husband.”
Val walked out of the kitchen. I didn’t know how she took what I’d said. When I was done here, I’d go back to Theresa, maybe Olive. Maybe both. The last thing Val needed was me.
***
I cut back on the scotch for a day. The drunken confusion disappeared but Val was a pain in the ass. The pain in my arm wouldn’t go away, so I got the drinking back to steady.
Luckily, Val had to go to the doctor sometimes to keep her state checks coming in. She went out and I was glad to see her go. I sat on the couch with a blank TV screen and watched.
I sat like that a while. She walked in, stood there with her fists on her vast hips. “I thought you loved me.” Her voice came out of nowhere, a strength I’d never heard from her—it felt like a balloon about to burst.
“I’m an old friend with a bullet wound.”
Her fists dropped and she stepped toward me. I sat up straight in case she swung. “You want mercy? Can I have some too?”
I pushed myself up from the couch, held out my arms. She stayed out of their range; I dropped them. “Mercy’s some other prick. I won’t talk down to you like that.”
Val stepped toward me like she’d take those arms now, but I sat back down.
She stood surprised a second, then sat beside me. “You’re a fuck when things don’t go your way, you know that?”
I wasn’t drinking anything so my hands were free, but I kept them on my knees. There was a little room between us and I left it there. “Don’t kid yourself, Val. I’m a fuck whether things go my way or not.”
I looked at her, glanced at the blank screen, looked back at her. I saw nothing everywhere.
“But you’re supposed to give a shit about me. That’s why you stayed in my life. You’re not just some high school boyfriend.”
I wasn’t sure she had that right. “When Lucas married you, you were kids, right? And you look back at me like a direction you coulda took. Then everything would be different.”
Val looked at me, and her face went from one kind of blank to another. She started out just void; now she knew emptiness.
I was days of tripping on scotch and morphine. Val was days of being with me while I did. She was also years of trying to deal with her children’s murders. She did all those years without drugs or drink.
“I got your revenge for you,” I said. “Maybe that’s no revenge for you.”
We stayed on the couch together. There was still the same gap between us, and the screen we faced stayed blank. I felt her look at me and I turned my head.
There was a question in her eyes. Her lips trembled. I took her hand. It was hot.
I clasped it tight as I could. It stayed hot. I let it go, got up from the couch, walked into the kitchen and poured myself the tallest shot I could.
***
Rehabbing the arm took weeks. With this new Valerie, it felt like months.
I sat there with coffee watching Godfather 2 again, watching Michael Corleone make hard choices.
Val walked into the kitchen. “How long you gonna stay here?”
I glanced back at her. “I can leave right now if you want.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She started making coffee.
“Another couple hours then. It’s a long movie.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Dust.”
I paused the movie, turned halfway around. “You don’t want me here, I’m gone. You want me here, I stay til the arm’s good.”
“So it’s on me.”
“Fuck it.” I stood up, turned off the movie. “Tell me how it ends.”
***
The road alone was a beautiful thing. The middle of nowhere, and I drove like I’d never stop. Miles of high speed and nothing else. If I could keep this road forever I’d be alright.
But it wasn’t forever, it was only an hour, and the open road turned from highway to streets. I got to a place I didn’t want to go but had to. Tired muscles knotted up. The neighborhood turned clean, and up ahead the houses faded away.
A desirable business district. A place where people felt safe, where everything was overpriced. Where no one suspected the cool little game store might be run by a predator.
I found a place to park a couple blocks from Evil, popped open my trunk and grabbed what I needed, then stuck one quarter after another into the meter. Maximum time, two hours. This shouldn’t take that long, but it was worth it if it did.
I walked into Evil. Davis was talking to the dwarf behind the counter. Both men looked at me.
I stepped up to Davis, grabbed one shoulder. “What the fuck you doing here?”
Davis stepped back, out of my grip. He wore a suit, nothing fancy, no tie anyway: jacket, shirt and slacks. “Stay away from me.”
He sounded scared, which was about right. I shrugged. “Answer the question.”
Evil spoke before Davis could answer. “This is the guy. The guy I was talking about.”
Davis looked at me. “You’re the guy?”
“I’m always the guy. Who the fuck are you? Here?”
Davis took another step back. “I own this place. With Evil.”
I laughed, reached inside my jacket and watched them both cringe. I pulled out the bottle of scotch, took a drink and put it away. It was a huge inside pocket. “You call him that, huh?”
Davis didn’t answer and the dwarf said nothing too. I was on the same side of the counter with Davis, opposite from Evil. With a step in either direction I could grab one of them by the throat.
The counter between me and Evil posed a problem.
I shook my head. “You like games that lure them young boys, don’tcha Davis?”
He took another step back. He’d be out of the building if he could. I stepped forward, kept an eye on the dwarf.
I felt my strength fading, braced a hand on the counter, turned my head so I looked at them both. “You might wanna close this place. Fast. Cuz Jeremy comes in here again, you’re both dead.”
I reached into my other inside pocket, the one the scotch wasn’t in, and brought out my HK 45 pistol, showed it quick and put it back. “Next time you see that, last time you see anything.”
I took a step toward Davis. He took another step back. I smiled, leaned at Evil and watched him hold still, but I couldn’t tell if he was bracing to defend himself or just freezing before he died. If it came to that, he’d be the one I killed first. He might have a weapon behind the counter and I knew I could take Davis.
I backed out of the store.
***
Threatening people was the easy part; I still had to return to Theresa. She might expect me back by now, but she wouldn’t expect a wounded man. Or maybe she believed I was never returning—even a cripple might be a bonus.
She’d still be at work, Jeremy not home yet either. I unlocked the door, took my two suitcases into the living room and put on some music. She’d hear it in the hall before she got to the door. I didn’t know how welcome I’d
be, didn’t want to surprise her too much.
I plopped down on the couch. The gun was uncomfortable where I lay, but I wasn’t sure I was home so I left it there. I got out the scotch and sat up a little to drink it. I tried to stay awake for her.
The door opened and I started.
“Oh.” Jeremy looked surprised.
“You didn’t hear the music?”
“I was thinking.”
“Then I’d better turn it up. In case your mom’s thinking too.”
“You tired?” he asked. “It’s not even dinner time.”
He probably wondered if I was drunk, was trying to draw me out. But I was in a steady state of scotch. “I hurt my arm. I took some medicine.”
He dropped his backpack on the floor and stepped closer, leaned in and looked at me. He squinted. “How’d you get hurt?”
“Workin. That’s how I get everything.” I laughed. “I’m always workin.”
“You don’t look like you’re workin now.”
I took a drink. I’d have leaned forward and patted the kid on the arm, but I only had one good hand and it held the bottle. “I’m waitin for your mom.”
I didn’t know if that explained it to him, but it sounded right to me and he nodded. Any answer that stopped the next question was a good answer. I wanted to share things with Jeremy, but I had to be in charge of what they were.
He didn’t walk away though, and his mom didn’t walk in. Most nights he’d have chugged half a carton of milk by now, but this time he stayed in front of me, didn’t make a move toward the kitchen. He stared hard, but he talked soft. “You stayin this time?”
“I was stayin last time. I had work to do.” It was weird having this talk with the kid. Tiring too. But it felt right. Theresa’s questions would be different. Innocence was for the young.
“But,” he said, “you don’t do anything forever, do you?”
So much for innocence. “What are you talking about?”
“Some kids in school have dads and the dads stay forever. It’s like there’s forever people, and there’s people like us.”
Fuck it. I took a long drink. “Sometimes it makes sense to leave.”