by Bob Sanchez
Mack opened them at the sound of the doorbell. He slid on a pair of jeans and a shirt and answered the door. Cal stood there, impatience rapidly fading from her face. Sunglasses rested on top of her head, and their eyes met for a moment. He welcomed her inside and out of the heat.
“I overslept. What time is it, I’m embarrassed to ask?”
“It’s noon. Time to show me Arizona if you’re still willing.”
“Love to. Make yourself comfortable while I morph into a human being.”
Cal offered to make a pot of coffee while he showered and dressed, and he agreed that was a plan. He went into the bedroom and closed the door, thinking he should have gone out running while the sun still lay low in the sky. The smell of ground roast, the peace of the desert, the company of a fine-looking woman gave Mack a feeling of contentment. But it seemed too perfect, like those mass-produced feel-good oil paintings of woodsy cabins snuggled in cozy valleys ringed by snowy mountaintops and bisected by burbling streams that usually made Mack want to reach for his Pepto-Bismol.
When he came back into the kitchen, Cal handed him a cup of coffee and gave him a perfect smile. “So where are we going today?”
“There’s a great park in Tucson. How much time can you spend?”
“You’re penciled in for the whole day.” She followed his eyes out the front window. “What are you looking at?”
“There’s almost no traffic on this road, but the same car just drove by for the third time.”
“I thought you’d be looking at me.” Cal’s smile turned crooked, still pretty.
“Trust me, I’d rather look at you than this guy.”
“Oh-ho, do you know him?”
“Hardly at all, which is too much. His name is Zippy.” Mack went to his bedroom and retrieved the .38 from his nightstand. “Stay away from the door, please.” He walked out the back sliding door as Zippy banged on the front door with his fist.
“Open the door, you cod-sucking baked-bean-eating Boston bastard! I know you’re hiding in there!” Zippy’s car was parked diagonally in the driveway and had driven over the cactuses Mack had planted last winter. In May, they had rewarded Mack with dozens of stunning crimson blossoms, and now they looked like so much cactus jelly. “Get out here so I can kick your candy ass!”
Mack came up behind him, leaned against Cal’s car and casually examined the barrel of his .38 as he looked at the maniac’s back. “’sup, Zip?”
Zippy turned, startled. “That thing you got, it’s loaded?”
“Might be. How can I help you?”
“You better forget about Juanita.”
“Who? I’ve forgotten already.”
Zippy wore wrap-around sunglasses, a slick contrast to his drug-addled face. Froth whitened the corners of his mouth. “Juanita Lopez,” he said.
Mack opened the cylinder of his sidearm, saw six circles of daylight and clicked the cylinder shut. “Yep. Loaded for bear. What is it about her you want me to forget?” Honestly, Mack remembered very little about the other night’s drunken dalliance, though images popped unbeckoned into his mind. He was pretty sure those thoughts were ninety percent his imagination. Cal had stepped out the front door to watch the festivities.
“You forget you ever met her! She belongs to me!”
“And you to her. I respect that.” The other night she acted as though she belonged to half the male population of Arizona, but Mack held his tongue.
Zippy charged, notwithstanding Mack’s weapon. “Freeze!” Mack commanded, for all the good it did, as Zippy tried to skull-ram him in the chest. Dodging was easy enough. Zippy slammed into the fender of Cal’s car and banged his head on the hood. Mack slid the gun into his belt and pulled Zippy up from the hot metal. There was no call for a lethal weapon, not really.
Zippy snarled and twisted his head. “What’s your problem with me, anyway?” Mack asked. Retirement was supposed to mean he didn’t have to deal with crap like this anymore. The lunkheads and schmucks were all supposed to be back East, getting their chops busted by the Bay State’s Finest. But no, they had to show up here, to roil his sea of tranquility.
“Juanita,” Zippy said.
“She isn’t here.”
“I’m calling the police,” Cal said, and jabbed her finger at a cell phone.
“Juanita.”
“Will you stop saying your girlfriend’s name?”
“Then you stop porking her. We’re getting married.”
Cal lifted an eyebrow.
“You are? Congratulations!” Mack released Zippy, whose face had turned crimson from the hot hood. First-degree burns were a possibility, although Zippy didn’t seem to feel any pain. And his looks hadn’t suffered, since they had already bottomed out. “She must be ticked at you, telling stories about herself like that. I’d suggest you bring her a dozen long-stemmed roses.”
“You did her, I know you did. She said you were twice as good as me in the sack.”
Cal lifted her other eyebrow.
“Oh man, she knows how to zing a guy. No way she’d say that about me if she only knew. You must have done something wrong, that’s the only explanation.”
“People saw you two at The Snake in the Grass.”
“That part is true. Your future bride and I shared a table and had a few drinks but nothing more. I confess to be attracted, but what guy in his right mind wouldn’t be? But she started talking about you right away, and I knew I didn’t have a chance.”
Zippy’s clenched fist loosened. “What did she say?”
“It was all Zippy this and Zippy that, like there was no bigger stud west of the Mississippi. I’m one jealous guy, believe you me.”
“I don’t believe you.” Zippy was wavering, though.
“Come on, it’s obvious you pissed her off somehow, and her wild story is just payback.”
“Yeah, she thought I was cheating.”
“See? And of course you weren’t, and of course she wasn’t.”
“How do you know I wasn’t?”
“’Cause I can read people. You dig the ladies, sure, but today you’ve got Juanita, and for the next ten thousand tomorrows too if you don’t mess up.”
“Well, if the two of you weren’t gettin’ it on, why’d you come to my apartment the other day?”
Did Mack want to mention the stolen credit cards, the stolen gun, the stolen pride? No, he already had the first two back and didn’t want to admit the third was gone. “A misunderstanding,” he said. “Hey, I’m a fallible guy. I made a mistake.”
Zippy looked down at his dusty Nikes. “Takes a big man to admit that.”
“Roses, Zippy. Long-stemmed. Quick, before she’s gone.”
Zippy didn’t say another word. He drove away, leaving a rooster tail of gravel and dust.
“Let me explain,” Mack told Cal.
“Don’t,” she said, her eyes regarding him with a frank expression. “You just gave that character the most transparent snow job I’ve seen in a long time.”
“Thanks. But I didn’t—”
“You did a nice job defusing the situation without killing him. You told a tactical lie, and I’m grateful for that.”
“Most lies are tactical when you think about it. Juanita—”
“Stop. There are two things I don’t want to hear about your sex life. One is the truth, and the other is a lie.”
“Fair enough. Why didn’t you call the police?”
“Damn phone needs recharging.”
“Look,” Mack said, “maybe you’d rather cancel our day trip. I’d certainly understand.”
She punched his arm. “You’re not weaseling out. Let’s go.”
Chapter 18
The three men had been riding in the back of the bus forever. Ace didn’t know the world was this damn big. Texas alone stretched forever. How could there be room enough for anyplace else but? Two guys wearing orange robes had gotten on the bus in East Hotplate or some such, their heads shaved except for skinny pigtails. A woman behi
nd them wore a baseball cap that said Chicago Cubs, World Champs, which startled Ace so much he forgot to check out her body. There was also Fidel Castro, or maybe his body double, except for the Confederate uniform.
As the bus headed west again, Ace said he saw oil wells, but Frosty claimed they were cell phone towers. They asked Diet Cola to break the tie.
“They’re phalluses,” Diet Cola said. “Now shut up so I can take a nap.”
“No, I don’t think they’re fallacies,” Ace said. “They look damn real to me.”
A guy in a cowboy hat turned around and said they were oil wells, so Ace felt pretty good about that until he heard some passengers laughing, and he didn’t know what at.
Anyway, there were more important things to worry about. Ace figured Diet Cola was looking for whatever Mack Durgin had, just like they were. Which meant that Ace had better think some more, be creative.
The bus stopped somplace dusty and flat, and heat whooshed in the door as a few passengers got on. Nobody got off, which didn’t surprise Ace at all. He wouldn’t either; look at those ugly round clumps of weeds blowing around and sticking in the barbed-wire fences. Out there it was hotter than Britney’s tit.
“You boys are dumber’n each other,” Diet Cola said. “You’re trying to hide why you’re going to Arizona, but it’s obvious.” Frosty seemed to have his mind elsewhere, and Ace looked down the aisle as a woman got on the bus. Except for a missing front tooth, she was hot-damn gorgeous. Her tattoo was a mass of flowers and horoscope animals, like the one that was half-guy, half-horse. They started around her collarbone and worked their way down to the scoop of her blouse. She smiled—at him, Ace was pretty sure—and she bent down to place a bag on the floor. The tattoos seemed to go all the way down, with roses, curlicues and who knew what else decorating the dandiest set of knockers he’d ever seen outside of Playboy. What was below her navel, down where the rubber caught the load? Could be a smiling man in the moon, the Earth, shooting stars. Ace felt so dizzy that he closed his eyes. He imagined the shimmering rays from the top of the sun. It had to be pretty hot down there, most likely with a big, brown sunspot.
She sat down three rows in front of them, and Ace inhaled her sweet perfume. The a/c was on, but he was sweating.
“Way I figure,” Diet Cola said, “is you’re a couple of no-account slugs cutting loose from your mother or your parole officer. You’ve never seen tits except through a keyhole or Pay Per View, and just now you got the biggest freebie of your pathetic lives. You think in Arizona the women won’t toss their tacos when they see you with your pants down?”
“We don’t have a parole officer,” he said, “and we’re going to see our mother.”
“Stick to your lies, boys, but when you get off this bus, you won’t have a clue where to go. Am I right?”
“Well, we don’t have every detail planned out.”
Diet Cola laughed. “Me neither. All I know is the bare-ass sentials. Get in, get out, and the stuff in the middle takes care of itself.”
“You, um, seeing friends in Tucson?”
“I don’t have friends anywhere. Friends are just people who haven’t shafted you yet.”
“Then how come you’re going?”
“Maybe you should mind your business.”
“Hey, no fair, man. You axed our business.”
“Then I’m seeing a man about a horse.”
“Better be a big one,” Frosty said, “if you’re sitting on him.”
“I’ll sit on your face, you’ll see a big one.”
“Whoa, no offense. I’m just saying. What if you had problems and me and Frosty could help?”
“As if. Like what?”
“No wheels is like what. We’re transportation procurement specialists.”
Diet Cola reached into his bag and unwrapped a Ding Dong. White goo slid from between the chocolate layers as he bit down. He smiled at Frosty’s big words. “Car thieves. Ever get caught?”
“Hell no,” Ace said.
“Hell yes,” Frosty said, “couple of times before we got good. We haven’t got caught since we were about twelve.”
“That’s a pretty good record. You’re lying, but I expect that. Maybe we can work something out when we get to Tucson. If you’re not too busy with your mother, that is.”
Somewhere in Arizona, deep in the Sonoran Desert, voices awoke Poindexter as he napped in the shade of a thick jojoba bush.
“Hey Mucko, you seen any a them wild pigs?”
“I seen how you’re hoggin’ all the beer, Pindick. Toss me one, will ya?” Two humans were calling out to each other, one to Poindexter’s left and the other to his right. Their sound was promising, because Poindexter had tired of prickly pear cactus and all the work involved in finding good ones. With humans, and he knew this from experience, came delicious plates of Brussels sprouts unlike anything he found on his own. He grunted softly. The humans had come to bring him home.
“You seen how I got that wolf yesterday? A perfect shot!”
Poindexter heard laughter, a good sign. The human girl did that sometimes. “Wasn’t a wolf, Mucko. Was Randy’s dog.”
“Was a wolf, Pindick.”
“Found his license tag. You know any wolves got license tags?”
“I hated that dog anyhow.”
“By some accident you do shoot a javelina, get it above the shoulder. Let’s don’t bring home nothin’ looks like it’s gone through no windshield.”
“Well, it ain’t gonna look like it’s been to no freakin’ dance recital.”
“A hundred bucks says I bag the first pig anyhow.” A voice from the left.
“You’re on, podner.” A voice from the right.
Poindexter stirred, nervous but ready to go back home.
“I heard ‘im! The sucker’s in the bushes!”
Two tremendous thunderclaps sounded like nothing he had ever heard before, and felt like giant cactuses jammed into both ears. He looked to his left and saw a human turn bright red, then wobble and fall. Panicked, Poindexter ran to his right and barreled past the other human.
“Mucko, you idiot! You shot me!”
Poindexter ran through the brush and the cactuses, stumbled over rocks and kept on running, trying to escape the shriek in his head and the horror he had just witnessed.
The bus slowed to a stop.
“Deming, New Mexico! Bio break! Departing again in half an hour.” The pneumatic door hissed open, and the bus driver got off. Ace thought it was totally bogus how often they stopped, because it seemed like they would never get to Tucson and their meal ticket. What if Mack Durgin took whatever these valuables were (probably jewels) and sold them already? This wasn’t a piggy-bank heist, you could be shit-sure of that, so Mack could have already turned the stuff into cash if it wasn’t there already, maybe bought himself a sky-blue Bentley or some nice inflatable Britney dolls. Getting to Tucson was starting to feel urgent, but now people stood and stretched, stepping off the bus onto a parking lot to get barbequed in the blazing heat. Which was worse, nobody seemed in a hurry.