“Girlfriend.”
He laughed, a good deep laugh, but then she heard something stick in his epiglottis and she looked away. It reminded her of how old he was. Ingrid was his age too, though. He hacked at whatever was in his throat and then got up and strode for the bathroom, a sheetrock box with a flimsy door, the ceiling open to the outer bay. Wasn’t the cleanest thing in the world and you could hear everything. A person had no business doing anything in that bathroom but straight pee.
Rook had slept here many times when she was seventeen. She’d thought they were in epic love. But looking back, she couldn’t have been the first to hole up in there with him and she damn sure hadn’t been the last. He wasn’t even faithful when they were together. She wondered how his wife handled it all.
After she’d quit him and started seeing Ingrid, he’d begged her to come back. Said he’d leave his wife.
He returned from the bathroom and strode to the kitchenette, no sign of self-consciousness for his naked body. A decent body. Not crazy lean or gym-pumped, but strong. Soft around the middle. He held his back like he always knew what he was doing, probably because he did.
He tapped out some powder he must have gotten from the bathroom and razored it over a hand mirror. “Want a little coke?”
“No thanks.”
“X? I did some before I picked you up. It’s good.”
“No.”
“Box of fucking chocolates?”
“You’re funny.”
He did a line, then came back and sat next to her on the bed, running his hand up her arm. “We OK?”
“Yeah, we’re cool. Just… let’s skip the kissing. And don’t call me baby, either.” She thought for a moment and then said, “Please.”
He gave a laugh and shook his head but said, “No problem. I get it.”
Sitting there next to him with the light on, she noticed a red vertical scar buried under his chest hair. It hadn’t been there a few years ago.
She touched it lightly. “What happened there? Knife fight?”
He said, “Scalpel. You want to tell me how your face got all busted up?”
“No. “
She was eyeing him, still toying with the idea of leaving. Maybe she was over the whole wild oats thing. She just really liked sex. It was fun. She didn’t always have to climax, either. Sometimes she just liked to bounce along with some guy for a while and call it a day.
Ingrid tried to give her plenty of sex and always made sure she had the token orgasm or two. But somehow it seemed on par with masturbation. Ingrid all but put her in stirrups and snapped on the rubber gloves. Now ve vill have ze orgasm time!
Rook burst out with a laugh.
“What’s so funny?” He smiled and pulled her in closer.
She said, “Look, I don’t mean to be a hard ass. I’ve just had a rough day.”
“I understand. It’s cool. You want to fuck, we can fuck. Or we can just hang out.”
“You’re so romantic.”
“You’re the one who won’t kiss me!”
She grinned.
He said, “Hell, if you want, you can hang out and I’ll leave. Maybe you need a place to chill. Take as long as you need. Take it all. Take my truck. I’ll give you everything. None of it ever did me any good. After you left I never—”
She put her hand over his mouth.
His beautiful lies. His beautiful imperfect body. The weird way he talked. An old aphrodisiac began to spread through her veins.
She crooked her finger under his chin. He nestled into it without touching his lips to her hand or any other part of her.
She realized then, in that moment, that she was going to break it off with Ingrid. Not because of Adam. God, no. The thing with Ingrid was just no earthly good. Rook and Daryl were going to have to fight their way through on their own. Somehow.
But not now. Not this second.
Now there was no point in worrying about anything but where she was: sitting naked next to a naked man in a domesticated metal shop.
His penis was standing again so he didn’t need any resurrection ceremony. He used his hand on her, though, just to the point where she was good and anxious, and then he slipped on a fresh condom and they went at it again. His movements were steady and rhythmic and perfect, the tempo increasing. But she realized he was getting a little too fast, too furious. A familiar expression fluttered across his face.
“Hey!” she said.
He kept it up, accelerating even faster.
She wriggled off center. “Hey! Ladies first!”
He seized her, eyes wide. “Damn it, girl! You never had a big need to get off before.”
“Well at this moment I got a big need.”
“Fine! You drive!’ He flung himself off of her and launched her upward in a circular paddle movement, so that now she was on top.
“Alright.” She leaned forward.
He held onto her hips and let her take charge.
The lights were still on. She could see through the grates on both of the swamp coolers from this angle. On one of them the fan was spinning fast, and on the other smaller one, it turned at a sleepy half-pace. The stronger one poured wisps that after a few inches turned invisible and stealthy. Rook felt its wild, chilling caress. Gooseflesh from the waist up, nipples tense. He was sweating, though. Sweating hard. He must have been awfully close despite the coke. She smiled and rocked and let the sensation fill her.
She breathed in, the air stinging with the cigarette still burning in the glass ashtray. In her mind, the cigarette smoke came at her in a black tulle strip and the swamp cooler blew all white and gauzy, and she tangled both together in her lungs. Spinning pinwheels of white and black. She put her hands to her chest and felt her own heartbeat, then moved them down in a vertical slide to her navel.
Her body moved to align with him just so. Hit, hit, hit, hit, hit. A frustrated thrill was growing. His hands went from her hips to her waist, and then they were gripping her arms. He was drenched, drenched in sweat. Studded with diamonds. She felt like a bird that was making its way up through the treetops, lifting through the tangles to break above the canopy.
He pulled her wrists forward. She resisted, pulling back and closing her eyes, refusing to kiss him.
A whore’s logic, she thought, but she couldn’t make herself do it.
Her hands wrenched free and went back to her chest. The tickle made her feel crazy. So close.
The air so tense inside. Swamp cooler mist and cigarette smoke spinning, spinning. She exhaled, letting the air spiral out. Every shred of wrong and right mixed together. In her mind, she could see it forming. A vortex over the ocean. One in the desert.
She opened her eyes.
He was looking at her as if he didn’t see her, and his face was red with his teeth clenched. The tickling sensation retreated.
“Adam?”
He made a strained sound. His fists were doubled over his chest.
“Adam!” She threw herself off of him and scrambled to her feet, cupping her hands under his head.
His mouth was gulping. He rolled, falling off the bed onto the filthy braided rug.
“Adam! Are you alright?”
Nothing.
She asked, “Is it a heart attack?”
What a stupid question! Stupid, stupid, stupid! He didn’t answer, just kept gulping, that awful vein in his neck. Another was now bulging on his forehead.
She laid his head back down and groped for her cell phone. In her cargo pants pocket. She was shaking so hard it took her three tries just to punch in 9-1-1, Send.
“911 operator, what is the nature of your emergency?”
“I think Adam is… my friend Adam Casitas, I mean - he’s having a heart attack.”
“What is your location?”
“The address is… I don’t know. It’s a salvage yard. We’re inside the building. Casitas Salvage on, um, Melpomene and Annunciation.”
“No,” Adam whispered.
He pulled himse
lf up to a sitting position, then reached toward her. She took his hand. His face was beet red and soaked. He drew her closer, a surprisingly tight grip.
The operator said, “What is the number you’re calling me from?”
“Look, he needs help, now! We need an ambulance. He doesn’t look good.”
“Help is on the way. I need you to stay calm and listen to me, OK? I’m going to talk you through this. Is he sitting down?”
“Yes. He’s sitting up in bed.”
“I need you to have him lie down on the floor, OK?”
“OK, hold on.” Rook circled her arm under his shoulders and pulled him. “They want you to lie down on the floor.”
Adam allowed her to move him to the dirty rug on the concrete floor, then folded his hand over her cell phone and took it from her. Rook looked at him in surprise.
The operator’s voice was saying, “Ma’am? Ma’am? Are you there?”
He ended the call.
Rook grabbed his elbows. “What are you doing? We need to get you to a hospital!”
His voice came hoarse and thin. “No ambulance. Police come with the ambulance.”
“You’re about to die!”
“Girl, I’m going to die anyway. Look at me.”
She stared at him, dumbstruck.
He said, “This is the third one for me. I’ve just been sittin around waitin for it.”
“Do you have any aspirin? I think you’re supposed to take aspirin.”
He shook his head. “I got all kind of shit to make you feel good, baby, but aspirin I don’t have.”
Rook reached for her cell phone again. “I’m just going to—”
He held it tight. “No.”
“Look, they said they’re already on their way.”
He was silent for a moment, then: “Shit. Goddamn motherfucker.”
He swallowed off his words and opened his mouth, panting. He looked miserable. “Haven’t had time to move things around. Now the police’ll come and take my shit and all my money.”
“What are you talking about? They can’t just…”
“They’ve been trying to fuck me for months. This’ll give’m an excuse to come in and figure out some probable cause to search the place.”
“Adam, you could die! Do you hear me? You may not survive this! Who cares about—”
“They’re gonna have me die in some fucked hospital if I even make it that far. And they’ll throw you in jail.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “Me?”
Beneath the swamp cooler hum came the wail of sirens.
Oh, God. Daryl. I’ll lose custody.
Rook turned toward the sound. Rising and falling. She reached toward her pile of clothes and began to dress in a stupor. He said nothing, watching her.
And then he said, “Wait.”
Her fingers were numb. She couldn’t find her sandals.
He said, “Are you leaving?”
“Daryl,” was all she managed to say, and tears spilled over onto her cheeks.
“Shit.”
He wrested himself up to sit against the wall, his entire body limp except for his head, Rook’s cell phone still clasped in his hand. The color in his face was draining away.
Under the bed. One of her shoes was there beneath a length of sheets. She got it on her foot.
He said, almost a whisper, “Baby, listen. Take the money. Get it the fuck out of here. Hide it for me, OK?”
“What?”
He nodded toward the second swamp cooler, the one with the slower fan. “Up there.”
Chapter 6
The grate came off with a tug. Behind the spinning blades, a plain old filter rested as though it had been placed there for storage and had never actually participated in any filtering.
Rook cast a glance over her shoulder. He was watching her with a watery gaze. He nodded. The sirens sounded closer.
She turned back and realized why this fan was moving slower than the one on the other swamp cooler. The blades were rigged to a simple motor instead of a more intricate cooling system. She widened her stance on the chair and reached in with a shaky hand, letting the blades whack her a couple of times, then grew bold and forced the fan to a stop. The motor buzzed like a mosquito. Ought to have switched the stupid thing off first, she supposed. She reached in with her other hand and cast the filter aside.
Beyond the fan blades, the motor, and the filter, the structure had been gutted. The parts were probably sitting out there somewhere on Adam’s endless racks. The metal plenum was now empty—no condenser, no coil, no nothing, except…
Lying there instead were two tidy stacks. On the left were mostly clear plastic balloons full of coke. On the right, stacks and stacks of money.
Rook turned toward Adam.
He waved a limp arm at a stained green canvas duffel in the corner. “Fill it. Hurry up, fuck sake.”
She let go of the fan and hopped off the chair to grab the duffel. Her stomach wanted to vomit.
Back up on the chair, this time her brain was firing with enough juice to remember to flip the rocker switch on the fan motor. The blades stopped spinning. She reached in and grabbed one bundle of hundreds after another, tossing each into the green canvas duffel. The banded stacks of money were sitting in dust and her hands felt gritty. No telling how much was there.
Protruding from under the coke balloons was the butt of a pistol. Also, two full bags of pink X tablets. They looked like the same one by the ash tray on the nightstand.
She stumbled off the chair and zipped the duffel shut as she stepped over to Adam. The chair clattered sideways somewhere behind her. Her left leg was still dragging a little. She sank to her knees in front of Adam as though he could magically make the duffel disappear to a safe place or at least perform a blessing, one of the two.
“Get the coke,” he whispered, and tossed her cell phone into the duffel.
“What?” She looked back at the gaping vent. “No way.”
“Get the goddamned coke!”
“No!”
He squeezed his eyes in a grimace.
She said, “What do you want me to do with this money?”
He looked at her. His breathing came in shallow rasps. He reached up and cupped her jaw, and his hand felt limp and damp like a beached jellyfish.
He said, “I die, you just keep it.”
“What about your wife?”
“There ain’t no wife.”
“What?”
“No wife, no kids. Just a story I tell so people would think I keep my money in the floorboards of some fancy old house.”
“All these years you—”
“You were the closest thing to a wife I ever had, baby.”
She stared at him. He was looking at her as though she could lift him out of hell by opening a wormhole in the atmosphere. The sirens were blaring. They sounded so close.
“And what if…” She swallowed. “What if you live?”
His expression changed. The rasping halted and his gaze sharpened. “I live, you wait for me. I’ll find you.”
Something about the way he said it caused her to move back an inch.
Outside, the sirens stopped.
He grabbed her wrists. “You’re just gonna leave me here to die alone aren’t you?”
“What?” She jerked backward, but he held.
His grip was stronger than it should have been. His eyes looked feral and bloodshot and his upper lip held a tremor.
“Adam, let go.”
He said, “Get the coke.”
“Let go of me! They’re coming!”
“They gotta get through the gate first. Get the coke!”
“No!” Tears were stinging the cuts on her face.
He looked around. “Alright, then close up that fucking grate, at least, you think you can manage that?”
She nodded, shaking in his grip. He was shaking, too.
He said, “Throw the bag out the bathroom window. I have an escape set up there. Yo
u’ll see it.”
She kept nodding. “OK. Please…”
He fixed a hard gaze on her. His brows pinched over wide eyes. He yanked her forward and jammed his mouth onto hers in a ferocious kiss. She shoved back at him, then screamed. The sound disappeared into his mouth.
His body concussed in a terrible gasp. The grip loosened. She scrambled backward and did a reverse tumble to rise up on her knees. He looked rigid and trembling. His eyes were fixed.
She looked from Adam to the gaping vent, to the door, and back to Adam again.
“Adam,” she whispered.
Someone shouted and pounded on the door. Adam finally went slack, then lurched.
“Adam!” she screamed.
His white, naked body was jerking like a crustacean, his eyes rolling upward. She darted for him. He fell sideways and smashed his head against the card table that served as a nightstand. The table collapsed. The ashtray clattered to the floor. He was convulsing. His mouth was open and saliva glistened his lips.
A loud thud at the door. They were trying to break it down.
She back-scrabbled and snatched the duffel, making it halfway across the bay on all fours before reeling up and running for the bathroom. Inside, the window slid up but then halted. The opening was only about six inches. She shoved the duffel through it. An enclosure had been built up around the exterior wall with a plastic child’s slide just below the window. Rook could barely see anything. Adam must have added this in recent months in anticipation of the need for a quick escape. Thank God for his paranoia. The duffel slid down into silence. She smacked at the window but couldn’t get it open any further.
Behind her, the front door smashed in.
A male voice: “Mr. Casitas!”
And then another male voice: “He’s over there!”
She tried to hoist herself through the window, but the opening wasn’t wide enough. Her body felt like waterlogged wood. Her heart pounded in her ears. She turned and stepped to the bathroom door and peered out.
The active swamp cooler was still drooling white vapor into the bay. Further down were two police officers. She didn’t see any paramedics. A lean, bald policeman jogged over to Adam and was trying to steady him, while an officer in police-issue shorts and crew socks was speaking into a device strapped to his shoulder. He was staring straight at the gaping swamp cooler. Rook looked back at the window. No use. It wasn’t going to budge another inch. She peered through the crack in the door and saw the crew-socks officer step toward the open vent where the coke and the X and the gun were still stashed.
Apocalypse- Year Zero Page 14