The Walkaway

by Scott Phillips

  The late afternoon sun was obscured in Sally’s living room by heavy, bluish green curtains. There was an inviting La-Z-Boy in the center of the room that must have been the husband’s base of operations, and across from it was a pretty good-sized idiot box. Against the wall was a big blue-green couch covered with green throw pillows, and above it a picture that reminded Gunther of the one in his motel room the night before, though the only similarity between them was their painters’ lack of skill.

  This one was a brightly colored cityscape with a crowd drinking at an outdoor cafe. He stepped onto the couch to get a better look at it, tottering from side to side on the surprisingly firm cushion. In the picture’s righthand corner it was signed “Pablo ’68,” and in the background behind the cafe loomed a huge white onion-shaped dome that made him think of Russia or India. The longer he looked at it the more it called to mind the other picture and his dream, which calmed him.

  He stepped down and pulled a book off the built-in shelf, one of a set of identically bound leather volumes on medicine and nutrition. He wondered for a moment if Sally hadn’t eventually found her calling in health care, but according to the title page it was published and distributed by a manufacturer of nutritional supplements. He flipped through it and stopped to read a page at random; it was a rant against the medical establishment in general and the Food and Drug Administration in particular, and when he closed it he found a bookplate on the inside front cover reading “Presented to Sally Atchison, a new Thousand Unit PurpleStar Dealer.”

  When the cab let Eric out in front of Belinda’s condo she wasn’t home yet, so he sat on the steps of her unit and waited. For half an hour he entertained a fantasy scenario in which hours of complicated foreplay disabused Belinda of the notion that he was an inconsiderate and hasty lover. Checking his watch he realized that this would be impossible if they were to catch Rusty’s race, and after another half hour he was wondering whether they’d even have time for a semiclothed quickie before they headed downtown to pick up his Volvo. By the time her car turned into the lot a few dozen feet away and settled into its space he was frankly annoyed with her, but determined not to spoil the evening by showing it. She got out and stamped across the parking lot toward him with marked displeasure.

  “Have you been here all day?” she said, her expression turning from hostility to disgust. “You’re all sunburned.”

  “I left my keys and my wallet inside. My car’s still locked up over by Ruby’s. I was kind of hoping I could get a ride over there.”

  “I’m not taking you anywhere, Eric. Where are your keys?”

  “I guess they fell out of my pants when I threw ’em.”

  “I’ll go in and look.” She unlocked her front door. Eric stood right behind her, and she turned and snapped at him. “Don’t touch me.”

  She opened the door and slipped in, starting to close the door. “Can I come in?” Eric yelled at her back.

  “No.” The door shut followed by the sound of a bolt turning inside.

  He stood there staring at the closed door, trying to imagine what had happened since the morning to alter her attitude toward him so radically.

  The door opened a crack and Belinda held out his keys and wallet. “Here. Don’t come by again without calling. In fact, don’t call. Last night was a big mistake.”

  “What’s up your ass all of a sudden?”

  “You’re a fucking liar. You’re broke. You’re weeks away from bankruptcy court, and I have standards to maintain.” She shut the door again.

  “Oh, hell, I’m not broke. Who told you that? Gary?” He knew it was, and the lack of response on the other side proved it. “Gary’s pissed off because I was screwing his wife the whole time they were married.”

  “Go away,” she said from inside. He rang the bell and she swung the door open with some violence. “I’m going to call the police if you don’t leave immediately.”

  “I just wanted you to call me a cab. Jesus.”

  “Wait out by the street.” She closed the door again and he walked to the sidewalk, his feelings of humiliation assuaged somewhat by the comforting sight of sweet cash in his wallet.

  The Stars and Stripes was harder to pick out than Sidney had anticipated; he didn’t remember the street number, and half the motels on the strip now had red, white, and blue signs and names like the Old Glory Inn, the Minuteman Motel, and the 1776 Motor Lodge. Despite the heat the streetwalkers were out in force, and as he slowed to look for the Stars and Stripes they moved forward one by one toward the street, trying to catch his eye. One of them, a round-faced, orange-complexioned woman with a loony, gap-toothed grin and a blond afro wig, ran alongside the car knocking on his passenger window. Finally she tried the door handle, and as he sped up to get away from her she started screaming something at him. He couldn’t hear all of it, but it started with “Fuck you, you fuckin’ faggotty asshole,” and she was still standing on the curb screaming after him, arms flailing in wild, extravagant rage and disgust when he looked into the rearview mirror half a block away. When he got to the Stars and Stripes he parked on the street, noting the absence of hookers on the sidewalk directly in front. This was explained by a note on the door, neatly handwritten:

  NO HOURLY RENTALS

  ONLY OVERNIGHT!

  NO EXCEPTIONS, PLEASE DO NOT ASK

  WE WILL CALL THE POLICE!

  The motel’s office was cooled only slightly by an underperforming window unit that buzzed urgently and constantly, a pair of white ribbons dancing frantically in the lukewarm air blowing from its vent. A young man seated at a desk looked up at Sidney’s entry with a tentatively friendly smile. “Yes sir, can I help you?” Sidney had at first taken him for Indian, but his flat monotone was unmistakably local.

  “My name’s Sidney McCallum. Gunther Fahnstiel’s my stepfather.”

  “Oh, the old man. I was afraid you wanted to bring a hooker into one of the rooms. A lot of the johns around here think this is still the Bide-A-Wee.”

  “Not me.”

  “Well, I wasn’t on duty last night. All I know about him is what’s on TV.”

  Sidney watched the ribbons flutter, feeling stupid and wondering what he’d thought he would find in any of these places that would bring the old man home. “Thanks anyway,” he said.

  “Don’t mention it. I hope you find him before he hurts himself.”

  As he stepped onto the sidewalk a tall black woman approached him with a nervous sidelong look at the office of the Stars and Stripes. “Looking for a date, sugar? That’s the wrong motel for you.”

  “No, thanks,” he said, moving around to the driver’s side.

  “Come on. Take a look at these titties.” She flashed him quickly as he got in.

  “I’m not looking for a date, thanks.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m a priest,” he said.

  She snorted. “A priest? In a BMW?”

  “I gotta go, my child. Late for Vespers.”

  “Come back if you change your mind, Padre.”

  He pulled away and made a U-turn, and as he headed back toward downtown he happened to notice a thin woman in a tank top a few doors north of the Stars and Stripes, talking to an elderly john. Her eyes seemed about to pop out of their sockets and dance, and Sidney thought he recognized her as a former employee of one of the clubs, a dimwitted but cheery young woman with a hearty appetite for speed. He hoped he was wrong, but despite a loss of about twenty-five pounds he was pretty sure it was her. He was looking at her and not the john, and didn’t notice when the old man got into his little car and took off after him.

  Half a block later the old man was right on his tail, honking, and Sidney looked back to see Ed Dieterle signaling for him to pull over.

  They went through the intersection and parked in front of a church, a modern, one-story building half a block long, unadorned except for a large sign with a cross and a flame and beneath it a marquee with mismatched red, gray, and black letters:

 
CHRITIANS ARENT PERFECT, JUST FORGIV EM

  “Didn’t you see me waving at you from the street?” Dieterle said, stepping out of a little Japanese car.

  Sidney got out and shook his hand. “Thanks for coming up. You getting anywhere?”

  “Hard to say. You?”

  “Not really. Just putting up flyers is about all I can think of to do.”

  “That’s good, though. Always the chance somebody’ll spot him buying a Coke or waiting for the bus.”

  “You need a place to stay?”

  “I’m at the Highland Seven on East Kellogg. Shitty but cheap.”

  “You can sleep at my house for free if you want.”

  He shook his head. “Thanks, but I live in somebody else’s house, it’s nice sleeping in a motel for a change. Listen, do me a favor. Check in at your mom’s house every hour or two, would you? In case I need you.” He walked back to his car. “See you later.”

  Sidney waved and started to get back into his car.

  “Hey, Sidney. Did you buy them an air conditioner a few years ago?”

  “No.”

  Dieterle seemed pleased, finally. “Thanks.” He got into his car and drove off.

  Loretta picked up carryout at a Chinese restaurant a few blocks west of the office. She would have preferred Italian, but with the Chinese she could get enough for two people and if Eric didn’t show it would still be good the next day.

  Once again his car wasn’t in its place in the garage, and this time she was happy about it. A few small household tasks nagged at her conscience; she ignored them, poured herself a glass of wine, and sat on the back patio for a while to enjoy the relatively temperate early evening.

  In the distance she could hear the buzzing, staticky, wavy sound of the cicada’s mating cry, a sad sound she had always associated with the end of summer. Even now, at the age of forty-two, it made her feel like school was about to start. She didn’t hear them here as often or as loud as she had growing up in Cottonwood, and despite the melancholy that accompanied the sound there was something comforting about it, too.

  She finished the wine and went back in and upstairs to the bedroom, where something seemed slightly amiss: the bed was made but the bedspread was considerably rumpled. Had he actually had the gall to bring one of them here? The idea of it bothered her for reasons more hygienic than sentimental, and she decided to do the sheets just in case.

  In the laundry room she loaded the sheets and bedspread into the washer and set the control to hot, and as she started to leave she saw one of her business cards crumpled on the floor next to a couple of cash register receipts. She tossed them into the wastebasket among the dryer lint and the Cling-Free anti-static sheets.

  Moving boxes filled Sally’s entire garage except for the right-hand parking space, which for the moment stood empty. Against one wall were crates full of canned food apparently dating back to the sixties, along with some five-gallon bottles of water, from which Gunther deduced that if you went and looked in Sally’s old backyard in Cottonwood you’d find a fallout shelter. Just how demented had this husband of hers been, paying to transport all this from one town to another just to store it in a garage, which would be incinerated in an atomic blast just like everything else aboveground?

  By the door was a crate filled with fishing tackle, some of it old and decrepit, some new and expensive looking. It looked as though the old man hadn’t ever fished again after leaving Cottonwood. A large box next to it contained a stuffed moose’s head with a plate on its back-board stating that it had been shot in Saskatchewan, Canada, on October twentieth, 1958, by Donald E. Atchison. Stacks of accordion files held old business records from an auto repair shop in Cottonwood starting before the war and going up to 1983 when the old man had presumably retired. In a carton behind those he found a bunch of old newspapers and clippings. Something about this excited him, although he couldn’t have articulated what it was.

  “Looks like you got yourself a pretty good burn there, partner,” the cabdriver said when Eric sat down. “Don’t take this the wrong way, now, but I’m gonna need to see you’ve got some money on you before we take off, here.”

  “Why would I take that the wrong way?” he said levelly, opening his wallet and producing a fan of twenties.

  “All right, then. Where are we heading?”

  Eric gave him the address of the parking garage downtown and didn’t open his mouth again until they got there. He paid and exited the taxi without speaking, then climbed the stairs to the second floor of the garage and got into the Volvo.

  He headed north to the freeway and opened her up, delighted to be behind the wheel after close to twenty-four hours of walking and riding, averaging ninety or so between there and the dog track. His temples still throbbed and his face hurt every time his facial muscles moved, but with money in his pocket and a set of car keys he was starting to feel his old swagger coming back.

  He parked close to the entrance and strolled toward the admission booth. Inside he picked up the tipsheet and saw that Rusty’s race started in four minutes. He got into the shortest line and bet twenty on Rusty to win at eighteen to one. With the ticket in his shirt pocket he went upstairs to the big circular bar.

  He took a seat as far from the other customers as he could and checked the tipsheet. Rusty looked good, with a high-percentage trainer and a good bloodline, and his times were getting faster. The morning line hadn’t reflected any of this at twenty-five to one, although the odds were improving steadily as post time approached, always a favorable omen. According to the infield monitor Rusty was now going off at seventeen to one, still a nice payday if he hit.

  A uniformed bartender with a ponytail served him his gin and tonic and let him alone. After the first mouthful went down Eric felt good physically for the first time since the day had started heating up, and a moment later when the bell rang and the race started he turned away from the bar to watch it through the clubhouse glass on the big monitor overlooking the infield.

  The dogs shot around the track after the toy rabbit and as they rounded the second turn the crowd began to shout out names and numbers in joy, anger, or disgust, and Eric stood up for a better view. A man in a houndstooth jacket and matching hat four stools to his left was already on his feet, fists clenched, snarling at the monitor mounted in the corner of the ceiling.

  “Eight! Come on, motherfucker! Come on! Eight! Eight!”

  Eight was losing ground to three and five. Five was Rusty, and Eric smiled to himself as the man to his left spat “Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!” again and again. Eight’s early lead was gone and Rusty was in front, neck and neck with number three, Prince o’ Chincoteague. When they crossed the finish line it was unclear who had won, and the clubhouse rumbled with the speculative murmurs of a couple of thousand anxious spectators.

  “It was Rusty,” the man in the houndstooth jacket said.

  “Prince o’ Chincoteague,” the bartender replied, shaking his head.

  The voices started again, and on the scoreboard and monitor the words photo finish flashed. The crowd groaned collectively and then grew silent at the frustrating realization that the results and their accompanying emotional release would be delayed for a few minutes.

  Eric turned back to his drink and his tipsheet, vaguely recalling having bet an exacta—or was it a quiniela?—on Rusty and Prince o’ Chincoteague that afternoon. He tried to remember how much he’d bet, and as he jubilantly calculated his projected winnings a simultaneous wave of cheering and booing drew his eyes to the monitor, where the words “Results Official” blinked on and off. Prince o’ Chincoteague was the winner. He stared dully at the results and ordered another drink. This wasn’t a good start; maybe he’d put down a single bet on the next race and call it quits.

  He looked the field over and saw a long shot that was worth risking five bucks on. He wondered what the exacta had paid; he glanced up at the infield monitor and the message it was flashing:

  HAVE YOU SEEN GUNTHER? $12,000 REWARD FOR IN
FORMATION

  Next to it was a picture of the naked old man from his nightmare.

  Eric sat there for a second, genuinely afraid that he was losing his mind. “He looks a little old to be robbing banks,” he said to the bartender, who looked at him with open disdain.

  “That poor old guy walked away from an old folks’ home yesterday. Hope that never happens to you.”

  The image was gone from the monitor, replaced by the odds for the next race. The old man had really been at his house, God knew why, and had really beaten him and locked him in the closet.

  “You got a phone I can use?”

  “There’s pay phones over by the men’s room. They cut ’em off at post time, so you better hurry up.”

  Eric headed for the phones. He had no idea where the old man had gone after he left, but it couldn’t hurt to put in a claim on the twelve grand. He’d already dropped two dimes into the slot when he saw the taxi company’s ad next to the phone. He called the number and got the same dispatcher he’d talked to that afternoon.

  “This is Eric Gandy again. Where’d that cab take me this afternoon? The first one. I lost the address.”

  “Just a second, Mister Gandy, 518 Control Tower Place.”

  “Thanks a lot,” he said, and he headed out for his car.

  Ed knocked on Dot’s door and found her with Tricia eating dinner. Tricia was eating what looked like a Caesar salad and Dot was well into a second pork chop, and at Tricia’s invitation he poured himself a glass of iced tea and sat down with them.

  “You want something to eat? There’s more salad. That’s the last of the pork chops, though.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Any progress?”

  “Some. Wait until your grandmother’s done eating.”

  At that Dot looked up suspiciously, her mouth full of pork chop and mashed potato. “I’m done,” she said, swallowing. “What’d you find?”

  “Where do you bank?”

  “That’s none of your goddamned business.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Moomaw.” She turned to Ed. “They bank at the Third.”