I dropped to the couch, wondering what Lonnie had in store for me. Would he bring out the tire iron again, or would he just shoot me and be done with it like he had Roger? He sat in the recliner where I had serviced him so many evenings; but instead of putting his hands behind his head, he leaned over to make sure he had my full attention. It wasn’t typical for Lonnie to be so intimately engaged, and I wondered whether he was trying to help me relax or if he wanted to intimidate me. Either way, he had my complete consideration. Meanwhile, Drexel stood in the doorway doing his own private jitterbug.
“M.R., you remember the talk me and you had the other day.”
“Yes,” I said. “Very well.”
“You remember that you was wanting to know what you could do as a favor to me for helping you out around here.”
“That’s not quite the way I remember it,” I said.
Lon sat back and sighed. “Well, whatever,” he said. “I seem to recall there was some discussion about what you could do for me.”
“Yes, you know I only want to make you happy. But this frightens me. I am not sure what you want. Or what it means when you show up to the house—not alone.”
“It means he may have other friends besides you,” chirped Drexel. “Me and Lonnie known each other a long time. Longer than you. I known him before we was together on the inside even.”
Lon held his finger up in warning. “I told you, Drex. Stop running your mouth. Let me talk to M.R. here.”
Drexel leaned against the doorjamb and sulked.
“Anyways,” Lonnie continued, “I was thinking about your offer of what you could do to help me out, and I thought about all what you got here that don’t belong to nobody else but you. And so I thought maybe it was about time you and me became partners.”
To be honest, there was one fleeting moment when I wished that what he meant by partners was that he wanted only to use my store as a place to sell drugs, that I would launder money for him, let him use the van to make deliveries, but even as I considered that, I knew it was not even a remote option. Crash, bam, boom. Would he break my neck, throw me down the cellar steps, blow my head all over the shop window?
“Partners. In the business.”
“Yeah, me and you. You can make the flowers and I can deliver them. And we can split the profits.”
It couldn’t be that simple I knew, so I followed the trail to see where it would lead. As it turned out, the path was a short one with a cliff not too far beyond. “Of course, we would have to have an agreement, so it would be legal and everything.”
“A contract, you mean.”
“Yeah, but just one that we could write out together that would say we were partners. We wouldn’t need to go to no lawyer or anything. Just sign it and date it and it would be an agreement.”
“And what would I be agreeing to?” I asked.
“Like I said, that we would be partners here in the business. In everything. Like the house and everything.”
Crash. Bam. Boom. It became crystalline clear. It wasn’t the business Lonnie was interested in. It was more than just wiping out the bank account. It was also the house. In the same way Drexel had acquired Annabeth’s trailer, Lonnie wanted to acquire the house. I watched Lonnie’s eyes dart back and forth across my face so quickly that it appeared as if they were vibrating. I wondered how it would feel to die.
“So, what do you say, M.R.—you think you could see your way into cutting me in?”
“Lon, this is a conversation we should have in private.”
“I told you I known him even before you did,” Drexel declared.
I looked at Lonnie as hard as I could. “Is he a part of this?” I asked.
“I’m here, ain’t I?” Drexel held his arms wide as if I might not have noticed him before.
“I told you to keep quiet!” Lonnie shouted. “I am handling this.”
“Lonnie, you will not get away with this. Do you think I don’t know what you will do if I open my bank account to you, sign my business, my house over to you?” I turned my attention to Drexel. “I’m not like Annabeth Owensby. People in town know who I am. They would be suspicious.”
Drexel sneered. “They wasn’t so interested in your friend when he bit it. And he was a lot more popular than you are.”
“And then what?” I asked.
“Surely you two don’t plan to set up house here and run the store?”
Drexel let out a belly laugh. “Can’t you see it, Lon? You can pick the flowers and I will put ’em in the jars.”
“They’re called vases,” I said. I wanted to add you moron, but knew the thread was extraordinarily thin, and I was dangling with no safety net. They hadn’t just come in and killed me. They could have done that, but they knew they needed my signature on a document that gave Lonnie ownership of my life.
“Whatever,” said Drexel. “I told you we’re getting shed of this place.”
“So, what do you say?” asked Lonnie.
“No, Lonnie. I say no. No. No. No.” I could hear my voice pitching up and I knew he could hear the panic and fear.
“You know I can make you do what I want,” he said.
“Are you saying you can hurt me?” I pointed at my bandaged foot. “We both know that is true. And I also know that no matter what I do you’re going to hurt me, so might as well get it over. Besides, how would you explain bruises and more broken bones when the police ask you to explain my signature? I have lived here all my life. I wouldn’t just disappear. You will need a body, and it better look natural because the spotlight will turn on you both. There is some money, probably not as much in the account as you think.”
“Nearly forty thousand last time I looked,” he said.
He had been looking at my bank receipts. What else did he know? I took a gulp and kept talking. “That would only get you so far. It will take time to sell all of this. You can’t think there won’t be questions.”
Lonnie and Drexel exchanged a look. I wasn’t sure what it meant. Was I making sense to them? Lonnie stood, motioned Drexel toward the kitchen. “M.R., you sit for a moment. I need to talk to Drex. And don’t try nothing stupid like trying to run away. You know we’ll just catch you.”
“Why are you doing this?” My voice trembled and I struggled not to break down.
“It’s bidness,” he said. “Bidness. And I plan to get what’s coming to me.”
I could hear them talking in hushed voices from the kitchen. I was happy to think that I had thrown a wrench into their plans, bought myself some time. If I had known what was to come, I would have asked them where to sign. Offered to have the document notarized for them. But I didn’t know what was to come. I only knew I was scared and didn’t want to die. Winter shadows were beginning to fall across the room, and I wondered what would happen if I managed to escape and hop down the street on my good leg screaming bloody murder. Would they arrest Lonnie and Drexel Smith? Would they both come back one night and finish what they had begun? Besides, Lonnie was right. It was a long way to the front door, which was locked and bolted. I would never make it outside before Lonnie grabbed me.
In a few minutes, Lonnie and Drexel returned to the den. “We’re gonna take us a ride, M.R.,” said Lonnie. “You got to know I am serious here.”
“I’m not doubting that,” I said. “But I am just as serious.”
Drexel plopped down on the couch, obviously preparing to stay while we ‘went for a ride,’ but Lonnie would have none of it. “Have some sense, Drex. You can’t be here. Whatcha gonna do? Sit here in the dark? What if somebody sees you here? Besides, you got some cooking to do. I’m going to drop you off at your place. M.R. and me will get this figured out on our own.”
Drexel pouted, but complied. And with that, we piled into Laverne’s Cadillac like three good mates off for an evening out and drove away. I didn’t bother to lock the door behind me.
6
Before we left Drexel at the camper, he and Lonnie packed a pipe and smoked some drugs—
an awful-smelling concoction like burned plastic that had been soaked in cat piss. Drexel made sure Lonnie had some extra for the road, and we took off together. So many times I had imagined Lonnie and I traveling, perhaps to Charleston or Savannah for a weekend of sightseeing. Instead, when we hit the interstate, we turned northwest toward Florence and Columbia. After about an hour, Lonnie pulled off at a truck stop, smoked some more from his pipe, and then roamed around to some of the parked rigs, peddling drugs to the truckers. While he went from truck to truck, I watched the usual assortment of men—young, old, married, ugly—as they entered and departed the Gentlemen’s Agreement Adult Bookstore and Video Lounge next door. In the past, I would have been excited to be in such a place, wondering at the prospects and opportunities inside. Now, it only depressed me and seemed a pathetic waste of time to see the stream of traffic in and out its doors. It didn’t take Lonnie long to earn what he needed, and after another short drive down one of the back roads flanking the freeway, he deposited me at the Peach Bottom Motel, which promised free cable TV for only $39 a night. I say deposited me because once we were in the room, Lonnie tied me to a chair and taped my mouth. He knew I would run if given the chance, and he was right. My mind was working frantically trying to find a way out.
Before he left, he gave me another chance to give him access to the bank accounts, to sign the business over to him. “This is gonna happen, M.R. You gotta believe me when I tell you that. Now, if you sign the paper, maybe you and I can make us a deal that Drex doesn’t have to be a part of.” I merely shook my head. “Have it your way, then,” he said, turning the TV on. He turned the volume up loud enough to cover up any attempts I might make to call for help, but not so loud that the manager would come knocking to tell me to turn it down. “Don’t want trouble,” he said. And with that, he disappeared through the doorway, bolting the lock as he went.
He wasn’t gone long, maybe half an hour or so, when I heard the key in the door and some laughing just outside. When the door flung open, Lonnie was carrying a twelve-pack of beer and literally fell into the room—the only thing that kept him from hitting the floor was the fact that a youngish man, a boy really, was holding the back of Lonnie’s belt in his right hand. Under his left arm, he clutched a bucket of chicken.
They were drunk as sailors, and the young man laughed as Lonnie broke free from his grasp and landed on the bed. “Damn, man, you almost made me spill this durn chicken all over the floor.”
“You drop it and I’ll kick your ass,” said Lonnie. He smiled large as he rolled over on the bed and pulled a beer from the box. I had seen this look before. “Now, lock the door and drop your pants.”
The boy, tall and gangly with a shock of reddish brown hair, turned to put the food on the table, his free hand already undoing his belt. He stopped abruptly when he noticed me.
“What the fuck, man? You didn’t say nothing about somebody else.”
“Don’t mind him,” said Lonnie. “He’s just here to watch.”
“I don’t know. What’s the matter with him? Why’s he all tied up like that?”
“Ain’t nothing the matter with him. He likes that.”
The boy studied me up and down and broke into a shaggy grin. “I saw that in a magazine. But I never seen it in real life. What’s he do?”
“He does what I tell him to do,” said Lonnie. “He’ll suck you if I tell him to. You want him to suck you while you suck me?”
“I don’t know,” said the boy. “He’s kind of old—I thought it was just gonna be you and me.”
“Yeah, well, he’s gonna be here, and he’s gonna watch everything we do, so if you want him to suck you off, tell me and I will untie his mouth. He sucks good.”
“What’s his name?” the boy asked.
“What the fuck do you care what his name is,” said Lonnie, lying back on the bed. He had his pants off and the bulge of his dick pressed up through his boxers. “His name is ‘Mister’ to you. So when you get done socializing, come over here and get down to bidness.”
“Howdy, Mister Mister,” said the boy, saluting me. “My name is Sammy. Sammy Hutchens. Proud to meet you.”
Sammy stripped down naked except for his socks, and he and Lonnie smoked more from Lonnie’s pipe. Then, for what seemed like an eternity, he and Lonnie fucked on the bed not three feet from me. It was as if I had been brought there to record the deed, and if ever I attempted to look away, Lonnie would kick a foot in my direction or curse at me until he had my attention. The drugs gave Lonnie an animal zeal, and he fucked Sammy Hutchens hard and long. Where I had only been permitted to touch Lonnie below the waist, these two wrestled in front of me with abandon, their hands exploring, clutching, stroking, their mouths and tongues licking, sucking, devouring. For all this time I had only wanted Lonnie to notice me, but now I tried to will myself invisible. Let me just evaporate into mist, I prayed. Just let me disappear.
When they were done, Sammy asked if he could take a shower. Lonnie shrugged his approval, and Sammy scurried into the bathroom, light and steam pouring out from the open door. Lonnie lit a cigarette and opened a beer and came over to me, untying the gag from my mouth.
“Why do you do this to me?” I asked. “Is this what you want . . . to show me how little I mean to you?”
Lonnie flexed and stretched, running a hand through that jet-black hair of his. The hair on his chest was damp with sweat, his cock still plump from sex. Even then, I wanted him, would have forgiven him all the injustice if he had untied me, and said, “Yes, that is what I wanted.”
But as Sammy emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his boyish hips, I could see that Lonnie was not done with either of us. And as Sammy stepped around me, he opened the bucket of chicken, and said, “Hey, little mister. We got extra crispy. It’s my favorite. Lon bought it special just for me.”
And then the moment. Lonnie’s massive hands gripped Sammy’s head in that relentless grasp. At first Sammy thought it was more sex play and laughed. Lonnie commanded me to not look away. “You need to appreciate this,” he growled. I could then see the confusion that turned to fear and then to hatred and finally to understanding as Lonnie held Sammy’s head in his hands, lifting it up and away from Sammy’s shoulders, twisting it around back and forth, front to back, so the bones in Sammy’s neck began to creak and the gurgle in Sammy’s throat became a sad, high-pitched whine. Until the bones unable to stand the strain began to splinter and the only sound was a low, guttural sigh that was Sammy’s final breath. “Now you know,” Lonnie said. “Now you know and you’ll believe what I tell you.”
Sammy shit all over the floor as he died, and Lonnie dropped him in a heap so that he lay stretched out in front of the door like a barricade, his broken neck tilting his head so that it crooked up against the door. Lonnie took the chicken off the table and sat back on the bed. “This is your fault,” he said. “None of this had to happen except you wouldn’t do like I asked. Now, can you and me come to an understanding, or do I need to fetch me another youngin’ in here? I can stack ’em up like firewood, M.R. It don’t mean nothing to me.”
“Take me home,” I said. “And I will give you whatever you want.”
“I’m too fucked up to drive now,” he said. “I think I’m gonna crash for a spell. We can set out in the morning.” Then he walked over to me, untied me, and said, “I expect you may need to use the toilet. Then we can get some rest and head back to Morris early in the morning. We got a busy day in front of us.” With that, he turned on the TV and started flicking channels on the free cable TV until he found what he wanted to watch. I stood up slowly, moving ever so gingerly around the dead body that had been Sammy Hutchens to the bathroom. There was no window, and the air was still thick with moisture from Sammy’s shower. I splashed water on my face, relieved my bladder, and came back into the bedroom. I sat on the other bed, waiting for Lonnie to go to sleep, but knowing there was no way I could touch Sammy to move him out of the way in order to leave. I was trapped here. L
onnie knew that. There was a phone, but whom could I call for help? Who was to say that I wasn’t a part of this whole thing, had helped Lonnie to lure this boy to the motel for a sex game gone bad? So I sat and I waited until it was morning and time for us to leave.
There are churches in Europe—ossuaries, they are called—where the bones of the dead are stacked in decorative arrangements around the sides of the church. A pile of skulls used to make a cross. Femurs, fibulas, humeri, and ulnas mounded into pale, moon-colored mosaics so the joints resemble a peacock, a shell, a martyr’s rose. In the San Bernardino alle Ossa, the decapitated skulls of the damned sit in a silent row at the rear to oversee all that passes in front of them: the endless eternal parade of baptisms, communions, weddings, funerals. Perhaps that is what hell is: the knowledge that life is there in front of you, but you are unable to participate. In the silence of the motel room, I saw myself as a severed skull, watching the parade of life that had passed through my shop, unable to touch it, to feel its texture. That is why Lonnie had chosen me. He and Drexel knew that I lived only on the fringe of life, and that when they wiped me away, it would be as insignificant as a speck of sand washed from the shore. A house cannot blame the tornado for the wind that blows it down. A tree cannot blame the fire that consumes it. A rabbit cannot blame the wolf. Lonnie was right. This had been my fault. If I had not refused him, then Sammy would still be alive. I also knew that he had a taste for killing. That whatever bond existed between him and Drexel would lead to this scene or one like it: a dead boy in a corner, an innocent man’s head blown off, a lonely waitress dumped in a field. I also knew that it had to end—with me.
Lovesick Page 31