Hornbeck felt far more effective in one-on-one situations. People, when he had to confront them, didn’t feel threatened by him despite his size. He had a sincere, friendly manner, and a shy, boyish smile that encouraged trust. If he had to take a car or a stereo, the delinquent owner was usually willing to listen to Hornbeck’s reasonable arguments. And he, in turn, was willing to hear their hard-luck stories. Often the delinquent owner would invite Hornbeck into his or her house for a beer or coffee. On more than one occasion, Hornbeck was so moved by their hard-luck stories that he volunteered to make the back payments on the merchandise himself, provided the payments were small. He saved the TV set of a stroke-paralyzed widower once by paying eighteen dollars on the man’s contract with the appliance store. He became deeply sympathetic to deserted women with children to support.
Bonnie DeLuca had missed four payments on her washer and dryer. She’d met him at her door in a bathrobe. “Don’t tell me,” she had said. “Pay the hundred-sixty now or it’s bye-bye Maytag, right?” She began to cry. She opened the door wide and he went in.
“I’m really sorry, ma’am,” he said, pushing his hand through his hair, unable to hide his discomfort. He found the utility room and looked at the washer-dryer set. He checked the width of the machines with his tape measure, then checked the width of the utility-room door. When he went back into the living room, Bonnie DeLuca was sitting on the couch staring into her cup of coffee. A small child pestered her knees.
“I wish I could just do what I’m thinking,” she said into the cup, “but, God help me, I’m not that type of woman.”
Hornbeck pretended he didn’t hear this and went out to his pickup and skidded the hand truck off the bed. He rolled it around to the back of the house and pulled it into the utility room. Bonnie DeLuca was there, her robe partially opened. “Goddammit,” she said. “I need my machines.”
“I feel rotten about this, ma’am,” Hornbeck said. He knelt to detach the hoses from the washer.
“Feel rottener,” Bonnie said, kneeling beside him. She was small and vulnerable next to the sweating bulk of his long torso.
He was surprised at how easy it was to let this happen. It was a first for him. Six years of faithfulness ended, easy as hanging up the phone.
Bonnie had said, “What do you think of me? I mean, what do you really think of me?” They were in her bed. The weak springs of the bed had made distracting hee-haw sounds, like the braying of a donkey. In another room the child had imitated those sounds in a dreamy singsong, and was now whining for its mother.
“What do I think of you,” he said, scratching his chin. “I think you’re a warm-blooded earth woman. Unlike your Vulcan counterpart.”
After they made love again, Hornbeck said, “And what do you think of me?”
“To be honest, I think you’re real nice but kind of geeky,” Bonnie DeLuca said.
That had been three months ago. Since then, Bonnie had not made any payments on her washer-dryer combination. The payments had been made by Hornbeck. “What are all these savings withdrawals?” Roberta asked him one morning at breakfast.
“What withdrawals?” Hornbeck said, studying the newspaper.
She tossed the bankbook onto the table. “Forty dollars, May ninth. Fifty dollars, June tenth.”
“Oh that. It’s a surprise, honey.”
“We can’t afford any surprises. I need a replacement crown on my molar, Lance needs school clothes.”
“No problem,” Hornbeck said.
“There’s something else. I want to put Lance into Rage Reduction before he starts kindergarten.”
Hombeck’s newspaper sagged gradually to the table. “I’m sorry? You want to put Lance into rage what’?”
“Reduction. I’m very serious about this. His violence has got to be understood and dealt with.”
“All healthy five-year-olds have some violence, honey. It’s very normal. We begin in the jungle. They tame us, little by little. Look at me.” He twisted a pair of paper napkins into cylinders and stuffed one into each nostril. He stuck out his tongue and rolled his eyes. He stood up in a half-crouch so that his knuckles dragged on the floor. He made urgent primitive noises in his throat. “Me, ten years ago,” he said.
“Cut it out. I’m trying to be serious. He’s destroyed most of his toys. He thinks hideous creatures live inside them. He hurts his playmates.”
“Good Klingon warriors, from a very early age—”
“Stop it! You turn everything you can’t face into a comic book!”
Hornbeck smiled, He thought he had an answer to this. Her mistake seemed clear to him. What, for instance, could he not face? He started to speak, then stopped. He ran his hands through his hair and shook his head, somewhat dismayed at his inability to state the obvious. “I’m a good person,” he finally said.
“So is Jerry Lewis,” Roberta said.
Sometimes he didn’t mind taking things away from people. The Invernesses had bought a two-year-old Cadillac for nothing down and payments of over four hundred dollars a month. They were a couple in their sixties, living on pensions in Van Nuys. They weren’t poor, they had a savings account, but it was convenient for them to skip payments from time to time. They had missed three in a row now, and the credit union that had granted the loan engaged the services of the Bolton Agency.
“I’ve always wanted a Caddy,” Mr. Inverness said.
“Everyone wants a Caddy,” Hombeck said.
“Do you have to take it?” Mrs. Inverness said. They were in the Invernesses’ living room. Mrs. Inverness had made tea, but Hornbeck wasn’t drinking his.
“You’ve missed three payments, ma’am. The fourth is due next Friday. If you can come up with seventeen hundred and eighty-four dollars, then, no, I don’t have to take it. That figure includes the late-payment penalties.”
“It’s our only transportation,” Mr. Inverness said bitterly.
Hombeck looked at his watch. “I’ll need the keys,” he said.
Mr. Inverness patted his pockets. “Don’t have them,” he said. “You have them, Polly?”
Mrs. Inverness shook her head. They both stared at Hornbeck. Behind their bifocals, their pale eyes were big with tentative challenge.
Hornbeck looked around the medium-to-high-rent apartment. Quality furnishings. Behind the leaded-glass cabinet doors of an antique sideboard, stacks of Wedgwood dinnerware gleamed. Mr. Inverness was wearing expensive burgundy wing-tips and Mrs. Inverness’s dress did not come from a K-mart rack. They were plump, florid people who were not worried about their next meal.
“I can make my regular payment,” Mr. Inverness said, “but not a cent more. We are not wealthy.”
“That’s not acceptable,” Hornbeck said.
“Listen to me, you. I’m sixty-seven years old, I’ve put two snot-nose ingrates through college. I’ve worked hard all my life. I’ve had a little setback, but I deserve the car.”
“Do I look like Father Christmas?” Hornbeck said.
“Don’t take that tone with me, young man,” Mr. Inverness said, rising.
“Now, Kenneth,” his wife said. “Remember what Doctor said about temper and blood pressure.” She turned bitterly toward Hornbeck. “You’re killing him,” she hissed. “Can’t you see that?”
Mr. Inverness leaned toward Hornbeck, his jaw stiff with menace.
“Just give me the keys, Mr. Inverness,” Hornbeck said, glancing at his watch again. “I’ve got other appointments this afternoon.”
“More innocent people to crucify,” Mr. Inverness sneered.
Hornbeck held his hand out for the keys. Mr. Inverness sprayed saliva into it.
“You’ve just made my job a whole bunch easier, Mr. Inverness,” Hornbeck said.
Hornbeck went into the kitchen and looked on top of the refrigerator and then scanned the countertops. The table was empty. He entered the bedroom and went through the clutter on the dressers and night tables. Then he emptied the night-table drawers onto the neatly made
bed. A collection of antique dolls were arranged on a shelf under the window. The tiny red lips of the dolls were puckered, and their seductive, oversize eyes regarded Hornbeck coyly. While Hornbeck was looking at the dolls, Inverness came in and grabbed his arms from behind, but Hornbeck threw him off easily.
“I’m calling the police!” Mrs. Inverness said.
“Do that, ma’am,” Hornbeck said. “Tell them that you and your husband are trying to steal a car from people who trusted you to pay for it.”
Hornbeck found the keys in the closet, hanging on a hook that had been screwed into the doorframe. Mr. Inverness lurched at Hornbeck, trying to grab the keys, but Hornbeck stiff-armed him in the breastbone, knocking him away. Mr. Inverness sat down, his shocked mouth wide open, unable to draw in air.
Hornbeck skipped lightly down the stairwell and into the parking garage, whistling. He found the Cadillac, a pearl-gray Coupe de Ville. He gave the thumbs-up to Cosmo Minor, who was reading the newspaper behind the wheel of the Agency’s flatbed truck. Cosmo looked at his watch, then scowled at Hornbeck. Hornbeck grinned and waved Cosmo off. They wouldn’t be needing the flatbed after all. Then he climbed into the Caddy and drove it away, hard plumes of blue smoke geysering from the tires.
He drove the car to Bonnie DeLuca’s house and took her for a ride. They stopped at a bar for drinks, then drove off to a secluded area in the Santa Monica Mountains.
“Upper Crustville,” Bonnie said.
“Don’t count on it,” Hornbeck said. “I hauled a boat out of here a few months ago with my own tmck. Damn near burned up the transmission.”
Hornbeck kissed Bonnie roughly and shoved his hands under her dress.
“Hey, Bonzo,” she said. “Aren’t we a little out in the open here?” She turned her face away from him to look at the wide houses and expensive landscaping.
“The windows are smoked. Besides, I feel kind of pumped up. I took this baby from bloodsucking life-forms hatched in the outer limits, Bonnie. Earthlings one, Evil Empire zero.”
“You’re a geeky kind of guy, you know that, Hombeck?”
“But I’ve got a good heart,” he said, pressing her down into the tangerine velour.
The house was dark and no one was home. Something was wrong, but it was past eight and Hornbeck was too hungry and tired to deal with it. It had been a long day, and he reeked. He’d taken back three cars, a living-room settee, an expensive stereo system, and, of all things, a satellite dish. The man who had the dish was crazy. He hadn’t been using it to receive television broadcasts, but as a device to contact aliens. He had rigged a short-wave transceiver to the dish and was transmitting his voice into space. “I am on the brink of a monumental discovery!” the man had said. When Hornbeck started unbolting the dish from its mounts, the man became frantic. He ran around his backyard making odd ges-tures and babbling in a language he had made up. Hornbeck felt uneasy as he unbolted the dish. He had to kneel down and duck under the supporting struts to do the job, and the man could have clobbered him from behind with a rock or garden tool. Hornbeck knew the man was capable of doing something like that. One look at the man’s face and it was clear he was crazy enough to do the next thing that occurred to him. When Hornbeck got the dish into the back of his truck, the man began howling in despair. “My research is mined! I hope you and the slime that sent you realize that!”
“Sorry, Professor,” Hornbeck had said. “E-Z Pay Appliances can’t afford to support research projects.”
“I was about to solve their codes, you Neanderthal!” the man had yelled as Hornbeck started his truck. “I could have moved humanity forward by a thousand years!”
“A thousand won’t be enough, buddy. But I’ll tell Mr. Sulu when I see him. He’s good at cracking codes.”
Hornbeck groped his way into the kitchen and turned on the light. There was a note taped to the refrigerator: “It’s pointless to think anything’s going to improve. We don’t make sense to each other any longer. Dr. Korda pretty much summed it up: ‘The boy’s father encourages a direct-line approach between desire and object. This is an extremely unproductive trend, and will most certainly cause the boy untold difficulty once he enters public school.’ I guess Untold Difficulty is the name of the game, but I want to try one more time to beat the system. I hope you understand. You’ll be hearing from Stensrud, Stensrud, and Levitz. (Legal firm.) Roberta.”
Hornbeck read the note again, then opened the refrigerator. He took out the makings for a pressed ham and cheese sandwich, and two bottles of beer. He took his sandwich and beer out to the living room and then noticed for the first time that most of the furniture was gone. He went through the rest of the house. It had been stripped also. He went into the bedroom and felt the top shelf of the closet. The tapes of his Star Trek episodes were still there. He took a large bite of his sandwich and washed it down with beer. “Looks like she’s gone back to Vulcan, Mr. Spock,” he said.
“You want to go up to West Covina with me tomorrow, Hombeck?” Cosmo Minor said.
“I guess so,” Hormbeck said. “I mean no. Unless you really need me.”
They were in Minor’s small apartment watching one of Hornbeck’s Star Trek tapes and drinking Canadian Club highballs. Cosmo Minor’s wife, Trude, was making supper.
“This yo-yo’s wanting to make payments on three computers,” Cosmo said, “but he’s too busy playing tug-o’-war with his dick to come up with it.”
“Dumb shit.”
“Hey, ain’t they all.”
Hornbeck felt agitated. “You’re sure it’s okay with Trude if I stick around for dinner?” he said.
Cosmo leaned back in his chair and called over his shoulder to Trude. “Hey, peaches. It’s okay with you if Hornbeck stays for supper, ain’t it?”
A sound came from the kitchen that could have been a confirmation.
“See? What’d I say, Hombeck?”
Captain Kirk had walked through a time portal and found himself in Renaissance England. The portal sealed itself instantly, leaving Kirk stranded outside a pub in a dark street. He spoke into his communicator, but the airwaves of the sixteenth century were dead. “Now what?” a bemused Kirk murmured to himself as a scornful swordsman belittled his futuristic clothes.
“Sometimes I feel like that,” Hornbeck said, gesturing toward the TV set with his tumbler.
“Like what?”
“Like Kirk there. Like I was dropped into the middle of nowhere. I mean, in the middle of somewhere strange. I feel like I just materialized in L.A. thirty-nine—Jesus, thirty-nine!—years ago.”
“Thirty-nine ain’t old, man,” Cosmo said, fixing himself another drink.
“I don’t mean that. I mean, like I never had a basic say-so in all this shit. I mean, here I am. You know? But it’s not my fault.”
“Hey, man. Do I look like the fucking Prince of Wales?”
“What?”
“The fucking Prince of Wales don’t need to figure out where he is or why they do him like they do. He just is. That’s all he needs to know about it. The rest of us are accidentals.”
Hornbeck took a pull directly from the bottle. “No one’s going to tell me I don’t belong, Cosmo. No one’s going to tell me I’m a fucking accidental scab on the fucking accidental ass of society.”
“Ay-fucking-men, pardner,” Cosmo said. “But how come it’s you feeling like that? No one’s saying shit to you. You look like Merlin Olsen. You look like you fucking own the company, ace. You look like you got the world buttfucked and the world asking you to stay on.”
Hornbeck allowed himself a small sob, but once that passed his lips, the dam behind it shook loose.
“Holy cow, Hombeck,” Cosmo said. “You want some coffee?”
An emotion he could not master stretched Hornbeck’s face into acute angles. He rolled to the floor and brought his knees up to his chest. His chest hurt, as if it held a taloned creature. Stunned with shame, and afraid Trude might come in and see him like this, he hid his face in his arm
s and continued to sob quietly.
“Looky there, Hornbeck,” Cosmo said gently. “Captain Kirk kicking serious ass in jolly old England.”
Bonnie DeLuca’s husband came home. Hornbeck found this out when he called her and Norman DeLuca answered the phone. “Who is this?” Hornbeck had said.
“Who the fuck wants to know?” DeLuca had replied, his diction elaborate with menace. Hornbeck hung up.
He drove by the DeLuca house once and spotted her in the backyard cutting back a rose bush. She was wearing shorts and a halter. The pink curves of her body made him ache. A wretched moan broke from his throat. Hornbeck parked the truck and walked up the driveway to the back fence. He opened the gate and entered the yard.
When she saw him, she dropped her clippers. “You can’t come around here anymore,” she whispered savagely.
“I thought I’d say hello.”
“Say good-bye instead. My husband’s home. He’s in the house right now, taking his bath.”
“This is a business trip,” Hornbeck said.
“What are you talking about?
“I’ve decided to take the Maytags.”
“You what? You can’t take them. I’m up to date on the payments!”
Hornbeck got the hand truck and pulled it into the utility room through the back door. He unhooked the hoses from the washer and unplugged the dryer.
“You’re crazy, you know that?” Bonnie said, watching him in disbelief.
Hombeck wheeled the appliances out and loaded them into the back of his pickup. He tied down the hand truck, but not the appliances. Norman DeLuca came out wearing a red bathrobe embroidered with fire-breathing Chinese dragons. The robe had billowing, half-length sleeves. Beads of water glistened on the dense black hair of DeLuca’s forearms. “I’m calling the cops, asshole,” he said. Hornbeck got into the truck and started it. He looked back at Bonnie. She was standing at the edge of her lawn, her grimly folded arms pressing her breasts flat.
Borrowed Hearts Page 27