For just a moment he thought high school? It sent him right back over the toilet, another surge, this time hotter and more sour than the last. He had no problem with young girls. He had big problems with young American girls.
The noise was unbearable, goddamned rap, especially that loud through a smartphone speaker. He fell back against the wall and vacuumed air through his mouth. He reached overhead for a hand towel and yanked it down, blew his nose and wiped off his tongue. Flipped it over and hocked up what was left in his throat. He sat there cringing—even his fucking teeth hurt, had to check them with his fingers to make sure they were all still there. Again, what had happened?
It came back slowly. He had hit the strip club where all the girls from out of town hung out hoping to either get noticed for the stage or get paid sucking cock. They gave the old man rolling eyes and cold shoulders. They were angry. Not at Pancrazio, but at just, like, life, and he hadn’t gotten anywhere. Five drinks, six, ten. Maybe it was him, too. Maybe because he kept looking over his shoulder, scanning the room. Maybe because he was wondering if there were any of his sales people working the floor. He let the Russells hire them, giving himself a cushion—the pushers didn’t know who they were really working for, and he didn’t know them. But anyway, the women here, they didn’t want him. The new dance music, all that bass, it wasn’t helping. Everyone had a dead stare going on, but not from war. It was the dead stare of privilege.
So the more drinks he drank and the later it got, the younger the girls got, and he knew they were laughing at him, right? The ’stache and the Jersey accent, the way he called them “ladies.” A gentleman. A hard man. Sure they were laughing, but they were getting touchy-feely and they didn’t do that sort of thing lightly, did they? The boys around him had gotten younger, too, and they were so direct these days, coming right up to the girls, grinding, handing them shots. Pure animal lust. He felt like bug repellent. Where had the people his own age gone? Why hadn’t they asked him to come along? The music changed—that...that...goddamned rap, Jesus, why did these kids...? Didn’t they know that nigger shit was...? When did Pancrazio turn into his old man?
The smells changed—the perfume fog of the older women had lifted, as had the cologne musk of the men, replaced by the guys with their body sprays, a chemical smell like the burning shit they sprayed in protesters’ eyes. The girls, oh fuck, the girls, these young ones didn’t bother with perfume. Their soaps did the work for them. They smelled...clean. Their sweat was working on him. He could smell their pussies, yes, each one a little different, but pussy none the less, and it was pretty fucking intoxicating, yes it was.
The girls, sparkly and raccoon-eyed, lots of skin exposed, lots of flip-flops showing off fancy painted toes and toe-rings and ankle tattoos, they were getting closer to him, and then some spun off and started dancing, or got pulled away by roughnecks with steroid arms, shaved heads, pierced ears, and then there were only a few left, and she had to have been one of them. Not dressed up for a night out. Not thick with make-up. Just a cute young college girl getting drunk and waiting for the inevitable.
Pancrazio was the inevitable.
He grabbed the rim of the toilet to push himself up. His grip slipped on the slime. He stood and shook it off and washed his hands, leaned his face into the stream of water, swished out the rest of the dead rat taste. Then he peeked out of the doorway towards the kitchenette.
Stark naked. Dancing in place at the two-burner stovetop frying bacon, mixing up eggs in a bowl. Jesus.
“Who said you could cook?”
“I’m hungry. Aren’t you hungry? I mean, you were going to eat it anyway.”
“Not all at once.” He spread his hands at the mess. The whole package of bacon, all dozen eggs. “That was for a whole week.”
She shrugged, kept on dancing, stirring, fucking with him. “Then go out and buy more. You’re a driller. Don’t tell me you can’t afford to give a girl some breakfast.”
Pancrazio started to remember what it was like when they’d gotten back to the trailer, both ripped, but him more so. Pretty sure she was the one that drove. Might have been her car. He stepped around her, got up close to the window and looked out. He didn’t see his own ride, but there was a lime-green Fiesta right outside his trailer. Jesus.
“Put some clothes on. You’re going to get burned.”
She turned so he could take her all in. “You see any burns? You see anything at all you don’t like? Shit, man, enjoy it while you can, right?”
Why was she so happy? Why was she like a frat boy’s wet dream, dancing around naked, fresh as a new bar of soap? He’d watched her keep up with him, drink for drink, hard stuff for hard stuff. He’d watched her smoke weed with him in a bathroom stall after last call. So how was she still...upright? The young people, they got started earlier and earlier. They didn’t have a dad who got pissed that his twelve-year-old boy stole half his vodka and then threw it right back up all over the living room carpet. They didn’t have to sneak around, even if it was just for a can of warm beer. These kids probably drank with their dads. Probably eighty proof from their momma’s tits, too.
Not the Muslim girls, though. Teetotalers, most of them, except of course that teenagers will be teenagers everywhere, will always try it if offered. That’s how he ended up fucking most of them. They didn’t like it. But nobody really likes their first time. And the Muslim girls were too drunk to stop him, too scared to scream. But when they did...
That’s what was missing, what was getting his hackles up this morning. This little bitch? She had no fear. No fear at all. No one iota.
And that meant he hadn’t fucked her after all. He hadn’t been able to get it up. He was stone cold dead to the world while she...?
He shook his head. “Maybe...” He waited for words. He shrugged. She went back to rapping about toking or poking or peeking up skirts or some shit, whatever. Sizzle, sizzle. Bacon grease popped and she sprang back onto her toes with a little squeal.
Pancrazio retreated into his bedroom and slipped into yesterday’s work pants. Felt around the pockets. His wallet was gone. He searched the floor, found it over in the corner. That was fine, there wasn’t much in it. He picked it up and checked real fast—expired insurance card, receipts, a smudged list of old phone numbers that were all disconnected. The bank card was gone, as was his credit card.
Now, the cash from his pants pockets, a few hundred, gone. Only some pennies and dimes left.
He crouched down by the girl’s clothes. Impossibly tiny. How’d she stretch into these? He tossed her shirt aside and groped her shorts. And there they were. Folded bills and a couple of hard rectangles. He sighed, dropped the shorts and stood.
He shouted, “You could’ve just asked.”
She shouted back, “I can’t hear you!”
He finally remembered her name. It was Stevie, like Nicks. Her mom liked Stevie Nicks.
“Stevie,” he said, walking slowly out of the room to the narrow kitchenette, the bacon shrinking fast, almost black, and the whole trailer was filled with blue smoke. “Stevie!”
She looked at him wide-eyed, but with a bitchy-girl smirk he wanted to wipe off her mouth.
“My credit card?”
She shook her head. “You gave it to me.”
“No, I didn’t. I didn’t even remember it was in there.”
“Well, you did.”
Was this going to be a thing? Was this how people fought these days? Believe your own lie hard enough and it became true. He had to admire it. He wouldn’t be here without having done it himself.
“You took my credit card. You took my bank card. You took my cash.”
Arms crossed now, over her breasts, hugging them tight. “Fine, whatever. You gave it to me. But take it back if that’s how you are. Real nice.”
The joy was gone. Just like that. She’d gotten an old man drunk and ripped him off and was hoping bacon and eggs would smooth him over. She’d pulled this before. Of course she had. Get him drunk eno
ugh the night before, show a little t-and-a the next morning, hope the mark didn’t notice he hadn’t gotten his dick wet, and there was the payoff.
“Just...why don’t you go, okay?”
“I really am hungry, though.” She made pouty lips. “I mean, we had a good time, right?”
“Get your fucking clothes on.”
“Hey, don’t be rude.”
He swiped her phone off the table and slammed it hard as he could to the floor. It stopped the goddamned noise. It split into three pieces. The glass screen cracked and shards scattered across the floor.
“What? The? Fuck? Dude? My fucking iPhone! What is wrong with you?”
Pancrazio tried to grab the back of her neck but she ducked out of it. But he tried again while she was ducked and got his thumb and fingers in a tight squeeze there so that she hunched her shoulders and shouted “Oww! Okay!”
He steered her around towards the bedroom, and she flinched after a couple steps. A second later he flinched, too—both of them barefoot, both of them stepping on shards of broken screen. So what. Just a couple of glass splinters. He’d felt worse pain. She must not have, because she buckled to the floor Indian-style and grabbed her foot and said, “Goddamn it, wait! Just wait!” The bottom of her foot was leaking blood. “Get me a towel! You sick fuck, get me a towel!”
Instead, Pancrazio grabbed her arm and forced her back to her feet, then gave her a shove into the bedroom. “Put your clothes on and get out of here! You’d better be glad I didn’t rip your little cunt apart last night.”
She slammed his bedroom door and shouted, “Fuck you, faggot!”
He peeked out his window again. No one wandering around the Walmart parking lot, no one to hear them fight. So he hoped. How thin were these fucking so-called walls? How many men were sleeping—or wired on meth—within twenty, thirty feet of him?
The glass in his heel was getting to him. He sat on the couch and lifted his foot to his knee. Yeah, the whole sole was red and slippery. Looked worse than it was, though. He found the big shard and plucked it out. The smaller ones would just have to wait. The blood would dry and everything would heal. He had tough feet.
The girl in his room was still talking smack—Jesus, how long did it take to put on two wisps of clothing? Just saying all sorts of stuff about how he couldn’t get it up and how even her grandpa was more of a man than this pervert. She liked saying that. Perrrrrv.
The smell got really sharp really fast, and Pancrazio caught a flash in the corner of his eye. The bacon grease. The whole stovetop was on fire. He jumped up and grabbed the panhandle—hot hot hot—then a dish rag. Pulled the pan off the burner, turned off the propane. The flames on the eye wussed out, but were still going in the skillet. The bacon wasn’t edible any more. The pan was so hot that the rag was smoking. He stared at the black bacon and the swirls of thick smoke coming off it.
Stevie finally came out of the bedroom, limping, still giving him shit but at a lower volume. Looked at him and made a face and said, “Just be glad I didn’t take you for more. Next time you look into a mirror, say this. I’m gross. Girls don’t like me. They only want me for my money. You sad piece of shit perv.”
He was going to tell her what a spoiled and predictable little whore she was, and how one day she was going to wind up in little pieces in someone’s freezer. Or pregnant. Or just getting the shit punched out of her. Or something like that. You know, like a warning. Something her dad would say.
Instead, he slammed her in the face with the bottom of the skillet. She went down. And then he stood over her and slammed it on top of her head.
There she was, her hair sizzling, smoking. The smell of burnt skin made Pancrazio’s guts churn again. The bacon grease was dripping from the skillet onto her thigh, and she was trying to move it out of the way, not able to. All she could do was moan, and it sounded fucked up. Wounded elk, that sort of warble. Not even human. She’d pissed herself. She’d gotten more glass splinters down her legs.
He knelt beside her, turned her face so he could see. Skin burnt all across her right side. Cheek and eye already beginning to swell. Other eye, vacant stare but full of blood. Her mouth was going like a fish. Her nose was smashed and purple and blooming by the second.
“Shit.”
Stevie moaned back, “Al-p. Shhhh. Al-p. ah Sh-sh-h. Al-p.”
There was no coming back from this. Pancrazio put his palm on the side of her face, the good side, a soft pat. Gently ran his fingertips through her hair, pushed it back over her ears. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I’ll call for help. You just relax. Now, now, calm down. I’ll call for help.”
He stood. She kept moaning, trying to make out words. Had to be a fractured skull. Had to be pressure building up in her brain. He put his hands on his hips and stared down. Finally, he walked over to the door, went outside. The asphalt was hot but felt good on the cuts. Like searing them closed. He took a few deep breaths and let the wind carry the greasy burnt odors out of the RV. Yawned. Stretched. Then he saw himself reflected in the driver’s window of Stevie’s Fiesta. Damn, he did look old, didn’t he? Like a patsy, sure as fuck. She had targeted him the moment she stepped in the door. He needed a haircut and some brown dye.
Then he pulled out his cell phone and called for help.
Rang a few times before someone answered.
Pancrazio said, “Hey, Russell. Get Bad Russell and you guys come over. I need some help.”
FALL
CHAPTER TEN
The wind got colder. An even nastier scrape across the face than it had been all summer. Once the cold air swept down from the Arctic, it took Ferret’s breath away.
That was okay. He still got the job done. The best part, though, was that after breaking his back on a shift, he didn’t have to sleep at the man camp anymore. Now he got to drive another fifteen minutes back to the trailer where Dee Dee was waiting for him. Violet would be coming, staying with her grandparents in the meantime. Other than her absence, coming home from work for Ferret meant getting used to normal all over again—he got to talk to Dee Dee. He got to ask her questions. He got to help with dishes and the trash. He got to fix the trailer as best he could. So many little things—holes in the walls and floors, rattling noises that kept Dee Dee up at night, the mildew stains on the carpet, the smell in the kitchen that would not fade away.
But, shit, there she was, live and real and in front of him. Smiling again, actually. Some of them were nervous smiles, not-so-sure-about-this smiles. If-not-for-the-pills smiles. Still, she was like a new woman. Working, shopping, driving. Kissing. Making love.
She made getting up at four-thirty in the morning worth it again.
*
Dee Dee had aced the interview. They had hired her right then and there on Skype. She was shocked by the salary—for a teacher???—until Ferret told her how much things cost in Williston. They both shared a laugh over the phone anyway, pretended to be like the rich people from that British show she liked, the one in the abbey.
“Be a dear and bring me my gold, dah-ling.”
“Mi lay-dee, with ’onor, right.”
“No, that’s the servants. Do it like the rich guy.”
“They all sound like that. Mi lay-dee, wut cha mean, luv?”
And they laughed some more, and he let her off the phone and kept driving, another haul from Fargo to Williston, another month of rent for a little time on the road.
A supply run. That was what the Russells called them. It seemed too easy. Not at all what he expected from an operation run by an outlaw biker gang. So who had they really hooked into? Globe-trotting, jet-setting, multi-national corporate meth? Blank it out, Ferret. Blank it out. Not your concern. They would’ve gotten it there some other way if not for him driving. The addicts would’ve smoked any old meth they could get their hands on if Ferret wasn’t driving for Pancrazio. Don’t even think about it. Drive. Do your job and drive.
So he did, every couple of weeks. Same drill—drop off a car, stay over in a hot
el, eat good food, and take a different car home the next day.
He kept most of his payments in cash, but put enough in the bank account to make it look like his promotion was making him more money. He had plans. Violet and Dee Dee were going to have a good Christmas for a change. From him this time, that’s what he meant. Not just from the in-laws.
Every trip, closer and closer to the day Dee Dee would fly in...
First week of August, he had met her at the airport, waiting in baggage claim at the small but stupidly crowded airport near Williston, picturing her in his head, how he would hug her, what he would say, but then his phone buzzed with a text that said Look up. And there she was, wearing a coat much too thick for the weather, too shiny for his eyes. God, that smile. Those glasses. She had gotten a haircut, a cute bob right around mid-neck.
Ferret ran to her. A security guard yelled at him. He held her and thought she must be pregnant again until he remembered the ski jacket. He fumbled with the zipper and opened the front of the jacket and pulled her close. This was when men cried. This was when they couldn’t help it. He buried his face in her neck and held on and then longer and then longer.
He took her “home”, and she reacted better than he had expected. Four thousand a month for this dump? She looked in the newspaper, checked online, and then whispered “Wow” in bed that night. “You were right.” But it was only a first step, he told her. “I’m a Motorman now.” Like that meant what she thought it meant.
The anxiety pills had helped, and Ferret being there helped, and her being a couple thousand miles from her folks helped, but he could tell—Dee Dee was on the verge of collapse. She would get distracted. When they went out to the grocery store or Walmart, she would stay really close to him, inches, with deer-in-the-headlights eyes.
Ferret called in “sick” for a couple of days—Pancrazio knew what was going on, no worries—and drove her down to Mount Rushmore and the Black Hills. It was beautiful, the hills and rocks and forest making them forget about the flat prairie up in North Dakota. He splurged for a room with a Jacuzzi tub. Dee Dee’s parents had one in their house, but not for two people like this. Ten minutes after getting into the room, she wanted to take a bubble bath with him. As Dee Dee leaned against his chest in the roiling water, Ferret felt her calm down. The shuddering eased to a stop. The shakiness in her voice disappeared. She kissed him like she could go forever on one breath.
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