Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom

by A. L. Haskett

  “Hey,” Edward asked, “do you have any more hootch?”

  Duncan gave him the other bottle of champagne. Edward drank and sang while Duncan painted. The champagne was soon gone and the singing mumbled. Edward nodded into sleep. Duncan shrouded him with a blanket. He scrubbed dirt from the tub and wiped water off the floor while Edward slept. He took Edward’s old clothes downstairs and tossed them in the dumpster behind the mini-mart. He went inside and bought a beef burrito and warmed it in Assan’s microwave. He wondered as he climbed his stairs what Edward was like at twenty-one, whom he had loved and was that love requited, and if he had ever known anyone like Pris.

  When Duncan returned, his studio was empty and his blanket gone. He looked in the bathroom. No Edward. He looked in the closet and kitchen. Still no Edward. He got undressed and spread his sleeping bag across the couch. He took the money from his pocket and counted. Of the sixteen hundred he had received for Roscoe, barely seven hundred remained. He took the shoe box from under the couch and opened it.

  Empty.

  Duncan picked up the phone and dialed 911. His eyes fell on the Harley. He hung up. He laughed when he looked in the refrigerator. Not satisfied with the money, Edward had also stolen his last beer. Duncan drank a glass of orange juice and finished the burrito. He looked out the window. The Hollywood was dark, the blue neon sign black in the night. He placed a fresh canvas on the easel. He painted a woman in a red dress with yellow hair falling around her shoulders. He painted her leaning on the wall outside the Hollywood, her arms crossed, knee bent and the sole of her boot flat against the dirty red bricks. Her face he painted with ease. Her eyes and her smile were branded deep onto his neurons, disrupting his synapses until all he could think of was her smile. A Harley thundered by outside. Duncan wedged a chair against his door. He laughed when he returned to the easel and saw what he had done.

  The Pris in the painting was smiling, her eyes bright and her arms crossed before her. But the middle finger of her exposed hand was once again extended to him in that traditionally contemptuous salute.

  Eight

  Duncan was sitting in his window reading a People magazine the next day when Pris came out of the Hollywood Bar and Grill. She crossed to her Cadillac which, by design or coincidence or by that random series of events men call fate, was parked below his studio. She wore a red tank top tucked into faded blue jeans, sandals, and sunglasses. Her hair was loose and wild.

  “Improving your mind?” she asked.

  He dropped the magazine. He had been sitting there since he first noticed her car hours before, and had rehearsed this conversation forty seven times in his brain, but improving your mind was not an opening he had prepared for.

  “Just wasting time,” he said.

  “Sorry about last night. I would’ve come up but your lights were out.”

  “I was here.”

  “Maybe another time.”

  “Don’t move.”

  He jumped up and stuffed a hundred dollars in his pocket. He took a whiskey bottle from its hiding place in the back of a cabinet behind a box of cherry tarts. He grabbed his hat and ran from the studio. He almost hit his head on the pipe again. Pris was in her car when he reached the street.

  “How about now?” he asked.

  She frowned. Then she leaned over and opened the door.

  “Get in,” she said.

  She took him to a restaurant on the ocean side of Pacific Coast Highway north of Malibu. All the way there Duncan kept her talking and laughing so she would not think to change her mind. When they arrived, Pris was relaxed and happy and Duncan was nervous. Bolo Giulliano, Café Bella’s owner, met them at the door. He hugged Pris and kissed her and sat them at a table overlooking the beach and the sun falling orange into the Pacific.

  They shared a bottle of Chianti over dinner. Bolo imported it from his family’s Sicilian vineyards and only served it to his favorite customers. After dinner they sipped coffee spiked with Duncan’s bottle of Irish whiskey. It was one of two bottles Sean Delaney bought the day Duncan was born. Sean had drunk the first as Duncan screamed in his jackhammer arms. He promised the wailing child that they would share the second on Duncan’s twenty first birthday. Sean had not made it, but Duncan did not believe his father would object if he shared it with Pris instead. Duncan felt good despite the uncertainty pervading his intestines whenever he looked in her eyes. Bolo joined them for dessert and shared a cup of Irish coffee.

  “Him I like,” Bolo said.

  “He’s okay,” Pris laughed.

  “When you first came in,” Bolo said, “I thought, she’s with one of those degenerate rock stars again.”

  “Shut up, Bolo,” Pris said pleasantly.

  “Despite needing a haircut, you I like.”

  “Shut up, Bolo. You’re embarrassing him.”

  “I can’t tell him I like him?”

  “Thank you, Bolo. I like you too.”

  “She’s like a daughter to me. You treat her right.”

  “Shut the fuck up, Bolo.”

  “Such a mouth on her.”

  “Don’t worry,” Duncan said. “My intentions are honorable.”

  Pris frowned but Bolo smiled and clapped Duncan’s back. He kissed Pris and left. When the bill came Duncan was pleased to see Bolo had not charged them for the wine or the dessert. They shared a final cup of Irish coffee and when they got up to leave, both were pleasantly inebriated.

  “Let’s walk,” she said.

  They took off their shoes and strolled beside a phosphorescent ocean, the sea rinsing sand between their toes. Pris did not resist when Duncan took her hand. It was soft and warm and her grip was strong.

  “Tell me about your family,” she said.

  “It’s just me and my mom. She’s rich and beautiful and relatively young. She likes getting her own way. Got a temper, too. You’re a lot like her.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. I love her. More than she thinks I do. After my dad died, she was the world to me.”

  “Do you have a girlfriend in Wyoming?”

  “I did. But we had a difference of opinion about my coming out here.”

  “What’s she like?”

  “You know,” he said, “I’m not so sure anymore.”

  Duncan skipped a flat rock out to sea. He had just made up his mind to kiss her when she said, “What was your father like?”

  “He was short and wide and strong and always laughing. He was Irish, real Irish, you know, born in Ireland,” he felt the alcohol, “his accent was so thick he sometimes had to repeat himself three or four times to be understood. Everybody loved him.”

  “How did he die?”

  Duncan resumed walking. “There’s an air force base in Cheyenne. When I was nine, one of the jets crashed on our ranch. Dad jumped on his horse and rode out to see what he could do. I followed. When we got there, the jet was still in one piece. Mostly, anyway. I think part of the tail broke off. Anyway, Dad got off his horse and ran up to see if the pilot was okay. He made me stay back. He climbed up a wing, put his hands on the cockpit, and pulled himself up.”

  She was pale under the moon, her eyes vast and caring. A blond tress fell against her forehead and she pushed it back.

  “That’s when the jet exploded,” he said.

  “Oh, Duncan . . .”

  “Thing is, the pilot had ejected. He landed two miles away in a pasture. Not a scratch on him though he twisted an ankle running from a bull.”

  “Oh, Duncan . . .”

  “I used to lie in bed wondering if my dad knew the cockpit was empty. He probably had just enough time to say, oh shit.”

  She was crying. Duncan felt like an ass. He had not intended that. He took her and held her, the ocean washing unnoticed around their feet.

  “I’m so sorry,” she cried.

  “It’s not your fault,” he said. “It’s nobody’s fault.”

  “My father died when I was young too,” she sobbed.


  He put his head on her shoulder and smelled the floral scent of her hair. He brushed his lips against the smooth skin on her neck, barely touching her. She stiffened and pushed him away. The tears were gone and her eyes were bright and angry.

  Here we go again, Duncan thought.

  “You’re not so different after all, are you? Why do you bother? Don’t you realize I’ll never let you fuck me?”

  “I don’t want to fuck you.”

  “Right. You want to make love to me.” Duncan was dumbstruck at the intensity of her wrath. “Don’t make me gag.”

  “I didn’t realize I was so repulsive to you.”

  The blue anger in her eyes thawed slowly. She stroked his cheek.

  “No,” she said, “I think you’re beautiful.”

  She turned and ran. Duncan tried to catch her, but she was fast, and more important, she was in shape from long hours dancing. After a hard minute running, Duncan dropped panting to his knees. She ran like a gazelle away from him, the moon shining in her hair, her pony tail flopping side to side in time with her long, athletic strides.

  Great, Duncan thought as he watched her flee, I’ve fallen for a lunatic.

  When Duncan returned to Café Bella, Pris and the Cadillac were gone. He sat at the bar and ordered a beer. Bolo sat beside him. He was a small, round man with bright, wet eyes and thin gray hair combed over the top of a balding skull.

  “Where’s Pris?”

  “Beats the hell out of me.”

  “She ditched you, eh? Don’t worry. She likes you. I can tell.”

  “I sure can’t.”

  “I’ve known her longer. Since she was fifteen. And let me tell you, she doesn’t usually bring men here. And I’ve never seen her look at anyone the way she looks at you.”

  Bolo started coughing. The coughs grew louder and more violent and for a minute Duncan thought he would cough up a bronchial tube. The bartender set a glass of water on the bar. Bolo drank it quickly.

  “Are you okay?” Duncan asked.

  Bolo nodded yes, but the coughing had taken something out of him. Duncan unpleasantly perceived Bolo’s skin and gentle eyes were all that separated him from life as a corpse.

  “Be patient with her,” Bolo said. “She’s had a hard life. But you listen to me. If you want her, you must be strong, gentle, understanding and patient. Especially patient.”

  Duncan could handle gentle, but he doubted he possessed the capacity for that much strength or understanding or patience. He nodded anyway.

  “Good.” Bolo stood. “I’ll drive you home.”

  Duncan followed him to the door. “Has she stranded anyone before?”

  Bolo laughed. “You’re the first to make it through dessert. When I saw you leave together I thought you had a chance. How did you screw it up?”

  “I tried to kiss her.”

  “So you’re a bastard too.” He gripped Duncan’s shoulder. “But I still like you. You know how you can tell? No? I’ll tell you.” He whispered in Duncan’s ear. “I’ve never given any of the other bastards a ride home.”

  Bolo dropped Duncan off in front of the mini-mart. The alcohol had cleared from his brain, but the depression caused by his near miss with Pris combined with a lack of sleep over the last few days to grab his eyelids and pull down hard. He stumbled upstairs and fell onto his couch.

  He heard someone urinating in his bathroom.

  He jumped up and fell to the floor. He grabbed for the bat under the couch, panicked when he could not find it, relaxed when his hand touched cold, hard wood. He stood outside the bathroom, bat held tight and poised to knock the head off the poor unfortunate emptying his bladder behind the battered bathroom door. The sound of urine joining water stopped.

  “Get the hell out here,” he said.

  The toilet flushed. Duncan raised the bat and waited for the door to open. He heard the sounds of brushing teeth.

  “I’m not kidding,” he said, “come out or I’m coming in after you.”

  The urinator rinsed and spat. Duncan imagined the fiend behind the door flossing his teeth. That stopped him. What if the urinator was, in reality, a urinatrix? What if it was Sheila Rascowitz? The shower went on.

  That’s it, Duncan thought.

  He flung the door open and stepped inside. Something moved to his right, but before he could swing, unseen hands turned him and shoved him into the tub. He dropped the bat and fell beneath the shower. The urinator picked up the bat and turned off the water. He was short and lean with high cheeks, dark eyes, and long black hair falling across wiry shoulders. The smile he sported and the hand he reached out were two of the nicest human features Duncan could hope to see. Duncan allowed himself to be pulled out of the tub. He hugged the naked man with all his feeble might, his clothes dripping unnoticed onto the cracked tile floor.

  “Benjamin,” Duncan said, “am I ever glad to see you.”

  Misty required nine days to accrue sufficient nerve to return to Duncan’s studio. It was noon on a crystalline Saturday. She had been up preparing since six. She wore a lace teddy under a silk blouse, tight jeans, and hundred dollar Italian leather sandals. Her hair fell light and dense around her face. Her glossy violet nails duplicated her lipstick. She had never received more second looks as she did that morning driving into town from her apartment in Venice in her BMW convertible with the top down.

  She imagined she looked like crap.

  In truth she was a winsome young woman who, if graced by God with a few more grams of brain cells, might have succeeded in numerous professions not requiring a college degree outside the adult entertainment or food service industries. She was hard working and loyal and not afraid to go for what she desired. Right now, lurking below the first centimeter of cortex, was the desire to seduce Duncan. But as she stood below his studio listening to his stereo she was nervous enough to vomit. She bought a Snickers and a diet Coke from Assan. She slumped against the wall by the pay phone and ate the bar and quaffed the soda. She belched twice softly. She inhaled deeply until she became dizzy.

  “All right, Misty,” she said, “he’s just a guy.”

  She did not believe it though, intellectually (so to speak), she understood it was true. He was an artist. He created. He did not pump gas or strum variations of the same three chords or program computers or add numbers like the dozens of losers who filled the Hollywood Bar and Grill each day. He had vision, and Misty wanted to be part of what he saw. She stalled as long as she could, but finally her excuses were depleted, and she strode past a ratty old truck, took the stairs two at a time, ducked under the pipe in the hallway, and rapped on the door with a fist of fine tan knuckles. A young, lean, dark-haired man answered her knock. He was naked save for red candy striped boxers and a necklace of mountain lion teeth. His eyes set off the smoke alarm in the bedroom of her mind.

  “Come on in,” he said. Misty smelled bacon and butter. “You hungry?”

  “I just ate.”

  “You must be Pris. Duncan told me about you.”

  Her heart sank to where her arch supports would be if she had worn running shoes instead of sandals.

  “My name is Misty,” she said.

  “Whoops.” He flipped bacon with a fork. “I’m Benjamin.” Hot grease splattered his chest. “Jesus that smarts,” he said, and then, “Duncan just left for the laundromat.”

  “You ought to put on a shirt.”

  “Sure. That’s what they’re expecting me to do.”

  Misty wondered who they were, but inferred he was fooling just as she opened her mouth to ask. Despite her cranial weakness, Misty pegged Benjamin as a wise guy who had already exceeded life’s allotment of trouble. She closed her mouth and lay her carnal thoughts aside. She required innocence in a man, not just raw animal appeal. Duncan better fit the job description from what she had seen.

  “What’s he doing at the laundromat?” she asked. Benjamin looked at her. She nodded. “Oh, right. Laundry.”

  He slapped the bacon on a plate b
eside a mound of scrambled eggs. He put four slices of buttered toast heaped with grape jam over the eggs. He sat on the couch and ate with his fingers. Misty sat beside him.

  “Are you Mexican?”

  “Arapaho.”

  “Oh, wow,” Misty said, “you’re from Italy?”

  Benjamin laughed so hard he spit out his food. He kept laughing while he wiped masticated meat and poultry from the floor with a paper towel.

  “Native American,” he finally said.

  “You mean like an Indian?”

  “You’re not the brightest candle, are you?” Her blank look answered him. “Never mind.” He put his plate in the sink. “I have to perform my morning ablutions.” He saw her embarrassed look. “That means ritual washing.”

  Misty relaxed. “Oh.”

  She studied Duncan’s paintings while Benjamin showered. Edward’s portrait moved her to pity and the one of the Guardians scared her. The painting of Champagne and Cassandra made her jealous. The collected canvases made her horny as hell. She lifted the sheet from the Harley. She knew Sheila’s bike had been stolen but she missed the connection. She spotted a fourth canvas covered by a cloth behind the Harley. She lifted the cloth and looked. She was sobbing on the couch when Benjamin emerged from the bathroom, her head in her hands and her elbows on her knees. He knelt and pushed the hair from her face. Her eyes were red and her make up streaked.

  “You okay?” Benjamin asked.

  “Sure,” she said, “just wonderful.”

  Then she jumped up and ran from the studio.

  Duncan sat on a washing machine, his clothes spinning infinitely beneath him. He wore his Stetson and a tank top. His legs poked white and mostly hairless through a pair of shorts. He was reading a Dear Duncan letter.

  Dear Duncan, it began, Danny has asked me to be his bride. I said I would answer in one week. That’s time enough for you to come to your senses and get home where you belong. If I don’t hear from you by Sunday, the next time you see me you better call me Mrs. Carpenter.