“Say what?”
Benjamin pointed to the space on the couch between Roscoe and Sven. Roscoe gripped a beer in his right hand and Sven held one in his left. The hands between them were tenderly clasped.
“Oh my god,” Misty said.
“Looks like he’s a nickel short of a three dollar bill,” Benjamin said.
Cassandra burst into the studio. “Duncan, come quick! It’s Pris!”
“What’s wrong?” Duncan’s heart threatened to escape his chest via trachea. “Is she ok?”
“I don’t think so,” Cassandra said.
It was like he was back in the dream.
Everything was identical, from the steel pole impaling the raised stage to the small footlights, the mirrored walls, and the peeling veneer on the particle board tables. Pris stood on stage, her back against the mirrors, naked except for her black silk panties. Her blonde hair was loose and wild and she had a wolverine cast to her eyes. Her naked chest labored with each panting breath. She held a bloody, splintered chair leg. Stuart Yog lay on the floor by the footlights, a gash on his scalp running from forehead to ear and coloring his gray roots red. Roscoe and Sven stood on either side of Yog watching the stage. Sheila stood across from Pris, trying to calm her, but when she stepped closer Pris swung the chair leg towards her.
“I need a doctor,” Yog moaned.
“Fuck you,” Roscoe said.
“I’ll sue your ass. I’ll close this place down.” He tried to stand. He fell back to his knees. “Someone call the police. That bitch nearly killed me.”
“Fuck you twice,” Cassandra yelled. “Asshole.” She sat at the bar. “He tried to stuff a twenty down her panties. She told him to put it on the stage. You can’t take money directly from a customer, you know.”
“I did not know that,” Benjamin said.
“That’s solicitation. You can get busted for that. Anyway, this jerk puts the twenty back and takes out a hundred and jams it and his hand down her pants. Roscoe was in the john otherwise the prick wouldn’t have tried it. So Pris slapped him and the bastard slapped her back.”
Duncan nodded. “Which is when she picked up the chair.”
“Uh huh. Smashed it over his head. Then she backed into the corner with the chair leg. No one can get close. We might have to call the cops.”
“No police,” Duncan said. He climbed onto the stage.
“I’m handling this,” Sheila said, her eyes angry.
“How long have you been handling it?”
“A couple of minutes.”
“More like ten,” Yog said.
Roscoe kicked him. “Fuck you,” he said.
Duncan said. “Let me try.”
Sheila smiled. “Go ahead, hot shot. I hope she caves your skull in.”
“Are you finally satisfied?” Pris said when Duncan approached. She swung the chair leg up and down her body. “To see me like this? Isn’t that what you wanted?”
Duncan removed his jacket and stepped forward. “Not like this.”
“Stay away.” She brandished the chair leg. “I’ll kill you.”
“No, you won’t.”
He gently wrapped his jacket around her. She dropped the chair leg and sobbed. Duncan held her and buried his head in her hair. It was damp with sweat and faintly acrid.
“It’s Bolo,” Pris said.
“He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“How did you know?”
Duncan could not say Bolo predicted his own death in a dream. He tried a variation of the truth. “I can’t imagine anything else could hurt you so.”
Sheila glared at the man holding the woman she loved. The red fury she had felt towards Duncan was replaced by a cold rage tempered by her desire for Pris’s happiness. She walked off the stage, pausing only long enough on her way to the door to army boot Stuart Yog in the ribs.
“Uhngh!” Stuart Yog moaned. “Won’t anyone help me?”
Benjamin knelt beside him. He grabbed Yog’s ear and pulled his head up. He held his Bowie knife to Yog’s throat. Yog looked at the bright sharp blade with sideways eyes.
“Sure I’ll help,” Benjamin said. “I’ll help you bleed to death if you don’t shut up.”
“Ok.”
“And I don’t want to hear another word about police or lawsuit. From you or anyone else. If I do, I hunt you down and kill you. Understand?”
“Jesus,” Yog said, “there are witnesses here!”
“I didn’t hear nothing,” Cassandra said.
“Anything,” Benjamin said.
“Whatever. What about you, Champagne?”
“All I heard was this jerk crying after he tripped and brained himself.”
“Aw, Christ,” Yog said. “I got the picture.”
Benjamin sheathed his knife. He helped Yog to his feet. “Come on,” he said, “I’ll buy you a beer before you get the hell out of here.”
“Can you drive me to the hospital?”
“Don’t push it.”
“You drive,” Pris said. “I’m really tired.”
Duncan opened the Cadillac and let her in. He slid behind the wheel and started the car. Pris only spoke to tell him which way to go. They turned onto a private road and drove through mossy gates onto a gravel driveway. He stopped before a big, Spanish style home with a red tile porch and a red tile roof. Roses climbed an arch around a tall wood door. Iron balconies framed two sets of French doors on the second story. A grove stood in the darkness west of the house. Duncan smelled oranges. Pris got out. Duncan followed her to the porch.
“Where are we?”
“Home. Bolo’s home.” She opened the door. “My home now.”
She turned on the lights. A white couch sat on an oriental rug across from a granite fireplace with a black iron screen before it. A cracked leather armchair sat on polished hardwood beside the fireplace, a reading lamp behind it. Bifocals lay on a book on a table by the chair. Photographs of Bolo and a plain, dark-haired woman hung above the mantle. French doors led out to a fountain surrounded by green grass and yellow roses. An iron bench sat on old bricks facing the lights of Los Angeles.
“Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, please.”
Pris smiled. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Duncan moved the bifocals and picked up the book. It was an old, leather bound bible, in Italian. A photo fell from the bible to the floor. Duncan picked it up. It was of Bolo and the woman in the picture above the fireplace. A blond girl stood between them, a crowd behind them, and the mountain in the background made Duncan think of Disneyland.
“That’s me.”
Duncan put the photo down. Pris had changed into plaid flannel pajamas and had washed the makeup and the tears from her eyes. Duncan took one of the two tea cups she held. She sat on the big white couch.
“Could you make a fire?” she asked. “I want to watch something burn.”
Duncan set his tea down. He moved the screen and wadded up newspaper he found behind the armchair. He laid the newspaper under an iron grate. A metal caddy held split wood beside the fireplace. He placed four logs above the newspaper. He lit the paper and replaced the screen. He picked up his tea and sat beside Pris. She stared at the photograph.
“I ran away to Hollywood after my dad died. I was fifteen and I didn’t want to end up in a foster home. Guys on the street kept asking me if I was working. I didn’t know what that meant until one asked me how much for a blow job and I ran like hell and hid behind a dumpster. I stayed there until I got so hungry my ribs jabbed my stomach and I crawled into the dumpster and ate leftovers and garbage. I was desperate and I didn’t know what to do. The choices were starve or go to work. I decided to work.”
“You don’t have to tell me this.”
“Yes I do.” She sipped her tea. The green wood in the fireplace hissed and popped. “I approached the first well dressed, middle-aged man I saw on the street. I told him I would screw his brains out for twenty dollars.
“‘I like my brains where they ar
e,’ he said. He smiled and I started to cry. He hugged me while I sobbed into his shirt.”
“Bolo?”
Pris nodded. “When I stopped crying, his shirt was filthy where my cheek had been. I stunk, my clothes were dirty, and god knows why anyone would want to have sex with me let alone pay for it. He brought me here. His wife Maria gave me a bath and a room and told me I could stay as long as I wanted. She died from breast cancer the next year and then it was just me and Bolo. He kicked me out when I started stripping. He told me I could come back when I gave it up. But the money was too good. I couldn’t make that much money any other way.”
“What about modeling? Or acting?”
Pris smiled sadly. “I can’t afford to be famous.”
“Why not?”
“I’m too tired to talk any more tonight.”
She set her tea on the floor by the couch then put Duncan’s cup besides hers. She pulled his boots off and stretched him across the couch. She turned off the lights and lay beside him. She fell asleep in his arms, one layer of flannel and another of cotton and denim between them. Despite the absence of the possibility of sex, Duncan was almost as happy as he would have been if they were naked and joined at the pelvis. He fell asleep and dreamed of Christmas at the Circle D and a red-haired child playing in the snow beside a frozen creek and as he drifted further and deeper he wondered if the child was his or Sean’s.
Seventeen
Fiona was sitting on the veranda enjoying the sun and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice when the phone rang. Her heart skipped when Duncan said Mom, but the ensuing words were gentle, and she dared hoped he had forgiven her attempt to buy off his harlot. She concluded her puppy dog of a boy was coming home with his tail sutured between his legs where it belonged. Woody returned shortly past noon. He had been at the beach taking the third installment of a five lesson surfing package. He wore a black wetsuit. His hair was damp and salty and hinted at ocean bleach. He leaned his chartered surfboard upon the wall outside the veranda.
“How was it?” Fiona asked.
“Flat,” he replied, “I only caught a couple of waves. I got up once.”
“Good for you.”
Fiona followed him into the bathroom. Woody pulled his wetsuit off and stood under the shower. Fiona watched his ripcord muscles move beneath his skin as he lathered and shampooed.
“Duncan’s coming over,” she said.
Woody stopped shampooing. “Oh, lord,” he said. “What is it now?”
“I think he’s coming to say he’s sorry.”
He ain’t the one who should apologize, Woody thought. He rinsed and stepped out of the shower and dried himself with the towel Fiona gave him. He put on a tank top and baggy shorts and rubber sandals. The tank top said Hard Rock Café across the back. Fiona had bought it for him. He shunned such shirts back home, but here it was his favorite.
“So we might be going home?”
The prospect appealed to him less than it did to Fiona. He had hoped to become a proficient surfer and to catch the Tonight Show live. And he did not eagerly anticipate the coming winter.
“We’ll see,” Fiona said. “Soon, I guess.”
“Probably shouldn’t push him too hard just yet.”
“No, I think you’re right. Was that a knock? That must be him.”
Fiona opened the door for Duncan and stuck her head out. She looked both ways for Benjamin. But Duncan was alone and she shut the door and hugged him with a silent, grateful prayer.
“Hey, Duncan,” Woody said, “care for a beer?”
“You got a cold one?”
“Nope.” Woody picked up the phone. “But we got room service.”
Woody ordered three. It was such a wonderful day Fiona allowed she would have one herself. She led Duncan to the couch and sat beside him.
“So you’ve forgiven your poor old mother?”
“I never begrudged you. And you’re not that old.”
“What mistakes I made were made out of love. But she was not the woman for you.”
“That’s for sure. Though I’m surprised to hear you say it.”
Fiona sensed danger. “You are coming home, aren’t you?”
“We’ve been through this mom. This is home now.”
“I am confused. Didn’t you just agree that girl was wrong for you?”
“Yes I did. I don’t know why it took me so long to realize it.”
“Uh oh,” Woody said. “You think she’s talking about Tiffy, don’t you?”
“Well of course I’m not! I’m talking about that stripper.”
“Then you won’t much like what else I have to say. That stripper, as you call her?” Duncan stood. “We’re getting married.”
“The hell you are,” Fiona spluttered after Woody revived her with an ice bucket of water to the face. “No son of mine is going to marry a tart.”
In the interim between the faint and revival, room service had arrived with three beers. Duncan was one third through his when Woody emptied the bucket on Fiona’s face. He would have revived her himself, but Woody seemed eager to execute the drenching. He stood by the bedroom door, the empty bucket in his left hand and a cold one gripped so tight in his white knuckled right that either the bottle or the bone surrounding it might break.
“She quit stripping,” Duncan said.
Fiona took a deep drought of beer. “But she’ll always have it in her past.”
“Goddamn it, Fiona,” Woody said. His face was red beneath the tan and his eyes were wide and angry. “That’s enough.”
“Woody,” Fiona said dangerously, “last I checked you worked for me.”
“Not anymore I don’t.”
He dropped the ice bucket and the beer and stalked into the bedroom. Duncan listened to drawers flung open and closet doors slammed. Woody emerged with his suitcase.
“What has gotten into you?”
“Fiona, I love you. Always have. But I’ll be damned if I’ll stand by and watch you let your son make the same mistake you made.”
“You think marrying Sean was a mistake?”
“God, for such a smart woman you are dense. No, that was probably the best thing you ever did. Your mistake is not marrying me.”
“You never asked!”
Woody set the suitcase down. “All right,” he said, “I’m asking.” He got down on one knee. “Fiona Delaney, will you marry me?”
“Woody, this isn’t the time . . .”
“That’s what I thought.” He picked up the suitcase. “You’ve cheated on a dead man for twelve years. Correct me if I’m wrong, but your vows said, till death do you part. I believe you’ve fulfilled your obligations under the contract.”
“Woody, what about Duncan?”
“He’s a grown man!”
“He’s my baby!”
“Don’t look now, but your baby has grown up and you’re all alone.” He turned to Duncan. “Can I stay with you until I figure things out?”
“Sure. As long as you want. Benjamin’s waiting in the parking lot.”
Woody left. Fiona stood there, stunned and bereft, an empty space filling her chest and shrinking her heart into her bowels where it threatened to implode with fear and sorrow.
“We’re getting married in Las Vegas tomorrow,” Duncan said. “I’d like you there.” He wrote the address on hotel stationary. “Woody’s right. You should have married him long ago. Dad wouldn’t mind.”
Her son telling her how her dead husband would feel rekindled an angry ember. “How could you possibly know that?”
“I just know,” he said.
Duncan followed Woody out the door. Fiona stood a long while holding her half empty beer. She heard the Purgatory Truck’s distinctive roar fade in the distance. She went to the bedroom and sat on the bed. She finished the beer and dropped the bottle onto the carpet. Then, for the first time since Sean Delaney was transported into the hereafter courtesy of a ball of rapidly oxidizing jet fuel, she put her head in her hands and cried
.
“She won’t show,” Duncan said.
He wore brown cotton pants, brown leather shoes, a tan linen shirt with a dark brown tie and his Stetson wedged atop his ears. The painting of Assan stood on his easel, and though he had finished it two days before, he nervously dabbed at it with a brush.
“You keep messing with that and you’ll ruin it,” Woody said.
Woody wore his Stetson, a white shirt with a silver and quartz bolo tie, his best blue jeans, a belt with a silver and topaz buckle in the shape of a charging bull, his finest boots with silver tooling, and a brave face to disguise his aching heart.
“Think positive thoughts,” Sven said.
Benjamin carried a case of malt liquor into the studio and passed out sixteen ounce cans.
“I got the tall boys,” he said. He popped one and drained a good portion. “Where’s the bride?”
“She’s not coming,” Duncan said.
“Sure she is,” Woody said. “She’s got ten minutes.”
Roscoe exited the bathroom. “Hey, give me one of those.”
“Did you wash your hands?” Sven asked.
Roscoe returned to the bathroom. “It’s like I got a new mother.”
“You Americans,” Sven said, “you are such barbarians.”
Roscoe emerged from the bathroom wiping his hands on his t-shirt. “That’s what you like about me.”
“Are they gay?” Woody asked Duncan. “It’s like they’re married.”
“Apparently so. Not married. Gay, I mean.”
“Well, okay.” Woody said.
Duncan did not know if that meant Woody approved or if he was simply acknowledging the confirmation of his suspicions. He returned to the couch and opened a beer. Misty carried a tray in from the kitchen.
“I could only find pop tarts,” she said. “I’ve got raspberry, strawberry, and brown sugar and cinnamon.”
She had cried for ten minutes after Roscoe told her the news of Duncan’s impending nuptials. But she forced herself to stop, fixed her makeup, and marched across the street to congratulate Duncan with a kiss that burned her lips with restrained passion but barely left an impression on Duncan’s cheek. Duncan took a raspberry pop tart.
Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom Page 19