The Dispatcher

  ‘Motel/Food.’

  ‘Monica?’

  ‘This is Betsy.’

  ‘Can I talk to Monica?’

  ‘I’m sure I can help you, hon.’

  ‘I’d like Monica.’

  ‘Right. Hold on.’

  The sound of the phone being set on the counter.

  ‘Mon, I think it’s the guy just checked in.’

  A long emptiness. Then: ‘Hello?’

  ‘Monica.’

  ‘Hey. Did you change your mind? I was hoping you would.’

  ‘Not exactly,’ he says. ‘Do you have a first-aid kit?’

  Ian walks to his duffel bag, which is sitting on the bed, unzips it, and pulls out a pair of boxer shorts. He slips into them.

  A knock at the door.

  He walks to it and pulls it open. On the other side stands Monica with a white metal first-aid kit hanging from her fist. For a long time she is silent, and he can only imagine what he looks like. Middle-aged and overweight with thinning blond hair and wearing nothing but a pair of boxer shorts, a plastic tube twisting out of his chest and into a black satchel which he is holding by the handle like a door-to-door salesman.

  ‘Hi,’ he says.

  ‘Jesus,’ she says. ‘What—what happened?’

  ‘I was shot.’

  ‘With a gun?’

  ‘With a gun.’

  ‘You should go to the hospital.’

  Ian shakes his head.

  ‘I’ve already been,’ he says, and holds up the satchel. ‘That’s where I got this. I just had an accident, is all.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Ian turns around to show her his back. He looks over his shoulder at her. She is grimacing, but she does not look away. In fact, she leans forward, examining the wound.

  ‘You sure you don’t need to go back to the hospital?’

  ‘It’s not as bad as it looks.’

  ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I can probably bandage it myself if you just—’

  ‘Don’t be dumb.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s in the middle of your back. Unless your elbows bend the wrong way, you’re gonna need help.’

  Ian stands silent for a long moment, then steps aside to let her in.

  He lies on his stomach on the mattress and Monica straddles him. The first-aid kit sits open beside her. He cannot see what she is doing, but he can feel and hear her. He can feel the soft curves of her backside against the backs of his legs. He can hear her tearing the paper from something. He can feel her gently wiping the blood away from the wound with a pad of gauze.

  ‘You’re right,’ she says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. Only a few stitches tore out.’

  He has barely felt a woman’s touch in two years, not since he went drinking at O’Connell’s and picked up one of the coeds from Bulls Mouth City College, and that was an angry drunken fuck, nothing like the gentleness he feels now from Monica. He had forgotten that this kind of gentleness existed.

  After she wipes the area around the wound, he feels her pour something onto it and into it. It stings and he sucks in air in a hiss.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  She wipes at it again, and then lays something over it. She does it with gentleness, a soft touch that makes the pain feel almost pleasurable. Then she pulls something else from the first-aid kit, and he hears a clinking sound, then something like tearing. Medical tape being unspooled and torn away. She tapes a pad of gauze onto his back. After another minute, she tosses everything into the first-aid kit and latches it closed.

  ‘All done.’

  ‘Maybe you could stay a while longer.’

  ‘You’re in no shape for that.’

  ‘I know. That’s not what I want.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  He lies on his back in bed and watches her take off her clothes. She does it slowly, first her T-shirt, and then her bra. She unbuttons her skirt and lets it drop to her feet. She is wearing a pair of utilitarian white panties. She puts her thumbs into the waistband and pushes them down. She has a thick thatch of reddish-brown pubic hair. The bones in her hips are visible. Her breasts are small and her nipples light pink, ghosts of nipples. There is a mole on her left breast. She stands there completely naked before him, looking at his face.

  Then she walks to him and lays herself down beside him, on his left side, and he feels her smooth legs against his legs and her warm breasts brush against his skin, her coarse pubic hair against his hip, and her breath on his cheek, and she rests her head in his armpit and she puts a hand on his heart.

  ‘It’s beating so fast,’ she says.

  ‘I know,’ he says.

  Ian watches the fan in the ceiling spin. He tries to follow a single blade as it makes its way round and round, but keeps losing track after four or five rotations, the blade dissolving back into a blur with the rest of them. He imagines his life after getting Maggie back. He imagines living in an apartment in Los Angeles with her and Monica. Monica is sweet and gentle and true. He might be able to live with her. He likes the idea of once more having a woman in his life. A partner. He thinks of Debbie, widowed back in Bulls Mouth, but he knows there is nothing left there. Sometimes people have too much history together, history of the wrong kind, and people cannot tear pages from the book of their life. Once something is written there it is permanent. But maybe he could start something new with a new woman and his daughter. Chapter four. Her body feels right against his body. He smiles at the thought, though he knows in the back of his mind that it’s nothing more than a childish fantasy. He smiles at the thought and tries to hold on to it for as long as possible.

  ‘Maybe you can stop by again on your way back from California,’ Monica says.

  ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I would too. I like you.’

  ‘We could have a date,’ he says. ‘A real date.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I could buy you dinner and we could ask each other what our favorite color is.’

  ‘We could start now.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You first.’

  ‘Green.’

  ‘Me too,’ she says. ‘What’s your favorite food?’

  ‘Meat.’

  ‘Meat isn’t a food.’

  ‘It’s a food group.’

  ‘Then mine is sugar.’

  ‘Okay. Filet mignon.’

  ‘That’s better.’

  ‘What’s yours, really?’

  ‘You’re gonna laugh.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Promise?’

  ‘Stick a needle in my eye.’

  ‘Okay. Those little sour gummy worms. You know the ones?’

  ‘Really?’

  She nods. He can feel the movement against him, though he sees only the ceiling above.

  ‘That’s disgusting.’

  ‘You promised you wouldn’t laugh.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m closer to puking.’

  ‘Stop it,’ she says. ‘You’re making me feel dumb.’

  ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry. You can have sour gummy worms on our date if you want.’

  ‘That’s better,’ she says. ‘What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?’

  Ian swallows. ‘I don’t like this game anymore,’ he says.

  ‘How bad can it be?’ she says. ‘Did you steal something?’

  ‘Let’s skip that question and move on to—’

  The sound of a car outside makes him stop. He listens closely. It pulls to a stop out front.

  He sits up.

  ‘Could you see who it is?’ he says.

  ‘Are you in trouble?’

  ‘Please,’ he says.

  Monica gets to her feet and walks naked to the window. She pulls back the curtain and looks out.

  He shouldn’t have let himself relax. He
knew better than to let himself—

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It looks like a police car.’

  He gets to his feet and bends down to pick up his satchel, but suddenly everything goes gray like a thin blanket thrown over him, and the blanket is very heavy, and he’s falling to the floor, it pushes him to the floor, and then he’s on the floor, and there’s nothing.

  Maggie opens her eyes. She does not know where she is. She is leaning against something, something soft and warm. A person. Her head is throbbing. Her mouth tastes bad. She sits up and looks around. She is in a truck, Beatrice on her right and Henry on her left. They are both eating hamburgers wrapped in yellow paper. She looks out the windshield. They are in a parking lot behind a McDonald’s, and beyond the McDonald’s the pink evening sky lined with gray clouds that look almost solid. The descending darkness makes the sky feel very small: it is closing in on her. She feels trapped sitting in the cab of this truck, trapped on either side by the hulking figures of Beatrice and Henry.

  She rubs at her eyes.

  Beatrice glances over at her. ‘You’re up,’ she says.

  Maggie nods, but does not feel like she is up. She feels groggy and gray and caught in a dream. A nightmare.

  ‘How’s your head?’

  ‘Hurts.’

  ‘You had a accident.’

  She thinks of the ground rushing up at her.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We got you some food.’

  Beatrice leans down between her feet and brings up a hamburger from a white paper bag. She hands it to Maggie and Maggie takes it. She holds it and looks at it. For a moment she thinks she is not hungry, that she will not be able to eat the hamburger, but then her stomach grumbles loudly and she realizes she is starving. It’s been a long time since she last ate. She unwraps the hamburger and her stomach clenches and she takes a bite and tastes ketchup and pickle and she barely chews before swallowing and taking another bite.

  ‘What do you say?’

  She looks at Henry and swallows. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Not me.’

  She turns to Beatrice. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’re welcome.’ Beatrice smiles at her.

  Maggie takes another bite.

  Fifteen minutes later they’re back on the road. Maggie sits between Beatrice and Henry and looks out the windshield. Darkness is spreading quickly across the land now that the sun is below the horizon. She is afraid that she will never escape. She wonders where her daddy is.

  She closes her eyes and counts to ten.

  She opens her eyes. She feels like a person in a snow globe. The sky is so close. Maybe it always was that close and she just doesn’t remember. She spent a long time in the Nightmare World. Outside is bound to seem strange to her now.

  She wonders what Borden is doing.

  He’s not real.

  Everything will be okay, she thinks. Everything will be okay.

  The sky is darkening, but she has her own light inside. Not even the Nightmare World could kill it. Certainly the setting of the sun will not.

  Diego parks his car next to Ian’s Mustang in what is left of the day’s dying light. He kills the engine and steps outside. He squints at the interstate, then sprinkles tobacco into a rolling paper, rolls it, licks it, and sticks it between his lips. He thumbs the end of a match into a flame and lights his cigarette. It’s a loose roll and it burns quickly. It tastes good but in four drags it is burned down to his nicotine-stained knuckles. He drops it to the dirt and heels it into submission and walks toward a building fronted with a sign that says MOTEL/FOOD in hand-painted white lettering.

  The place is quiet but for the TV on the wall in the corner. It plays a series of loud and obnoxious commercials while a woman and a cook with a cigarette hanging from his lip play a game of cards.

  When the bell above the door clinks dumbly, the woman turns around and says, ‘Hi there, officer.’

  ‘Howdy.’

  ‘Are you here on business,’ the cook says, ‘or are you eating?’

  ‘I could eat.’

  ‘What’ll it be?’

  ‘What’s good?’

  ‘Cheeseburger.’

  ‘Then that’s what I’ll have.’

  ‘Fried egg on top?’

  ‘I’ll skip that part.’

  ‘American, Swiss, cheddar?’

  ‘Cheddar.’

  ‘All right, coming up. Fries?’

  ‘Onion rings.’

  ‘Will you be staying with us tonight?’ the brunette asks.

  ‘I hadn’t really thought about it. I reckon so. I stopped here because I’m looking for—’

  The door swings open behind Diego, the bell clinking, and he spins around. A stick of a woman in a denim skirt and a T-shirt, barefoot and with her hair mussed, comes in and her gaze shifts around the room till it finds him.

  ‘Ian wants to see you,’ she says.

  There is a smear of blood on the front of her T-shirt and another on her cheek.

  ‘Is he okay?’

  ‘I think so. He passed out for a second, but I . . . I think he’s okay now.’

  Diego nods. ‘Where’s he at?’

  She leads him outside and around to the back of the building where several single-wide mobile homes are scattered across the land, and there is Ian, walking out the front door of one of them in nothing but boxer shorts and a pair of black shoes. He is pale and his skin is almost translucent as cooked onion. His shirtless belly is very white and there is a tattoo on his right shoulder, though from where Diego is standing it just looks like a green-gray smudge. Sweat stands out in beads on his face. A tube runs from his chest and into a black satchel he carries in his right hand like a man spreading the good news.

  ‘Diego.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re okay?’ the woman says.

  ‘I’m fine. I just lost some blood and shouldn’t have bent down.’

  ‘I thought you were dead for a second.’

  ‘I don’t kill that easy.’

  ‘You look pretty near it,’ Diego says. ‘You need to rest.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Someone might be passing by. I need to be alert. Asleep isn’t alert.’ Then he looks to the woman. ‘Do you mind if I talk with my friend privately a minute?’

  ‘Yeah,’ the woman says. ‘I’ll just be up front. Sure you’re okay?’

  Ian nods. ‘Thank you.’ Then he looks toward Diego. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he says. ‘I need to sit down.’

  Ian sits on the edge of the bed and Diego pulls a wooden chair away from the wall and sits across from him. Diego hasn’t seen his friend since right after Henry Dean put a bullet through him and is shocked at how exhausted and sick he seems—somehow worse than when he lay in the gravel bleeding. He shouldn’t be up. He certainly shouldn’t be driving halfway across the country.

  ‘You killed Donald Dean,’ he says.

  ‘He was scum.’

  ‘He was a person. You didn’t have the right to—’

  ‘I know. I know that, Diego. But I did it anyway. I don’t give a shit about right or wrong. I want my daughter back. Once she’s safe, then I’m willing to face the consequences for what I’ve done . . . and for what I haven’t done yet. But until then, nothing is gonna stand in my way. Not Donald Dean, not a bullet, and certainly not you.’

  ‘You try to face off against Henry Dean in the shape you’re in, he’s gonna kill you.’

  ‘I don’t have a choice. He might be coming down that stretch of road in the next hour or two, unless the law catches up with him first, and I can’t be asleep if he does.’

  ‘It’ll be dark by then. He might drive right by.’

  ‘He might. If he does, I know where he’s headed. But if I’m not ready for him and he does decide this is the place he’s getting me off his back . . .’ Ian coughs into his hand. The sound is wet and comes from a very deep place. Ian’s face turns red. When he is done coughing he looks at his hand.
/>
  ‘Let me see.’

  Ian opens his palm toward him.

  A meaty wad of red in its center like a Christly stigma. Ian wipes it off on his blanket.

  ‘You need to get to a hospital.’

  ‘Not happening.’

  ‘Ian.’

  ‘Goddamn it, Diego. I didn’t ask you to come here.’

  ‘At least get some rest. We can park our cars around back so he can’t see them from the interstate. You can get some sleep, we can go after him tomorrow and finish this.’

  ‘He still could stop here.’

  ‘I’ll watch for him.’

  ‘If I agree to this I don’t want you with me tomorrow.’

  ‘We’ll talk about that then. What you need now is rest.’

  Ian closes his eyes. His mouth hangs open. He looks to be on the verge of falling asleep even as he sits there. Falling asleep or passing out, Diego cannot tell which. He wonders if Ian can. Ian opens his eyes again and looks at him for a long time.

  ‘You’re a good friend,’ he says finally. ‘You could have . . .’

  ‘I’m loyal to my friends. Now get some rest. I’ll move our cars around back.’

  ‘And . . . and you’ll watch for Henry.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Ian watches Diego walk out the door and close it behind him. He will have to convince Diego to go back to Bulls Mouth tomorrow. Ian doesn’t want him anywhere near what will have to happen if he’s to get Maggie back. But it’s good that he is here tonight. Ian is more tired than he can remember ever being. He is tired and not thinking straight. His eyes sting and his eyelids feel very heavy. If he closes his eyes that doesn’t mean he doesn’t love Maggie. It doesn’t mean he won’t get her back. It doesn’t mean anything. He’ll get her back tomorrow. But tonight he can sleep. Blessed sleep. Punishing himself will not get her back, nor will it prove his love. Diego is right. He needs to sleep. Henry will kill him if he doesn’t get some rest. He lies on the bed and feels hot and cold simultaneously and slightly nauseous as well. He deserves a little sleep. Who puts a fried egg on a cheeseburger? He is very tired. He had a friend in school who used to put potato chips on his bologna sandwiches. A little sleep now and lot of sleep once he gets Maggie back. Maybe fried egg is good on a cheeseburger. Someone should close the curtains. If anybody ever asks him again if he wants fried egg on his cheeseburger he’s going to say yes. Life is short. A person should only say no if they have to.