by Pete Hautman
His office may have once been the master bedroom. Sophie halted at the door, fearful of entering. The far wall was braced by a collection of four-, five-, and six-drawer file cabinets, all different heights, widths, makes, and colors, all featuring no fewer than two open drawers, and all capped by piles of folders and papers that could only be the result of years of careful stacking The floor of the office also supported a mass of paperwork, mostly piled along the walls and, except for one teetering stack, limited to a height of four feet. Everything seemed to lean in toward the center of the room, drawn in by the mountainous jumble of books and files that dominated the space and served to mark the location of Knox’s desk. Sophie was afraid it was all going to come crashing in on her.
Axel put his hand on Sophie’s back and coaxed her into the room. Knox moved two piles of documents from a pair of wooden side chairs, then wiped his hands on the shiny lapels of his black twill suit. Axel directed Sophie to one of the chairs and sat beside her.
Knox sat behind his desk and smiled at them, his chin barely clearing the stacked documents. Frank Knox was an ashen, wispy-haired man. The hands he folded in front of his chin had a gray, powdery aspect, the nails stark yellow in contrast to the surrounding flesh. Large-lensed, black- rimmed bifocals made his face seem insubstantial, as though he were made of dust and the shiny suit was all that contained him. Sophie thought he looked like a ghost.
“I guess I should congratulate you,” he said to Sophie, sliding his glasses up his long nose with a gray forefinger.
Sophie folded her arms over her breasts and nodded, her expression serious. The air in the room was suffused with a familiar chemical smell. What was it?
Knox looked at Axel and raised his eyebrows.
Axel said, “Frank has put together a contract for us, Sophie. Frank? You want to explain to her how we’re going to do this?”
Knox nodded, causing his glasses to slide down his nose. He cleared his throat and began to talk.
By the time he had finished his explanation, Sophie’s lips had become a thin line, her face was pink, and her breasts hurt from the pressure of her tightly crossed arms.
“You said you were going to make me your partner,” she said, not looking at Axel.
Axel, as relaxed as Sophie was tense, smiled broadly and said, “That’s what we’re trying to do. But we have to do these things right.”
“What’s he talking about, ten percent?”
“Excuse me,” Knox said. “I’ll be right back.” He left the room.
“He’s going to wash his hands,” Axel whispered. “Kill the germs.”
“What’s that smell?”
“Rubbing alcohol. That’s what he washes his hands with.”
“What’s this about ten percent? You said we were going to be full partners.”
“It’s ten percent a year,” Axel said. “Every year you get another ten percent, and in five years you own half of Axel’s Taco Shop. Fifty percent. We have to do it that way because of taxes.”
Sophie shook her head.
“I can’t just give you half the business all at once,” Axel said. “It doesn’t work that way. We’re valuing the business at one hundred thousand dollars, even though it’s worth twice that, and you’d never be able to pay the taxes on fifty grand. If I just up and gave it to you, you’d be stuck with a twenty-thousand-dollar tax bill.”
Sophie said, “Five years? What if…”
Axel waited a moment, but she did not finish her sentence. “You want to know what if I die,” he said for her.
Sophie nodded.
“Then you’ll have to negotiate with your new partner. My share of the business will go to my heir.”
“Your heir?”
“Yeah. Alice.”
She looked at Axel. “Alice from California? You’re leaving it to Alice?”
“Yup.” Axel grinned. Alice Zimmerman was his sister, a bad-tempered, disapproving, formidable matron who, contrary to the usual aging sequence, had grown taller, louder, and stronger in her advancing years. Axel had seen her only once in the last decade—two years ago she had flown out from San Diego for an unannounced seven-day visit, a week that left Axel with a bad stomach and a lifetime’s worth of unsolicited advice. Alice had never approved of Axel or his friends, particularly his women friends.
“You don’t even like her. You told me you never wanted to see her again as long as you lived.”
“That’s right, I don’t. And I won’t have to.”
“Alice hates me.”
Axel shook his head sympathetically. “Yeah, that could be a problem. But you don’t have to worry about it now. I’ve decided I’m not gonna die till later.”
On the ride back to the fairgrounds, Axel kept the conversation going by telling Sophie how great it would be to be partners. Sophie watched the traffic, gripping the armrest and pushing her right foot against the floor, trying to make the truck go faster. She didn’t like being a passenger.
“I’ll stop by Midway Sign and get a guy out to paint your name on the stand. Axel and Sophie Speeter, Proprietors.”
Sophie gave Axel a sharp look. “Sophie Roman,” she said.
Axel turned red.
“You’re blushing!” Sophie said, her face breaking up into laughter.
“Anyway, I’ll get the guy out to paint it.”
They rode along in silence. Axel rested his hand on her back. It felt good. She had never seen Axel blush before.
“It’s going to be great,” he said again. “We’ll make one hell of a team.”
Sophie was starting to believe it. She reached up and put her hand over his, held it there against the back of her neck.
Axel’s Taco Shop was still standing when they returned. Carmen and Kirsten had handled a few minor emergencies, and failed to deal with a few others, but people were still lining up and pushing their money across the counter. That was what counted. Sophie tied on an apron and dove into the fray. Axel went for a walk, heading down Carnes Avenue with no destination in mind.
The idea of making Sophie his partner had grown quickly, like the idea of buying a new truck, or the decision to pay for Carmen’s schooling. He was glad he’d acted while the idea was still fresh and clean and free from doubts and overanalytical thinking. This streak of impulsiveness had been with him all his life. It didn’t hit him as often now, but when it did, he embraced it as a sign that the young man still resided within him.
He no longer had to wonder whether he wanted Sophie in his life. It was done. They were partners now, for better or worse. He’d felt this way after committing himself to a big poker hand, after buying the Taco Shop, after burying his money in Sam’s backyard.
A sudden movement from above caught his eye. He looked up, to see a round metal cage fly straight up into the air, reach a height of about one hundred feet, then tumble earthward. Two screaming figures were locked into the cage. The Ejection Seat, one of the fair’s newest attractions, was a cross between a giant slingshot and a bungee cord. Sixty bucks a ride, and they had a constant line of thrill-seekers waiting to get strapped in and shot skyward. Axel grinned and watched the cage bounce up and down between the sixty-foot-high towers. He understood how they felt, and why they paid the money. The thrill was in the decision to go for it, the idea of being strapped in, the moment before the slingshot was triggered.
Chapter 27
Axel snapped the padlock closed and took one last walk around the outside of the restaurant. Everything seemed to be in order. Most of the concessions on the mall were closed, or closing. Sophie had gone home. Carmen slumped on a bench, smoking a cigarette. Axel wished, as he often did, that he still smoked. The end of the day was a good time for a cigarette. He missed the break, and the morsel of warmth that came with a good cigarette.
Tiny Tot Donuts remained open, feeding the last of the grandstand crowd. Tommy Fabian sat on his stool, looking as though he might fall off at any moment.
It took fifteen minutes for Axel to talk Tommy int
o closing. By the time the kids had shut down the machines and finished cleaning, it was nearly midnight. Axel helped Tommy lock down the stand.
Carmen had fallen asleep on her bench. Axel gave her a gentle shake.
“Let’s hit the road, kiddo.”
They walked to the truck in silence. Both Carmen and Tommy looked like they were going to pass out. Tommy walked with one hand inside his shirt, like his gut hurt.
They were almost to the Winnebago when it occurred to Axel that Tommy might be holding on to something besides himself.
Axel gave Tommy’s elbow a nudge. “What you got there, Tom?”
Tommy glared up at him. “I don’t want to hear it, Ax.”
“Administration sees you packing a gun again, you could lose your spots.”
“I run into that Bald Monkey again, it’ll be worth it.”
In the truck, as they pulled into the motel parking lot, Carmen roused herself to ask, “What’s Sophie so hyper about, anyway?”
Axel said, “Sophie? What do you mean, hyper?”
“All day she was all over my case. All of a sudden she’s worried about I might put too much meat in somebody’s taco. You’d think I was giving away money, the way she’s been acting.”
Axel forced his face to assume a serious expression. “Really?”
“Yeah. She’s turned into a real bitch all of a sudden. I don’t get it.”
Axel could hardly contain himself. This partnership was going to work out great. Grinning, he asked, “So how much meat are we talking about here?”
Carmen opened the passenger door and said, “You’re just as weird as she is.”
“Get some sleep,” Axel said. “You’ll feel better tomorrow. Try to get in before the lunch rush, okay?”
Carmen closed the truck door and waved him away. Her head hurt. She was tired and she was bored.
She could hear Dean’s voice before she opened the door.
He was sitting on the writing table, his booted feet resting on the chair, reading from his poetry book. He looked up briefly as Carmen entered, then continued reading. On the bed directly in front of him sat a young giant with arms the circumference of her waist. He wore an olive-drab tank top, khaki-colored cotton duck pants, and a pair of boots like Dean’s, only bigger. His head was shaved, and most of his forehead was covered by a swollen, scabby bruise. He didn’t look up at Carmen but kept his eyes fixed on Dean, his arms rigid and flexed, his jaw pulsing every few seconds.
“No man hath affliction enough, that is not matured and ripened by it, and made fit for God by that affliction,” Dean read.
Behind the giant, who took up most of the bed, a boy of perhaps seventeen, also bald, lay gazing up at the ceiling tiles, hands laced behind his head. He wore shredded black denim jeans and a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots held together with silver duct tape. Carmen closed the door and leaned against it.
“How’d you get in?” she asked Dean.
The boy with the cowboy boots toned his head. “Pork just fuckin’ picked it,” he said, showing her his collection of mottled gray teeth.
“Pork?”
Dean read, “This Soule, now free from prison, and passion, hath yet a little indignation.“
This, Carmen thought, is too weird. She walked quickly between Dean and the giant, heading for the bathroom, hoping to give herself a minute to think. She found another intruder, bent over the back of the toilet tank, using a razor blade to chop chunks of dry white matter into powder.
“What you got there?” Carmen asked, forgetting her confusion. “Coke?”
The man turned his head and leered at her while he continued chopping the lumps into powder with short, rapid strokes. He was the most feral-looking of the group, possibly due to the furry patch that served to connect his eyebrows with his long, meaty nose. Also, he had neglected to shave for some time, and his head and face were covered with short, dense dark hairs.
“We don’t do yuppie dope,” he said.
Carmen looked curiously at the lines he was now making on the white porcelain. “What is it?” she asked.
“Crank. You’re Carmen, I bet. I’m Pork.”
“Pork? Crank?” Carmen was looking at the lines. “Is it any good?” she asked.
Pork grinned. “Pure crystal meth. You could drive all the way to L.A. on a quarter gram.” He rolled a five-dollar bill into a tube the diameter of a pencil and handed it to her. “Want a little wake-up?”
A few minutes later, Pork followed Carmen out of the bathroom, carrying the top to the toilet tank. Carmen’s nose throbbed agonizingly, but it was getting better. She could feel the amphetamine flooding her system.
Dean was explaining something to the kid in the shredded denim, who was now sitting up on the bed, next to the giant. They were both leaning forward intently, listening. The words spilled from Dean’s mouth, tumbling over one another. “It’s not you, Tigger. That’s the whole point. It’s everybody. So it’s like you are part of the nigger, and part of the yuppie, and part of the whore, and like they are part of you.”
“Bullshit,” said Tigger.
“Look,” said Dean. “What do you do when you got a big zit, big old whitehead, hanging off the end of your nose. You squeeze it off, right? And you got a right and an obligation to do that, right? On account of you don’t want people to get sick from looking at you, right? And what do you do when your little sister, who is a part of you—”
“I ain’t got a sister.”
“Well, suppose you did, and she’s like a part of you, which she would be, and she starts hooking, doing coke and smack, and hanging out with the niggers. What’s the righteous thing to do?”
“Me an’ Sweety fuckin’ kick ass on her and the niggers both.”
“Exactly. What I’m saying is, it’s on account of you got to because they are a part of you. Which is what my man Donne is on about. When the fucking bell fucking tolls, you better fucking listen, on account of it means somebody needs to get their fuckin’ head kicked.”
The giant, who had been nodding energetically, curled a meaty arm around Tigger’s head and started rapping his knuckles against his skull. “Lemme soften his head up. He don’t listen.”
Tigger twisted loose. “Fuck you, Sweety.”
“‘Fuck you, Sweety,’” Sweety parroted, pitching his voice as high as he could get it.
“Hey,” said Pork, still holding the ceramic toilet tank top. “I gotta set this down someplace.”
Dean slid off the writing desk. “Right here,” he said. He looked at the lines, six neat parallel slashes of white on white.
“Me and Carmen here, we already got our consciousnesses raised. This is for you guys. You ready for seconds, Deano?”
“You better go first,” Sweety said to Tigger. “Your conscious got more climbing to do.”
Tigger said, “Fuck you,” but he took the rolled-up bill from Pork and did his two lines quickly, one up each nostril, and threw himself back on the bed, holding his hands over his nose.
Pork laughed. “Stings, don’t it? That’s how you know it’s good.”
Pork and Carmen watched Sweety and Dean do their lines, then Carmen opened the cooler and distributed warm canned martinis.
“Awright,” said Sweety. “We gonna have a party.”
“Where’d you guys come from?” Carmen asked.
“Headquarters,” Tigger said.
“Drove over here in Tigger’s Caddy,” Dean said. “Man, that is one big ugly car you got there, Tigger.”
Tigger grinned. “The Black Beauty.”
“It’s a fuckin’ tank.”
“Got a big old five-hundred-cubie V-8.”
“So we drove on over here, sitting around reading John Donne, working on Sweety’s head, man. These guys never heard of Donne before. Sitting around waiting all day for the Porker to show—”
“I got hung up,” said Pork.
“It was worth it,” said Dean, pinching his nose. “This is great shit. I want it. I want it all
. So anyway, we sit around here waiting, but at least Tigger got done with Sweety’s tattoo, man. What do you think?”
Carmen, enjoying the buzz but with no idea what was going on, asked, “Are you guys from Omaha?” She pulled a cigarette out of her pack.
“Gimme one of them,” Sweety said. “Gimme two.” Carmen handed him two cigarettes.
“We’re from Frogtown, man,” Tigger said.
“I found ’em,” Dean said.
“Bullshit,” Sweety said. “We found you. You didn’t know where the fuck you was.” He had both cigarettes in his mouth. Carmen lit them.
Dean said to Carmen, “Went into this bar, place full of factory creeps, and Tigger comes up.”
“Stepped on my fucking toe,” Tigger said.
“So we start bullshittin’.”
“Skins hang together,” Sweety said, sucking hard on his cigarettes.
“So I asked these guys if they knew where I could get some speed.”
Carmen’s head was waggling back and forth as she tried to follow the conversation, retaining almost none of it. Her eyes settled on Sweety’s forehead. “What happened to your head?”
Sweety grinned, contorting his brow.
“It’s a tattoo,” Dean said.
Carmen looked at it for several seconds before distinguishing the words FUCK ME.
“Fuck you?”
“You got it, bitch. Fuck me fuck me fuck me.” He stood up and moved toward Carmen, his arms held out before him.
Dean pulled Axel’s .45 out of his jacket, pointed it at Sweety, and said, “Bang.”
Sweety clapped his hands over his chest and fell back on the bed. “Arrrgh. You got me. I’m fucking dead.”