by Peter Craig
“Hey, and happy birthday, Kevin,” said his father. “No, I didn’t forget. I just didn’t have a chance to get away. Why don’t I give you some money and you can run out on the skateboard and buy yourself something. Take your time. How’s twenty?”
While with one hand Jerry pulled out his wallet and thumbed through bills, with the other he stroked around Colette’s hipbone and the small of her back. His fingertips were big and square, and she bowed faintly to the motion of them like a skittish cat, staring ahead and brushing her hair. She must have perceived the tension in Kevin from clenched fists and flared nostrils, because her face grew steadily more distant, as if staring out a train window at a fleeting landscape, leaving Jerry alone to explore the strange new surface of the nightdress. “Give him fifty,” she said. “I think his price just went up.”
EIGHT
In early March bathing suits bloomed on the store racks and Easter decorations spread across every icy window. Whole families of mannequins faced the stark light in sunglasses and Bermuda shorts, mothers with picnic baskets and canary straw hats. Pressed zigzags of snow fell from the treads of galoshes to thaw in department store aisles.
To check the status of a card, they would buy candy bars or six-packs in a convenience store. Only once was a card declined as stolen, prompting Colette to retreat and leap back into the truck, idling behind a trash bin; they were southbound on a farm road before she’d freed the seat belt from the slammed door. When the cards cleared, the day would start with Colette’s binges: brooches, topaz bracelets, diamond-studded barrettes. She’d give Jerry her fingers to kiss as she sank into a leather recliner. The promoted regional manager, his son, and pretty young wife, they celebrated up and down the escalators, lounging on bedroom displays and dollying out china cabinets. Colette would push out through the saloon doors of a dressing room to spin happily in a triptych of mirrors, while Kevin marveled at the giant stacks of televisions, a soap opera seen through the eyes of a wasp. Jerry needed power tools for fictional tree houses; Colette would stalk around every table and chair, mumbling to herself about its ideal place against the brocade curtains and over the Persian rug, trying to visualize a perfect harmony for their new chimerical home.
In a single week of manic shopping, they filled an entire moving van, a deluxe model with a door between bucket seats that linked the front cab to the storage in back. They packed to keep a passage open. When the last armfuls of clothes were thrown into the pile, they left town with Colette still taking stock in back, headed southbound on empty farm roads. Loaded up with caffeine tablets, Jerry drove straight through the afternoon and night, hollering his approval and disagreement at AM talk shows, as Colette rooted around in the stacks, an occasional fallen box rattling like aluminum stage thunder. Jerry laughed and said, “She’s going to get buried alive back there.”
When Jerry started singing along off-key to Johnny Cash songs, Kevin escaped through the cubbyhole door, back to Colette, past pillars of speakers, crates, and upended furniture. In a clearing amid the boxes and appliances, Colette had made a drawing room with a sofa, coffee table, chairs, and a wobbling antique lamp. The overhead light was the faint yellow of an industrial twilight, and the smell was like a burning tire. But even in the clutter, with the ground swaying beneath them, the close little arrangement of furniture looked homey and comfortable.
In her fake blue-blooded accent Colette said, “I’m terribly sorry about the state of things, but you know, since my husband went off to war we’ve been forced to retreat into the one room—to cut down on heating expenses.”
Kevin crawled over the boxes and lay down on the sofa. All around him were Grand Teton cliffs of crates and lamp shades, suitcases fallen sideways, the cabriole legs of overturned chairs and snowdrifts of spilled packaging. On his opposite side, a linen chest supported an entire rack of cellophane-wrapped clothes. A table saw buffeted a ridge of ice coolers filled with jewelry and silverware, and a chandelier sat crookedly on top with its crystals dangling like icicles off the edge. In every crevice, she had stuffed a beanbag chair or a garment bag for support. When they hit a bump in the highway, snares rattled under a collapsed drum set, and a hidden cymbal rang faintly like the prelude to a magic trick.
For a while Colette continued spelunking over boxes in her tight jeans, hair ragged over her face, trying to stabilize one side of the mess. With a groan, she said, “I seem to have misplaced the tea kettle.”
“I can’t handle the English lady right now, Colette. Seriously.”
She joined Kevin on the sofa, lifting his legs like a final piece of merchandise and placing them back down on her lap. “That’s fine. You don’t want to be associated with a fallen noblewoman. When you grow up, Kevin, promise me you’ll have better taste than this. I remember thinking we were going to be jewel thieves lounging around on the Riviera. Instead we’ve got the world’s largest collection of stolen power tools.”
“Dad says a good chainsaw is worth as much as a stupid locket.”
“And I’m sure he’ll have my name engraved on it.”
She lay down beside him. For an awkward moment, she nuzzled her shoulders against him, maneuvering until she cuddled up against his chest. They stared up at the yellow light, which flickered at each dip in the road, and he could feel each time the wheels lagged onto the lane dividers. She was rosy and humid from the work, and he inhaled the sweet fumes along her face and hair.
“So here’s our plan,” she said, louder now, as if they weren’t so close. “When you and I get married, we’ll have a moving wedding. Like on a train or a bus. No, not a bus, that’s too white trash. I’ve had enough of these discount capers as it is. We’ll rent out an entire train. So I’ll be marching down the aisle—and I’m going to have a gown that drags through sixteen cars, so there’ll have to be a lot of bridesmaids keeping the doors open, or I’ll get tangled up and never escape. We’ll be married by an engineer. Can they do that? Are they like ship captains? You’ll have to get to work on that.”
“When do you want to do this?”
“Oh, Kevin. Calm down. This is a long-term plan, sweetheart, not some whirlwind affair in the back of a truck. You’re going to have to be patient with me if we’re ever going to stand a chance.” They had braided their legs together, and Kevin closed his eyes now and tried to visualize something to control his excitement. He pictured trash bins, security cameras, a slathering Doberman pinscher chained to a barbed-wire fence. He tried anything to save himself from the embarrassment, but her smell and the swaying motion in her ribs was stronger than any image he could conjure up; until he thought of a funeral, with rows of distant family in black, and he recalled the starchiness of his clothes and how he had stood stiffly with his aunts, afraid to scratch his legs beneath the woolen pants. Colette gripped his hand more tightly, and said, so eerily that he thought she had read his mind, “This is like a pharaoh’s tomb. Do you believe in curses?”
“Stop that,” he said. “I’m superstitious, sure—but there’s nothing haunted about somebody else’s credit.”
“Well, I believe in the curse of Mr. Culpepper. Everything in here we’ll pay back somehow, whether we like it or not. Might as well live it up now, I guess. But if I have to burn for something, I wish it wasn’t this hideous couch.”
A few hours later, while Colette was asleep in a recliner across from him, the truck turned off the highway. From the disoriented series of right turns, Jerry seemed to get lost in a grid of streets. They stopped and idled. A chain gate rattled open and someone hollered directions over the rumble of the engine. Outside there was the metal clank of stacked pipes, a frantic dog chasing the tailgate, facetious applause as the motor shut off. Jerry had a murmured reunion with someone by the front cab, while the dog’s paws scrabbled against the side of the truck. “Get down from there, Sputnik. Where’s your ball, girl? Go get your ball.” When the back door raised open, Kevin could see blue sky behind coils of barbed wire and phone lines.
“I got a couple o
f stowaways in there,” said Jerry. “Maybe I’ll throw them into the deal.”
“Shit, Swift—look at this. We talking about the truck too?”
“I need some coffee before I talk about anything.”
When Kevin climbed out of the back, Jerry and his associate had already gone into a warehouse past shedding dandelions and a dismantled sink. The Rottweiler growled at him for a moment until Kevin put his hand out for her to sniff. She trotted away, distracted by some stench along the base of the weeded fence. Kevin found a secluded spot to pee, where severed screen doors rested against the high fence, their shaded backs pimpled with hornets’ nests. When he returned to the truck, Colette was sitting on the tailgate untangling a length of hair in front of her faintly crossed eyes. The man was shouting in the warehouse, and it took Kevin a moment to discern that it was a joke and not outrage. Jerry walked back with him and introduced the man as Perch. He was considerably shorter than Kevin, but from the way he swatted him on the shoulder and called him “champ,” he seemed to assume that Kevin was simply an overgrown child. Colette was also a forehead taller, and he rose onto the toes of his cowboy boots to greet her, smiling with his mouth shut, tongue slid behind his lips. When he stopped squinting, there were tiny, clean streaks radiating from the corners of his eyes. Jerry asked him how much he’d paid for a big place like this, but Perch kept staring at Colette, his neck tensed and shoulders raised. Distractedly he said, “Mmm-hmm. A pretty penny.”
While they discussed business inside, Colette and Kevin took turns throwing a chewed softball to Sputnik. Colette whispered to Kevin that she needed to pee so badly she might explode. But when Perch returned alone to offer them coffee, she just shielded her eyes from the sunlight behind him and nodded politely to his long speech about quitting the game to raise attack dogs in the desert. “Mmm-hmm, but y’all got some crazy balls driving around like this. You come to the right place. We need an appraisal first, got to be proper about these things. Sure you don’t want coffee?”
Colette shook her head. He put his hands up in the air and replied, “Okay, okay—your call, darlin’. Not going to hold you down and force it into you.”
“Thank you.”
“But you know what I think? I think you probably ain’t old enough to drink coffee. Shit—you ain’t any older than seventeen. You’re just a baby, huh. A big, pretty baby with a mean look on your face.”
Colette averted her eyes, and he seemed fascinated by the reaction, grinning at her profile, showing small, dingy teeth at the end of long gums.
“Where’s my dad?” asked Kevin.
“He’s inside, sport—don’t worry about it. He ain’t going nowhere. I just come out here to be a good host to you kids. It’s going to be a little while before we’re ready to unload this stuff, so, nothing I can get you? Some Cap’n Crunch? Maybe the prize is still inside! I can hook up one of these TVs and y’all can watch cartoons.”
Perch put his hands out, showing scars on his palms. He had the faint foam of colorless stubble on his cheeks and a yellow texture to his eyeballs. Kevin said, “We’re both fine. Thank you.”
“Well, I’ll get back inside then, talk things over with the Pied Piper.” He laughed, a hard scrape, then walked back toward the warehouse with a clowning dance in his step.
“Colette? He has a bathroom. Everyone does. Even Satan has a bathroom.”
“Yeah, right. One that locks from the outside.”
Kevin groaned and told her that he would find it for her. He stepped through a dim doorway into the cool warehouse air, smelling of aerosol and bicycle grease. He noticed first how the light angled through the high transoms into spots on the floor, one of which shined perfectly onto the silver skeleton of a disassembled car. There were three stripped frames; but, on a row of foldout tables, it appeared as if there were parts from hundreds of others, whole boxes of brake shoes, flywheels, the cross sections of rotor chambers. Everything lay in the meticulously ordered piles of a collector: foreign and domestic tires, rows of bucket seats all ducking forward in a line, the plucked wings of windshield wipers. Along the far wall, past the cars, there was a region of other merchandise: washers and dryers, refrigerators, a stack of TVs in the same pyramidal arrangement of a department store.
Perch’s laugh reverberated, and Kevin followed it through an alley of unfinished plywood walls to the stuffy office. The room was full of metal file cabinets and clamshell ashtrays; a dead geranium sat behind a barricade of green bottles. Perch had his face turned down and his mouth full of smoke. With a faint squeak of air, he said, “He’s not a narc, is he?”
They both laughed, Jerry spraying loose potato chip fragments. He took the joint from Perch, touched the ash loose with his fingertip.
“Colette needs to use the bathroom.”
“Oh yeah?” said Jerry. “And where do you fit into this little caper?”
Perch was laughing in shrill notes, but Jerry’s face stayed hard, his whole body remaining still, just a thread of fragrant smoke coming through his fingertips.
“I’m finding it for her.”
“So you two are bathroom buddies now? You’re supposed to go out in the woods and take turns watching for bears.”
At this, Perch was in such hysterics he put his head down and shook.
Jerry said, “Calm down, you idiot—you’re going to bust a blood vessel.”
Perch made a long, sighing release of air and said, “I missed this motherfucker. You got to come see me more often, you piece of shit. I’m going crazy down here.”
“Listen to this. I need a second opinion here. This kid vanished all night in the back of the truck with her, and this morning, all of a sudden, he’s in charge of her bladder.”
Perch couldn’t hold the laugh and he blurted it out through his lips. Jerry grinned reluctantly and said, “Get a hold of yourself, man. I’m trying to get a bead on this situation here—I don’t need a fucking hyena as my counsel.” He turned to Kevin and pointed with his smoking fingertips. “She’s got you finding bathrooms for her now—what I’m wondering is, what else are you finding for her?”
Kevin took a hard breath through his teeth. He was gripping both sides of the doorjamb with his eyes down at the shedding carpet.
“Ah, he’s a good boy, Jerry. Leave him alone.”
“I’m not worried about him. Shit. What do you think I’m talking about here? Look at him—this guy is puberty on wheels, man. He doesn’t have any control.”
“Your will is not your own,” said Perch. “It is a perilous journey, my boy.”
“That woman—she’s all about getting what she wants. Anyplace the road goes, you know what I mean?”
“She just has to take a piss, Dad. That’s the only place the road is going.”
“I’m talking straight to you right now—and you’re not really hearing me, bud. She wants a bathroom—oh, sure. Now it’s a bathroom. Pretty soon it’s everything else. Then, suddenly, you’re a slave. Standing outside a shoe store. Holding a purse.”
Jerry frowned in an exaggerated and childlike way; then with his forehead raised into a stack of wrinkles, he took a hard drag and handed the roach back to Perch. As he thought, he seemed to chew the smoke in his mouth, until a wisp escaped as if from a blanketed campfire, and he added, his voice tinny and small, “I’m glad we finally had this little talk,” and he laughed loose a cloud.
Eventually Kevin found the bathroom, a tiny, fetid alcove where yellow weeds from outside laced through loose boards and a bee ricocheted between a grimy window and a fractured mirror. Colette was still outside. She followed with her arms crossed and her shoulders hunched, and he stood guard because the door didn’t lock. Sputnik roamed inside and trotted around, collar jingling, claws tapping on smooth concrete. When Colette came out, hair now tucked behind her ears, she inhaled deeply through her nose as if she had held her breath the entire time inside. “Let’s hope there wasn’t a hidden camera in there.”
For the next hour they sat Indian legge
d in a clearing of cattail grass and made piles of little rocks on his skateboard. Colette told Kevin that she wanted to be treated like a lady for once in her life. She was her own woman, of course, and no, she wasn’t going to expect some hero on a white horse. For God’s sake, she would open her own doors, she would make her own money, pay for a meal now and then, it wasn’t a question of petty things like that. It was a deeper sense of respect—for mystery and complexity—a kind of appreciation that perhaps couldn’t be found around here, maybe not even in this whole stinking country. “See, I think it’s about class, sweetie. You could soak that dwarf for six months in a spa and you wouldn’t get the prison stink off him. And robbing every damn factory outlet doesn’t add up to a Tiffany, you know. I think, basically, people take on the qualities of whatever they steal. If you’re high end, then you’ve got some leeway; but if it’s clearance sales at Pic-N-Save, then you’re more or less competing with the cockroaches. I had to twist your father’s arm to boost anything worth more than a few hundred dollars.”
Three teenagers passed sideways through the narrowly opened gate. Perch poked his head out of the dim doorway, beyond a growing haze of gnats, and called to them in poor Spanish. The boys had stern faces and slicing eyes, and Kevin could tell they hated the little man from the way their bodies slouched at his commands. Listlessly, they unloaded everything onto the driveway; and then, in a haze of dust, they continued moving furniture along the path into the warehouse. Once they had moved the heavy appliances, they quickly grew impatient, and Kevin could decipher enough Spanish to hear them cursing La Perca as lazy and cheap and a puto maricon.
When Perch and Jerry emerged, their faces looked like they’d never touched sunlight, agonized squints and bright red cheeks. Perch had a gust of energy so uncontainable that he ignored all his assistants to play fetch with the dog in the high grass, each stride casting up more seeds and gnats.