Bullets of Rain

by David J. Schow

  Most of the subsequent nine months-give or take-vanished into Art's recycling bin in the form of empty bottles, or up his reconstructed nose in the form of cocaine. It took another year to resurrect his career, and these days he stuck to occasional beer and wine. He let his hair grow out again and tied it back, not minding the gray threads that appeared and gradually got longer, seemingly because he was looking right at them.

  He had incorporated as Lattitude, Ltd., punning on his own name. Latimer plus attitude. I don't know about "Art," but I know what I like. His business cards were arrogantly stark-two geometric lines resembling open boundaries embossed in show-off metallic ink, the company name, and a row of reps and contact numbers, one of which was for Charlie Brill, an agent who had actually sold some of Art's designs as framed collectibles. Art always signed Latt in the appropriate box on the blueprints.

  Blitz mooched a bite of bagel that vanished down his gullet with no chewing whatsoever. CNN advised that the government was vaporlocked as usual and Wall Street was caterwauling over a single-percentage-point drop in something or other. Children were starving to death in India and 70 percent of the people in Africa, it appeared, were HIV positive. A hot-air balloonist had crashed and drowned somewhere between Art's home and Hawaii. In Los Angeles, the heat was on to make random weapon sweeps of private homes legal; Art thought of the Hitler Channel. San Franciscans were advised to button up for a big, wet storm over the weekend. Art's porch barometer was dropping steadily.

  The satellite dish feed offered five hundred channels of nothing. Art picked up the novel he had begun… what, weeks, months ago? Yesterday? He was only fifty pages in.

  Lorelle's bailiwick had been fiction, for which Art had little time among the temptations of research and tech journals. Occasionally he made a stab at reading for entertainment and was usually disappointed, feeling he had to process too much to gain not enough. Make-believe just did not grab him, although he presently made sorties into the novels Lorelle had left behind, as if preserving one of her favorite pastimes would help her endure in memory.

  His habit was to read at night, before dozing off, but he sensed oncoming defeat, and… sure enough. He lasted through a few more chapters of the overwrought bestseller about a made-up serial killer, and knew he would read no further. There; a decision had been made and it was still early in the day. Art found invented fiends far less interesting than genuine killers, although he could argue persuasively that Jack the Ripper was probably the most infamous "invented'' serial murderer in all history. Few candidates held a candle to H. H. Holmes, the guy who had constructed his " Murder Castle " in Chicago just in time to prey upon the throngs that came to experience the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Far fewer tomes had been written about Holmes than saucy Jack. Art had accumulated a respectable short shelf of true crime, and had done a great deal more reading since Lorelle's death.

  The telling of stories was fundamental to human nature, an expression of the anthropological need for the species to constantly arrange things into cogent groupings, which trait was supposedly its most salient distinction from the lower orders. Humankind organized thoughts, wants, needs, and dreams into a coding called language, expressed via spoken words, then put that conveniently opposable thumb to the task of ordering that language into graphic symbols. All human interaction was based on storytelling, one individual or group relating a story to another. You got together with your friends and swapped stories, or voiced opinion on topical events called news. Everybody decided what political or religious stories spoke to their condition, and new stories were fomented much in the manner of a spreading virus. Art, already a compulsive arranger, was aware that he had begun absorbing stories from pages and screens and displays as an alternate form of human contact. Not many actual humans were loitering around his life, at the moment, to listen while he told his own story, which he felt was cunningly one-note… right now, anyway.

  In the bathroom he spoke to himself again in the mirror. "Your ballroom days are over, baby."

  ***

  By noon it was time to "do shots." Blitz understood what that meant in purely selfish dog-terms; it meant he would be permitted to sortie downbeach a certain distance and then return, since he did not care for the loud noises made by his Person.

  In the back of Art's master bedroom closet was a fireproof Corsair gun safe, half-stocked with maximal security lockboxes that guarded certificates, a few bits of jewelry, and petty cash. These were stacked atop a disused shortwave radio with its own power supply. The rest of the space stored his gun collection, including several collector's items that could technically be defined as illegal. He drew down an overpriced Benelli shotgun with a pistol grip and a pair of handguns, both hanging on pegs in shoulder holsters-a Beretta 92F nine-millimeter and a big-cock Desert Eagle.45. All the weapons were loaded. (Art's father had taught him this was the best way to prevent an "accidental" shooting with a rig presumed to be "unloaded.")

  Art's improvised, bare-bones range was on the north side of the house, where what he laughingly called his "yard" hung on for dear chlorophyllic life. He had provided for this lawn area in the basic plan of the house and had thrown a board fence around it with a future eye toward cactus, or some hearty gardening-indistinct plans for amateur horticulture that became extinct once Lorelle had been removed from the equation. Now the lawn was more like one of those welcome mats woven of tough brown fiber, the beds for flowers or plants gone to weedy dirt. Salt air had killed the grass to the point where every footstep raised chaff. Hardier grasses sprouted from the dunes separating the house from the highway, but Art had nothing to do with that.

  He cut Blitz loose to roam and arranged a lineup of two-liter plastic beverage jugs scrounged from the big recycling bin. Filled with water, they took hits most impressively. Art knew bowling pins to be the target of choice for gun geeks because a bowling pin was an "anatomically correct" sketch of the hit zone on a human being, from narrow chin to fatter sternum, but he enjoyed the way the plastic bottles responded. A nine-millimeter hollow-point round would punch a hole the size of a Bic pen and blast an exit path as big as a dessert plate, causing the bottles to somersault, pinwheeling jets of tap water. The.45 cut them in half like a scythe, and the shotgun caused them to simply disintegrate.

  Behind the rickety post rail of bottles at waist height, Art hung regulation paper targets on a nylon clothesline, for the usual plinking. The sky was a dirty dustmop hue, and more than once Art felt speckles of moisture on his bare forearms as he set up.

  He destroyed a few of the bottles with the Beretta, alternating to the paper targets for double- and triple-tap shots. Each round blew a sonic cocoon of air toward his face. Blowback was an oddly pleasing sensation, but the targets were already dancing in the wind, unstable, some barely tethered. No good for skill.

  Concentrate, raise, sight, lire. The motion had to be fluid, more natural, making the gun an extension of his reach. Not plinking, now. As he tried to focus, he knew that he was in danger of retrofitting Lorelle into some kind of no-fault goddess. The conundrum of death was that it sometimes made the dear departed perfect, an icon against whom the still living could never compete. He and Lorelle had navigated through many fights and conflicts; that was just part of getting accustomed to someone who fit you like one hand into another, even though they were inside different skins.

  They'd once had a terrific argument about guns, for example.

  ***

  Lorelle is wearing astonishingly brief cutoffs and no underwear, which gives her a low-blow advantage as she assumes what Art has come to know as her defensive posture. She's on the sofa, knees drawn up to her chin, ankles crossed, arms hugging legs, eyes set in infinity focus. It is summer and sea aerates the house, blasting through open windows and doors to rinse out the ambient staleness. Most of the reconstruction of the house is complete, or relegated to buffer zones in need of tweaking. Whenever Lorelle speaks and does not look at him, he knows they have spread their picnic blanke
t in a minefield.

  "If it's for self-defense, why do you need a dozen of them?''

  "I like the hardware. Call it a boy thing.''

  "You're talking about them as if they're toys. Look at a handgun. It exists for only one purpose-to kill people.''

  "And a lot of people act irresponsibly when it comes to their basic rights or freedoms, and I'm not any of them."

  "God, you're starting to sound like an ad for the NRA. All that Second Amendment garbage made sense during the Revolutionary War, but not now. Now you've got gun nuts hiding behind the Constitution, the same way censors hide behind children."

  I love you, Art thinks. Anyone else would button their lip, be less honest, let it ride. Nevertheless, this was an argument, and they had both sailed through debate at the collegiate level, which made them ruthless.

  "You're what those 'gun nuts' call a 'limping bunny in the meadow.' "

  That gets a rise out of her. "What the fuck is that supposed to mean?" Now she is looking directly at him, but he is ready for the double-barreled blast of her gaze.

  "Think it over: If you're a hungry predator, what do you dream about? A limping bunny in the meadow. Bunnies are tasty and can't hurt you when you kill them. Limping bunnies can't bounce away and make you waste energy by chasing them. A meadow is a wide-open space with no place to hide; the grass betrays the bunny's every move."

  "What if the bunny is limping because it has gangrene?" she says. "What if the bunny is faking it so the predator will step into a bear trap hidden by the grass?" She waggles her eyebrows.

  "Limping bunnies are people who don't consider the reality of their own vulnerability. Like people who expect the police to protect them from burglars in the house. Like drunks who act out in public with strangers because they never think those strangers might kick them in the face until they die while they scream for help."

  "So you're saying that the muffin in the leather mini and fuck-me pumps, who's staggering around a bar parking lot at two-thirty in the morning, deserves to be attacked, right?"

  "No. But she is a limping bunny."

  "That is still the stupidest thing I've ever heard," she says, wincing from its truth. "What does that have to do with all that 'We the People' stuff people use as an excuse to arm up for their own personal world war?"

  "Every time the word people appears in the Constitution, it refers to an individual right, not a collective one. The mechanism of change is inherent in the document. If the country doesn't like it anymore, then we'll have a sort of Prohibition on firearms, and we all saw how that eradicated alcohol, right?"

  "So as a result of that kind of thinking-which is called paralogia, by the way-everybody now packs a zillion guns."

  "No, they don't. The issues are so polarized that it's a hot-button topic just by existing. There's nobody who doesn't have a furiously extreme position on guns; there are no gun moderates. Everyone is passionate. What most normal citizens don't know is that most times a gun is used for self-defense, it is not fired. All the times they're not fired are never included in the statistics… but suicides are. No fair."

  "You know as well as I do that statistics mean nothing. Zero. Either side can use the same damned statistics to support whatever position they favor, because it's all selective vision.''

  "Okay, then look at it this way: Most normal citizens have never actually had the experience of feeling like prey. Of being helpless, and having a predator grinning at them."

  He is accessing a thorny memory, and he knows it. Lorelle had been date-raped in college by a charming footballer whose draft prospects went swirling because he felt he was owed sex. Of the two, Lorelle had recovered more admirably.

  "Low blow, Arthur." She makes a little hissing noise of disgust, because he is breaking the rule about making the conflict personal. "Even if I'd had a gun, I wouldn't have shot him. I don't think it's right to take another human life."

  "Guy wasn't a human in any sense of the word. Chances are, if you'd had a gun, you would never have had to fire it. He would've backed off. No rape, no hospital, no therapy, no screening for AIDS, no self-loathing.''

  "You're really being a prick about this," she says, pointed and sullen, now determined to sting him in return. "What if things didn't go as conveniently as you say and I did have to fire it? Then I'd be a murderer. Think of the self-loathing then."

  "Point. But abstract the idea: If you have handguns, then women don't have to depend on men for defense. That's why they were called equalizers. If everybody's armed, everybody else gets a lot more polite."

  "I don't depend on men for defense."

  "Sexist."

  "Nothing personal," she lies. "That's one of the more bloated male fantasies."

  "Is it? If there was trouble, wouldn't you call a cop?"

  "What if it was a lady cop?" She cracks a tiny smile at that; it's better because they both know they shouldn't be sniping at each other.

  "Police do not magically show up to make things better. That's one of the mass delusions of our age. That's bunny thinking. I wouldn't depend on the police for anything, I mean, Christ, look where we live. Think of the response time."

  "Oh, now we're on the wild frontier all of a sudden."

  "It's a state of mind, that lawless wilderness. It occurs in the flash of a synapse. All it takes is some nitwit on PCP seeing the lights on and deciding to knock over the house. Zap-you're lost in the woods with no light, and no ability to defend yourself."

  "You can hide. Run away. The impulse is fight or flight."

  "Not if the guy after you can run faster and jump higher, or sniff out your hiding place."

  "Now you're getting into this whole caveman macho thing: Me crushums all enemies. That's not me. The fact of the matter is that there are too friggin many mental deficients out there toting guns already."

  "They're the predators. I say arm the prey."

  "There's like two firearms for every man, woman, and child in the country now. Too many; it's already overkill. Nobody asks all those gun nuts to take a psych test, or even demonstrate the barest competence or responsibility. You just go in, sign a paper, wait a couple of weeks, and you're loaded for bear. You can walk right out of the store with a rifle and ammo, same day."

  "So let's say that in order to own a firearm, you have to prove to an instructor that you know how to handle a weapon. I'm all for that. Any imbecile with an opposable thumb can get a driver's license, and cars kill more people than handguns. So let's ban cars."

  "Now you're being ridiculous."

  "Not really. What I'm saying is that given a choice between a sweeping sort of police state versus sensible rules, I know what ought to play in a democracy. Let politicians pass laws that allow cops to bust into your house with no prior cause, just rooting around for weapons? No thanks. But pass a test that proves you can responsibly use a gun? What the hell-throw the politicians their bone, because they'll always need an issue to chew on, and if that calms them down, I'd rather submit to a test of my own ability as opposed to mob rule."

  "Mob rule id a democracy," she says. "The greater good for the majority equals the lowest common denominator for everybody."

  "I love you when you talk like that."

  "I don't need a gun, anyway. I have a police dog." Blitz cues directly to the word dog, and plops down close enough for Lorelle to wrap her legs around him, ruffling fur with her bare toes. She has beautiful, gracile feet and Art feels a wanton surge.

  "We have an almost police dog who is goofy and undependable. And who won't fit in your purse."

  Blitz regards Art with his tongue hanging out, a full serving of idiotic love, making Art's argument for him.

  "I am not going to become a pistol-packin' mama."

  "I'm saying just a little personal tool, to carry around, so light you won't even feel it, but you'll know it's there if ever you get boxed in. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it. Like a little Baby Eagle you can carry cocked and locked. Or a-"


  "Oh please, don't start fetishizing the damned things. 'Baby' Eagle; Jesus H. Christ."

  "I'm not fetishizing them."

  "No? Ever take a close look at those gun magazines? The photo spreads are more lewd than Hustler."

  "When were you ever looking at gun magazines?" Art gives her his penetrating-inquisitor look. I just found out something about you. "I know I don't subscribe to any of them."

  "Are all your guns legit? Registered? Accounted for?''

  "Not all of them, no. I've got a couple of unpapered ones."

  "Why?"

  "Because it's a collection, not an arsenal. Because I'm an enthusiast, not a gun nut. And because if Confiscation Day ever rolls around in the great state of California, I want backup."

  "Listen to yourself. You're rationalizing all this with jargon, and sprouting a big ole woody just thinking about all your firepower. That's so teenaged. If you're just an 'enthusiast,' then why don't you wear those headphones when you shoot outside?"

  "So I'll know what my gear sounds like in a combat situation, so there are no surprises, so I won't flinch, so I can keep my attention on the target without distractions. Which is also why I shoot at night sometimes-so I'll know what the muzzle flash is like, what the conditions look like; so I'll be prepared to do it for real."

  Lorelle liberates a huge sigh. "You're still doing it-rhapsodizing over your guns. It's compulsive. Are you paranoid, or do you just feel vulnerable and weak, not able to face the world without a shootin’ iron?"

  "They're just guns. Lorelle." Art resents the trap into which she has led him.

  "Don't you dare use my name like my mom, dressing me down. I hate that."

  Gladly, his back is turned when she cuts that one loose. He has moved to the fridge to find a drink. "Sorry," he calls from the kitchen, making it more an acknowledgment and less an apology.

  "And if they're just guns, why do you have a dozen of them? Plus a shotgun."