Bullets of Rain

by David J. Schow

  "Yeah, Tommi was a dog with no papers, all right. He had a bungalow to himself near the beach-everything in Kaunakakai is 'near the beach'-all to himself because his previous chick just moved out on him, emptied the closets and vanished. Which left him with six weeks free rent and free cable, but without a fuck bunny for the weekend, which is where Erica comes in."

  "And Erica, who has a level head up until this moment, gets swept off her feet?"

  "No, she got swept onto her back," said Derek. The sting of memory still held residual venom, and the power to hurt him. "You ever read that fairy tale, The Girl Who Loved the Wind?"

  "Is it a classic?"

  "No, it's a modern one, written in the Seventies. I checked it out. A girl has this overprotective father who keeps her inside this fabulous garden, to shield her from the wickedness of the world. It's a gilded cage that also protects her from anything real, and finally the Wind, which whispers of the world's promise and endless possibilities, blows over the wall and woos her away. It's a loss-of-innocence parable; you can read it as anything from gaining maturity to loss of virginity."

  "And you're the evil, imprisoning father figure."

  "Sort of. Erica saw our relationship as a box, and I thought it was a safe house; I mean, everyone's got to deal with the world. Instead of us progressing to four or five on the relationship scale, which is scary and intimidating, she decided to go 'back to one,' as the movie people say."

  "With some rock'n'roll dood with no attachments, no obligations, and no worries."

  "Yeah, he was the Wind, and he blew her." Derek snickered at his own crassness. "You know what it feels like to lose to a loser like that? Anything I could say was too reasoned, too rational, not spontaneous, and all just a trick to get her back in the box. She just lock-stock-and-barreled out the door to something less predictable and more familiar to the rest of her life. How do you argue with that? You don't. It's a choice, and you eat the fallout, which is why people advise other people never to fall in love."

  "It couldn't last, though," said Art. "It's not designed to."

  "But once it tarnishes, see, she's recaptured the mind-set and can just breeze onto the next thing, like a skipping stone."

  "What yuppies call grazing instead of cocooning."

  "And never get in too deep on anything you can't bail from at a moment's notice, because there's always another branch to light on. So, she's making no immediate noises that she's anything but deliriously happy and free and sampling life's rich cornucopia… with Tommi-with-an-i, who is a world-class meatball. This causes Derek-that's me-to brood a lot, because I wanted to invest my life in this person, and it's like she's saying that's swell and all, but has no value. He's the Wind, and I'm the Cinderblock. She gains the world and I feel like I've lost everything, and I start to ask myself, gee, does she have to figure some things out, or is she really that shallow?"

  "Scared, maybe." Art thought it was sad. Did two people ever run in parallel, or was it all just lies partners imposed on each other, a shadow play of life as it was supposed to be, not how it was?

  "I couldn't do anything useful, so I gradually worked my way around to the idea of scaring Tommi off. Maybe, I thought, she left me so easily because I didn't light for her."

  "Mmm." Art rolled his eyes and stuck out his lower jaw into a ridiculous gorilla expression. "Ug do battle for woman. Crush enemies."

  Derek leaned forward, elbows on knees. They'd started an actual, real blaze of actual, real wood in the fireplace, and burning cedar had filled the room with a rich, smoky tang. An occasional knot fizzed and exploded against the spark grate. They were savanna hunter-gatherers, swapping sagas by firelight.

  "I find out where Tommi lives and stealth over there, thinking I'll keep the clip in my pocket and shove my gun in his mouth and scare him into I don't know what. But her car's already there and through the side window I can see them fucking in the bedroom. She's being really loud, really vocal, which is funny because she rarely did that with me. Her new personality. I guess I just saw red; I thought if I could just see them fucking, then click, my brain would know that it was over and done. Wrong. I burglared in-just add breaking and entering to my tab, thanks-and pushed the door open with my foot and shot him. She was on top of him, bucking away like somebody was filming them, flailing and hooting, and the round went right between her left arm and armpit and hit him in the tit as he was trying to sit up. He flopped with a little grunt-I think that was when he blew his load-and when Erica looked down she saw a bullet hole with a red air bubble of blood already growing out of it. She saw me and I said something really moronic, like 'Remember me,' and I turned and walked out."

  "Jesus."

  "Then I did the only thing dumber than what I've just told you."

  "You went to a bar with a thatched frond canopy and drank yourself idiotic until a cop tapped on your shoulder."

  Derek tipped his bottle toward Truth and finished it off. "Detective, actually. When I got arraigned it came out that I hadn't paid any income taxes since Lockheed, which was another rather shortsighted life decision. The list of charges ran over two typed pages by a single line, and when judges see that staple holding more than a page, they tend to get a bit irritable. I got a pit bull of a lawyer who sacrificed my one-time accountant to the tax beef, and played the crime-of-passion angle for all it was worth, which is to say, all I could be billed for."

  "That doesn't explain why you're here, what, a couple of years after a murder charge. How does that work?"

  "Three years and change. It happened right when the second-degree murder charge got changed to Voluntary manslaughter.' Hawaii has no death penalty, but even second degree carries a life sentence."

  "With possibility of parole, I take it."

  "It was the state versus me, and they concluded no premeditation."

  "Crime of passion?"

  "Better." Derek allowed himself a private grin. "Third degree. They concluded that unpapered gun of mine actually belonged to Tommi, and they believed it when Erica showed up in court and said it was so. My lame hit hung a corner into self-defense. Nobody was more boggled than I was. That was the last time I saw her, and god knows why she did it, because I never got to ask."

  Art knew his old amigo better than that. "What's the part you're leaving out?"

  Derek chuckled. "The attorney part. The bribery part. The money part. The parole-board-payoff part. The showy-good-behavior part. The under-the-table-"

  "Stop, stop, or I'll drown."

  "I am, in fact, a murderer, if you want to get picky about it. Personally, I'd rather believe the story than the reality. It's bad enough that I'll have that dumb fuck Tommi's face in my brain for the rest of my life." Derek knotted his hands between his knees, risking a reverie.

  "And how does the parole thing work, and give you the latitude to show up on my doorstep in another state?" Art was still skeptical.

  "I was technically in violation of my release the minute I stepped onto a plane for San Francisco. Lawyer's there, a grizzled fella by the name of Thurston Cutler Junior. You ever need first-class rep, he's your man and you can tell him I sent you."

  "What'd all this cost you, if you don't mind my asking?"

  "What is costs, Arthur, is you have to stop calling me Derek. My name's Jacob Hume now; Jake to my pals."

  This time Art brought the refills. "Here you go, eh, Jake. Would you like to hear about our specials for this evening?"

  "Comedian. A lot of those in the ole big house. You'll do well."

  "What happened to-?"

  "Erica?"

  "Yeah, Erica. Sorry."

  "What'd the masochist say when asked what he liked about his lover?"

  "Beats me," they both said simultaneously. It was an old, retarded joke, the kind your dad might tell for forty years running. If it was funny during the Second World War, it's funny now, goddammit. Art's father used to cackle.

  "I used to think that Erica actually got what she wanted, in a perverse sort
of way. A big tragedy to add drama to her new life story. You can get a lot of mileage out of the old murdered-lover anecdote. But where is she now?" Derek-"Jake"-shrugged. "Now ask me what it was like in prison."

  "How come you didn't tell me when it happened?"

  "Like you needed that grief. There was nothing to do, unless you were going to send cookies, and the guards eat all the good ones, anyway. My choice. I'm telling you now. Don't get all hurt and shit."

  Art thought about what he could have done, realistically, practically, and saw his friend's point. He still felt that small pang of exclusion, though.

  In order to share, match story for story, Art told Derek about the human bone and the note in the bottle found on the beach earlier in the day. Derek, abristle with the freshly picked memory scabs of Erica, snorted at the floridly vague declaration on the waterlogged paper.

  "It's gotta be a chick, no offense. It's got that manipulative, self-centered, me-me-me stench. You recognize junkie behavior faster if you're inundated in it. Little Miss No-Name probably got all teary and jumped into the ocean, and if that's a piece of her you're keeping on the mantel, throw it back and make sure Blitzy doesn't fetch it."

  "Junkie behavior?" said Art.

  "You know-evasion, denial, refusal to address whatever's relevant? 'How're things?' 'Things're fine'… when they're not, when they are, in fact, all fucked up, but nobody discusses it because that would violate the gentle fib that everything's okay and everybody's getting along swell. Under all that, the hunger holds illimitable dominion over all. The hunger for drugs, or freedom, or whatever goofy perfect picture has been cooked up by the delusional. Junkie behavior."

  "Hell, in that case, I could've written the note," said Art, and they both laughed.

  "Next question," Derek said with forced brightness, as though eager to get past it. "Did you get fucked in the ass in the slammer?"

  "I wasn't going to say that.''

  "Everybody says it. Everybody thinks it. And the answer is, yes, when I was fresh fish, I got held down and raped by some very big guys with shaved heads and a lot of scar tissue. By the time newer fish rolled in, I was old news, and the population had figured me out, at least as much as they cared to, because I could draw. Pictures."

  Art cocked his head. It was a quizzical expression, like Blitz would make.

  "Remember it," Derek said. "If you're doing time, and you can draw, then you can tattoo, and if you can tattoo, you can survive in prison. Although you'd have to get a little artier than blueprints." He coughed. "Blue print-hey, that's funny."

  "Yeah, but jail ink is usually shit-dragons and gang tags and naked women done by somebody with a hot nail and no style."

  "That was my target. I could actually draw, that is, illustrate. I got a lot of attention for the right reasons, instead of for the rape-ability of my asshole, or my superfine, sensuous mouth. Once you cycle into the population and learn where the goods come from, you can score practically anything. I spent a shitload of dough on an electric toothbrush, and made it into a tattoo gun. You rubber-band a bunch of needles around the wiggly bit. It worked pretty fair."

  "I was going to ask about the eyeball on the back of your hand," said Art. "Kind of a bit of a problem in the 'identifying marks' category, isn't it?"

  Derek examined the eye, languidly half-open, on the back of his left hand. The eye looked back at him as if wondering how interesting the answer would be. "It's one thing if you've got a shitload of Maori jazz crawling up your neck onto your face. This, I can hide. Cost of doing business. Call it a learning experience."

  "Still…"

  "I read you. I designed the eye so I could cover it up with a driving glove. Then those fingerless motorcycle gloves fell out of style and the joke was on me, right?"

  "You could wear a snappy single glove, like that inspector in that Frankenstein movie."

  Derek's brow furrowed. "Hey. Bust your dog's balls, okay? I have to be careful; I have a new identity to protect. I thought of finding some guy who knows which end of a laser not to stare into, but you know what? I don't want to lose it. It looks out for me, spiritually. Keeps an eye peeled while I'm asleep, in the astral, I don't know. What can I say? It grounds me. I think it's going to stay." Derek stood up and pulled his heavy merchant marine sweater over his head. "If the eye bugs you, then you're going to hate this."

  Art was going to say, Just don't take your pants off, but the spit dried up in his mouth. Derek's left arm was end-to-end dermagraphs. The wrist was clean but most of the forearm was gauntleted in a Celtic weave of knots. At the elbow on both sides was inked an anatomically correct bone joint. Wrapped around the biceps was an armor-patterned snake, flicking its forked tongue toward the rattles on the tip of its own tail. Above that, near the ball of shoulder, was a sun or star that looked to be going supernova. Derek moved closer and sat cross-legged on the floor so Art could observe the tour of the gallery.

  "Problem is, most guys bring photos they want to immortalize. Girlfriends and pets, RIPs. Sword and sorcery hokum, biker chic, broken hearts. Mom. Shit from some dog-eared girlie magazine. Anybody who bothers to go to the library usually requests an Egyptian symbol or classical image."

  "I was going to ask if that was the Eye of Ra."

  "Sort of. My interpretation. But you've got the inspiration right. Another biggie is astrological signs. Flags of all nations. One guy whose bro died in prison came to me to duplicate his friend's tat, as a remembrance."

  "What was it?" Art was fascinated.

  "Just a purple sort of flower, like an iris. At least it wasn't a hula girl, or Hot Stuff." He indicated the sleeve. "Celtic patterns are always good. The barbed wire thing was popular, but I always thought it was kind of pussy-you know, wooo-you've got a picture of razor wire on you. That's like wearing an empty cartridge belt as a fashion accessory."

  "That bone thing looks gruesome, like the inside of your arm seen through X-ray Spex."

  "Hurts more to do the back of your hand, or fingers, or your knee, or the top of your foot. That's where the bones are closest to the surface. Once I did this baby, guys started asking for all sorts of bone overlays. A lot of skeleton hands, and never mind the fucking pain, they'd say. If I'd stayed in longer I would've gotten to try a full-on skull on this skinhead guy named Turk, no lie. I'd put spiders on the backs of heads, with the legs curling around the ears. Cobweb patterns. Inevitably some clown wanted me to tattoo a bone on his dick-yuh know, the bones that grows, haw haw-but I was spared the delight."

  "That serpent looks familiar."

  "You got it. That's our snake, immortalized."

  Art was surprised by the speed with which he'd gone from initial distaste to considering an identical snake for himself. The thing on Derek's arm was Art's exact idea of the imaginary rattler inside his vitals. He wondered what Lorelle might have requested, and came up with nothing obvious.

  "Why just the left arm?"

  "Because I'm right-handed. So it's long sleeves; I don't really mind. It's not that weird anymore. Twelve-year-olds are getting inked and pierced at the mall; they can buy niobium safety pins at any drugstore. I know this guy, a studio guy down in L.A., who has a great big curlicued fuck you tattooed right across the center of his chest. Says he loves to sit in bullshit meetings, just knowing it's there, just thinking about the day he quits and unveils it at the correct moment."

  "Speaking of Hollywood, I think I've got just the movie for your mood."

  "Thrill me."

  ***

  They sat through I Married a Monster from Outer Space, a Fifties classic about aliens taking over human bodies in order to mate with Earth women. It was better than its hysterical title, it was in glorious black-and-white, and best of all, it featured monster-fighting dogs, a pair of German shepherds, one of whom gives his dog-life to repel the invaders.

  Blitz was not moved by the selfless sacrifice of his brethren.

  "Ever notice that?" said Art. "Dogs are always the first line of defense against extra
terrestrial bad guys. Purebred Monster Fighters." He thumped Blitz. "Would you take on a slimy alien for us? At least let us know one's around?"

  "Not if the alien brings a steak," said Derek. "I think ole Blitz would turn traitor on us, for a steak. Say steak."

  Blitz woofed, exactly once.

  "When your dog betrays you, that's the worst. You're not listening, are you?" Blitz put his head back down on the carpet with a capacious nasal sigh, and remained encamped under the table.

  "How's this for a transition?" said Derek. "One of the reasons I'm 'bound for L.A. is a fella named Joseph Clawfoot, Joe to his friends."

  "That's one way to avoid being made," said Art. "Hang out with people who have inconspicuous names."

  "Joe's in construction, and they've got him slaving away on this refitting of the Cinerama Dome Theatre down there. They're restoring it so it can show actual Cinerama movies-the screen is curved, and it'll be ninety feet wide. Only other place that can show true Cinerama is in Seattle.''

  "How many movies are there in Cinerama, anyway?"

  "Fewer than ten. Most people know How the West Was Won. Anyhow, Joe asks if I know anyone who'd be interested in his next project, and I thought of you."

  "I don't build 'em, I just draw 'em."

  "You make my point for me. What he needs is a new design for a very special kind of movie theater. See, the multiplex is dead as a concept. That big ole screen you've got in your living room is proof. People don't want to pay, what, nine-ten bucks to see essentially the same thing with no focus and some guy spitting popcorn in their hair. So Joe wants to tear the guts out of an existing multiplex, and plug in a single theater with one-third the seats. Nice recliners. Beverage service, including champagne. No kids allowed. Legroom. Big screen. Ushers. One projectionist. It's like bumping the ante on a Hollywood screening room, the kind you have to have special invites to go on studio lots to see, only better."

  "Any movie house where they serve you champagne is a step up. Most multiplexes look like giant porcelain restrooms."