Object of Desire

by William J. Mann

  Turning onto our street, both of us saw the motorcycles at the same time. My driveway was filled with them. Six, seven, eight big black bikes.

  “What the fuck?” Chipper asked.

  “Oh, man,” I groaned.

  Chipper pulled up in front, and I stepped out of the car.

  “Must be a meeting of the Finding Becky Society,” I said, leaning back in through the window toward Chipper.

  “Good luck,” he said and steered the car across the street, to his own driveway.

  I trudged up the walk. I didn’t relish going into my house with all those bikers inside. I’d seen bikers tearing through town before, and I didn’t think they were going to be very nice people. But I took a deep breath and pulled open the door.

  The sight in my living room was not to be believed. I was still high, so it seemed even more like a hallucination. There were eight men, with long beards and black leather jackets, sitting everywhere. They filled up the chairs and the couch, and one was sitting on the arm of the couch. Another one was on the floor. Each of them had a can of beer in his hand, and most of them were smoking. A blue cigarette haze hung between their heads and the ceiling. Three women, also in leather, stood among the men, their hair long and stringy. But the most incongruous sight of all was Nana, sitting on the couch between two big, bearded bikers. She looked so small next to them, and her eyes were terrified.

  Mom was standing in the middle of the room, a notepad and pen in her hands. “Danny!” she said when she saw me. “Come in! I want you to meet Warren!”

  I took a step forward nervously. Mom was gesturing toward the man on Nana’s right. His eyes were barely slits in his face. Long black hair was tied back in a ponytail, and a black and gray beard came down to his collar. He wore a black T-shirt and a black leather vest, dirty jeans, and black boots. I just glared at him.

  “This is my son, Danny,” Mom said in the cheery voice she might use to introduce me to a neighbor or a priest at church.

  Warren didn’t rise or move to shake my hand. He barely lifted his bushy eyebrows over his hooded eyes to look at me. There was a hint of a smile. I noticed teeth were missing.

  “Warren brought his friends to see me,” Mom was explaining, “because each of them has seen Becky at one time or another.”

  “You have?” I asked, staring straight at Warren.

  “Yup,” he said, taking a sip of his beer. “We all seen her. Question is, how do we find her now?”

  “Exactly,” Mom said. “Now you’ve told me that you believe this man, this creature you call Bruno, has left Cape Cod and taken her to New York.”

  “That I do,” said Warren. “Now you gotta remember, Peg, that Bruno is not one of us anymore. He’s no longer a Skulls man. So he don’t trust us, and we don’t trust him.”

  It was then that I noticed they all wore skull pendants around their necks. Tiny silver skulls hung from black leather strings. The women had skulls dangling from their ears. I felt as if I were in a bad horror movie. I glanced from Warren over to Nana. She was moving her lips, maybe praying, maybe talking silently to herself, and turning a handkerchief in her hands over and over in her lap.

  “You got another beer?” one of the other guys asked behind me.

  “Yes, sure,” Mom said. “Help yourself from the refrigerator.”

  “So if Becky’s in New York,” I said, “maybe the police should—”

  “Danny!” Mom cut me off. “There’s no talk of the police here. I’ve given Warren my word.”

  I looked over at him. His eyes opened wide for the first time. He scared the shit out of me.

  “There’s only one guy that Bruno still talks to that I think we can trust,” Warren said after a pause. “He lives outside Holyoke, Massachusetts, and I think he’s our only hope of getting to Bruno. But if he thinks the police are anywhere near this operation…”

  Mom jumped in. “He needs to know that I’m not the heat.”

  The heat? Had she been watching too much Starsky & Hutch?

  “Can you take me home?”

  All heads turned. It was Nana. She was looking up at the big, bearded guy sitting beside her, asking him plaintively if he could take her home.

  “Adele,” Mom said, louder than necessary, “you are home.” Addressing the bikers, she added, “Ignore her. She’s a little confused.”

  I watched as Nana’s eyes flickered back down to her lap. She began once again to turn the handkerchief over in her hands. My heart broke for her.

  “So what is this man’s name?” Mom asked impatiently, holding her pen to the pad. “The one in Holyoke?”

  “He’s called the Rubberman.”

  Mom blinked. I sat down on the floor. I couldn’t believe any of this. My head was no longer spinning just from the pot.

  “He’s had a lot of surgeries,” Warren explained. “Cracked up lots of bikes, been in lots of fights. I think nearly every bone in his face has been broken at one time or another. So his face—it looks like rubber. He’s kind of earned the right to be on his own. He’s not affiliated with any group.”

  “So how do I contact him?” asked Mom.

  Warren poked his chest with his thumb. “Through me, Peg. Nobody else is gonna get to the Rubberman.”

  “Okay, so how?”

  “Well, he’s gonna need some persuasion if he’s gonna talk.”

  Mom made a face. “You told me this would cost money. How much?”

  “Let’s say we start with a grand.”

  “Fine,” she said, writing it down on her pad without blinking an eye.

  Warren finally smiled at that point. His mouth looked like a jack-o’-lantern’s. “Now, you know it’s not for us, Peg. None of us Skulls want to take any of your money. We just want to see your daughter home safe with you.”

  “Why?” I asked. All heads turned to look at me. I couldn’t believe I had the guts. The word just came out of my mouth without me even thinking about it. Maybe it was the pot. I was staring straight at Warren’s face.

  His smile disappeared. “For one thing, little boy, we hate Bruno’s filthy, stinking ass, and we want to take what’s his.” His hooded eyes moved from me across the room to one of the women standing a few feet away. “But go ahead, Lee Ann. You tell him the rest of the reason why.”

  “Oh, do I gotta, Warren?”

  “Yes, you fucking bitch.”

  I couldn’t believe what he had just called her. And Mom just stood there, not batting an eye.

  Lee Ann looked over at me. I couldn’t tell how old she was. Maybe twenty-five. But her face was lined, and dark circles shadowed her eyes. Her hair was dyed platinum blond like Suzanne Somers, but her black roots were showing.

  “When I was seventeen, I was kidnapped,” Lee Ann said in a low, halting voice. “I was hanging out with these guys who were bikers, and we went to a party one night. This was back in Ohio, where I come from. And I got pretty wasted, and the next thing I know, I’m with this guy and he tells me I belong to him. I’d never seen the guy. But he took me and never let me go home. I was with him for four and a half years, and he beat me and raped me.” She paused. “His name was Bruno.”

  “Dear God,” Mom said and made the sign of the cross.

  Lee Ann went on. “About a year ago he dumped me for another girl. Now we got word he’s taken two bitches for himself. And one of them, I’m sure, is your daughter. I seen them together at a rally up in Albany. The word was they were heading down to Manhattan.”

  Mom looked as if she might cry. “Do your parents know you’re okay?” she asked.

  “I ain’t going home now,” Lee Ann said. “Too much shit has happened. My mother’s a big, old, drunk Jesus freak. She don’t care where I am. Besides, I found my man now. Warren is my man now. He’s all I need, huh, Warren?”

  “Thatta girl, Lee Ann,” Warren said.

  Mom shuddered. “Well, then, if this monster has my baby, he’s probably hurt her very bad. So we need to act fast.”

  “Get us
the money. I’ll pass it on to the Rubberman and see if we can find out where Bruno is,” Warren asserted.

  Mom nodded.

  “Okay, I’ll—”

  “Who the hell are these people?”

  The voice startled everyone in the room. We looked up. It was my father, coming in through the kitchen. We hadn’t heard his car, and I immediately understood why. All the bikes were in the driveway. He’d had to park in the street and had come in through the back door. Now he stood in the passage leading to the kitchen, with his mouth open and eyes wide. And there was one other thing I noticed about him. He hadn’t spritzed himself with cologne. He stank of alcohol.

  “Tony,” Mom said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I live here, in case you forgot,” Dad returned. His words were slurring a little.

  “These people are helping us find Becky,” Mom told him.

  “Jesus Christ,” Dad said and strode off through the kitchen. I heard him banging chairs and cabinet doors.

  Warren was standing. “It’s time for us to leave.” The rest of the bikers stood as well.

  “I’ll get the money tomorrow,” Mom was saying. “Will you come by here?”

  Warren nodded.

  Mom began to cry. “May I hug you?”

  Warren looked at her with surprise.

  She didn’t wait for permission. She threw her arms around him and sobbed on his massive barrel chest. “Thank you, Warren! Thank you for helping me find my baby!”

  Warren said nothing, just stood there, looking uncomfortable. Finally, he took Mom’s arms and gently moved her away from him. The bikers filed out of the house.

  I watched from the window as the women climbed on the backs of the bikes, gripping their men tightly. The roar of the engines was deafening. The bikers revved their machines a few times in the driveway, then tore off down the road, one following the other. The sound was louder than any thunderstorm I’d ever heard.

  Dad was immediately back in the room. “Jesus Christ, Peggy! You invite these degenerates into our house, let them drink my beer—”

  “These degenerates are doing more to find your daughter than you are!” Mom shrieked. “And as for your beer, I think you’ve had quite enough liquor for a while!”

  “Can you take me home?” Nana’s little voice piped up in the middle of the argument. She was still sitting on the couch, turning that handkerchief over and over in her hands. “Can you take me home, please?”

  “Oh, Jesus Christ,” Mom screamed, her big hands in her hair. “All day long I have to put up with this! I can’t take her anymore!”

  “Oh, Ma,” Dad said, his voice ripped with sadness. “We shouldn’t have been yelling. It’s okay.”

  “Can you take me home?” Nana repeated.

  Mom started to cry and rushed out of the room. Dad attempted to reach down and touch Nana’s hand, but he was so drunk that he lost his balance a little. He steadied himself and then turned away. He headed down into the basement, where he had set up a chair and a television set. He’d probably sleep down there, too. He did that a lot lately.

  In the air, the cigarette smoke still lingered. Nana’s eyes were watering. I propped open the front door and began gathering up the dirty ashtrays and beer cans.

  “Can you take me home?” Nana asked again.

  I set down the trash in my hands. I walked over and sat beside my grandmother.

  “Nana,” I said, “this is home now. I know it doesn’t seem that way. It doesn’t seem that way to me, either. But it is.”

  She just looked at me with those sad, vacant eyes.

  “You remember who I am, don’t you, Nana? Danny. Danny off the pickle boat.”

  “Danny,” she repeated.

  I smiled.

  “Danny,” she said, “can you take me home?”

  I thought of Nana’s home, the big white house in Manchester, where my father and Aunt Patsy had grown up. How I used to love to go there when I was a kid. Nana was the best babysitter. She’d make her homemade macaroni and cheese and her cinnamon streusel cake. Becky and I would play in the big field out behind her house, catching fireflies in jars. And when we’d sleep over, Nana would tuck me into bed in Dad’s old room, which had a big bay window overlooking the field. In the mornings, I used to like to sit there and listen to the crows and watch the sun come up. The room would turn all pink and gold. I loved Nana’s house. And at the moment I missed it very badly.

  “Will you take me home?” Nana asked again, in barely a whisper.

  I put my arms around her. “Nana,” I said, “we’re just gonna have to make the best of this one for now.”

  We sat that way for a long time. She didn’t ask again if I could take her home.

  PALM SPRINGS

  “I told you it was a pit,” Kelly said, stepping aside so I could enter his apartment.

  The last slanting rays of the sun sliced through his half-closed venetian blinds, striping the room with orange. A mattress sat on the floor, wrapped tightly in a sheet and covered with a Mexican falsa blanket. Three milk crates placed on their sides held papers and drawing pads. An old door held up by four cinder blocks served as a table. There was a single straight-back chair. The walls were bare except for one spot over his bed, where a black-and-white glossy photo of Jackie O in sunglasses was secured with Scotch tape.

  “You should hang some of your sketches,” I said. “It’d brighten up the place.”

  “My landlady won’t let me put holes in the walls.”

  From what I could see, it would hardly matter: the plaster was already cracked and peeling enough as it was. I turned to Kelly and smiled.

  “It’s not a pit. It’s cozy. It’s a roof over your head. Now bring out the work. I’m here to see some Nelson originals.”

  Kelly laughed. “There’s not much to show.”

  It had taken quite a bit of persuasion to get in here. Over the last week, we’d been texting back and forth. I’d ask for a look at his portfolio; he’d say no. I’d ask again. He’d reply with a joke. DOES A DUCK PAY FOR HIS DRINKS AT A BAR? This time I figured it out, and with glee, I texted back, NO. HE JUST PUTS THEM ON HIS BILL.

  That was what got me in here, I think.

  That, and the fact that I’d told Kelly that I’d spoken with a teacher at CalArts about him. The teacher was a guy I’d met when I was taking classes there, and I’d read that he was offering a course on illustration next semester for the general public. I had him send me the description, and I handed it to Kelly now.

  “If you like the class,” I told him as he looked over the papers, “maybe you should think about applying to the school. I mean, you could maybe get a scholarship.”

  He looked up at me with scorn. “Oh, please. You haven’t even seen all my work.”

  “From the little I’ve seen, you’re damn good.” I smiled. “So show me the rest.”

  He sighed. He sat down on his mattress and reached into one of the milk crates, withdrawing two sketch pads. “Okay,” he said, patting the place next to him on the mattress. “Sit down.”

  I obeyed. He flipped open the first pad. There was a series of doodles and crossed-out images. The next page was more of the same. When he turned to the third page, however, I saw a more complete sketch, a caricature of a woman with a big nose. After that came several more sketches, some more finished than others. Most of them were done in pen, but others were in pencil, with attempts at shading.

  I said nothing as he flipped through.

  “See?” he said. “I told you that you wouldn’t be impressed.”

  “They’re fine, Kelly. Let me see the other pad.”

  It was here that I recognized the sparkle I’d seen in the drawings he’d done in my presence. It was here that he’d started drawing Jackie O. Jackie in a pillbox hat. Jackie with Caroline and John-John, watching the funeral procession. Jackie with sunglasses and a scarf around her neck. Jackie with Aristotle Onassis. They were brilliant renderings.

  But most of the rest
were doodles and scratches.

  “You have real talent,” I told him. “You just need to finish some of these. Give them the same passion you give when you’re drawing Jackie.”

  He laughed, flopping backward onto the bed. His shirt inched up, revealing his belly button and the little tuft of black hair that grew up from his groin.

  “Finish them?” he asked. “There’s the problem. I don’t have the discipline to finish them.”

  “Draw me,” I said.

  His black eyes looked up at me. “I thought we were going for pizza.”

  “Not until you draw me.”

  He sat up. Our thighs were touching. So were our shoulders. He looked me straight in the face, not two inches away.

  “I can’t draw you,” he said quietly.

  My heart was thudding. I could smell him. His soap, his shampoo.

  “Why not?” I asked, my throat tight.

  He smiled. Oh, those dimples. “Because you’re too nice to me,” he said.

  “Too nice?”

  He stood, breaking the electricity that had connected us, and walked across the room. “Yes. Too nice. Nobody has ever talked to me about my sketches as if they mattered before.” He turned to face me. “And here you are, telling me I ought to go to CalArts!”

  “You said you don’t want to remain a bartender all your life.”

  “Why do you care?”

  I stood now, too. “Because I was like you once. I see myself in you.”

  He tilted his head and looked at me. “No other reason?”

  That was the question. I’d asked myself exactly that on my way over to his apartment. Why was I so insistent I see his work? Why did I feel such a compulsion to encourage him? Was it just a crass strategy to finally get him into bed—something I’d now been frustrated out of twice?

  But even as I asked myself the question, I already knew the answer. My fixation on Kelly these last couple of months had never been solely about sex. I wanted something more from him. Something much more. I wasn’t quite sure what it was that I wanted, but I knew it was far more than sex.