I Don't Like Where This Is Going

by John Dufresne

  Everything about the Coffee Shop was bothering me, the brown Formica table with its cigarette burns, the plastic cruets of powdered nondairy creamer, the red and yellow squirt bottles of catsup and mustard, the bamboo basket of saltine twin-packs, the sugar and sweetener packets stacked on their plastic caddy, the peel-back cups of ersatz jam jumbled in a cracked wooden salad bowl. The coffee arrived in a coppery plastic thermal decanter. Patience poured coffee in my cup. When she poured her own, she moved her eyes from the cup to the menu, and for some reason her hand followed her eyes, and she poured the coffee on the table. She quick got a rag from our waitress and sopped up the mess. I tasted the coffee and said, No harm done. Weak and stale.

  Tennille, our waitress, took forever to get back to us. When she did, Patience said she’d stick with the coffee. We passed on the uninviting breakfast buffet. I ordered bacon and eggs sunny-side up. I said, “Do you have any butter?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Real butter?”

  Tennille didn’t understand the question. She dipped into her apron pocket and took out a small sealed tub of what turned out to be something called Country Morning Blend. I said, “No toast, thanks.”

  Patience took her journal out of her backpack, flipped it open, and read me her last entry, something she’d overheard in the Shop n Go in Lovelock: Bottle caps don’t break down, why should you? The man in the red suspenders at the next table barked and rubbed his hands together. He had spread typewritten pages across his table. He touched his eye with a finger, touched his forehead, his chin, each of the pages in turn. He barked again.

  Tennille arrived with my breakfast. I didn’t remind her I didn’t want the toast. Patience asked the waitress about the barking man.

  “That’s Eric. He’s not all there, if you know what I mean. But he’s sweet as honey, just the same.”

  Patience took a slice of bacon. My ex, Georgia, used to pilfer my food all the time. Drove me crazy. I said, “Should I order you bacon?”

  “It smells so good.”

  Eric was suddenly standing by our table contorting his face, flicking his fingers until he got our attention. He looked at me and forced a crooked smile. “We’re all impressed with your strength of character and sense of self-worth.” And with that assessment, he saluted, turned, and marched back to his table.

  The front door squealed open, and I saw a man walk in whom I didn’t know, but who looked vaguely familiar. Plaid shirt, dusty jeans, work boots, sunglasses over eyeglasses, and green ball cap. He looked like he was trying to grow himself a chin with his scraggly beard. I sensed that he was annoying, whoever he was. And then I remembered that he was the guy pumping gas while I was filling the car last night at the Shell station in Valmy. I noticed him then because while he was fueling his pickup, he was talking on his cell phone and smoking, two risky behaviors that the sign on the gas pumps warned against. The S on the enormous neon gas station sign above our heads had burned out, announcing to any poor soul approaching this benighted town out of the pitch-black desert that they had arrived in HELL.

  I asked Patience where she’d like to drive to today, hoping we’d head in the general direction of Vegas. She unfolded her state map on the table. We decided to drive 305 to Austin, eighty-eight miles of unpeopled open range. I figured the car’s little jerkiness wouldn’t be a problem. Gas up and buy water before we leave town. Tennille brought our check. Patience paid her. Eric brought another check and laid it facedown on the table. Patience read what he had printed: This happens rather than that. And that’s the way things like this come about—you and me in the same place. A miracle.

  I SET THE CRUISE CONTROL to eighty, adjusted my seat, stretched my legs, and watched Patience glue Eric’s message into her journal. She said, “In ten years, all I’ll need to do is look at this check, and I’ll remember everything—the red suspenders, the threads of white saliva at the corners of Eric’s lips, Tennille’s brown mascara, these salt flats. It’ll all come rushing back to me.”

  I felt the car flinch and balk, and so did Patience. I said, “We’re forty miles from anywhere.” And then the car ran well for ten or so miles before it jerked a few more times, knocking the car out of cruise control. Patience suggested stopping to let the car rest, but I was afraid if I turned it off, it wouldn’t restart. I figured we were now twenty-eight miles from Austin. It took all of my concentration to keep the car running. All I could think of was this damn sputtering car and the salesman who had sold it to Bay and me at Rick Ferguson Auto Sales in Vegas, Danny Mascola, “Dan the Can-Do Man,” white shoes, white belt, carbon black toupee, and yellow aviator shades, Danny Mascola, whom I wanted to throttle right then. She sound like a creampuff to you now, Danny? Patience told me to breathe.

  Carl, at the Last Chance Chevron in Austin, told me the problem was vapor lock. I stared at the engine and wondered if I was being fucked with. Vapor’s a gas. How can it lock? And if it did, how would you know? Carl said, “What that means is your engine’s running so damn hot that the gasoline begins to boil, and that creates vapors that your fuel pump can’t handle. When the car cools down, the vapors condense to liquid, and the car runs fine—for a while.” Carl said what he would do with this little Asian car was he would install a new thermostat to keep her running cool. “Suit yourself, of course.” Carl wiped his hands with an orange shop rag, tucked the rag in his back pocket. He pointed to the Mirage. “Myself, I could never buy a Jap car like this. You don’t know how cruel those people were. You heard of the Bataan Death March?”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “It was yesterday.”

  “We’re allies now.”

  “You think so?”

  Carl figured two and a half hours to fix her up, given as to how he was backed up and all—his mechanic Grady Hall didn’t show up for work this morning. Had his girlfriend-du-jour call to say Grady’s gone fossil hunting with the Ramos brothers down to the Toiyabe Range, if you can believe that.

  Patience and I walked to the Lucky Boy Saloon, sat in the dark and empty room, and ordered drinks. The bartender said he was sorry, but he didn’t know what a Vulcan Mind Bender was. When Patience explained it to him, he said sorry, but they didn’t carry ouzo at the Boy.

  Someone—the Chamber of Commerce, maybe—had built a large letter A out of whitewashed boulders on the hill across the street. A for arid. A for abject. The bartender brought our vodka and tonics and a bowl of Wheat Chex and pretzels.

  Patience asked him if he was a Virgo.

  He blushed. “Hell, no!”

  “Not that,” she said. “Your birth sign, I mean. What’s your birthday?”

  “First of September.”

  “This should be a good day for you, then. Welcome the intrusion of a healthier perspective.”

  “I sure will, ma’am. Will that be all for you all?”

  PATIENCE LATER HEADED for the Main Street shops to look at jewelry. I said I’d be right here obsessing about vapor lock. I caught Virgo’s attention and ordered another cocktail. He closed his book, using a drink stirrer as a bookmark, and hopped to it. A couple walked in. The elegant silver-haired gentleman took off his sunglasses, slipped them into his jacket pocket, and ushered his young companion to a table across the narrow room from mine. His smile was bright, his forehead sloping, his eyes avocado-green, like my mother’s refrigerator. He wore a tailored black suit, a starched white shirt, and a pink-and-blue-striped silk tie. His nails were manicured and polished. The young woman wore a red strapless dress and silver wedge sandals. Her eyes were dark and her hair shoulder-length and brown with blonde highlights.

  Virgo brought my drink. I asked him what he was reading. He said, “Self-Esteem Affirmations, Volume II.” And then he recited an affirmation. “I am in the right place at the right time, doing the right thing.”

  When my table neighbors got their glasses of red wine, I held up my vodka and tonic, and we drank to Virgo’s worthy self-regard. Virgo smiled and said, “I am making the right c
hoices every time.”

  I said, “I’m Wylie Melville.”

  The gentleman’s name was Clifton Luciano and hers was Bella. “I just go by the one name,” she said. “Like Lady Gaga.”

  I said the obvious. “That’s two words.”

  Bella smiled. “Two words but one name. ‘Lady’ is her title.”

  Clifton told me no, Bella was not his daughter. She was his wife and business associate.

  “What’s your line?”

  “Sales.” Clifton glanced at Bella and smiled. “You are looking at the last of a dying breed, Mr. Melville: the door-to-door salesman.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve been a commercial traveler since I was thirteen. I’ve sold Fuller brushes, the Cadillac of cleaning products. I’ve sold vacuum cleaners, Japanese knives, cookware, yo-yos, Encyclopedia Britannica, miracle cleaner, illustrated Catholic Bibles, and indestructible dinnerware. I could sell a TV to a blind man and knee socks to an amputee. I favor a life on the road. I’m a people person—love that face-to-face contact.”

  “What are you selling these days?”

  “A product that sells itself.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “You’re looking at it.”

  And with that, Bella smiled my way, drew her tongue along her lips, raised an eyebrow, and cocked her head.

  I said, “This is a joke?”

  Clifton said, “What can I do, sir, to get you into this woman today?”

  “You’re pimping your wife?”

  “Managing her career.”

  She said, “I’m a big girl. I know what I’m doing, and I like what I’m doing.”

  Virgo appeared. “Care for another?”

  Clifton said, “And our handsome young waiter finds himself once again in the right place at just the right time.”

  PATIENCE AND I drove south out of Austin and into the desert listening to Marcella Riordan perform Molly Bloom’s soliloquy on the CD player. “Isn’t this exquisite?” I said.

  “She does go on about bottoms, doesn’t she?”

  We were thirty miles outside of Austin when the car coughed and sputtered. Molly said yes; I said NO! I turned off the CD and clenched my jaw. Patience rubbed my neck and told me to breathe from my diaphragm. Five miles later the car bucked, lurched, and rattled. I slammed my fist on the steering wheel. Patience said that wasn’t going to solve anything. I said, “Don’t start, okay?” I cursed that son of a bitch Carl, the goddamn thief. And then the car ran smoothly again. I willed it to run, but after a mile or so, the car trembled, gasped, and died just beyond the Shoshone County line near the alkali flats.

  I said, “I cannot fucking believe this.”

  Patience told me to try my cell and call Carl to come tow us back. But there was no service. I got out of the car, walked ten steps, tried the phone again, walked ten more steps, tried the phone. And ten more. And then I tossed the phone across the highway and started walking south. Patience got out of the car and asked me what I thought I was doing. I suppose she thought I was going to explode, but she didn’t want to be the detonator. She told me I needed to recombobulate. I told her I was going for help. She let me go and retrieved my phone, which was scratched but intact and workable.

  She tried starting the car. When it hesitated, she revved the engine, and it caught. She pulled out onto the highway. After a hundred yards or so, the car shimmied, skipped, but settled itself. I heard her approaching, turned, and walked back toward the car. She slowed, stopped in neutral. Pumped the gas. I hopped in. We had to pull over every three or four miles to let the stalled car recuperate, and in that way we made it to within six miles of Pesadilla. Where we were stopped, someone had fit a mannequin’s head atop a rusted barbed-wire fence post. They’d put a white plastic fedora and yellow sunglasses on the tanned head and tied a paisley necktie to the post at the mannequin’s throat.

  And that was when three cowboys in a pickup saw us stranded, made a U-turn, and stopped. I told the men about our predicament and about Carl’s diagnosis and glaring incompetence. The men laughed. Grady Hall introduced himself.

  I said, “Carl’s absent assistant! He mentioned you.”

  Grady introduced Nacho and Chili. The men nodded. One of them tossed a beer can into the sagebrush.

  Grady said, “Easiest thing to do is we’ll tow you into town.”

  “We really appreciate your doing this. You don’t know.”

  The cowboys towed us in to the Smoky Valley Garage. Grady introduced us to Tinker Beaty. Patience found the ladies’ room key in the office, attached to a cowbell. Tinker took a shop rag from his pocket and slid under the car. I said, “Can I buy you boys a drink before you head back?” Grady said, “Sure can,” said they’d meet me across the street at the Full Moon Saloon. Tinker slid out from under the Mirage and held up the fuel filter. “Here’s your vapor lock, pardner. So clogged with dirt and shit won’t nothing get through. Let me see do I have a replacement.”

  Patience put the key back on its hook beneath the old metal advertising thermometer. On the thermometer cans of Dubl-Duty motor oil were lined up at an angle, one behind the other, so all you could see was DUTY DUTY DUTY. And then Patience noticed a small black dog curled beneath the metal desk, obscured by piles of grease-smudged Chilton manuals. Patience crouched down and said hello. The dog lifted its head, sniffed the air, and slapped its tail on the floor. Patience said, “What’s your name, baby?”

  Tinker told me, “I don’t have a filter for this particular car, but I can jury-rig one to fit. Get you folks on the road again. First chance you get, you have a proper one fit on, hear?”

  Patience said, “What’s the dog’s name?”

  Tinker said, “Doesn’t have one.” And then, “This’ll take a while.”

  We walked outside. I told Patience it would be rude not to show our appreciation. Patience had a bad feeling about the cowboys.

  “We’ll buy them a drink, thank them, then say our goodbyes.”

  “They’re bored. And that makes them dangerous.”

  I kissed her nose, took her arm, and we crossed the road.

  The Full Moon was dark and quiet. I bought a round of drinks for the table, beers for the cowboys, water for Patience, whiskey for me. We were the only folks in the bar except for the bartender, who spent her time pulling slots by the bar, smoking cigarettes, and drinking something green. She had an unfortunate do-it-yourself tattoo on her right shoulder: NO REGERTS.

  I told the boys this was our first trip out West. We were from Everglades County, Florida.

  Grady said, “You’re a long way from Flaw-duh.”

  “Couple of thousand miles,” I said.

  “Why?”

  “Seeing the country.”

  Grady looked at Nacho and Chili. They smiled, leaned back in their chairs. Chili said, “Ain’t got no job?”

  “Taking some time off.”

  Grady said, “So you’re like a couple of drifters out for what you can get.” He smiled.

  Nacho said, “You in some kind of trouble?”

  “No.”

  Grady said, “Lacy, sweetheart, another round for the table on my good friends here.” And then Grady touched the top of Patience’s hand. “I never did catch your name, darling.”

  “No, you didn’t.” Patience wore a black sleeveless blouse and her right arm was tattooed wrist to shoulder in an intricate Islamic geometric pattern of stars and diamonds that seemed to fascinate our three amigos.

  I said, “Hands to yourself, Grady.”

  Grady suggested a friendly game of Texas hold ’em. Chili took a deck of cards out of his pocket. Patience looked out the window to the garage, where the black dog was pissing against the gasoline pump.

  I said, “I don’t gamble.”

  Grady said, “Small stakes. Friendly game. Five-ten. Two-fifty buy-in. How’s that?”

  “You two ain’t going nowhere till your car’s fixed,” Nacho said.

  Me and the cowboys bought ou
r chips from Lacy and moved to a corner table. I bought fifty bucks’ worth, figured I’d let them win that and consider it payment for services rendered—a small price to pay for rescue, if you think about it. Lacy dealt for the house. Grady put on his sunglasses. Chili lit a cigarette. Nacho spit tobacco in his dip cup.

  Patience joined us and said, “Kind of looks like we got three against one.”

  Grady said, “Shuffle up and deal, Lacy.”

  Lacy shuffled, boxed, released. “Put up your blinds, gentlemen.”

  I lost twenty bucks on the first two hands. Patience whispered in my ear, “You’re giving money away.”

  Nacho hadn’t taken his eyes off me except to glance at Grady when he was under the gun.

  Patience said, “Wylie, you don’t have to play every hand. Make them earn their money.”

  Grady smiled. “You can’t win if you ain’t in.”

  Lacy said, “Blinds.” She dealt. Patience told me I should fold my pair of nines. I told her Grady was bluffing.

  She said, “How do you know?”

  Grady said, “Listen to your girlfriend.”

  I raised him all of my chips and asked myself why I was doing this.

  Nacho and Chili folded. Lacy dealt Grady a six on the river. He smiled. I looked at Patience. I called him.

  Patience said, “Really?”

  “He’s dancing his chips, checking his cards. He’s sending me a telegram.”

  I took the pot and felt stupid. All this was going to do was lengthen the game. I apologized for my testosterone and tried to give the men back their money, call it even.

  Grady said, “We don’t want your fucking money.”

  Chili said, “But we would like a taste of her.”

  Patience picked up her purse. “We should go.”

  Grady said, “Are you a Jew?”