“Do you know her?”
“What are you talking about?” Jack says, stopping at the girl’s side. “Keep your mind on the job.”
Rick shakes his head in disgust. “Whatever, Jack.”
“Hey, how’d you know my name was Jack?”
Rick can’t help but smile at the old joke. Jack starts tending to the girl’s wounds in a reasonably efficient manner, so Rick goes to ask the girl’s father some questions. At first, Jack is all business, but eventually he begins to slow to study an arm here, a leg there, until he’s stopped working on the injuries entirely and is carefully examining her fingernails as if he’s standing over a corpse on an autopsy table. He reaches down and starts unbuckling the girl’s belt, and Rick sees this just before the girl’s father does and finally snaps. Before Jack even sees him take one giant step towards him, Rick has punched Jack square in the face. But by now, they’re both almost used to this.
A roll of gauze flies from Jack’s grip, landing on a nearby bush and unspooling like a high-school toilet-paper prank. Jack rolls over, holding his nose but quickly jumps to his feet.
“No, no, you don’t understand...”
Rick takes another swing, but Jack ducks it. Then Jack comes back with a left hook that knocks Rick back over his box of emergency equipment. Rick gets off the ground fast and runs toward Jack, burying his head in his chest. Jack backpedals and they both stumble over the crying girl, someone’s flailing boot catching her in the jaw, which finally brings the father into the fight. He’s got more of a righteous cause than either of them, and he punches Jack in the stomach, doubling him over and knocking the wind out of him for good. Then the man turns on Rick, and a solid uppercut takes Rick off his feet and drops him on his back in the weeds. The father wipes his hand on his pants and calmly picks up his daughter to walk toward the ambulance while Jack and Rick sit dazed on the ground, staring at each other.
“Get the fuck up and take us to the hospital,” the father says. “Hurry the hell up. Unless both you motherfuckers want to be riding in the back with the meat.”
Ambulance. Later that night. Rick is driving and Jack is back in the passenger seat. They are bloody, bruised, and brooding. “San Jacinto” by Peter Gabriel is playing on Jack’s portable cassette player. Finally Jack speaks and Rick blinks long and slow in frustration.
“What if I’m right? What if that girl had been raped and it had gone bad?”
“Who? That girl? Raped by her dad?”
“No.”
“The dog?”
Jack doesn’t say “no” fast enough.
“Shut the fuck up,” Rick says as Jack’s mouth opens to unload more bullshit. Rick shakes his head and turns on the broken siren to drown out his partner’s nonsense with its warble. Parts of Jack’s paranoid ramblings can still be heard over the warbling siren and the song on the stereo...
“I hold the line... I hold the line...”
“...and if there is a rapist, maybe he freaked out, maybe he had to rub the dog’s face in it... to punish himself… or punish the dog...”
“...I hold the line... the line of strength that pulls me through the fear...”
“...he pulled out one of the dog’s teeth... dog’s teeth are loose, every one of them… so he tried to cut her throat with it to cover up... bet the dog hates him now... bet it licks the mailman but growls at him every morning...”
“That’s not how the song goes, is it?”
“...I hold the light... I hold the light...”
Rick stabs some knobs to turn off the radio and the siren, finds some Cat Stevens loving his dog instead of Peter Gabriel singing all spooky, then he glares at Jack.
“Asshole. Listen to me. You are looking for meaning where there is none.” Rick smiles sincerely. “And tonight is the last night I deal with your bullshit.”
“All the pay I need comes shining through his eyes. I don’t need no cold water to make me realize...”
“How can you say it means nothing? Everything means something. I mean, I’ll admit that I might be wrong about what something means but I know I’m right when I say it means something.”
“What the fuck do you mean ‘something’?” Rick shouts as he slams the brakes to keep from back-ending a truck. “Did that old man rattle your brains when he knocked you out? Fuck!”
“Relax. Relax. And he didn’t knock me out. He hit me in the breadbasket.”
“Where?”
“Never mind.”
“Did you even go to medical school?” he asks Jack angrily, tapping the windshield with his finger.“Hold on. You almost made us hit that...” Rick’s voice fades as he notices his partner squinting at the back of the truck.“Are you fucking kidding me with this? Hey. Hey! Tell me what it is about that truck that you see right now. What are these new clues, Sam Spade?”
“Fuckin’ racist,” Jack mumbles, leaning forward. In spite of himself, Rick finds he’s studying this vehicle right along with him. It’s a red pick-up truck with barbed wire around the license plate, a huge “No Fear” decal across the back window, and a bumper sticker that proudly states:
“My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student.”
Oh, yeah, it’s also adorned with those glowing aquarium lights under the exhaust, a bloody, fake, Halloween-prank hand hanging from the trunk, and, finally, a pair of swinging metal testicles where the trailer hitch should be.
“See that truck?” Jack asks. “All that shit?” Rick actually waits in anticipation, and the urge to slap himself for being caught up in the suspense of Jack’s next sentence is overwhelming.
“Doesn’t mean shit,” Jack finally says.
“Wow,” Rick sighs.
“You know what really upsets me here?” Jack asks. “Why can’t that be the villain of the story?”
“Oh, he is. Trust me. Just not ours. A story set in the ‘80’s, I’m guessing.”
“Oh, yeah? Then who is it?” Jack laughs.
“If you have to ask that, of course it’s gotta be you, fucknuts. Have you ever even seen an ‘80’s movie?”
“What time is it?”
“Why?” Rick sighs again.
“I have something to do.”
“When?”
“Just get us back to the garage. I have to tell someone something.”
“What?”
“The answer to a question that’s six years old.”
“Who?”
“Exactly!”
“Can’t wait to drop you off for good, Costello.”
Woods. Same night. The tall, shadowy figure is crouched over the broken tree trunk where Jacki crashed her car. A ring of green seedlings are growing around the rim of the stump, glowing in the bobbing beam of a tiny flashlight. The shadow pockets the flashlight, which illuminates his jeans from the inside. He unzips his glowing, orange pants, and leans over the rainwater gathered in the dead wooden bucket. He masturbates furiously. In seconds, splashes of milky-white liquid swirl around the water like larvae. He reaches into the stump to soak his hands.
The stump water swirls around them until the water is red again with blood.
A smaller shadow leans against a nearby tree, cracking some knuckles to keep busy.
Same night with no invite, Jack pulls into Jacki’s driveway, jumps out, and practically sprints to her front door. He bangs on it like a woodpecker chasing grubs. A light bulb flutters behind a curtain, and she opens the door dressed for bed in a flannel shirt and no pants, confused and squinty, arms crossed and defensive.
“What the hell’s going on, Jack?”
“Can I talk to you?”
“Well, that’s what you’re doing.” She looks up and down the street. “What’s happening?”
“Can I come in?”
“I guess,” Jacki says after a moment, feeling the heat waves of desperation coming off his skin like a bonfire. “We have to get up early tomorrow though, so I need sleep.”
Jack steps inside past her and slams the door.
“Take it
easy. You’ll wake up-”
“This won’t take long.”
“Listen, I’m not trying to kick you out, but we have to go back to the hospital tomorrow.”
“Is Toni okay?” he practically shouts.
Jacki shakes her head “yes” and “no” at the same time.
“It’s nothing serious. She’s just allergic to something, and we can’t figure out what.”
“Probably me,” Jack laughs. “That’ll be $300 for the diagnosis, please!”
Jacki smiles a bit, relaxing her posture, but backing up to a bookshelf that hides one of Anthony’s hammers.
“I wish it was that easy,” she says. “Tell you what, I’m not ready for her to get any more shots. And I don’t like the way that goddamn doctor keeps sneaking up on her to do it.”
“You’re right, it’s kinda weird they do it that way. You’d think they’d have it down to a science by now. Especially since your situation is getting more and more common every day.”
“What situation?” she asks. He doesn’t answer, so she lets it go. “Anyway, now I’m thinking I should just wait for her to skin her knee and send a scab in an envelope. Know what I mean? Less traumatic. Sick of this shit.”
“Let any kid play past dusk, and they’ll always end up scratched.”
“Play till morning, and I’ll clip her wings.”
“Scary! You’re gonna give her nightmares. And by ‘her,’ I mean ‘me.’ You’re gonna mail what again?”
Jacki sits down on the couch, and Jack sits down on the far end, almost falling off. He starts cracking his knuckles nervously, then picks up a small wooden-framed photograph off a splintered, wire-spool table.
“This isn’t a very good picture of you.”
“That’s because it’s not me,” Jacki frowns. “That’s my mother.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack says embarrassed. “I don’t mean she’s ugly or something, it’s just - She looks just like you. Exactly like you. Toni, too… but worse?”
“So, what’s up?” she asks impatiently.
“You know, there’s probably a hundred ways you could give Toni a shot in the arm without her knowing it’s coming,” Jack starts babbling. “If we were to think about it long enough, we could figure this out. I mean, there’s hundreds of species of stinging insects alone, and-”
“Is this why you came over here?” she interrupts, starting to stand.
“I’m sorry. No, no.” He looks up, down, left, right, left, right, but doesn’t feel any braver. So he spills his guts.
“I’m here because I was there six years ago when you crashed into that tree.”
Jacki blinks to let this information, as well as the memory, sink in.
“ You came to my hospital room. I was there, remember. Go on.”
He slowly turns to face Jacki, a melodramatic move that infuriates her. Jack knows about this kind of scene from the movies. He knows it’s supposed to be important. This is a big, important moment, goddamn it. He imagines grabbing her face.
“Here’s the thing,” he says. “I believe that you were raped. I believe this happened while you were lying unconscious after your car crash. I believe I found evidence of this rape when I pulled you out and put you in the back of our ambulance. And because of this, I decided to cover up this evidence while I rode with you to the hospital. And I did this for you.”
He’s trying to be sincere, but it all seems so smug and self-satisfied that Jacki has to struggle to control her hands. She imagines grabbing his face.
“And you did this why?”
“I don’t know. Because I thought I was given this opportunity, you know? I had this chance where I could erase this horrible thing. Where you didn’t need to ever know what had happened. Where no one would ever know what happened. And you had all these other injuries, too, and I thought, ‘Fuck it, why not make this one less thing for her to deal with?’”
She stands up, and he follows her around the room, still talking.
“I thought, ‘Why not make the worst thing to ever happen to her go away?’ I mean, I didn’t have the power to save your human cannonball in the tree, even though I was doing all our driving back then and we got there sooooo fucking fast! And I didn’t have the power to save the kid under the car the day before that, even though we were first on the scene by at least eight minutes. And I didn’t have the power to save that fucking cat in the sewer the day before that, but with you...”
She goes for the door, and he grabs her arm to stop her. Right out of the fucking movies.
“I had the power, don’t you get it? Finally, more power than just getting there first. I got there before it even happened! I had the power to go back in time and make it so you were never raped. You’re welcome!” He has his hands out like he’s accepting a standing ovation.
“What the hell are you talking about?!” she yells, jerking free. “Just because a kid can write ‘Time Machine’ on the side of something doesn’t make it true, you child, you fucking idiot. You didn’t stop anything. How do you even think that you...”
“I never wrote ‘Time Machine’ on anything,” Jack whispers. “Not a bad idea…”
She turns away, done talking to him.
“But I did stop it,” he pleads. “If you didn’t know it happened, then it didn’t happen. That’s how it works. Your character wasn’t given this information. This was the worst thing that ever happened to you, and I took it away. Any other wishes you want me to grant?”
“Are you fucking serious? You think rape is worse than death? You think a random cock is worse than murder? Don’t fucking flatter yourself. I think you’re giving that thing way too much credit. Rape is worse than a car wreck? Maybe, but please don’t confuse me with a new generation of victims who wear rape trauma like a badge of honor. I will not be that.”
Jack holds his hands up in surrender. He doesn’t understand her resistance. He thought everyone loved big, important, Oscar-fellating moments like these.
“It’s not that, I just...”
“You ‘just’ nothing. All you did was do something no one asked you to do. Worse, you probably helped that monster get away by destroying evidence.”
“…just thought that...”
“Just stop. You were wrong then, and you’re wrong now. You did nothing to help me. You have nothing to offer me.”
Jacki walks to the window, catches her breath. After a moment she turns around to look at Jack, and another revelation twists the expression on her face three different ways.
“Unless it was you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Unless you raped me. Maybe that’s why you covered it up.”
“What?! You’re nuts. All I did was try to-”
Jacki is following him around the room now, talking through her teeth.
“Think about it, asshole. What’s more likely? That you’re a one-time, time-traveling vigilante, quite possibly the least-effective of all time? Or that you were fucking around with me on the side of the road like a freak. Or maybe you were just fucking around with me in the back of your ambulance, huh, Jack?”
Jack keeps backing up. He notices the hammer that’s slipped smoothly from the sleeve of her flannel shirt and into her fist. He’s loving the suspense.
“No, no,” he says. “It wasn’t just this random thing. When I saw you, I-”
“Wait a second. Are you now going to tell me how you fell in love with a bloody, unconscious car-crash victim? How are you not the rapist again?!”
“But it’s not just about you anymore.”
“You know what’s really scary?” Jacki says, her voice picking up power and speed. “I believe you when you say that. I believe it’s not just about me anymore. So, how many are there, Jack?”
The hammer is up.
“Listen,” Jack begs, palms out. “Don’t you get it? It was six years ago this week. The day Toni was conceived, and...”
The hammer hovers.
“…the rapist is your fath
er. I mean her father.”
The hammer drops.
The hammer drops? How perfect is that? Jack wishes someone said those words out loud, like stage direction.
“Shut the fuck up. Get the fuck out.”
“But-”
“Get...” She shoves him by the face to divide her command in half. “…out.”
“I’m sorry,” he says, now in the open doorway. “I thought I could make it so you never knew. Then shit got weird. I thought maybe you’d thank me.”
Jacki’s voice gets low and scary, like it’s made of hammers.
“Listen to me very carefully. I know I was raped. I knew this before you told me. I knew it then, and I know it now. I wasn’t unconscious in the back of that ambulance, and you didn’t save me from anything at all. Goodbye.”
She walks back inside.
On his way to the drive-in, Larry’s stereo devoured his Captain Beefheart cassette, of course, and he almost went for Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell instead, at least to hear the intro. He’d always suspected Meat Loaf was Beefheart’s practical joke persona anyway. “They’re both meat based!” he’d tell anyone who listened. This was before Don Van Vliet’s duplicity had been conclusively proven in court, of course. But the tape must have been equally delicious because the stereo ate it before the piano even slowed down.
He reached into his glove box, dug around for some more music, and came up with two airline tickets instead.
Daytona to Heathrow. Five hour difference. Just enough to make it the next day. Just enough to make it something like time travel.
Sometimes Larry forgot which job he was doing, or even which decade he was in. Clothes weren’t a reliable clue as fashions recycled. Movies were slippery with the popularity of period pieces. Slang was even slipperier. One thing that used to reliably establish a specific time, mostly due to their truncated shelf life, was whatever song you could locate being broadcast at that moment.
So he turned on the radio. A.M. was all he had left, but that’s where the voices from the movies, the real movies, came through his speakers the clearest.
The Last Projector Page 26