When he came out of the bathroom Maggie was still sitting there on the edge of the couch. She had something stuck up her nose, a twist of toilet paper crammed into one nostril to dam a nosebleed.
Kelly said: “What’s wrong.”
“Caleb Quinn come over when you was at work,” she said.
“Caleb Quinn? What did—”
He could feel the anger coming inside him, starting in his stomach and racing up his throat.
“What did he want?”
She didn’t look at him. She was watching the agitated crackle of static on the TV. It wasn’t quite snow. There was some kind of image buried in it. Silent, fuzzy figures moved like shadows behind a curtain of noise.
Her voice was a decibel above a whisper, and she looked like she was conscious of being watched as she said:
“He raped me.”
After he’d calmed down enough and the baby had quit crying and had gone back to sleep, Kelly sat down with her on the couch.
They sat there together, watching the figures moving behind the static on the TV, not saying anything, Gabriel asleep on Maggie’s lap. Kelly tried to hold her hand, but she didn’t want him to. He tried to put his arm around her, but she flinched, she didn’t want to be touched at all.
At a quarter to seven they heard the dogs barking outside.
Jackson Reno had pulled his car up on the gravel outside, and they heard him sink his palm into the horn of his green Chrysler LeBaron three times, probably guessing that Kelly had fallen asleep. Kelly had to go to work.
• • •
Fred wet the seam of the joint he’d just rolled, double-sealed it with an index finger, and presented it to Lana.
“This,” he said, holding it the way one would hold up an interesting archaeological artifact for schoolchildren to see, “is a joint rolled with the inveterate craftsmanship of a dude who lived through the sixties.”
Lana smiled and accepted it, almost over-casually, Fred thought, like not making too big a deal about this new illicit wickedness between them, as if to say there was nothing wrong with sharing an illegal marijuana cigarette such as this with her uncle, though it was obvious the wrongness of it thrilled her.
“Do not, I repeat, do not, tell your mother about what we’re gonna do here,” he said. “She wouldn’t get it. This is not porn—this is art. I don’t think she would get it. I don’t think she would understand the difference.”
“What is the difference between pornography and art, Fred?”
“That’s a time-old question of aesthetics and the answer has to do with your, uh, philosophical outlook, but what I say to that question is very little actually when it comes down to it. But still. Bottom line, don’t tell your mother.”
“Yeah, no duh,” said Lana. “She wouldn’t get it.”
They were sitting at Fred’s kitchen table under a jittery fluorescent tube full of dead bugs, looking at books of nude photography. Fred had just dropped the needle on an album of Alan Lomax field recordings; the antique recording warbled and crackled with static, and Lead Belly sang:
Brady, Brady, Brady, you know you done wrong
busting in the room when the game was going on
Lana extended her neck out with the joint between her lips and Fred lit it for her with the feeble blue sputter of a Zippo that was running out of fuel, clacked it shut with his thumb, and set it on the table. This is what was on the table: the lighter; some empty beer bottles; two orange Fiestaware plates, on which were forks, knives, and crumbs of toasted hot dog buns and spaghetti; a brown glass ashtray Fred had stolen from a Best Western in Utah, containing the ashes and butts of the cigarettes they’d smoked; several books of art photography they’d been looking at together; some matte prints and proof sheets of Fred’s own photographs. The table itself Fred had made out of tree stumps and a slab of concrete he had painted pink and decorated with Mexican Talavera tiles. Every spring he hauled the bastard thing out to the sidewalk art fairs in Denver, Boulder, Aspen, Durango, Santa Fe, Taos—along with his paintings, framed prints of his art photographs, and the other unwieldy pieces of furniture he’d made and painted with kaleidoscopic patterns, turquoise, green, neon pink, diamonds, suns, crescent moons, lizards, cacti, jaguars, dog-headed snakes, Aztec gods—and he would sit under his designated tent in a lawn chair with a cigarette and a beer and an ice-cream cone and hope for customers, and if none bit he just watched the passersby, which was entertainment enough if the weather had warmed up and all the skirts and flip-flops and bikini tops had finally come out of hibernation. Occasionally he actually sold something. Fred also photographed weddings and did high school yearbook shots, if the parents didn’t take a look at Fred and decide not to drop their kids off with him (which happened), and in the summers he painted houses to supplement his income. Still, Fred Hoffman was perennially broke. He leased (not to own) this aluminum-sided fifties ranch, and had illegally converted the fallout shelter into a darkroom, where he spent a lot of time under red lights, breathing in the noxious miasmata of fixer, developer, and stop bath. Working with paint and photochemicals compounded perhaps with too much acid in the sixties (mostly the seventies, to be honest) had given Fred some nerve damage, and though he felt his wits were still intact, sometimes his words couldn’t quite slide through the electrical conduits from brain to mouth syntactically unscathed—they got bogged down somewhere along the way, always arriving late and in the wrong order. He also found himself talking in a slow, nasal, pained-sounding voice; his lungs straining to push air through a smoke-hoarsened throat. And at some point in the last ten years he’d gotten really fat.
Fred wanted to shoot nudes—atmospheric close-ups of milky hips and legs and torsos and breasts, black-and-white shots with very narrow depths of field, pale dunes of skin sloping into the distance like mystical desert landscapes, or maybe something like David Hamilton, delicate-boned girls splashing around in streams, wringing hair, sighing, perched lithely on logs like forest nymphs out of some titillating Greek myth. He was thinking about starting a Web site, though Fred wasn’t exactly sure what this meant, he only knew that he apparently hadn’t been paying attention at the precise cultural moment when everything suddenly turned into w-w-w-dot-whatever-the-fuck-dot-com. Any technology more cutting edge than the eight-track was as good as voodoo to him. But cell phones, computers . . . technology was the thing now. Somehow technology was supposed to save us all. The future was promising and bright. It was the summer of 2001.
Fred had met Lana in Troy, New York, at his mother’s funeral, when his scattered and estranged family got back together for the first time since they were kids. At the reception Mom was lying supine in a glittery electric-blue casket with a plush white interior, looking like she had passed out in the backseat of a ’57 Caddy. Fred said they should have buried her facedown so when the Rapture comes and Jesus floats down from heaven to raise the dead she’ll wake up and start digging in the wrong direction and we won’t have to ever see her again, unless she eventually resurfaces somewhere in China with fingers clawed to the knucklebones, hacking up lungfuls of dirt . . . Fred’s sisters didn’t think it was funny when he said that. Lana had been fourteen years old at the time and had recently gone all mall punk, with a silver bauble flashing on the curl of her nostril and her pretty little head totally befouled with this psychotic haircut, her hair shaved to the skull except for a Kool-Aid–green shock in front that dangled to the corner of her mouth, and she had a disgusting habit of chewing on it. Her mother—one of Fred’s older sisters—said she was “in a difficult phase.” Lana was doing drugs, smoking cigarettes, listening to the Buzzcocks, dressing like a hooker, and mutilating herself with safety pins. Her mother simply didn’t understand. Fred understood.
During that week, Lana and Fred would sit across from each other at dinner and exchange looks of exaggerated boredom while everybody else blithered about property values, retirement plans, PTO meetings, interest rates. Greasy, fat, bearded, long-haired Fred generally went ignored,
and Lana was usually discussed by the adults (while she was present) in the third person. Lana would rearrange the food on her plate in pecks and scrapes with her silverware, makeup-blackened eyes full of murder, responding to anything asked of her as if the question were absurd. Sometimes in the course of the conversation Fred would open his mouth and attempt to contribute in some way, and when he finished talking, everybody else just sort of stared at him for a moment, and then, after a few ticks, somebody changed the subject, and people started talking again. Lana warmed to Fred.
Fred told Lana about painting backdrops in Hollywood, about his stint as a playwright in New York, about the punk scene in the East Village, about how he’d tended bar at CBGB for a while, about how he once went to live on a commune in New Mexico in the seventies but they kicked him out after three days because his stupid dog was chasing all the fucking sheep.
Lana told Fred her parents were pricks. Fred had to agree. After everybody had gone home, Lana and Fred exchanged a couple of letters, and Fred sent her some mix tapes—stuff like Television, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, (early) Sonic Youth, the Replacements, Gang of Four, Orange Juice, Josef K, The Teardrop Explodes. Meanwhile, Lana grew her hair back, washed out the dye, and quit mutilating herself with safety pins, although (as far as her mother was concerned) she still dressed like a hooker, and now that Fred was sending her the mix tapes she was listening to nastier music than ever. She was sixteen. She was still “in a difficult phase”—or maybe she was in another one.
Lana’s family lived in some godawful cardboard-cutout suburb in Southern California. She saved up for a plane ticket, and now, two years after Fred’s mother’s funeral, Lana and Fred were sitting in Fred’s kitchen together, smoking pot and talking about photography and listening to Lead Belly.
Lana gave Fred the joint, scooted back her stool, and crossed the room. Fred watched her walk: Her jeans were rolled up to her calves and her feet were bare, a flaking spot of red nail polish on each toenail. The bone-yellow linoleum of the kitchen floor made sticky noises under her feet and the rotten floorboards yowled as she walked. She yanked open the refrigerator, an old mint-green Frigidaire that looked like a sci-fi robot. The refrigerator hum kicked on and beer bottles jingled in the side door.
“Want another beer?”
“Fuck it, hon,” Fred said, wheezed, emitting a burst of smoke with each word. “Uno mas cerveza, señorita. Pero uno, solamente uno.”
“Your Spanish sucks, Fred.” Lana gripped the necks of the beers with three fingers. “Are you a lightweight?”
“I’m driving, hon. They’ll be more beer when we get back. You’d better keep a rein on yourself there. I don’t want you getting all sloppy drunk on me here, man, I mean, this isn’t operating like, heavy machinery here, but it does require a little, uh, cognizance.”
“I don’t think that’s the right word. Cognizance means like, knowledge. Competence?”
They’d been talking about photography. Lana said she used to want to be a poet, but now she wanted to be a photographer. They were going to shoot photographs. Fred was going to take the photos; Lana was going to model.
She set the beers on Fred’s table, took the joint from him, took the smoke deep into her lungs, let it churn there a moment, exhaled from her nostrils. Lana wedged open one of the beers with a plastic lighter, handed it to Fred, and did the same with hers. She swigged the beer, squinting. She had a tendency to squint. In the last year and a half she’d grown into her body more. Her shirt hung limp on her thin shoulders, no bra, the shadows of her nipples showing through the fabric.
They flipped through the photography books, pausing for a long time on each glossy page to soak up the image, talking about the photographs. They talked some more, a bottle of whiskey came out, they did a shot together and talked about the Delta blues. They were going to cover her body in silver paint, drive out to the woods, and do light paintings. Fred’s plan was to set up the camera on the tripod in a dark place and take shots with very long exposure times, and Lana in her silver body paint was going to flit around in front of the camera like a forest nymph and Fred would shine the flashlight on her and turn it off, burning her ghostlike image into the celluloid.
The Alan Lomax recordings ended, and they moved into the living room, where the turntable was, and started rifling through the record collection that covered all four walls of the room from floor to ceiling. As Lana flipped through records, Fred mentioned Tommy Johnson, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson, Skip James, Son House. Fred mentioned Blind Blake, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell, Blind Boy Fuller, Blind Gary Davis, Blind Lemon Jefferson. Fred mentioned Lightnin’ Hopkins, Pink Anderson, Leroy Carr. On the turntable, Robert Johnson sang:
If I had possession over judgment day
Lord, the little woman I’m lovin’ wouldn’t have no right to pray
“Is this song about the end of the world?” said Lana, the bottle of Wild Turkey in her hand. She was sixteen. Fred was forty-nine.
Fred spoke to Lana about what Federico García Lorca called duende: an untranslatable word for the ineffable graveyard mysticism of only the truly great flamenco music: irrationality, earthiness, a dash of the diabolical, and a heightened awareness of death. That duende, he said, is present in these blues songs in a visceral and immediate way. All truly great music has it, he said—that skull and crossbones, that eros-thanatos, that love of darkness that infuses the sound and sentiment behind the downbeat, the minor key, the doomsday lyrics, making them so lush and so dangerously alive: a heightened awareness of death.
• • •
So next day we’re at work and Kelly’s telling me this bullshit about how he wants to “kill” Caleb Quinn. Kelly’s pissed, I mean pissed the fuck off, and on top of all that he aint got no sleep cause he works his other bullshit job at night throwing newspapers in people’s driveways and I’m sittin here thinkin he’s gone all psycho on me here and I’m all like, hold on, slow down, motherfucker. What? No. I already told you. The thing is, Kelly don’t understand women. A bitch is the only thing in the world that loves you more the worse you treat her. That’s like the first fucking thing about understanding female psychology, and I don’t know why but Kelly never got it. Kelly, that motherfucker is whipped. Kelly thinks he saved Maggie from a bad life, like Caleb is the bad-guy cowboy and he’s the good-guy cowboy and Maggie’s the bitch tied to the tracks in her panties and dun-dun-dah!, here comes Kelly on a white horse. He don’t understand the bitch’d rather have a bad-guy cowboy in a black hat to come around and fuck the shit out of her than a good-guy cowboy to save her. That’s the first fucking thing about like, human psychology, period. Nobody really wants to get saved, right? But whatever, she don’t respect his ass and Kelly hates that she sits around all day getting fat and toking up with the kid in there. And I’m all like, what the fuck did you expect, dog? You marry a bitch and of course she’s gonna get fat. But he don’t even know about half the shit she does. Like, case in point. That skank calls me up on my cell some night when Kelly’s gone throwing his stupid-ass newspapers and she asks me if I got any coke I wanna sell her. I say, no, fuck you, not only do I not have coke, I aint ever going to now cause I just got out of motherfucking jail, if they catch me doing anything while I’m still on probation they’ll fuck me in the ass ten times worse, and furthermore, you stupid cunt, I know for a fact Kelly don’t like you snorting yay or tweaking or whatever the fuck else you’re doing and you got some fucking brass calling me up like this knowing how tight me and Kelly is, and I aint gonna tell him about it this time, but you stop this shit or I’m gonna talk some sense into Kelly and let him know the full extent of the female parasite he’s got hanging off his ass while he’s out there busting it working two goddamn jobs to make rent, you understand? And Maggie, she’s all crying and shit, like, sorry, sorry, sorry, and she starts saying something else and I just hang up on the bitch, click. And that’s the difference between me and Kelly. But that aint Kelly’s main problem. Sure as hell it ai
nt his main problem right now. Huh? Yeah. Yeah. No, like I fucking told you, I’ve known Kelly Callahan since we were this fucking tall, dude. Jesus. Whatever, dog. Okay, yeah. So we’re at work, right, and Kelly’s all telling me this bullshit about how he wants to kill Caleb Quinn, and he don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, right? Cause Caleb Quinn, it’s not like I’d call him a bud but I know him, right, and Caleb, he’s a big motherfucker, like six three or some shit and three hunnerd pounds. And Kelly’s just this little dude, and now he thinks all a sudden he can take Caleb, like he’s the Incredible Hulk or some shit and just getting pissed off is gonna turn him into this big scary green-ass monster? But Kelly’s good, man. He’s good people, you know? He gave me some help when I was in a bad situation and hooked me up with this job when I got out of jail for drug shit—which was a bunch of bullshit anyway—and nobody wanted to hire my ass, so I owe him one, right? And Kelly, I say to Kelly, the time to return the favor is now, and my favor to you is this. First of all I’m gonna be the one to cool off your fuckin’ head, dog, cause you’re dead tired and crazy pissed and you have lost your brain, so first thing you need is a friend with some rational motherfucking faculties here. Second thing you need is a second, cause there aint no way in fuck you’re gonna take that bigass motherfucker by your littleass self. Third thing you need is a plan, cause this like take-him-out-and-whack-him Godfather-type shit you’re talking about is simply not enough. So we’re at McDonald’s on lunch, right, and we’re talking, just brainstorming, understand, and I say look, dog, I know Caleb Quinn. I used to be tight with Caleb way back, known him since we were this tall. So I go meet up with Caleb, I say to Kelly, I go meet up with him and I bring him to you. Don’t ask me how, I’m gonna figure that out. I have my ways, dog, don’t worry about it. I take him up to the park, right? Centennial Park, with the cannon on top of the hill where they killed all those Indians or some shit? We take his car so he feels chill with it. We drive up to the park, and that’s where you’re gonna be at, and you’ve got a baseball bat or something. Go get yourself one a them Louisville Sluggers. There’s this trail there, right, and the trail goes down a hill, around the bend? You know what I’m talkin about? You be waiting right there around that bend, so you can get the drop on his ass. I aint even gonna touch his ass unless you miss or something and you need my help, but I don’t want to cause this is your thing, right? So don’t miss, but if you do, just in case I got your ass, trust me. So that’s the plan, right? And I say to Kelly, you better be out on that trail with a bat or some shit by nine o’clock tonight, and you just sit your ass down and wait. I’ll take care of the rest. I say nine cause that’s when the sun goes down, cause it’s summer. It might take me all night to get him out there cause I don’t know how long it’s gonna take me to find him, so be ready just in case, is what I tell him. If I got him with me I’m gonna try to call your cell before we get over there so you can get ready, but I’m warning you I might not get a chance to call, so don’t expect it, just be ready anyway. And don’t, I repeat, don’t go busting nobody’s skull by accident cause you’re a jumpy motherfucker right now and you think they’re Caleb. I’m gonna keep him talkin, and you know his voice, right, and you know my voice, so that’s how you’re gonna know we’re coming. And I’m gonna make damn sure he’s walking in front a me so I aint the one that gets whacked by mistake. Main thing is, keep your fucking cool, Kelly. And then Kelly asks me if I can try and get Caleb out to the park by eleven so he can still get to work throwing newspapers, and I think that shit’s so fuckin funny I just laugh, but then he’s all like, I’m serious, dog, I can’t miss work. So I just say yeah, whatever, I’m gonna try and get him up there by eleven so you can beat his ass and still get to work. But here’s what I want you to do now, I say to Kelly. Huh? Yeah, we’re still at McDonald’s here. I say, go tell the boss you’re sick, you got to go home right now. You gotta go home cause the most important thing you gotta do now is get you some fucking sleep, dog. Rest up, cause you’re gonna need your energy, and you’re all nodding and shit right now, I can tell you’re tired. So Kelly says yeah, OK I’m gonna go home and get some sleep. We go back to work and he tells the boss he’s sick as a dog, and the boss is like, yeah, whatev, Kelly, you look like shit, go home. So he clocks out and I drive his ass home and drop him off. And we’re outside his house and all these dogs in the yard next door are going crazy barking and Kelly’s getting out of the car and I say, Kelly, promise me you get you some sleep. I don’t care fuckall what that bitch has got to say to you when you get in there, just tell her shut the fuck up, I got to get some sleep so I can think straight, you understand? And he says yeah, he promises me, but I can’t hardly hear his quietass voice cause of all them crazy dogs barking. So I get back to work and everybody is looking at me all like suspicious, cause they understand some kind of shit is up but they don’t know what, but I just say fuck all y’all, and I clam the fuck up and I don’t say a goddamn thing to nobody the whole rest of the day, except for shit like, hey, gimme that hammer. The end of the day comes and there’s this little bit of shit with the boss wanting me to work overtime cause with a man down that afternoon we didn’t get where we was supposed to, but I just say no, man, I got a date, can’t stay, sorry. I go back to my gramma’s house, say whatup and kiss her cheek and shit and I go downstairs and wash up and change clothes. I get in my good clothes which was a mistake cause they got all fucked up with blood later but that’s the least of my problems now. When I leave the house, all I got on me is a shirt and jeans and boots, forty bucks in my pocket, my phone and a pack of smokes. I take the bus downtown, eat a sandwich at Papa Jose’s and then I go to the Scumdowner and walk up to the bar and order a beer. There aint nobody in there at first cause it’s early, but more people start coming in and I just hang back and shoot some pool. And sooner or later I see this guy I know, Braden Boomsma. I know he knows Caleb. So I see this motherfucker from my past life and I just go up and say hey dog, whatup, and he says I hear you got out a jail a couple months back, and I say yeah, it’s good to be back. And then I say, hey, dog, you ever seen Caleb Quinn round here no more? Whatever happened to that dog? And he’s all like, naw, dog, I guess that just means you aint been to the Scumdowner much lately cause he still comes in here all the time. He’s working some job fixing swimming pools now. He gets off work about seven and he comes in here about a half hour later. He stick around all night? I say. He says, yeah, he stays a couple hours sometimes, sometimes he’s here till last call. It’s like six thirty now, and I know Kelly aint gonna be out there at the park with a bat till like two, three hours, so I gotta keep busy. I bet Braden a beer on a round of pool, and I’m winning till I knock in the eight ball, so I go up to the bar to buy his ass a beer and buy my ass one too, and when I get back from the bar who the fuck is standing there at the pool table as Braden’s racking the balls? I aint seen this motherfucker in two years, and I never did much like that motherfucker much anyway so it aint like I been seeking his ass out since I been out of jail. Sure enough he’s wearing these ugly yellowass boots that he cleans pools in or whatever. And here I am, I’m standin here with two beers full up to the rims in both my hands and I’m all trying not to spill and shit and still for some reason I can’t take my eyes off these big yellow boots he got on. And Caleb Quinn says, hey, whatup dog, like we’re buds. I put down the beers and we shake, and when me and his hands are doing the whole slap-squeeze thing I feel he’s still got a real good arm, and I note this duly. So then I’m all like, I aint seen your ass in like two years, what you been up to, just some bullshit like at. And we’re talking, and the conversation’s just about shit we used to do, all the girls we used to know. Just a bunch of inconsequential bullshit. And we’re shooting pool and shit and talking. But I’m keeping my eyes on the clock the whole time, waiting for it to get close to nine. Caleb’s loosenin up and drinking, and I’m drinking too, but I’m trying not to drink too much cause I gotta hold on to my wits. But I get an idea on my own, which is I ke
ep on betting him beers on pool games, and at this point it’s just me and Caleb and the pool table cause Boomsma is over at the bar trying to chat up the one girl in the room, and she aint even that hot. And here I am, I keep on losing and losing, cause I’m throwin the games. I keep on sinking the eight ball and shit, playing like shit on purpose. So I let him win and win, and I keep going like, shit, dog, it aint my night, and Caleb, this greedy motherfucker can’t turn down free booze, especially if he feels like he won it off me. So I been going over to the bar and buying his ass beer after beer and then shot after shot when he switches to whiskey, and don’t get me wrong, Caleb’s a big dude and he’s a drunk anyway, so it takes a lot to get him good and shithoused but he gets there alright. And it’s like, not even nine yet, but here’s Caleb, and he thinks we’ve been having a grand old fuckin time and I guess he’s right, and here I am about to take a shot, and I’m lookin at the cue ball and the cue’s slidin in and outta my fingers like a dick in a pussy and that’s when I look up all sly and I see Caleb standing there like he’s ten sheets to the wind, and I see him put down his beer on the edge of a table, but he like half misses the table and the glass falls, and I don’t even remember if it broke or not all I remember is he tried to put his beer down and missed the fuckin table. And that is when I unload the plan on him. And it works like a motherfuckin charm, at least the first part does. I make my voice all quiet so he’s gotta lean in to hear me, and I look around the room like I’m being all like conspiratorial and I say, you still into yay? He leans back and he’s all like, yeah, every now and then, like he’s trying to play it cool, but he don’t have a very good poker face. See now this is the thing, Quinn (I say to Caleb). My old connection calls me up the other day and says check out all this shit we got. At first I say, naw, dog, I can’t get into that shit no more, I’m still on probation. And then he tells me how much and what price, and I freak out, right? Soon as he tells me what he’s selling this shit for I’m all like, the fuck? cause at first I don’t believe him, I think he’s shittin me, but I say, I gotta see this shit, so I meet up with him and take a look at it and sure enough he aint shittin me. Shit is fucking gold, man. And I’m broke as a joke right now cause ever since I got out of jail I been trying to go straight. If I sold this shit off for even like half what it’s worth I’m gonna be in good shape, I think. I cannot turn this shit down, so I throw down and buy it all off him right then and there for half a grand. And then I go home, and the next day I get a surprise visit from my probation officer. She didn’t search the place or nothing, she’s just like checkin up on me to make sure I got a job and shit, which I do, but she scares the fuckin shit out of me, right? I’m all standin there and she’s talkin to me and the whole time I’m all like shakin in my boots cause alls I can think about is all that yay all rolled up in a sock in my closet, and I’m trying to stay cool, and I do, and she goes away, but soon as she’s gone I’m having some extremeass second thoughts about my little purchasing decision yesterday. You know what caveat emptor means? Caleb goes, what? I go, it means don’t go round buying a shitload of coke when you’re on probation and you got some bitch from the fuckin government coming round at randomass intervals checking up on your ass. So, I say to Caleb, that all happened yesterday. So now I realize how much I fucked up. I bought all this yay, and I realize now, I been in jail for damn near two years, and in that time all my contacts dried up. I don’t hardly know nobody in town no more. I don’t know who the fuck to sell it to. And for obvious reasons I aint about to try to sell it to some dog I don’t know all that well. And that, Caleb, is what brings me to my unhappy conclusion. I have got to get rid of this shit ASAP, and I figure if I can’t turn a profit on it I might as well sell it for what I paid for it just to get rid of it, which is a fuckin steal considering the quality of this shit. So. You interested? And then he lets a couple seconds go by, like he’s all busy thinking it over, like he don’t want to make it look like his pussy’s already all wet over it, but I can see in them little pig eyes of his he’s already made his decision. Yeah, he says, yeah, I’m interested. Good, I say. And then we talk details and he says he’ll give me the five hunnerd I say I paid for it, which is the best offer I got for a bunch of coke that don’t even exist. He says today’s my lucky day cause today was payday and he’s got the cash on him right now if I got the shit on me. I say good for you, but I don’t have the shit on me. My whole unfortunate legal situation’s made me real paranoid about this kind of shit, and I went and hid it in the woods. He goes, what the fuck? I go, I know, it sounds crazy, dog, but I wanted that shit the fuck out of my house. I put it in a fuckin coffee can and hid it a little ways off a trail in Centennial Park. You know up on that hill off Lookout Road? It’s like five-ten minutes from here? He agrees, says yeah, yeah, says he knows it. So I say, you got wheels? I drove the company van down here after work, he says, cause I got the van till close and they aint got no way of knowing what I do with it after. Okay, good, I say. What? Yeah, yeah, we’re still at the Downer. I dunno, nine? Nine fifteen? Yeah no. Yeah. Now Caleb Quinn’s shithoused, yeah, but I figure he’s a pretty good drunk driver from years of practice so I guess he’s still basically good to drive. We’re only going one way, anyway, I think. So he goes off to piss and I call Kelly on his cell, but it aint on, which kinda scares me a little cause he’s supposed to pick up. What? Yeah, I guess it was like about nine thirty, almost ten at that point. Last time I looked at a clock it was nine, don’t know where the fuck a whole hour went. I start leaving a message for Kelly but then I stop and put down the phone cause I see Caleb come out of the bathroom. Now I’m thinking if Kelly pussies out on me or some shit and it turns out he aint there when we get there what the fuck am I gonna do if we get out there in the bushes and I aint got nothing to show him? That thought makes me start to sweat a little, so now I gotta work out a Plan B if Kelly flakes. Caleb comes back, says, aright, let’s go. First he wants to peace out with Boomsma though, but I don’t want nobody being able to say for sure he saw me leave the bar with Caleb that night, and I tell him so, and he agrees, but he don’t know the real reason why, he just thinks I’m being all paranoid about the coke and shit. So I swear him to secrecy and then I go up to Boomsma and smack him on the back and say, so long, and he aint really paying much attention anyway cause he’s still tryin to chat up the one girl in the bar even though she’s not that hot, and I just get the fuck out of there and go wait outside for Caleb. Five minutes later he comes out, too, but before he does I try calling Kelly’s cell again and again it just rings and rings. I’m thinking if Kelly pussies out on me I guess I’m just gonna have to say, aw, shit, man, it aint here, some little bird must of took it, but I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to act that good to bullshit that bad. We go get in his company van, which is like this pool cleaning van with all these nets and pool equipment and shit on top of it and this picture of a mermaid on the side of it holding a pool net. The mermaid’s got nice tits. We go. I’m sitting there tryin to think, and in my head I’m all like, stay rational, dog, and there’s all this alcohol swimmin around in my brain cause I fucked up a little and wound up drinking a little too much. I try and see what pocket he kept his keys in, cause now I’m thinking if this here company van’s in the parking lot next morning it’s not so good, right? And I’m also thinking if he sees I aint got shit on me and I took his ass all the way outta town for nothing, he’s gonna get real suspicious, and I aint got a getaway car or nothing, and don’t get me wrong, I’m plenty confident with just my fists, but this here motherfucker is stacked like a fuckin wall and if he lands a punch on me in the right place it’s gonna mean lights the fuck out for me. So all of a sudden I got a lot a shit on my plate and I’m sittin shotgun in this pool cleaning van and we’re driving around and Caleb’s all swerving around on the road and shit, and that’s when my cell goes off. Who the fuck is at? says Caleb. The fuck is it to you? I say. I say, it’s my gramma. That was a lie. Of course it’s Kelly, calling me back way the fuck too late. I turn
down the volume on the phone way way low so Caleb can’t hear and then I answer the cell and I make my voice go up like three registers like I’m talking to my gramma. I go like, Hi, Gramma! What the fuck? says Kelly on the other line. Oh shit, I’m thinking. How fuckin dumb can you get? And I’m like, oh, I’m just out and about, Gramma. I’m coming home soon, yeah, yeah, yeah. Don’t worry about me. The fuck are you talking about? says Kelly. I aint your gramma. We been sittin here in the goddamn dark waiting for your ass. Good, good, I think. And I say, okay, love you too, Gramma! Be home soon! Remember to take your medicine when you go to bed, OK? OK. Love you too. And I hang up. Then I says to Caleb (and we’re almost at the park now), I turn to Caleb and say, hell, I gotta say it. I love the shit out of my gramma. She practically raised me, cause I was born when my ma was fifteen, and when I was a kid she split and never came back, last thing we heard she was shacked up with some asshole in Tucson. Yeah, yeah, says Caleb, like he’s all chill now. Gramma, he says, aint at the shit. Hells yeah, I say. But in my head now I’m feeling totally chill about one old thing but I’m freaking the fuck out about one new thing. I feel chill now I know Kelly’s gonna be there alright, cause we’re about to be there in about five minutes. But then I’m thinking: The fuck’s he mean, we?
The Fat Artist and Other Stories Page 5