by Ray Garton
Adam laughed. “They won’t be able to do it without you, Billy.”
The reflection of a third figure appeared on the window pane. Someone tall, in a cap and sunglasses, with long hair.
“You guys comin’?” Diz asked.
Adam was utterly caught off guard by Diz’s smile, his face. The eyepatch was gone and the bill of the black cap was pulled low to hide his eyebrows. A silver CBS Eye stared from the front of the cap. Adam saw his reflection in Diz’s large, black-framed sunglasses. The hole was gone. Like magic, it had disappeared. Straight blonde hair fell from beneath the cap to his shoulders. In his End of Days T-shirt and a pair of shorts, a blue and green nylon backpack strapped to his shoulders, he looked years younger, like a beach bum. As long as he kept his hands out of sight.
“Diz, that’s...astounding!” Adam said, looking closer.
Diz put an arm around Billy’s shoulders and said, “M’man Billy here taught me. Don’t know what I woulda done without him. Some impressive shit, huh? Damned if the motherfucker didn’t give me a face again.”
Billy’s cheeks turned a brief crimson and he smiled at his feet.
Adam had to lean close to see the latex patch. “You’re a genius, Billy.”
“Oh, well, um, it’s...nothin’ special, y’know,” he said.
Diz started walking. “Gotta make one more stop. Little grocery store back up the block? Gotta get a couple bags of groceries. Adam, y’know what kinda food your dad usually stocks the boat with?”
“Yeah.”
“Thass what we gotta buy.”
“Why? It’s not my job to stock the shelves.”
“Don’t fuckin’ matter,” Diz said.
“You mean, we’re going to buy groceries and just leave them on the boat?”
Diz nodded.
“But they’ll notice that.”
“It don’t. Fuckin’. Matter.”
Adam stopped at a crosswalk to wait for a red light. Diz and Billy passed him and headed across the street against it. There were no cars, so Adam followed them, caught up. “Why the groceries, Diz?”
“People know you here?”
“Sure, but I doubt I’ll see any of them.”
“You might. So. You see somebody, they say hi, you say hi, they wanna know what you’re up to, just bein’ friendly, and what’re you gonna say?”
“Ah.” Adam nodded. “Just bringing some groceries for the voyage.”
“Correcto-mundo. Sounds good, makes sense, no more fuckin’ questions.”
“What about you and Billy?” Adam asked. “How do I introduce you if I need to?”
“I’m B.J. Billy’s the Bear.”
“You’re joking.”
“Nope.”
“Look, I’m not gonna introduce you as B.J. and—”
“Then don’t introduce us.”
Adam walked into the grocery store ahead of the other two. Turned to his right just in time to see a Korean man pop up from behind the counter with a shotgun. Spinning around to flee, Adam fell into a smiling Billy.
“’Scuse me,” Billy said.
“S’up, Adam?” Diz asked.
“Uh...” He turned to the counter again. A Korean man, yes. But the shotgun in his hands was a broomstick. Sweeping up behind the register. “Fine. I’m fine.”
Diz watched him for a moment. “You look like you just hadda Depends moment.”
“Really,” Adam assured him, “I’m fine.”
Diz grabbed a cart and said, “Okay, girls, less go shoppin’.”
Later, as they walked to Money Shot, each carrying a bag of groceries, Diz asked, “Your family eat that much fuckin’ macaroni and cheese? Thassa shitload of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, man.”
“My dad loves it,” Adam said. It had been difficult not to laugh while throwing the boxes into the cart on a whim.
Inside, they put down the grocery bags, and Adam gave Diz a quick tour of the yacht.
Plush cream carpeting, dark shiny wood furniture and cabinets, glass-topped coffee tables. A formal dining room and a galley, six staterooms and a game room with video and pinball machines bolted to the floor and walls. A big-screen TV, hot tub, and a small but fully equipped gym.
“Shit, man,” Diz said with a chuckle. “Yo daddy like his comfort, don’t he?”
“Oh, yeah,” Adam said.
In the kitchen, they put away the groceries. Helping Adam fill a cupboard’s shelves with boxes of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, Billy said, “This is a real nice boat, Adam. You, um, go out on ’er much?”
“Not since I was a kid. And it was a different yacht then. Dad gets a new one every couple years, sells the old one. Each one’s a little bigger than the last.”
“This a two hunnert footer?” Diz asked.
“Two-fifty. The last one was two twenty-five. He’ll eventually end up with a cruise ship. The Hate Boat.”
When they were done in the kitchen, Adam took them to the helm station. It looked like a compact version of the bridge of the starship Enterprise. The black and silver high-tech instrument panel gleamed among all the dark wood and cream.
Diz sat in the pilot’s seat and looked the panel over carefully. “Okay, lemme see, what the fuck we got here? Take a little longer’n I thought, but not by much.”
“You’re not going to do it now?” Adam asked.
He shook his head. “Tonight. Any chance somebody’s gonna be here tonight? Can’t have nobody droppin’ in on my ass.” He got out of the chair, turned to Adam.
“No one should show up here until tomorrow morning.”
“Two things.” Diz held up his lonely thumb and forefinger. “I need a place to put my backpack. Someplace it won’t be noticed somebody does come. Second, you gotta show me the engine room, Scotty.”
The backpack fit perfectly into the cupboard beneath the kitchen sink. Diz spent a couple minutes looking the engine room over, then they were out of the luxurious yacht and back in the real world. Smelling the filthy water and air.
Back at the strip mall, Diz got into the van and slammed the door. While Billy got in on the other side, Adam rested his arms on the edge of Diz’s window.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
“We...don’t do shit. Billy and I got things to do. You go home. Relax. Go out tonight, have fun.” He leaned closer. “And make sure plenty of people see you doin’ it. Understand? Just a little piece of friendly fuckin’ advice.” He smiled, started up the van.
“See ya, Adam,” Billy called as the van backed out of the parking slot. “Tell Carter I said yo!” He waved as Diz drove out of the parking lot.
By the time Adam lifted his hand to wave back, it was too late. They were gone. He got in the Lexus and headed home.
He wanted to go straight to the bookstore, find Alyssa. She was the only one who could get his mind off everything. But that might not be a good idea. Diz was right—everything Adam did from that point on would either strengthen or weaken his defense should he be accused of, or even tried for, murder. Anyone he encountered would be a potential witness if there was a trial. Especially Alyssa. He did not want to put her through that.
“What the hell am I thinking?” Adam shouted. His voice bounced off the interior surfaces of the Lexus and pounded back into his head. “Do I want to put me through that?”
TWENTY-NINE
Helicopters stirred the dirty air over the city. Police, traffic reporters, air rescue units going to or from one of the summer wildfires that raged throughout California. Ground level, there was always a siren coming from one direction or another. Everywhere Adam looked in the stop-and-go freeway traffic surrounding the Lexus, mouths yammered silently into cellphones while eyes hid behind black lenses.
Rush hour was a few hours away, but it seemed there had been a wreck somewhere up ahead. Or maybe there was road construction. Cars drove a few yards, a few feet, stopped for a while, then moved forward, only to stop again in a few seconds.
“Look, I told you I wanted to help,�
� Carter said. “That means I’m involved, okay? You don’t have to protect me, Adam. That Diz guy, we really don’t know anything about him. You shouldn’t be hanging out with somebody like that by yourself.”
“Billy was there,” Adam said.
“Billy has his head up his foot. He’s a follower. I mean, he’s a cool guy, a big talent, a good friend, but...I keep waiting to hear he ate poison applesauce in some UFO suicide cult. What do you think he’s doing with Diz? He’s following. If you were in trouble, Billy would be as worthless as tits on the pope.”
“Yeah, I kept wishing you were there to protect me, Carter. Just in case.”
“Smartass.”
“You defended the hell out of Billy yesterday.”
“I was trying to make the best of a bad situation.”
“What are we going to do this weekend?”
“I don’t know. Got anything in mind?”
“No, but we’ve got to be seen. I’ve got to be seen. Know of any parties?”
“You hate parties.”
“I don’t have fun in mind.”
“Maybe the one at Monty’s is still going on.”
“Bite me.”
“We’ll find something. You gonna bring Dracula’s daughter?”
“I told you, she’s not like that.”
Carter shrugged. “I thought you wanted to see more of her.”
“I have been seeing more of her.”
“What, in the middle of the night?”
“Mostly.” Adam told him about being awakened naked by Alyssa’s dad and they laughed.
“They sound like pretty cool parents,” Carter said. “Hey, maybe they won’t mind that you killed your family and they’ll invite you to move in!”
When Adam didn’t laugh, Carter said no more for a while. They drove in silence—even the radio was off—with no destination in mind.
“I’m afraid to get her involved,” Adam said.
“Involved how?”
“You know, as a witness. If there’s a trial—”
“There won’t be if you do it right.”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Yeah, and it’s a possibility Henry Jaglom’ll make a movie people can watch without wanting to commit suicide. But it’s not likely. Remember what Diz said when we were at his place? He could vaporize that yacht and everybody in it. Unless there are witnesses, nobody will even know they blew up. It’ll look like they just...you know.” He made a raspberry noise. “Disappeared.”
“If we’re lucky.”
“No, it’s not luck. Diz and his family...there won’t be any middle schools named after them in the near future, but I think Diz knows what he’s doing.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
“So what do you doubt?”
“Everything else.”
The traffic finally began to move, picked up speed until they were cruising.
“Look!” Carter shouted, palms flat against the window beside him. He made them squeak on the way down. “Nothing.” He shouted, “My Gawd, there’s nothing! No wreck. Nobody broke down. Everybody just slowed to a stop for no reason. It’s a madhouse—a madhouse!” He fell back in his seat, jutted his chin like Heston and reached dramatically for the windshield. “Soylent Green is liberals, you damned dirty ape! Now somebody give me a Goddamned firearm!”
Normally, that would have had Adam laughing hard enough to swerve the car. But he wasn’t up to it. He kept his eyes on the road.
“Okay, let’s just go to the bookstore and see her,” Carter said, moving past the awkward moment. “You’re a couple, right? Then it would be weird if you didn’t go see her.”
Adam’s eyes stayed on the car ahead and he did not speak.
“Hey. Marlee Matlin. What the hell is wrong with you?”
Adam put up a good front for several seconds, until the first squeaks of the laugh came through. It exploded from his mouth. “ Marlee Matlin?”
In an exaggerated impersonation of the deaf actress, Carter said, “Whuh? Ah’m thowwy, Ah cahn hee yooo. Ah’m dayf.”
Adam laughed harder, barely got his words out. “Stop it. Can’t you see I’m trying to brood over here?” He could not stop laughing. He was incapable of not laughing.
Carter’s smile dropped off his face. “Adam?”
Clutching the steering wheel, Adam rocked in his seat, gasped for breath between bouts of coughing, hacking laughter. His face turned deeper shades of red.
“You okay, Adam?” He gripped Adam’s shoulder, tried to steady him. “You’re not okay, are you?”
The Lexus swerved to the left, into the next lane. Someone ahead of them honked, then someone behind. They honked for a long time.
“Shit, shit!” Carter grabbed the wheel and pulled the car back into its lane, steadied it. “Adam, for Christ’s sake, would you stop laugh—hey, slow down! It wasn’t that funny!”
Adam composed himself just enough to ease the car off the freeway. He had no idea which exit he had taken and was not sure where he was. Carter pointed to a 7-Eleven next to the freeway exit. Adam parked in two spaces and killed the engine. Melted into his seat with laughter, red cheeks wet with tears.
“Jesus Christ, Adam, what do you want me to do?”
He waved a hand at Carter. Don’t worry. Just give me a minute, okay?
“Are you having, um, I-I don’t know, some kind of, you know, breakdown?”
Shaking his head, Adam made a great effort to stop laughing. It happened very gradually. He spoke haltingly, words interrupted by dying laughter. “I was just thinking. About how many things. Could go wrong. So many things. But it’ll just take one. To put me on death row. And I’ll end up tied to that weird table. Waiting for the needle.”
“Listen to me,” Carter said. “If anything puts you on death row, it’s gonna be this shit.”
Adam wiped his face with his hands. His voice was shaky when he asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean this, freaking out like that annoying chick in The Blair Witch Project. I’m telling you, Adam. You stay cool and calm, keep your head on, you’re gonna get through this without a bump. But you’ve gotta bottle up all this weird stuff. Laughing like a lunatic, puking on people’s shoes. That kind of shit makes people talk, Adam.”
Adam massaged his temples, sighed. “Okay. Yeah. You’re right.”
“Look, once this is all over, you wanna go crazy, go apeshit, hey, knock yourself out, have a party. But not now. If you want, I can get you some pills. Something to relax you. Devin’s got pounds of pills at home. I’ll grab some for you when we go back to the house. Maybe some Xanax.”
Adam rested his forehead on the steering wheel. “Why are you doing this, Carter?”
“Hey. I’m your best friend. And I know it’s what you want.”
“What I want,” Adam said. “You know what I want?” He sat up. “I want to be a little kid at Christmas again.”
Carter opened his door and got out. “I’m gonna go in for a Klondike Bar. You want me to see if they’ve got some little kid at Christmas again?”
“Smartass.” Adam got out and followed him into the 7-Eleven.
THIRTY
There was no one to fill in at the bookstore that afternoon, so Alyssa had to work. Adam and Carter hung around, talked, browsed. They listened to The Don and Mike Show on the radio, and Alyssa made them iced tea. It was a slow day, and what few customers came—potential witnesses, Adam thought—did not stay long. A girl entered the store about forty minutes after Adam and Carter arrived. Alyssa introduced her as her best friend, Brett.
Short, straight, blonde hair framed her round face. A small silver ring pierced her right eyebrow. They were thin, black, arched eyebrows above a face that looked as if it had never smiled, not even once, yet there was a natural prettiness to it. Roughly the same height as Alyssa, but more muscular and tan in her black shorts and red sleeveless top.
Brett listened silently for a while as Adam and Alyssa and Carter talked. When Adam
made reference to something he had written, she asked, “You write?” Adam said he did, but had nothing published yet but a couple poems in journals nobody ever heard of. She smiled then, a small, guarded smile, and said, “That’s cool.” It was not much, but it was clear to Adam from the look on Alyssa’s face that he had received high praise from her friend. Brett asked Carter what he did. When he told her, she said, “That’s disgusting.”
Carter gave Adam a look that asked, What’d I do?
Sunny arrived about twenty minutes later and took over for Alyssa. The four of them left in the Lexus and decided to go to a movie. All but Brett wanted to see the new horror movie directed by John Carpenter. Brett was outnumbered.
“You probably like to look at pictures of dead people, huh? Car wrecks. Burn victims.”
“Why would you think that?” Carter asked.
“Well, that’s the kind of stuff you make, right? Violently damaged body parts?”
“Yeah, but I don’t use pictures of dead people.”
“Then what do you use for models? Real body parts?”
They arrived at the theater early and took popcorn and soft drinks into the auditorium, looked for seats. Adam and Carter sat between Alyssa and Brett.
“You think I’m some kind of a serial killer because I make prosthetics and masks?”
“Is that what you call it?” Brett said, eyes looking straight ahead.
“Yes, that’s what I call it. What we call it! I mean, it’s a whole industry, you know.”
“Assembly line violence.”
“You’re one of those anti-violence people, huh?”
She laughed. “You say that like being ‘anti-violence’ is a bad thing.”
“Depends on exactly what kind of violence you’re anti, you know?”
“No, I don’t. What kind of violence do you think is acceptable?”
“None! Violence is bad, all real violence is bad, okay?”
Another laugh. “How can you say that and do what you do?”
“I don’t use real body parts, nobody gets hurt. They’ve got laws against stuff like that, you know. I make fake body parts, fake wounds, and masks. I mean, if you’ve gone all this time thinking the blood and gore you see in movies is real, then I—”