The Hidden Things

by Jamie Mason

  Then he remembered the board game in the truck and convinced the boys to go old-school with the entertainment.

  Mikey and Byron had never played Monopoly. They were young. Though even if it all came down to just age, Roy had to admit that it was hard to imagine Mikey or Byron growing up in a household where there’d ever been family game night. Feral, that’s what they were. Cats with no collars.

  They’d laughed when he’d brought it in. The wear and repair on the box had left the bottom more duct tape than cardboard, the white-and-red top frayed to fuzz along the edges. The play money had been so thoroughly thumbed that it was all more or less the same dingy color. But even after almost three decades, every bit of it was still there—every playing piece, every property marker, all the Community Chest and Chance cards. Even the original dice.

  And in the random chemistry of some nights, it was great. There was beer enough on hand and the laughter was contagious, and by the time everyone was bleary-eyed and completely, if temporarily, over the busted TV, Mikey disappeared down the hall and came back with a tattered lace-trimmed pillow and pointed vaguely past the kitchen and reminded Roy that the bathroom was back that way, if he needed it.

  So here the next morning, with the sun blazing through the bent blinds, was the smell of bacon, and after some clomping and door slamming, a good bit of noisy chatter coming from the kitchen.

  Roy walked in on the end of an argument. A young woman with yesterday’s mascara smudged down to her cheekbones had her glittering club shoes swinging by their straps in the fist she was jabbing over the table at Mikey.

  She cut her eyes at Roy as he crossed the kitchen’s threshold, but homed back in on their host, who went rigid under her wrath.

  “And you can ask your asshole brother. I haven’t been here for almost a week. I don’t know what happened to your stupid TV, and there’s no way I’m on the hook for it. I just came to get some of my shit.” She shook the drawstring bag that was scrunched in her nonshoe fist. “And to get my pillow, except that you let some random hobo sleep on it with his greasy-ass head.” Her shoe-clutching hand flung out toward Roy. The heel swung wide and nearly took the nose off of Byron, who was sitting quiet and goggle-eyed next to Mikey at the table.

  Byron sputtered out a laugh at Roy’s expense.

  “And I don’t know who you are,” the girl said to Byron, drilling him through with a bloodshot glare. “But you can fuck right off, too.”

  She abruptly ran out of steam and sighed. The bacon sizzled and smoked. The girl dropped the bag and her shoes on the linoleum and crossed to the stove. She turned the bacon with tongs while the three men stared at the window, the clock, the tabletop.

  She turned around, hands on hips, then retrieved her stuff. She walked the long way around the table and kissed Mikey on the top of his head, then clonked him over the skull, right on the kissed spot, with a dull clatter of stilettos on bone.

  “Ow! Fuck!”

  “Tell your brother to call me.” The hinges of the screen door screamed in protest as she banged through. “And you owe me a new pillow!”

  The silence settled around everything but the spit of bacon grease.

  “That bitch needs to chill.” Byron stared after her on her barefoot way down the sidewalk.

  “Nah. She’s okay.” Mikey rubbed his sore head and winced. “My brother’s kind of a dick.” He brought the bacon to the table on a paper towel.

  Breakfast was almost-burnt bacon and beer and a splash of orange juice from the bottom of the carton, split three ways into red plastic cups.

  The scant discussion turned to how nice it would be to have some weed to soothe their hangovers. Mikey and Byron both had reasons why none of their money could go toward a trip to the house on the corner.

  Roy hated weed. The lightness that other people seemed to feel when they smoked was lost on him. The woozy high rose up in him like helium, stretching him like a balloon, but with no lift, only pull and itch and worry that something would bust.

  At the table with his new friends, he struggled for the right tone. He didn’t want it. He couldn’t afford it. And if he didn’t help them, they might make him leave. “I mean, it’s totally fine with me if you guys do. I don’t have any problem with it. I just don’t . . . it doesn’t . . . I just can’t.”

  “It’s cool. No problem,” Byron said. But it wasn’t true. His voice was thick with a disappointed problem.

  “Hey”—Mikey looked at Roy—“have you got a gun?”

  Roy felt all the blood speed away from his head as if he were doing it on purpose. Because he absolutely would do it on purpose. He would happily drain his head like an oil pan, if he could. Anything to unplug the idea of having a gun, touching a gun. He’d do just about anything to hold the door against the memory of the roar that went with a pulled trigger, the gasp and gurgle through a bullet-torn neck.

  “Hey, hey! Dude!” Mikey reached over and grabbed Roy’s shoulder. “Dude, dude.” Mikey was laughing now. “You should see your face. I didn’t mean it like you would rob anybody. Not for weed. Don’t be crazy.”

  Roy looked at Mikey, bewildered. His neck was cold with sweat. His hands were icy and damp.

  “Damn, man. You need to chill,” Byron said.

  “No, hang on. I’ve got an idea.” Mikey left the room and came back with a terry-cloth-wrapped something that he thunked down onto the table.

  Somehow it was obvious that only one thing in the world would make a noise like that. Mikey unwrapped the gun, a black .38 revolver, bullet tips glowering from their nests in the barrel. Roy might have been less alarmed if the guy had uncovered a coiled snake.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking,” Mikey said. “You live in your truck, right?”

  Roy had been in Mikey’s house for just over fourteen hours, with Byron, and briefly some girl, and a game and some jokes and more untroubled sleep than he’d had in months.

  He’d woken not even noticing his hope, well rested beneath his jacket, but on top of a pillow that smelled like flowery perfume. He’d forgotten about the truck and the several hundred pounds of useless junk in the back. None of his heaps of nothing had crossed his mind in more than half a day, and he’d forgotten that he was worried about feeling low. Some pound-puppy part of his mind had curled up as if he were home, as if he’d been adopted.

  Byron chimed in, “Ray, man, it’s okay. No shame that you have to stay in your truck sometimes. You’re getting by, man. We all get by as best we can.”

  “Roy,” said Roy.

  “What?”

  “My name is Roy, not Ray.”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry, man.”

  “So I was thinking,” Mikey continued. “Anybody who lives in his truck should have a gun. You don’t know what could happen. You might need it. There are assholes out there who need to see a gun to believe you. And I’ll sell you this one for a hundred.”

  “You’re going to sell your brother’s gun?” Byron asked.

  “He’s got, like, six of ’em.” Mikey nodded to his own decision. “Plus, fuck that guy. He’s probably the one who broke my TV. And, yeah, fuck that guy.”

  Roy jammed his fingernail down over a bottom tooth. “I don’t want a gun,” he said around his chewing.

  “You probably do, seriously, but whatever,” Byron said. “If not, just buy it and sell it, if you want.” The hope for getting high had returned to his voice. “It’s worth way more than a hundred dollars. Bet Mikey here would take a little less, right, Mike?”

  And there it was. The bargain. The hook of usefulness. Roy wasn’t mad that Byron didn’t know his name or that they wanted him to leave. He wasn’t. He didn’t want the gun, but it could be useful. Spend money to make money. He’d heard that. Right. Do that, sell it, and maybe then you don’t have to ask John for anything anymore. Maybe there’s a way to get a step up, a little boost to get a payday ahead, just even one. Then you’re on the way to a place to stay and a real job and a girlfriend who forgets to wash her face, but
turns the bacon and kisses you on the head.

  In the end, Roy gave Mikey $80 for the gun, almost everything he had. Mikey and Byron clapped Roy on the back and told him to take care and that they’d see him later at work. They said it had been a good time, but they said it on the front stoop with their eyes already cast to the end of the block, watching the foot traffic in and out of the last house there.

  Roy didn’t like the weight of the gun in his hand and insisted that it be wrapped up before he took it. He didn’t trust it not to slide across the truck’s seat or floor when he took a fast turn in a sharp bend. He didn’t want it in the glove box, either, with his registration, should he need it—the registration or the gun.

  So he put the Monopoly box back where he’d gotten it in glee the night before, in a mood of belonging. He took the gun wrapped in the hand towel and layered it in with care inside the dry aquarium, beneath the board game, cushioned in with the undershirts, stacked newest to rattiest, the seven work shirts and two pairs of blue jeans, and the sad wad of shredded boxers and holey socks.

  He put his jacket on the passenger seat. It was folded over the perfumed pillow he’d tucked inside it when Mikey and Byron weren’t looking. The girl said she’d wanted a new one because Roy had put his head on it. It was embarrassing, but he understood. He wasn’t mad. He wasn’t.

  But he was down $80, plus the little bit he’d spent at the bar. Now his cash wouldn’t last him until next payday. He realized he didn’t know how to get rid of the gun. It wasn’t like a normal thing to sell, not a normal question to ask. He didn’t know anyone who might know what to do with it.

  So he stopped by the store for three raspberry vodka minis and two energy drinks. He downed the whole mixed potion fast, like medicine. The polluted buzz would be just near enough to not giving a rat’s ass anymore. It would let him get things done.

  He took out his stopwatch and got what he’d say down to sixteen seconds, even with a lot of pleases and thank-yous. He nudged his finger through the loose change in the cup holder to see if he had any quarters. He’d leave one for John so he’d know they needed to talk.

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  John had firsthand experience with the run-and-hide reflex. He knew what it took. Everyone thought it was the go-to move when things fell apart, but that was only for people who’d never actually had anything truly fall apart. It wasn’t just a response. It was a commitment. Evaporating out of the twenty-first century wasn’t easy.

  Jonathan Spera had found an old painting. That bit of good luck met three things: a gap in his knowledge, a gorgeous art dealer, and an idiot called Roy Dorring. These ingredients, when blended together too fast, made a disaster that, at first, looked like easy money.

  Jonathan Spera’s mistake had been in thinking he could unmix the batter and rethink the recipe after the oven door was closed.

  He’d offered Roy $5,000 to scuttle the sale. Five thousand dollars was ten times more money than that witless weed had ever had to his name at any given time. If Roy had just shown up and disrupted the meeting, just enough for Jonathan to back out so he could rethink and renegotiate without Marcelline, he would’ve gotten paid.

  But that’s not what Roy did. Roy had shot two men in a panicked sort of on purpose—and Marcelline entirely by accident.

  That night, after the gunfire, Jonathan had escaped with more than he’d intended to. The cash was a lucky stroke, but no one was supposed to get hurt except maybe Roy.

  No one giving chase knew who Jonathan was. They didn’t know where he lived or worked. They didn’t know how to contact him. They didn’t know his last name.

  So he could use his credit cards. He did use his credit cards. He’d used them to get off the street and watch from a hotel room’s television all that next day to see if anything would rise to the level of the local news from the mess he’d left.

  But there was nothing. It was as if it hadn’t happened. And it wasn’t even a little bit reassuring. All it made him know for certain was that the people he was dealing with could make a bloody, noisy open-air firefight vanish, and a parking lot littered with dead bodies somehow unnewsworthy.

  Back then, he’d been able to unplug from his life legitimately. Sell his condo. Quit his job. Move. Change his name the proper way and do it far away from anyone who might care. And still, it was nerve-racking.

  John Cooper had thoroughly unanchored from Jonathan Spera, which should have made John Cooper more likely to get hit by a bus than caught.

  The only loose end had been Roy.

  Roy Dorring was the only one who knew John Cooper used to be Jonathan Spera. Roy was the only one who’d known Jonathan Spera was connected to the painting.

  But he could handle Roy. Roy was an idiot. Roy would always be an idiot. John was pretty sure that it would take him all of six minutes to convince Roy that the earth was actually flat and spinning through the universe like a fucking Frisbee.

  Four years ago, John had told him a different, more useful lie about how the world worked. John told Roy that he hadn’t been able to retrieve the painting. He told him they were safe because the buyer’s guy, the one Roy didn’t get a chance to shoot, took it.

  If they kept their heads—meaning if Roy did what John told him to do—they could make it. Roy had believed him, and John had spent the last four years trying to scrape him off his shoe.

  Roy’s blundering had put John’s life on hold. But now the video.

  It might be better if they just had it out. Waiting and wondering what Roy was thinking, however pale and pointless his thinking ever was, wasn’t going to do anything good for John’s mood.

  Roy needed to get it out of his head, right fucking now, that he was getting anything out of this catastrophe. John felt it might, for once, come down to physically knocking the idea out of Roy. With a wrench on his skull, if need be.

  It had been less than twenty-four hours since any possibility of anyone connecting John Cooper to the painting, and already he was exhausted by the whole thing.

  You can pay for a hotel room in cash, but they’ll notice you. It wouldn’t do to be remembered when the type of people looking for you can keep mayhem off the news. He didn’t have time to outrun his new name. If he had to run, this time it would be cash running, which was the hardest kind.

  The painting had to come down out of sight. If there was going to be any margin to find, any hope to try to sell it or disappear with it, it couldn’t stay on the wall. He had to be cool about it. If he could manage to walk away instead of run, he might be able to make this work again.

  The plan, when he got home, was to redecorate the foyer. He would replace everything and take down the painting from where Donna had insisted on hanging it.

  When they had bought the house and moved in together, she’d found it wrapped in blankets during the bustle of combining his meager belongings with hers and Carly’s. She’d nailed it up before he could stop her.

  But he’d tried to.

  Oh, wait. I didn’t have that out. Don’t . . . I mean, do you really want that there?

  It goes great! Look, it’s perfect. I didn’t figure you for an antique-y type.

  I’m not. It’s not really my taste.

  Don’t get defensive. It’s sweet. Do you really not like it? Is it just a sentimental thing? A gift from an old girlfriend or something?

  No, no, nothing like that. It’s just . . .

  A family heirloom? Hang on, is this thing a real antique?

  No! It’s . . . it’s fine. It’s just a little embarrassing. Yeah, I bought it. Some people have comfort food. I’ve got comfort . . . colors.

  Well, I like it. And I like that I learned something new about you just now. And that it wasn’t some deal breaker that I’d have to do something drastic about. It’s adorable.

  She’d kissed him, a little turned on by the softer side of him that really wasn’t. And that was that.

  It didn’t really look like anything more than a wall hangi
ng from a fake-cinnamon-smelling décor-and-knickknack shop. He’d had no choice but to laugh along. She’d thought it looked perfect there and John hadn’t been able to think of a way to make the case against her happy discovery without turning it into a topic of contention or, God forbid, further conversation.

  To keep Roy from pissing his pants every time he came up against the next thing he couldn’t manage in his life, John had invented the emergency measure of the call system.

  John designated three spots he’d always use at the Y or his office so that Roy could signal him, if he could just hold himself together long enough to find the car. He’d made it plain to Roy that he would actually, physically kill him if he ever attempted to contact him at home or on the telephone.

  John had been convincing to an easily convinced moron, but he idly doubted that he’d be able to bring himself to really hurt Roy. It was useful to give him a scare every now and again, a little peek under the lid of John’s temper when plain words wouldn’t do. But John wasn’t a killer. Probably. Sometimes that was a relief and sometimes it was a speed bump.

  The passing of time wasn’t improving his opinion of the idiot or tamping down how irritating he found Roy’s sad-sack face. John tried not to think about it. Thoughts became things and he didn’t know how to end anyone’s life outside of a daydream. But as the months turned to years, he found that he wasn’t any less inclined to kill Roy.

  If John found a coin, he was supposed to meet Roy at 6:00 p.m. or 8:00 a.m.—whichever he could manage within the next day—in the back parking lot of the closest McDonald’s.

  With Roy’s latest signal weighing like a lead sinker at the bottom of John’s otherwise empty pocket, he wandered around the housewares section of Target. Necessity would get him over the hurdle of his lack of imagination. With exactly one exception, he didn’t give a shit about what hung on the wall.