1990 - Mine v4 (56 page)

But the moment passed. They were good people. There was no need to mark their lives with the barrel of a gun even though she never would dream of using it as anything but a bluff. Some hard case, she thought.

"Thanks for the lift," she told them, and got out.

The station wagon pulled away. Gary waved at her through the rear window. And then Laura turned to face the bald-headed grease monkey who stood about three inches shorter than her and stared up at her through his yellow goggles like a bullfrog.

"You fix cars?" she asked stupidly.

"Naw." He laughed like a snort. "I
eat
'em!"

"My car's broken down a couple of miles from Deeth. Can you tow it here?"

"How come you didn't go to Deeth, then?"

"I was heading west. I came here. Can you tow it?" She realized the tattoos on the man's arms were interlocked figures of naked women.

"Busy right now. Got a car in both bays and two waitin'."

"Okay. When can you tow it?"

"An hour, give or take."

Laura shook her head. "No. I can't wait that long."

"Sorry, but that's the breaks. "See, I'm all alone here. I'm Marco, like the sign says."

"I want you to go get my car right now."

He frowned, deep lines furrowing across his broad forehead. "Got wax in your ears, babe? I said I —"

Laura had the gun in her hand. She placed it against his bald skull. "What did you say?"

Marco swallowed, his Adam's apple bulging. "I… said… I'm ready when you are, babe."

"Don't call me
babe
."

"Okay," he said. "Whatever you say, chief."

On the subject of baths, Marco had a lot to learn. Laura knew she didn't smell like roses, but Marco exuded an odor of stale sweat and dirty underwear that made one wish for a whiff of Limburger cheese. At the Cutlass, Marco peered into the radiator and whistled. "Hey, chief! You ever heard of puttin' coolant in this thing? You got enough rust in here to sink a battleship!"

"Can you fix it?"

"You can shoot it and put it out of its misery." He looked at the gun Laura held by her side. "Why don't you put that away now, Annie Oakley? Have I got a target on my ass?"

"I have to get back on the road. Can you fix it or not?" The towtruck was starting to look attractive, but trying to steer that damned thing with one hand and an elbow would be beastly.

"You want honest or bullshit?" he asked her. "Bullshit says yeah, sure, no sweat. Honest says you'll need a new radiator, bottom line. Got some rotten hoses in there and belts that are about to go. Oil lines look like a rat's been chewin' on 'em. You still with me?"

"Yes."

"Major labor," he went on, and he scratched his pate with black fingers. "Have to find a radiator that'll fit this clunker. Probably have to drive to the parts shop in Elko to get one. We're talkin' two big bills, and I'm not gonna be able to even get started good before closin' time."

"I can spend four hundred dollars," Laura said. In her pocket was five hundred and thirty-four dollars, what remained of the cash from her engagement diamond. "Can I buy a used car around here anywhere?"

"Yeah, I can find you somethin'." He cocked his head at her, his hands on his bulbous hips. "It'll have an engine, but it might not have a floorboard in it. Four bills ain't gonna buy you much, unless…" He grinned, showing a silver tooth. "You got somethin' to trade?"

She pretended not to have heard that, because he was real close to becoming a soprano. She needed his hands, not his dubious equipment. "How about
your
car, then?"

"Sorry, chief. I'm a Harley man."

"I'll pay you four hundred and fifty dollars to fix my car," she said. "Except I want you to keep working on it until it's finished."

The lines furrowed deep again. "What's the rush? You kill somebody?"

"No. I'm in a hurry to get where I'm going."

He prodded at the right front tire with a boot that had been scrubbed with steel wool. "Let's see your money," he said.

Laura returned the pistol to her waistband, reached into her pocket, and showed him the cash. "Can you do it in three hours?"

Marco paused, thinking about it. He looked up at the sun in the cloud-dappled sky, back to the radiator, and sucked air across his lower lip. "I can put a radiator in and do a patch job. Got a retarded kid who helps me sometimes, if he ain't readin' his Batman funnies. Have to close down the pumps and shut up shop except for the one job. Elko's about twenty miles there and back. Four hours, minimum."

It was approaching three o'clock. That would get her out of there by seven. San Francisco was still over five hundred miles away, and Freestone another fifty miles north, according to the maps. If she drove all night she could make Freestone before dawn. But when would Mary get there? Sometime after midnight if she kept going straight through. Laura felt tears pressing to burst free. God had turned a blind eye. Mary was going to get to Freestone at least four hours before she would.

"That's the best I can do, chief," Marco said. "Honest."

Laura drew a deep breath. They were wasting time talking. "Get it done," she said.

Little Black Snakes

"HOW MANY NIGHTS?" THE DESK CLERK ASKED, GLASSES perched on the end of his nose.

"Just one," she said.

He gave her a piece of paper on which to fill out her name and address. She put down
Mrs. Jack Morrison, 1972 Linden Avenue, Richmond, Virginia
. Across the top of the paper was Lux-More Motel, Santa Rosa, California.

"Sweet little baby, yes she is!" The clerk reached over the registration desk to tickle Drummer under the chin. Drummer didn't like it; he was tired and hungry, and he squirmed restlessly in Mary's arms.

"My son," Mary said. She drew away, and the clerk offered a chilly smile and got her room key. "I'll need a wake-up call," she decided. "Five o'clock."

"Five o'clock. Wake-up call for Room Twenty-six. Got it, Mrs. —" He checked the paper. "Mrs. Morrison." He pushed his glasses off his nose. "Ah… cash in advance, please."

Mary paid him the thirty dollars. She left the motel office, limping into the cool, damp air of northern California. It was just after two-thirty in the morning. Mist drifted around the halogen lights on I-101, which cut through Santa Rosa and headed north toward the redwood ranges. A fifth of a mile from the Lux-More, County Highway 116 cut across the verdant, rolling hills toward the Pacific Ocean, and eleven miles away down that road was the town of Freestone.

She got into the Cherokee, drove it along the motel lot to Room 26, and parked it in the designated space. She was too weary to care if the night clerk noticed that a woman who said she was from Virginia had an Iowa tag. The revolver in the bag over her shoulder, she unlocked the door of Room 26 and took Drummer in, then closed the door and bolted it.

She was trembling.

She laid Drummer down on the single bed. The curtains were decorated with faded blue roses, and stains marred the gray carpet. A red sticker on the television set cautioned that the X-rated closed-circuit channel should be viewed only by mature adults. The bathroom had a shower and a tub and two cigarette butts floating in the toilet. She didn't look at herself in the mirror. That chore would be for later. She sat down on the bed, and springs groaned. The ceiling, was riddled with earthquake cracks. That was California for you, she mused. Thirty dollars for a ten-dollar room.

God, her body hurt. Her mind was tired; it craved a blank slate. But there was still much to be done before she could sleep.

She lay on her back next to Drummer, and stared up at the cracks. There was a design to them if you really noticed. Like Chinese quill strokes. Shouldn't have spent that hour in Berkeley, she thought. That was dumb, walking the streets. She'd planned only on driving through, but there was something so ripe, so haunting about Berkeley that she couldn't leave it without seeing the old places. The Golden Sun coffee shop, where she had first met Jack, the Truck On Down head shop, where she and the other Storm Fronters bought their roach clips and bong pipes, Cody's Bookstore, where political discussions of the Mindfuck State had made Lord Jack rage with care for the downtrodden masses, the Mad Italian pizzeria, where CinCin Omara used to be the night manager and slip her brothers and sisters free pizzas: all those were still there, aged maybe, wearing new paint, but still there, a vision of the world that used to be.

A young world, Mary thought. A world full of brave dreamers. Where were they now?

She'd have to get up in a minute. Have to take a hot shower, wash her hair, and squeeze the watery yellow pus from her oozing thigh wound. Have to get herself ready for Jack.

But she was so tired, and all she wanted to do was crash. It wouldn't be right to let Jack see her like this, grimy with road dirt, her teeth unbrushed and her armpits foul. That was why she'd stopped at the 7 Eleven just before the Oakland Bay Bridge; there was a sack in the Cherokee that she had to go get.

Drummer began to cry louder. Hungry cry. With an effort she roused herself, got his formula ready, and stuck the bottle's nipple into his mouth. As he sucked on it, he stared at her with eyes that were every bit as blue as Jack's. Karma, she thought. Jack was going to look at Drummer and see himself.

"You're scared."

God was standing in the corner, next to a lamp with a crooked shade. "You're scared shitless, Mary my girl. Aren't you?"

"No," she answered, and the lie made God grin. Two heartbeats and he was gone. "I'm not scared!" Mary said stridently. She concentrated on feeding her baby. Her stomach was a tight bag of nerves. Her right hand twitched around the baby's bottle.

The thought crept in again, as it had several times today, like a little black snake at a picnic: what if Jack weren't one of those three men?

"He is, though," she said to Drummer. His eyes were searching the room, his mouth clamped tightly on the nipple. "It's him in the picture. Didi knew it was him." She frowned. Her head hurt when Didi's face came to mind; it was like holding a metal photograph with saw-toothed edges. And another little black snake crawled into her realm of summer where was the bitch?

The bitch knew all about Lord Jack and Freestone. Benedict Bedelia had told her. So where was the bitch right now, as the clock ticked toward three?

When she found Jack, they would go away somewhere safe. A place where they could have a farm, maybe grow some weed on an acre or two, kick back in the lamplight and look at the stars. It would be a mellow place, that farm where the three of them would live in a triad of love and harmony.

She wanted that so very very badly.

Mary finished feeding Drummer. She burped him, and his eyelids were getting heavy. Hers were, too. She lay with Drummer in the crook of her arm, and she could feel his heart:
drum… drum… drumming
. Have to get up and bathe, she thought. Wash my hair. Decide what to wear. All those things, the heavy details of life.

She closed her eyes.

Jack was walking toward her, wearing a white robe. His golden hair hung over his shoulders, his eyes blue and clear, his face bearded and chiseled. God was at his side, in black leather. Mary could smell the sea and the aroma of pines. The light streamed through bay windows behind Jack. She knew where they were: the Thunder House, on Drakes Bay about forty miles from the Lux-More. The beautiful chapel of love, the place of the Storm Front's birth. Jack walked across the pinewood floor, his feet in Birkenstock sandals. He was smiling, his face alight with joy, and he reached out to take his gift.

"She's scared shitless," she heard God, that demon, say.

Jack's arms accepted Drummer. He opened his mouth, and the shrill ring of a telephone came out of it.

Mary sat up. Drummer was wailing.

She blinked, her brain sluggish in its turn toward thinking. Phone ringing. Phone. Right there, next to the bed. She picked up the receiver. "Yeah?"

"It's five o'clock, Mrs. Morrison."

"Okay. Thanks." The clerk hung up. Mary Terror's heart began to hammer.

The day had come.

Her clothes were damp, her fever sweat returned with a vengeance. She let Drummer cry himself out, and she left the room and got her suitcase and the 7 Eleven sack from the Cherokee. The sky was still black, tendrils of mist drifting across the parking lot. Morning stars glittered up above; it was going to be a sunny, California-groovy day. In the bathroom of number 26, Mary stripped her clothes off. Her breasts sagged, there were bruises on her knees and mottling her arms. Her thigh wound was a dark, festered crust, yellow pus glistening in the dried blood. The bite on her forearm was less severe but just as ugly. When she touched her thigh to try to squeeze out some of the infection, the pain brought fresh blisters of sweat up on her cheeks and forehead. She turned on the shower's taps, mixing the water's temperature to lukewarm, and she stepped into the shower with a new cake of soap she'd bought that smelted of strawberries.

Her shampoo, also purchased at the 7 Eleven, left her hair with the aroma of wildflowers. She'd seen an ad for it on TV, young girls with white teeth and shiny tresses. The water and suds washed the grime off her body, but Mary left her wounds alone. She had no electric dryer, so she toweled her hair and ran a comb through it She swabbed under her arms with Secret roll-on, and taped her wounds with wide bandages. Then she dressed in a clean pair of bluejeans — painfully tight on her swollen leg, but it couldn't be helped — and a pale blue blouse with red stripes. She shrugged into a black pullover sweater that had a mothball smell in it, but it made her look not so heavy. She put on dean socks and her boots. Then she reached down to the bottom of the sack and brought out the vials of makeup.

Mary began to fix her face. It had been a while since she'd done this, and her right hand began to spasm, so she had to use the left, awkwardly. As she worked, she watched herself in the mirror. Her features were strong, and it wasn't hard to see the young girl who used to live in that face. She wished her hair were long and blond again instead of reddish-brown and cropped short. She recalled that he liked to curl her hair around his fingers. There were dark hollows, purple as bruises, beneath her eyes. Put a little more makeup on them. Now they weren't so bad. A touch of rouge on the cheeks, just a touch to give her face some color. Yes, that's good. Blue eyeshadow on the puffy lids. No, too much. She rubbed some of it off. The final touch was a light sheen of rose-colored lipstick. There. All done.