Colonel Rutherford's Colt (16 page)

She fended off a lone wolf, stood moving with the music, and then started eye-fucking the guy at the end of the adjoining counter. A lanky sandy-haired guy with the open, handsome face of young Corporate America. His long muscles weren't a product of gym work. Must have played some ball. Worn jeans and a black T-shirt without advertisement. He looked to Rita like he came from money—money dressed plain when it was out slumming. He smiled at her, revealing perfect capped teeth, and his eyes seemed to empty out. My brother, Rita thought. She looked away, as if offended. Then she smiled, too. BJ caught his arm, drew him into a shouted conversation, but he kept on checking out Rita, and after the band took a break, the juke box kicking in at a lower volume, he called out, “Wanta join us?”

Rita shrugged, mouthed Okay, sidled over. The sandy-haired guy surrendered his stool to her. “Walter!” he said, tapping his chest.

“Lisa!” She said it so they all could hear. The fourth woman was another brunette, small and doll-like, who was holding the hand of an equally small curly-haired man. They had their own world going, exchanging secrets, in diminutive union against the tall. The third guy was heavier and shorter than Walter, his hair lighter, Germanic stock, wearing gray slacks, a red golf shirt without a crest or an alligator or any such bullshit on the pocket. His watch was platinum, ultrathin. Rita concluded that he and Walter were out trolling together, they'd run into the doll couple, and maybe the doll woman knew BJ and the blond, whose name turned out to be Janine. She looked like money, too. A collegiate-type plaid blouse and skirt, but a very expensive gold bracelet. She would have been a hottie if she dropped thirty pounds and slacked off on the cocaine. The skin above her sinuses was islanded with inflamed blotches. Seated next to her against the wall: Dee, short for Denise. Very pale; hair down her back; probably the youngest. Dressed in jeans and a UCAL Golden Bears T-shirt that fit like a nightgown. Rita's first impression was that she was a mouse, but she came to realize that Dee was white-girl exotic. Enormous dark eyes, a dainty nose, a mouth that was sculpture. A face as carefully bred as an Afghan's, all clever angles and artful hollows. She wore no make-up and rarely spoke.

Their conversation eddied around Rita. It consisted of gossip and boasts and sexual innuendo, fleshed out with a litany of catch phrases. BJ asked Rita what she did, and Rita said, “I'm an actress.” Except for Dee, who displayed pointed interest, their reaction was a studied neutrality. “I do Native American parts,” Rita added. Smiles and nods. Now they understood.

“You filming around here?” Walter asked.

She shook her head. “I'm not working. Just running around visiting friends in the area.” She grinned. “I'm on a whirlwind tour. But I'm doing a picture in Canada with Liam Neeson next month.”

“Yeah? What's it called?” This from Walter's Teutonic friend.

“They gone through a half-dozen titles. When I got the script, it just said ‘Bigfoot Script' on the cover.”

“It's about Bigfoot?” Janine was amused. Dee gazed at Rita with transparent envy.

“It ain't as dumb as it sounds.” Rita rebuked herself for the “ain't,” but nobody seemed to notice. “It's an eco-thriller. Liam plays a scientist. Everybody thinks he's a nut. He believes Bigfoot exists, spends all his time in the wilderness hunting for sign. Eventually he finds them and starts livin' with them. Like that woman over in Africa.”

“Goodall,” Janine said authoritatively.

“Whatever. Anyway, Liam tries to prevent 'em from bein' captured. It's got a huge budget. You should see the make-up for the bigfeet. Incredible! And they signed Charlize Theron as the love interest.”

“You're not the love interest?” Walter asked.

“Sweet thing!” She patted his cheek. “No, I play a wise Indian woman who knows the secrets of the forest. I sacrifice myself to help Liam in the third act.” She winked at them. “But I come back as a ghost in the end.”

She snagged a passing waitress, handed her a credit card. “Run a tab on this, will ya?” She glanced at others. “Tequila okay?”

Tequila it was.

They were all impressed. Usually they were the dispensers of largesse. They respected its uses.

It was easy after that. The band came back onstage and Rita enticed her new best friends into a drinking game. The doll people begged off, said they had to drive. But the others played along. Walter never lost, but drank a couple of shots to be polite. He smiled frequently—the expression transformed his face into a mask hiding a sickly glare. Dee lost once. After draining her glass, she looked at Rita and screwed up her face and grinned. All her looks had begun going Rita's way. Walter's friend, Janine, and BJ lost with regularity, but it was Janine who showed the effects. She became sloppy affectionate, hugging BJ and Dee . . . Dee more often. The two women had a distinct dynamic. Whenever Dee spoke, Janine looked fondly, dotingly at her, as if proud of a child for reciting her lines, and Dee would refuse to acknowledge her look. Until, that is, Janine got sick. Everyone ministered to her then, and finally BJ hustled her outside for some air.

The band launched a mid-tempo rocker—Walter asked Rita if she cared to dance. She hauled him down by the neck, shouted in his ear: “I'm saving you for later!” He pulled back and smiled his serial-killer smile. Rita downed a shot, slipped off the stool. She invited Dee to dance by beckoning with both hands, swaying her hips. Dee was startled, pleased, but she waved to signal, No. Rita frowned and mouthed C'mon, beckoning again. Okay. Dee hopped off her stool, proving to be taller than Rita. She took Rita's hand. The doll people were shocked.

They found room to dance near the stage, directly beneath Mister Right's bassist, a sleepy-eyed Chicano guy with a soul patch. The music gloved Rita, squeezed her like a kitten in its fist. All the pressure built up over the past days flowed out of her, convulsing her hips, shaking her breasts. Dee danced the same as most of the white girls, her hands holding the thick waist of an invisible partner, hips working off the down beat. Rita wanted to loosen her up. She danced closer and rested her hands on Dee's hips. The girl's eyes widened, but she went with it. Rita guided her, eventually got her moving less like a hinged stick. Nearby couples stared then looked away. Lesbians were cool. Weird, but cool. Political correctness a jingle in their heads. The band segued into a salsa rhythm, probably a sop to the bass player. A conga drummer had joined them, coming out from the wings—he was a bitch, a genuine music monster, pulling beats from the skin with his bandaged fingers, speedy gunfire riffs. Rita showed Dee what to do, and this was the music the girl had needed. Her body responded with shoulders, butt, hips twisting, making that baggy shirt move as if a live crazy woman was inside it. Her hair fanned out behind her like a black peacock's tail. Rita kept a hand on her, held her tight so their breasts nudged, then not quite releasing her, fingertips touching, letting her solo. Then more tightly, linking her hands behind the girl's ass, doing a grind against her thigh. Their faces inches apart. Dee was locked in on her, flushed, and Rita felt her yielding, resistance an energy discharging from her waist. The music was a bubble around them, trapping them at its silent heart. Rita airbrushed a kiss onto that wide, dreamy mouth, just a pass of the lips, a spray of sensation. Dee's lips parted, and Rita took the cue, tongue-fucked her a little, a quick taste. She drew back and they did it with their eyes, Dee going all cherry soulful and sweet. When the music ended, she jumped up and down and applauded. “Want some coke?” she shouted to Rita. “Come on!” She skipped backwards in front of Rita on the way to the ladies john, laughing at everything. Two of the stalls were already booked, giggles and whispers rising over the doors. They shut themselves into a third, leaned against opposite walls. Rita watched her finger out a vial from her jeans pocket, a tiny spoon attached to the inside of the cap. They each did four hits. The coke fuel-injected Rita's heart, tripped her into serious mode. She thought she might actually want to do Dee. Not because she was beautiful, but because she had a wildness in her, a thing wanting to get out. It had flashed out of her on the dance floor, erratic, a pure light channeled crazily through a fractured diamond. Rita remembered how it was when her own thing had been set free. Glory days. Nights of divine madness.

“You're an actress, too,” Rita said. “Right?”

Dee was still breathing hard from the dancing. She caught a drain, swallowed. “How'd you know?”

Rita pointed to her brain. “We sense these things. You worked any?”

“I did some modeling when I was younger. But I didn't like it. Now I'm in Theater Arts down at Berkeley.”

“I'll give you my number in LA before I leave. If you want, I can introduce you to some people.”

“That'd be awesome! Thank you!”

“With your looks,” Rita said, “couple years I might be thanking you for givin' me a crumb from your table.”

A silence slid in between them. Rita read some of the graffiti. To the right of Dee's head were eight felt-tip representations of a hand with its thumb and forefinger held apart, measuring distances ranging from miniscule to small. Under each drawing was the name of a man. Marty Kass. Jack Sauter. Clay Homanski. Someone had gone to great pains.

“You're an amazing dancer,” Dee said shyly. “Really amazing.”

“I was inspired.” Rita reached out, caressed her cheek, and Dee rubbed against her palm.

'No.” Dee peeled Rita's hand from her cheek, kissed it, then let it fall, only the fingers touching. “You're so alive. You're the most alive person here. I saw it when you were walking toward us. It wasn't how you moved, it was just who you are. Everyone was staring.”

“A female skunk would draw stares in this crowd.”

Dee's manner was all naive fire and sincerity. “Don't put yourself down! You're so beautiful!”

Rita honeyed up her voice. “I'm not the one's beautiful here.”

The girl's mouth shaped itself into a pout. “I've got a face . . . but there's nothing behind it. I'm ordinary.”

“How you figure?”

“When I look at myself . . . it's just a face.”

“You can't see nothing in a mirror.” Rita laid a finger beside her right eye. “This here's where you wanna look.”

Keeping her back to the wall, Dee tilted her head toward Rita, and there it was again, that flash from inside, a ray of gemmy brilliance sawing wildly out, like a klieg light gone off its moorings.

“What do you see?” she asked.

“I see myself,” said Rita.

The answer appeared to stop Dee, to cut her juice for a second. Then she said, “Don't lie to me,” in a damaged voice.

Rita caught up her hand. “That's what I see. Myself without all the healed-up places, all the shit of life.” She played with the girl's fingers. “I see an actress waiting for the right part.”

A change in Dee's face, as if the wild thing was eased and had withdrawn, leaving her a girl again. Anxious. Innocent and smitten.

“Did you come with Janine?” Rita asked.

“Yeah, but . . .” Dee blushed. “But . . . uh . . .”

“You're not together?”

“No.” Dee shook her head with solemnity, as if she knew this to be a step taken.

A toilet flushed; somebody said, “Oh, shit.”

Rita stroked the inside of Dee's wrist with her thumb. “I wanna kiss you again,” she said. She moved close, and Dee looped both arms about her neck. A stall door banged, and two girls shrieked laughter, the sound reverberating in the tiled space. Dee tensed, but relaxed when Rita sipped freshness from her mouth. Tequila and toothpaste. Rita liked the way Dee took control of the kiss, aggressive with her tongue, the wild thing starting to slither free. Dee pushed her gently away, slipped off her T-shirt. Her breasts were milky white, largish and high, the engorged pink nipples like mints on hotel pillows. Rita cupped them, hefted them, squeezed them together so she could serpent-kiss both nipples at once. Dee whispered, “Oh god. . . .” Fingers tangled in Rita's hair.

“Now you!” Dee said urgently. “I want to see you.”

Rita straightened. She rolled a nipple between her fingers, gave it a pinch to regain control. “Don't rush it,” she said. “Something this sweet, you let it simmer till the flavor's strong.”

 

* * *

 

Jimmy located a spot where he could pull the van into the bushes off the road leading to Major Borchard's compound, just past the abandoned shack with the target tacked to one collapsed wall. He cut the engine, climbed cautiously out, watching where he stepped. Dry leaves crackled underfoot, fallen twigs clawed his bootheels. He walked back along the road to the shack, using a flashlight to point the way, then pushed through thick brush until he was standing by the steps. Rotten-looking boards. He gave them a kick to see if anything scurried away, tested them to learn if they would bear his weight, and shined the flashlight underneath them. He probed the skewed doorway with the light, illuminating yellowed magazines, a broken chair, an empty cartridge box from which the printing and color had been scrubbed by the weather. An old smell of decomposition, almost subsumed by the resiny scent of pine, issued from within. Satisfied by the absence of pests, he sat himself down. The board step was damp and creaked beneath him. At his back, the ruin seemed to release a faint moldy breath. He wondered how the shack had served Major Borchard. Maybe a place of initiation. Send a racist cub down to sit in it until he had visions of Ivory Joe Jesus or the town of Maumbad Heiglitz where Hitler got his first woody. Might be it was holy ground, the primitive shelter where Bob Champion, possessed by the spirit of Liberty, had come to plan his sacred bank robberies and write his irresistible screed. Or maybe the shack was pre-Borchard, being the ancestral home of the elusive and terrible Caucasaurus, the progenitor of those noble savages whose cave paintings of lynchings and burning crosses could still be found in sewer tunnels beneath certain land-grant universities in the South. The more he talked to Borchard, the more Jimmy thought the major had been snagged by his own hook, reeled himself in, and was now preparing to mount his own stiffening body on a trophy plaque. His claim of being the exemplar of a philosophy purified of any taint of racism . . . What a hoot! Borchard had lost contact with his true imperatives. He was like a man who thought he could reach the Heavenly City by swallowing a Bible, and having done so, had proceeded to shit out the best parts, the parts he most believed in . . . It started to rain. Drops splatted on the roof, but the canopy was so thick overhead, Jimmy scarcely felt a one. He listened to the dark. Apart from the rain, there was only the distant humming of the expressway, a streak of sound that seemed to run alongside the rest of reality, measuring some fundamental quality, like the bar registering the levels of a soundtrack beside a frame of raw film. He supposed he should go on up to the house and give the major the bad news, but he didn't feel like dealing with him just yet.