Maximus actually blushed.
Or at least the tops of his forehead were starting to match his
hair.
“
I am not about to wrestle
no bears, but I did used to catch baby gators for my cousin back in
Louisiana,” he said. “They were easy once you got their mouths
clamped shut.”
“
Just like Perry,” Dex
chimed in cheerfully.
“
Shut up.” I glared at him.
He gave me a skeezy look in the mirror and laughed.
I shook my head and looked
back at Maximus who was trying not to laugh himself. I rolled my
eyes. “Anyway…”
“
Anyway,” Maximus repeated,
still grinning at me, “just because I’m 6’4” doesn’t mean I can’t
get scared every once in a while.”
I cocked my head. “Do you
ever get scared on the job. You know, doing a reading?”
He nodded, his green eyes
sobering. “Oh, of course. How can you not? The most terrifying
moment is the one right before I do it. I don’t know how these
people died. I mean, I know to some extent but to feel what people
feel when they go…it is God awful. It hits you like brick. Every
time. I can’t even prepare for it. I reckon I never will. You think
you know death, you think you have some idea of what happens, of
how you’ll feel but you don’t know. And I only feel, probably,
fifty per cent of what they went through. The terror. The…
questions they had. It’s always, why? Why now? Why me? It is so
powerful, it leaves a fucking imprint that some hillbilly like me
can pick up on. And each time I do it…”
He trailed off, his eyes
leaving mine and stared out the back window, watching the dusty
road disappear behind us. His blush was gone and he had turned a
wicked shade of alabaster. This big, burly man with his sexy snarl
looked like a freckled little boy, sleeping with the nightlight
on.
Instinctively, I reached
over and brushed his hair back lightly. He had nice, thick
hair.
He gave me a quick smile.
“Well, let’s just say I wouldn’t wish death upon my greatest
enemy.”
“
Jesus. Can we shut up with
the death talk, please?” Dex grumbled, eyeing us in the mirror,
anger sparking.
Maximus looked sheepish.
“Sorry man, I forgot.”
Dex shot him a sharp look
but Maximus was turning around in his seat and didn’t notice. I did
though. What did that mean…“I forgot?” Forgot what? I know Dex’s
family was dead…I guess that had to be it. But it felt like
something much deeper and rawer than that.
And being me, I couldn’t
let it rest. I wanted to know and if I brought it up later, I
wouldn’t have Maximus there for support and whatnot.
“
Well you picked an ironic
profession if you didn’t want to talk about death,” I challenged. I
meant to say that a bit nicer.
Maximus turned his head to
look at Dex. Dex didn’t move or say anything but his grip on the
steering wheel tightened.
“
Skinwalkers aren’t
technically dead though,” Maximus said.
“
I’m not talking about
skinwalkers, which by the way, I am not totally sold on yet. I just
mean with Dex. You, Dex, what’s with the ‘shut up with the death
talk’ all of a sudden?”
Dex slowly moved his eyes
up to the mirror to meet mine. I hadn’t seen him glare that good
for a long time. He was the king of glares. Sometimes they were
sexy (probably by accident) but they were always effective. When
his black, arched brow lowered and connected with those dark eyes
and his lips set in a snake-like twist, he just radiated intensity.
The depths always surprised me. It was like looking into a cave and
thinking you could see the back of it, but it just ended up being a
trick of the eye. There was always more, another twist, another
turn.
This was the best exampled
I had seen yet; I thought the glass in the mirror might
shatter.
It made me sit back in my
seat just a bit, but I wasn’t going to back off.
“
What?” I shrugged, playing
the ignorant card. I tapped Maximus on the shoulder. “Tell me more
about what people feel when they die.”
“
Uh,” he glanced warily at
Dex. Dex looked right back at him.
“
Don’t let me stop you,” he
sneered. “If she wants to know, she wants to know.”
Maximus looked back at me,
his voice a bit shaky, “Okay then. Well, it depends.”
“
What was the scariest
reading you’ve done?”
“
I reckon it would have to
be this woman who was murdered. By her own daughter.”
I grimaced.
“Ugh.”
Maximus quickly glanced at
Dex and continued, “Yeah. She was sick. No one could figure out
what was wrong with her. Her daughter was taking care of her and I
guess it got to be too much. She smothered her with a pillow. You
can’t… imagine what that woman felt as her own child killed her. To
raise someone and love someone that much and then for them to turn
around and take your life, like it all meant nothing,
was-”
SCREEE!
Dex suddenly slammed on the
brakes and the Jeep was careening off to the side of the road. We
stopped on the shoulder in a mist of red dust.
“
What is it?” I cried,
thinking we had almost hit something.
Dex got out of the car and
slammed the door. I looked at Maximus, mouth agape. He looked
uneasy.
“
You stay here, please,” he
said. “I’ll be right back.”
“
No!” I protested but it was
too late. He was out of the car.
“
This is how people get
killed in horror films,” I pouted to myself, wishing the dust would
clear so I could get a proper look outside.
I had no idea why we
stopped. It was like Dex just had enough. I was starting to feel
bad for provoking him but maybe it was something else. Unlikely,
but possible.
Seconds later Maximus got
back inside, coughing from the air outside.
“
Well, what happened?” I
asked anxiously.
He let out a low groan.
“Oh. You know Dex.”
I leaned forward on his
seat and tried to see out the front. The red cloud was clearing and
I could see someone, I presumed Dex, walking away from the
car.
“
Where is he
going?”
“
Just give him a few
minutes,” Maximus replied simply. I looked at him closer, at the
freckles on his nose, the sienna hairs of his five o’ clock shadow.
He moved his head to face mine and gave me a little
smile.
“
You guys sure are fucked
up.”
“
Me?” I said.
His smile grew wider. He
stuck the tip of his tongue out between his teeth.
“
You’re almost worse than
he is,” he said rather suggestively. “It’s OK, I’m all for women
with a little more adventure to them.”
I couldn’t tell if he was
kidding so I ignored it.
“
Yesterday, you told me I
couldn’t trust Dex,” I said.
“
I told you that you
shouldn’t. Not that you couldn’t.”
“
Why did you say
that?”
“
Dex isn’t well…”
“
Well, I know that
Sherlock.”
He squinted those emerald
peepers at me. “Watson, more like it. You know he’s a few cards
short of the deck.”
“
Yeah. I mean, who can’t see
that. Plus he actually told me. He’s bipolar or something and, you
know, right now he’s not even on any meds so he’s all out of
sorts.” I felt strangely defensive about Dex’s mental
health.
“
Do you reckon he’s
bipolar?”
I thought about it. “Maybe.
I mean, I guess. Why would he lie?”
He adjusted in his seat to
get more comfortable and rested his chin on the back of
it.
“
Dex is one of the greatest
liars you’ll ever come across. The man turns it into an
art.”
That wasn’t good to hear. I
felt a bit icky, as if he was about to spring something on me that
would change my view of Dex forever. I didn’t want to change my
view about him. I liked him. A lot.
Maximus was watching me
closely. “You’re worried about him.”
“
Well, uh,” I stammered.
“Sure.”
“
I wouldn’t. He’s been this
way a long time and he’s still around and kicking. Doing better now
more than ever. I mean, have you seen his girlfriend?”
My face fell for a split
second but I pushed it into blasé territory before he could notice.
“Yeah, I know who she is.”
“
When we were together at
NYU, he was always all over the place. Like a wind-up toy.
Sometimes he would be on and when he was on, he was really on.
Ideas coming from all over the place, intelligent debates that
would last into the wee hours of the morning, and just creating the
most incredible shit out of nothing…especially, music. He would
write the craziest songs yet they always worked. We didn’t end up
using those songs, after all we were a cover band, you know, Henry
Mancini and all that, but he still wrote them. And his voice...and
he would write too, like thoughts, fiction…just stay up all night
drinking and writing pages of…anything. He would never share that
with anyone, but I caught a few glances here and there. That boy
had a wicked imagination.
“
And then
when he was off, he was off. Just shut off from the world. It was
hard to tolerate the two sides of him, especially when he would be
on doing rehearsals, and then would shut off on stage. You can
imagine that doesn’t go over very well. But I mean, he was
it
. He was our singer. He
was the guy we wanted to be even though none of us would admit it.
And sometimes, he was a very good friend, when he wasn’t being
tortured by some personal demon of some sort. He never let us in
close but when he took the effort to put himself aside for a
change, he was fiercely loyal.”
“
I can see that,” I said,
nodding.
“
And then he fell in love.
With a real sweet girl. Abby. She was kind of a fangirl at first.
Frankly I think she was after me but I had a girlfriend at the
time. She was far too nice for Dex but he went for her. I guess
sensed her vulnerability or whatever. She could put up with a lot
and she really cared. But the more involved they got, the more Dex,
like…fell. My Lord, I have never seen a boy that smitten over
someone so meek and mousy but that’s what happened. That’s love,
you can’t explain it. He was apeshit in love. And soon, he became
more possessive. He was jealous. And at first he had no reason to
be. But the more, uh, crazed he became, the more Abby pulled away.
I know she started cheating on him. My girlfriend became friends
with her and she told me. I ended up telling Dex. I shouldn’t have
but, you know, honestly I thought the moment those two broke up,
the more Dex could concentrate on his music. It was very Yoko Ono
and John Lennon.”
“
Except John Lennon doesn’t
die in this case,” I said, fascinated by what I was
hearing.
His face tightened. I felt
the energy in the car drop.
“
No.
But
she
did.”
I was stunned but managed
to ask, “How?”
Please don’t let Dex have
killed her
, I thought absently.
“
Happens every weekend,”
Maximus said sadly. “Driving drunk. Dex had gone over there as soon
as I told him and he ended up finding Abby and some guy in bed
together.”
I gasped, personally
knowing all too well what Dex had gone through.
Maximus continued, “I think
he may have punched the guy or threw him out. I’m glad nothing
worse happened to him because when Dex loses it, he really goes all
out. He and Abby had a yelling match. The people at the dorm said
they heard glass breaking, lamps were thrown, though I don’t know
who did what. It was an epic fight, I know that much. Dex has a
short temper anyway. Abby was so distraught that she had to call my
girlfriend to come get her. Of course, I was with her so I came
too. I could put Dex in his place if I needed to. He’s a scrappy
fighter but I’ve got a clear head. And maybe I could talk him
down.
“
We came and I had to kick
down the door. Felt very badass. Dex was sitting on the couch with
his head between his hands. Eyes all wide and wild but
strangely…empty. He said Abby had locked herself in the bathroom
with a bottle of gin. My girlfriend tried to coax her out of the
bathroom but none doing. Eventually I had to kick that door down
too. Just totally destroyed that apartment. The bathroom was empty,
as was the bottle of gin in the sink. And it was a big bottle. The
room was on the first floor and the window was open. She went out
that way, then I guess went to her car and drove somewhere. We
don’t know where, she never called anyone from her phone. I guess
she was too drunk. Drove straight into a tree, about five minutes
away from the dorm.”
I didn’t know what to say.
My fingers were at my mouth.
He noticed and gave me an
empathetic shrug. “There’s been too much death in his life. Dex
couldn’t handle it. And then he really lost it. Basically lost his
mind from the shock and blame.”