She still couldn’t see him there in the dark but now she wanted to, wanted to see his round face and his red cheeks, wanted to feel the rather soft feeling that he always gave her, something safe and plain, not like the wild rambling of Tristan and the craziness and fear of things she didn’t know, places he would take her where she had to wander blindly, trusting in his obscure intelligence and emotion, his elusiveness, the disappearing man. And before she knew it she was kissing Russell’s face, his cheeks, his eyes, his nose, and then his lips, and she was over on his seat sprawled up against him, his back leaned on the door while his hands fumbled at her waist and then beneath her shirt, twisting anxiously at her bra strap, and after a little while he said, “There’s a mattress in the back.” She crawled through the window of the canopy, and Russell, too
big to get through, went around to unlock the hatch and throw down the tailgate. He climbed up next to her and she could hear the pattering of raindrops from the birch leaves, and then he had shut them in and everything was quiet except for their breathing.
It was just like when she used to have sex with Russell, just like all the times in his old apartment, just like when they’d conceived Hayley. Here in the truck bed the lumpy mattress, the rattle of beer cans, the discarded T-shirts, the smell of motor oil—slightly different from his apartment, but not that much. And all of it was welcome to her, so different from what she’d considered at the time the romance of Tristan’s lake house, the high rectangular windows and the sweet smell of the cedar woodwork and the sighing of the pine trees by the lake. Being with Russell was so easy, because you didn’t have to think of what he thought of himself, you could believe in the simplicity and purity of his pleasure there in the dark, not like Tristan and his calculated sexual intimacies, the way he had left the lights on to stare at her face, and she didn’t know what the look in his eyes meant. Russell was sweet, Russell was always surprisingly tender. She could forget Russell and lose herself in her own pleasure. With Tristan there had only been Tristan. Now she had eased into the rhythm of her own body, and her mind became lazy and dreamy, and soon she came, squeezing Russell’s shoulders and shouting out in the truck, embarrassing herself for a moment but then quickly losing the embarrassment, because this was Russell.
Within seconds, it seemed to her, she was almost sleeping, but then Russell began searching around the truck bed for something and soon came up with a flashlight, and they found
their discarded clothes and got dressed. She reached back in the truck cab and grabbed her purse and had Russell hold the flashlight while she used a mirror to fix her hair. As she put the mirror back in the purse, her hand settled on her wallet.
“What do we do now?” Russell said. “I mean, that was great, but I have to go back in.”
She ignored him. She opened the clasp on the wallet and flipped through her pictures, stopping at a recent studio portrait of Hayley that she’d had taken at Wal-Mart. Hayley wore a yellow dress and held her favorite stuffed animal, a purple giraffe she called, for some reason, Mopey. She flashed an open-mouthed grin at her mother, just to the side of the camera.
She took the photo from the plastic and gave it to Russell. “Look at her,” she said.
Russell pointed the flashlight, angling the picture up and down. “Cute,” he said, smiling a little uncertainly, as if he weren’t sure what one was supposed to say about children.
“She’s yours,” Kelly said.
Russell looked over at her, his mouth slightly ajar. “You mean you want me to keep it?” he asked.
She sighed. “Look at her hair. Look at the color of her cheeks.” Russell aimed the flashlight again, squinting. “She’s
your
daughter, Russell.”
That was the story she could tell, the one she could say right out loud. About the last night she’d spent at Russell’s apartment. About how when she found out, she was confused and unhappy and hadn’t wanted to see him afterward. About how Aaron, her boyfriend, came along and took Russell’s place, and how everyone but him thought he was Hayley’s father. How she hadn’t felt right about that, had started to hate Aaron for it
after a while. About how she’d had to work so hard as a single mother, how it made the stars seem out of reach. Even how she’d slept with Tristan and gotten her hopes up. About how she was here now with Russell, though, and it was up to him what he wanted to do about it, whether he wanted to make the story about the little house and the fireplace and the happy family come true. But even as she told this story, her story, looking at Russell’s face still leaned in over the picture, the serious and melancholy set of his features, which she hadn’t expected and which made her heart go soft, she had to wonder how long she could go on telling it—not to Russell, but to herself.
A Fucking Perfect Opportunity
Vince Thompson’s head hurt
like a son of a bitch, a condition that could have been improved, no doubt, if he’d had access to even a single alcoholic beverage of one goddamn variety or another during the course of the last fucking hour or so, but no, even such a simple pleasure as that was going to be denied him tonight, apparently, what with goddamn Bill eyeing him from behind the fucking bar like he, Vince, was a goddamn cattle rustler and Bill was John fucking Wayne, and so it was starting to look like he was going to have to shoot Russell fucking Harmon stone-cold sober, and Jesus Christ Al
mighty
his head hurt like that asshole Clint Harmon had hit him with a two-by-four, I mean was it his imagination or was his fucking head actually
lopsided
, I mean if you looked at it from that one particular angle, if you squinted just like that, was it actually fucking
lopsided
, like swollen up on the left side so it looked like his brain was ready to leak out his left ear, or was that just a fucking optical illusion caused by the fact that the old goddamn left eye was even more screwed up than usual? Vince Thompson pondered the question while he stared at the bathroom mirror, at the same time sticking his
hand under the faucet and dribbling water up onto his throbbing nose and upper lip, thinking more at the moment about Russell Harmon’s asshole father than about Russell Harmon, and how it might not be a bad idea, after blowing Russell fucking Harmon’s underdeveloped brain to smithereens, because when you got right down to it who would really give a shit anyway, to walk right back up the street to fucking PJ’s and shoot the asshole air force colonel father and Russell fucking Harmon’s asshole father too, thereby ridding the world of two more useless fucking jerks. But, you know, Vince you old fucker, Vince fucking Thompson thought, you’ve created a little problem, haven’t you, because, well now they’d all seen him, hadn’t they, everyone in the whole goddamn place, all bloodied and shit and hanging around with nothing to do but glare at Russell Harmon with what no doubt looked like homicidal rage, which, OK, you had to look at at this point and say that that hadn’t been such a good idea, had it, because, well, who the fuck was going to come under immediate suspicion when Russell turned up dead other than good old Vince, crazy whacked-out Vince who everyone in the entire fucking town had just been waiting around for years to see snap, probably taking up money for a goddamn pool, he wouldn’t doubt it a bit, well in that case he was going to give them their money’s worth. The thing to do was figure out a way to make sure as shit it looked like he was dead too, like in the fucking movies how people were always faking their own deaths, right? Like leaving behind all sorts of bloody evidence and shit and then disappearing, which shouldn’t be too hard, now should it, considering he already had the bloody part taken care of, and as he splashed more water on his face and at the same time tried to
determine whether the pounding in his goddamn skull meant he actually might be hemorrhaging, he tried to work out in his head the details of a drug deal gone bad, something where he and Russell fucking Harmon would both be shot and he, Vince, would be dragged away from the scene and dumped at some undetermined location, and there was a
boom
, like a mortar round or some shit, and then the bathroom was totally black. Vince Thompson’s hands were in the water and he turned his palms down and there wasn’t any water then and what was so surprising suddenly, son of a
bitch
, was that there was no Vince fucking Thompson either, Vince fucking Thompson had completely disappeared, his hands were in the air somewhere and his body wasn’t touching the sink and he wasn’t in contact with the goddamn earth at all except for the soles of his boots on the floor, and holy shit it was like he was floating, like he was suspended in this dark, like floating or sinking, he couldn’t tell which, and it was almost like even his goddamn head didn’t hurt now that he couldn’t fucking see it, and he started laughing to himself,
laughing
, what an asshole, and he took a step back from the sink he couldn’t see and the face he couldn’t see and it was like he was free of the whole thing for one goddamn second, one fantastic second where he didn’t feel all weighted down and shit, all pissy and morose, and he started doing a pinwheel motion with his arms like swimming or maybe goddamn flying, Vince fucking Thompson was going up into the dark and flying off to the fucking moon, Jesus what a stupid asshole. It just went to show what sort of weird shit you got yourself into when you were essentially a fucking social outcast who spent way too much time on your lonesome and then found yourself in this kind of situation, in the total fucking
pitch-black hole of Calcutta darkness, imagining all kinds of crazy shit like how you were kind of two different people, like you were one person who was standing there in front of the mirror looking at his goddamn lopsided head and then all of a sudden you were this other person whose head wasn’t lopsided at all, and how maybe when the lights came on everything would be cool and you could forget about all this other crap and you might even suddenly look like Brad Pitt. Good fucking
God
it was dark. Vince fucking Thompson came back to himself and splashed one last handful of water on his swollen face and felt around in the dark for the towel dispenser until he found it and took a handful and wiped his face and then aimed the towels in what he thought was the general direction of the goddamn wastebasket, and then with both hands he felt one more time his pathetic lopsided head, and then he went back out into the fucking bar, the thought beginning to grow, beginning to dawn now, that this would be the perfect fucking opportunity, right while nobody could see a goddamn thing, to locate Russell Harmon somehow and stick the Beretta in the back of his skull and force him outside where he could then figure out how to waste his pansy ass.
But out in the bar it wasn’t dark, goddammit, not dark like in the john, it took him a minute to actually comprehend that he could actually see again and shit, that there were all these fucking
candles
, and no matter which way he looked, no matter which direction he turned in performing his fucking reconnaissance, there wasn’t any Russell Harmon. Russell Harmon, goddammit, was gone. Up at the front of the bar he saw that goddamn Matt walking toward the restroom, like he thought he was going to do a line of coke in there, what a fucking idiot,
like he could even open up the bindle in the goddamn pitch-blackness, use your fucking
head!
And there was that Tristan dude, who he would have given more credit, actually like sitting in a chair and
listening
to the goddamn musician strumming his lame-ass acoustic guitar, Jesus, Vince Thompson hated that asshole,
Oh maybe we could crank up a little “Puff the Magic Dragon,” oh could you please play us your fascinating rendition of “Where Have All the Fucking Flowers Gone.”
It was enough to make you want to pull out the Beretta and shoot your fucking
self
. And there were more of the idiot dart players. And there were the two fags. And here in the back of the bar, all alone, was that crazy convenience store owner, still standing there at the fucking dartboard, still throwing his little darts plunk, plunk, plunk into the fucking board, the dude was fucking creepy, it was like you never even saw him half the time, it had taken Vince about half a dozen goddamn trips to the store before he could even remember who the hell the guy was, and looking around at all these assholes Vince Thompson was happy as shit to get the hell out of the bar, and he knew just where to go, because he knew just where Russell fucking Harmon would go, right out to his truck to do some blow. Stepping outside he found the night relatively quiet and inoffensive, even if it was black as a nigger’s ass at least the rain had stopped, and the air was cool, and he could hear the sign on the mountain bike shop next door banging in the wind, and he was so fucking
tired
all of a sudden, life made you so damn tired, it was almost too much to bear to stay so angry all the time, and wouldn’t it be nice to just forget the whole damn thing and go home sober and collapse in bed, but no, there was business to attend to, there was the goddamn Beretta in the pocket, give it a little pat,
OK, and there was the hunting knife on the belt, and there was the pain and shit in the lopsided head to keep up the old resentment, and so it was off to the parking lot, crossing the deck on the proverbial fucking cat’s feet, don’t give yourself away, and approaching the shrubs under the birch trees, feeling ahead carefully in the dark, and lo and behold there was Russell fucking Harmon’s truck right there, but squinting into the goddamn blackness Vince Thompson couldn’t see anything, couldn’t see the outline of anyone in the truck, son of a bitch maybe Russell Harmon wasn’t there, maybe he was sneaking up stealthily on an empty fucking truck, that would be just about par for the goddamn course, just about a summary of the whole fucking glorious evening, but then he heard something, he heard the truck’s shocks give a little squeak, and you could see the truck move, right
there
, you could see it rocking a little bit on the frame. Holy shit. It occurred to Vince fucking Thompson that there was someone else he hadn’t seen in the bar on the way out, wasn’t there, son of a bitch, old Russell Harmon was out here banging away on that Ashton chick, what do you know, the last fucking supper so to speak, the final request granted the dying man, and Vince Thompson leaned on a fence post and felt what was it, relief? That he wouldn’t have to do it right now? Because he couldn’t shoot Russell Harmon’s head off in front of a hot-ass chick? Pride? Like a surge of goddamn pride, he supposed, like the thing that went through his head was
way to fucking go, Russell, you old shit-for-brains son of a bitch
, like the fact that Russell Harmon had actually hung out over at his place before and drunk his fucking beers and snorted his fucking lines and basically taken advantage of him from the word go somehow reflected better on him, Vince? Like if
Russell Harmon could get his ass laid by a hot fucking chick that meant there was hope for Vince fucking Thompson too, by association, like he might be able to get some woman that wasn’t just a pussy on a computer screen? That was pathetic, the most pathetic thing he’d ever imagined of himself, and he stood there leaning on the fence and wondering how he’d slipped so far, because he’d been normal once, hadn’t he, he’d had a truck like that one, not as nice, maybe, but a truck, and he’d had a girlfriend, her name was Summer, this was a long time ago back when he worked for the city maintenance crew, hanging out down at the city shop with all the old farts drinking their coffee and smoking their cigarettes, and Vince always the first one to take a job, wasn’t he, they used to laugh at poor Vince because if a water main burst or a road needed grading or a pothole needed to be filled or the snowplows needed to go out in the early morning dark he was always the first to volunteer, ready to go, actually fucking eager, but they liked him too, didn’t they, they would pat him on the back every once in a while, one of the old guys, say
You’re doing a nice job, Vince
, and back then he’d had Summer to go to every night, but her parents had been goddamn hippies and she was used to moving around, so she’d talked him into saving up money to buy a camper and quitting his fucking job, which was the only real job he ever had, and going on the road to fucking California with all the other goddamn hippie freaks. But it had been worth it, hadn’t it, Vince Thompson thought now, hearing the noises from Russell Harmon’s truck and looking up at the white stars, which were out now in abundance, just like they were in that camper with Summer, putting out the campfire and going to bed, maybe cooking up a little something on the
tiny stove and pulling a beer from the refrigerator, crawling up into the space over the cab where the bed was and lying there talking to Summer for hours, sometimes until you could feel daylight creeping in. Summer, how long had it been since he’d thought of her, or how long had it been since he’d let himself acknowledge that he thought of her, that she was always there behind the pictures on the screen, always her actual flesh somewhere deep in his goddamn memory. She hadn’t been much to look at, Summer, nothing like that Ashton chick who he could hear now crying out in the truck, good old Russell, who’d have thought, mousy brown hair and a plain face and thin as a fucking bird, a goddamn vegetarian of all things, but she was the sweetest girl he’d ever known, sweet even about his goddamn deep-seated insecurities and what fucking ever and his shitty moods and his bitter goddamn memories, she had put up with it all, at least up until the time that the drugs got the best of him and he’d gone back home without her, leaving her in some small California town that he couldn’t even remember the name. He could listen to her talk forever, back in the good days, and he loved to hear her laugh, loved to hear her soft throaty voice that was what a robin would sound like, he always thought, if it could speak. She’d written him a letter once, after he was long gone, and he had read that letter over and over again trying to find that voice in it, but finally it too had gone away.