“Mari,” Jay said, and waited for her to look his way. “You were married to a nut.”
“Tell me about it.” Her cheeks puffed and her eyes brightened at the brake lights ahead. “He was a good nut, though.”
To Jay it sounded like he had been. A good and lucky nut to have been with this woman.
“Your turn,” Mari said. “Tell me something.”
“Something happy?”
“No, change of subject.” She bit her lip and tried to think of one, like a child might when conjuring road games during a long trip. “One wish.”
“One wish,” Jay repeated. “One wish what?”
“You get one wish—what do you wish for?”
“Ten more miles an hour out of this car,” he answered, and Mari chuckled.
“No, seriously. One wish. Just one. What would you use that one wish for?”
She was serious, he realized. She really wanted to know. Well, she had shared, and shared freely, so it was only right that he did. And he didn’t even have to think more than a second to know what his wish would be.
“To know why my parents had to die.”
The remnants of happiness drained from Mari’s face and she glanced at Jay. “You don’t know how they died?”
“No, I know that. They died in a car crash. I’d like to know why.”
She looked back to the traffic ahead. “Are you sure there is a ‘why’?”
He shrugged mildly. “For the longest time I believed that it was because they found themselves poor, and that being poor put them at that intersection at the wrong time. But now... I think that was probably an easy excuse to make.”
“What if it was just ‘because’,” Mari proposed.
“At least I’d know,” Jay said, and right then Mari had to brake hard as traffic slowed quick up ahead, the city not all the way gone yet. The sudden motion caught him off guard, and his cast slid forward on the worn floorboard carpet and jammed against the firewall. He yelped in pain.
“Jay, I’m sorry!” Mari said, reaching over as she steered with the traffic that was moving again.
“Not your fault,” he said, and curled up toward the door, pulling all of his body that wasn’t pure hurt right then into a ball. He closed his eyes and listened to the road buzz by below them.
“Why don’t you nap, Jay. It’s only a couple hours ‘til we’re back. I can take it the rest of the way.” She glanced at him. “Jay?”
But he was already gone, asleep or passed out from the pain, she didn’t know. And she didn’t think it mattered.
But it did, because as they arrived in Plainview those two hours later, just after five in the evening, and as she turned onto Wells Road and then onto Todd, she did not notice—nor would it likely have mattered to her if she had—the upturned five gallon bucket sitting near the curb out front of the barber shop at the intersection of those two strips of blacktop.
Forty Six
Something Old, Something New, Something Dead With Eyes Of Blue
Mari actually had to wake Jay, nudging him hard after they had pulled up in front of the building. She carried most of their things upstairs, but Jay insisted on handling the bag with the gun. When he got it inside he took it out and saw that it was loaded.
“Can I take a bath in that thing?” Mari asked, looking uncertainly at the lopsided tub.
“It works,” he told her. “Some parts just get more water than others.”
She shrugged an ‘okay’ and got clean clothes from her big suitcase, which she’d lugged up to the room rather than leave it in her car, an almost unconscious act she realized once it was laying at the foot of the bed. Like she was staying, or something.
Then again, she’d wondered after that, where was there she had to be once this was done?
Whatever ‘done’ meant.
She went into the bathroom and closed the door almost all the way once again, leaving just that fine line of radiance up the jamb. Jay went to the window and pulled the shade halfway down, and as a week’s worth of stale, heated air scratched at his skin he momentarily considered putting his fist through the lower pane as he had through the Honda’s window on the tracks, except this old wavy glass would surely lay his arm open and make such a red mess that he’d be glad to be dead. But dead he couldn’t be. Dead he didn’t want to be. He looked longingly at the bathroom door and listened to the water run, and Mari hum.
It was stupid feeling this way, he thought, worried about the next moment and that gun now resting on the bed table, and wanting that next moment to come because he would spend it with her. Might spend it with her, he corrected himself. It wasn’t good to get ahead of matters. Not good at all.
But that didn’t stop him wanting that next moment, and it did not stop him wanting the woman singing Sonny and Cher tunes now beyond his bathroom door.
So what could he do? He could clean up, that’s what he could do, he decided, taking in the mess that had moved from the car to his room. Clothes to be put away, or at least piled so that they could be taken down to the Super Suds come morning. Blankets to be folded. Jackets to be hung. It was plenty to do while Mari bathed, and it would keep his mind off his leg, so he got down to it and started with the clothes.
He squatted mostly on one leg, his cast jutting out and forward so he looked like a Russian dancer frozen in mid step, and took a pile of their clothing and lifted it to the bed, planning to sort it there. Buried within it, though, was the fanny pack, and washing that would be a waste, not to mention detrimental to the very few dollars they had left, and so he took it in hand and slung it across to the chair where it landed quite safely in the sag of the cushion. Then he turned back to the clothes, getting his jeans and hers pulled from the mound before something caught his attention. A sound. A sound he knew.
He turned slowly toward the chair, his skin tightening all over, and saw what the sound was. A coin was on the floor, had fallen to the floor, and was rolling his way. A penny it was, and as it neared his feet it leaned to one side and began circling before him, as if in a holding pattern Waiting.
For what, he learned next.
From the worn depression in the chair’s cushion, another coin came, rolling slowly up from the pit and then over the top to drop to the floor, where it rolled toward Jay. And then another followed suit, and another still, and finally one more, until there were four coins, all pennies, wheeling toward the one already at his feet, and when they arrived they fell into line and circled with the first of their number, tracking round, and round, and round once more until all at the very same instant tipped to the side and showed...
...and showed tails up at Jay.
His mouth went dry at the sight. Dead dry.
Oh God, no. Please no.
The fear leapt from a place he thought dead. Dead a week now. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t. The tails were back. Back!
But...but where was that knowing? That knowing that death would come? As he looked to the coins he could not see death, all he could see was...was...
...a number.
Just a number. Another ordinary number. Just...
Just that. And what did it mean?
It means what it means...
That recollection chilled Jay, but that was all it was—memory. What he had to focus on now was this number.
And what did it mean to
him
? To
them
? He glanced at the gun on the bed table and wondered, too, what it meant for that?
Tails, he thought. Tails. Before they had signaled death. Might they again? Once more his gaze was drawn to the gun, then back to the coins which he knelt to pick up, grimacing. He held them in his fist, and noticed how the bed table lamp shone light that gleamed off of the gun.
In his fist he felt the five pennies tremor.
His breath rushed in, then out, and he squeezed the coins tight. Tight so they could not move, but they did, and finally he dropped them into his empty shirt pocket and sat down on the bed.
Death? Death? Death? That word rang over and over again in his head. Did the tails still mean death?
The coins shook against his chest and he slapped his hand hard over them.
Death? But what death? There was no vision of it rushing at him. No sense of impending doom. No body counts, no flames, no falling. No nothing. Just the number...
...bigger for some reason in his knowing of it. Just that big number, and the gleaming steel revolver on his bed table.
Had death come back, but to be dispensed?
The five pennies shuddered, and he held them down fast.
Not seen, but dispensed? By him? With that gun?
And they writhed in the confines of the pocket as Jay held them over his thudding heart.
Dispensed to something somehow related to the number...
...?
The coins wriggled and shook and he finally squeezed his hand around them, bunching the material of the pocket in his fist. And that was when Mari came out of the bathroom.
He swore his heart stopped when he saw her.
She had finished her bath, the water now gasping away down the drain beyond, and she stood before him toweling her hair, a long sleeved orange jersey all she had on. It hung down to her knees like a nightshirt, clinging to the parts of her form that were still damp, but these Jay did not notice. No. It was all he could do to see anything but the huge white 5 emblazoned on the jersey’s front.
“You gonna wash u—. Jay?”
He gaped at her wildly, not believing what this was. Not believing that this was what it had all been about. It couldn’t. It
couldn’t!
But coins vibrating in the depths of his fist disagreed. Oh yes, they disagreed.
“What’s wrong, Jay? What are you holding against your chest? What’s in your hand?”
He shook his head. No, no, no. He couldn’t do this. He wouldn’t do this. There was no reason!
For everything there is a reason...
Not for this!
his mind screamed out.
Not this! Not her!
She stepped toward him, but he backed away, into the bed table, one hand going back to the gun, as if guided there. As if it was supposed to wrap around the grip, and feel the steel, and curl a finger over the trigger...
NO!
He fought it, but took the gun in hand. Took it and lifted it behind his back and secreted it down his waistband and under his shirt.
“Jay, for God’s sake, tell me what is wrong!”
She came closer, and he backed more away, not wanting to be near her now. Not wanting to be anywhere near her now. He grabbed his crutches and hobbled to the door, the pain in his leg not even an afterthought.
“Jay!”
“Stay here,” he told her. “You hear me? Stay here! Don’t come near me! Whatever you do, stay away from me!”
“Jay, what—”
But he was out the door, and hopping madly down the staircase. She ran to the window and watched him crutch quickly up toward Wells Road.
Forty Seven
Ask Max
Jay was halfway to Wells Road when he stopped and took the coins from his shirt pocket and flung them across the street. They skidded over the asphalt and slid into the gutter against the far curb like a mass toss in a penny pitch. He stood, his back leaning against the front wall of the long-closed dress shop, just between the two big windows where showy frocks had hung in better times, and he watched where the pennies had come to rest. And rest they did, not moving at all anymore. Cast among the dust they now were, to be found or swept away, and neither mattered to him. Or to the coins, he suspected, because they had done what was required of them. They had marked him a target.
He shook his head hard again, shutting his eyes tight and trying to squeeze the thought from his mind, because it could not be.
NO!
Off the wall he pushed, and started moving on the crutches again, the hard and deadly thing pressing at the small of his back. The thing that Julio had given over, though who Julio was, and for whom the weapon had been intended, he did not know, or care. It was with him now, in his waistband right now, well within reach at a split second’s notice now, and he had to be away from Mari, who had made him promise never to doubt the coins again. Ever.
And he had promised.
So now he could not doubt. He could only defy. And so he ran, or moved as fast as a half lame man could toward Wells Road. And once there? He had no idea. Farther, he thought. He would just keep going until what was fated did not have to be, because he could
not
kill Mari.
5
5 5
5
5
5
5
5
5
“NO!” he screamed aloud as the cacophony of numbers, of
that
number, batted about his consciousness, rushing at him like death had from the tails prior incarnation. Wordlessly they were taunting, chanting
kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her.....
And from them he ran on, good leg and bad leg and two wooden poles carrying him down Todd to Wells Road, away from the instruction, the order, the
fate
. Away, and once to Todd and Wells he moved on, crossing the intersection at a diagonal, not even looking, wishing once again that some errant driver might just mow him down like Mari should have to save her own skin. But nothing came, nothing stopped him, and he made it to the far side of the intersection and stopped, out of breath, crashing shoulder first into the light pole right there. A few feet away the barber pole outside Max’s Clip Joint corkscrewed blue and red stripes up and away, the motion a dizzying show that he could not look at any more, and so he hung his head and sucked air as fast as he could. Hung his head as sweat dripped from the point of his nose to the pale sidewalk below, splattering dark rounds of moisture on the pavement right next to—
He jumped back from what was resting at his feet, landing against the bubble-like fender of an old Ford pickup parked at the curb.