I felt stupid for talking too much.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘That business with Arthur. That was rough on her. She shouldn’t be here. It’s too soon. And I told her to sell that house a long time ago. This place is going to hell.’
I was exhausted. What else did I need to ask him?
He did another shot and then said, ‘So, you plan on sticking around?’
‘I don’t have anywhere else to go. I miss my wife.’
‘To the ladies,’ Rick said, pouring. I did another shot. Rick did another shot. He went back to talking about women and cars and prison escapades. The music got louder. We found ourselves singing along to Steve Miller’s ‘Abracadabra’. Rick showed me a rare gun and fired a shot into his wall. I laughed and he let me fire another shot into his wall. The wood paneling smoldered. At some point I could not hold myself up on the stool and slid over to his couch. He was laughing and turning up the music. I nodded off to ZZ Top singing about legs and a woman who knew how to use them.
‘Wake up. Wake up, Ghost. Yo yo, cornbread. You need to eat.’
I snapped out of my dead slumber, still drunk.
‘I made a Tostino’s.’ Rick held out a paper plate with burned slices of gray meat and orange sauce.
My stomach roiled. I waved the slice away.
Rick gobbed it whole and spoke through a mouthful of mush. ‘She hasn’t called. You want a ride home or you gonna sleep here all night?’
I rubbed my eyes. ‘It’s night already?’
Rick laughed. ‘You fucking pansy lightweight.’
I stood and made sure my pants were buttoned. They were, but my brain seemed to be gyrating. ‘Holy fuck. What time is it? What have you been doing all afternoon?’
‘Working on my car. I dropped by the house to see if she was around. She didn’t answer the door. Won’t answer the phone. You sure she came back with you?’
I did not understand the question.
‘I would have seen her by now,’ he said.
‘You think I came here alone?’
‘Maybe she’s the ghost!’ he said, and laughed. ‘Maybe none of this is real.’
‘That’s not funny,’ I said. ‘I need to go home.’
Rick poured me a beer and I shoved it aside, then thought I might as well wash the sleep out of my mouth and took a gulp. It actually tasted pretty good.
‘She’s there,’ I said. ‘This was dumb. For all I know she might have killed herself by now.’
Rick kept shaking his head. ‘I still don’t understand how you got here,’ he said. ‘Where’s your car?’
‘Annette drove.’ My head felt as though it had been run over. This made me think of Lucy. I almost threw up. Something was wrong. I looked around, feeling punked. ‘Are you fucking with me? Did you slip something in my drink?’
Brah-haw-haw-haw!
‘You’re crazy, Ghost.’
My temper neared its boiling point. ‘Maybe so. Fuck, man, you have no idea what I’ve been through.’
‘Do tell?’
I turned to give him a mouthful about what it was like to lose your wife, but then I saw myself in the big Budweiser mirror behind his bar and almost screamed. My hair had turned white. It was standing up in a spiky mess and it was snow-white. Peroxide white. Ghost white.
Rick sipped his beer and nibbled at another slice of garbage pizza. ‘What?’
‘What did you do?’ I shouted. ‘What the fuck did you do to me?’ I was up off my stool. I shoved my beer at him and it fell off the bar and splashed onto his pants before shattering on the floor.
‘Hey, hey!’
I pointed at him. ‘You motherfucker. I’ll kill you!’
‘Calm down, what is your problem?’
‘Look at me! Look at this!’ I yanked at my hair.
‘What about it?’
‘You dyed my hair? Are you kidding me?’ I looked around for the evidence. A brown bottle of peroxide, a towel, anything. But I saw nothing, and my scalp felt the same as it always did. My hair was dry, a little oily, as if I had not showered in two days, which I hadn’t. ‘You think this is cute? What the fuck is wrong with you, man?’
Rick reared back. ‘You think I dyed your hair? What the fuck is wrong with
you
? Your hair was like that when I met you this morning, dumbass. When’s the last time you looked in the mirror?’
He was utterly calm. And I did not believe him.
‘This is not - I’m not. Just get me the fuck out of here. I’m done. You, her, this whole scene. I’m done with all of it.’
Rick looked more frightened of me than I was of him. ‘Fine by me. Take it easy, man. Jesus. I’ll give you a ride home. Let me get my keys.’
It was night time again. Every third or fourth street lamp was on, as if the association were purposefully running them at twenty or thirty per cent to cut costs. As a result, the neighborhood was dark for long stretches, Rick’s headlights sliding over abandoned houses and cars as we worked our way through the derelict maze. I felt far from civilization, the reality of the desert creeping in all around me. I had not eaten in some twenty or thirty hours and the beers and shots had gone straight to my blood. I felt sick in his company and it didn’t help that Rick was doing almost sixty through the neighborhood. After a few minutes I didn’t recognize any of the houses and sensed we were going the opposite direction of Annette’s.
‘Isn’t her place back the other way?’ I said.
‘Gotta make my rounds. Sit tight, I’ll get you home in a jiff.’
His rounds. ‘You work for the association?’
‘Association? Ain’t no fuckin’ association.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m just a homeowner looking out for my investment. ’
This was not going to be fun.
Rick hooked a hard right onto a steep road, his tires squealing and the undercarriage scraping as we jounced through the drainage dip and then climbed, the car roaring as if the engine had some kind of blower or four-barrel carb.
Whonh - whooOOOOOHNNNH!
We topped out quickly over the hill, floating on the cruiser’s soft suspension. As soon as we nosed down, a little orange glow appeared up ahead and Rick killed the lights.
‘Jackpot.’
He used a driveway apron to weave onto the sidewalk and quickly straightened out so that my half of the car was riding on the curb while he leaned toward the street. We continued this way, me dipping with every driveway and rising again, for about a hundred yards. I tasted Jim Beam and bile. The orange glow was in a house, now visible behind a garden-level window. As we approached, still pushing thirty, the glow enlarged and then snuffed out. Rick slewed onto the lawn, braked to a halt and left the cruiser idling, which it did in near silence.
I expected him to bolt immediately, but he just sat there watching the house through the windshield. In his blue pseudo-uniform, his acne-scar pitted face pasty with booze sweat, eyes glassy and low, he looked like a soldier of fortune.
I couldn’t stand the silence, but as soon as I opened my mouth he threw his right arm across my chest.
‘Shush.’
I shushed.
‘They know,’ he said softly. ‘Now it’s only a matter of how many will stay, how many will run, and which door.’
‘Who?’
Rick looked sideways at me, his smile a red-lipped blade. ‘The Crawlers.’
While I waited for an explanation, his left leg raised itself steadily and there was the sound of tearing Velcro. His left hand passed something over his lap and into his right hand, which extended to me.
Ankle piece.
I shook my head and whispered, ‘I don’t want that.’
‘Yes.’ The voice of the grave. ‘You do.’
He saw the fear in my eyes, the need to understand.
‘They crawl across the desert, into other kings’ castles, ’ he said. ‘Our mission is to let them know there’s order in this kingdom, and make sure they never come back.’
A door slammed. We both looked up. It wasn’t the front door; that was still closed. Another clamor farther away, footsteps bounding over wood, probably on the back decking.
‘Rock ’n’ roll, Ghost.’
The ankle piece fell into my lap. I hesitated.
He pointed his gun at my face. ‘Stay here you’ll die.’
Rick’s door did not so much open as explode, ejecting the big man like a sprinter from the starting blocks. Except there was no grace, only raw power. He moved over the lawn with the frightening spurt of a buffalo startled from his herd. His boots threw a chunk of sod as he darted right and disappeared behind the house.
Stay here you’ll die.
Did this mean one of them would come out the front door and start shooting at me? Or that, if I didn’t provide back-up, Rick would punish me?
I followed him. God help me I exited the car and, though I could have run away, I followed him. I would show him what happens to people who drug me and dye my hair.
Cool air in the desert night. My breath steaming alcohol fumes. Adrenaline rush across the yard and over the split-rail fence like a steeple chase, ready to pistol-whip any bitch, damn it feels good to be a gangsta.
Shapes and shadows weaving through trees, sod grid yards, out onto the expanse of the park with the dying baby trees. Two men ahead of him, using the playground for poor man’s camo. Rick closing like he’s got pupils big as eight balls night vision. Three, then four men and maybe a woman bursting from their hidey holes. Converging on the same narrow gap, a hole in the culvert wall. Into the wild, no more suburbs, just land. Weaving through rocks and cactus and dry river beds, pure terror.
My feet slipping, legs pumping, heart pumping faster, my lungs burning under enough moonlight to see their dark skin, his massive head jumping like an antelope.
The pistol swinging at my side, my finger inching closer to the trigger as I catch up to the black hulk of him cutting across the desert, the shouts of his prey as they realize there’s nowhere left to go. One trips, another stops to help, the whole train piling up. He’s shouting, they’re surrendering like border jumpers, knees in the dirt, hands behind heads, and he’s rounding them up, master of ceremonies now, Emcee Rick, huffing and puffing and waiting for me to bring up the rear. I’m ready to surprise them all.
The gun coming up, my gun, the tableau waiting to unfold.
The buffalope in my sights. His head exploding in a pink mist.
Psychological safety - off.
30
I didn’t shoot Rick, though in retrospect I should have. It would have saved us both some trouble.
I did take the gun and exit the car, run around the house, trip over a plastic rain gutter and nearly slam face first into the grass before I emerged around the back. I heard him chasing them, shouting and firing his gun into the air (I hoped), and after another minute of running across the raw desert that lay just on the other side of all this false suburbia, I cramped up. The stitch lit up my side like a purple flame and I stopped, bent over and threw up into the rocky sand. I was dehydrated and lost and my head was throbbing like it had its own heart.
I wiped my mouth and walked back to the car. I thought of stealing it, but only slipped the gun into my waistband and wandered off down the street. I didn’t want to know what Rick was up to. Chasing immigrants or squatters - the Crawlers, people like me the night before - was my guess, though why he cared I could not imagine. No one was paying him. It was probably simple blood sport to him, a hobby, a way to feel powerful and needed after being downsized from the prison. I knew guys like him from Ghost’s security entourage. They were police academy rejects, looking for new, less regulated venues to exercise power.