Authors: Pat Connid
I ran up to
the woman’s car and knocked on the passenger side window.
“You okay
in there?”
Stunned,
her head spun toward at me, locked onto my eyes for only a second and turned
her face away.
“Hey…”
The next
moment, the car started and leaped forward, made a wide arc onto the grass,
spitting up dirt, found the road again and melted into a pair of red demon eyes
as it sped away, eventually turning and heading up the interstate, swallowed by
dark of night.
The young
guy who’d come out of the car shouted something at me, but I was so stunned.
That woman—
“Hey, man,”
he said, helping his friend from the driver’s seat. “You get a license
plate?” Checking on his friend sitting on the pavement, he then walked
around to see the damage. I stared in the direction the Chevy had taken
off. “Man, look at this! Look at my car!”
Still in
shock at what I’d seen, I mumbled, asking, “Your buddy okay?”
He walked
toward me. “Seems alright, just dazed. You catch a license plate on
that asshole?”
I shook my
head. “Sorry, man.”
“Get a look
at the driver at all?”
“Looked
like a woman but, uh, didn’t see her face.”
He swore to
himself and walked over to the pile of clothes, digging around.
Of course,
I had seen the woman’s face. And it was actually the second time I’d ever
seen her. But, it was the hair I’d noticed first when I’d gotten close.
Before, she’d been with three others, and had tossed her hair back— I
remember thinking— like in a shampoo commercial. The first time I had
seen that woman was by the fountain at the Marietta Square.
Just
outside my apartment in Marietta, Georgia.
Nearly five
hundred miles away from the rest stop.
"YOU
WANT BREAKFAST, AT least?”
I said,
“No,” and my stomach growled at me, but it was time to get on the road. I
wouldn’t get very far on foot but just the idea of moving, any motion, appealed
to me. Lately, I’d felt very Blanche Dubois-y with my serious dependence
upon the kindness of strangers and needed to shake that off a little. It was
time to take manhood back a bit.
“How about
a fruit bar?” Abe said, smiling his brilliant, white-Chiclets teeth. “For
the road.”
Nibbling at
my handheld breakfast, it wasn’t very long before Pavan eased up next to me.
I looked
back and the house I’d just left was still in sight. “Dude, I walked, like, a
block.”
He popped
the door open. “Hey, awesome, man.”
Abe had
given me a composition book—the ones with the black and white marbling on the
cover. It looked like he had a stash of them, with five kids I didn’t
blame him, and he said he didn’t mind letting me have one.
Once in the
car, I started taking some notes of what had happened over the past several
days. When I snapped the pen into the book and stuffed both inside the
glove compartment, Pavan took this as his cue to speak up.
“So, you think
you know this chick? The one at the rest stop?”
“I don’t
know her. I saw her outside my place that first night, when you and me
were hanging down stairs in the square.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Pavan ran
his fingers through his mop. “Damn, man.” He thought for a moment.
“Doesn’t make sense. You’re really sure?”
“That’s the
least of my worries right now. I can’t go home or The Mentor’s going to
show up, without notice. I’m off to la-la land again.”
“Wha?
You’re calling this prick your mentor?”
“Gotta call
him something. ‘Mentor’ has a nice ring of irony to it.”
“’Asshole’
has a good ring to it, too.”
“Actually,
it was
your
idea. You called him that first.”
“Oh?
Yeah, then, that works. Good idea.”
I looked
into the back seat. Thankfully, when your best friend is a stoner,
there’s always munchies around. But sometimes, not for long. I
reached back and pulled up a bag of chips, cheddar cheese flavor. The
moment before I popped the bag, I stopped. My shoulders slumped a little.
I said, “You don’t have anything—“
“Dude, I’ve
got EVERYTHING back there,” Pavan said, puffing with pride.
“You got
anything, you know, kinda healthy?”
He shot a
look at me. “Well, no, I don’t have
that
back there.”
Well, the
choice had been made for me. Either it was cheesy chips or starve.
I chose the former and my stomach, for the moment, was happy with me
again.
“You get
the discs from the library?”
Pavan’s
hair bobbled for a second. “Yep, fourteen all together.”
“Damn.”
“Yeah, all
sorts of stuff. Physics, geology, horticulture—“
“Horticulture.
Dunno if that’ll come in handy.”
“Maybe.
I don’t know what it even means,” he said and grinned wide. “I do
know that it had the word ‘whore’ in it, though, man.”
I chuckled
and settled back into the spongy seat.
He said,
“They’re in the backseat in the little kid backpack. Player’s in there,
too. I took the batteries outta the TV remote control since there’s never
anything good on anyhow.”
“Hey,
awesome.”
“And, I put
my copy of
Drink & Drain
in there, as a bonus. You said put
everything in, so I’m donating it to the cause.”
“Drink and
Drain.”
“Yeah, got
it for a birthday present when I turned twenty-one. It’s how to say ‘I
would like a beer, please’ and ‘where exactly is the restroom in your fine
establishment?’ In one hundred sixty-two languages.”
“Very
helpful.”
“You said
everything I could find.”
Leaning
into the back seat, I unzipped the mouth on Spongebob Squarepants, and reached
inside. The jagged edges of CD jewel cases were nipping at my wrists as I
pulled out one, randomly.
“So, what’s
the plan? You can’t go back home, man.”
I’d nabbed
a disc by Steven Hawking called
The History of the Universe
.
Seemed like a good place to start. Popping the bud in my left ear,
I hit play. As the introduction music swelled then faded, and words began
dripping into my skull, I turned to Pavan.
“Actually,
we’re headed there first. My apartment.”
“You wanna
go
back
home? That’s f-in’ nuts, man.”
“Just for a
min—“
“No way!
He’s probably totally casing the joint.” His hair shook with panic
as he took an aggressive drag on his cigarette.
“We’ll
sneak in. Around back,” I said thumbing volume down a little on the CD
player, half listening. “Don’t worry about it. You can wait in the
car.”
“Doesn’t
sound like a good idea. What do you need from there? Undies, socks?
I mean, you’re pretty ripe, but I got stuff you can wear.”
Looking at
him through the haze pouring from his mouth, I shook my head. “You want
me to wear your underwear, dude?”
“Not the
ones I’m wearing,” he said, and then thought about it for a moment.
“Yeah, we better stop by your place.”
Listening
to the universe’s story, as we thought we knew it, I could still take some
notes and collect my thoughts. In high school and, as I was beginning to
recall bits at a time, this was an easy way to study. My eidetic audio
memory could split between two sources fairly easy.
Studying is
far more enjoyable if you can do it while watching a
Godfather
marathon
on TNT.
At the
apartment, I wanted more than to just get a change of clothes or two. A
shower, certainly, but mainly I wanted to look under my kitchen sink.
When
my new “landlord” barged in on Laura, he went and fiddled under the sink.
It’s doubtful he was fixing the plumbing, despite how bad it needed to be
tended to.
“So let’s
say you find a Mr. Microphone under your sink, then what?” Pavan
whispered a few hours later as we slowly trolled the dark alley behind
Wicked
Lester’s
. Both of our heads were swiveling slowly from side to side,
like those old dog figurines people used to put on their dashboard, checking
for any sign
him
.
“Man, I
have no idea. I’m playing this by ear.”
Pavan
chewed the butt of his cigarette.
“Listen, my
cousin’s got this place up on Red Top Mountain. Why don’t you go hang
there for a couple, you know, years or so?”
“Can’t do
that.”
“Listen, I
appreciate you want to Rambo this guy but remember your buddy Pavan. I
have a trick stomach, here. I can’t handle so much stress.”
“How can
you be stressed?” I said as we drove, motioning him to head toward the
back fire escape. We’d waited until dusk because we wanted it to be dark
enough that we wouldn’t be seen, but not too dark where The Mentor could
materialize out of the shadows. Dusk seemed like the perfect
“chickenshit” hour for us.
“My stress
is maxxed, man!”
“You smoked
two joints in the past five minutes,” I said, put my hand out, fingers splayed.
“You’re more likely fast asleep on your couch, the TV was left on and
there’s an old episode of
Kojak
or something on the tube and you’re
internalizing any sort of anxiety from the storyline.”
Pavan held
the cigarette smoke in his lung for a moment. “Never liked
Kojak
.
Hated the bird.”
“That’s
Baretta
.”
“No.”
“Yeah,
Baretta
had the bird.
Kojak
was the lollipops guy.”
That seemed
to rock Pavan’s world a little. “You sure?”
“Yep,” I
said and told him to stop the car, parking near the Dumpster. “I always
liked
Columbo
myself. Loved that guy.”
“Couldn’t
watch it. Dude had that fucked up eye, and I couldn’t ever take him
seriously because I’d be giggling about his eye.”
Quietly, I
popped the door open. “You ever thought about maybe easing off on the
dope a little? I mean, just a little?”
Pavan, now
parked and his engine off, for the first time put his seat belt on.
“Why?”
I pulled everything
out of my pockets but couldn’t fit any of it into the overstuffed glove
compartment. Under the front seat was also out of the question.
Junk everywhere.
I said,
“Man, what is all this—whoa,
shit
!”
“What?”
“What is
that
,
man? Take it off!”
While I’d
been concentrating on hiding my stuff, Pavan had slipped on a rubber mask that
looked like it had been pulled out of some post-Halloween bargain bin ten years
ago.
“No way,”
he said, his voice muffled by the mask. It was a horrible combination of
demon dog and wild boar with a lot of the paint flaking away. The pink
plastic underneath made it look more stupid than scary. It was still
scary.
“What is
that?”
“It’s Uncle
Rolo’s
Chupacabra
mask. He wears it when he buys dope from his
dealer so nobody recognizes him.”
“Take it
off,” I whispered. “You’re creeping me out, man.”
“No way,”
the pink, rubber demon said to me. “Incognito, hombre.”
As I
slipped out of the car, I crouched low, hidden by the door. It was
getting darker by the minute and that only compressed my chest, making it even
harder to breathe. Pavan had already affirmed I was doing a solo mission.
It took the two doobies just to get him to drive to my place.
Not that I
couldn’t drive— just hadn’t since the accident and, sure, there’s an I.D. card
in my wallet, not a license. I don’t mind driving without a license, but
in the instance that I
currently
could, say, have to run for my life at
the highest speed possible, it was best to have someone ready to fire up a
getaway car.
It’d taken
a moment, but right then the dome light popped on and Pavan’s hand had shot to
it like a frog going after a fly, trying to dampen the glow. His fingers
looked blood red covering the light—not exactly the best image to carry in my
head, wandering into the dark.
Crossing in
front of the car’s grill, I gave a quick wave to my friend who responded by
tapping his wrist where a watch would have been. Unable to pick up any nuanced
expression on his face-- just two pin-pricked pupils staring out from a Chupacabra
mask-- I inferred as best I could that he was hoping his friend would hurry the
fuck up.
The smell
of the Dumpster made my eyes water but, still, I tried to scan the alley, the
neighboring windows, the rooftops—The Mentor hadn’t come at me in full-on
attack mode in the past. He preferred getting me snoozing, which, by the
way, really pissed me off and screwed a bit with my sleeping patterns.
Still, I wasn’t taking any chances.