The Nirvana Blues (41 page)

“I'll tell the judge about Scott's water-rights pact with Roger. That amounts to outright collusion between Roger and Cobey and Scott in the Nuzum embezzlement caper.”

“Don't forget, though, that Skipper's been cooperating with Roger in order to nail Cobey's ass. They're all on the take from each other. So if it came down to an actual court fight, they'd all suddenly back off, join hands, and present a united front against you.”

“I'm not sure I understand the logic, but I suppose that makes sense.”

“I've been mulling over this situation all afternoon, and I've finally arrived at a fairly astute analysis of the situation.”

“Namely?”

“It's a can of worms.” Tribby giggled and exhaled iridescent marijuana fumes.

“I'm not laughing.”

“But you got to admit it is funny,” Tribby said gently. “It's like one of those whacky sexual Victorian farces where you can't tell the players without a program.”

“To round out the picture, then, maybe you should know this. When I chatted with Eloy this afternoon, he had assumed somebody else won the dope last night, and was planning to rob a bank.”

“I know.”

“How could you know that?”

“In the bar on Saturday night he mentioned it to Diana and she and Rachel got to reminiscing about one thing and another.…”

Joe said, “This whole crazy shtik is absurd.”

“I think it's a rather amusing scenario.”

“But who stands a chance?” Joe said miserably. “When I start seriously kibitzing the game, I don't seem to be holding many cards.”

“One thing I don't understand is Nancy Ryan's role,” Tribby mused. “Theoretically, she's Smatterling's stooge. When you two got it on, I figured she meant to addle your brain so you couldn't act. Or to split you and Heidi, thereby rendering the land-purchase pointless. Both of these goals she seems to have achieved without even raising a sweat. But why, then, sic her monkey on the tea box? Without it, you're not even a twenty-to-one long shot for that property.”

“You mean you think that bitch seduced me in cold blood just to blow my shot at Eloy's farm?”

“Why else would she be doing you up in such style?”

“Maybe she thinks I'm cute.”

“Well, I can only look at the developing patterns.”

“The sex is very heavy.”

“Bravo.”

“You're not impressed?”

“Not as impressed as I am by the fact that she threw a curve last night by putting the coke back in your hands, when all she had to do was ride out the gunfight on the sidelines and turn the keys to Eloy's palatial estate over to the Simian Foundation.”

“You actually figured all along that was the reason she and I started balling?”

Tribby shrugged. “I got a puzzle. I'm trying to collect pieces and fit them together.” He pointed skyward. “It's fun, a titillating game. Like drawing lines between all the bright twinkles overhead to make a dipper, a crab, a scorpion.…”

“Wow.” Joe was momentarily overcome. “It sure is beautiful up there.”

So they sat, bewildered, placid, thoughtful. Joe said, “I'm beginning to think this whole antic is doomed. I'll never score that land. It's crazy. All my life I assumed I had a natural-born right to all the middle-class amenities. I mean, how much is one-point-seven acres and a house of my own just big enough for a four-person family? That's what capitalism is all about. Every time I click on the TV, or look at magazine ads, there's a million good-looking Mommies and Daddies and Kiddies and pet Doggies and Kitties leaving a spotless suburban garage in their road-tested, thirty-one mpg, rotary-engine chariots, looking so happy and secure it's obscene.”

“But we all know they're miserable. The promoters just want us to think they're happy.”

“If we know they're unhappy, why do we buy it?”

“Because we
want
to be happy, idiot.”

“But we know beforehand that crap
won't
make us happy. So why am I risking my neck—”

His words slurred, slightly mocking, Tribby said, “Listen, why worry about it? Something will come up. Meanwhile, the adventure makes it all worthwhile. Tomorrow we'll all meet and devise an infallible plan.”

“Infallible,” Joe murmured caustically. “Why don't you smoke another couple dozen joints?”

“Hey, America is perfect, Joe. We'll figure out a way.”

“I dunno. How come I feel so blue?”

“You got them old Nirvana Blues,” Tribby giggled irreverently. “Things are so good they make you sorrowful.”

“Tell me about it,” Joe sarcasmed gloomily. And added: “Screw you and your Colombia two-toke.”

“Did you hear that, Universe?” Tribby guffawed. “Mr. Idealistic here is growing cynical!”

*   *   *

C
YNICAL
? N
OT REALLY
.

Ten minutes later, halfway to Eloy's land, his single headlight flickered and failed. Joe pumped the brakes, and, several hundred yards farther along, coasted to a stop. As soon as his eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, he shifted into first, and continued on steering by starlight. The ghostly landscape of enormous hovering cottonwoods and warm yellow houselights extended a hand of reconciliation. The small snowcap on Hija Negrita burned like a lyrical fire of ice. His brief spell atop the pyramid hadn't been so bad. In fact, though he hadn't smoked, Joe felt mildly giddy. He even chortled about his dramatic weighted note. Oh for a photograph of their startled faces! Anthony Quinn had no more Zorbaesque stranglehold on life than did Joe Miniver right now! His blood fluttered like wind-caught daffodils!
I wandered lonely as a cloud…!
His ego inhabited the coordinated panache of a Romanian gymnast! A magic moment, one of those that occasionally usurped his paranoia no matter how hard he struggled to be wizened and tight-assed, had captured his soul. Joe Miniver cruising down the starlit boulevard in his headlightless Green Gorilla right after a cataclysmic horror show with his rapidly-becoming-ex-family, was a pure rhapsody. Where these natural highs hailed from, he did not know; but God forbid he ever try to look them in the mouth, either!

Soaring was the only answer.

A skunk waddled across the road. Silver light glinted off the wings of a veering bat. The nocturnal frog-babble created a summery Christmas sound. Joe wished he could float along, without headlights, on a night like this, forever.

Slowly, he jounced up the potholed driveway to Eloy's spread. Geronimo waited patiently in the front field, an ancient argentine apparition. Joe stopped in the middle of the driveway and switched off the ignition. The horse whinnied softly. Both his hands draped over the steering wheel, Joe shut his eyes and sang:

Tell me why

The stars do shine.

Tell me why

The ivy twines.

Tell me why

The sky's so blue …

And I will tell you

Why I love you.

Then he abandoned the truck. Breaking off a weed, Joe fitted it between his teeth.
God that tasted good!
He tiptoed up the driveway, praying that he wouldn't trigger the howls of Eloy's menagerie. No lights burned in the small adobe. Joe had caught the chihuahuas, turkeys, and geese off guard—nobody made a peep. Her car—Diana's—was parked in the shadow of the old man's sagging pickup. She had pitched her tent, right on the edge of Eloy's six-tree orchard. It was larger than Joe had suspected: a real live-in nylon house that might have slept eight.

No lights shimmered inside. But when he said, “Diana? Are you in there?,” her whispered reply came back: “Sure. Come on in.”

Joe unzipped the mesh flaps, and, on his knees, entered the silken womb. Seated cross-legged on her sleeping bag, wearing only panties and a radiant white T-shirt, Diana was brushing her long hair. Starlight, strained through thin membranes, blurred the highlights in her features, and softened shadows.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“All right, I guess. You didn't have any trouble?”

“Not a bit. That sweet old man helped me pitch the tent.”

“That's nice.”

“He certainly loves this place.”

“Yeah, I know.” Guilt over his lust to obtain it punched Joe in the solar plexus.

“He planted all these fruit trees, and most of the cottonwoods,” Diana said. “And the honey locusts. And the four little aspens years ago. It's fascinating to hear his stories. When he and his wife built that little house on this land they had barely reached twenty. There wasn't another house within a mile. He dug that well by hand and lined it with rocks. He's a funny old guy, really loves to talk. He told me a great story.”

“Which was?”

“Well, unlike a lot of old-timers around here, he liked coyotes. In this area they used to run rampant. Sometimes he and his old lady would sneak out before dawn and sit in the apple trees training binoculars on the coyotes when they trotted through the pastureland.”

“Huh.” Her enthusiastic riff on the old geezer he must soon evict if he came up with the cash to buy the land made Joe queasy. How could he deal honorably with Eloy? The answer, of course, was he couldn't. Joe wondered petulantly: why was it that God never gave anything even semi-nice, without making you pay for it through the nose?

Diana's brush generated electrical sparks as she tugged it slowly down through her full mane. Joe said, “Hey, look at that.”

“At what?”

“All the sparks in your hair.”

“I have beautiful hair. Do you think I'm pretty?”

Pretty? Joe hesitated, put on guard by her voice. It wasn't quite innocent; it contained traps.

“I think you're attractive. Especially when you smile. And you have a beautiful body.” Her large breasts, revealed by the T-shirt, surprised him. They were sizable enough to be described as pendulous; they were beautiful—and, for her slim body, oversized—globes. A letch for her abruptly keelhauled Joe. The moody nocturnal light, combined with the friction sparking in her hair and the T-shirt outlandishly hailing her breasts, had his heart mildly fibrillating.

“My tits are too big. I've always been ashamed of them.”

“I like 'em big.”

“Well, whatever. It's neither here nor there.”

“Where is it?” he joked.

“With sex?”

“Well, sure—if you want.”

“I don't know. People always beat up on me a lot. I put out a bunch of energy, I attract men. It's really easy. But then it seems that violence always happens. Never have I even found a man who remotely understood me.”

Joe studied her body, her facial expression, the lax way (the provocative way) she stroked her hair. It added up to a come-on. But not her voice. It came from a curiously remote, perhaps even dangerous, place.

“I guess all in all,” she said confidently, “you could say I'm a pretty cute chick. Still, men have to be careful with me. I'm really vulnerable. I'm more naïve than you would believe.”

Joe had been prepared for idle chatter, a brief noncommittal rap, and then perhaps she would let him shack up beside her. But he had known, the second he entered, that a heavier adventure lay in store. Already he had a hard-on. Which in no way guaranteed he'd have the courage to propose they ball.

“How did it go with your wife?” Diana asked. “Okay?”

“That's hard to say. We had a fight. I threw a rock through the window. But you never know.”

“Are you guys in love?”

“We were. Sure, I guess we still are.”

“But you might get divorced?”

“Right now everything is up in the air. It's a crazy limbo—”

“I don't ever fall in love. I can't stand nostalgia. Or any kind of romantic crap. Sometimes people make me so sick.…”

Joe studied her eyes: was she being hard just for effect, trying to calculate, from his reactions and his answers, whether he was safe or a potential rapist?

“There's no point in being cynical,” Joe said. “As for love—well, you just never know.” Talk about insipid!

“I can't stand jealousy trips,” Diana said quietly. “Everybody always gets jealous and then the whole thing falls apart. I don't give a damn what anybody I'm with does in their spare time. And I don't expect anybody to care about what I do. But as soon as you get together with somebody, they always want to put you in an emotional cage. Then it winds up violent when I want to get out.”

“‘Violent'?”

“Well, I've been raped almost a dozen times.”

“How did that happen?”

“Sometimes it was guys I knew, sometimes just people. I used to hitchhike a lot.” Her voice sounded so hostile. Yet the brief smiles she released were vintage coquette: they gave her a sultry, partially tragic bloom. Beyond that, her breasts seemed to be pleading:
Touch me, feel me, knead me, fondle me, heft me, slide your dick between me, suck me, crush me, you big ol' hunk you!

“You should at least be sensible about when you hitchhike,” Joe said. The usual preliminary weakness induced by his high-falutin lust was usurping his motor activities. Not for a million years had he dreamed she could be this attractive. Yet if asked to explain, he could not have defined the origins of her sexual affluence. Her manner and tone actually seemed a-carnal: yet her eyes sparkled with cockteasing energy. In the back of his mind, a faint warning bell jangled: cuidado, muchacho, this one might be a real lulu!

“I've always picked up people that interested me,” she said. “I never worried about sexual proclivities. In that way I guess I'm terribly innocent. On the other hand, I've had men stick with me for months, even though I wouldn't make love with them. Something profound in me keeps them interested.”