An alcohol-laden breath hit Doot. Garza had draped his arm around Doot's shoulders. A Bacardi pint bottle dangled from Garza's hand, and his loopy smile pressed close to Doot's face. "Look what / got."
Doot knew it wasn't Bacardi. Garza had been carrying around that one bottle so long that the label had started to fray white around the edges. He made something from raisins and sugar and yeast, in a gallon jug that he hid up in the rafters of his parents' garage, and then poured it into the bottle with a plastic funnel. It smelled like vomit.
"Yeah, that's great. Lucky you." Doot slipped out from the other's embrace. Support gone, Garza stumbled a few steps away, barely regaining his balance. He looked up, mouth dropped open, eyes filled with sudden puzzlement.
"What d'ya want?" On the other side of the glass, Lou took a pencil from behind his ear.
"I need change." Doot pushed the dollar bills across the counter and over the metal track of the little window. "Quarters and dimes."
"You get change at a bank. This ain't a bank."
One of Garza's buddies, a little less drunk, was pulling him back over to the Ranger; Doot saw them out of the corner of his eye. "Uh, just a Coke, then. Small one."
Lou looked disgusted and waddled over to the dispenser. A few seconds later, he turned and slammed the cup down on the counter.
Doot snatched back the two dollars and held them up. "Break 'em both?"
"Jesus Christ." Lou's face went even sourer. He grabbed the bills and stepped over to the cash register. He slapped the change down, ignoring Doot's outstretched palm.
"Doot! Hey, Doot!" Garza, propped up against the Ranger again, called out to him as he turned away from the counter. The raisinjack's hilarity had come bubbling up in the other kid again. "We'll see you around, man! We'll see you
around
…"
He ignored the slurring, drunken voice, and all the rest of the guys hanging out. Soon as he was around the corner and in the dark, he ran across the empty sector of asphalt.
The phone booth looked empty. When he was a couple of yards away, he saw the man crumpled at the booth's floor, knees folded tight. He yanked the door open, and the face rolled toward him.
"Come on." He got a grip under the man's arms and lifted him up. The man was still alive; he could hear the shallow, ragged breathing. "Look-I got the change."
The eyes opened partway. He raised his good hand and rubbed his face, bright with sweat. His shoulders flopped back against the glass.
"Fuck." The man tilted his head forward, panting. "I can't even see the sonuvabitch." His hand gestured vaguely toward the pay phone. "You gotta do it for me… I'll tell you the number… you dial…"
Doot squeezed in closer so he could turn toward the phone. He took the phone from its chrome hook and held it to his ear; with his other hand, he thumbed a quarter into the coin slot.
"Okay…" The man spoke with his eyes closed. "You gotta dial one first…"
***
She usually didn't get this loaded when she was by herself. She lay on the bed with the sheets all tousled and wadded up underneath her. On the floor was a Scotch bottle, some single malt that tasted the way fertilizer smelled, which had been the only liquor Mike had kept in the apartment. The bottle had fallen over on its side and made a big spot on the carpet. On the pillow beside her head was a plastic baggie, empty except for a couple of tabs and one blue and yellow cap. Her blonde hair trailed over the baggie's open mouth.
Getting seriously fucked up was for when you were with other people, as far as she was concerned. Not just because of having more fun-a real party, a
damage yourself
good time-but also because if you went too far, loaded up your bloodstream with more fizzy chemicals than your body could take, there'd be a good chance that somebody would be around to pull you through it. At the least, roll you over on your face so that you wouldn't aspirate your own puke and strangle yourself, drowning on your lunch. Calling the police about a dead body was the absolute most comedown way to end a party.
Not that she had to worry about puking anything up. She hadn't eaten since she'd come back to the apartment and found the place trashed and Mike gone. Not gone like out to the store, or gone to the hospital to pull down his shift, but
gone.
Gone like not coming back. Gone like dead.
That's what the blood on the wall over by the apartment's front door had meant. The place hadn't been trashed as though somebody had been looking for something-she'd checked Mike's stashes and had found them all in place, untouched-but instead, from people fighting and rolling around. Mike had given them a tough time. For a little while, at least. It had probably been those two guys, the mean, smart-mouthed one and his bigger companion, who'd done it. And then they'd ripped up the sofa cushions and done some other shit-she'd found one wall in the kitchen, with a puddle on the floor beneath it, that looked like it'd been pissed on-just for fun. Just to give her a good scare.
It'd worked, all right. She'd dived right into the stash Mike had kept in a plastic baggie taped to the bottom of the stereo preamp: Mexican boots, stuff he didn't get from his hospital sources because the pharmaceutical companies didn't make them anymore. They'd fuzzed her right out, the way they always did. But when the fear was gone, hammered into oblivion, the new loneliness stayed solid as a rock. Methaqualone, even at shitty boot potency, always made her feel tragic. By now, her face was puffy and damp, like a red sponge, from weeping over Mike. She'd really loved him.
The radio on the little table beside the bed murmured. It had gone off the station it'd been tuned to-probably one of those fuckers had kicked it or something-and now it emitted more static than voices and music. She hadn't bothered to switch it off. It didn't matter.
Another sound cut through the static and the distant, eroded voices. The telephone was ringing. Its note was muffled by the bed's other pillow, which had flopped over on the table, hiding the things on it.
The phone went on ringing. She heard it-the ringing was inside her head now, bouncing back and forth-but she didn't stir. If she ignored it, eventually it would go away. Everything went away-eventually.
It didn't. It went on.
"Motherfucker." She spoke the word into the pillow under her face, feeling her numbed lips move against the cloth. She raised her head. The whole side of her face felt numb, as though the blood had been drained from it.
Pushing the dry tangle of her hair away from her eyes, she fumbled her other hand toward the noise. The pillow fell off the bedside table, and the phone's ring shrieked louder.
She managed to get it to her ear.
"Yeah?" Her tongue felt like some alien creature that had taken up residence in her mouth, a space too small for it. Mumbling: "What d'ya want?"
"Lindy, it's me… it's Mike…"
The words, the voice, jolted her into full consciousness. As if the chemicals in her blood and brain had evaporated, replaced by adrenaline. She sat upright on the bed, drawing her legs underneath her, clutching the phone, the most valuable thing in the world, with both hands.
"Mike-" Her brain raced ahead; it took a second for her own words to catch up. "Where are you? How did you-"
His voice, an unsteady whisper but his voice, cut her short. "Never mind… we can talk about that later… when you get here. First… you've got to help me." For a few seconds, she heard nothing but his breathing, dragging and rough. Then he spoke again: "I'm going to need some stuff…"
***
Doot had had to stay in the phone booth, his butt sticking out past the folded-up door, to keep the guy standing so he could go on talking. Some of the things the guy said, to whomever was on the other end of the line, made sense-it sounded like doctor stuff, things the guy needed to try to take care of himself-and other things he couldn't figure out at all. That part didn't sound too good.
"All right…" The man's voice had dwindled down to a whisper, a breath. "Just hurry…" The phone fell from his hand and dangled at the end of its cord.
He draped the man's arm over his shoulder and carried him out of the booth to the motorbike. The guy looked even worse than before. Maybe he really was dying.
The bruised face lifted toward his. "Let's go back…" The lips barely moved. "Just gotta wait…"
They'd have to do the whole bungee cord routine again. Doot pulled the cord out of the back pocket of his jeans and looped it underneath the denim jacket, the man's weight sagging against the elastic. He got him straddling the bike's passenger seat, then climbed on and hooked the cord around his own chest.
The bike sputtered to life. Its headlight swept across the empty reach of the parking lot as Doot swung the machine back out onto the road.
***
She flew through the apartment, grabbing things and running back to the bedroom to stuff them into the suitcase.
Some of the things were easy to find, even in the apartment's trashed-out state. Things that were legal, that had never had to be hidden. Mike's doctor stuff, antibiotics and simple shit like that. She threw them in on top of the clothes, both his and hers, that she'd snatched out of the dresser drawers.
Other stuff… She stood for a moment beside the bed, eyes closed, gathering her breath. Then she swiftly knelt down and tugged at the carpet underneath the bed frame. The deep pile's backing had been slit; the point of a triangle peeled back in her hand. From the hiding place cut in the floorboards, she took out a small cardboard box, its flaps held down by a rubber band around it. She straightened up and threw the box into the suitcase. The rubber band snapped, and an assortment of hypodermics and glass vials and orange-capped plastic containers, their contents rattling, spilled out.
She stood up and slammed the case's lid shut, snapping the locks into place.
With the suitcase in one hand and her coat draped over the other, she couldn't manage to pull the apartment's front door shut behind her.
"Fuck it."
She left the door open and headed for the stairs. Through the building's glass door at the bottom, she could see the Corvette waiting at the curb.
NINE
Doot left the guy lying on the floor of the old clinic's lobby, wrapped up in the blankets he'd had to fetch back in from the building's porch.
"I gotta go now." Doot slid the water bottle and the Pepsi and what was left of the food closer to the man, then stood up. I'll be back in the morning, see how you're doing. Okay?"
The other nodded weakly, his head barely moving. He hadn't opened his eyes in all the time Doot had been half carrying, half walking him back into the building.
He watched the man for a moment longer, the slight, quick motion of the chest rising and falling. Then he reached down and switched off the flashlight sitting on the floor. The lobby's walls vanished into darkness. He turned and headed for the moonlit outline of the door.
What the fuck have I gotten myself into
? Doot beat himself over the head with the question as the motorbike sped as best it could down the road. He'd left his denim jacket buttoned around the injured man, and now the night's chill tore through the thin cotton of his shirt. It was more than the night that shivered goosebumps up his arms. Now that he had time to think-riding the bike at night always drew out his thoughts-there was also time to get spooked.
He didn't even know who the fuck this guy was. He'd thought he'd heard a woman's voice coming over the pay phone's line, calling him Mike-that was all. Whatever the guy's name was, he was in deep shit. If Doot's father hadn't found him, the guy would already have sunk in the shit, and the brown waves would be rolling over his head. That was what worried Doot: if somebody had wanted this Mike character dead, then they probably wouldn't be too happy to find out he was still alive. And they wouldn't be too friendly with anybody who was helping him stay alive.
You idiot
. He squinted into the cold wind. What a fuckin' mess-he'd already gotten himself into it far enough that he didn't see how he could pull his foot out. If he just left the guy out there, and didn't go back again… Maybe, maybe not. The guy couldn't have dragged his ass all the way out to that old clinic building by himself, not the way he was beat up. Somebody would've had to have helped him. And if the people who'd beat the crap out of this Mike were still around, or came back, they might want to know who the local good Samaritans were. Which would mean more shit, heavy shit, for Doot and his dad.
He didn't even know why he'd stepped in it. Going out there and dropping off some food and water for the guy, like his dad had told him to-that was one thing. But strapping him onto the bike and hauling him all over the place, right on the road where any pair of headlights could have caught them…
Jesus H. Christ
. He must've been out of his flipping mind.
That was the big problem with living out here in the middle of nowhere. It was something Anne, his buddy from school, was always talking about, why she'd been scheming since she was ten years old on how to get out of here. People got so stupid and bored in a dump like this-he could see Anne flailing about with her hands when she said it, making
bored
a two-syllable cry up to the ceiling of her bedroom-that they'd jump off a cliff, with a six-pack, every can opened, pressed up to their guzzling faces, just to break the monotony.
He knew she was right. This was a great place to live, if all you ever wanted to do was get blasted out of your mind and pile your daddy's pickup into a telephone pole, with a Metallica tape cranking away in the dash.