Blackbirds (3 page)

  "Thanks for the interview," he says. The kid sounds nervous.

  "Sure thing." She sucks on the cigarette. After an exhale of smoke in his direction, she adds, "I don't mind talking about it. It's not a secret. It's just that nobody listens."

  "I'm listening."

  "I know. You bring me what I asked?"

  He pulls a crumpled brown bag, sets it down in front of her with a thunk.

  She snaps her fingers. "It isn't gonna unwrap itself, is it?"

  Paul hurries to pull the bottle of scotch – Johnny Walker red label – from the bag.

  "For me?" she asks, waving him off. "You shouldn't have."

  She unscrews the cap and takes a swig.

  "Our 'zine – it's called
Rebel Base
– gets, like, a hundred readers or something. And soon we're going to be on the internet."

  "Welcome to the future, right?" She fingers the moist rim of the scotch bottle. "I don't really care, by the way. I'm just happy to talk. I like to talk."

  "Okay."

  They sit there, staring at each other.

  "You're not a very good interviewer," she says.

  "I'm sorry. You're just not who I expected."

  "And who did you expect?"

  He pauses. Looks her over. At first, Miriam wonders if maybe he's hot for her, wants to jump her bones maybe. But that isn't it. On his face is the same look one might have while marveling at a two-headed lamb or a picture of the Virgin Mary burned into a slice of toast.

  "My Uncle Joe said you're the real deal," he explains.

  "Your Uncle Joe. I would ask how he's doing, but…"

  "It happened like you said."

  Miriam isn't surprised.

  "I haven't been wrong yet. For the record, I liked Joe. I met him in a bar. I was drunk. He bumped me. I saw the stroke that'd kill him. Fuck it, I thought, and I told him. Every detail – that's where the devil lives, you know, right there in the goddamn details. I said, Joe, you're going to be out fishing. It's going to be a year from now – well, technically, 377 days, and it took me some noodling around on a napkin to get the number and the date. I said, you'll be out there in your hip-waders. You're gonna catch a big one. Not the biggest, not the best, but a big one. I didn't know what kind of fish, because, fuck, I'm not a fishologist–"

  "I think it's an ichthyologist."

  "I'm also not an English major, nor do I care to become one. He said it would probably be a trout. A rainbow. Or a largemouth bass. He asked me what kind of bait he had on the line, and I said it looked like a shiny penny, one flatted by a train so it makes a smooshed oval. He called it a spinner, said that's what he used to catch trout. Again, I'm not an ick, uhhh, ithky, a
fish
ologist."

  She taps the cigarette into the ashtray, crushing it.

  "I said, Joe, you'll be standing there with this fish in your hand, and you'll be smiling and whistling even though nobody's around, holding it up for God and all the other fish to see, and that's when it'll hit you. A blood clot will loosen and fire through your arteries like a bullet down a rifled barrel. Boom! Right into the brain. You'll lose cognitive function, I said. You'll drop into the water. Nobody'll be there for you. You'll die, and the fish swims on."

  Paul is quiet. He worries at his lip with the too-white teeth of a teenager.

  "That's how they found him," Paul says. "Pole in hand."

  Miriam chuckles. "Pole in hand."

  Paul blinks.

  "Get it? Pole? In hand? You know, like, his dick?" She waves him off, and pulls out another Marlboro. "Well, screw you, then. Joe would've liked it. Joe appreciated the finer points of a double entendre."

  "Did you sleep with him?" Paul asks.

  Miriam feigns shock. She fans herself like a wounded Southern debutante.

  "Why, Paul, what do you think of me? I am the very model of chastity." He isn't buying it. She lights the cigarette and waves him off. "Dude, I discarded the key to my virginity belt long ago – just up and tossed it into a river, I did. That being said – no, Paul, I did not bang your uncle. We just drank together. Closed out the bar. And then he went on his way and I went mine. I wasn't sure he really believed me until you found me."

  "He told me about it a month or so before he died," Paul says, running his fingers through his unkempt hair. Paul stares off at a distant point, remembering. "He totally believed it. I said, just don't go fishing that day. And he shrugged and just said, but he really wanted to go fishing, and if that's how he was going to die, then so be it. He got a thrill out of it, I think."

  Paul reaches over and turns on the digital recorder. He watches her carefully. Is he looking for her approval? Does he think she'll reach over and bite him?

  "So," he asks. "How does it work?"

  Miriam takes a deep breath. "This thing that I have?"

  "Yes. Yeah. That."

  "Well, Paul, this thing? It's got rules."

 

 

 

Long highway. Everything else is black, pulled away into shadow. All that exists is what the headlights reveal – the glowing middle line, the center divider, a pine tree or exit sign as it emerges from darkness and passes back to darkness.

  The big trucker is as his shadow suggested: canned-ham hands, shoulders like hunks of granite, a chest like a bunch of barrels strung up together. But he's clean-shaven, with a soft face and kind eyes, hair the color of beach sand.

  Probably a rapist, Miriam thinks.

  The cab of the truck is clean, too. Almost
too
clean, not a speck of dust or road grime. A control freak, clean freak, rapist serial killer wear-the-skins-of-women freak, Miriam thinks. The radio and CB sit mounted on a chrome plate. The seats are brown leather. (Probably
human
leather.) A pair of dice – hollow aluminum, with the dots punched out – hang from the rearview, lazily spinning.

  "All of life is a roll of the dice," she says.

  Frankenstein looks at Miriam as if he's confused by her.

  "Where you headed?" he asks, studying her.

  "Nowhere," she answers. "Anywhere."

  "You don't care?"

  "Not so much. Just get me away from that motel and those two douchebags."

  "What if I'm going to another motel?"

  "Long as it's not
that
motel, we're square."

  Frankenstein looks pensive. His big hands pull tight around the wheel. His brow furrows. She wonders if maybe he's thinking about the things he's going to do to her. Or maybe what use he might get out of her bleached skull. A candy dish would be nice, she imagines. Or a lamp. She was in Mexico, what, two years ago? During the Day of the Dead celebrations? All those colorful
ofrendas
– the bananas, the
pan de muerto
bread, the marigolds, the mangos, the red and yellow ribbons. But what really stays with her are the sugar skulls: hardened meringue
memento mori
dotted with colored confections, each wide-eyed and grinning, blissful in its delicious demise. Maybe this guy will be cool enough to do something like
that
with her skull. Lacquer it with sugar. Tasty.

  "I'm Louis," Frankenstein says, interrupting her fantasies.

  "Dude," she says, "I don't want to be friends. I just want to get away."

  That'll shut him up, she thinks. And it does. But he only grows more preoccupied. Frankenstein –
Louis
– gnaws on a lip. He taps on the wheel. Is he mad? Sad? Ready to rape her early? She can't tell.

  "Fine," she blurts. "You want to talk, great. Sure.
Yes
. Let's talk."

  He's surprised. He says nothing.

  Miriam decides she's going to have to do all the heavy lifting.

  "You want to know about the shiner?" she says.

  "The what?"

  "The bruise. The black eye. You saw it as soon as I stepped into this truck, don't lie." She clears her throat. "Which is a very nice truck, by the way. So shiny." She thinks,
You probably polish it with the hair you scalp from pretty girls like me.
Miriam takes a moment to commend herself. Normally, she'd say that sort of thing out loud, which would probably get her kicked out onto the rain-slick highway.

  "No," he says. "I mean, yes, I saw it. But you don't need to tell me–"

  Miriam opens her bag and starts rooting through it. "You look flummoxed."

  "Flummoxed."

  "Yes. Flummoxed. That's a good word, isn't it? It sounds like a made-up word, like maybe a word a three-year-old would use in place of another word. You know, like,
Mommy, my flummoxed hurts, I think I ated too much pasghetti
."

  "I… never thought of it like that."

  She screws a cigarette between her lips, and starts flicking the lighter.

  "You mind if I smoke?"

  "I do. You can't smoke in here."

  She frowns. She could really use a smoke. Scowling, she puts the lighter away but leaves the cigarette dangling from her lips.

  "Whatever. Your truck. Anyway. The black eye, that's what you want to talk about."

  "Did one of those boys give it to you? We could call the police."

  She snorts. "Does it look like either of those frat-fucks gave me a black eye? Please. I can handle myself. No, this shiner was dutifully applied by my boyfriend."

  "Your boyfriend hits you?"

  "Not anymore. I'm done with scum like him. That's why I don't want to go back to the motel, see? Because that prick is back there."

  "You left him."

  "I left the shit out of him. Get this. He's lying there on the bed, all smug and satisfied after popping me in the eye and then popping his cookies – at least he didn't pop his cookies
in
my eye, am I right? – and the dumb fucker falls asleep. Ooh. Bad move. He starts snoring like a drunken bear with sleep apnea, and I think,
it's over
. I'm tired of getting pushed around. Tired of the cigarette burns, tired of the belt and the golf cleats and all that shit."

  Louis stares dead ahead, like he's not sure what to make of the story. She continues.

  "So I grab a pair of handcuffs – sorry for the sordid details, but the jerkoff likes to get kinky and has a real power-trip fetish. I take the handcuffs, and gently, so as not to wake him, I handcuff his one wrist to the bedpost." Miriam pulls out the cigarette, twirls it betwixt thumb and forefinger like a cancer baton. "I take the key, and I go chuck it into the toilet, then I pee on the key for good measure. But that's not all – as they say on TV,
wait, there's more
."

  Miriam, it must be said, loves to lie. She's very good at it.

  "I took one of those little plastic bears, the ones filled with honey? Again, I know, kinky details, but the guy liked foodplay. Whipped cream on my tits, a lollipop in my mouth, a hunk of broccoli up his ass, whatever. So I take the honey bear, and I drizzle the sticky golden goo all over his–"

  She makes a swirly motion over her crotch region with her index finger. For added emphasis, she whistles.

  "Christ," Louis says.

  "Not done yet. When I blew out of there, I left the door wide open. Windows, too. I figure whatever kind of animal wants to come in and snack on his Honey Nut Cheerios, so be it. Flies, bees, a stray dog."

  "Christ," Louis says again, his jaw set firm.

  "Made some Pooh Bear very happy, I hope." She clears her throat, then sticks the cigarette back between her lips. "Or some homeless guy."

  For the first minute, Louis doesn't say anything. The trucker just sits, stewing. His shoulders tense. He looks pissed. Does he know that she just lied? Is this when he slams on the brakes, puts her through the windshield because she's not wearing her seatbelt, then rapes her broken body on the soaked macadam?

  Bam.
He pounds his hand against the steering wheel.

  Miriam doesn't have anything smartass to say. A slow realization creeps up on her:
I can't take this guy. He'll crush me like a bug.

  "Goddamn assholes," he says.

  She narrows her eyes. "What? Who?"

  "Men."

  "You're gay?" It's the way he says it.

  He pivots his head, levels his gaze at her. "Gay? What? No."

  "I just thought–"

  "Men don't know how good they have it. Men are basically… children. Pigs."

  "Pig children," Miriam offers, a quiet addendum.

  "We never see what's in front of us. The women that are kind enough to be in our lives, we just treat them like garbage. It's nonsense. Plain nonsense. And men who hit women? Who take advantage of them? Who don't just fail to appreciate what they have but they outright… abuse what's been given to them? My wife – when she left me… I didn't fully
appreciate
…"

  He hits the steering wheel again.

  That's when Miriam decides she likes this man.

  It's the first time she's felt even the tiniest bit inclined toward anyone in… years. Something about him: sweet, sad, damaged. She knows who he reminds her of (
Ben, he reminds you of Ben
), but she doesn't want to go there, and she shoves that thought back into the darkest corners of her brain.

  And then, she can't help it. She has to know. She has to
see
. It's a compulsion. An addiction. She offers her hand.

  "My name's Miriam."

  But he's still fuming. He doesn't take the proffered hand.

  Shit, she thinks. C'mon. Grab it. Shake it.
I need to see
.

  "Miriam's a pretty name," he says.

  Hesitantly, she withdraws her hand. "Nice to meet you, Lou."

  "Louis, not Lou."

  She shrugs. "Your truck, your name."