Cutter and Bone (9 page)

Still Bone had time to sit and smoke and observe the park scene. As usual there was the Frisbee set, young hippie types who had piled out of their minibuses to spend a fruitful afternoon sailing Frisbees back and forth, to each other as well as to their dogs, the inevitable pack of mangy Dobermans and German shepherds and other kindred gentle breeds they seldom went anywhere without. When Bone thought of his own young stud days, the college years and after, he could not conceive of having to drag a dog through all that. To his way of thinking, young men needed dogs about as badly as they needed clap. Yet these characters clung devotedly to their canines. And about the only reason he could see was the species’ unselective capacity for instant adoration. To feed a dog was to become a god of sorts. Maybe not to Mom or Dad or to the creeps back in school, or to the pigs and straights of the world, but to your dog, oh yes, you were a winner, you were bright and beautiful, you were
loved
.

But then Bone had to admit the syndrome was hardly confined to raunchy kids in minibuses, especially not in Santa Barbara. Downtown or on the beach or here in the parks, or for that matter along any residential sidewalk, the story was pretty much the same—dogshit. Or as Cutter put it,
“Pedigreed
dogshit. You can always tell by the slight royal purple cast it leaves on your sneakers.”

“It was not the sort of day, however, to sit and ponder dogs and their waste. The afternoon sun, warm and brilliant, lay like a coat of fresh paint on the adobe façade of the Mission. On the stone steps in front, a number of tourists sat in shirtsleeves while others wandered the colonnade or snapped the mandatory snapshots around the old Moorish fountain. And closer, beyond the rose garden, the Frisbee throwers and a few strollers and huddled groups of teenagers were scattered across the wide greensward, which rose gently to the queen palms and great shaggy eucalyptus at the far edge of the park. So for the moment the world did not seem such a bad place after all. Alex Five certainly was enjoying it. He had just teetered across the chasm again and into Bone’s hands. And as Bone got up now, carrying the baby back to the bench, he picked up a strong new odor that reminded him of Cutter’s monicker for the kid, old Brown Pants. Yet Bone felt no revulsion toward him. He was such a happy uncomplicated little bugger. At the same time Bone was unable to take any real pleasure in the child. The plump pink skin, the almost hairless head, the sweet breath and clear, clear eyes—for some reason they reminded him all too vividly of Mrs. Little’s painted and butchered flesh, the dead black hair and glop-rimmed eyes, the desperation that oozed from her, like yet another cosmetic. For the baby was on his way too now, just a few steps behind. It was only a matter of time before blood would appear in the old brown pants or the sweet lips would begin to exhale the sour deaths of lungs and stomach, and the pink skin would run to white ash as the heart began to tire. Mrs. Little or the kid, it was not much of a choice really, just a matter of time.

“How touching,” a voice purred. “How too, too sweet.”

Turning, Bone found himself looking up at Mo, half hidden behind a pair of dark sunglasses. “Well the mother of the year,” he said.

“If only I had a Polaroid,” she came back.
“Ladies’ Home Journal
, certainly they’d buy a print. And then I could give one to Alex, show him what fatherhood is all about.”

Bone smiled wearily, watching as she sat down on the other side of the baby, took him onto her lap.

“He didn’t give me much choice,” he explained. “He was yelling his guts out.”

“Oh, I can imagine. Mother takes a five-minute walk around the block and—”

“An hour’s more like it,” Bone cut in. “I changed him at the house. I gave him a bottle. And we’ve been here—”

But Mo was already laughing.
“Changed
him!
Fed
him! Oh that’s just too much, Rich. Now if he was a little girl I think I’d understand. I mean, knowing your proclivities.”

“You get more like Alex every day.”

“Honest, you mean.”

“Sick, I mean.”

Lighting a cigarette, she shrugged indifferently. “Okay, I plead guilty. I guess it was longer than I thought. But it was so nice out, you know? And he was sleeping. I thought I’d just get a little air, and then once I started walking—” She gestured helplessly at the park, the glorious day.

“That’s why the rent’s so high.”

“I guess. How’d your job interview go?”

“I’ll be out of your place tomorrow.”

She smiled again. “My two Alexes will miss you.”

And as usual Bone played her game. “I’ll come around still. Don’t worry.”

“Oh good.” Taking off her glasses, she looked straight at Bone for a change. “Now, why do I do that, huh? I mean always coming on so bitchy with you. I don’t mean anything by it, Rich, I really don’t. For some reason you just bring it out in me.”

“My natural vulnerability. It invites attack.”

“Oh sure. Maybe it’s just your looks, you think? I mean, loving Alex, maybe I just naturally resent a handsome bastard like you. And yet I don’t really, I mean resent you. I—”

“Drop it, okay?”

“Gladly.”

The baby had taken hold of her ear and she shook herself free, nuzzled him in the neck and he giggled. And as she looked up Bone saw that her eyes had filled with tears. Because she did not try to hide them he asked her if anything was wrong.

“I don’t know.”

“You and Alex?”

She did not bother to nod. “Has he said anything to you?”

“About what?”

“Anything. Everything. Me, the baby, the whole setup.”

“No. Nothing special.”

“I don’t believe you. I can’t. But if he was splitting, you’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

“Wouldn’t
he?”

“Please, Rich. Help me. Tell me if he’s said anything.”

“I have. He’s said nothing.”

She sat there looking at him. “God, I despise the lot of you. You’re like birds of prey, you know that? Above it all except when it’s time to eat or screw.”

Bone shrugged. “I’m sorry, kid. You asked.”

“And a fat lot of good it did.”

“What makes you think something’s wrong at home?”

“You were married. You live with someone, you can tell. It’s just different lately. He looks right through me.”

“Money problems. It’s usually money, Mo. You ought to know that. Once he gets his next government check—”

“Oh sure. Everything will be roses.”

Suddenly she got to her feet and picked up the baby. “You take us home?”

“Of course.”

As they walked to the car she told him that Cutter had phoned home earlier. “He said he’s bringing a guest for dinner,” she added. “How about that, huh? Dinner at the Cutters’. Or Alex and Mo’s, I guess I should say. Anyway, he asked me to ask you to be there?”

“Who’s he bringing?”

“The victim’s sister.”

Bone did not miss a step, but the news hit him like a small stone thrown hard. “The girl last night?”

“The cheerleader, yes. Her sister.”

“Goddamn him.”

“Alex? Why? What’s he up to?”

Bone put her off. “I’d rather not know.”

Cutter did not make it home until almost nine o’clock that evening, hours after Mo’s small roast had turned black in the oven and she had calmly abandoned it in favor of martinis in front of the fire with Bone, who was responsible for both, having that afternoon cleaned out the fireplace and bought some ersatz logs and real booze at the supermarket. While he liked the fire too, and the drinks, he did not share Mo’s indifference to food, and had first raided the kitchen, cutting off an end of the burnt roast and downing it along with a rocklike baked potato and some scattered greens, the makings of a salad that never did get tossed.

So he was feeling fairly comfortable in front of the fire now, his stomach full, a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other and a good-looking girl to share it all with. The only problem was the girl—for her, he might as well not have been there. One moment she would be goddamning Cutter, shaking her head in futility and bitterness, and the next she would give in with a wistful smile and say something inane, like it was good she and Cutter weren’t married, because this sort of thing would really piss her off then. She might think she owned him then, you see. But of course no one owned anybody else, and anyone worth his salt would not let himself be owned. So of course all she had a right to do was wonder where he was and what he was doing, and for that matter admire him too, precisely for this, for pissing her off, because it meant he was his own man, he was free, he was worthy of her. Bone, listening to her run on, occasionally lifted his glass in a toast. White woman speak with dumb tongue, he said. White woman full of shit.

But she was not listening.

And finally they heard Cutter arriving home, the Packard’s old engine laboring up the hill. Bone absently went over to the window, in time to see Alex bring the car to a stop out in front, unable to pull in because of a Toyota that blocked half the driveway. But he was not stymied. Abruptly he threw the Packard into gear and roared ahead, slamming into the Toyota and driving it backward a few feet. At the crash, Mo got up and came running over to the window, just as Cutter finished backing up a short distance and now took another crack at the tiny foreign car, this time smashing the front end over the curb onto the grass, totally clearing the driveway, which he calmly entered now and parked. If there was a scratch on the Packard, Bone could not see it. The Toyota, however, looked as if it had been in a head-on collision.

In the driveway, Cutter got out of his car, alone, grinning.

“He’s drunk,” Mo said, opening the front door.

Bone laughed. “What makes you say that?”

Across the street and next door people were beginning to come out of their houses and apartments Among them was a thirtyish elementary school teacher, the owner of the Toyota. She ran to her car and examined it as if it were bleeding to death and there might be a chance of saving it. Then she turned on Cutter.

“You maniac!” she cried. “You drunken maniac!”

“It was in the driveway,” he said. “I didn’t even see the goddamn thing.”

“You lying bastard. You dirty rotten cripple.”

Cutter shook his head at that, like an adult reproving a youngster. “Peace, my child. Listen, why don’t you come in the house with me and we can talk it over, okay? I tell you what, you come in and I’ll let you see my thing and maybe even play with it, and we’ll call everything square. That sound all right to you?”

“Oh God, he’s flying tonight,” Mo said.

The woman was crying now and her apartment neighbors were telling her to go back inside and call the police and her insurance company, because he wasn’t going anywhere, she didn’t have to worry about that, and they would back up her story.

One man, a Negro across the street, gave Cutter the black power salute. “Right on, brother,” he yelled. “They block my driveway too.”

Cutter returned the salute with his left arm, the stump. “Power to duh people,” he said, and the black man grinned.

Cutter came on in.

“That was beautiful,” Mo told him. “Absolutely beautiful. You know our insurance has lapsed?”

“That’s her tough luck.”

“And if you lose your driver’s license?”

He had gone into the bathroom to urinate, leaving the door open behind him. “It’s already expired,” he said over the splashing. “And anyway, Where’s it written you got to have a license to drive a car? Mine runs just fine without one.”

Mo made herself another drink and resumed her vigil in front of the fire. As Cutter came back out, Bone asked him where his guest was.

“What guest?”

Bone looked over at Mo.

“The Durant girl’s sister, remember?” Mo said. “That ‘real dinner’ you told me to make for her. ‘Not our usual slop’—I believe that’s how you put it.”

“You two are hallucinating, you know that? Acid heads, that’s what you are.”

“You didn’t call me, is that what you’re saying? You didn’t say you were bringing this girl home, and that you wanted Rich here too?”

Frowning, Cutter looked from Mo to Bone. “You part of this put-on?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Someone else must’ve called,” Cutter said. “Some sinister force.” He had just finished combing his hair in front of the hall mirror, and now he went into the bathroom and came out with Mo’s bottle of Lavoris, which he proceeded to chugalug, gargling it and spitting it into a dead potted cactus Swanson had given them, “something harmonious with Alex’s character,” as he had put it.

“Pigs probably be here in a minute,” Cutter explained. “Gonna do a number on them. A neat little number.”

Mo asked him where he had been all day. “If I may ask,” she added.

“Of course you may, love. Went driving, I did. Picked up this group on one-o-one, a nigger fag and two spic girls with a pet monkey. We went up to El Capitan and had an orgy. The guy was all right but that monkey, Jesus, did it ever bite.”

Mo sipped at her drink. “What’s the use?” she said to Bone. “What’s the goddamn use?”

Bone said nothing. Outside, the police had arrived. The flash of their red domelight washed over Cutter as he stood gargling in the middle of the room. Putting the bottle down finally, he passed his hand over his face, magically creating sobriety. Then he moved toward the door.

“Come on with, old buddy,” he said to Bone. “I may need your support.”

But he did not. Playing the role of humble wounded war veteran, he limped eloquently down the stairs and went over to the police car, where the officers were already listening to the schoolteacher’s complaint. Cutter waited patiently, and then politely answered all their questions. Gosh, he was awfully sorry about the whole darn thing. And a little confused too. He hadn’t even seen the car the first time he hit it, when he turned in—a passing car with its brights on had temporarily blinded him. And then when he tried to back up, after the first impact, the gearshift apparently slipped into first instead, and that was why there was a second crash. Of course he took full responsibility for the accident, and of course his insurance company would pay, the lady had nothing to worry about there. But he had no idea what all this other was about, his supposedly insulting her and using obscene language. He recalled asking her to come into his house, yes, but only to discuss the incident away from the crowd and to give her a chance to calm down, while he called the police and his insurance company. Was he aware that his license had expired? No, but he understood the officers had no choice except to issue him a citation for the oversight; they were just doing their duty, and duty was something he knew a little about. As he said this last, Bone halfway expected him to hike up his pants and show everyone his false leg, but all he did was modestly look down at the ground, affecting embarrassment and pain.