Drawing Dead (13 page)

This seemed to satisfy his prying ass.

I’d sapped the first beer and had to reach around so as to start work on another. I was hungry now. Starving in fact. Nothing could be done about it though, we still had an amount of shit to do. By the time we got back to Chenko’s place it was about two in the morning. It was on the way back into the city. We didn’t go inside but instead immediately round the back of the place where two forty-four gallon drums were howling with fire. I’d wheeled the case around with me. It was an overly large block with a shed right out back on the left and bits and pieces all over the place.

Dying grass and yellow sand with bush-land completely to one side. First thing I threw in were the plastic gloves that were still on my hands. Then I emptied the entire contents of the case evenly into the flames. I pocketed about seven or eight pull-ties. I figured me and Evie could play a little game with’em when I got back to her. Chenko watched over me adding lighter fluid as we went to get the burn really going. I stripped naked and tossed all the clothes I had on in too. Don’t fret, I’d taken the pull-ties out and placed them near the bourbon bottle and hotel key. I asked him about the knife and he said to throw it in the fire and he’d get rid of it in the morning.

How you gonna do that?

I’ll melt it down in my shed. It’s not hard to do.

I nodded and picked up the bourbon bottle and told him I was keeping it. He didn’t ask about the pull-ties.

Fine Jack, just put some fucking pants on will ya.

While I let myself in through the back door. Chenko with a knife of his own started hacking the case to pieces and feeding them to the twin conflagrations. I went to the bathroom, showered and shaved my face and then put the clothes he’d left out for me on. I slicked my hair back and left the two top buttons of the grey long sleeved shirt he’d gotten me wide open. God knows why, all I could say to myself in the mirror was you sly mongrel dirty dog you. The trousers he’d got me fit real nice and so did the shoes.

I went back outside and as my first item of business pocketed the pull-ties. I was very excited about those. Next I told Chenko he could be my personal tailor if he ever needed a second job. Third I took a jolt of bourbon. He’d finished up with everything needing to be sized to fit for incineration and was just watching it burn and occasionally topping up the heat with some extra lighter fluid and enjoying the snarling shout the flames made as they leapt up a notch and made old Chenko glow. I broke his blazing daydream with words.

I gotta blow son.

Yeah. You can take the car round the side. Park it by the river and walk back to yours and I’ll get a taxi over to it in the morning.

I’ll leave the keys on the front passenger tire.

I know you will.

Chenko…

Don’t say a goddamned word about it.

So I didn’t and left.

Driving again.

Does it ever end.

Back to Evie.

Back to life.

Whipping down the freeway, hurtling across the city, dashing like a motherfucker down to the beckoning beach. I should have been going straight to my place. Parking this vehicle where I’d been told to and sneaking back across the neighbour’s yard to my warm, soft and waiting bed.

Seemed like a cinch, but with the pull-ties in my pocket, bourbon in my belly and her stark naked in a hotel room I had a key to I felt I had no choice. I was being dragged there by a monumental force rather than driving over by my own will. Right then there was nothing but the impetus and thrust with which I was traveling to her, everything else was siding and could never really be important again.

She was home amidst the metropolis and its muddy, diseased trenches. I had to get there. Had to have her. Choice was irrelevant, you understand me, the money and the consequence were unrelated in any way. I was gonna see the sun one more time, and it was gonna shine brighter than the day it dies, blazing out her untouched asshole.

I got there quick. Parked a street back and walked over fast making like a man possessed. Bourbon in hand as promised. It was about three in the morning, just like I’d said.

The light was off, I let myself in.

I was burning up with desire, baking inside and out, man was I gonna let her have it. I hit the light and locked the door. She wasn’t in the bed. I called out her name and got nothing. Made it over and checked the bathroom with the same result.

Quiet boomed mucho

Ringing in my ears like the hiss of a hellsent bitch.

Consciousness closed in on me the way a collapsed building would have. I sighed, groaned and broke wind all in the same corkscrew of cognizant horror. Took a hateful mouthful of the bourbon and then hurled that sucker with all I had into the side wall. Went over and picked up the TV and threw that fucker as far as I could. I’d owe Chenko a tad more when it showed on his credit card but I went for it anyhow. The lamp, phone and a chair meet a similar demise. I regretted that bourbon being gone and almost went over and licked the wall before I made for the mini-bar. Gulped two vodkas straight up and pocketed the rest. I felt the pull-ties in there and then the pinching sting of missed opportunity. Scorpions in my belly. Starved rats in my brains. I mouthed two words and two only.

Fucking.

Snake.

Good for you old man. Did you see her or not?

Haven’t seen a thing all night.

I was guessing he wanted to get paid. I laid a fifty on the counter. This old motherfucker!

How about now?

Well…

This elderly fuck was really getting to me real fast.

Well what old man, spill it will ya.

There was a taxi.

Right, what about it?

Came maybe an hour ago.

I fished in my pocket, found then slapped a second fifty on the counter. He was lucky I didn’t slap him, knock the false teeth right out his fucking mouth.

Nobody took it. Driver came in and said a woman ordered it for the airport. She disappeared though. He said he was running late. Should have been there twenty minutes earlier than he was. Wasn’t called through the front you see. She must have used the room phone.

A phantom cab huh?

That’s right…sound like your girl.

Maybe.

I thought a second. His geriatric stench was clouding my mind and choking my throat.

Nothing else then.

Just that. A no show, wasn’t the first time there’s been one, and it won’t be the last.

He’s a fucking philosopher now too. I bullshitted him some.

Yeah and time and tide wait for no man do they.

Never a truer word said son.

I put one more fifty on the counter.

You didn’t see or hear a thing right?

He smiled. It was horrible saliva ridden event I can tell you.

I never do.

I walked back to the car with my skull buzzing. It seemed I was perhaps finally fucked. This was the end of the road buddy. The curtains had closed. The coffin nailed shut. If she had gone to the airport there was no way I could find out what flight she’d boarded. Not with the way security was at those places was nowadays. The way I played it out in my head was that she had panicked when the cab was late and gone out onto the street to hail one down. Now she was flying her oh so lovely shape far away and never coming back. Business men were buying her champagne and looking down her top. It was a huge mistake to give her those documents before I’d gotten my money. I threw the hotel key at room door and got in the car and drove.

I was tired, I was hungry.

Everything had turned to shit.

Though I shouldn’t’ve been surprised, I’d always had that King Midas in reverse thing going for me, everything I touched went to shit, it always had and would.

I couldn’t believe I didn’t have the money. Just could not fucking fathom it. I’d been too busy planning what I was gonna do to her ass to cover every angle. Too hot for the sweltering sweet of her honeypot to see I was gonna get played. Where in fuck was I gonna find the rest of the money I owed.

Where in goddamned hell….

It struck me like a jarring uppercut I never saw coming, but instead of knocking me out, it buoyed me like a flotation device would a drowning man. It was all that money talk, the thought repeating in my head.

The money.

The money!

The goddamneded motherfucking money…

She couldn’t leave with all that.

She couldn’t board a plane with it.

It had to be a bluff.

Had to be.

Call a cab asking for the airport, dodge it knowing the driver will go to the front desk. Knowing I’ll do the same thing too. Walk her perfect ass down the street and get another and hole up some place else. The fact that the thing was late was just a bonus to her, made it look more legit, or maybe she caught him down the road and told him to do it, then he loops around and picks her up anyhow. With how she looked she could tell a man to jam a cactus in his ass and he’d do it just on principle. Just to say he did it, and that she had asked him to.

The further I drove the more I convinced myself. She’d paid me twenty-five already, agreed to fifty plus expenses; let’s say she had ten times the initial at least. She wasn’t getting that on a plane with it stacked nicely in her suitcase.

No way, no day.

I parked the car by the river as I’d told Chenko I would and then walked down closer and took a look over at the city stuck there paralyzed and the stagnant river below it. I spit in the water and then walked back toward my place. I was exhausted. I slipped in through the yard of the house I’d slipped outta before and then jumped the back connecting fence like a acrobat. I let myself in, stripped naked and just collapsed on the bed.

I’d had enough but knew tomorrow would bring more.

She was still in town, and I was gonna find her.

She was still in town and I was gonna fuck her.

Yeah the mantra went like that, over and again, a furious repetition in sync with my swollen pounding heart.

Like a drum being smacked at by some crazy-ass demon, it went and it went.

Oh yes, oh yeah, oh yep, that little fucking bitch and her second to none ass would sure as shit be mine.