Drawing Dead (22 page)

“You should be. Why don't you tell the security guys about him?”

She shook her head. “Right now I know where he is.”

“You're going to not go home again?”

“Not till he leaves.”

She put out her cigarette, stood up, pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her shorts. Milo walked across the sofa to the cushion on which she had been sitting, sniffed it, turned two circles, and sank into a black ball. Catfish walked around the room, touching things: books, a vase, his framed baseball cards, a blank wall.

“Why are you here?” Crow asked.

“I wanted to see you. I liked the way y'all were looking at me that night. Like I was real. When Dickie looks at me, I feel like a martini.”

“Which way do you mean—like you are one or you want one?”

“Like I'm a martini and he's looking at me, staring at the olives. I need a real man in my life.” She walked past him, behind his chair, leaving a vaporous trail of smoke and sweat. “A guy like Joe Crow.”

Crow watched her moving away from him, toward the doors leading out onto the porch. She stood with her back to him, letting him have a good look at her.

“All the time while you were following me, I kept thinking about you, thinking about you and me.” She turned and walked directly toward him. He had the sense that her moves were choreographed, but that didn't prevent his heart from speeding or his mouth from going dry. It was as though he were watching a bad movie—but he was in it. Her hands, hot and moist, pressed in on either side of his face; she bent down and kissed his lips. Her saliva was acid; he could feel his lips burning. Then she was gone, back on the sofa with Milo on her lap, both cats watching him and smiling.

Crow cleared his throat and crossed one ankle over his knee to conceal the sudden swelling in his groin. His body was betraying him. “What is it you want, Catfish?” His voice was thick, the back of his throat numb, as if he were on his fourth, fifth, sixth fat line of coke.

“I need a place to stay tonight.”

He pointed at the sofa. “You want to sleep with Milo, it's fine by me.

Catfish smiled, a big smile showing all of her little white teeth, and hugged Milo to her breasts.

Crow
lay naked on his bed, unable to sleep. He had opened the window, but the air outside was congealed and there was no movement. Perspiration pooled in his navel. His jaw bulged; he stared through slitted eyes at the water stain on the white plaster ceiling. It was shaped like a butterfly, a flower, a seashell, a woman's sex.

It had been over a year since the last time he had had any, or wanted it. When his marriage to Melinda Connors ended, he'd left his desire behind, or locked it away, or destroyed it.

No, not destroyed. The woman Catfish had found it. He closed his eyes and let the images flicker across the movie screen. Catfish in her black party dress, her breast pressing against his biceps. Catfish in her red Porsche, punching through traffic. Catfish reclined on the undressed bed at the Twin Town, kicking her sandals across the motel room. Catfish standing in the motel room door, laughing. Catfish small on his front steps, smoking. Catfish with too much red lipstick, nicotine staining the underside of her wide nostrils; Catfish with small sharp teeth, hot sweaty hands, breasts tart as grapefruit swinging against her white shirt.

He opened his eyes and looked toward the bedroom door, at the slit of light at its bottom. Why Catfish Wicky? She had the predatory, utterly self-centered perspective of a female cat. She smoked cigarettes, drank, jumped in the sack with every swinging dick. She was not particularly good-looking—swollen lips, protruding eyes, burnt-looking flesh, stained upper lip. She was married. He tried to twist her image into a gargoyle, a Medusa, a hag. The effort left him with a knot in his chest and an erection. He licked his lips—an hour after her kiss, they still burned. He rolled onto his side, away from the damp center of the mattress, and forced his thoughts to Dickie Wicky. That should help him chill.

At Crow's insistence, she had called Dickie to tell him she wouldn't be home. Dickie wasn't there, but she left him a message:

“Can't make it home tonight, honey. Remember that big fella I was telling you about? That Freddy Wisnesky fella? Well, he's sorta lookin' for me, and I got to make myself scarce for a day or two. I'll be in touch.”

After she hung up, he had said, “Why didn't you just tell him where you were?”

“He'd freak, darlin'.” Then she had laughed. “But maybe then he'd pay you ten thousand dollars to leave me alone. y'all want me to call him back?”

“Forget about it.”

“Anyways, he'll be drunk as a mash-fed opossum when he gets home.”

Crow had let it go. He tried to imagine Dickie, drunk, alone in his condo, listening to the recorded voice of his nymphomaniac wife. It wouldn't be so bad, though, because Dickie would quickly render himself unconscious and oblivious. Crow envied the man his drugs, his liquor, his peace.

A soft thud came from the living room, then the sound of bare feet padding down the hall, the sound of the toilet seat going down and, a few seconds later, the tinkle of urine falling into the bowl. The image of Catfish sitting on his toilet. The sound of the toilet flushing.

She had said he looked tense. She had wanted to rub his neck. She had sat on the sofa, curled her toes over the edge of the glass-topped coffee table, put the palms of her hands together, squeezed them between her thighs.

“Don't you want me?” she had asked.

He had brought out a blanket and a pillow and said good night.

He heard her now, padding back toward the living room. He could feel the muscles in his abdomen relax. He swallowed, and half- thoughts tumbled unidentified through his mind like clothes in a dryer. As though in a memory, he again heard the sound of bare feet on a wooden floor. The door to his bedroom opened, closed, and he felt a hot hand press his shoulder back against the mattress. He opened his eyes, drew a ragged breath, stared at her dark shape. She moved her hand down his chest, paused at his belly—”You're all soaking wet, honey”—and continued down to stroke the length of his swollen penis. He heard her husky whisper, “I thought you might be waiting on me, Crow,” and then her tongue was in his mouth, deep and soft and wet, and he hoped he would drown.

Thing I always wish, son, was I coulda been there to teach you how t' handle a woman.

—Sam O'Gara

In the morning,
tangled in his sheets, Crow sought to reestablish the connection between his anxious mind and his sated body. What had he gotten himself into? He was alone on the bed, but he could still smell her. His penis lay against his thigh, long and flaccid, blooming with the crusted oleo of their bodily fluids. Was she gone?

He thought about herpes, about AIDS. No disease seemed, in that moment, to be as serious as the fact that he had been betrayed by his body. Over a year of celibacy—waiting for love or some other noble impulse to return him to the world of feeling—and he had wallowed in the depths of this black-haired Catfish creature, this married woman, this cigarette-smoking estral female who would fuck, as she had told him in the postcoital dark, anybody with a dick longer than his nose. At the same time, the memory of her lying there on his bed asleep, her quiet, abbreviated snores, came with a wave of desire—of the urge to protect, to preserve, to own. Could she help what she was?

He felt strong in his body, an engine enjoying a long-overdue tune-up. Another illusion? Another drug? He thought back to his walk home from the Black Forest Inn, his belly full of food. He had been happy then. Or, at least, at peace. Thinking about his Vietnamese laundress.

Last night, in the dark, Catfish had talked but said nothing. He had asked her questions. “What do you want?” “I want you.” “Where do you come from?” “New Jersey, Phoenix, Mexico, Louisiana, Tampa.” “How do you know that guy, that Tommy?” “I've known Tommy forever.” “What do you know about his business?” “Nothing. Business is boring.” He had asked her more questions, thinking himself clever, but had learned nothing. She had quickly grown bored and fallen asleep.

Was she gone?

He listened, searching with his ears for clues to her presence. Someone was talking, but he couldn't identify the direction or the source. He rolled out of bed, pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, and went into the kitchen. The smell of coffee was overpowering. He poured a mug full, tasted it, shuddered. Thick and bitter. She must have used half a pound of grounds. He could already feel the caffeine plucking at his synapses.

Catfish was sitting in the wicker chair on the porch, wearing nothing but his red-and-pink bowling shirt and a pair of suntanned legs. She held a coffee cup near her mouth, and she was talking to someone. Crow put his head out the porch door. Debrowski stood at the railing, looking down First Avenue. Catfish smiled up at him, her rubbery lips big and red as cayenne peppers.

Debrowski's face was white stone, her mascaraed eyes slitted. A cup of coffee balanced on the railing beside her, untouched. She was holding a quart of milk, her hand squeezing the waxy carton.

“Morning, darling,” Catfish said. She hooked a forefinger through his belt loop and pulled. “Laura, here, came up looking for you this morning. I told her you were sleeping. I've never seen a guy sleep like that, like you were never gonna wake up. I invited her to have a little coffee with me, long as she brought her own milk. This gal's got to have milk with her morning coffee, you know.” Crow looked down at the coffee in her mug. It was paler than her thighs. He detached her finger from his belt loop and stepped to the side, out of range. Catfish shrugged, wrapped her mug with both hands.

Crow said, “Welcome back, Debrowski.” He felt like a boy caught masturbating.

Debrowski turned her face toward him, her mouth drawn into a twisted gash, the left side swollen and purple. Crow started toward her, reaching out, but she jerked back, shifted her hips, and her eyes fixed on a place above his head and a foot to the side. He stopped as if he had struck a force field. She did not want to be touched.

“What happened?” he asked.

“I ran into a door,” she said, her voice flat.

Catfish rubbed an ankle with the sole of her foot.

Crow smiled uncomfortably.

Debrowski pushed off the railing. She handed Catfish the milk carton. “I'm going to bed. I've been driving all night.” She walked between them and through the door to the staircase. She looked back at Catfish. “I just wanted to make sure you were still alive, Crow. Nice meeting you, Fish. You can keep the milk.”

Crow listened to the heavy sound of her boots descending his stairs.

Catfish said, “Fish? Who's she calling 'Fish'? Sort of a tense little thing, ain't she? Can you imagine doing it with all those chains?”

Crow was staring at the cup of coffee balanced on the railing.

“I get all sore just thinking about it,” Catfish said.

“I think you had better go now,” Crow said. His voice sounded harsh and distant. He was seeing Debrowski's face, bruised, hard- eyed, bloodless.

“What? Isn't that a little rude, darlin'? I'm not even half done with my coffee. y'all make love to a woman, you ought to buy her breakfast, don't you think?” She seemed more amused than offended.

“No. I don't know. You have to go. I'm sorry.”

“You want me to go back home, with that Freddy fellow waiting on me?”

“You can go wherever you want. This was a mistake. Go to the police, or take a vacation.” He went inside, picked up the phone, punched in the number printed on the back of every third cab in the city. Catfish came up behind him and put her arms around his waist.

“I'm calling a cab,” he said.

“y'all leave a lady feeling a bit cheap, Joe Crow.”

“I'm sorry.” Her arms were two hot bands across his belly. He stepped from her embrace, turned, pressed her palms together. “Last night was a mistake. You have to go now. I'm sorry.”

She looked at her hands pressed between his. “Did I make trouble with your girlfriend, darlin'? Maybe I shoulda had my coffee black.”

He released her hands. “She's not my girlfriend.”

Catfish smiled. “What ever can I have been thinking?” She pulled the bowling shirt up over her head and handed it to him. Her body was as sensational in daylight as it had been in his dreams, in the dark. He could feel the pulsing begin in his groin. “I'll get dressed,” she said, scratching her dark and tangled pubis with red nails. Crow looked away; Catfish snorted. “You know, darling, I never realized y'all were such a prude.”

“I'm not a prude,” Crow said as she walked toward the bedroom. But he knew it was true even before he heard her laughter.

Ten minutes later, she was gone in a blue-and-white cab. Crow picked up the phone and called Debrowski. No answer. He went downstairs and pounded on her door. No answer. He went back upstairs, turned on the shower, and let it hammer at his chest until the water went cold.

Be sure to be nice to the people you step on on your way up, because you're gonna have to step on them again on your way down.

—Richard D. Wicky,
training in a new registered representative

Wicky sipped his instant coffee
, winced, added a shot of brandy, a dollop of milk, and a handful of sugar cubes, sipped again. He was sitting out on the balcony in his silk Calvin Klein boxer shorts, staring across the river at downtown Minneapolis. Things were looking a little fuzzy, though no fuzzier than usual. It was one of those windless, cloudy days, thick with atmospheric moisture, eighty-three degrees and rising, a good day to skip work, hang out in front of the air conditioner, nurse a hangover, maybe take a couple of naps. Not a good day to be jump-started by a call from Catfish, phoning from some motel, or so she said. She'd wanted him to get out of bed, seven o'clock in the morning, and run downstairs to the parking ramp to see if Freddy Wisnesky, the ogre from Chicago, was still sitting there. He'd told her to call the cops, but she wouldn't do it. “You don't call the cops on these kind of guys,” she'd said. “Look, I just want to know if he's still there. You can't miss him. He's the biggest, ugliest guy you've ever seen, and he's driving a blue Cadillac convertible with a smashed-in grille. If he's gone, I can swing by and get my car out of there.”