The Interloper (22 page)

The whole pileup was smoking when I ran out the door. I pulled out of our garage into our alley and drove to the end. When I reached the cross street, I stopped and looked in my rearview mirror. Why did Lot’s wife turn into salt? Did I turn into salt when I saw Patty enter the alley, a block down, and drive into our garage, no doubt wondering what had happened to her husband?

I drove east. Out of Our Little Hamlet by the Sea, onto the freeway through the heart of the megalopolis, past the fiefdoms of the Inland Empire, and into the desert. A brief but powerful squall marked the end of the halcyon days. When the skies cleared they were not the same skies as before. Some force other than my will pulled my car forward, and that force would not be satisfied until I had found Portia Snow, and with her, Henry Joseph Raven. The fundamentals had not shifted. The scales of justice remained off-kilter. It was still up to me to balance them. I did not listen to the radio. I opened my windows periodically to make the rush of wind match what I was feeling. Desert dust rose from invisible trucks. Out there, everything had been stripped from the surface of the land, leaving behind only shadows. In those miserable sunny hours, my mind reeled with what I had left behind. A baffled therapist, a confused Patty, a clueless Calvin Senior, a sympathetic Minerva, a pair of keys, a PO box, a smoking computer, a collapsed plan. Their nagging pull was
no match for the massive magnet of Mount Pleasant. They were gum on the sole of my shoe. At sundown I drove past blinking Las Vegas and considered for an instant where my life might lead if I decided to stop and gamble, drink too much, and then use the anxiety and guilt of my Viking Hangover to propel me, apologetically, into the arms of my sweetheart.

It would be another life, not mine.

At gas stations, at diners, on the verge of collapse, I brought myself back to life by reading the letters, by reading CJ’s diary, until I knew it all by heart. All the wreckage was Raven’s. He would pay. I had in my pocket, as the record will show, Moses Lundy’s crumpled note. I did not reread it. I stuffed it away and forgot about it. His sentences were suffused with falsehood. I was under no illusions, however. Raven had, in a gesture of criminal camaraderie, shared some of Lily’s letters with his cellmates. That I understood. I am quite sure he did not share all of them. And while he might have kept other second-tier penpals to occupy him while waiting for new letters from Lily, none of them had pierced his heart quite the way she did. It was impossible.

I made exactly two detours on that 1100-mile journey.

My first detour took me seventeen miles out of the way. 1.4% of my journey. Off the Silver Mine exit, up a two-lane road into the mountains. Pine trees, a clearing, a turnoff, and there it was, a low-slung, weathered wood roadhouse. Diana’s Grill. I sat at the same bar, maybe on the same stool, as dead CJ.

Later in the night, I drove down a side road until I was in total darkness. I stopped and lay on the hood of my car, absorbing heat through my back even as the night air went to work freezing my features. The stars were breathtaking. Surely out
there, among the stars, were other inhabited planets. Other intelligent creatures. Staring into their night skies. Alter-Owens, lying on the hoods of their little hovercrafts. All is not lost, I said to them, there is still time to set things right.

I fell asleep behind the wheel. I do not recall falling asleep, only waking up to the sound of my tires crossing into another lane. The driving threatened to sap my reserves. I decided that I would face him fresh-faced and clear-headed. Stopping at a motel was no indication of weakening resolve. I was strong. I was an arrow. But once I was in that mothball-smelling bed, sleep eluded me. I lay awake for hours, listening to the semis roll in and out of the truck stop adjacent to the motel, and to metronomic humping in the room next to mine. I clocked the woman’s squeaks—the sound of a paper towel on glass just after the Windex has evaporated—at sixty-four per minute. The man was quiet. Finally I fell into a dreamless slumber.

At two forty-three the next afternoon, I arrived at the town of Mount Pleasant, a hillside community with a small, failing, alpine-themed ski operation. The entire place was covered with gray slush. No answer on P. Snow’s phone. I scoured the commercial strip, asking questions at the local diner and the local pharmacy, but I came up with no leads. Those mountain people were naturally suspicious of strangers like myself. I could feel everything slipping away from me. It got dark. Things started to shut down. Still no answer on P. Snow’s phone. I did not know where to turn next. Then, while driving around looking for a place to stay for the night, something familiar called out to me from a paint store parking lot.

Despite Brewster’s Paints being closed, the lot, bathed in the orange glow of sodium lamps, was nearly full. Among the vehicles: a 1970s Dodge pickup truck. The color looked wrong at first, under those lamps, but when I pulled into the lot, the cross-eyed beams of my headlights revealed what I already knew.
This was Raven’s truck, candy-apple red, the same truck I’d seen in that picture long ago. I parked a few spaces down and walked over to the truck, my footsteps crunching in the freezing slush. I could see my reflection in the paint. There I was, there was my image, reflected in Raven’s truck. I placed my hands on the hood. It was still warm. Inside the cab, a red checked winter jacket lay across the passenger seat. The interior looked clean. I tried to tell myself that this could have been anyone’s truck, that Dodge had made thousands of trucks just like it, that I hadn’t actually tracked down my quarry.

Voices at the other end of the parking lot, some laughter. A pair of dark figures emerged from the alley behind the paint store, a short bearded man and a round woman, stumbling their way to a dilapidated car. They disappeared into the vehicle; it groaned under their weight. The engine turned over several times, weakening with every revolution. It started up finally, and I stepped through a cloud of blue smoke into the alley. There, tucked behind Brewster’s Paints, lay the Hart’s Head Bar. Two blacked-out windows, a rotting plywood door between them.

I pulled the door open. Smoke, stairs leading down. My eyes took a moment to adjust to the darkness inside. I descended, passed through another door at the base of the stairs, and entered the Hart’s Head. People looked up, didn’t recognize me, looked away. I leaned on the bar and ordered a beer. The room was lined with tall-backed booths; coats hung on the partitions, blocking the view into the booths. There was a jukebox at the end, and a pool table in the middle. Neither of the men playing pool was Raven. He was not on a bar stool, either. I would have to walk slowly through the place. I would have to pretend I was
looking for someone. I was looking for someone. Classic rock emanated from the jukebox. The men on the stools were focused on some baseball game unfolding on the dusty television set above the bar. I asked the bartender for some change.

“To feed the jukebox,” I explained.

I held my beer in one hand, but I couldn’t figure out what to do with the other hand. The pool table’s felt was covered with scars. Everyone was talking at once. I made my way to the jukebox. There was nowhere to put my beer. The song ended and everything was silent. I scanned the room but I couldn’t see past all the coats. I went to set my beer in the booth next to the jukebox. A man was sitting there, alone. He looked up.

I had found Raven.

How many times had I considered what I would do with him when I found him? I had visualized pounding his face in with a hammer, kicking his lifeless body over and over, slicing him from gut to gullet. He looked at me with as blank a look as a man can make. I thought he’d recognize me somehow.

“Excuse me,” I said, “can I set this here?”

He shrugged. I put my beer down. I fed the jukebox a dollar and hit random numbers until my credits were gone. He was only a few feet away. He’d cut his hair short, military-style. His chin showed several days’ stubble. I should have destroyed Raven right then. I could have. Instead I returned to my beer. He sipped at his drink—whiskey, with a little glass of beer—and stared across the booth at nothing. The crack of a pool break. I turned my face toward the pool table, but my attention was still on him. I had to act as casual as possible while remaining
vigilant. Distract the prey on the ground while the eagle dives from above. I should have picked up the ashtray and smashed it over his head.

Most of the booths in the bar were occupied. I turned to Raven. He did not look up this time. I could have walked away—every part of my animal self was telling me to walk away—but I knew I might never have this opportunity again. I had to steel myself. I cleared my throat.

“Mind if I join you?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said.

I sat down. The booth was smaller than I thought it was going to be, and the view different. The world was shut out on three sides, and partially obscured by hanging coats on the fourth. This was going to be an intimate showdown. Raven took a long drag off his cigarette. He exhaled slowly through his nose, flicked ash toward the ashtray. He had slender fingers, with little knots for joints. The jukebox played one of my random selections. Country, female, ballad.

“The jukebox busted?” I asked.

“How the fuck should I know?”

His eyes were on the pool game, but he wasn’t watching it. He had been staring at the other side of the booth before I sat down, and now that I was in his way, he had to stare elsewhere.

“I’m just passing through,” I said.

“Huh.”

“I said, I’m just passing through town.”

“I heard you.”

“I’m from California. Out here to see a friend.”

“California.” He raised his whisky glass and drained it in one swallow. Then he polished off his beer. He started fishing around in his pockets, as if he might be about to leave.

“Let me get the next round,” I said.

He lit another smoke, settled back into his seat. “Ten High, beer back,” he said, not looking at me.

I left Raven sitting at the table. The jukebox played another song, more country. I ordered two Ten Highs with beer backs and brought them to our booth.

“I didn’t pick this song,” I said.

He sipped at his whiskey, made a face. “This Ten High?”

“That’s what I ordered.”

“Huh.”

I would put him at ease. He would lower his defenses. He wouldn’t know what hit him.

“I’m here to visit a friend,” I said.

“In Mount Pleasant?”

“Cold Plains Correctional Facility. About a hundred miles east of here.”

He shrugged noncommittally. But his eyes flashed. Try as he might, Raven could not conceal what was going on behind those eyes.

“You drive out here by yourself?” he asked.

“Sure,” I said. “I’m alone.”

One of the pool players walked up to the chalkboard next to the jukebox and crossed off someone’s name. “Carl!” he shouted, “Carl’s up!” Carl rose from a booth across the room, stick in hand, and proceeded to feed quarters into the pool table. Raven and I watched in silence.

He shook his pack of smokes. Nothing came out. He closed one eye and shook the pack again. Nothing. He started to go through his pockets. He rose from the booth and headed toward the bar. I watched him through a mirror above the jukebox. If he tried to leave, I would catch up with him before he could reach his truck and get away. I took a series of deep breaths. I was drawing him in all over again. He had left himself open to attack. I watched as he bought cigarettes from the bartender. He walked back toward our booth. He glanced in the mirror and our eyes met.

“It’s funny,” I said, after he’d sat down again, “you remind me of someone I used to know.”

Silence. We drank and watched the pool game. Raven fiddled with the cellophane on his cigarettes.

“It’s weird how much you look like him,” I said.

“I’m not him.”

“Because you sort of sound like him, too.”

“It’s not me.”

“Good thing,” I said. “He owes me.”

“I don’t owe you fuck-all.”

“He owes me, is what I said.”

“Exactly what does this guy owe you?”

“I’ll know when I get it from him.”

He smiled. I had amused him. I will forever remember that moment, when I had Raven in the palm of my hand. I should have destroyed him right then. I should have gone out to the car and fetched my Glock from the paper bag under the passenger seat, and I should have come back in and destroyed him, with the entire Hart’s Head Bar as witness to justice finally, finally, served.

But some invisible force held me back, told me to wait just a little bit longer, to toy with my prey rather than dispatch the monster immediately.

He shook the new smokes at me until one stuck out. I took it. I did not want to deal with the consequences of not taking it. I would have lost any advantage over him had I passed it up. He took one for himself. He held out his lighter. I leaned toward him, cigarette in my mouth. I could smell his breath. He lit the lighter, cupped the flame. The tip of my cigarette danced around in the little yellow flame. That moment, that instant in time, was the closest I would ever get to Raven, physically. I was never much of a smoker. I inhaled carefully. I did not cough. The first few drags made me nauseous. The booze, the empty stomach, the cigarette. We are undone by simple things. I had to grip the edge of the table to stave off the spinning feeling.

“You make a habit of staring at people?” he asked.

“What?”

“If you’re looking for the faggot bar, it’s down another block.” Raven stood up. “I gotta take a leak.”

After a moment, the spins dissipated. I let the cigarette burn down, so it would look like I’d smoked it, then put it out in the ashtray. I watched the pool players for ten minutes. Twenty. Raven didn’t return. Out in the parking lot, the red Dodge was gone.

The empty parking space taunted me. Here was the poof of particles into thin air, it said, here was once the magician. You are the sucker. You and Lily are the suckers.

“Lily,” I yelled, “Lily is the one who is supposed to disappear!”