Train Wreck Girl (16 page)

ITINERARY FOR A SETUP

2:31
P
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M
. Sister Janie will call. From her very first, “Hey, Knucklehead,” be suspicious.

2:33
P
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M
. Agree to go over to dinner at Janie's that night. Understand as soon as you agree that you've made a mistake. That you were supposed to have been suspicious. Too much shit is going on in your life. You're not thinking straight.

7:09
P
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M
. Get on your bike and head for Janie's. You were supposed to be there at 7:00, but you won't be able to get yourself to leave until

7:09.

7:13
P
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M
. Ride your bike up Janie's driveway. The garage door will be open. Notice: one BMW convertible that looks suspiciously like a Mazda Miata and one Land Rover, Janie's. There is also a Volvo station wagon in the driveway. Ask yourself how many cars two people need. Also notice again how big Janie's house is. You could fit five of your apartments into this house. The same number of people live in your apartment and this house. Grumble about what's become of your sister.

7:14
P
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M
. Knock on the front door. Powell will answer. You've known Powell for years and you still don't know if Powell is his first name or last name. By extension, you don't know if your sister's last name is Powell or not. Don't bother cursing yourself for skipping out on their wedding. The waves were good that day.

7:15
P
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M
. Powell will offer you a glass of wine. Don't accept. You've never been a wine drinker. It's always seemed like a rich man's game to you. You're not thirsty, anyway.

7:16
P
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M
. Enter Powell and Janie's living room. Janie will be sitting in an antique wooden armchair, drinking wine. You haven't seen her since the day she picked you up at the bus station, almost six months ago. Even though she hasn't seen you in six months and has only seen you once in the past four years, she won't get up to hug you. She's never been the hugging type. She'll only say, “Knucklehead!”

7:16:05
P
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M
. Notice Sophie sitting on the couch. Scream curses in your head.

7:17
P
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M
. Sister Janie will tell the story about how fat you were when she picked you up at the bus station. Six months have passed since then. You've been surfing nearly every day and riding your bike a lot and eating right and working manual labor that whole time. You've lost those extra pounds. Janie won't notice. Sophie will say, “I don't know. Danny looks the same to me.” Powell will offer you a drink again. Ask him what kind of whiskey he has.

7:19
P
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M
. Powell will disappear into the kitchen to prepare dinner. You'll be stuck in the room with Janie and Sophie. Janie will not be drunk, but you'll recognize a bit of a wine high in her eyes. She'll start telling embarrassing stories about your childhood. Look in the kitchen. See that Powell isn't cooking so much as reheating pre-prepared food that he'd picked up at the grocery store. Relax. Dinner will be ready in ten minutes.

7:24
P
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M
. Janie will say, “Hey, Knucklehead, do you remember the Robisons?” Nod. The Robisons were the foster parents you went to live with after your father died. You were four years old. Janie will tell Sophie, “We'd lived with the Robisons maybe, what? Two weeks? When Mr. Robison died. We all had to go to the funeral. Danny and me and a couple of other foster kids. And we're at the funeral. It's an open casket. And Danny's looking at the body. Just staring at it. Oblivious to the line of people behind him. He even had his hands on the side of the casket, trying to pull himself up for a better look. And he asks Mrs. Robison, ‘What happened to his feet?'

“She says, ‘What?'

“Danny says, ‘What happened to his feet? How come you can't see his feet? Couldn't he afford shoes?'

“Oh, Jesus, did that get Mrs. Robison fired up. She gave Danny such a beating. I've never seen a kid take a beating like that. You remember that, Knucklehead?”

Yeah, Janie, you'll think, I remember that. Thanks for bringing it back up.

7:32
P
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M
. Dinner will be served. Eat quickly. The sooner it's done, the sooner you can leave. Janie will be in rare form. You won't be sure if she's trying to set you up with Sophie or humiliate you. Maybe both. She'll drink a lot of wine, though, and laugh a lot.

7:41
P
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M
. Notice that Sophie will handle the situation with a lot of grace. She'll look at you sympathetically and give Janie polite smiles. Wonder if Sophie is really as crazy as you made her out to be in your mind. Try to remember if Sophie has always been this pretty. Have her eyes always been this root beer brown? Did her left cheek always dimple like that when she smiled?

7:46
P
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M
. Powell will start in. What are you doing with your life,Danny? You're not still picking up dead bodies, are you? Do you think there's a future in that? Don't you have a daughter to think about now? Wonder how Powell knows about Taylor. Remember that you told Janie on the phone, earlier that day. Make a mental note not to tell Janie anything anymore.

7:47
P
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M
. Decide there's one of two ways you can respond to Powell: you can be a smart ass or you can go on the offensive. Because, obviously, ignoring him won't work. Say to Powell, “Are you still working at the Space Center?'

Powell will say, “No. I'm working at Lockheed now.”

“But you're still an engineer? You're still working for the defense department?”

“Yes. And making a good living at it.”

“So you're basically working on bombs. Missiles. You're working on ways to kill as many people as possible from as far away as possible. So you're creating dead bodies all over the world and you're getting on my case for picking dead bodies up?”

Powell will grow strangely silent.

Janie will scold you: “You're being inappropriate, Danny.”

You'll suddenly feel like a kid again. But not in a good way. Decide that you don't need to be where you are. Thank Janie and Powell for dinner and walk away. Do it abruptly enough so that no one will have time to protest.

7:49
P
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M
. Sophie will come out into the front lawn and catch you as you're unlocking your bike. She'll say, “Sorry about that.” Shrug. She'll say, “Let's get a drink. Just me and you.” Agree to go.

7:54
P
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M
. Lock your bike up to the post outside of Sullivan's. Sophie's Volvo will already be in the parking lot.

7:55
P
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M
. Join Sophie at the bar. It's fairly empty. Sophie has wine. She's ordered a beer for you. Some kind of fancy brown British beer. Take a sip. It'll taste good.

7:59
P
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M
. While Sophie is talking about Atlanta, think about the sex you used to have with her. Remember the mornings when she'd grab your erection and say, “We can't waste this.” Remember the way she'd bite down on the side of her bottom lip when you did things right. Invite her to play a game of darts before you drive yourself mad.

8:48
P
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M
. After a few games of darts and another brown British beer, you'll start to feel good. You'll start to forget everything. Sophie will seem remarkably put together. You'll start to feel like her bad times are all part of the past. At that exact moment, Sophie will say to you, “Why'd you leave me, Danny?”

Even though the answer seems obvious, tell her anyway. “You were just too mean to me.”

“I was going through a rough time,” she'll say. “I broke a lot of things that meant a lot to you. I'm sorry about that.”

Say, “Don't apologize.”

She'll say, “No. I'm sorry about that. But couldn't we have worked it out? I was never that mean. I was never mean to you like Janie is.”

Point out the obvious: “You stabbed me.”

Sophie will look hurt. She'll look at you like,
how could you say that to me?
She'll shake her head. She'll say, “No. I don't believe it.”

Try to make sense of this. How could she not believe it? Try to see things from her perspective. Could she have been sleep-stabbing? You've gotten up and walked in your sleep before. One time, you even sleepwalked outside of your trailer and took a leak against the side wall. You didn't remember any of it until Libra told you the next morning. Could this have been what Sophie was going through? It seems unlikely. But there's also blackout. Even you've blacked out. Even you have drank so much that you don't remember whole chunks of a night. You can't remember even when you're reminded. Bart and Sophie were very drunk that night. They drank more after you saw them. It's very possible that she was in blackout when she stabbed you, that she has no first hand memory of doing it at all. Tell her, “I have about ten thousand dollars worth of medical bills to prove it.”

“I'd like to see that.”

You won't be able to show her the bills. The hospital has found your new address and phone number. They are hounding you again. But you don't exactly carry the bills around with you. Be honest. You just throw them away when they come.

8:51
P
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M
. Lift up your shirt. Tell Sophie, “You can see the scars.” Sophie will bend down to look at them. She'll rub her fingers against them. She'll stand back up and look you in the eyes and start crying. Give her a hug. She'll put her face in that soft spot between your shoulder muscle and your chest muscle. Her tears will soak your shirt. Her breath will be warm against your chest.

8:52
P
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M
. Realize that it's ridiculous to comfort the woman who stabbed you. Especially when she needs comfort to deal with the fact that she did stab you. Let go.

8:53
P.M.
Sophie will lose a little grace. She'll leave abruptly. Too abruptly for you to react. Stand there with darts in your hand. Ask yourself, what's next?

The next thing was the fucking Samoan. Or whatever he was. He was a big, fat guy, built like an offensive lineman, taller than me and I'm usually the tallest guy in the room. He looked Samoan. Helen called him Samoan. So I took him at that. And, anyway, the most important thing about him was that he was stalking me. Everywhere I turned, the fucking Samoan was right behind me.

It didn't make sense to me, to be honest. If Libra's parents were going to be this obvious about having me tailed, why didn't they keep Clay Barker on the job? I liked Clay. I would've ridden around with him and made it easier on everyone. But this fucking Samoan, man…

I hopped on my bike and headed down to Helen's garage. There, I could close the door and narrow my world down to a dim room and a single flame welding metal. Everything else would fade away. On the ride there, though, the Samoan followed me in his car.

He couldn't have been more obvious. Even at my fastest, I only went maybe twelve or thirteen miles an hour on that bike. Which was normal. But for a car to ride behind me at that speed caused all kinds of problems. Other cars honked at the Samoan, yelled at him, made crazy passes around him. The Samoan seemed undaunted. He just rode behind me. Blank expression. Sunglasses on.

I tried to ignore him until I got to Helen's. Once I was there, I locked myself in the garage and did my best to forget.

My latest sculpture was on the workbench. This was my favorite so far. I'd taken old fenders and banged them out into a big bowl, and I'd cut up the edges of the bowl so that it looked like flames. In the center of this flaming bowl, I was welding together a figure that was seated like Rodin's
Thinker,
only, of course, my thinker was a monkey. I had him sitting on his haunches, one long arm on his chin and one wrapped around his leg and, hopefully, when it was done, the monkey would look guarded and scared of his thoughts. And the world would be burning around him.

That was the idea, anyway. So far, I only had a frame of a monkey sitting there. This was the day I'd give the monkey skin and a face. I had a busted chimney flue to make the skin out of. I took out my clippers and got to work.

Joe came into the garage as I got started. Or the ghost of Joe. Or my imaginary friend Joe. However you want to think of him. He would come by now and then when I welded. We'd chat. It helped me deal with his death.

I cut the flue. Joe walked by my pile of sculptures. He ran his finger along them. Ordinarily, I would've warned against this. Most of the sculptures had sharp edges and could cut you. Joe was beyond bleeding. He touched the sculptures as he walked down the line. “You've been busy,” he said.

“I have.”

“This is a whole lot of metal. A whole lot of work.” He stepped back and looked at the sculptures as a whole. “How much money would you have made if you had spent this time welding for Duane instead of making these sculptures?”

“I don't know. A couple grand.”

“How much do you think you'll make off of this stuff?”

“Who cares?” I said.

“Humor me,” Joe said.

“I don't know. Helen and her ex-husband set up a gallery show for me. Helen said her ex-husband had friends with money. Maybe I can make some decent scratch. I don't really care, though.”

“Of course you care,” Joe said. “Everyone cares. No one wants to spend this much time and heart on something and not make at least a little dough.”

I nodded. Fair enough. I wrapped the metal around the monkey's leg frame. A couple of snips to adjust it just right and a weld down the back and the skin looked pretty smooth. Of course, there should be hair. I should do something there. But first things first. I picked up the flue and started cutting the skin for the next leg.

Joe walked over to the workbench. “Another monkey,” he said.

“Yep.”

“You remember that monkey you made for me when you were in high school?”

I nodded.

“Whatever happened to that thing? I loved that thing.”

“I think you know, Joe,” I said.

Joe looked at the floor, at the metal shavings and his white bare feet and the way his tan stopped a few inches above his ankles. His legs got this way from years of working landscaping. It looked like he forever had on a pair of socks. “It's hell raising a kid,” Joe said. “You should try it some time.”

I kept cutting the flue. “I'm a dad, now,” I said. “Turns out Taylor's my daughter.”

“I heard,” Joe said.

“How could you have heard? Who else talks to you but me?”

Joe looked at me. “Sometimes I just float around in your brain, picking up bits of gossip.”

I shook my head in short, tight jerks, as if I were trying to shake Joe out of my mind. His ghost or whatever he was still stood in front of me.

“That's some shit,” he said. “What kind of dad are you gonna make? You're almost as bad as me.”

“You were a good dad, Joe,” I said. I looked down at his white feet when I said it. I think Joe nodded. I kept making the monkey's skin. Joe changed the subject.

We chatted like that for the next few hours. Helen wasn't around. No one could see what I was doing in that garage. No one knew that I spent hours talking to dead people in there. Sometimes it was Libra, but usually it was Joe. There was no harm in it, anyway. It kept my mind occupied while I welded the skin on my thinking monkey. The ghost of Joe even modeled the pained expression I put on the monkey's face.

By early that afternoon, the monkey was more or less done. I'd probably think of other shit to do to him. I'd probably tinker a little more before leaning him against the wall to sell. For the time being, I felt done. I started cleaning up and thinking about the Samoan.

He was sitting outside of Helen's garage, just as I'd expected. Helen's truck was out of the driveway. That meant she must've seen him as she left for work earlier that day. I couldn't have this. I couldn't have a stalker watching me and all my friends. I couldn't cause a traffic jam every time I rode my bike. I couldn't just ignore problems and wait for them to go away. I leaned my bike against Helen's garage door and walked over to the Samoan.

I didn't storm over there or anything. In my head, I thought about running over there, yanking him out of the car, and thrashing him. Giving him a good, sound beating. I was actually okay with that thought. The Samoan wasn't in a wheelchair. He was big enough to defend himself. Hell, he was quite a bit bigger than me. I wouldn't be a bully if things got physical. But I held off that screaming id and decided to just talk to the Samoan.

I put my hand on the roof of his sedan. His window was open. Fast food bags and wrappers littered the floor of his car. He had a hamburger on his lap and a forty-four ounce soda between his legs. I said, “I can't have you following me like this. Do what you have to do and move on.”

He lifted the soda to his lips and drank. He said nothing. I looked into his sunglasses and saw my reflection.

“I know who you work for,” I said. “You work for the Fultons. You're the second dick they've sent after me. The first one is in a wheelchair.”

The Samoan laughed.

“So let's get it out in the open. What do they want from me?”

The Samoan lifted the burger to his mouth, took a bite, and chewed. I wasn't going to say anything more. I'd already laid my cards down. If he didn't start talking right after he stopped chewing, things were gonna get ugly. I waited. He chewed. He washed it down with more soda. I started the countdown in my head. Ten, nine, eight… The Samoan set his drink in a holder. I looked to see if his door was unlocked. It was. Five, four, three… “They want you to come to Flagstaff,” the Samoan said.

“I'm not with Libra, anymore,” I said. “I don't know where she is.”

The Samoan looked at me like I was crazy. “Are you fucking kidding?”

“You've been following me. You can see Libra's not here. I don't know where she is.”

“Libra's fucking dead,” the Samoan said.

And I knew that. Of course I knew that. But he didn't know I knew that and he knew good and fucking well that Libra and I had dated and even been serious and lived together and this is how he told me that she died?
Libra's fucking dead?
What kind of bastard was I dealing with? I'd had enough of this guy. I yanked his door open and grabbed him by the throat and ripped him out of his seat.

He was too heavy for me to lift out of the car, but I had a hold of his throat and heaved with enough force that he followed. He stumbled out of his car. I tripped him and forced him down before he ever got a safe footing. He hit the ground, flat on his back. I put my knee on his chest and leaned most of my weight into it. My first punch went for his nose. It's a good place to start when the guy you're fighting is surprised. I missed and hit the sunglasses. The frames flew off his face. A left followed that right, though, and my left hit his nose. It wasn't as hard as I wanted it, but it was hard enough to hurt my hand and bust open his nose. His eyes teared up. Both of his hands went up to his face. Blood seeped between them. I leaned over and punched the hands on his face a couple of times. He kicked back. His knee missed my sack by inches. I couldn't have that. He was down and I was up. There was no reason for me to punch. I jumped off him and started kicking him. The first couple of kicks went for his ribs. He tried to crawl away but I kicked his arms out from underneath him. My toe hit his nose on one of these kicks. He gave up at that point. He curled into the fetal position. It did me no good to keep kicking him. That was that, as far as I was concerned. He wasn't fighting back anymore and I'd made my point.

I checked his waistband and ankles for weapons. None there. I rolled up the window to his car, pulled the keys out of the ignition, locked the door, and shut it. I threw the keys about twenty yards down the middle of the street. This way, if he had a weapon in his car, he couldn't get to it before I was gone. I kicked him one more time. Not hard. Just enough to keep him down. “There's your answer,” I said. “Give it to the Fultons.”

I walked back to my bike. The Samoan didn't move. I rode away, wishing he would've fought harder so I wouldn't feel so bad about what I'd just done.