You Believers (3 page)

Shuffling through the racks of clothes inside, she kept thinking she shouldn’t spend the money. They couldn’t afford it. “I don’t know, I don’t know,” she muttered to herself as she rifled through hangers holding tops and skirts.

Then the clerk was suddenly beside her, said, “Can I help you?”

Katy jumped. “I don’t know,” she said. Then she looked at the woman, smiled, reached and squeezed the woman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry. It’s just I’m going a little nuts. I’m about to get married and all. Prewedding jitters, I guess.”

The clerk nodded and said Katy had a pretty ring.

“It was his grandmother’s,” Katy said. “The diamond’s not that big, but I like the little designs in the gold.”

“You buying stuff for your honeymoon?”

Katy shook her head and moved hangers across the rack. “Taking a little trip back home. I like it here, but sometimes I feel like Dorothy, want to click my heels, close my eyes, and go home. But then once I’m back there, I know I won’t like it. I’ll know I should be back here. No matter where I am, seems I always want to be someplace else.” Katy looked up and sighed. “Know what I mean?”

The clerk, a sweet-looking older woman, smiled and said, “Tell me about it.” The clerk offered a little white top. “This will look great with your tan.”

Katy took the top. It was cute, cut to show off her shoulders. “I just don’t know if I’m the marrying kind.”

“Oh, you poor young girls,” the clerk said. “You just have too many choices these days.”

“You sound like my mom,” Katy said.

“I don’t mean to lecture,” the clerk said. “It just seems to me these days there aren’t any rules.”

Jesse studied her truck. The Tennessee license plate said, “
POSITIV
.” Optimistic was good. They went along easy. And it could take days before her truck got into the system back in Tennessee. Perfect. He laughed and sang in a monotone, “Over the river and through the woods . . .”

Mike lit a cigarette. “You one crazy motherfucker, man.”

Jesse waved a hundred-dollar bill and motioned to Mike to move the car closer. “Now, you keep your mouth shut. If she asks, you look stupid, say we just gotta take the car to your granny’s house. Now move.”

Mike’s hands trembled as he gripped the wheel. “Why’s it got to be my granny?”

Jesse leaned forward, his eyes on the store. “Come on, we’ve got a job to do.”

Mike nodded. He was the driver. He told himself that no matter what came of this, he was just the driver. They needed her truck to hit the pawnshop. Get guns, get cash from Jesse’s friend Zeke. Then Jesse could skip town and run back to Atlanta the way he always said he’d do, and Mike would have some cash to buy groceries for his granny, maybe fix his car, score some more weed. “A simple plan, man,” Jesse had said. But Jesse was always saying,
A simple plan, man
. Jesse made it all sound easy and clean. Mike knew him from juvy. Mike knew Jesse had been behind that dude in the laundry getting stabbed to death with a laundry pin. The guy was always wanting to suck somebody off for cash. But when he hit on Jesse, he hit on the wrong man. When the word got out about some fucker—even a fag—dying like that, stabbed two hundred times with a laundry pin, people said, “Man, that’s fucked up, even in here.” Jesse just shrugged, said, “Everything got a reason, man.” Mike wished he could be like Jesse, all fire and wires and sparks inside. But cool somehow, like the cool blue of a gas flame.

Jesse laid the hundred-dollar bill on the dash, stretched his arms, and cracked his knuckles. With batting gloves stretched tight and smooth on his hands, he looked like he could be ready to knock a fastball out of the park.

Mike watched the glass door of the store. It didn’t seem right to use his granny like bait. Jesse had said he wouldn’t hurt whoever they hit, but Mike knew Jesse’s need to hurt whatever he held in his hands. Except dogs—he had a thing about dogs. And kids. Little kids. Mike hoped maybe that girl inside would be lucky, have a dog in her truck. Jesse wouldn’t go after a girl with a dog there beside her. Mike looked toward the truck. Then he got to wondering if the truck color was called sky blue or robin’ s-egg blue. He’d always liked that color on a truck. He felt Jesse staring at the side of his face. Jesse had a look that really could burn. “How do you do that, man?”

Jesse dropped back and leaned against the passenger door. “What?”

“That thing you do with your eyes.”

Jesse smiled. “Told you, man. I’m the devil. Don’t know why folks have such trouble believing a thing like that. They’ll believe just about anything but that.” In one quick move, he popped the glove box, reached under the papers, and pulled out a bag with a couple of tight little joints rolled and some loose weed. He looked Mike in the eye. “I knew you were stoned, you fucker. You get all paranoid and fucked up when you smoke. I told you, lay off this shit till the job’s done.”

“I don’t get paranoid. I just think about things.” Mike watched the storefront while Jesse shoved the weed in the pocket of his jeans.

“Here she comes,” Mike said as Katy walked out of the shop. She slipped her sunglasses on.

Jesse watched her, thinking,
Ignorant, not looking where she’s going, too busy digging for keys. Not seeing a damned thing
.

Jesse grabbed the hundred-dollar bill. “Amazing what some folks will do for a buck.”

Katy stood outside the store, happy with what she’d bought: the little white top, a bra and panties, and a short black skirt that would show off her legs. Randy always said her legs were her best part—well, not her best part. Then he’d laugh. Katy looked back toward the store, saw the clerk standing there watching, thinking Katy was some kind of criminal or nut just because she’d wanted to use the restroom to change into the new underwear. The woman had backed off, looked at her like she was some kind of whore, said, “What kind of woman needs to change her bra and panties in a store?” Katy had just said, “Never mind,” and figured she’d change at the McDonald’s down the road. She knew Randy would like the matching black lace bra and panties. Randy liked it when she took extra care to dress for him. He liked most everything she did, except taking something without asking. Once it was just a cigarette from his pack on the table. And then the shirt. He’d been really pissed about her taking it when she’d left his house that night. But he was asleep, and there was a cool rain falling, and she needed something over her tank top. So she just picked up his shirt from the floor. She told him she’d return it, and he said that wasn’t the point. Now it was in the truck, just picked up from the cleaners because it was a Brooks Brothers. She’d take it back, and she’d surprise him with a nice clean shirt and new black lace underwear. The clerk came out of the store, said, “Miss, why are you standing here?”

Katy laughed. “Ma’am, I’m just standing here thinking about a man. Don’t you remember just standing and thinking about a man?”

“Well, I’d be more comfortable if you did your thinking someplace else.” Then she gave Katy a look that meant nothing but business and went back inside.

Katy laughed and headed for her truck. She hoped Billy would
work late. She’d need the time to get to Randy’s, the grocery store, then home to clean up and make that lasagna and run him a bath that would make him forget they’d ever had a fight. The good wife. She’d make him the good-wife meal. Just like her mother. But she didn’t want her mother’s life. So what the hell was she doing?

She got in the truck, found her keys, and wished she had her cell phone. If she had her phone, she’d call Randy to say she was coming, and then maybe she’d call Billy to tell him she was making the lasagna he liked. She knew it was messed up. She looked at the keys in her hand, realized she was sitting there in a sweat, an idiot in a truck, baking in the heat.

Katy flinched when Jesse opened the passenger door and jumped in.

He tossed the hundred-dollar bill in her lap and smiled. “Mind giving me a ride?”

“What?” The plastic bag of clothes crumpled to her feet.

“I need you to follow that car. It’s kind of an emergency, and taxis won’t run to where we need to go.”

She studied his face. Good-looking and smooth. “You’re sitting on my boyfriend’s shirt.”

He lifted the shirt, smoothed it across his lap. “Sorry,” he said. Then he smiled a smile that was just a little bit devilish. “Come on.” He gave a little shrug like a boy. “It’s just a little drive.” Yeah, he was cute, and he knew it.

She glanced back at the white Datsun rumbling behind the Dumpster. The driver looked like a kid, soft round face, big dark eyes staring at the man beside her.

“Come on,” he said. She turned and looked into his eyes, green flecked with black and looking straight at her. She’d always had a thing for green eyes. She tried to guess his age, early twenties, she figured, younger than she was, but worn. He was hard-looking, like
a man who didn’t eat enough real meals, a man who worked out in a basement. He had a scar on his cheekbone, a little crescent shape. But what a mouth, pretty lips that curved in just the right places. The kind of mouth that knew just how to kiss. Pushy but firm and soft.

He smiled, leaned a little closer. “Yeah, I know. You like my face. I get that.” He picked up the hundred-dollar bill. “But I’m not looking for a date right now. I just need you to follow that car.” She liked the smell of him, clean but that man smell underneath.

“Why should I follow that car?” she asked. Katy had tended bar for years. She was used to guys wanting things. Asking questions was the best way she knew to make them stall. Men, no matter what they were after, always liked a little time to talk.

“Why?” The bill dropped into her lap, and he eased back into the seat beside her. “Don’t you need the money?”

“Well, sure, but—”

“Well, sure. Yes, you need the money. The thing is, my friend there, his name is Ronald, and I’m Brad.” He offered to shake her hand, and she almost took it, but she kept her hands on the steering wheel. “Okay, then, I understand your caution, some strange dude jumping in your truck—”

She laughed. “Well, yeah.”

He smiled. “You see my friend there, Ronald, he’s a little nervous. His granny, she’s sick, and she lives way out there in Whitwell. Out by Lake Waccamaw.”

Then she grinned, sat up, looked around. “Is this a joke? Where’s Randy?”

“I don’t know no Randy,” Jesse said. “What you talking about?”

“Randy. My friend. He likes to play little tricks on me. He lives out by Lake Waccamaw. I drive out there sometimes.”

“That’s nice,” Jesse said. “It’s real pretty country out there, isn’t it?”

She nodded. “Yeah, there’s something pure out there. No tourists. Just trees and water and sky.”

“And Randy,” he said. “But I guess you just drive out there for the nature and all.”

She turned to him. “Look, I’d like to help you out, but I gotta get home.”

Jesse shook his head and leaned closer. There was a softness to him, but a confidence. She liked that soft confidence in a man. She breathed that scent of him. He definitely knew what he had. He sat back and looked out her windshield as if this were just another conversation. “You got a chance to do something good here. I saw your license plate—
POSITIV
.’ You like to think positive, right?”

“I try,” Katy said.

“You like to do good things, right?”

She nodded, looked back at the other guy in the car.

Jesse sighed. “Well, Ronald’s granny, she’s sick, and he’s got these groceries in his trunk, and he’s gotta get the stuff to her, and if he makes it there, he can get a neighbor to work on the car.” He nodded, rocking in the seat beside her. “See, she’s waiting, and we’ve got these groceries in the trunk, and it’s a long ways out there through farm country. And that car, it’s always stalling out, and you got no idea how bad that can be in this heat.”

It sounded like a good story, but there was something off. “I need to get home,” she said. “My fiancé—”

“What about Randy? Nah, Randy isn’t your fiancé.” He said the word mean and teasing. He lifted the hundred-dollar bill and held it to her face. “For your gas and trouble. It’s just forty-five minutes from here. But then, you know that ’cause Randy lives out there, and you like to drive out and see him.”

She studied her hands on the steering wheel. The engagement ring shone in the sunlight. Something was wrong. This felt like a
joke. It had to be a joke. Maybe it was Billy’s joke. Maybe Billy had found out about Randy. Maybe Billy somehow knew where Randy lived. “Is this a joke?”

“Nah, man,” Jesse said. “This is serious. Listen to that car of his.”

She listened to the chugging, staggering sound of the engine. “I’m sure it’s something simple,” she said. “You can just pull up there to a station. You could use some of that hundred dollars to fix his car.”

He smiled again as if he were telling her a joke she just didn’t understand. “Not when we can get it fixed for free. And besides, I can’t keep track of the money he owes me.” He opened his palms in a little helpless gesture. She studied that hundred-dollar bill. “It’s the principle of the thing,” he said.

“I mean why would I want to drive out to Lake Waccamaw?” she said. It was just too strange that Lake Waccamaw was exactly where she was heading as soon as she changed into that new underwear. He waved the money again, then shrugged, made a move to get out of the truck. But he didn’t leave. He paused, looked back at her.

She reached for her purse. It lay open between them.

“Look,” he said, “nothing funny is going on here. We just need you to go along in case the car dies. We can fix the car for nothing if we get out there. Ronald’s granny, she’s waiting, and if we don’t hurry, that milk in the trunk is gonna turn. I need a ride, that’s all.” He dropped the hundred dollars into her purse, zipped it tight, and tossed the purse into her lap. “There and back,” he said. “And tonight you and your fiancé, or Randy, can go have a steak dinner on me.”

“I don’t eat steak,” she said.

“Tofu, then.” He smiled. “Go have twenty tofu-bean-sprout suppers on me.”

He was really good-looking when he smiled. Like some rock star. Flashing eyes, sandy hair that fell in his face. He had country-boy good looks, the kind of face that promised wild rides in fast cars
though green hills. Definitely the type she liked. “Come on,” he said softly. “My friend over there, his granny’s waiting, and she doesn’t have a phone. All you gotta do is start the engine and pull out, follow that car.”