$200 and a Cadillac

XVI



Janie lay awake in the dark.

It was something she did and it bothered her. Despite Eli’s comments, despite the way her youth had taught her to act around men to get along with them, deflect, and sometimes to control them, she rarely went home with a stranger. In fact, she’d only been in a room at the Super 8 a few times before. But on those occasions, much as this one, her eyes roamed the walls at four a.m. trying to make out the shapes in the dark, feeling guilty about feeling good, and then getting angry with herself for feeling either way at all.

She thought through the catalogue of men, or boys, or distractions, or whatever they were at the different times of her life. The first one only a few days before her sixteenth birthday. There were eight altogether during high school. That first one, two as a sophomore, four as a junior—maybe that was excessive, but she was only seventeen—and then the guy she dated her senior year. The love of her life, or so she thought. They’d tried to make it work when she went to San Diego, but all that did was ruin her first year of college.

Then there was Tom, the math nerd. They dated for two inexplicable years. That made nine. Then it was her last year of college and she was determined to enjoy it. Fires on the beach. Guys with wet hair and surfboards and not a care in the world. But even then, getting drunk and stoned and running around on the beach and splashing in the water, she’d only been with five of them. That made fourteen by the time she finished college.

She worked for one celibate year, and then life got serious. She dated one guy briefly during her master’s program and then returned to Nickelback. And in those five years there were five others, including Hank. That made an even twenty. She was thirty-two years old. She’d been having sex more than half her life— nearly seventeen years—and that was barely more than one a year. Was that so bad? If she’d ever found the right one then the number would be smaller—but she hadn’t. It was that simple. Was there a certain number she was supposed to stop at? Twenty just seemed like a lot. It sounded like a big number, but it wasn’t. Was it?

She knew this calculus of promiscuity, filled with strange Puritanical variables, was silly and yet she ran through it anyway, as though the final number could have some meaning, could be some indicator of her own self-worth. She wondered how many other women were haunted by the same thing. Not daily. Not all the time. But in quiet moments, late at night, when they were studying the walls. And then the anger would start again. If a man ever made the same calculation, it was merely to brag to his friends.

She listened to Hank’s breathing beside her. He was forty-nine. Forty-nine. She remembered her father being that age. When had she started sleeping with men her father’s age? How did that happen? Not that it mattered to her, not really. It was merely one more indicator that her life was adrift—creeping toward old age, slowly, but surely and steadily. How many women had he been with? Janie did the math in her head. Even at her average, which she rounded in her head to 1.2 per year, and starting at sixteen years old, that was thirty-two years and roughly thirty-eight and a half women. Call it forty. What did it mean? Nothing, certainly, because he was a man.

She turned to watch him sleeping. Even in the dim room, she could see his chiseled features, make out his dark hair, his olive skin, the stubble on his cheeks. Nothing fit together. He drank and played pool and moved around a bar with macho confidence. Yet in bed he’d been hesitant, almost timid, as though he wasn’t quite sure what to do with her, caressing the curve of her hip in the darkness like delicate porcelain. And then his conversation: reflective, introverted, analytical, befitting the reluctant Ivy League philosophy student he admitted to once being only after she pestered him about it.

The bar had been nearly empty. The chemist had gone. Her brother and Eli were long gone too. Only a couple of tables still had people at them. She sat across from Hank trying to figure him out. He said he started at Columbia the fall after his brother was killed and he never really felt comfortable there. He nearly quit several times, but to do what, he didn’t know. He told her about how his father was never the same after the funeral, and in fact had seemed surprised that there was actually a casket, a hole in the ground, a flag folded by a color guard and given to his wife. As though the visit from the captain and the letter from the general, informing them of their son’s death had all been a mistake. None of it was real until they put him in the ground.

Then Hank ordered a scotch, neat, and leaned toward her as he spoke. His eyes lit up, as though something metallic lay just behind them, trying to push its way out through the holes in his head. “By the time I finished school,” he said, “the war that killed my brother was over, we were pulling out. The communists had won. I could still remember my old man, back in, I dunno, ’66, ’67, talking about how the communists were evil and that they had to be stopped and how we didn’t understand fascism. He used to say, ‘You don’t remember Mussolini.’ He would go on about secret police and torture and how people who tried to live outside the natural law were doomed and that right always triumphed. He still believed that there was a set of correct rules to live by, and that good always prevailed.”

Hank took a slow sip of the scotch and shook his head. “He never talked like that again after Vincent died. I only half-believed it as a kid. And then there was Kent State, Watergate, the Weathermen, and an insane obsession with throwing kids in jail for taking drugs. And all of the sudden, I’m looking around wondering where was this set of f*cking rules my old man seemed to think were governing society.

“You’re too young to remember what that was like. But it just seemed like everyone was going around doing whatever they wanted—or whatever they thought they could get away with. No one had any guiding principles. No values. Nothing. It was like everyone in America—from the president, to the Army, to student protestors, to Charles Manson and the f*cking Zodiac killer—woke up one day and said, ‘F*ck you. I’m doing what I want.’”

Hank took another drink and his eyes flickered. “And then I was walking down the street one day. Broadway, right through Times Square. This is, oh, probably 1976, and I see these two guys on this corner doing a drug deal. That was pretty common in Times Square in those days, so I just kind of watched out of the corner of my eye. Then, right after the one guy hands over this baggie, the other guy sticks a knife in him and runs off. He’s just stabbed somebody right in broad daylight. I couldn’t believe it. I don’t know what came over me, but I’d just had it. I was just like, goddamnit—” Hank slammed his palm on the table and his glass of scotch jumped.

“Is this what it’s come to? Is there no morality in the world at all? I mean, Jesus F*cking Christ. So this guy’s running, but he doesn’t see me, and I cut over in front of him and lay this f*cker out. I mean, I grab him as he runs by and slam him into a wall and kick him in the face and all of the sudden, I’m down on my hands and knees just wailing on this guy. I can’t stop. I’m pounding his face into the pavement. I’m about to kill him. Then, I feel these two guys grab me and drag me off him. And they keep dragging me right over to the curb and they throw me in the back of this limo.”

Hank laughed and finished the scotch. “I swear to God. One second I’m pounding on this guy in the middle of Times Square, and the next I’m sitting in the back of this limo with this old guy smoking a cigar and telling me that the world has gone to hell and you can’t trust anyone anymore and that it was good to see a citizen sticking up for the rights of others and he asks me if he can buy me a drink.

“I’ve still got adrenaline pumping through me, but I say sure. So twenty minutes later I’m sitting in this little bar with this old guy. He’s asking me what I do, and I wasn’t really doing anything at the time. I tell him I’m a student, although I’d graduated a year before, and I was just drifting from job to job trying to figure things out. You know the routine.

“And then the old guy starts asking me why I was beating the guy up. And I really didn’t have a good answer. It just seemed like the right thing to do. The old guy says he agrees with me, that it was the right thing to do. He tells me he happened to be watching from the car, saw the whole thing. He said he was impressed by my immediate reaction, almost like a reflex, and he told me that when he saw me he knew there really was justice in the world. He said he could see that I possessed an innate and immediate sense of the true moral code, as he called it.

“I remember I said something to him like, well, it was a drug transaction, so it’s not like these were great people to start off with. And I’ll never forget it, he leaned into me and pointed a finger at me and said, ‘Son, that’s where you’re wrong. These two guys, they’d made a business arrangement, and then the one guy tried to pull a fast one. That’s wrong. It doesn’t matter what the business arrangement was about. You make a deal, you stick to the deal. That’s what’s wrong with our society. The law, what’s the law? Where does it come from? I’ll tell you where.’ This is what the old guy says to me. He says, ‘I’ll tell you where. It’s not out there, it’s not from outside. It’s not the government. It’s not the courts. It’s right here.’ And he points to his chest like this and says, ‘We are the law. Each of us. That’s the essence of democracy. That’s what makes this country great. Each of us is responsible for our own actions because this is a free country. And the price we pay for freedom is responsibility.’”

Janie shook her head, processing it all, and then said, “That’s bizarre. Who was this old guy anyway? Did you ever find that out?”

“Yeah, his name was Luciano Fazioli. Hard as nails old Italian guy.” Hank caught himself about to say more. He looked down at his empty glass, as if blaming it for something. Then he added, “He made millions running pawn shops all over the city.”

Janie said, “Sounds like an old man with some interesting ideas about the way things work.” She thought about it for a second, and then added, “Most people wouldn’t say two drug dealers owed a moral obligation to each other because they live in a democratic society. Especially when that society makes the very thing they’re doing illegal.”

Hank shook his head slightly and said, “He meant democracy in the sense of a social contract. We can all be a party to many social contracts. The obligations two drug dealers owe each other are no different from the obligations two Masons owe each other, or two members of the same homeowner’s association. Once you’ve joined the group, you’re bound by the code of the group and the penalties they’ve agreed to for violations of the code. Joining the group is an act of consent to the rules of the group. Just like forming a democracy requires an act of consent.”

Janie shrugged, “But you can always choose to quit, can’t you? Then you don’t have to follow the rules.”

“Right,” Hank smiled back. “But you can’t quit in the middle of something, and quitting doesn’t wipe out the moral obligations you already incurred before you quit. I mean, if you sign a lease on an apartment and decide later that you don’t want to live there, you still have to pay the rent.”

“But that means there are no real moral obligations. Everything is based solely on what people agree to. And that’s not right.” Janie shrugged, “You can’t opt out of a democracy. I mean, I’ve never consented to being an American, I was just born one.”

“Which is why the country has so many problems.” Hank leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table. “The very notion of civic responsibility has eroded to the point of nothing. We don’t value the social contract anymore because none of us ever really chose to join it. It was forced on us by virtue of being born here. Democracy doesn’t work unless everyone consents to it. It’s like Rousseau said, ‘You have to have a unanimous vote, at least the first time.’”

Janie smiled at him. What kind of surveyor was this? “So you think there’s more legitimacy to the laws of a homeowner’s association than the laws of the United States?”

Hank shrugged. “I’m just telling you what Fazioli meant.”

“You sound like you mean it too.”

Hank just sat there, spinning his empty glass on the table.

After a minute, Janie asked, “Doesn’t someone who stays in the United States rather than leave the country consent to its laws? Implicitly?”

Hank grimaced for a second. “That might have been true in the beginning. A guy who didn’t like what was going on could always head west, into the wilderness. But now, as a practical matter, you can’t just move to another country. So no. It’s impractical to opt out.”

“But is that really the key to our moral obligations to each other? Consenting or opting out of some agreement?”

“Of course.”

“But there are some laws you never consent to and can never opt out of.”

Hank leaned back in his chair, tipping it onto its rear legs, grinning. “Don’t tell me you believe in natural law.”

“I don’t know about that,” Janie said. “But I believe in the laws of nature. No one consents to gravity. You can’t opt out of the laws of motion.”

Hank laughed. “You can take the girl out of the physics department, but you can’t take the physics department out of the girl, eh?” He gave her a wink and set the legs of his chair back on the barroom floor.

Hank turned the conversation to the music, the pool table, his fondness for highland single malt. Janie listened without saying much. She just watched him. He seemed to have had enough serious talk for one evening. They ordered another round, drank it, and then the moment came: the long silent stare, eyes meeting eyes, gauging some primal frequency of attraction, an atavistic moment of assessment. No words were said, but there was communication beyond words, harkening back to a time before language, when only actions mattered. Two animals meeting in a native habitat, looking each other over, each determining that the other is an adequate breeding partner. And then come the understanding expressions, the slight and tender touches as they make their way back to the place where the act will be done.

Janie stretched in the bed, feeling restless but trying not to disturb him. She reached one arm off the bed and the tips of her fingers ran over the piled up equipment. Another contrast. She hadn’t believed he really was a surveyor until she saw it. She knew nothing about survey equipment, of course, but when she saw it she sensed immediately what it was and a twinge of disappointment went through her. The sudden death of a girlish fantasy she knew she was too old to feel. He was no different than the others. Why should she think he was? Just a guy who came to town to do a boring job and then leave. That’s all he ever said he was, why should she want him to be something more, or different?

She knew the answer had everything to do with her and nothing with him, and she was tired of thinking about it. She’d had the same reaction to the last guy in her life. She stared up into the darkness and thought about him. Ron Grimaldi had showed up in town, bought her parents’ old house, and chased her around for two and a half years before she relented. He wasn’t her type, but at least he was something new.

Nine months of Ron was enough to take the newness away. Janie realized that women were just objects to Ron—props for his own self-aggrandized vision. She’d seen it in Vegas the few times they’d gone there together for a weekend. Ron with a cigar, wearing a suit, throwing around money like it was nothing to him. She knew she was completely irrelevant to him. It could be her or any one of a thousand cocktail waitresses on his arm or in his bed and it would make no difference to him. Which was why ending the relationship was so easy. For Ron, a relationship was merely having a convenient and consistent sex partner. However, Janie wanted to redefine what they were doing was fine with him.

But between his effortless and expensive carousing and his ability to pay cash for the house, Janie was left with a lingering question as to why he was in Nickelback at all. It couldn’t have been for the forklift job out a Monarch. In fact, he barely seemed to know anything at all about the oil business. The only answer that made sense was that he hadn’t come to Nickelback for the job; he had come there to hide.

It wasn’t until she had decided to stop seeing him that Janie finally asked him about it directly. Late at night, while reclining on his black leather couch in the house where she’d grown up—which she had lately begun treating more and more like her own again—she sipped her wine and just came out with it.

“You’re not really a forklift driver from Houston, are you?”

He hesitated for a second, staring at her from the other end of the couch. “Look,” he grinned, mulling it over, “the only reason I’ll tell you is because the statute of limitations has run. And because I trust you. But you can’t tell anybody. I mean, anyone.”

She agreed. “Who would I tell?”

He cocked his head from side to side, as if trying to shake the pieces of his story into some kind of order inside his head. Then he took a sip of wine and leaned forward to set it on the coffee table. “Okay,” he began, nervously, sitting on the edge of the couch, clapping his hands together a couple of times.

“I used to work for a family, in New York.” He grinned and shrugged his thick shoulders. “You know, the mob, whatever people call it.”

“I didn’t think you were from Houston.”

“I had an uncle in Houston. Owned a car dealership. That’s why I picked it. But anyway, I was an accountant.” He laughed. “You believe that? Really. Yeah, I’m a numbers guy. Gray suit. Green eyeshade. The whole deal. You laugh but it’s true.”

Janie sat up on the couch, holding two fingers over her giggling mouth. “You’re a bean counter?”

Ron raised his right hand. “Swear to God. Fordham University, class of 1984.”

“And you worked for a Mafia family? How does one get a job like that?”

“Ah, it just sort of happened. I had some friends who had some friends. That kind of thing. But it’s not what you think. I mean, I went to work in a business office, right in mid-town. There were five accountants, some lawyers, business managers. I mean, anyone off the street would have just thought this was a small consulting company—which it basically was. I mean, you wouldn’t believe how huge this business was. These guys were investing in everything. Tons of real, legitimate businesses. It’s just that, instead of investor money, they were all propped up by illegal money.”

Ron took a drink from his glass. He seemed to enjoy telling the story, as though he’d been practicing in his head, waiting to get it off his chest for years. “So anyway,” he went on, “I worked there for about ten years, got to know the ins and outs of all the accounting tricks they were using to hide money everywhere, and then I decided to take some.”

“You mean you embezzled from your employer?”

Ron laughed. “Yeah. It was all illegal money anyway. Drugs, gambling, whatever they were doing to get it. I figured, what the hell am I doing slaving away for a salary when these guys are making a fortune. So I started skimming a little here, a little there. Pretty soon I had a decent pile saved up.”

“And then you quit?”

“Yeah. I started to feel like maybe they were on to me, so I just disappeared. That’s how I ended up out here. I figured they’d never look for me in the middle of nowhere.”

“So why the job out at Monarch?”

“To make it look good, for one. I mean, I didn’t want people talking. But also, I realized after I left that I didn’t have enough to live on forever. I needed to make the money last. It’s already running low.”

Janie said, “Money’s a nice thing to have.”

“You’re telling me.” He leaned back into the couch. “It buys you freedom to do what you want. That’s why I need to figure out a way to make some more of it.” He swirled the wine in his glass and studied the color of the liquid in the lamplight. Then he said, “I’ve gotten used to a certain lifestyle that I don’t want to give up.”

Janie laughed, brushed the hair off of her forehead, and said, “I’ve gotten used to a certain lifestyle I’d be more than happy to give up. I’ve been trying to get the hell out of this town for years and I just can’t seem to do it.”

“Sounds like we have the same problem then.”

“So what’s the solution?”

Ron shook his head with eyebrows raised. “Hell, there’s lots of things a guy can get away with in the desert. The problem is picking one and getting it off the ground. That, and finding people you can trust to get the job done. I’ve got money to invest, but I don’t want to get my hands dirty.”

“I don’t have anything to invest,” she said, “and I don’t want to get my hands dirty either.”

“That’s a problem then. You’ve got to bring something to the table to get a cut of the deal.”

Ron grinned at her, sipping his wine. Janie realized at that moment that they were talking about doing something illegal. Forming an honest-to-God conspiracy. Why didn’t it bother her? Was getting involved in crime really this easy? Maybe it was. How hard could it be anyway? She was smarter than most people. And besides, it would feel great to get the hell out of town, especially if she could make a real score beforehand—something to give her a nest egg for her new life. She’d love nothing more than to leave this one-horse town behind, before Monarch shut down and killed the place completely.

Then she thought, wouldn’t it be nice to get some revenge on the oil company in the process? And almost as soon as she thought it, she said, “You really don’t know anything about the oil business, do you?”

He shook his head. “Not a damned thing.”

“Well if you’ve got money to invest, I’ve got one hell of an idea.”

And just like that, they went from lovers to partners.

Janie glanced back over at Hank and exhaled. No man was going to save her, she knew that. But still, it was fun to think about from time to time. A stranger riding into town. A whirlwind romance. A completely new life opening up. Girlish fantasy, certainly, but what was the harm in that? The only downside was that it got boring after a while. And potentially depressing, too. Luckily, Ron had given her a way to take care of her problem herself.

Slowly, she brought her legs from beneath the covers and sat up along the edge of the bed. She could feel her clothes on the floor with her feet and she stood and gathered them up, slipping her legs into her pants, throwing her shirt over her bare breasts. She felt beside the nightstand for her purse and stuffed her panties and bra into it. She slipped into her shoes, then lingered at the door for a moment, planning how to open it without making noise.

Out in the cool air, she paused at the railing along the second floor walkway and stared out across the desert and up into the night sky. Everything was black except the stars, which were only just beginning to fade with the coming day. It would be another hour before the sun began to rise and swallowed them with its overwhelming light.

She descended to the parking lot and listened to the heels of her clogs on the asphalt. The clicking was loud against the silence. She hugged herself, rubbing her arms for warmth as she hurried across the street. She walked down the half block to the Golden Dragon and turned down the driveway to the small parking lot in back where she’d left her car.

She heard a motor coming up the street and turned to look behind her as it passed. The old Dodge Dart went by on the street. It was her brother and Eli, sitting stone-faced and silent in the front seat. She wondered if they’d gotten any sleep.