CHAPTER FOUR
The day was already hot and arid, even at 8AM. The hotel manager said they were having an unseasonably warm fall and we would probably approach the upper nineties later that afternoon. As I stood outside by the Jeep and waited for Dex to finish up paying for the rooms, I welcomed the impending heat. I think it was the Pacific Northwestern in me; most of the year we were enveloped in depressing dampness so I soaked up every warm opportunity I had.
The sun sat loftily above the mountains, its sharp light clearing the cobwebs from my foggy head. I was running on very little sleep. When I wasn’t freezing cold from the room’s air con which just wouldn’t switch off, I was dreaming about bedbugs and/or some coyote zombies. After last night’s “incident” (and I’m sure there will be many of them) I convinced myself coyote zombies were an actual thing.
It wasn’t long before Dex emerged from the office and made his way out towards me. He had black shades on, a plain black tee shirt which fit him perfectly and his black cargo shorts. Against the dry backdrop he bared a resemblance to an emo Man in Black.
“The desert seems to suit you, Mr. Cash,” I said, smiling. He didn’t smile back. He went straight for the back of the Jeep and started riffling through his bag in the trunk.
I peeked over as he frantically started dumping stuff everywhere, searching for something.
“Is everything OK? Did your credit card not go through?”
There was no way I could afford to pay for us.
He quickly shook his head. “That’s all fine.”
He sighed loudly and stood up, his hands pressed against the sides of his head. The next words out of my mouth were going to be ‘what is it?’ but there was something hostile about his current crisis. I decided not to say anything and see what would happen.
I bit my lip, looked away at the mountains and kicked up the dust on the ground with my vintage cowboy boots.
He exhaled again, almost like he was begging me to say something, then quickly turned and ran back into the hotel. He went past the lobby, I guess to his room.
It was obvious that he had forgotten something. I looked in the back where his bag had expunged its bowels. Things were scattered everywhere, but as far as I could make out, all of the camera equipment was present. And he had packed several pairs of underwear (boxer briefs, in case you were wondering. I know I had been).
If we had our gear and were able to pay for the hotel, I wasn’t sure what he was freaking out about. So, I just leaned back against the Jeep, the hot exterior already singing my skin, and waited. I was determined not to freak my own self out just because Dex had lost something important. Lately, when I found myself getting panicky over other people I started reminding myself that it wasn’t my problem.
“We’ve got a problem,” Dex said as he came out of the building, his jaw stern, eyes hidden by the shades.
My heart did a few slow thumpa-thumps. Spoke too soon.
“What?” I asked slowly.
He pointed to the door. “Nevermind. Let’s just get going. Can’t do anything about it right now.”
I exhaled and shook my head at him as I got in the car. He didn’t notice.
I waited for him to say something but five minutes into the drive, he seemed more interested in popping his CDs into the player. As he fumbled for a Deftones album, I caught a shimmer from his left hand. I looked closer. He had a friggin’ ring on his ring finger. It looked exactly like a wedding band.
My heart went thumpa-thump again. Only the feeling was much more devastating than anything else that caused my chest distress in the last 24 hours.
Did Dex get married over the last few weeks? I didn’t even know he was engaged - he had always referred to Jenn as his girlfriend.
I felt stupid and na?ve and, also, a bit sick. I couldn’t help my feelings. It was now obvious that I liked him a lot more than I had let myself believe. If he was married now…ugh. I just felt like it was all over. My despair surprised me.
I think he must have noticed the sudden weight of my mood because he gave me a curious look.
“What? I know you love Chino.”
I shook my head slowly (though yes, I did love the Deftones’ singer) and nodded at his left hand. How could I have not noticed it yesterday?
He looked down at it and wiggled it around in the air. It was hefty platinum ring and looked handsome on his long fingers.
“Ah, you like it? I’m not much of a ring man but I thought it looked passable.”
“When did you get married?” I said, my voice a little squeakier than I would have liked.
He raised his glasses on top of his head and stared into my eyes. His own looked red and a bit wired. He searched me earnestly for a moment before a smile slowly broke across his wide mouth.
“You’re kidding right?” he asked.
I didn’t know. I shrugged, confused.
He laughed and put his sunglasses back on.
“OK kiddo, I guess now’s the time to fill you in on some things.”
Yes, please.
He reached into his pant pocket with his other hand and fished around for something. I watched, still, but my heart was doing summersaults inside.
“Put out your hand,” he said.
I put out my right one. He took my left one instead, flipped it palm down, and slid a ring over my own ring finger.
I looked down. It was a pretty silver ring with a solitary pear-cut diamond on it.
I didn’t know what to say. Or think. What the hell was going on? I felt the tiniest flicker of a shameless, hopeful thought forming at the back of my head.
“Now we are betrothed,” he announced, which only caused the flicker to flame.
“Ummm….,” was the only response I had.
“Funny, I thought you’d be more into it than that,” he joked. I stared at the ring, then at him and then at the ring again.
“This isn’t exactly filling me in on anything. I would have remembered if we had gotten married,” I finally managed.
“Well, it would depend on how drunk you were.”
I gave him an impatient look. The flame was going out.
He smiled at me and shook his head. “OK, well here’s the thing. We’re going to have to be married for the next couple of days. Hope that’s OK with you. And if it’s not, tough tits.”
“Why?”
“The house, the people we are staying with in Red Fox, the people with the ghost problem, are a devout Christian couple.”
“I thought they were Native American…”
“They are. But converted to Christianity, I guess. Anyway, the only way they said they’d let us stay with them is if we were married. And so I told them no problem, we were. Been married for three years.”
This was not going to go well. I was a good liar when I had to be, but I always got the feeling that people could see straight through me. It was probably a confidence thing.
Not only that but Dex and I were not even a couple. I didn’t see how anyone would possibly buy that we were husband and wife. This scheme seemed cooked up out of a Three’s Company episode and we all knew how those ended.
“You’ll be Perry Foray.”
“That sounds way too much like Perry Farrell,” I said. >
“Then it’ll be easier for you to remember.”
He turned his attention back to the dry, endless road and turned up the stereo as if to signify the conversation was over. I will admit that I was feeling a lot better about this scenario than the other scenario (that he had gotten married to Jennifer), but…
I reached over and turned down the volume. He looked ticked but I figured if we were fake married, I could start acting more like a bossy wife.
“What was the other thing?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I sighed. “You lost something. Said you’d tell me about it in the car. We are in the car. The marriage thing obviously wasn’t it. So what was it? Are we getting divorced now too?”
He briefly bit his lip. If I could see his eyes, they probably would have been roaming fretfully.
Finally he said, “Yeah. Well, it’s not a big deal.”
“You said it was a problem.”
“It’s my problem.”
“Well,” I couldn’t help but smile. “Now that we’re married, your problem is my problem.”
A wry tug at his lips. “Oh is that how relationships work?”
“I hear the good ones do.”
He nodded, looking serious, and said, “I forgot my medication.”
His medication. Dex’s pills that kept him at an even keel. Least, that’s how I understood it. As I said earlier, all I knew was that he was bi-polar or something akin to that but I had yet to really understand what that meant with him.
“Oh. OK. Can’t you go to a drugstore and get a refill?”
“No,” he said simply.
“I’m sure if they called your doctor they could do a transfer or something.”
“No, not these pills.”
Uh huh. Not only did he forget them but they seemed to be ultra top-secret medication as well. Why did everything have to be so difficult with him?
“Are you going to be…OK?”
He shrugged, which didn’t really assuage my fears.
“I don’t know. I’ve only been on these pills, well, since we last saw each other.”
“Did I drive you to new medication?”
“You could say that.” It didn’t seem like he was joking.
“Gee, thanks,” I said, mildly hurt. Though this was nothing new, it didn’t help to hear it from him. What was it about me that drove people up the wall?
He gave me a quick smile. “Don’t flatter yourself, kiddo. There was a lot going on and anyway, I think our whole, uh, situation, was enough to cause anyone to re-evaluate things. Didn’t you start to question whether you were losing your mind after the lighthouse? You know, almost dying at the hands of a…thing?”
Before I had time to think, I said, “Yeah, but you were losing your mind way before that.”
He stiffened at that remark.
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I…”
He raised his hand to shut me up.
“The point is,” he continued, “I thought I should be in a better frame of mind if we were to continue to do this whole f*cking circus. So, no, I haven’t been on them long enough to miss a dose and know what happens if I do. But if it’s anything like before, it shouldn’t be that big of a deal.”
I still felt uneasy.
“You’re not going to murder me in my sleep are you?”
“Maybe,” he said, not smiling. “It’ll be easy to do since we’ll be sharing the same bed. I expect you’ll put out now.”
He looked at me, mouth shut and taught.
I assumed he was kidding but there was always that tiny part of me who never knew what to believe. I swallowed hard and turned my attention to the landscape that was becoming more rugged and blistering as we drove on.
Out of the corner of my eye, I eventually I caught Dex grinning. Of course it was a joke. I felt like this might be the longest weekend of my entire life.
Two miserable hours later, we pulled into the sleepy, somewhat desolate town of Red Fox. The air-conditioning in the car decided to putz out 30 minutes into our drive, which meant the last two and a half hours we had the windows down, but with the outside temps, it didn’t do anything to cool us. It was like having a hot blowdryer on your face. My hair was an absolute rat’s nest, tangled to shit, my face was as dry as the cracked desert floor that tumbled by monotonously, and my entire back was soaked with sweat.
Dex didn’t look so good either. He was getting a bit twitchy and irritable, which I would have before attributed to driving in an oven, but now that I knew about his pill situation I couldn’t help keep that in mind. He knew it, too. He kept nervously glancing at me from time to time, wiping the sweat off of his brow and flinging it out the window.
Dry, rolling ranches dotted with sheep and cows announced our arrival into the township. As we got further in, the acres were replaced with a simple mix of adobe storefronts with “For Lease” signs, peeling bungalows with broken fences and rusted bicycles, and a scattering of crooked trailer homes. I’d never been in the Southwest before, but from what I gathered, it looked like a forgotten town, where residents clung desperately to their roots, no matter how badly the rest of the world moved on. There were quite a few Native Americans driving around in faded trucks or strolling the streets nonchalantly. The heat didn’t seem to affect them in the slightest.
We drove through the dusty streets, over the gritty pavement and potholes, until we came to a low wood building at the edge of town. It reminded me of that last structure of civilization that always sat at the edge of an old West main street. Indeed, there wasn’t much beyond the building except the highway and endless scrub which stretched into the surrounding mountains.
Dex drove up beside a weathered Ford truck and put the car in park. He closed his eyes and let out a long sigh. A bead of sweat dripped down his nose.
I peered at the building. A small, hand-painted sign said “Rudy’s Place” and beside that, a neon Budweiser logo. A bar. It wasn’t even noon but Dex drove us straight to the right place. Suddenly, nothing seemed as important as a cold, refreshing beer.
“You read my mind,” I told him.
He didn’t open his eyes or wipe away the sweat droplet, which now hung from the tip of his nose. It started to bug me.
Without thinking, I reached over with my hand and wiped it off. To his credit, Dex didn’t flinch. He opened his eyes though and gave me a strange look.
“We’re meeting someone here,” he said in a tone that insinuated I should know.
“Whatever, I can’t sit any longer.”
I rolled up the window, grabbed my purse and stepped out of the car. I had no idea who we were meeting, I just needed to get out of the car, even though being outside wasn’t much better.
It was absolutely sweltering. You know when people tell you it’s OK because it’s a dry heat? That’s bullshit. 100 degrees dry is still 100 degrees and I was sweating like a pig. I stretched my legs back and forth and tried to take in a breath of fresh air but all I got was dry dust.
A pretty, pale pink adobe house across the street caught my eye in a weird way. There wasn’t anything really unusual about it except for surprisingly colorful flowers adorning the sides. It would have been a soothing sight among all dirt, except for seven large crows perched ominously in a dead tree in the front yard. It was such a weird contrast – perhaps that’s why I felt drawn to it. The murder seemed like a black blot on the smooth fa?ade of the only nice building in town.
And then, a movement at the window of the house caught my eye. There was someone standing there, watching me, watching us. I wished the glare of the window wasn’t obscuring so much, but from what I could make out it was a woman. A woman in a long, poofy, shiny gown with…
I stopped myself. It couldn’t be, could it?
I squinted, straining against the sun. It looked like there were multi-colored dots or pom poms on the dress, scattered throughout. I had seen that before. It made my ears ring and my blood whoosh loudly in my head.
“Hey,” Dex’s voice broke into my trance.
I looked behind me. He was standing by the door, beckoning me over to the bar with his finger, as if he had been waiting a while. Though, maybe he had.
I looked back at the house. The woman in the clown-ish dress was gone. Only the crows remained, as if they were her loyal guardians. I waited a few beats before walking back to Dex.
He took off his sunglasses, shoved them in his pocket and peered at me.
“You OK there, kiddo?”
I nodded, knowing there was no use explaining what I probably didn’t see. “It’s hot.”
He gave me the once over. “You can’t handle the heat, huh?”
Phhfff. As if he could. His shirt was clinging to him (to his pecs, nicely), his hair was a damp mop on his forehead, and if it wasn’t for his telltale smirk I would have thought he was close to passing out.
I crossed my sweaty arms and nodded at the glass door. The layer of grime gave no glimpse to the inside.
“So, who are we meeting here?”
“An old friend.”
“Of mine?”
He rolled his eyes. “Max. My old friend, Max. He was the guy who told me about this place.”
“How do you know him?”
Dex squinted off into the distance, pursed his lips slightly. “In college. We were in the same band.”
“Sing Sin Sinatra,” I said excitedly, remembering that he used to be the singer in a lounge/rock band. He never talked about it much and there were no YouTube clips so I didn’t know too much about them. But I did know he had an amazing voice, no surprise considering how sexy his gravely speaking voice was.
Did I say sexy? Whoops.
He looked a bit chagrined, maybe a bit annoyed. “Yeah, that was it. He played bass. We lost touch but, you know, found each other and shit on Facebook. Turns out these days, he’s a…a…well, I’ll just come out and say it, a ghost whisperer.”
I raised my brows. “Aren’t we considered that?”
He smiled and fished out a piece of Nicorette gum out of his pocket. He started chewing it faster than he should have. Old friend or not, Dex didn’t like talking about him. Or maybe it was the past he didn’t like talking about.
“This guy is supposedly a real ghost whisperer,” he said between chews. “He’s kind of for hire. People call him when they want someone to talk to their dead loved ones.”
“Are you serious?”
His mouth slowed down. “I am serious. Doesn’t mean I think he’s legit.”
He looked around him and peered through the door before continuing, voice lowered, “Actually, I think he’s full of shit. But he called me here and I don’t think he would have done that for nothing.”
And with that he spit out his gum and opened the door to the bar. “After you.”
I walked into the bar. It was dark, very dark, with shades pulled down on most of the streaky windows. It was probably to keep the heat out, and it was doing a fine job, along with the various huge wooden fans that whirred creakily from the ceiling. It gave the place a rather morbid, squalid feel.
A woman stood behind the bar serving a beer to a man who looked like Will Farrell’s Old Prospector from Saturday Night Live, complete with filthy hat and denim jacket. The bartender paused, looking us up and down before giving the man his drink. She was tall, pushing late thirties, weathered and no nonsense. She regarded us very cautiously with no hint of hospitality.
Dex came in beside me gave the woman a quick wave and smile. “Good afternoon. We’re here to meet someone.”
She didn’t say anything but her eyes shifted to the left.
To the left we looked. That part of the bar opened up into a much larger area. There were a couple of pool tables, an ancient pinball machine, scattered tables and chairs, a sawdust floor, lazily placed barrels for “ambience” and a row of booths. In the last booth sat a tall man, the only other person in the bar.
I looked at Dex and whispered, “Is that him?”
Dex stared at him and didn’t mutter a word, but I could see the recognition in his eyes, the wheels turning. We’d found him.
Max looked down at the table, writing something with care. He had earphones on, so he probably didn’t hear us come in but from the engrossed look on his face, he probably wouldn’t have noticed anyway. He was rather attractive – my first thought was that he looked like a ginger rockabilly. He had red hair pushed back into a top-heavy coif, thick lips that were ready to snarl. I couldn’t see his eyes properly but I bet they were green. He was wearing a faded blue flannel shirt that fit his wide frame nicely and gave him a wholesome look that stood out in this joint. Light spilled in from the window next to him, showcasing the dust that floated around his head.
Dex cleared his throat (nervously?) and walked towards him. I followed, wondering if this was going to awkward somehow.
Max looked up as Dex approached and immediately grinned. He threw his earphones on the table with a clatter and leaped up. Standing in front of us I could see how tall he really was, a big, barrel-chested thing of a man.
“Well looky what the cat dragged in!” Max exclaimed and embraced Dex in a bear hug that nearly picked him off the ground. I couldn’t see Dex’s face but he had to be uncomfortable. He didn’t seem like a public affection kind of guy.
They parted, the dust swirling around them.
“Good to see you Max,” he said. “It’s been a while.”
Dex sounded a bit melancholic. Max continued to smile but his eyes fell a bit. I felt like I was intruding on something from out of the past. A lot of baggage hung in the air between them. >
“It’s been too long,” Max said carefully, still with a grin. He had a creamy Southern drawl.
“Just long enough.”
They both smiled at each other with a tinge of shame. Maybe I was imagining that though. Either way, I was starting to feel shy and out of place. I looked behind me at the bartender. She was watching us all intensely. She caught my eye, moved over to a radio and flicked a switch. “Radar Love” came blaring on the speakers. It took me a second to realize the bar must have been dead quiet before.
“Max, this is Perry,” I heard Dex say.
I turned and gave the tall redhead a smile. “Nice to meet you, Max.”
I offered him my hand which he took and shook between his two, large hands. I couldn’t help but stare at them. Nice hands, nice forearms. No wedding ring. Then I remembered I had one on my own damn hand.
“You can call me Maximus, please,” he implored. I looked up at him. I was right, he had very nice, bright green eyes.
Dex snorted. “Maximus? You hated that name.”
Maximus let go of my hand and answered Dex while looking at me, “I hated a lot of things when I was young and stupid.”
“Anyway,” Dex injected, “shall we get down to it?”
“You’re in quite the rush, aren’t you?” Max pondered, more of statement than a question. He was right. Dex was looking agitated, the toothpick was back in his mouth again. I felt a rush of sympathy remembering his medication problems, so I touched Dex’s shoulder and gently pushed him to the booth.
“Why don’t you boys sit down while I get us all beers, OK? My treat,” I smiled broadly at them, trying to dissipate the tension that seemed to be emanating from Dex.
“Why, thank you Perry,” Maximus drawled. “That’s mighty kind of you. Shit.”
I giggled internally at the sound of his drawl and made my way over to the bar. I didn’t really have the extra cash, nor did I want to deal with the bartender but I had to do something. Besides I wanted a beer from the moment we pulled into this desolate town.
Luckily, the bartender was pleasant enough to serve me my three beers. She didn’t make any small talk but neither did I.
When I got back to the table I was relieved to see that they weren’t involved in any intimate conversation. I plunked the beers down in front of them and Dex visibly relaxed. I motioned for him to scoot over so I could sit down and he did.
“Cheers,” Maximus said, holding up his beer. We all clinked.
“To new beginnings,” Dex said.
“Ain't that the truth,” I muttered. I didn’t want to be reminded of how new everything was for me at this moment. Not just the here and now but what waited back for me at home…uncertainty. It had being pawing at my subconscious all day long.
And at that I took the longest swig of my beer. Nothing has ever tasted so good in my life. I put the bottle down, surprised to see it half gone already. Everyone else’s was as well.
“We’re going to need more beer soon, I reckon,” Maximus laughed. “This time I’m buying.”
“I’m counting on it,” Dex said. “In the meantime, why not fill Perry in a little on what’s going. I haven’t told her too much.”
Maximus nodded, his face growing more serious but his eyes still frothy in the harsh afternoon light.
“Well then Perry. As you may or may not know, I’m a ghost mediator-”
I felt Dex kick me lightly under the table at that.
“-who helps people connect with their loved ones. Most of the time they just want to know if they are OK, want to know if they are still remembered. I don’t do anything special, I can’t really pass on messages like people seem to think. All I can do is go to a place that someone has died and get a sort of life energy from that spot. I don’t know how to explain it scientifically, hell it would all be considered hooey to most people, but I feel like when people die, the act of death itself leaves a magnetic mark. Somehow I am able to see and feel this mark. I can know how they died, how they felt at the time and right before.”
I was trying to keep an open look on my face while listening to this, in case he thought I was being judgmental. But it was hard not to be, even though in the context of what I’ve been through it was actually perfectly logical.
“So you can’t really communicate with them…the dead?” I said.
“No. It’s a one-way street at best. But most people still ask me to tell the dead things…I don’t argue. It’s money.” He shrugged then continued, “And it’s because of that belief, I get most of my business. I helped a widower with her late husband a while back. Nothing unusual, the man just had a heart attack. But she wanted to know if he felt loved. Seems they had an argument earlier that day about something stupid like the dishes or something. The man didn’t die happy, I can tell you that much but I didn’t tell her that. No one dies happy.”
I felt Dex tense up beside me. I stole a quick glance at him. He was peeling the label off his perspiring bottle. I had an abstract thought about sexual frustration then turned my attention back to Maximus.
“But from what I felt, he had lived a pretty fulfilled life and he loved his wife, I guess, so that’s what I told her. She told a lot of people she knew, including one of her cousins. Will Lancaster. Will lives here in Red Fox. Called me about a week ago about a disturbance at his ranch. Sort of your stereotypical haunting stuff if you ask me…rocks being thrown at the window and roof, doors slamming shut, the feeling of being watched, sheep carcasses turning up all bloodied and disfigured, crows flying through the house.”
I shuddered at the mention of crows. I looked out the window to the house across the street and sure enough they were still there, that black blot on the dead tree. Maximus followed my gaze and nodded.
“So I went there and tried to do a reading to figure out what was going on. Wasn’t much help. Will was scared, clearly, but ashamed of it. He’s a big Navajo man, he didn’t like to admit to his ranch hands that he brought me there. Let alone his wife. Sarah, she’s blind and…well, kind of a bitch.”
Dex laughed. I wanted to but felt like I should admonish him. Maximus caught my eye sheepishly. “Well, it’s true. Lordy, she did not want me there. And she’s not going to want you there, so I’m warning you now.”
“Fabulous,” I sighed. “So, what did you find?”
“Nothing.” He held up his earphones, which were connected to an mp3 device. “I’ve been going back and listening to my notes, our conversations…nothing died there, that’s the problem. I couldn’t pick up on anything at all.”
He leaned across the table and lowered his voice. “But I’ll tell you this…there is something strange going on. I don’t know what but that’s why you’re here now.”
Dex finished the rest of his beer. I looked at him for his opinion but he wasn’t very forthcoming. He just tapped his foot on the floor to the beat of an unknown song.
“So…how do we begin?” I asked.
“For starters, I was hoping that Rudy would be here. But he’s not in until tomorrow night.”
I raised my brow.
“Rudy owns the bar,” he explained. “He’s also a guy who knows a lot. Knows a lot of people, has lived here his whole life and has seen a lot of things. A lot of things.”
“So we come back here tomorrow night. And what do we do until then?”
Dex impulsively reached over and grabbed my left hand and displayed it for Maximus to see.
“Made an honest woman out of her, like you said.”
Maximus laughed and leaned back in the booth, giving me a wry look. “Sorry about having you get hitched to Dex here. Will and Sarah are fiercely Christian. At least Sarah is…real old school. Now I’ve dealt with a lot of religious mamas in Lafayette, but she takes the cake. Pretty much walks around with a cross. She’d probably throw holy water on you if she found out you weren’t actually married. Two singletons sharing the same bed? Blasphemous shit.”
He laughed again and got up. “Time for more beers.”
“Jack Daniels,” Dex shot at him. “You owe me a double.”
Maximus waved him off and walked his hulking body over to the bar.
I inched away from Dex to get a good look at him. He had the label off and was working at folding it into an origami figure. He looked pale, his eyes were burning holes into this project, his brow furrowed, jaw clenched, and toe tapping.
Finally, he stopped, put down the paper (a bird of some sort) and closed his eyes. “What is it?”
I looked behind me to make sure Maximus was at the bar and, satisfied, I leaned in closer to his ear. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
He let out a chuckle. “You care suddenly?”
He was acting like a little boy, not the Dex I was used to seeing.
“Of course I care. I mean, you know…I’m worried about you. The medication withdrawal, meeting an old friend-”
“He’s not a friend,” he said. He picked up the origami bird and shoved it down the bottle of his empty beer. He took out a match from one of his pockets, lit it on the table and dropped it in the bottle. The paper began to curl and smolder, smoke rising out of the neck. I watched, fascinated.
“What do you mean?” I asked. “You were in the same band, same school…”
He raised the bottle up and watched the smoke snake around. “I don’t have to tell you that it all means nothing. Do I?”
I guess he didn’t. I hated 90% of the people that I went to school with.
“Well, OK then,” I said, annoyed. “You know, I have to work with you for the next few days. I just want to make sure you’re OK…OK?”
I put my hand on his shoulder and squeezed it lightly. There was something so irresistibly vulnerable about him. He eyed my hand for a moment, then spat in the bottle to put out the flame. Pretty disgusting way to ruin a moment, Dex.
He looked at me. “Don’t worry about me. Just worry about yourself.”
That was easier said than done.
“I am worried about myself,” I blurted out.
He raised his brow, the eyebrow ring glinting. I said too much. Now he looked concerned.
“Remember I said I’d get to the bottom of you…”
I nodded and switched the subject, “So do you trust Maximus here?”
Dex held my eyes for a few beats. I could see he wasn’t satisfied. But he looked over at Maximus who was now walking back over. “I don’t trust anyone Perry. Neither should you. But I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.”
“Your refreshments,” Maximus said proudly, placing our drinks down. I think he knew we had been talking about him but it didn’t seem to bother him. Wish I had that ability to just shrug things off like that.
As we drank our drinks, the conversation went to more “normal” topics. Unfortunately, they were topics that seemed to make both Dex and I a bit apprehensive. I was asked a lot about my life: what I did, my family, my personal life. I felt like I lied through all of it, even when I told the truth. Guess I was just so used to it now. Dex could tell too, he was watching me, which made me even more nervous. I’m not sure why I still felt like I had to lie and pretend everything was peachy back at home but there it was. It was like I had more power in the lie.
Then Maximus told us a bit about what he had been doing after college and how he got into the business of “ghost mediating.” Apparently he always had the gift, I guess you could call it, but just thought he was a bit mad. But, as interesting as it was to me, the more Maximus talked about the dead, the more annoyed Dex became. And any mention of their times together in college, or in the band, were always approached with caution and tension. Dex reminded me of the sketchy addicts that wandered around in Portland’s Chinatown.
Thankfully, by the time that Dex finished his Jack Daniels (straight up, by the way) and we talked about the show and what we wanted to do with it, he had loosened up considerably.
I, on the other hand, hadn’t. I felt more apprehensive about Dex with each passing hour, I wasn’t sure if I could trust Maximus (though I wanted to), I thought the whole married couple staying with a blind bitch and a poltergeist was ridiculous, and I was freaking starving. The only thing I had eaten that day was a bag of chips I pilfered from the hotel’s vending machine. The beers went straight to my head at a time when I needed clarity.
The heat didn’t help either. When it was ready to roll, we got back into the sweat mobile, dropped Maximus at his motel and followed his truck out of town, and into the rocky hills until we came to a sprawling ranch. We had arrived.