Therefore, I was building what I liked to cal my Sleeping with the Enemy Plan.
I started to save money in a new account Bil y didn’t know about. I stashed newly purchased clothes Bil y had never seen and would never miss at Annette’s place and I left.
First, I went to my folks’ house.
Bil y came and brought me back.
I expected this. I was stil stashing money and clothes at Annette’s, biding my time.
Then I went to a girlfriend’s in Atlanta.
Bil y found me and brought me back.
Again, I waited.
Then I went to a hotel in Dal as.
Bil y found me and brought me back.
This plan took a long time and this was unusual for me. I wasn’t the most patient of people and I felt, acutely, that my life was ebbing away day-by-day, month-by-month, year-by-year. I had to see it through though, and I’m kind of stubborn so I kept at it.
It was the last time to leave Bil y, a two-part end of the plan. I was going to go to the last place he thought I thought he wouldn’t look, knowing (like al the others, when I’d left breadcrumbs) he’d eventual y look. Then, after he brought me back, I’d go there again, having set up the plan beforehand and getting help (I hoped) while I was at it.
Though things got kind of fucked up, mainly because Bil y’s stink had settled on me, just like I’d feared.
See, it was then that I went to Denver.
I went to Uncle Tex
And, unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you looked at it, I looked at it both ways; fortunately, because I’d remember it with bittersweet clarity for the rest of my life and unfortunately, because it would never last) it was then that I met Hank and my plan got total y fucked.
*
Now I’m sitting on a stinking bathroom floor in a sleazy motel, cuffed to a sink and, if I can help it, Hank Nightingale wil be a memory. He deserves better than me.
I just hope I can figure out a way to make Hank agree.
Chapter Two
Whisky
This is how it began.
*
A few months ago Uncle Tex wrote to me about some folks he met, one of whom gave him his first job since Vietnam. He’d had it rough, readjusting when he got back from ‘Nam. He spent some time doing time and was living meagerly off a smal inheritance (including a house) he got from a childless uncle who’d taken a liking to him, supplementing the inheritance by cat sitting. If you could believe it (I couldn’t when I read it), Uncle Tex was now making espresso drinks at a used bookstore and coffee house cal ed Fortnum’s. My Uncle Tex had been incarcerated for hunting down and then nearly beating a drug dealer to death. Now, several decades later, he was making fancy schmancy coffee.
How weird was that?
He seemed to like it and his letters were fil ed with stories about al the people that worked there and the regulars who came in, especial y the lady who owned it, India Savage (but, according to Uncle Tex, folks cal ed her Indy).
In his letters, I could tel that Uncle Tex liked everyone, especial y Indy (and, lately, another girl named Jet). He said Indy had “spunk” and Uncle Tex liked spunk. He also liked mettle, which he told me Jet had, even though (he said) she didn’t know it. Lastly, he liked sass which he said another girl he worked with, Al y, had (apparently, in abundance). In his letters, I could also tel that this Indy person had kind of adopted Uncle Tex and that it was changing him, for the good.
So, I worked Denver into my plan, thinking maybe this Indy had performed some magic and Uncle Tex wouldn’t close the door in my face (like he did with my Grams when she tried to visit al those times, and with my Mom, when she and my aunts went with Grams al those times).
Therefore, I decided to add a second agenda item to my plan, getting Uncle Tex back to the family: kil ing two birds with one stone.
*
It was a Sunday in early October when I arrived. I saw, for the first time, Denver’s big, blue skies that went on forever and the Front Range spreading across the west making the words “purple mountain majesties” a reality to me. Even with the sun, there was a nip in the air. I arrived early in the morning, got a hotel room (with cash, I didn’t want Bil y to find me just yet), showered and did myself up. It was, to my thinking, a special occasion, meeting Uncle Tex for the first time and furthermore, I loved clothes (wel , I loved designer clothes). Mom said I wore my designer threads like armor. Dad said if they were armor, they weren’t working because they acted more like a magnet.