It was past ten when we got to the ranch, and Dee smirked at me while Liam tore me a new asshole. Like it was my fault the Mexicans tried to double-deal. Like it was my fault Vic’s car broke down. Goddamn, I was done with Liam Quinn. Or I woulda been done with him, if it wasn’t for Wavy.
I left the flatbed there and rode the Panhead home, just to get some fresh air on me. At the house, I was through the front door, pulling off my boots before I realized the kitchen light was on. Thinking of those dead Mexicans, my guts tightened up. Those boys probably had friends who wouldn’t think much of me plugging them. I walked into the kitchen and leveled my gun right in Wavy’s face.
“What are you doing?” I said. The no sleep and the running on nerves caught up with me. My hands were shaking as I popped the clip. I slammed open the kitchen drawer and shoved the gun to the back.
Wavy looked as shocked as I felt. She was sitting at the table, up on two phone books, with her boots off, her bare feet dangling. The overhead light made her hair gold.
“Come on, pack your stuff up. I’ll give you a ride home.” The back of my shirt was filthy from lying in the dirt working on Vic’s car. Her white sundress was gonna end up covered in it, but that was too bad.
I went stomping back to the front door to get my boots on, but she didn’t come. When I went back to the kitchen, she was still sitting at the table, reading a magazine.
“Now. Goddamn right now. I’m not in the mood for this.”
“Walk.” She slid off the phone books and stood in her bare feet.
“No, you’re not walking home.”
“Walked here.”
“Yeah, well it wasn’t pitch-black out when you walked here, either.”
She shrugged.
“And how’d you get in here?”
She took a key out of her dress pocket and laid it on the table. The spare from under the mat on the back porch.
Looking down at the key, I got an eyeful of the magazine she’d been reading. A skin mag from out of my nightstand. She had it open to a couple things I didn’t like to think she’d looked at. A blow job on one page and some girl taking it from behind on the other.
“What are you doing looking at this fucking shit? You can’t be looking at this kinda thing. And where the hell do you get off? Just coming in here and making yourself at home? This is my house.”
I snatched that magazine off the table and rolled it up. She flinched, like she thought I was gonna hit her with it. The way you’d do a dog. Seeing her ready for me to hit her was a bucket of cold water on me. If I couldn’t be any better to her than that, I didn’t have any business thinking I was sticking around for her.
“It’s my house, okay? You can’t come in here without me.”
She gave me the kinda look makes you wanna curl up and die. Just because she didn’t have any titty mags for me to look at didn’t mean I hadn’t snooped in her bedroom. I went around the table, opened the sink cabinet, and stuffed the magazine in the trash.
“I’m sorry, but I haven’t slept in two days. I’m fucking dirty and greasy and tired and I need a shower and something to eat and there isn’t so much as a clean shirt in this goddamn house, because I had to leave in a hurry. So I’m sorry, but I don’t have—”
I came that close to saying, “I don’t have time for you.” Except it wasn’t just mean. It was a lie. I had all the time in the world for her. I wanted her to be there, but I was so miserable, I couldn’t even talk to her like I normally would. I didn’t have no business saying, Sorry I’m in such a shitty mood, but I just killed a couple guys.
She walked out to the breezeway, so I said, “The bike’s out front, sweetheart.”
She came back with a bundle of cloth in her hands. She held it out to me: a T-shirt, jeans, and a towel. Washed, dried, and folded. She did my laundry.
“Thank you. And I’m sorry. I’m just tired and I had a bad couple days.”
I reached out to take the clean clothes, but she pulled them back and frowned at me. My hands were covered in grease. I followed her to the bathroom, where she laid the clean clothes on the edge of the sink and turned on the shower. She went out, closing the door after her.
In the shower, I spent a good fifteen minutes letting the hot water pound down on me, trying to be finished with the two dead Mexicans. I needed to stop playing that over in my head. It was done.
By the time I got out of the shower, Wavy was gone. I worried she’d walked home, but her backpack was still in the kitchen. Weirder, she’d emptied my wallet. It was in the center of the table with its chain coiled up beside it. Laid out next to it, like a game of solitaire, was all the stuff I kept in my wallet and my pockets. A roll of Wint-O-Green Lifesavers, my keys, a bottle of eye drops, and five shell casings standing on end. I pocketed those. I’d cleaned and tossed the gun, but forgotten to ditch the shell casings. I guess I wasn’t much smarter than Vic.