My beard is neatly trimmed. My hair has some crap in it that old guys use to cover graying temples, turning it the color of rotted-out rust. My face is plastered with the stuff Nicolette ran back out to the car and gave me, for people with nasty scars. I don’t see how girls can stand makeup. It feels like I’ve rubbed my face with scented crankcase oil.
I try to convince myself that this is the classic all-American boy’s tale: boy meets bear; boy vanquishes bear; boy saves a princess in a tank top. I liked winning, even with the complicating factor of the princess stabbing the bear.
I’ve spent my life not beating guys who were begging for it, all the while being trained to go for it. But I just kept punching. If she hadn’t stabbed him, I might have kept going until he stopped breathing.
After driving around for a couple of hours, trying to calm down, my cell phone vibrating continuously, I pull over to talk to Don.
He’s pissed, as usual, but I don’t have the patience for it.
I say, “I hit a glitch. I had to deal with it.”
“A glitch? Isn’t that when ladies are late because they couldn’t pick what dress to wear? You have trouble picking your dress?”
“Fuck off. I had trouble ditching a car.”
“What did you do with my car?” I enjoy him knowing that, in some ways, locked up in there, he’s helpless. I focus on that and not on worrying what he’ll say when he finds out his car’s been abandoned in the desert for a while.
“You want me to do this? I can’t drive a red shitmobile with no muffler.”
“You decide to do something, you get my permission!”
“Will you listen? I got in a fight. I had to lose a car.” I’m thinking this is something Don could relate to, but I’m thinking wrong.
“You got in a fight? What, the checker at Rite Aid overcharged you for gum so you bitch-slapped the bitch?”
“It was a drunk guy in a parking lot.”
“Shit. Were you drunk?”
“No.”
“Figures. Anyone see you?”
“Besides the guy? Maybe. I don’t think so.”
“Straight-A moron, aren’t you? Did I tell you to get in a fight or did I tell you to get your hands on her?”
Maybe I am a straight-A moron, but I’m not letting him do this.
“Answer me!”
I don’t. But the playground rule that if you ignore the bully, eventually he’ll forget what he was taunting you about and go away doesn’t apply to Don.
“Do you have her or don’t you? And the answer better be yes.”
There’s no answer from me for maybe a second too long.
“Jesus,” he says. “You found her and you took her drinking, didn’t you? You found her, and you’re playing with her.”
“No!”
“What’s wrong with you? Fuck her after you off her—just finish this thing!”
“What kind of perverted shit is that? What’s wrong with you?”
“You don’t have the balls for this, do you? You’re gonna take her to the movies and ask her to prom.”
“No!”
“Where are you keeping her?”
“I told you, I don’t have her!” Even to myself, I sound like a liar. “Nobody wants this over more than I do.”
There are a couple of minutes of listening to Don’s uneven breathing and static. Finally he says, “You need to get your butt back up here.”
“No.”
“Jackass,” Don says. “This is real. Bad things are going to happen. Get in my car and get back up here and convince me to believe you.”
“I told you, the shitmobile is history.”
In a voice I remember from childhood, from when he was cornered with no way out, short of scratching a hole under his feet with his toenails, he says, “You need to be here. Right now. If these guys don’t think I have you under control, Mom’s the carrot and the stick. You’re disposable, and so am I. Get back here.”
I want it not to be true. I want this to be Don offering up the same self-serving lies he tells regularly without blinking. I want this to be his effort to manipulate me like the little bitch he says I am. But I believe him, or close to enough to tell Nicolette a fairy tale to keep her at Mrs. Podolski’s while I drive to Nevada.
I believe him, and I need him to know that so he won’t do some angry, stupid thing to show me how serious he is, and get us all killed.
I say, “Yes, sirrrr,” in the exaggerated slur we used to use when we were sassing our dad behind his back.
Don says, “Don’t you sass me, boy,” imitating the voice I haven’t heard for four years but that still gets me going—along with the guilt that I closed it down.
46
Cat
I’m hunkered down with Mrs. P. Curtains drawn. Getting groceries delivered to the welcome mat. Watching TV and baking.
I’m not waiting for him.
I’m hiding out.
Not feeling a tenth of the way safe.
The Home Shopping Network doesn’t have news. Every time Mrs. P nods off, I grab the remote and hit up the local news on channel nine.
Nothing.
No armed assaults. No barroom brawls. No murders.
I mean, somebody thought she saw a bear cub in a tree. That was news. They interviewed her for five minutes.
If we killed the guy, it would have to be news.
Where is J ditching the car anyway? Peru?
I think he’s coming back.