“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.