The Animals After Midnight

by Jeff Johnson

  “When am I supposed to take Hank on this tuxedo mission?” I interrupted. Delia wheeled on me.

  “So that’s what this is about!” she spat, instantly furious. “You think you can get out of it if you help me shop for party supplies? You spiteful cock-smoking—”

  “No, no,” I interrupted again. “I just want to take him out for drinks. Before or after. It was your idea, you mean little bitch.”

  She moved in like she was going to punch me and I flinched and dropped the handles of the wheelbarrow. Instead, she stuck her index finger in my face. It smelled like peaches.

  “If you have some kind of genius motherfucking plan,” Delia whispered, “to fuck with his mind or make a ‘man’ out of him, I will peel your tiny dick, Darby. I will dry the skin and wipe my—”

  “Delia!” I cocked my head at her, willing her to calm down with my best thoughtful expression, never very convincing. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but you need either a hug or a Valium.”

  She crashed into me and hugged with all her might. I patted her back and we stood like that, surrounded by chickens, who took that moment to make their presence known.

  “So much could still go wrong,” she said into my sternum. “Our luck does not extend to weddings.”

  “I know, sweetie,” I said softly. “But I’m going to be on my best behavior. I mean, I’m going to do the right thing.”

  She pulled back a little and looked up into my eyes, frowning.

  “Why do I feel like you added ‘the right thing’ as a modifier to your behavior vow? Darby, this is no time for any of your shit, man. Your creative interpretation of the ‘right thing’ has a police record.”

  “It’s different here,” I assured her. “I won’t let you down, baby. Not now, not ever.” Delia nodded and pressed her cheek into my chest again. I focused on the meanest rooster, a real bastard posturing right behind her. “Gonna take Hank out for drinks. The whole nine yards.”

  She pulled away and sniffed, gave me a smile, then began strolling again. It was a nice morning to be at a chicken and hardware store shopping for wedding supplies, I had to admit. The air was crisp and cool, and patches of blue sky were visible. The place smelled like hay and birds and roofing tar, and it all combined to create a relaxing effect.

  “Your day yesterday with the kid,” she continued. “You never did tell me about it.”

  “Kinda boring. He wants to move back to LA and give it a try with this gal, says Gomez is cock-blocking him, something like that. I wasn’t listening.”

  “Huh. So no heart-to-heart bonding bullshit?”

  “Not really. Lunch was good.”

  “Darby Holland.” Delia made a tsking sound. “The lies you tell.”

  I laughed. “I don’t know what you mean, Cordelia.” Delia had kept her real name and her roots as an upper-crust wingnut secret and probably would have indefinitely. Dessel had filled me in on her personal history. Her parents weren’t coming to her wedding because they were snobs. Her two sisters were the same.

  “Go ahead, toss that out there.” She shook her head. “I’m too tired to fight anymore this morning.”

  We walked. She stopped in front of a rack of hoes and stared at them.

  “You, ah, you were fighting with other people this morning?”

  She looked at me. “Hank.”

  “Ah.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it. Not right now.”

  We kept strolling, slow, and as we went I watched her. I was tired and so was she, and my mood shifted then, from enjoying her company on one of the last nice days of the year to wanting to beat her fiancé to death. I cleared my throat and she turned back and looked at me with sadness in her big eyes.

  “Let’s go get lunch,” I suggested. “We can hit up the Vietnamese sandwich place on Halsey and then go blow five bucks in nickels at the video game place.”

  “Dealio.” She smiled, and I could see in a flash some of the things that were weighing her down. One of them was me. Just like I was, she wondered at that instant if it was the last time we were going to eat up an afternoon doing not one goddamned thing.

  It was dark by the time we got to Delia’s house. A year or two ago she’d moved from her longtime art studio with a futon and she never talked about the new place. It was odd, considering that she talked all the time. I’d never given it much thought. When we hung out outside the shop, it was always at my place so she could spoil the cats, or at a bar. Where I bought the drinks.

  So I’d never been there, but as we rolled in I began to suspect that we weren’t going to her place after all. It was Beaverton, for one thing, in an area of the suburb where her red vintage Falcon stood out like a boil among the family sedans and newer BMWs. When we pulled into her driveway, I looked around and was about to ask if we were stopping off to perform an impromptu robbery, but a dark look from her, particularly piercing, stopped me. Silent, I followed her in without a word. At least I was silent until we got inside.

  “Question.” I didn’t have one. Not exactly. It was all I could think to say.

  “Of course I have beer,” she said, answering what would have been my last question first. “Hank is a Blue Ribbon kind of fella.” Delia hung her jacket on the coat rack by the door and left me frozen in place on the doormat. “Wipe your feet, please,” she called over her shoulder. “The real estate agent is showing it again tomorrow and I don’t want to mop again.”

  Delia’s condo was entirely out of keeping with her character. It was in a good neighborhood, for one thing. White, too, with a tidy little yard. The living room before me had beige furniture, high-end hotel stuff, with matching walnut end tables shining with polish. There was a coffee table that came in the same set. Freestanding lamps with pale blue shades. Two big oil paintings, sunflowers on one side and sea grass on windswept dunes on the other. Hardwood floors. I heard a refrigerator door open and close.

  “Has . . .” I stopped before I stuttered. She poked her head out of the kitchen and waited. Nothing further came to mind.

  She rolled her eyes and disappeared.

  I wiped my feet and walked into the kitchen doorway. Delia was staring into the sink.

  She glanced over at me, back at the drain. The kitchen was spotless. New stainless steel juicer and a matching blender. A single magnetic hook on the refrigerator with a single pot holder, unadorned black. A lone miniature wooden barrel with cooking implements fanning from it in a careful bloom. And a wad of plaid that could only be Hank’s briefs sitting next to a can of Pabst.

  “I’m a bitch, Darby.”

  “No you aren’t,” I said instantly. We were in a show condo, I realized. No one lived here. But then there was Hank’s underwear to prove otherwise. “I give you strange, as in weirdo, but—”

  “I’m not in control,” Delia said flatly. Then she glared at me and passed me the beer. “Look at this place. My father bought both of my sisters houses, but I rated condo. I’m not offended, I mean who cares, right? But it was deemed the better investment short term, because art is a stupid career so I’d need to cash out first. So, a condo. This isn’t a home, like your place. Total irony there, I know, so shut it.” She shook her head. “I live in an investment. An investment. Me.” She turned around and faced me. I didn’t say anything. She wasn’t done.

  “So I live here. Or sleep, whatever. But I accepted it. This judgment. This daily fucking reminder. Fucking shame. And I’m beginning to realize that this piece of shit place is a symbol of some kind of awful shit that was built right into me.” She gestured encompassingly and let her hands drop, shook her head. “The closer we get to the wedding the more I act like my mother. Makes me want to wash my mind off in sewer water.”

  “What—”

  “His underwear!” Delia thundered. She balled it in her fist and shook it in front of me. “Darby, I made an appointment to get his teeth cleaned! Like he’s my fucking dog!”

  “Wait a—”

  “Remember when I told you . .
.” She tossed the underwear back on the counter and stepped in front of me, looked up, searching my face with watery eyes. Her lower lip was trembling. Heat was rising from her tiny frame like she had a fever. “Remember when you and Suzanne met and all that shit was going down? And I told you she was already trying to fix you, to paint your windows over and stop the light? Remember?”

  “That was—”

  “I’m doing the same thing!”

  I put my hand on her shoulder. The contact seemed to shock her, and she sipped in a fast breath. She’d never told anyone what she was telling me. I could see it in her eyes. It was the first time she’d even said it out loud and put the thoughts into words, and it had stunned her.

  “Delia. Listen. You and Hank, this is different than me and Suzanne and I’ll tell you why. Me and Suze, I’ve come to realize that love is the real deal, as in huge, the biggest journey there is, but complicated people have a different time waiting at baggage claim. Suzanne is waiting for her cameras and her sports junk. I forgot what my bag looks like, but I know the cops are waiting for me to take one. Same plane, same airport, but a totally different experience. This house?” I gestured with my free hand. “This condo thing? This is your empty bag. Hank doesn’t even have a bag, sweetie. You see?”

  Delia sagged and I pulled her in.

  “We’re almost there,” she whispered.

  “I know,” I said gently.

  “Just, no band practice. No fucking impromptu parties, with spray paint and bong water explosions. This place will sell in the next few weeks in this market, and by the time we get back from our honeymoon we’ll be set. Then we get the Dildo Palace.” Her voice grew quiet and dreamy. “Austin City Limits. Little adobe with a garden, and my dumbass husband can start the rudest country band of all time. But for right now . . .”

  It wasn’t adding up. None of it. It was simply impossible that she was marrying Hank out of some kind of teen rebellion after being “gifted” this terrible condo. It came to me then that maybe some part of Delia was tired. Tired of the constant fire she was burning. Maybe I was seeing it all through the warped lens of my own exhaustion. Maybe that’s why I felt as lost as she did. It could be almost anything, this wanting to run she obviously felt as much as I did. The City of Roses was shedding its carnival side. The odd, once so cherished, so much the soul of the place, didn’t feel at home here anymore. Austin was as good a place as any. Better, in fact, than my own destination of Nowhere.

  “For right now,” I said, staring at the clock behind her, “we hold our shit together.”

  I left Delia to clean up the mess from the horrifying pear and kale smoothies she’d made. She was in a better mood, laughing, and the skin around her eyes had lost its tautness. She was a secretive woman, but so much of the truth is in the burden of it, I knew from experience, and sharing it lightened it, changed its gravity. She was relieved that her bland investment life hadn’t stunned me all that badly after the initial shock wore off, and what I’d said about love and Hank and empty bags had spackled a hole in her. Lying so often to the boy genius Agent Dessel and the next-level criminal scumbags who were fucking with my game in the last few years, shuffling around the facts for Suzanne, it had all culminated in a mastery of the cowardly science of deception. So I felt dead inside.

  I couldn’t pick out the tail behind me, but I knew they were back there. The rain had dialed down to medium thick. I drove aimlessly, waiting to feel better. Instead, I felt gradually worse.

  Hank’s shithole of a bum squat second home looked abandoned when I drove past it. The lights were out and the official Empire of Shit van was gone. I didn’t slow, just rolled past without turning my head. A few minutes later I pulled into the parking lot of Sho’s Lounge, where his secret girlfriend worked. Four cars, no van. I turned the ignition off and sat in the spill of neon from the sign, smoking and thinking.

  If Hank was inside, the jig was up. Plus, I’d get arrested. My tail had pulled into the lot across the street behind me, a 2000 Generic White Nothing, and if a 911 call came in reporting a savage beating in progress, I’d get busted even if I got away and whatever was left of Hank didn’t rat.

  Four cars. They were beaters, too, so they probably belonged to the employees. Sho’s was run down in the same way. No one there was making any money, so if Hank’s one true love was working, it might be my only chance to say hello. I stabbed out my cigarette.

  The inside of Sho’s was dumpy casual, with red overstuffed washable plastic booths and formica tabletops, a deluxe bar with a righteous display of middle-of-the-road booze, and low light from regularly spaced sand dollar lamps. It smelled like old beer, cheap hamburger, and mold. I scanned the place from the doorway next to the gumball machine like I was looking for someone I knew.

  She was just as Nigel described her. Short, with Delia’s pug nose, but a wide mouth with big red lips, long hair with loose, heavy curls, and the chest of a woman twice her size. She was chatting up the bartender in a familiar way, a towel and an empty drink tray next to her hands. Both of them glanced my way.

  “Sit anywhere,” she called. She had the throaty, smoky voice of a Lauren Bacall. I nodded and slid into a booth. She picked up her tray and a menu and casually sashayed in my direction.

  “Drink?” She put the menu in front of me and gave me a sleepy smile.

  “Old Crow, rocks.”

  She glanced back at the bartender and he nodded that he’d heard. When she turned back she cocked her hip.

  “Cool scar,” she said, meaning it. She touched the side of her face where my scar was. In spite of it all, I liked her, right then and there.

  “Cool hair,” I said back. She stuck a finger in a curl and twirled.

  “The rain does it.” She sighed and looked out the window. I squinted at her nametag.

  “You from here, Becky?”

  “Nah. LA. Specials tonight are the prime rib, okey dokey if you’re in the mood for a hungry man platter, and the red eye chili comes with cheese and onions.”

  “Just the drink for now.”

  “You waiting on company?” She twirled her hair again, and then she smacked her gum for the first time. Becky was the laziest gum chewer I’d ever seen.

  “Yeah, sorta.”

  She drifted back to the bar, picked up my tumbler, and brought it back, all in slow motion. I watched the whole thing blankly. Becky was undeniably beautiful, and in a tragic way, one of my favorite kinds. Bloomed, but in a dark place, and with the perfect curves and unconscious, languid grace that could never last. If Delia was being played by Hank, then the angel with my booze was a victim of a higher order. You had to love a woman like that through what was coming next for her, the hard years of decline from that accidental and magnificent high, and maybe Hank knew that, maybe he didn’t. But the womanizing little scumbag was not that man.

  “Who you waiting for?” she asked. She chewed again. “You look sorta sad, man.”

  “Barroom telepath, eh? That’s a grim sorta talent.” I squinted up with one eye closed and gave her questioning and innocent, as much as I can make that face. “Just makin’ sure I don’t owe anyone here money.”

  Becky snorted when she laughed. It was that real. “And? You sat down, so . . .”

  I knocked back half my drink and tossed an arm along the back of the booth, slumped into a relaxed posture. “What brought you here from LA, young miss? You don’t mind my asking.”

  “My mom. Sick. Took care of her for the last year, stuck around. Now I work here.” She smiled wanly. “Sho’s Diner, where good girls go to get rich.”

  “Get back to LA ever?” I sipped. She shook her curls.

  “Nah. But me an’ my dude are moving back in a few months, so full circle. Get a little apartment in Santa Monica, maybe, finally live under the same roof. He’s a musician. He’s gonna start a country band, maybe get a little skate shop going. I’ll still be waiting tables, but I bet I’ll make more money.”

  “Right on.” I peeled a ten and
a five out of the roll in my pocket and finished my drink, set the empty on the edge of the bills. “Keep it.”

  She stepped back as I slid out. When I stood, we smiled at each other. Her beautiful junkie glow might hold for a little longer, I reasoned, and I had a wild impulse to rescue her, to get her away from the dummy drain she was circling, to somehow shine light into her head. I could only think of one way to do that, and in that instant, looking down into those dream fog eyes, I missed the cutting mind of Delia. My way would have to do.

  “See ya.”

  Becky went back to the bar, the bills in her apron pocket, and I knew I was already forgotten. The rain was coming down harder when I stepped outside. I ducked into the dark corner of the entryway and lit a cigarette. Sho’s parking lot had been big chunk gravel at one point, but it had worn through in most places into deep, oily puddles. I watched the passing lights reflected in them, warped and choppy by the impact of big black drops, and all I could think about was Delia again, and Hank, and the surprising time bomb element of it all.

  The waitress Becky had beautiful eyes, and they were full of love. Tragically, it wasn’t horndog love or dick-sucking worship love, but the real kind, with breakfast involved. This rain didn’t mean shit to her because she was getting out. None of it did. The eerie new bummer vibe in the city, the dead daytime skies, the shit job. She was going home, a wonder woman, in a controlled habit delusion, with a trophy guy fresh from a score, into a semi-retirement leisure fantasy of bong hits, cowgirl boots, tender garden sex, and a part-time job. She was that close.

  She was that close. I could see her new place, too. Little one-bedroom with the best IKEA and garage sales had, and with a cat, too. All of it, down to the airfare, paid in full with the money Delia would get from selling her condo of shame. I didn’t feel the cold wet as I walked to my car. I don’t even remember unlocking the door. I got in and stared at the Sho’s Diner sign, and then turned to the woman sitting in the dark in the passenger seat. It didn’t even scare me.