“They said it might flurry. I’m playing golf in an hour. I went out two hundred and seventy-five times last year. Only got snowed out once. You’re gonna have to wait for me to finish eating. I hate doing coke on an empty stomach and I’m not buying it without trying it. Where did you get it, anyway?”
“A friend of mine gave it to me.”
“Just gave you a half a kilo?”
“Yeah.”
“Who’s your friend?”
“A girl I know. She owed me some money and couldn’t pay me, so she gave me the coke instead.”
“Where did she get it?”
“I don’t know anything about that. She just gave it to me and I don’t do it myself.”
“Why the rush on selling it?”
“I just don’t like having it with me. It makes me nervous. So I called JJ. I used to be friends with him and I knew he would know what to do. I explained it to him and he called you. I just want to get rid of it.”
“In the middle of the night you decided all this.”
“I guess.”
Rodney got up, refilled his glass with water, and sat back down and kept on eating.
Lynette again looked around the room. “What kind of work do you do?”
“I repossess cars,” he said. “The ones out there on the lot are in the process of going back to the dealers they were bought from.”
“All those cars have been repossessed?”
“All except mine. You’d be surprised how many people don’t own their cars outright.” He paused and finished the French Toaster Sticks. He pushed the plate away and licked his lips. “One thing in my line of work that you find out is that most people act like they have more than they really do. That they’re better off than they really are. It’s always the same kind of people, too. I’ve been doing this for over twenty-five years and it never changes. Rednecks and gangsters want to be rich, but most of them aren’t rich. Rednecks with their trucks and gangsters with their SUVs and Cadillacs. And on the other side are the full-of-shit people trying to act white-collar rich by driving BMWs and Mercedeses and Audis.”
He got up, put the dish in the sink, and started the faucet. He washed the plate, the fork, and the knife and set them on a wooden rack to the left of the sink. “I don’t mind the white-collar ones, but the rednecks and the gangsters try to kill you when you repo their rig. Here they are driving trucks they can’t afford, skipping out on payments, and then they try to kill you for calling them on it. They signed the deal, has nothing to do with me. I’m only the result of them not paying their bill. But still they try to kill me when I’m only following the law. The white-collar wannabes just cry and whine and tell me they’re gonna sue me. I’ll be out in Beaverton, Hillsdale, or Tigard, and some asshole will be yelling in the middle of the street: ‘You can’t do this to me. I’ll get my lawyer and he’ll sue you. When I’m done you’ll be in prison!’ It’s all bullshit. You never hear from them again unless they buy another car they can’t afford and then of course the same thing happens again. Over and over. You know I’ve never had one person say ‘I’m sorry I fucked up and I bought this car and I can’t pay for it. It’s my fault. Here are the keys. Can I please get my CDs and the baby seat out?’ Nowadays people buy things they can’t afford just ’cause they’re able to, and then when it hits the fan they blame the people selling the stuff.” He laughed. “I’ve begun to hate people that don’t pay what they’re supposed to pay. That don’t honor their side of the deal. After all these years it’s really starting to make me sick. You get a bill, you pay the bill. It’s pretty simple. You want to buy something, then save for it, have some fucking patience. Pay for it with cash. It used to be like that in this country. Now no one wants to wait. No one wants to save for what they want. Credit cards and credit cards and credit cards. People getting things they haven’t earned, that they haven’t sweated for. Half the time they’re buying things they didn’t even know they wanted. And let me tell you, getting things you haven’t earned does nobody any good. How can it be good that the second you want something you can get it? Go online and hit a button and then you own it. But really you don’t own it and when the payment’s due you’re about eight miles from remembering why you even wanted the thing in the first place. So then you just stick your head in the sand or cry or throw a tantrum. Or if you’re a real piece of shit you come out with a gun and try to kill me for a bill you haven’t paid in six months. They’d rather kill a guy than take a bus. They’d rather kill a guy than drive a piece-of-shit beater like what you got out there. What is it, a Sentra?”
“Yeah,” said Lynette.
“1993?”
“’92.”
“I had a red ’94 when I was in college. They aren’t bad cars for running around town. Do you want a cup of coffee?”
“No.”
“I’m just gonna get a splash more,” he said. There was an old Black & Decker coffee machine in the corner of the kitchen. He filled his cup and poured powdered creamer into it, stirred it with a fork, and sat down again. “I just don’t get it. For example, my cousin works construction. He’s always just been one of the grunts, never moved up, never tried to be a foreman or a lead. Not sure why he’s never tried, but he hasn’t. About twenty years ago he got married and together he and his wife squeaked out a loan on a hundred-thousand-dollar house. This was in 2000 or 2001. The house was a piece of shit, but that’s where he was at. That’s what he could afford. His wife worked at Target, they had a kid, and like I said he worked construction. You know where the Chinese Village Restaurant is?”
“Sure,” said Lynette. “They just tore it down.”
He nodded. “They had a house right by it off 82nd and Washington. A fucked-up busy street and a small house. I didn’t like the place, but it made sense to me ’cause that’s what the guy deserved. That’s what they could afford. Five or six years go by and in the mail they start getting these offers. He starts getting preapproved home loans for three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now what the fuck’s going on there? Nothing’s changed. He’s got the same old job and, sure, his wife doesn’t work at Target anymore, no, she works at Bed Bath & Beyond. Same hours, almost part-time, almost full-time, around the same pay. So why the fuck would they get preapproved like that? Just out of the blue when a few years before they were busting his balls about a hundred-thousand-dollar loan? Makes no sense, right? Anyway, he won’t listen to me. His wife, of course, wants a nicer house for their kid, he wants a nicer house ’cause he’s sick of living on a busy street. He’d always tell me, ‘The traffic, man, it drives me crazy. And all those weird fuckers on 82nd always walk by.’ I told him to get double-paned windows and plant a hedge or put up a fence. A hell of a lot cheaper. But does he listen to me? No, of course not. He buys a place in Happy Valley for three-thirty and of course they have to buy new furniture to go into their new house and, well, you know what happened?”
“No, what happened?”
“He lost the house and he and his wife split up and now he’s renting an apartment from me. I own a six-unit complex on Dekum, by Woodlawn Park. You know that area?”
“A little,” she said.
“Well, he can barely scrape together the rent on the discounted friends-and-family price I gave him because they’ve garnished his wages over child support. I have him managing the place now because he’s late on rent almost every month. It’s the only way I can justify not kicking him out. He’s a fucking idiot and he ain’t gonna get out from under it ’cause he’s getting old and he’s still working construction, still a grunt, but now of course he’s getting tired. His back is fucked up, his knees are wrecked. If he would have just accepted the shitty house on 82nd he’d probably own it outright by now. He’d probably still be married. But I guess that’s just human nature. Anyway, I’ve eaten, so, where is it?”
Lynette kept her feet on the turquoise bath towel and took the package out of the Burgerville bag, set it on the kitchen table, and pushed it toward him. Fr
om his pants pocket he took out a charcoal-colored vial and opened it. The lid had a small, thin spoon connected to it and he dipped it into the cocaine, put the spoon to his nose, and snorted it. He did it twice in each nostril. His eyes watered and his face grew red. He looked at her and let out a quick intense breath. “Where did your friend get this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, it’s good.”
“Then it’s a deal? JJ said three thousand dollars. He said that was good for you. It’s good for me, too.”
His face grew redder, like something was wrong with him, and then he just lifted his right hand and pointed to the door. “The deal is you can get out of my trailer now.”
“What do you mean?” asked Lynette.
“JJ says you owe him money, and the thing is, JJ owes me money. Has for a few years. I’d be more pissed at him, but I’ve known him for a long time and he was nice to my brother. My brother died in a motorcycle accident and JJ bought two kegs for the funeral. He helped cater it. He was really upset and he was about the only one outside of me and my parents who really was. Maybe that’s why I’ve let him slide on what he owes me. But now, with this, he can pay me back. That’s what we both decided. You owe him, he owes me. You give me the coke and JJ and me are even. And you’ll be even with JJ, too.”
“But I don’t owe JJ any money,” Lynette said. “He’s lying about that. I paid back what I owed him years ago. He helped me out once, but I paid him. I put the money in an envelope and put it in his mailbox and then I called him to make sure he got it and he said he did. I swear to God. And that was over six years ago. Except for tonight I haven’t seen him since back then. He’s lying.”
Rodney smiled, and when he did, she could see that his teeth were unnaturally white and perfectly straight. They were dentures. “He told me you’d say that. He also said you were crazy. That you have mental problems and to watch out. He said a lot of things about you. Anyway, I’ve known him for twenty years and you I don’t know at all. So I have to trust him more than you. So I’ll let you leave right now and everything will be okay. Just take your piece-of-shit car and get out of my lot.”
Lynette reached for the cocaine, but Rodney exploded out of his chair and with both hands hit her so hard in the chest that she flew back into a waist-high table near the front door. A glass lamp on the table crashed to the ground and she fell back on it. Shards of glass cut into her back and stuck there and she struggled to stand up. When she did, Rodney had a stainless-steel revolver pointed at her. “You’re leaving right now.”
“I don’t understand why you’re doing this,” she said in disbelief. “I don’t owe JJ anything.”
“JJ said you’re a piece of shit and you owe him money. I knew just by looking at you that you’d bitch and lie and waste my time and I’m playing golf in less than an hour. So leave, and if you do, your debt to JJ is done and his debt to me is done and you won’t be a piece of shit anymore. At least where this is concerned.”
Lynette slowly walked toward the table. “But like I said I don’t owe him anything. If you know him at all, you know he’s a liar. Just give me the three thousand we agreed on and I’ll leave. Give me the money or the cocaine. You say you’re honest. If you are, you’ll do the right thing.”
Rodney set the gun on the kitchen table and took the roll of money from his pocket. “I’ll give you a couple hundred bucks, but then I want you to get the fuck out of here or I’ll force you out and you won’t like that.” He looked down to take the rubber band off the roll, and when he did, Lynette grabbed the Mace from her pocket and shot it in his face. It hit him in the eyes and mouth and he dropped the money on the table and doubled over screaming. He reached for the gun but couldn’t find it. Lynette grabbed it and the money and put them in her coat pocket. Rodney was coughing and beginning to throw up on the floor as he stumbled out of the room toward the back hallway. Lynette pulled her scarf around her nose and mouth. Her eyes watered and she had trouble seeing but followed him and continued to spray his head until he locked himself inside the bathroom.
18
Her car started on the fourth try. She could barely see and her coughing wouldn’t stop, but she drove to the gate and it opened just like he said it would. She pulled out and made it to Columbia Boulevard and headed west. The windshield was little more than a blur with her eyes watering and the rain falling. She drove under twenty miles an hour in pain, hunching over the steering wheel.
She made it a mile to a McDonald’s parking lot and turned off the ignition. She put Rodney’s money in her pants pocket, put his gun under her front seat, and got out. She took off her scarf and the Mace-ruined coat, which pulled on the glass stuck in her back. She rolled them both into a ball and walked to a nearby trash can, dropped them into it, and went inside.
The bathroom was empty and she washed her hands and face, her neck and arms a half-dozen times, then dunked her head under the sink and washed her hair with hand soap. She dried it with paper towels and then looked at her back. Blood covered her shirt and she could feel shards of glass inside her. She went into a stall, used the toilet, and counted Rodney’s money. Thirty-nine hundred dollars. She put it back in her pants pocket and left.
It was seven in the morning when she got to her house and the white Toyota Avalon in the carport. She opened the front door and saw her mother on the couch in her orange bathrobe, the electric blanket around her, watching TV and smoking a cigarette. In front of her was a Domino’s pizza box and a half-empty liter of Pepsi.
She looked at Lynette and sighed. “Jesus, I was worried about you.”
“I was gonna call, but I didn’t have the time, and then it was too late.” Lynette went to the thermostat and turned up the heat on the furnace. “I want to talk, but I need your help first. I got into some trouble and there’s glass in my back. Can you help me get it out?”
“Glass in your back? Jesus, what happened?”
“I don’t really want to talk about it. I just panicked and tried to get all the money that was owed me. I made a lot of mistakes and got greedy. Will you meet me in the bathroom?”
Her mother nodded and got up from the couch and followed her down the hallway. Lynette turned on the bathroom light and her mother came in and saw her blood-soaked shirt.
“My god,” she said. “Can you take it off?”
“I think so,” said Lynette and unbuttoned her shirt and then cried out in pain as she pulled it off her back.
“That bad, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“You still have your fifth of Jägermeister in the freezer. Do you want me to get you a glass?”
“Maybe I better.”
“I’ll get some dish towels, too. I know we have hydrogen peroxide and rubbing alcohol in the medicine cabinet. Do we have tweezers?”
“I have them downstairs in the cigar box on my dresser.”
Her mother left the room and Lynette sat down on the toilet seat. In the next room she could hear Kenny snoring. The heat finally came through the bathroom vent and she began to relax. Her mother came back wearing her reading glasses and set a stack of dish towels on the sink and handed Lynette a glass of Jägermeister.
“God, your back is really gross-looking,” her mother said. “There’s four or five shards that I can see. You’ll have to take off your bra.”
“Can you do it for me?” Lynette asked and stood back up. “I think I hurt my ribs, too. I don’t think I can move my arms back.”
Her mother unclasped it and helped Lynette take it off.
“Where did you get such an expensive bra?” she said and set it on the edge of the bathtub.
“I don’t really remember,” Lynette whispered and sat back down.
“I never had a bra like that.” Her mother opened the medicine cabinet and took out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide. “But my tits used to be as good as yours. Maybe even better, but of course then came two kids. Jesus, wait until you get to my age, until you can’t lose weight and your tits sag.�
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Lynette took a drink from the glass. She sat hunched over on the toilet seat, her arms resting on her legs. Her mother sat on the edge of the bathtub next to her.
“What did you get yourself into?”
“I’ll tell you later,” said Lynette. “Do you have enough light?”
“I think so,” said her mother. “I’ll get the big pieces first. After that I’ll rinse the cuts out with hydrogen peroxide and then maybe I’ll get the flashlight and look again. Do you remember where the flashlight is?”
“It should be in the desk by the front door. If not, it’s in Kenny’s room.”
“You should take another drink ’cause I’m getting ready to pull them out.”
Lynette had another sip and set the glass on the floor. “I’m ready.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” her mother said.
“It’s okay. I know it’s going to hurt.”
Her mother began pulling out the pieces of glass with the tweezers and setting them in the sink. Lynette cried out and tears filled her eyes.
“These tweezers don’t grip very good, but I think I got most of them,” her mother said and stopped. “I’m going to get the flashlight now to make sure.” She left the room and came back with a red plastic flashlight and an old shirt. She found two more smaller pieces in Lynette’s lower back and then rinsed each cut out with the hydrogen peroxide. After that she put Neosporin over the cuts and covered three of them with Band-Aids. The two larger wounds she covered with gauze and then used masking tape to hold them.
“The big ones might need stitches. I don’t know. They’re not really bleeding now. Maybe we can look online and see what to do.”
“Alright,” Lynette said.
“Jesus, I was worried about you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m just glad you’re okay. I brought my button-down paint shirt we used when we painted the kitchen. It’s clean and you can get blood on it and it won’t make a difference.”
“Thanks,” Lynette said and stood up, and her mother helped her put it on.
The Night Always Comes Page 13
