Eve's Men

by Newton Thornburg

  Chester snorted and shook his head, as if Charley were something of a card himself. “What do you take me for? Some candyass city fool? Don’t you think I got enough smarts to figger out that if the law gits to Brian afore I do, he’s gonna sing—and I don’t mean sing ‘Miss Colorado’ neither. The ballad of Chester Einhorn, that’s what he’s gonna sing. And you know it same as me. So there ain’t gonna be no droppin’ nothin’, not now and not never.”

  It surprised Charley that he could adjust so quickly to a situation that should have been a scene on television or in the movies rather than a slice of his own life. Here he was, competently chiving on while this wiry little cowboy waved a cannon in his face and prattled on in the very lingo of showbiz: “singing” to the police and “taking care” of Brian and giving him “a real good taste” of a gun barrel. But the lingo in no way tempered Charleys anxiety and fear. Chester may have had the dialogue all wrong, but Charley still knew the little man was for real, in fact was probably the very worst—and commonest—of America’s bad dreams: another lunatic with a loaded gun.

  With this in mind, Charley wouldn’t let himself relax for a second. He knew with every breath he took that his life was on the line and that his survival might well depend on just how patient and calm he could be, and how ready, when his moment came. So he waited. And he listened.

  “You best be sure about Seattle,” Chester warned him. “Cuz that’s where we goin’, all right. And if old Brian turns up on the moon, then that’s where we goin’. Cuz justice is all that counts in this world, Charley, and they’s only one way to git it. You go out and take it, that’s how. Court justice and all that horse manure ain’t fer people like me, it’s fer lawyers and judges and big business honchos, that’s who. It ain’t nothin’ but a guvmint subidy fer ’em, jest like welfare and food stamps is fer niggers. No different. No sir, if yer a workin’ stiff and you want you some justice, you gotta go git it fer yerself. You git you some guns and learn how to use ’em, and then you can think about gittin’ you some justice. Cuz there ain’t no other way, and that’s a fack.”

  They were descending from the higher ground south of Denver down into the city, which appeared to have been erected in the middle of a lake, a rusty yellow layer of smog that stretched far out into the prairieland to the east. Listening as Chester droned on, Charley thought how nice it would have been to push the little cowboy overboard, right into the yellow lake. Sweets for the sweet.

  Much of the time Chester didn’t bother to hold the gun on Charley, or for that matter even to keep it in his hand. Sometimes he would casually lay it down on the dashboard in front of him, either because he enjoyed playing cat and mouse or because the thing was heavy and he judged Charley wasn’t fool enough to struggle over a loaded gun while zipping along the freeway. Still, holding the gun or not, the little cowboy kept his eye on Charley. Most of the time he sat leaning back against the passenger door, his boots barely touching the floor as he chewed contentedly on a match and squinted over at his captive, his seamed and sunken face looking almost happy for a change, almost relaxed, as if the two of them were driving farther and farther from that biting cold wind he was always hunched against.

  “Anyways,” he said, “I bet ya been wonderin’ how come my politics is like they is. I bet ya been wonderin’ what in hell happened to old Chester. Well, I’ll jest tell ya. I don’t s’pose I mentioned it before, but it was my great granddaddy who got our place, back after the Civil War. He traded fer it with some dumb Cherokee, gave him two beat-up horses and a barrel of rotgut for all twelve hunnert acres. And we’ve had the place ever since. My granddaddies and my pa and uncle—and now me and Belinda—us Einhorns, we been livin’ and dyin’ there for over a hunnert years. And it’s a real nice little ranch, it really is. Only problem is this crick we got. It cuts across our north quarter and it’s got these rock cliffs and all that kinda purty shit that turns city folk on. Anyways they come on over from Tulsa to picnic there or skinnydip or what the hell have ya. And they tear up the fences and leave their garbage and they shit all over the place. So my pa and me, we useta jest git our guns and run ’em off. Shoot over their heads and such. Give ’em a scare. You know.”

  At that point he shook his head in rueful disbelief, a philosopher still amazed at the world’s perfidiousness.

  “Then one day the goddamn sheriff waltzes in and tells us the guvmint declared the crick a ‘scenic waterway’ or some fool thing, and we had to fence it off so’s our cattle wouldn’t dirty it up. Meantime the public had the right to come in and do whatever fool thing they wanted—on our land, mind you—and we couldn’t do one dang thing about it. Well, my ma, she writes the guvner and our congressman and senators and everybody but the goddamn dogcatcher. But of course it don’t do one damn bit of good. The guvmint one day jest tells ya ya don’t really own what’s been yers fer a hunnert years. So what in hell is a body to do? Change who ya vote fer? Change yer political party? Call up radio talk shows and piss and moan about it?”

  Chester laughed at the absurdity of the idea. He snorted and shook his head. “Not this cowboy, no sirree. Instead, what I did was undeclare our li’l crick a ‘scenic waterway.’ I jest git out my guns jest like before, only I don’t show myself this time. And I don’t shoot above no heads either. I blast Thermos jugs and shoot beer bottles right outa their grubby mitts, and I part their fag hair and shoot their fuckin’ dogs too. And when the sheriff comes roarin’ out afterwards, I’m jest settin’ there on the porch swing drinkin’ a beer, innocent as a lamb. They couldn’t prove nothin’. Some weekends they’d send out a deputy to guard the fuckin’ trespassers, but soon as he’d leave, I’d jest start in again. And finally they wasn’t no more trespassers. And we had our crick back.” At that point he actually lifted the gun to his lips and kissed it. “That’s what I mean by a party of one. Me and this li’l baby, that’s all the political party I need.”

  Heading west out of Denver, Charley followed the interstate, four smooth lanes of blacktop snaking through the mountains, often in well-lit tunnels. Soon, just past Idaho Springs, Chester grunted and motioned for Charley to turn off the freeway, onto a two-lane highway running north. On this road, they drove past a couple of turnouts, places where tourists could park and take in the spectacular scenery. And eventually Charley saw a turnout without a single car or tourist, and he judged that the stone parapet bordering it was low enough so the door of Chester’s high-riding truck could swing open above it. It crossed his mind that he was probably being fatally reckless, that in a few seconds he would be gambling with his life. Even then, he could not stop himself.

  Braking and turning in, he looked over at his captor. “I’ve got to piss,” he said. “Either outside or here in the truck. Which will it be?”

  Chester took hold of the magnum and brought it to rest on his lap, pointed at Charley. “Okay,” he said. ‘Jest don’t think you can git out and run. Jest shake the dew off your pecker and git back in, you got that?”

  Nodding meekly, Charley opened the door above the parapet and started to get out. But even as he placed his left foot down onto the wide stone surface, he swung his right hand backwards in a vicious arc and chopped the wiry cowboy in his Adam’s apple. Then he seized him by the front of his denim jacket and, yanking him out of the driver’s door, tossed him like a sack of garbage over the parapet and down the side of the mountain.

  Shocked by what he had done, Charley just stood there and watched as Chester plunged down the steep grade, frantically reaching for an occasional bush or scrub pine and fighting to get feet but falling again and tumbling, sliding, ultimately coming to rest about two hundred feet down, with the gun, incredibly, still in his hand. Without quite knowing why, Charley was relieved to see him move slightly, already struggling to sit up. And finally the little cowboy craned his neck and looked back up the mountain.

  Charley waved to him. Then he got into the truck and drove off, heading back toward Denver.

  Chapter Six

 
Sex with Brian almost always left Eve feeling good afterwards, sated and loved and fulfilled. And usually she was able to carry those feelings with her into sleep, like an armful of flowers. But not this time. This time, even as she and Brian parted and began to pull their clothes back on, Eve felt as if she’d fallen out of a cozy bed into a pool of ice water.

  “Well, that was fun,” she said. “A couple of desperadoes pretending everything’s cool.”

  Brian laughed. “Desperadoes? Oh, come on, babe, it’s not that bad.”

  “No? Well, I’m just a tyro at all this, never having been a fugitive before.”

  “And you’re not now. Maybe I am—but you’re not.”

  “That’s reassuring coming from the only Californian who’s not a lawyer.”

  But Brian refused to be baited. Continuing with his impression of a secret agent—as Eve considered it—he calmly told her that he wanted her to go forward and tell the pilot that they wished to change their destination to the Burbank airport.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “In case they’re on to us. Santa Barbara was just a red herring. We actually go there, we’ll probably find a welcoming committee waiting for us.”

  “What do I tell the pilot?”

  Brian frowned. “Oh, let me think. Why not just tell him we’ve changed our minds, that the meeting we were going to hold in Santa Barbara, now we want to postpone it? Something like that.”

  “I’d feel better if I had a bath.”

  “A little sticky, are we?”

  She mimicked his smug smile, and he laughed. As she got up and moved past him, he smacked her on the bottom.

  “Still world class,” he said.

  “Will it look world class in stripes?”

  “They don’t wear stripes anymore. Orange jumpsuits now. You’ll look positively fetching.”

  “Thanks. That’s all I needed to hear.” With that, she opened the cockpit door and went inside.

  At the airport, Brian again assumed the role of Eve’s dim-witted brother, tagging along after her in his Chicago Bears cap and sunglasses, leaving it to her to find a skycap and wave down a taxi. Following the instructions he had given her on the plane, she told the cabbie that they wanted to go to Hollywood, to some reasonably priced motel there, and he took them to the new Ramada Inn just off the Hollywood Freeway. Eve paid the cabbie and registered for their room, paying cash for two days in advance, while Brian used the lobby pay phone to call “an old friend.”

  Not until they were in their room and Eve was hurriedly stripping for a shower did she learn the identity of that friend: Stephanie Hodges, a rich old lover of Brian’s, the woman he had turned to after Kim Sanders’ death, the woman who had hidden him from the media during that unhappy time. Though Eve didn’t much care for the idea of staying with one of Brian’s old flames, she didn’t make a fuss about it, mostly because she was so eager to get into the shower and take root there.

  “Her daughter’s coming for us,” Brian said. “So don’t take too long.”

  Eve didn’t bother to answer, thinking at first that she would take as long as she damn well pleased. But there were things she had to know, questions she wanted answered before the girl arrived. So within a few minutes she was out of the shower, dried, and dressing, this time in black stone-washed Levis and a man’s peppermint striped shirt.

  “Brian, we have to talk,” she said.

  “So talk.”

  “I want you to listen.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “All right, then.” She found herself suddenly so tense she was short of breath. “Until I get some answers, I’m not going any further. I’m not going to Stephanie’s with you.”

  “Okay—answers about what?”

  “About what?” Faced with his maddening aplomb, she was trying hard not to lose her temper. “Well, just what the hell do you think? I have to know how far you plan to take this whole thing. I mean, are you going to continue trying to sabotage the movie? And do you plan on being a fugitive for good, and if so, have you somehow got it into your head that I’ll just go along like a good little girl? A good little moron? Is that what you think?”

  Brian looked genuinely puzzled. “Jesus, I don’t know,” he said. “I haven’t really thought about all that. I’m just rolling with the punches, you know? Just taking things one day at a time.”

  For Eve, that was answer enough, all the reason she needed to abandon ship as soon as possible. “And not worrying all that much about me, it seems. Well okay, Brian. So be it. You go on alone with the girl when she comes. I’m pulling out. And I’m going to keep the money and give it back to Charley, to cover the bail he put up.”

  Brian sat down on the bed. “Just like that, huh?”

  “Yes, just like that. You try to stop me and I’ll scream for the police.”

  “Jesus Christ, Eve, have I ever touched you in anger?” He was shaking his head, in confusion or disbelief. “You want to cut out, fine, you’re free to go. I told you I expected it. It only makes sense.”

  “I’m glad you agree.”

  “I just don’t see why you’d expect me to have things all planned out. I thought we’d just go up to Stephanie’s for a few days and see which way the wind is blowing, find out what the studio’s going to do about the movie. Then I’ll have a better idea what to do.”

  “Then you agree with me about the money?”

  “Sure. I already told you that. I just wanted to wait until Charley put the police onto Chester for the shooting, that’s all.”

  “How will you get by?” she asked.

  “Forget the money,” he said. “The question is, how do I get by without you?”

  Eve stood there looking down at him still sitting on the bed, his hands folded in his lap, his long legs thrown out, the bent, rueful, affectionate smile just beginning to form, the deep blue eyes as guileless as a child’s. And once again he had her. She already knew that. He had seduced her just as surely as on the jet.

  “Oh, all right,” she said. “A couple of days up at Stephanie’s, and then we come down and face the music, okay?”

  “Except if there’s any music to be faced, I’m the one who’ll do it, not you.”

  Getting up then, he took her in his arms and kissed her on the forehead and the nose and finally on the mouth, slowly and tenderly, barely touching her lips, a loving kiss, uncomplicated by sex or passion. And this was something about him that she always found surprising, that as masculine as he was—as unsubtle and insensitive as he often seemed to be—he nevertheless invariably knew just which button of hers to push, and when to push it.

  “Just a few more days, all right then, honey?” he said. “I need you. I need to know you’re there.”

  Nodding, she hugged him and turned her head, trying to hide the tears in her eyes.

  Terry Hodges came for them in a beat-up old Travel-All station wagon that looked almost brand new on the inside, even though the car itself was almost as old as the girl, who was a skinny teenager with a boy’s haircut, baggy jeans, and a sleeveless Raiders sweatshirt. When Brian had let her into the motel room, responding to her virtually inaudible knock, she had seemed almost too shy to speak. And her hangdog, apologetic look gave Eve a pretty good idea what Stephanie herself would be like: another aging Sunset Boulevard prima donna, with all the mothering instincts of a shark.

  The girl was a competent driver, though, and soon they had reached Mulholland Drive, the strip of road winding along the top of the hill-sized San Gabriel Mountains, which divided the major part of the city from the San Fernando Valley. Eve of course had been on the road many times before, usually at night and in the company of men who wanted to park and show her its famous nocturnal vista of sparkling lights while running their hands up her thighs. Her ex-husband Richard had also taken her there, to show her the “handling characteristics” of his new Mercedes sedan. True to form, he never once had gone over the speed limit, an example of the mind-set that made her father recommend him s
o highly to her as husband material.

  This day, like that one, was hot and still and so smoggy that the skyscrapers in downtown L.A. appeared to be floating in air. Though Brian had opened the front door of the wagon for Eve, she had declined, taking a backseat instead, figuring that the girl already knew Brian and that they would have things to talk about. Since then, however, it had become apparent to Eve that a good deal of the girl’s shyness was probably due to Brian himself, either because of his newfound fame or simply because he was what he was: her mother’s handsome ex-boyfriend. Brian tried repeatedly to make conversation with her, but each time she would mumble something and retreat into herself, blushing deeply.

  Finally she slowed the car and turned onto a gravel lane that ran along a spur of the mountain.

  “We’re just up ahead,” she said.

  At the end of the lane, after passing two other houses, they came to a Spanish-style home sitting behind a tan stucco wall half-hidden by chaparral, which covered the hillsides, tinder waiting for the spark of fall. Driving on through the an open wrought-iron gate, they parked in a graveled area in front of the house, which at first looked small to Eve. But as she and Brian got out their luggage and followed Terry down a brick outside stairway, she saw that the place was considerably larger, with an L-shaped daylight basement floor running under the main part of the house and continuing at a right angle to it. Inside the angle there was a brick patio with umbrella tables and chairs scattered between a swimming pool and the low stucco parapet that edged the entire property.

  On a chaise under one of the umbrellas a bleached-blond woman in chartreuse lounging pajamas lay stretched out like a corpse, one listless hand holding a cigarette, the other a half-full champagne glass. As Brian and Eve reached the patio, the woman put down the glass and struggled to get to her feet, almost falling in the process. Eve was happy to see that though Stephanie undoubtedly had been quite attractive in her day, she was now a total mess, with sagging breasts, flabby hips, and skin so sun-damaged she could have passed for a Navajo matriarch. Smiling broadly, she held her arms out wide enough to gather them all in.