Vanilla Ride

by Joe R. Lansdale

  Anyway, in the money department, Brett and I weren’t rich, but we had most everything paid off and weren’t hurting. And, as always, another job would pop up. Also, Marvin was starting a private investigations company and Leonard and I had been promised work from him once he got that up and running. I couldn’t wait to peep in windows and take pictures of the wrong couples coming out of cheap motels.

  I got off work and went home and showered the sweat off and read a little from a book by an author who didn’t use quotation marks and was scared to death his work might be entertaining. I gave up on the book and put it in the to-be-swapped pile for the used bookstore, went upstairs, and watched TV

  There was some good History Channel stuff, and some Discovery Channel stuff on, but I watched a show about some dumb blondes who had access to a lot of money and didn’t do much of anything all day but plan ways to spend that money. I couldn’t take my eyes off the program. I told myself down deep they couldn’t be as dumb as they seemed and that there was something spiritual about them. I think their most spiritual aspect was their lack of clothing. Their benefactor was an eighty-year-old gray guy who walked around in a house robe and took Viagra so he could bang all three and sleep in the bed with them all at the same time. He was my hero.

  When I heard the front door slam, I switched the channel. Brett was home. I found a history program about Genghis Khan. I had seen the program before and had enjoyed it. Seen it twice even, but by this go-round I knew Genghis was dead and he wasn’t coming back.

  Brett came upstairs. She looked cute in her nurse’s uniform. Her flame-red hair had slipped out from under her cap and was hanging over one eye. She took off the cap and sighed and threw the cap on a chair. She came over and turned her back to me. I sat up on the bed and unzipped her dress. She wiggled out of it.

  “I want to order pizza,” she said, “and then fuck like a couple of greased weasels.”

  “My lucky day.”

  “And don’t you forget it.”

  She sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the phone and called the pizza place. I unsnapped her bra and played with her breasts while she called.

  When she hung up, I said, “Bet we could do it before the pizza delivery gets here.”

  “He’s ten minutes away,” she said. “What fun is there in that?”

  “About ten minutes’ worth.”

  “You are correct, sir,” she said. She rolled onto the bed and I took her in my arms and we kissed. “Will you wear the bunny slippers, baby?”

  “Oh, hell yes,” I said.

  But I didn’t. The rest of it just happened naturally.

  13

  We ate the pizza downstairs and Brett read the newspaper and I read part of a Western novel and thought it was pretty good, even if the author did talk about starting his herd with two steers; that didn’t exactly endear me to his Western lore or his grasp of basic biology, but the story was all right. Then there was a knock at the door. I went to the curtain and pulled it back and looked out. The glass was fogged over from the cold outside. I had to wipe it a bit, and then I could see Leonard standing by the door, looking toward the curtain. When he saw me he lifted a hand.

  I let him in, and felt the air blow past. It had really turned chilly.

  “Winter’s here,” Leonard said. “My nuts have frozen up to the size of raisins.”

  “Now, don’t brag,” I said.

  Brett got up from her chair and came over and hugged Leonard, said, “We still got some pizza, baby, you want it.”

  “No thanks,” Leonard said. “Well… how much pizza?”

  “Couple of pieces?” Brett said.

  “I can do that. And then I could maybe have some of those cookies Hap got for me and some of the Dr Pepper he got me special too.”

  “I like that stuff myself,” I said.

  Leonard winked at me. “You are so cute,” he said.

  I sat at the kitchen table with Leonard while he ate and Brett went back in the living room to finish reading the paper. When Leonard finished eating the pizza and was ready to start on the cookies, I put a pot of decaf on, said, “Okay, what’s going on?”

  “What?” Leonard said.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Because you’re my bestest goddamn buddy in the whole damn world. My brother. My doppelganger. My—”

  “Yeah, but why are you here?”

  “I always come over.”

  “And you’re always welcome. But where’s John? Why haven’t you mentioned him? You know better than to jack with me, Leonard. I know you better than anyone in the world. Better than you know you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Leonard pushed a vanilla cookie around on his plate. “John and I aren’t doing so good.”

  “Could it have anything to do with you crappin’ in the bed?”

  “I was mad.”

  “You? Oh, say thee not such foul lies about your own sweet self.”

  “I said some things.”

  “Another surprise.”

  “I’ve sort of been staying somewhere else.”

  “Where?”

  “Motels. I get off the security job, I been picking a different one each night. Quite the thrilling experience. One of them, it has one of those old-time beds where you put a quarter in a machine and the bed vibrates. … Course, it doesn’t work. But the mechanism is still there, and you can’t imagine how the nostalgia comforts me. Hey, and there’s this one cheap motel, the sheets, they got shit stains on them. I stayed there twice, two different rooms, shit stains on blue sheets. I guess it saves on laundry soap, leavin’ them like that.”

  I got up and poured us some coffee and got some sweetener and cream. We fixed our coffee. I stirred mine longer than was necessary. I said, “Have you tried to talk to John?”

  “I have.”

  “And what’s the sticking point?”

  “He doesn’t like me.”

  “Bullshit. What’s going on?”

  “The queer stuff.”

  “You’re both queer, Leonard.”

  “Really? Well, that puts some things in perspective.”

  “So, John feels guilty about being gay?”

  “John’s brother hates him because he’s gay. He tells him he doesn’t have to be gay. He’s telling him God doesn’t want him gay.”

  “Even if God made him that way?” I said. “Provided there was a God.”

  “If there was one, and he made someone gay wouldn’t God his own goddamn self be responsible?” Leonard said.

  “In my book, yes. But in the Christians’ book, that rascal can do no wrong. Someone survives a hurricane, it was God’s mercy. Someone drowns, it was God’s will. I don’t like him. He’s a bully.”

  We touched fists. It’s a manly bonding thing.

  “Or maybe,” Leonard said, “God is gay and it’s the rest of you people who are messed up and going to hell. You ever think about that? Maybe there’s another Bible out there that tells us to stone you guys and not to lie with women because it’s strange. It is, you know.”

  “Brett and I like it.”

  Leonard sipped some coffee. “You see, John is starting to feel he’s not supposed to be gay, and unlike us, on some level he believes that God stuff. He thinks he’s violated God’s law, so he’s going to church counseling to get straight.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

  “That’s what he thinks. For heaven’s sake.”

  “It’s a figure of speech.”

  “I’ve tried to tell him that even if there is a God, the New Testament is the one to go by, and it’s not tough on us queers. It’s just the old mean version of God that gives us a hard time. Motherfucker in the Old Testament won’t even let us have a pork chop.”

  “God must have finally got laid between the Old and the New Testament,” I said. “’Cause between those two books, he sure mellowed out.”

  “Who’d he lay, male or female?”

  “Either �
� Look, Leonard, I’m sorry about John.”

  “Not half as sorry as I am. I’ve called him, I wrote him a letter. I even did an e-mail from one of the hotels on my laptop.”

  “You got a laptop?”

  “John bought it for me. At home I even got a printer and some paper to print out on.”

  “You are so cosmopolitan.”

  “Tell me about it. But the thing is, he’s going to take these classes so he can tell his brain and his dick that he’s been confused and he likes women. I can’t think of anything yuckier than learning to like that old pink snapper.… No disrespect to you and Brett.”

  “I get your point. You want me to talk to him?”

  “I don’t know. I thought about that, thought about asking you. But it won’t matter. He thinks he’s on the road to hell and wang and butt hole are no longer on the smorgasbord.”

  “Leonard, thy middle name is romance. You and Tanedrue, you should get together, write a book on courting. Look here, you’re not staying in any motel. You’ll park your happy ass on the couch tonight.”

  “Thanks, Hap.”

  “I’m just afraid you keep trying to hook up those motel Internet connections to your laptop you’ll put your eye out. So I want you here, safe and sound.”

  “Thanks, brother. Can I have the last cookie?”

  “No.”

  We sat there and looked at the cookie. I said, “You haven’t given up on John yet, have you?”

  “No. But I got a rule. If you’re ashamed of being gay, I’m ashamed of you. I say, Queer up. I take into account John’s getting some shit and was raised in such a way as to not think he’s on the right path, but I was raised that way myself. I got over it by the time there was hair on my balls. Actually, John shaves them for me, but you know what I mean.”

  “Too much information, partner. Besides, I think a man ought to have hair on his balls.”

  “Now that John won’t be doing that for me anymore, are you interested in doing the shaving?” Leonard said, and smiled.

  “I’d just cut them off, problem solved. Actually, several problems solved. Your relationships would be less strenuous and that pesky hair problem would be over with. You could just hang out with Bob and be happy.”

  Leonard sighed. “And if things aren’t bad enough, Bob died.”

  “Oh, man. Sorry.”

  Bob was Leonard’s pet armadillo. They had been close. Well, Leonard had been close to Bob. It was hard to tell how Bob felt. But he did hang around and would sniff Leonard’s hand and eat out of it. He lived in Leonard’s closet a lot of the time. Went outside to do his business, like a dog. Had a bowl with his name on it.

  “It was like his little clock ran down,” Leonard said. “I buried him out back near a little wallow he had made. You know how he liked to dig.”

  “He was an armadillo, Leonard. It’s what they do.”

  “I know. But he was kind of cool. I liked him.… Hell, Hap, I don’t know. Short time back, life was good, felt like I was fartin’ perfume and crappin’ chocolate candy. Now things suck the big ole donkey dick. John, the way he’s actin’, and now my ’dilla goin’ down. It sucks the oxygen right out of you.”

  I couldn’t tell if Leonard was more upset about John or Bob. I studied his face, decided it was a draw.

  “Sorry, man,” I said. “Really.”

  “Thanks. It don’t help worth a damn, but I’m glad you said it,” and his voice wavered a little. “Actually, I’m thinking of trying to write a soap opera, call it Lives of the Homos.”

  “Leonard?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You can have the last cookie.”

  14

  Leonard stayed with us about three days. After work we played chess, talked nasty, read books and discussed them; we talked about which was cooler, Marvel Comics or DC. Leonard thought Marvel. I thought DC. Brett liked Archie Comics. That immediately excluded her from the discussion and a bit of respect was lost. We listened to music. We rented movies and played Monopoly. Brett proved to be adamant about having the silver dog as her token, and she won a lot. I saw her steal some money from my pile once, but let it go. I called her on it when we went to bed and she made it up to me and the authorities were not called, though Archie Comics was not entirely forgiven.

  It was fun having Leonard around for a while, and we hated to see him go, but he finally rented a little apartment on the other side of town, said he was calling John daily, that they were talking and he was guardedly optimistic, hoping things would resolve quickly because the hair on his balls had grown back.

  I came home from work one day, sweaty and dirty and feeling like something the dogs had dragged under the porch and gnawed on, and there was a police car parked out front of the house at the curb. There was a big black guy with a cop’s uniform and a cowboy hat about the size of a life raft sitting in one of my lawn chairs smoking a cigar big as an erect horse dong. When I parked in the driveway and got out, the stench of that damn cigar wafted over to me and damn near curled the hair on my eyebrows.

  I went over, said, “Let me guess. No Enterprise Police Department.”

  “Ah, hell, man, you ain’t that smart,” he said, turning his head as if he wanted to pin me with just one eye. “You read that off the side of my car.”

  “You’re right.” I sat down in a lawn chair and looked at him. I said, “So, you took a wrong turn or what?”

  “No. I’m in the right place. They said you were a smart-ass, both of you were, and I figure you’re the white guy.”

  “That’s observant.”

  “Yep. I had a whole month of cop college and I read a book on fingerprinting once. I took a couple of courses in identification too.”

  “Wow!”

  He grinned at me around his cigar. He had strong creases around his mouth when he grinned and his eyes were slightly bloodshot. One ear floated out from the side of his head as if signaling for a turn. He didn’t strike me as over fifty. He had a hard body with a bit of a gut and arms that could twist a full-grown pig like wet wash. I remembered that Marvin had told me he was one of two fat guys. Boy, was he full of it. This John Law was big enough and mean enough looking to use an elephant’s ass to store his shoes and make the elephant like it.

  “You already talk to my buddy?” I asked.

  “No. Thought I’d talk to you. Hear you’re more reasonable and you don’t have lace on your panties.”

  “You’re right. I am. And that lace remark, not smart. Leonard heard you talk bad about him like that, he might stick you in your hat and piss in it after you.”

  “Doubt that.”

  “A man with confidence,” I said. “I like that. I know a lot of confident men Leonard has handed their teeth.”

  “Yeah, I hear you two think you’re tough guys. Be that as it may, what I know about you and him and me, I’d say I’m doing some better than either of you.”

  “Probably. Less graft in the jobs we have.”

  For the first time he didn’t look amused. “All right, let’s get formal. My name is Budd Conners. I’m half the law out of No Enterprise.”

  “Do the two of you count as one lawman?”

  He thumped ash from his cigar on the ground. “Let me tell you why I’m here.”

  “Let me guess. I stuck my dick in your territory.”

  “Something like that. You can wise off all you want, but I’m here to do you a favor.”

  “I could use some yard work done.”

  He leaned forward. “Listen, asshole. Listen good, and tell your partner what I’m going to tell you.”

  “Should I take notes?”

  “You can take notes, or you can just let it whistle through your ears. This way, I came to you and told you and I’m giving you a chance. Those guys you fucked over, shot one in the leg, took that girl from, flushed their dope down the shitter, they didn’t like it.”

  “Well, I hope not.”

  “They’re mad at you, and the more connected guys who work the dope
through them, guess what? They’re pissed too.”

  “Get in line. Me and Leonard piss a lot of people off.”

  “I can believe that. I can believe you two are not going to listen and you’re going to wind up with your body parts in separate trash bags in different parts of the county.”

  “This isn’t the first time we’ve been threatened.”

  “I don’t doubt that, peckerwood. But this has put a little pressure on me. The organization that runs those turds you slapped around, they got folks that run them, and they are bad folks. The Dixie Mafia.”

  “Do they have Dixie flags and still whine over the South being unionized into the rest of the country? Do they talk about cotton a lot? Get weepy about the Old South? I don’t know about you, but nothing—absolutely nothing—touches me less or bores me more than those assholes. I was you, a black man, I’d throw my rag in with someone else.”

  “It’s bigger than any of that. Some of them, they come out of the Aryan Nations, out of the prisons. But they aren’t so down on the brothers anymore. They just don’t want them to fuck their sisters. They feel they can do business with them, anyone else for that matter. These guys, they don’t care about any war but their own little money war. They’re all about commerce and respect, ass-wipe.”

  “Watch your language. I’m sensitive, and I just might go sensitive all over you.”

  He leaned back in the chair and grinned. “I’m twice your size.”

  “And I’m twice your mean.”

  “So you say. Do you want to hear me out or not?”

  I looked at my watch. “Might as well. It’s still a couple hours till dinner.”

  “They aren’t getting their dope back, so maybe they’ll think to make some kind of example out of you. That would be their way. The low guys on the turd totem pole can’t take care of you, then they’ll bring in the middle guys. That don’t work, then the middle guys will bring in the top guys, and those guys will hire someone that’ll be meaner than a bucket of rattlesnakes. They won’t dirty their hands. They’ll bring in real talent. But they probably won’t have to go that far. Enough guys with no real talent is still a lot of fuckin’ guys.”