It’s no time to make yourself beautiful, Victor says.
I look behind the counter. It’s been cleaned out, nothing we can use as a weapon.
Look, we better get out of here, I say to Victor. We can’t do anything against those bastards.
No point running. Besides, I got a piece.
He pulls up his skirt and reaches inside his panty hose, down to where an athletic supporter would be if he wears an athletic supporter. He pulls out a gun, a small calibre revolver.
Where the hell did that come from? I ask.
You just saw.
I don’t mean that. Where’d you get it in the first place?
Always had it. Just never told you about it. I had it in my crotch that day you rescued me. I was trying to figure a way to get at it when you stuck your nose in. Then I didn’t need it any more.
Well, okay, so you got a piece. What good is it? There’re six of them. If you get one you’re lucky, and then it’d have to be at close range.
I’ll just have to get close.
You’ll never.
You have an alternative suggestion?
No.
So.
Victor—
C’mon, out the side.
I spot a two-pronged cooking fork next to an encrusted griddle. I pick it up, it’s got scum all over it, and follow Victor toward the opening in the side wall.
The bike gang is heading toward the main entrance of the Hot Shoppe, so apparently they didn’t notice, or didn’t care to use, the wall opening. At least we have room to maneuver then. Victor starts through the opening, hesitates.
What’s the matter? I ask.
My clothes, my other clothes. I left them back there.
This is no time to sort out your wardrobe.
You’re right.
He takes another step, then mumbles:
I’m always leaving my duds behind somewhere.
We get outside. The day is terrible. Humid, murky, that unpleasantness that comes with dusk on awful days. Outside, we are worse off, since we can’t see the bikers any more.
Maybe we can make a break for it, I say, they don’t know where we are.
I want to kill that bastard.
How about some other time, maybe we—
One of the bikers strides around the corner of the building. What teeth are left in his mouth seem white and shining, adding a conditional brightness to his smile. He wears a tee-shirt (little underarm rips) with the words I’d rather eat shit than ride Jap bikes printed on it in threadbare block letters.
Hey look at this, he shouts over his shoulder. Victor’s arm moves backward, he hides the gun in the fold of his flowing skirt. The biker turns back. He is particularly ugly, some crisscrossed scars on his cheek, the shape of his face doughy.
Remember later, Vicki baby, he says. I found you first. Remember I got rights.
You got about as much rights as you got balls. Zero on both counts.
Dough-face feints a blow. Victor steps back. The others appear around the corner of the building. The leader pushes Dough-face aside. He is a lot prettier than his gang, but you’d rather spend a casual evening with any one of them. There is malice in his eyes above and beyond any provocation.
Well, Vicki, he says, it’s been a thrilling chase, honey, now we’ve got matters to—
Victor shoots through his skirt. The leader, stunned, grabs at the side of the building, at the border of the wall-opening. I glance quickly toward Victor. He seems about to collapse. Doughface is first to react. He lunges at Victor, past me. As he goes past, I bring the scummy fork upwards. Amazingly, I get both prongs into his beefy neck, just below the jaw line. Some blood starts running down the prongs as Dough-face falls sideways.
Victor is still retreating, ignoring what I’ve done, staring past me at the man he’s shot. He’s scared shitless, I can tell. Suddenly there is movement all around me. One of the bikers jumps at me, I hear some shots off to my left. The biker hits me twice in the stomach, once against the side of the head. Last thing I see is somebody else’s fist coming at my face.
— 7 —
Link is looking down at me as I come to. At first I see his face in fuzzy outline, an improvement on its normal state, then I see him more clearly. He is smiling.
What’s so amusing?
That you’re alive. Considering, it’s worth momentary amusement.
Okay, guess you’re right. What happened?
You all right?
If I move any more I’ll discover my whole body’s in pain. Other than that, I’m okay. What happened?
You had a run-in with some bikers.
I remember. I mean, after I got knocked out.
Well, not much after that. I saw you two and the bikers as we came out of the woods. I saw the shot and what came after, dropped the box of food I was carrying. You were falling as we ran into the parking lot. A couple of bikers came after us, and we had a good old brawl. Course we outnumbered them three to two and we managed to win out. I carried you in here about ten minutes ago and, oh, about forty-five seconds ago you woke up.
You’re leaving out something.
Yes, well, I am assigning priorities to certain pieces of information.
It is all too confusing to me. I shake my head to clear it, but that only makes it hurt more. I wonder if I have a skull fracture. A concussion, at least.
What happened to the bikers? I ask.
You mean, besides the dead one?
Which was the dead one, mine or Victor’s?
Yours.
I was afraid of that. What about Victor’s?
I don’t know. He isn’t around anywhere. None of them are. His bike’s gone, too.
Suddenly I discern a missing piece of information.
Where’s Victor?
Gone, too.
Where? How?
He took off in your car.
In my car?
Zoomed it outta here on two wheels down the road.
Oh, Jesus.
I lie back and think about it for a minute. Then something occurs to me and I reach in my pocket. My keys are gone.
That son of a bitch! I shout.
Which son of a bitch?
Victor!
Oh, should’ve known.
The son of a bitch stole my keys. He must’ve, had to do it before those bastards even showed up. He picked my pocket back there when I was asleep, he had to. He intended to steal the car all along.
That’d figure. For Victor, I mean.
I am about to ask Link to explain that remark, then I realize he doesn’t have to. I understand it completely.
Rest a while, he says.
I try to rest, but I can think only of that rotten son of a bitch and how he must’ve picked my pocket. I can see his hand sliding in, him watching me breathe deeply, perhaps stopping for a moment if I snored or stirred. That son of a bitch. I put my hand in my pocket, scrounge around to see if maybe I have missed the keys and they’re still there, hoping that maybe Victor ran off in somebody else’s Mustang. Nothing. At the very bottom I come upon a crumpled-up piece of paper. I pull it out, open it up partially with the fingers of my one hand. Just some numbers. It’s a minute before I recognize them. This is the paper Emil gave me before I left. The telephone number there. I stare at it for a long time, then I start to get up. Link is beside me immediately.
What’s the matter? he says.
That wall-phone. It works?
I think—yes, it does. Somebody used it the other—
I’m gonna make a call.
Later.
No, now.
Your move, I guess.
Link sees I’m determined, I can tell that. He helps me to the other side of the room, where the telephone hangs unsurely on a decaying wall. Every step is agony, pain shooting up and down my arm.
This one work like back-east phones? I ask Link.
They all work alike, don’t they?
I mean, do I need coins?
Oh, that. Course
not. It’s all doctored, I’m sure. We can beat Ma Bell every time.
I dial the number and wait through several rings before a recorded voice answers and tells me the number I have dialed is not a working number. Hell it ain’t, I shout at the voice. She tells me all over again that the number I have dialed is not a working number. I redial it, get the recorded lady again. She sounds like she’s ready to die as soon as she finishes with me. I try to slam the receiver down on the hook, but it slips off and out of my hands, dangles like a forgotten string. Link gently replaces it but I continue to stare at the phone. I want to tell Emil I am almost out west, hear him cackle so what. I want to go and chase the ghost-Chuck across phantom highways. I want to talk to Cora, ask her to consider meeting me out here somewhere. But how the hell could I meet her or go back there, with no wheels and no luck?
Link comes up and says some new dude is offering the bunch of us a ride and would I like to come. I say yes and hobble out of the restaurant.
— 8 —
We drive in bleak darkness. I keep dozing off and, after one of the dozes, suddenly awaken to bleak sunlight. The guy who’s given us the ride, a short professorial type, seems to be anti-ventilation. He won’t let us open any windows. The inside of the car is unbearably hot. I can’t breathe. I press my head against the side window, as if I could somehow draw air through the glass. We drive for a few miles, then I spot an overturned motorcycle off the side of the road.
Stop! I yell at the driver.
I ain’t got time, gotta barrelhouse to—
Stop, you can leave me here, it’s okay.
I’ll go with him, Link says, stop the car.
Jesus, the driver says and pulls to a stop. I am out of the car before it comes to a halt and running down the road on my aching legs. I hear Link’s ambling footsteps behind me. Even when I get to the motorcycle I have no way of knowing if it belonged to any of the gang. I look past it and see a flash of green, the shade of the Mustang’s paintjob, behind some trees in front of me. Link catches up with me and says:
What do you think?
Over there, I say, and we both head toward the trees. It is the Mustang all right. Overturned, the windshield glass shattered, part of the top crushed. I am looking at the passenger side. I slowly walk around the car and see what I expect to see. Victor, the upper half of his body sticking out the driver’s-side window, pieces of broken glass and other debris around him. I find it odd that his new blouse has only a couple of stains on it. I lean down to him. Beside his face there is an upper denture plate, split in half. He must have spit it out. How it broke I can’t figure out.
How is he? Link says.
He’s still breathing. But I don’t know.
We should do something.
What can we do?
I don’t know. Something.
What can we do?
Maybe we should—but no, I don’t know where we could go, or how to get anywhere.
Then what should we do? The roads are—
You could start by pulling me out of this goddamned wreck of a fucking car, Victor says.
Link looks at me and I look at him and, without commenting, we begin pulling Victor out of the Mustang. As we work on him, I notice more and more that is destroyed on my car. More things twisted out of shape, more things that cannot possibly function again, more places where it is smashed in completely. It looks worse than it did when I first bought it.
Victor complains about the way we are delicately removing him from the mangled vehicle. I kick him in the ribs and tell him to shut up. Link laughs. Victor continues to grouse anyway.
We finally get him out. As he stands up, he tests his body. Apparently he is in no more pain than I am. His mouth when he talks looks funny. Because he’s half-toothless, of course. The condition does not seem to alter his complaining abilities, but it sure looks weird.
What happened to the biker? I ask.
Beats me, Victor says, shrugging.
Link taps me on the shoulder.
Over there, he says. Noticed it while we were extracting our friend here.
I look where he points, and see the biker. Or the body of the biker. I guess such distinctions should be made. Upside down, feet aimed at the sky, the body rests, reclines almost, against the trunk of an old leafless tree.
We should check him out, I say, see if he’s still alive.
No way he’s alive, Link says.
He looks into my eyes, seems to see something there. Misery maybe.
Well, okay, he says, I’ll check it out. You two stay here.
He goes to the tree. He walks like a gorilla in traction, he looks weird even from behind. I follow him a few steps. Victor stays behind, leaning against the car, looking toward the body as if it’s a normal piece of the landscape. His eyes are cold. Indifferent is the word, I suppose. How many gods can dance on the end of a pin?
As Link leans over the body, I see its face for the first time. The biker looks much better dead. His face looks angelic in a kind of strangely colored way. Like in one of those very old no-perspective paintings you sometimes see on religious calendars. I remember the cop I killed, Sergeant Allen, and the calm on his face in death. It had been a coplike calm that looked like it could be reanimated by a staticky call to duty. Then of course there’s my own second kill, the other biker back at the crumbling Hot Shoppe, lucky I never got to see his dead face. Shit, now I’ve chalked up two corpses, I could notch a gun grip, does that make me a success? How many corpses can lie peacefully on the head of a—shit, I’ve got to stop thinking like this.
Link walks back to me.
He’s dead all right. Dead as a piston rod. C’mon.
We return to Victor, give him the news.
I’m heartbroken, Victor says.
What did those guys have against you anyway? Link says. Victor just shrugs.
Usually they don’t chase a guy down for nothing, Link mutters.
I lean against the Mustang.
Do you think it’ll run again? I ask Link.
Who the fuck cares? Victor says.
I don’t know, Link says. It’s possible. I heard of a dude, at a place not far down the road. If the challenge is impossible enough, he’ll work on anything. He’s good, I hear. Let’s go see.
Okay.
I remember The Mech, who has given me great faith in mechanical miracle workers.
Jesus Christ, don’t you two guys have a car? Victor says.
We did, I say.
But we don’t any more, Link says.
Jesus Christ, you mean we got to walk?
Take off your goddamned heels and c’mon, I say. Victor is about to reply, but thinks better of it.
We all stand still for a minute, nobody ready to take the first step out. I look away from Link and Victor, examine the underside of the Mustang. It’s spotted with rust, just like the overside. Hell, I should just leave it behind, get another set of wheels. But, shit, what would I do with a different set of wheels? Make the same mistakes twice, Cora would probably say. I turn around. Victor is smirking at me as if he realizes how stupidly sentimental I’m getting. Well, why shouldn’t I? Here I’ve maybe lost my wheels forever and I’m stuck with Victor for who knows how long. Not too long, I hope. I know I can ditch him. How seems to be the problem.
Let’s go, Link says.
Okay, I say.
Finally, Victor says.
As he passes the Mustang, Link gives one of the front wheels a good spin. He and Victor go on. I watch the wheel’s spin diminish, then give it another good spin before starting after them.
Part IV
— 1 —
I can’t believe there’s any hope for the Mustang when I get a good look at it dangling at the end of the tow-truck chain like a fish that was already dead when it bit the hook. I also can’t believe the polyester leisure-suited clean-skinned mechanic (well, there’s dirt embedded in the grooves of his fingers but they go to the grave with that) who says sure he can fix it, there ain’t a ca
r was made by any worldeating conglomerate that he can’t resurrect if somebody’s really praying for it. The third thing I can’t believe is that he wants more than just the usual couple of gas cans as payment.
Look, I tell him, I haven’t got a penny to piss on right now.
That’s not precisely true, but I really don’t have the price he’s asking for, and I’m not willing to settle for handing over what little money I got left.
Well, he says, I got plenty storage space and I can wait until you get the funds together.
And if I can’t get funds?
Don’t worry about it. We’ll think of something, my lad.
He wears horn-rimmed glasses, this mechanic, and his sunken cheeks make him look more like an undertaker. No muscles on his body, but an intrusive and oddly uncharacteristic pot belly. The skin of his face is scrubbed so clean, it has the appearance of a tile surface—a touch of gloss on the unreal paleness.
Staring at his benign and bizarre visage, I'm beginning to realize that I’m no longer back east and that this ain’t The Mech, and I wish I could figure a way to cry.
While I stand there in silent frustration, a battered Caddy drives up to the open garage door. A bearded driver leans out his window, hollers:
I needa get laid, Anton.
Okay, the leisure-suited mechanic hollers back, you know what to do.
I even know how to do it.
So see Maria, tell her I okayed you. And, if I don’t see she’s got the money from you upfront, I'll personally invade your room and screw off your prick with a pipe wrench.
I got the money, Anton. I got the money. Made a pile at the casino. Blew away a couple rubes in a game of bac. So don’t sweat it, Anton.
Not sweating.
See you later, Anton.
Bye, sport.
The Caddy drives off. Anton? This guy’s name is Anton? And he’s a mechanic? Something’s not right. If The Mech had a name like Anton, he’d have changed it. If The Mech had a name. I think of the confident pleasant feelings I always had around The Mech and I resent being put on the defensive by this asshole who looks like a faulty and inefficient copy of good mechs everywhere. Like one of those new translations of the Bible that come out every few years, Anton seems to have the words okay but not the poetry.
A Set Of Wheels Page 13
