Big Picture: Stories

by Percival Everett

  “You know,” Michael said, “I’ve got a long drive tomorrow and I’ve got to leave early. So, as good as this is, I’ve got to get to bed.”

  “That’s okay, Michael,” Harley stood, put his napkin on the table. “I’ll show you where you’re bedding down.”

  “If you’ll all excuse me,” Michael said. “Thanks for dinner, Sumiko. It was really good.”

  “Good night, Michael,” Sumiko said.

  “It was a pleasure meeting you two,” he said to the other guests.

  “Same here,” Simon said, standing and shaking Michael’s hand.

  “Maybe I’ll see you all in the morning,” Michael said.

  Eddie gave him one last ogle before he followed Harley, who was saying, “I already grabbed your bag.” They walked down the hallway, past the bathroom of monochrome torture and into a small den.

  “I forgot Eddie and Simon were staying over, so we’ve got to put you on this sofa,” Harley said.

  “Fine with me.” Michael looked around the room, at the short couch on which he would be sleeping, at the blond wood paneling, at the green carpet.

  “This is the room we haven’t done yet,” Harley said, apologetically. “The television works if you want to use it.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Well, we’re at the end of the hall if you need anything.”

  “Okay.”

  Harley left Michael and closed the door. Michael sat on the sofa, ran his hand across the scratchy fabric, and leaned his head back.

  The far-off chatter and laughter interspersed with an occasional booming “great” was gone. Michael assumed that they had all gone to bed. He uncoiled himself from the sofa and went to the door to listen. Nothing. He had to relieve himself, but he refused to go back to that white bathroom. Although he believed that even without knowing the layout well enough he might do all right in the dark, the room just flat out scared him; his head hurt simply considering it; his stomach tightened into a knot, which, given his present condition, was an unfortunate circumstance. He felt irrational, but hell, being irrational was the least of his worries. Being irrational didn’t hurt and didn’t poke like pins into the backs of his eyeballs. No, he couldn’t go in there. At the front door, however, he was shocked to find that, even though this was “Laramie, not Denver,” there was an alarm system. A green light flashed, but Michael didn’t know what it meant, whether it was armed or off. He dared not open the door for fear of waking the whole house and maybe summoning every deputy in the territory—cowboys bored shitless at coffee shops just waiting to speed over and point their hair-trigger pistols at him while he squatted next to the holly bush.

  He went back and stood in the hallway outside the bathroom. He felt the already piercing pain in his head and was truly afraid of what the light in that room would do to him. He would open the door, flip the switch, and his brain would rupture. If only the room had a window, then at least there might be a small amount of moonlight from outside. He couldn’t bring himself to use the room with the door open, because of the obvious potential for interruption and embarrassment. He hadn’t liked the feeling he’d gotten from Eddie at dinner, the way she licked her lips even when she wasn’t licking her lips, so he was particularly sensitive to the possibility of her finding him in a compromising position. Down at the end of the corridor was the door to Harley and Sumiko’s room and in there was another bathroom. It occurred to him that there might be a flashlight in the kitchen. He believed that everyone had one of those messy drawers with rubber bands, pliers, empty matchbooks, and maybe, just maybe a flashlight. He went into the kitchen and prowled about using the moon through the windows, finding the flatware and a drawer full of corkscrews, and finally their equivalent to his junk drawer, but it seemed frighteningly neat and was, after all, without a flashlight. As sometimes happens when one is engaged to the point of distraction, the urge to go suddenly disappeared. Michael decided to return to his room, close his eyes, and consider his predicament. He went back and put himself on the sofa only to find a leg already stretched across it. He jumped up and hit the switch for the overhead fixture. It was Eddie.

  “What are you doing in here?” Michael asked.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. She was wearing a gown made of flannel.

  “You shouldn’t be in here. What if Simon wakes up? What if he were to come in here? What would he say seeing you sitting there like that?”

  “Who cares what Simon says?”

  “Well, Simon didn’t say you could come in here.” Michael felt silly saying that. “Is that really his name?”

  Eddie nodded, sitting up and leaning toward him. “Sumiko said you tried to kill yourself.”

  “What?”

  “She said you ate paint.” Eddie swallowed. “I love the passion of that.”

  “I see.” He walked over and sat beside her on the sofa. “I did eat paint, but I didn’t try to kill myself. I’m just a dumb shit. Now, I don’t know what kind of romantic picture you’ve concocted of me, nor what kind of game you’ve conjured up for us to play, but I’m not going to be a part of it.”

  “You haven’t heard what I have in mind,” she said.

  “I don’t need to hear it.” Michael’s brains pushed at the walls of his cranium. “I really think you should go on back to your room, okay?”

  “A kiss first.”

  “No.”

  “Just one,” she said, pouting. “I’m good at it.”

  “I’m sure.” Michael sighed. “Please?”

  Eddie stood and slinked across the room toward the door, trying to achieve a seductive look in her flannel nightshirt. “I’m going,” she said.

  Michael looked at her feet. They were enormous.

  “Good night, Michael.”

  When she was gone and his door was closed, he shut his eyes and pushed out a breath. His stomach began to hurt and he felt pressure again to find a toilet. There was no putting it off this time; he’d have to suffer the consequences of using the white room. He went out into the hall only to find the door closed and a stripe of light at the threshold. Eddie was in there doing god-knew-what and he didn’t dare knock and make it look as if he were coming after her. His stomach did a flip. He was in pain and in a hurry.

  He made his way down the hall to his hosts’ bedroom door. He turned the knob slowly and pushed into the room. He could hear breathing. The darkness of his room and the hallway had helped his eyes adjust and with his pupils all dilated he was able to see around the bedroom by the light from outside. He saw what must have been the bathroom door and treaded softly toward it. About halfway across the room, he realized that the breathing he was hearing sounded a certain way. He then heard Sumiko’s small voice cooing, “Oh, my big steel baby,” and Michael thought he was going to die. He got into the bathroom and felt around on the wall for the light switch, then closed the door before throwing it. Pain detonated in his head like a blasting cap and the heat of it ripped through his eyes. This room turned out to be just as bright white as the other one. He was reeling and losing his balance, but he had a reason for being there and he managed to drop his trousers and sit on the toilet, covering his eyes with his hands.

  Finished, Michael automatically reached back and flushed and immediately cringed at the subsequent noise. The tank filled and he listened at the door, learning that Harley and Sumiko hadn’t heard the plumbing because of their involvement. He tried not to focus on their sounds, but couldn’t help hearing them since his headaches always heightened his auditory capacity. He switched off the light, sat on the floor, and realized that when they were done, one of them would probably be headed his way.

  Michael crawled across the floor to the tub and climbed into it. He pushed his back up against the cool enamel and waited, trying to think and not think at the same time. What was it with these windowless bathrooms? He froze at the sound of the door opening and closed his eyes, anticipating the light being turned on, but no switch was thrown and the room remained dark. A mere twelv
e inches and the shower curtain separated him from whom he was sure was Sumiko sitting on the toilet urinating; the sound was just like Gail’s. She even pulled paper off the roll before she was done like Gail. Michael’s heart was racing, but strangely his headache was letting up—yet another bit of evidence against the theory that his symptoms were stress-related. Sumiko finished, yawned, flushed, and left the room with the door open.

  Several minutes dragged by and Michael thought he could hear Harley’s snoring. He pulled himself out of the tub and crawled across the icy tiles to the door, where he paused and satisfied himself that, indeed, Harley was snoring. He stayed on his hands and knees as he moved across the carpet of the bedroom and bumped into someone.

  “I’ve been searching all over for you,” Eddie said.

  Michael felt faint.

  A light came on and the very first thing Michael saw was Eddie’s gangly and naked body on hands and knees right in front of him.

  “What in the hell is going on?” yelled Harley who was sitting up in bed.

  Michael stood up quickly, looking in horror at Eddie and then at Harley and finally Sumiko. Sumiko had the covers pulled up to her neck, but Harley was now standing, butt-naked beside the bed. Michael saw the man’s little penis and looked away, but what he confronted were naked Eddie’s enormous feet. Michael wanted to scream, but nothing rose from his throat, although a scream would have served as an appropriate and suitable accompaniment to the way he tore out of there.

  Michael ran to the den, grabbed his shoes, jacket, and bag and bumped into Simon, who was coming out of the guest room into the hallway. Again, Michael wanted to let out some unintelligible shrill bellow and again his lungs failed him. He ran away from Simon, who stood confused and uncharacteristically silent in his red flannel pajamas. He reached the front door, turned the lock, and set off the loudest alarm he’d ever heard, a screeching horn that penetrated his head. In the background he could hear Harley say, “What in hell is going on here?!” and Simon say, “Edwina!” Michael ran to his truck, fumbled with his keys, got the engine started, and drove off as the lights of neighbors’ houses began to snap on. He looked over to find the head of the Dicotyles tajacu still on the seat beside him, still neatly wrapped.

  Michael drove north out of Laramie into stiff and increasingly frigid wind. He thought of the fire that had consumed his recent work, recalled the odor of the burning oil-covered canvases. The Virginian Hotel in Medicine Bow was dark, lonely, and most significantly, closed when he arrived there at three in the morning. He bundled up in his new sleeping bag and huddled up against the wall out of the wind. In the morning when the doors opened, he would sit down and order the mediocre breakfast fare for which the hotel was regionally famous and then continue north for the Big Horns where he would camp, fish, and probably freeze. He thought about the head of the Dicotyles tajacu on the passenger seat of his truck and wished it were alive; alive, so that he could let it go, watch it trot off on short, sturdy legs across the prairie. But it had no legs, it was just the severed head with a hole where an eye had been, and a fake eye at that, seeing nothing even in its newest, most firmly inserted condition. The head was only a head.

  Pissing on Snakes

  Laney decided to walk the remaining miles to the shitty little desert town where the shitty little police had her shitty little brother locked in a cell for drinking too much and generally being himself. She was walking because the belt on the water pump of her truck’s engine had broken. Mitch walked alongside her and his mouth was, as usual, open:

  “I told you not to buy a piece of shit Japanese truck.”

  Laney was a couple of yards ahead of him and she muttered, “Fuck you, you lame-ass rodeo has-been.”

  “What was that?”

  “I said, ‘fuck you.’” She stopped and turned to him, looking at his narrow face.

  “And what else?”

  “I think ‘fuck you’ about says it all.”

  “You know, I didn’t have to come with you.”

  She laughed and again with her back to him said, “I didn’t ask you to come. I told you to stay. I didn’t ask you to walk to town with me either. You can go back now if you want.” In her pocket she fumbled with the string she had used to measure the pump belt.

  Mitch caught up with her, matched stride with her.

  She looked over at him. He wasn’t a bad-looking idiot, but an idiot nonetheless and it was laughable that he considered himself to be tagging along as protection. She wasn’t sure why she had first gone out with him, much less why she had agreed to let him come along now while she bailed out her good-for-nothing brother.

  “Laney, I’m sorry. Okay?”

  “Sorry for what?”

  Mitch looked down at his sneakers hitting the highway. “I don’t know, but I am. I don’t want to fight, that’s all. I’m really tired of the fighting.”

  “Then take your stupid ass back to the truck and wait there.”

  “Why do you talk like that?”

  “I’m not talking like anything. Why do you hear like that?”

  “Like a damn sailor.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “See,” Mitch said.

  She glanced at him quickly, then looked back at the highway. He was too tall and too skinny and his hair was retreating, showing more of his face, a face not aging well. His mustache at least worked as cover. She took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, “no more fighting.”

  Mitch nodded. He looked behind them. “You’d think one car would go by.” He kicked his heels as he walked. “Your brother has a drinking problem.”

  “He’s a low-life scum. Of course he has a drinking problem. But he’s my brother.” She sighed and rolled her head to loosen her neck. “Whatever the hell that means.”

  “Can’t choose your family,” Mitch said.

  “That’s true up to a point,” she said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Figure it out.”

  The sun was on full and Laney was sweating. The dry air was stealing away the moisture and any possibility of coolness. She was thirsty. “I wish I’d brought a canteen.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Mitch said, then, “I mean, I wish I’d brought one, too.”

  “Christ, Mitch, calm down.” Laney couldn’t believe she had ever let this guy touch her. It wouldn’t happen again, she assured herself.

  The service station was one of those no-name kind with a gravel yard. The pumps were old and dusty. It was still several miles to the town, so Laney hoped it would have the belt she needed.

  No one came out as they approached the station and there was no one in the office. Laney parked her face over the water fountain and let the stream wash her forehead. The water was barely cool, but it felt good. She drank slowly, then stepped away to allow Mitch a turn. She called out, “Hello!”

  Mitch stood, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nobody home?”

  Laney observed the belts on the far wall, narrow loops of black wrapped midlength with paper and hung on hooks. She pulled the circle of string from her pocket. “At least I can find out if they have what I need.”

  Mitch stepped through the open door into the garage.

  Laney pulled down a couple of belts and compared them to the loop of string. One was close enough that she believed it would work. She called to Mitch.

  “What?” He stepped back into the office. “Find it?”

  “I think so.”

  “Good.”

  “You didn’t find the attendant? Did you check the rest room?”

  “No rest room,” Mitch said.

  “There’s got to be one.” Laney looked at the belt in her hand. “This thing doesn’t have a price on it.”

  “Can’t be more than ten bucks.”

  Laney frowned at Mitch. “Well, I’m not leaving ten bucks if the damn thing only costs three ninety-five. Did you look around back?”

  “Yeah, I checked during an out-of-body experience,” Mitch sa
id.

  “You don’t have to be a snot.”

  Laney led the way out and around the broken-down building, pausing to look across the desert in the direction of town. Behind the station was a door marked “Wash.” Laney knocked and fell back a step.

  “Go on inside,” she said to Mitch.

  Mitch looked at her.

  “In case he’s in the middle of something.”

  “I don’t want to see him if he is,” Mitch said.

  “Go on. Don’t be a baby.”

  Mitch opened the door, leaned inside a bit, and came back. “Oh, fuck,” he said.

  “What is it?” Laney moved forward to the doorway and saw the red-covered floor. “God. Is that blood?”

  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” Mitch turned away and let the door close.

  Laney looked all around, feeling dizzy, her heart racing. She studied two derelict cars some yards away in the sage. Mitch was looking around, too.

  “It’s a gas station rest room,” he said. “The blood doesn’t mean a thing.”

  Laney and Mitch went back to the front of the station and into the office. A lizard on the counter startled Laney. It was then that she noticed the blood on the floor behind the desk.

  “Mitch, look here.”

  Mitch did and shook his head. “This is bad. We’d better call the cops.”

  Laney reached for the phone and listened for a tone. She looked at Mitch and shook her head. She watched Mitch run out across the yard, past the pumps to the phone booth. He held the receiver and severed cord in the air for Laney to see before throwing it to the ground.

  Laney felt exposed. Mitch walked back to her.

  “What do you think?” he asked.

  Laney looked at the pump belt still clutched in her fist. “We can go back and get the truck, then drive to town for the police or we can just walk to town from here. Same amount of time. Probably take longer to go to the truck and put this thing on.”