Slipstream

by Leslie Larson

  He didn’t kid himself about the other crap: no one would want it. Just a few bunged-up power tools, his high school yearbooks, and a stack of LPs from when he was a kid. Santana, Springsteen, Eric Clapton. Still, he didn’t feel satisfied. He cracked his knuckles again, rolled his head to try to work out some of the kinks in his shoulders, gripped the pen with extra force, and wrote:

  My dear family and friends,

  This is what I have Left. Please don’t ever fight about Money or Material Things. I have always done my Best in Life, even though it might not come out the way I planned. Its the Thought that Counts. To my Children, please always be True to Yourselfs. That is most Important. I love Each and Every one of you.

  Your Father/Logan Wylie

  He signed his name, folded the paper carefully, and put it in the envelope that Wally from the liquor store had given him with the letter saying he’d won the contest. OPEN ONLY IN THE EVENT OF MY DEATH, he printed on the outside. He waved the envelope as if the ink were wet and put it in the inside pocket of his Bogart jacket.

  Then, sitting at the little table and looking over the familiar rooftops of downtown, he did the dope. Rush hour was gearing up; everybody racing their engines to get the hell out of Dodge, get a jump on the weekend. Here’s to Friday the thirteenth, he toasted, raising an imaginary glass to the city outside. The speed hit his veins like thick, golden fire. He felt himself swell, straighten, converge.

  Everything was cool.

  He sniffed and wiped his nose, stood up and pushed the chair in, put on his Bogart jacket.

  He was ready to go.

  26

  Inez pushed the bike to the back of the house and locked it to the banister of the porch. She took the plastic cover from the box under the steps and fitted it over the bike. It was going to rust out there, cover or not, but this was just one more of Rudy’s new rules. It was cluttering up the garage where he was trying to keep things in order, he had explained, his eyes bulging. Right. Sure. What did Rudy think she was, stupid? Something was going on in there, just like Vanessa had said.

  Inez tiptoed across the thick, soggy crabgrass to the garage. Rudy had been keeping it locked, but she twisted the knob anyway, throwing her weight against the door. Nope. He’d taped newspaper over the window in the upper half of the door, so she couldn’t see in. She crept around to the side of the garage. That window was covered, too. What he was up to? She couldn’t imagine. But she didn’t want to get caught snooping around out there.

  The truth was, she was getting more and more afraid of him. The way he talked all the time, whether to himself or to her—it no longer seemed to make much difference. Anything could set him off: the way she arranged the food on his plate, if she opened a window for some air, a remark she made while they were watching TV. His eyes bugged, his face went red, spit flew from his lips. And his personal hygiene. He wasn’t changing his clothes very often; she could tell by how much was in the laundry. And his dandruff was worse than ever: flakes fell from his fine red hair and clung to his oily eyelashes. Worst of all was the smell he gave off, acrid and vomity, like an unwashed baby.

  She just needed to hold on a few more weeks. All the money from the Christmas orders would soon be in, and that would be enough. It was too bad about Celeste, the one who lived with the other woman, but even without her order, Inez would meet her goal. Just wait for that, then for the holidays to be over, and then—as soon as the new year started—she’d be on her way. She had already picked the town in Oregon. She didn’t need a lot, just her nest egg and one suitcase each for Vanessa and herself. They’d pay cash, take a taxi to the train. She’d already contacted the Avon people; they’d help her set up a new route. She didn’t want any of the things in the house anyway. It was a lot of trash. A load of bad memories. What she wanted was a fresh start.

  She crossed the yard back to the house and took her things from where she’d left them on the step. Vanessa had gymnastics practice after school today; after that she’d go to a friend’s house, where she’d stay until the mother got home and drove her back. At the thought of Vanessa, Inez’s hands stopped rummaging in her purse for a moment. Her eyes went soft and blurry. Her daughter. Maybe she loved her so much because she was her only child. Maybe because she’d had her when she was a child herself. Sometimes she couldn’t take her eyes off Vanessa; she could barely prevent her hands running through her hair, squeezing her shoulders, caressing her face.

  And him, Vanessa’s father. It was funny how fresh he was in her mind after all these years: his matter-of-fact ways, his neat suits, his clove smell. The brutal way he’d used her. The lies he’d told the others. Who would have thought that such a beautiful girl could come from him? Inez had drawn a lesson from it, one that she remembered often during these hard times with Rudy. Good can come from bad. God had given her the trial of Vanessa’s father, but from it came Vanessa. And through Vanessa, all of Inez’s family came to live with her—her mother and father, all the aunts, uncles, and grandparents she’d never known. Vanessa had their eyes, their hands, their voices. The man was just the instrument that had brought Vanessa to her, the tool that had allowed Inez to create her lost past out of her own body.

  Inez found her key in her purse. The lock on the back door was sticky; she jiggled the key in it. She couldn’t help imagining the day Rudy would come home and find the empty house, her and Vanessa gone without a trace. Picturing his rage was terrifying; she had to remind herself that she wouldn’t be there to experience it. No, she and Vanessa would be on the train, chatting as they ate a picnic lunch and watched the scenery go by. While he trashed the house, ranting and raving, they’d be in the dining car ordering dinner. By the time he figured things out, got in his car to go looking for them—maybe even with the gun he kept behind his shoeshine kit in the closet—they’d be climbing into the bunks of their sleeping compartment, the train clackety-clacking toward their new home.

  The door stuck, too. Once she finally got the lock to open, she gave the door a hard kick and stumbled inside. Suddenly her breath stuck in her throat. The hair rose on the back of her neck. Before her brain could even form the words, her heart started pounding. Someone had been there. She didn’t know how she knew, she could just feel it. The air, the sound in the house. Something had been disturbed. She threw her Avon things on the kitchen counter and rushed into the living room. She looked wildly around: at the floral-print loveseat, the lumpy couch, the dead eye of the television. Through the window, she could see the phone wires swaying in the wind. Everything looked the same, but that didn’t fool her. The air was charged. She smelled something.

  She felt like a panther stalking its prey as she walked down the hall to Vanessa’s bedroom. The minute she opened the door she knew. Oh no! she cried as she ran to the closet. Oh no! Oh no! The lid was down on the cedar chest, but a puff of blanket was caught in the crack, spilling out like rising dough. Her knees went loose and flimsy. She had to hold on to the edge of the chest to keep herself from collapsing. The most surprising thing was that she wasn’t surprised. She’d been waiting for this, she realized. She’d dreamed it over and over. Every time she’d lifted the lid on the chest, she’d pictured it just the way it was now: the delicate lock broken; the blankets tangled instead of neatly stacked; the once-tidy layers churned up like a wild animal had dug through them. She reached down, her hand making its way to the bottom of the chest, and yes, sure enough, it was gone. Not just the money—all of it. Her pictures, her bundle of papers, her birth certificate. Everything. Gone.

  Yes, she’d been waiting.

  She closed the lid. The room was quiet. Her chest, neck, and arms felt like they were swelling, inflating with each outraged breath, like someone was pumping them up with air. Her nest had been robbed and fouled. She wrung her hands as she glared at the seam where the wall met the ceiling. His filthy hands had pawed through her things, had stolen them, had hidden them away. It hurt to breathe. His pink, prissy fingers. His piggish, lying eyes. Her things. Her
plan was demolished! Everything was ruined! She moaned, and then she roared. She screeched until the tendons in her neck felt like they’d pop, until her hands, clenching the edge of the chest, felt like they’d been smashed with a hammer. And my wrath will burn, and I will kill you with the sword. Her nest: the money, the only pictures she had of her family, the papers that might someday lead her to them.

  Help me, Lord, she prayed desperately, her eyes clenched tight. Help me. Help me. Help me. She repeated those two words until she was exhausted, until her breathing slowed to match her chant, until she was calm. Let justice roll down like waters, she recited, and righteousness like an everflowing stream.

  She went to the phone and called Vanessa, told her to stay at her friend’s house. “Everything’s fine,” she told her. “Don’t ask questions.” His wrath is poured out like fire, and the rocks are broken asunder. She recrossed the living room, went back through the kitchen where the clock over the oven said 3:55. The door was stuck again; she kicked it open. She stomped down the stairs, back across the grass, over to the fence where someone had dumped a pile of broken cinder blocks. She found one that was still in one piece, hoisted it up, and carried it over to the door. My God the rock of my refuge, she panted as she heaved it through the window.

  Inside it smelled of dried grass and gasoline from the lawnmower. Light filtered in from the open door and from a small window near the workbench. She walked across the broken glass and stood in the middle of the room. For the second time the hair rose on the back of her neck, and suddenly she felt in real danger, as if something were lurking in the garage. She was thunderstruck, rooted to the spot. Rudy had taped things to the walls: news articles, pages torn from the phone book, sheets of notebook paper covered with his writing—line upon line of cramped scrawl that grew more compressed as it reached the bottom of the page. There were sketches complicated by arrows and blocks of words scratched in pencil. Inez couldn’t make out what they were. Taped to a wall stud over the light switch was a floor plan. LAX, Inez read, recognizing the layout of the terminals as panic sent her into a slow, dizzy spin. There were seating charts from different aircraft, emergency instruction cards with evacuation routes from the seat pockets of the airplanes. Timetables of arrivals and departures; catalog pages of weapons, camouflage uniforms, ammunition.

  Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! Inez repeated to herself. She shut her eyes tight, pushed her fists against the sockets. This was what he’d been doing. All this time! How long? My God, was this really happening? It was, she told herself. It had to be.

  The worktable was scattered with wires and screws, rolls of electrical tape, paper bags twisted shut. A cardboard box of long red sticks that had to be dynamite was sitting on the floor. The first few layers were gone. There was a lot more stuff, but she couldn’t take it all in. Scattered everywhere—on the floor and on all the surfaces like a flock of butterflies come to rest—were empty bags and packages, twists of cellophane and smudged tissue paper from the food he’d eaten. Chips, cookies, doughnuts, cupcakes. The same smell of scalp and sugar that filled his car now lingered near the workbench.

  Inez looked at the ceiling as if she might see straight through the dusty rafters, the curled pigeon-gray shingles, the disconnected television antennas, the sagging telephone wires, the low ceiling of battleship-colored clouds, right to God Himself. The whole world had tilted; she felt like she might slide off the edge. What? she pleaded out loud, stretching her arms up to heaven as she breathed the suffocating air. Tell me!

  She closed her eyes and listened for an answer. Just when she thought that God had forsaken her, the words of Isaiah rang in her heart with crystal clarity: For the day of vengeance was in my heart, and my year of redemption has come.

  27

  At four-thirty, Rudy pulled into the Arco station he’d chosen the week before. He drove around to the back, near the hoses for air and water. He’d found Inez’s stash, like a rat’s nest covered with blankets and pillows, shawls that smelled of dried flowers and mothballs, down at the bottom of the cedar chest. Years and years of her filthy secrets in a fur-lined pouch like the rotten spot in her brain that had betrayed him, decaying their marriage like cancer. The pile of money she’d stored up, the lists of names, blueprints for her future. Yup, he’d finally zeroed in on its signals, tiny beeps high as a dog whistle that he’d tracked until they led him there, to Vanessa’s room. An old photograph of a child and a man with a bike; Vanessa’s birth certificate, father unknown; immigration papers with Inez’s other name, Santos. The foreignness of her. The conniving. The Yes, Rudy, nothing’s wrong and What can I do for you? and all the time she was plotting, storing up, sneaking. Lying cheating and deceiving. Through her teeth. With her eyes wide open. Lying next to him in bed. She and all the rest of them and he should have known all along, but at least in the end the joke was going to be on her. He put the car in PARK and killed the motor. He had her now. Carefully, holding his breath, he had robbed the infected nest of its putrid contents. Placed it in a paper bag. Evidence. Hidden it in the garage for safekeeping.

  The Arco station was right off the freeway, not far from the airport. From where he parked, Rudy could see the solitary person sitting at the register in the white cinder-block booth where people paid for their gas. He’d rehearsed everything because everything had to be just right. Every detail planned, like taking a trip. The trouble was, just when he needed all his concentration, his mind kept going back to Inez. Where had she been when he’d come home? It was a double betrayal: keeping those things, then not being home to answer for them. It enraged him, but it also unsettled him because it meant that the first part of his plan had fallen apart. She wasn’t there, she wasn’t there. Where was she? His mind kept going back to it. But he couldn’t let it throw the rest of the plan off track. Commandos are trained to be disciplined, to perform under the toughest circumstances. Concentrate, he told himself. Stay focused.

  The restrooms were around back: one for men, one for women. One-seaters with deadbolts on the doors. Perfect. Soon everyone would know. He got out of the car and locked the door. It was a special day today: Friday. The day he was born. He knew because his mother had told him that was the day she did her weekly grocery shopping. The pains had started in the parking lot, with a trunkful of perishables: ice cream, milk, ground chuck. Three weeks overdue, she’d told him, which was why, according to her, he was born with a thick head of reddish hair and fingernails so long his little newborn face was as nicked and scratched as an old dinner plate.

  He went around to the back of the car and opened the trunk. Everything had built up to today. Not just these last few weeks of long, lonely hours in his car; the mornings and afternoons figuring things out in cafés; the late nights in the garage—but his whole life. Researching, collecting, planning. He took the satchel out of the trunk. It was caramel-colored, with handles on top like an old-fashioned doctor’s case. It had been his mother’s; he’d taken it with him when he went in the navy. He felt important carrying it across the short stretch of blacktop. Inez had her schemes, he thought as he glanced at the few people filling their cars at the pumps, but he had his. By the time this day was over, she’d know what he was capable of, and so would everyone else. But by that time it would be too late.

  He pushed open the door of the men’s room. It was vacant: so far, so good. He locked the door behind him and set down the satchel. The hospital smell of disinfectant and pee was strong. The room was about the size of a jail cell; there was even a small barred window over the sink that let in a square of dirty gray light. The concrete floor had a brass drain in the middle. There was a toilet, a sink, a trashcan, and a machine that dispensed condoms and combs. On the wall next to the mirror was another machine with a big roll of white linen to dry your hands on. It was broken, though, and the cotton towel hung down to the floor, wet and wrinkled like a soiled bandage. When the big trucks pounded by on the freeway outside, the room seemed to sway. The sink dripped. Still, it was peaceful in
here, cool and quiet. So quiet Rudy could hear himself breathe.

  Someone had pissed without flushing. They’d left the toilet seat up. Using a piece of toilet paper so he wouldn’t have to touch anything, Rudy lowered the lid. He took off his jacket and unzipped the bag, then he laid everything carefully on the lid of the toilet and the edge of the sink. The explosives, the scissors, the duct tape. He took off his shirt and patiently worked his way around his waist, carefully taping each stick. The growing weight and stiffness reassured him. When all ten sticks were in place around his belly, he wrapped a few extra loops of duct tape round and round his middle to make sure everything was snug. He could hear cars coming and going outside, doors slamming, engines starting. No one came to use the restroom. It was like fate was on his side, like everything was working with him. He lost track of time. Stay calm, he told himself. Work it through. When he was finished, he felt the satisfaction of someone who’s good at his job, who takes pride in it.

  The detonator was the tricky part. He had taped it to his left arm so the trigger dangled exactly into his palm without showing any excess wire. Doing it with one hand was hard, but he managed. The lightness of it, its simplicity, excited him. If only his luck held out. He cut the last piece of tape, pressed it into place, and stepped over in front of the mirror. Wow! It took his breath away. He was a machine, a commando, a comet about to blaze across the sky. The thing to do was to believe in it, he told himself as he put everything back in the bag. That would get him past the obstacles.