“Ha-ha,” said Sean politely. Though he didn’t appreciate having his dog insulted.
It seemed to put Roberto in a fine mood. “How about you come up to the house, I’ll cook us a little dinner. You object to steak?”
“No, steak’s good.” He didn’t want to say yes or no. “I should talk to Dawn first.”
“She’s already up there. She’s doing her laundry. You have anything you want to throw in the machines?”
He sure did, but he wasn’t going to get that chummy yet. “Thanks, but I guess not.”
“Or maybe what you really need is a car wash.” Roberto leaned in to run a finger over the truck’s tailgate. “Honestly? You should try to keep your vehicle in a little better shape.”
“Yeah, I keep meaning to take it in somewhere.” Roberto had already turned his back and started up the drive. Sean stumped after him.
At the front door, Roberto waited for him. “You are one slow motherfucker. You must not be that hungry.”
“I’ll be hungry enough by the time I get there.” He was getting pretty tired of all the grief he was getting. But if he was going to keep hanging out at Dawn’s, he figured he had to go along with it, Roberto being the landlord, he guessed. “Hey, nice place,” he said, hoping that didn’t sound too bootlicking.
Because it was a sharp house, with walls of windows and one of those giant fireplaces that was designed to look like a rockslide. Sean went over to it and ran a hand over the large and small boulders. “What you got here, river rock?”
“It’s Chief Cliff stone. Dry stacked. With a reinforced wall behind it, earthquake-proof to 8.5. Get you a drink?”
“Yeah, sure. Thanks. Beer, if you have it.” Roberto had started off down a hallway, but Sean lingered, taking in the view from the oversized windows. It was one of those houses designed around a view. Here was Bolinas Bay far below them, the line of breaking waves, and the sun lowering itself into the water, flooding the sky with gold. He wondered how much it cost to buy yourself a piece of ocean like this one.
Where was Dawn? He nosed around a couple of the rooms, which struck him as expensive and uninteresting. They all had things that you were meant to admire, like the black leather lounges or the oil painting slashed with colors. All of them huge, enormous, the same as the fireplace. It was like walking into the giant’s house in the fairy tales, though he couldn’t remember which one. The Fee-fi-fo-fum one.
Sean found the kitchen because of all the racket Roberto was making, banging around with pots and pans. He had two steaks the size of city phone books out on a butcher-block island and he was rubbing them with different dusty-looking spices. The kitchen was all stainless steel and black tile. There were pools of light on the black countertops from the discreet undercabinet fixtures. The kitchen sink was a tub of stone with a Japanese-looking faucet that would probably take him ten minutes to figure out how to turn on and off. “You must be quite the cook,” Sean said.
“There’s your beer.” He’d set a Sierra Nevada Ale next to him on the butcher block. “And, if you don’t mind, use the coaster.”
“No prob.” He took a long pull of it. Cold. Good. “So, where’s Dawn?”
“She must have finished up and headed home. I expect she’ll come around later. How about I put a couple of big-ass potatoes in the oven? Bake em up, then mash them with garlic and cheese.”
“Sounds excellent.”
“You want tofu or soy or bean sprouts, you go get your own. I expect you got your share of healthy eating at Dawn’s place.”
“She does like her vegetables, yeah.”
“Here.” Roberto was using a long thin knife to trim up the steaks. He heaped a pile of fatty ends onto a paper towel. “Why don’t you give these to your scrawny dog? No, the back door.” He used the knife to point.
“Thanks.” Sean thought the guy could lay off about the dog, but he wasn’t really in a position to complain. He carried the meat scraps out through the kitchen, onto a big outdoor deck set up with a gas grill, wet bar, fire pit. Everything new-looking, like the tags had just come off. There was an ocean view from here too, the water more distant across a shoulder of land. Ornamental bamboo grew in huge glazed pots. He whistled for Bojangles, who came skulking around a corner. Sean threw him the scraps one by one and the dog gobbled them.
Roberto came outside and stood behind him. “This is the life, huh? The beauty of nature. The comforts of home.”
“Yeah, it’s real nice.” The breeze had picked up as the sun was going down, and even though Sean had his jacket, he wouldn’t have minded an extra layer. “Scram,” he said to Bojangles, but out of the corner of his mouth.
Roberto went to the bar, filled two highball glasses with ice cubes, and poured from a bottle. “I’ll get those potatoes working in a minute. Soon as I have me a little cocktail time. Here, try a bourbon chaser with that beer.” He set both glasses on a low table, then sat on one of the upholstered lounges. “Come on, take a load off.”
Sean sat too. He’d lost track of his coaster, and even though Roberto hadn’t used any coasters himself, he put his beer on the ground next to him. He waited for Roberto to pick up his drink before he did so himself. They both drank. “Whoa,” Sean said, putting it down again. The bourbon whomped him upside the head. “This is some firewater.”
“You like? It’s Booker’s. Small batch, aged six to eight years.” Roberto took another sip and set the glass down. He had a face like a statue, with a jutting nose, craggy eyebrows, and a red, fleshy mouth. “Bet you don’t usually drink hooch this good.”
“I’d have to say you’re right about that.” Sean took another careful sip. He was getting hungry, and he didn’t want the alcohol to start eating through his stomach lining. Roberto didn’t seem to be in any hurry to start cooking. “So,” he said gamely, trying to keep the small talk going, “what line of work are you in?”
“Entrepreneurship. I’m self-employed. Self-made. I’m involved in a number of ventures.”
Sean waited for him to say what kind of ventures, but Roberto didn’t elaborate. “I’m self-employed too,” Sean offered. “I’m a contractor. Home repairs, remodeling, that kind of thing. New construction.”
“A jack-of-all-trades,” Roberto suggested. His belly rippled and the cowboy on his shirt disappeared into a fold of fat.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“From time to time I need a few things patched up around here. General maintenance. Taking care of the leaks and squeaks. You available for that sort of thing?”
“I sure could be.”
“It’s not too small-scale for you? You being used to, I’m sure, running bigger projects?”
Roberto’s nostrils, Sean noticed, were furry with black hair. Somebody ought to tell him to trim that shit. It was really kind of disturbing. “Well, it’s a recession,” Sean said, “and that’s made for a slowdown in the building trades. You have to roll with the punches.” His bladder was cresting urgently. Ever since his accident, he had trouble holding it. “You mind if I use your restroom?”
“You can use the one off the kitchen.”
“Thanks.” Sean shifted his weight, leaning on his good hip and pushing off with his hands. He didn’t like looking all crippled up in front of somebody he didn’t know, especially if there was the possibility of getting some work thrown his way. “Hey, while I’m up, you want me to bring those steaks out, anything?”
“You can take the potatoes that are sitting out and put them on the rack in the top oven. You think you can handle that kind of executive, command-and-control mission?”
“Right.” Sean headed inside, found the bathroom, relieved himself, and washed his hands. The guy was kind of a prick. But it wasn’t like he hadn’t worked for pricks before. In the kitchen, the oven was already turned on. He found the potatoes and put them in the center of the rack. He looked around in case there was a
ny food lying around, a box of crackers, maybe, found nothing. He guessed it wouldn’t be a good idea to go cruising the fridge. The steaks had blood pooling on their surfaces.
He went back out on the deck. “Done,” he said. “Maybe I should run down to Dawn’s, make sure she knows I’m up here.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that. With Dawn it’s out of sight, out of mind.”
“Yeah.” That was exactly what he was afraid of. He needed to get his ass down there.
“We ought to talk about Dawn, you and me. I try to look out for her welfare. Because she has a piece or two missing upstairs, you know what I mean? Sit down, OK? I don’t want to have to keep turning around to talk to you.”
Sean sat. The sun had dropped into the ocean by now and the shadows on the deck were cold. He said, “Well sure, you can’t help noticing a thing like that. When something’s wrong with a person.”
Roberto finished his drink and got up to pour another one. “You want that freshened? You sure? I don’t regard Dawn as having anything ‘wrong’ with her. In some ways, she’s lucky. She doesn’t worry about the crap everybody else does. Global fucking warming? Collapse of the international banking system? What does she care? As long as she can dance on the beach and find somebody to spread her legs for when she’s in the mood.”
Sean kept quiet. Roberto got up and went inside, came back with the steaks on a platter.
He set the platter down and turned on the grill. There was a whoosh of gas as the flames caught. Sean wished he was sitting a little closer so he could get some of the heat.
Roberto said, “She’s almost a kind of talking animal. Eat, shit, scratch, fuck, sleep. Life reduced down to the basics.” He slid the steaks onto the grill. They hissed and crackled. The smell of the cooking meat made Sean’s mouth ache. “It doesn’t sound so bad, does it? Be a happy little, furry little creature. Sleeping in the sunshine. Singing in the rain.” He poked at the steaks with a long, two-pronged fork, occupying himself with the cooking. They sent up a fragrant, meaty smoke. Sean had thought the conversation was at an end, but Roberto wheeled around to him. “Does it?”
“Yeah. I mean no.” He’d forgotten what they’d been talking about. He wondered how long it was going to take the steaks to cook through on one side.
“The only problem with being an animal, sometimes you get eaten by bigger, smarter animals. What do you think you’d taste like, fella? If somebody made you into a burger?”
“Ha-ha,” Sean said, as if this was funny, then, seeing as how Roberto was expecting an answer, he said, “I don’t know. Salty, I guess.”
“This cow was probably pretty happy when it was running around on its four hooves. Probably just as well.”
“It’s kind of a complicated way to think about dinner,” Sean offered.
“The top of the food chain. That’s what we are.”
“Lucky for us, huh?”
Roberto swung around to stare at him. “What’s that?”
“Nothing. Say, you aiming for rare, medium-rare? You might want to turn those dudes over.”
Roberto gave him another glowering look, but he flipped the steaks. They hit the grill and the flames licked up around them. Sean drank some more of the head-slamming bourbon, just enough to be sociable. He was already tasting the cooked meat. He knew how the first bite of it would feel in his mouth, how it would give way and release its juices.
Roberto said, “You know how you tell the difference between a food animal and a predator? I mean, with humans.”
Sean shook his head. What was with the weird questions?
“It’s all about the bones piled up at the mouth of the cave. Look around you, sport. You want a house like this, cars like mine, all the toys that go along with them, you have to have the smarts and the hustle to go for it. Not to mention the killer instinct to take what you want.”
“It’s a nice place,” Sean said, wanting to steer the conversation into more normal channels. “Really nice. What’s this deck, redwood?”
“What if, just imagining, just as a kind of theoretical thing, somebody gave you a hundred thousand dollars. What would you do with it?”
“A hundred thousand dollars,” Sean repeated, to give himself more time to think. It had to be some kind of a trick question. The guy was turning into one of those screwy drunks. “Well, for starters, I’d go out and have a hell of a party.”
“Party.” Roberto nodded. One of his eyelids had developed a bad twitch that pulled his face in different directions. “I could have told you that’s what you’d say. Because it wouldn’t occur to you to think of it strategically. How to leverage that money to make you more money. How to use money as a weapon. No, it’s all about the pleasure principle to people like you.”
“Hey, buddy? No offense, but some of your remarks, they can get a little personal.”
“The ones who think they deserve a living. The lazy. The feebleminded. The crippled.”
“How about,” Sean said, “you pull those steaks off the fire, and I’ll go check on the potatoes, and we can eat instead of talk. Change the mood here.”
“Because now I’m supposed to feed you? It’s not enough that I come home and find you getting all the pussy in the place? All moved in and making your ragged gimp ass comfortable?”
Sean started to say, This is a simple misunderstanding, but Roberto took a step toward him and then he took a leap, his hands clutching and his red tongue working between his teeth.
Sean got himself out of his chair faster than he would have thought possible, dodged, and shoved a foot in Roberto’s path. He tripped over it and went down hard, face first.
Jesus shit fucking Christ.
He backed away from Roberto, who was motionless on the ground and making mewing, kittenlike noises. He grabbed the grill fork in case Roberto got up but when he didn’t, he speared one of the steaks instead. The steak dripped hot grease and he held it away from him. Quick as he could, he went back in through the kitchen and the echoing hallways to the front door. Once he was outside the dog trotted up to him in the near dark. He did a happy dance, smelling meat.
“Christ. Here.” Sean bit off a piece for himself, for the dog, then another for himself, for the dog. It was too hot to taste it right, and his head hurt and his body shook from adrenaline, fucking loony! Why did he keep finding these people? The house behind him was dark and silent. There was a light on at Dawn’s place. He ran downhill, his goddamn hip like running on knives, trying not to fall down or get tangled up in his excited dog.
He couldn’t find his keys. The sweat rolled over him. Here they were, on the truck’s seat, dumbfuck. “Get in,” he told the dog, who didn’t want to leave his true love, the steak, behind. “In there, Christ!” The curtain in Dawn’s window was yellow from the light behind it. He’d left some things inside that he would have liked to get back, but maybe some other time, since vacating the premises ASAP was the best idea he’d had in a long while.
He held on to the rest of the steak with his teeth as he climbed into the truck and started the engine. It always took some effort to turn around in this steep, narrow space. You had to throw the truck into reverse and back up the hill, then forward, then back again, all the while trying to keep the gearshift from popping out like it wanted to and this without having the heebie-jeebies like he did now and a hunk of meat in his mouth and the dog trying to get to it, and the last thing he needed was to run a wheel over the edge of the pavement and get hung up there, or go sailing off into the trees below, rolling end over end like he was in some goddamn movie.
“Off,” he told the dog, “get off.” But the dog wouldn’t shut up, yapping and throwing himself at Sean’s window, and just as he got the truck pointed downhill and in motion, there was a noise, CRACKWHUMP, and a singing zinging rush of air and glass breaking behind him and he couldn’t believe this asshole was FUCKING SHOOTING AT HIM!
Sean hit the gas. The truck bumped down to the edge of the driveway and he took off through town at high speed and it would be really, really all right if some officer of the law saw him and decided to intervene, but no such luck.
Once he reached the road that led back to Route 1 he eased up a little and checked himself and the dog for blood, found only a sparkle of glass across the back of the seat. A new layer of sweat crept over his scalp. Did he have some sign on him that said, “Please make use of me for any and all crackpot purposes”? Did he send out secret homing signals on the crazy radio? Somewhere in all the panic he’d dropped the remains of the steak and the dog was finishing off the last of it, fine. Just fine. “Don’t say I never did anything for you.”
Headlights were coming up behind him on the road. It could have been anyone, but they were traveling fast and gaining on him, and his mouth went dry and his hands turned slick on the wheel. Sean sped up. The lights kept pace. It was dark now, and the road was dark ahead and behind, and here was the highway, two-lane, empty, miles from nowhere in either direction. He turned right, south, then, wanting to get off the main route, jogged to the left on a road that opened up before him, powering the truck through the flats and uphill, hoping the trees would hide him.
Sean slowed, waiting, telling himself he was probably just being paranoid. Yeah, except for the actual bullet hole through his back window. No lights behind him. “Get out of there,” he told the dog, who was noodling around Sean’s legs, licking grease from his jeans.
Where the hell was he? The road was climbing up the mountain grade, narrow, twisting, practically doubling back on itself, maybe a fire road? He nudged along, looking for somewhere to turn around. The trees closed in and his headlights swung back and forth around the curves like he was on some funhouse ride. There were supposed to be mountain lions up here. People took pictures of them with trail cameras. Big tawny cats padding around with killer jaws and a hungry attitude.
Now why was he thinking about that? Couldn’t he stay positive for five minutes at a time? He wrenched his mind away, back to Dawn, sweet Dawn, fare thee well! Once he got past the actual death threats, this night might make a good story. He could even tell it to Conner, turning it into something comical, as if all this time he’d been gone he was only off having wild and crazy adventures. He’d leave out Dawn being mentally whatever she was. He’d feel funny about that part.
The Humanity Project Page 31
