by Bob Sanchez
“And now,” the emcee’s voice boomed, “our next contestant—”
Elvis winked at Cal. “My first song’s for you,” he said.
“Wait,” she said, but he bounded up to the stage as his name was called.
He strapped on his guitar and began to croon for her to love him tender. She cringed and looked away while customers howled with laughter and threw salted peanuts at the stage. Elvis looked puzzled. From several tables, a chorus of men sang “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dong.”
Cal felt bad for the poor slob as the bar closed and she walked to her car. The lot had nearly emptied. She shrugged off a twinge of discomfort; this was her last night working at this lousy dive. Then Elvis appeared out of the shadows.
“Babe,” he said to her. She fumbled in her purse for her keys as he put his hands on her waist.
“Stop or I’ll scream.”
“Lot’s empty. Who’d hear, darlin’?”
He pulled her close and planted a sloppy kiss on her mouth as she struggled. Then she pushed hard at his chest and grabbed a plastic hairbrush from her purse. She swung fiercely. The plastic shattered against his jaw.
“Ow-w-w-w!” he screamed as he fell to his knees. “You broke my jaw!”
She reached for her cell phone to dial 911, but it was dead. Damn. She looked around for anyone who might help, but saw no one.
“Gimme a ride to the E.R.,” he said.
“No. I don’t trust you.”
“I’m in awful pain here, and it’s your fault.”
Finally she relented and opened the trunk. “You have to ride here.”
“No, I’m ridin’ up front with you.”
She still held a shard of hairbrush in her fist, and she brandished it like a dagger.
“Take the trunk or hoof it, pal. That’s my only offer.”
He climbed into the trunk. Even in the bad parking lot light, she could see that a large bruise was beginning to cover the left side of his face. She let him ride to the hospital with the trunk open. “You and me ain’t finished, darlin’,” he said as she left him at the front door of the emergency room. “I know where you live!”
At home in her apartment, Calliope awoke from a fitful sleep and a nightmare involving sharp knives and Vienna sausages. The clock read 3:55. She had already packed her suitcases for her cross-country road trip. She looked into her purse. Keys, cash, credit cards, tampons, cell phone, pepper spray—had she forgotten anything? Certainly she could have called the police, but she was leaving town anyway. She was forty years old, for God’s sake, with a master’s degree in fine arts, a brand-new divorce and a very nice settlement. It wasn’t as though she had to wait tables in bars that held Elvis impersonation contests. Well, in a couple of hours she’d be in her car and on her way to California.
Her stomach grumbled. There was hardly anything left to eat in the apartment, but she scrounged up a jar of extra-crunchy peanut butter in the pantry and sat down on the couch. She dug into the jar with two fingers—who’d ever know about her guilty pleasures?
After she tossed out the bottle and washed her hands, she heard a knock at her apartment door. Through the peep hole she saw Elvis Hornacre wearing that same stupid jumpsuit and holding a bouquet of roses with the stems wrapped in a shingle. What a dope I am, she thought as she realized she’d not hooked the chain. He gave the door a steady nudge until she finally relented, figuring on ways she could knock this guy on his ass if she had to.
“I’m so embarrassed,” he said, stepping inside. He spoke through clenched jaws. His pants were zipped and his mouth was wired shut. The left side of his face had turned a grotesque purple, and the muscles around his mouth twitched. The poor man was a walking hematoma. God, what had she done to him?
“Oh, don’t be. The flowers are sweet, but—” But you’re not, she wanted to say.
“I don’t usually show the goods like that.”
“No, I don’t imagine you do.” Not usually? How often, then? She dared not ask.
“I’ll take you out tomorrow night, make up for it. I got coupons for Wendy’s.”
“That sounds hard to pass up, but I have to get my hair done.”
“Day after, then.”
“Uh, nail appointment.”
“What color they doing your nails?”
“Clear.”
“My favorite color. I’ll pick you up after.”
“No, Elvis. I don’t want to see you.”
Elvis looked at her as though she were speaking a foreign language, like the Queen’s English. “What? What do you mean? We’re made for each other!”
“What I mean by ‘no’ is ‘no’. Absolutely never. We’re not each other’s type.”
“You’re the most beautiful woman this side of Nashville. Of course you’re my type! And I’m your type, you’ll see.”
“I’m not even the most beautiful woman on the block. Look, I’m very uncomfortable now. I want you to take your posies and your shingle and leave immediately.”
“We’ll go out when you get finished with your nails, then I’ll show you what you’ve been missing.”
“You just showed two hundred people what you have to offer, and they laughed.”
“You saw me when I came out of the head! You could of told me about my Johnson!”
“I’m not your mother,” Cal snapped.
He looked almost apologetic as he reached for his belt buckle. “You’re a difficult woman, but you’ll be worth breaking in.” He sprayed spittle through his wired jaw. She fumbled for the Mace in her purse as Hornacre grabbed her by the throat and pushed her back into the apartment.
“You don’t need a suitcase, ’cause you’re going no place except to bed.”
She gripped the pepper spray, but she was too close to aim the canister at his face. She pushed and struggled. He was much too strong. He grabbed her arm and she cried out from the sharp pain. The spray clattered to the floor, and that caught his attention. He let go of her long enough to pick it up.
Hornacre smiled through clenched teeth. “Woman, you’re fightin’ dirty. Now lookit the worm turn.” Triumph lit his eyes as he slowly lifted the pepper spray to her face.
“Oh, thank God. The police!”
“Whut?” Hornacre looked away for a second, maybe two. Then he turned back just in time for Cal to stab him in the eye with a tampon.
Chapter 6
Pincushion, Arizona
Sally Windflower was a Tohono O’odham eighth-grader who dreamed of being a veterinarian, and her pet javelina won an Honorable Mention at the Regional Science Fair in Pincushion, Arizona. She had just turned thirteen and knew that with this project she was at the top of her game. But the best part of her display, in the judges’ opinion, was a large blue poster leaning on an easel. The lettering was shocking pink, and the poster looked roughly like this:
Can the Collared Peccary be Domesticated?
Class: Mammalia
Order: Artiodactyla
Family: Tayassuidae
Genus: Pecari
Species: Tajacu
Name: Poindexter
Gender: Male
Age: About 2 years
Height: 24”
Weight: 50 lbs.
Favorite foods: Prickly pear cactus, Brussels sprouts
Favorite TV show: American Idol
The collared peccary is commonly known as a javelina, from the Spanish for javelin. They have razor-sharp tusks.
In six months of observation, Poindexter shows that he prefers
living in a comfortable pen to living in his native habitat.
The second-best part of the display, again according to the judges, was Poindexter himself, who grunted happily in a small cage that Mister Windflower had transported in the back of his pickup truck.
One of the judges was Mr. Collins, the science teacher she’d have next year in ninth grade. He spoke to a couple of parents, keeping his voice down. “She’ll win a science fair when pigs fly,” he said, perhaps
thinking Sally couldn’t hear him, perhaps not caring.
Sally heard, all right. She walked over to him and stomped her feet. “Mister Collins! I spent hours!”
“I’m afraid you didn’t prove your case, Miss Wallflower—”
“That’s Windflower. Sally Windflower. Poindexter watches three hours of TV a night.”
“Apropos of nothing, I’d say,” sniffed Mr. Collins. “The tube is bad for you and probably bad for him, too.”
“I hate you,” Sally Windflower said, hot tears flowing down her cheeks. “You are so not nice.”
Poindexter punctuated Sally’s statement with an invisible cloud that made the two nearest exhibitors, their parents, the judges and assorted passers-by head for a distant corner of the gymnasium. “Phew!” someone said. “What’s that stink?”
“Sally’s science project farted,” a classmate shouted gleefully.
“That was not a fart,” she shouted. “That was a scent he exuded from a gland in his hindquarters.”
Poindexter looked out through his wire cage and grunted.
“I should take your prize away, young lady,” Mister Collins said.
“You do that,” Sally’s father said, “if you don’t need those front teeth.”
The Windflowers drove home in their family pickup truck, Sally sitting proudly between her parents with her pink ribbon resting in her lap. Mom and Dad were especially quiet, the way they sometimes were after a fight. Sally knew enough to be quiet while she thought about her prize, her future as a budding veterinarian, and the love she felt for Poindexter, who rode in his cage in the back of the pickup. Often when she spoke softly to him or scraped her dinner vegetables into his trough, he rubbed his bristly hide against her leg, snarfled up the food and curled up in a corner of the pen until she brought out her portable TV.
“Sally, darlin’,” Dad finally said, “Your mother has something to tell you.”
“Sweetheart,” Mom said, “it’s your father’s idea. He’ll have to tell you.”
Dad rolled down his window and spit, then took a cigarette out of his shirt pocket. “First, darlin’, you have to know it’s not your fault.”
“Not at all,” Mom said. “We’d never do anything to hurt you.”
Sally was terrified. “What? Are you getting divorced?”
“Now what put that damn fool idea in your pretty head?”
“Sweetie,” Mom said, “you can’t keep Poindexter anymore. We just can’t afford to feed him.”
Sally wailed. She could have dealt with divorce.
Chapter 7
The Pincushion Police quickly recovered Mack Durgin’s dusty Dodge three long blocks from The Snake in the Grass. The vehicle had a quarter million miles on it and had no more visible problems than it had the day before. Mack drove to the outskirts of town to Mission del Sol, a postcard-pretty adobe church that the Spaniards had built in the seventeenth century. George Ashe sat on the passenger seat, inside the ceramic urn still protected by the FedEx box.
“You’re finally in Arizona, George,” Mack said. “Want to stop in this old mission?”
“Not sure I’m welcome in a church, Mack. You know I was a bad sinner.”
“You weren’t even close to being the worst. The church will be glad to see you again.”
He wiped sweat off his brow, picked up the box and brought it inside the church, where the living found forgiveness every day. But what about the dead? Mack’s theology was shaky on this point, but he knew this place was hot as hell.
Three or four parishioners knelt and fingered rosaries as he walked past several Stations of the Cross. Tourists gawked at the lofty ceiling and the quiet majesty of the place. A brightly-colored window showed a shepherd adoring a pair of cherubs in the sky. Mack half wished he could leave George in this ancient house of worship, but it felt wrong. What if the urn wound up in a Dumpster? He placed George on the floor, slipped five dollars into the offertory, and lit a candle. “This is for you, my friend. Peace.” He knelt for a quiet moment, then stood up. If he left George behind, a janitor might dump the ashes and present Mother Superior with a lovely flower vase. He picked up the urn and headed for the door.
“This babe Juanita?” Mack said as he carried George back into the blistering sunlight. “We met last night at a bar, The Snake In The Grass. I bought her a couple of drinks, and then my mind turned to cotton after that. We went back to my place and must have had sex. ‘Must have had sex!’ How pathetic a phrase is that? Did I like it? Was I even conscious? In the morning I woke up with a splitting headache and an empty bed. She disappeared, along with my wallet, cash, and credit cards.
“I know what you mean, George, wages of sin and all that. My first sex since before Mary died, and I only know about it by forensic evidence. Man, I should never fall in love when I’m drunk.” An elderly couple gave him an odd look, and he tipped his Red Sox cap. They both had cameras around their necks, and had just stepped off a tour bus. “My baby done left me—Hah!” Never mind singing the blues; a thousand people did that better than Mack ever could. She’d looked stunning in the dim, smoky light of the bar after he’d had his chat with Jack Daniel. He had a cloudy memory of tattoos on her left breast, but no memory at all of bringing the woman home to his bedroom. Anyway, he didn’t want Juanita anymore. At least he’d canceled his credit cards.
“Next we’re going to—” Mack made a face. Too many days alone, that’s what made him talk to a bucket of ashes. He’d retired from the Lowell P.D. in Massachusetts and headed to Arizona for the dry air, the cactus, and the two and a half thousand miles between him and the home where Mary had died after thirty years of marriage. A vacation, that’s all it was supposed to be, but Mack had found a slower, simpler life. So he found now-and-then gigs as a security consultant to supplement a small pension and the fruit of a few lucky investments. He had just bought a digital camera to teach himself photography—and Arizona was certainly the place to practice—but Juanita had swiped that too.
She hadn’t taken everything of value, although she certainly seemed to have tried. At least the family pictures were intact: Mary and the boys; Mary and the grandkids; Mack and the tuna he’d caught off the Gloucester coast, a fish big enough to feed a thousand cats. Mack had looked behind the bookcase for his hidden .38, but Juanita had even found that. Then from the church parking lot he drove into the outskirts of town and stopped in front of the Pincushion Pawn Shop, a shabby place with bars on the windows and a painted sign with the three gold balls that signified the Medicis’ gift to the world of finance. Inside was a jumble of treasures, the usual stuff like a war bonnet, a stuffed rattlesnake, a chair autographed by Jerry Springer, a coffee table with a top made of petrified wood, and a copy of Dickens’ Bleak House (gilt-edged, which Mack thought ironic).
“I’ll give you one-fifty,” the pawnbroker said, nodding at the urn that was cradled in Mack’s arm. The sign behind the counter said Zeke Mertin, Prop.
“It’s not for sale. Are you Zeke?”
“That’s right. You can’t go over my head for a better price.” The top of Zeke’s head was gray and wild, like Einstein’s on a bad hair day.
