“Oh, yes, this is much better,” said Bobbie. As loudly as she could, she sang along: “Macho, macho man…I want to be a macho man—!”
“Shut up!” he shouted. He made a grunting sound like someone was standing on his foot, then said, “What is that little turdball playing?” He punched the dash so hard the tuner button spun off like a saucer. He swore and writhed in his seat and shouted at her. “Why on earth are you singing!”
He was truly insane now, shifting in his seat, hitting his car, screaming at the radio, the seat bouncing with his weight, the car drifting into another lane, so she stopped singing. She was sorry that she’d argued with him, sorry about wanting to go home, about the radio station, about everything. They were going to crash. He twisted in his seat, the cords of his neck showing like ribs; he was facing her now and howling, “Fix this fucking thing!”
She realized the problem. The tuner button, having flown off, was now missing. He couldn’t escape the Village People. She scrambled to find the button on the floor, then brought it up and aligned it with the little stick of metal on the radio to get it working again. She let him find a station he wanted and didn’t flinch when he yelled, directly into her ear, “Get! The! God! Damned! Pipe!” His voice was huge, even with the tearing sound of the wind through the car and the tires rumbling over the road and all the other cars’ engines, and the pumped-up speakers that shot the music in four directions all at once. Nothing was bigger than his voice. It was massive, like a weather cloud. She did what she was told.
“Light the fucking thing!” he barked at her, and she tried. If he smoked enough, he’d get mellow. He might even get sleepy. God, she wished he’d smoke himself into a stupor.
They turned off the highway and moved down a long, near-deserted stretch of road, heading toward the station at a speed that would land them in prison. She no longer dared look at the speedometer but focused on keeping the pot flowing. The pot would calm him down. She took the bowl and dumped the charred contents out the window, her hair flying in sheets around her head. She lit a new match to start the bowl, kneeling in the passenger’s seat and leaning low toward the floor, trying to keep the wind out of the bowl, trying not to light her hair on fire.
“Oh for fucksake!” he said, pissed off by how incompetent she was, not being able to light a bowl, and how he was going to have to roll up his window, what a pain in the ass.
She thought she should roll up the window on her side, too. Normally, she didn’t dare touch the windows, the seat position, the radio. These things belonged to him. But she cranked the lever from her bent position, angled on the floor, her elbow taking the strain. With the windows up, she could get a bit of a spark and then slowly, after a few short sucks, some embers kindled. She passed the bowl carefully across to him and he drew in the smoke and held it.
“Finally,” he croaked, holding his breath. He exhaled and said, “There’s countries where it’s legal to hit a wife who won’t obey.”
“I’m not your wife,” she said. But she shouldn’t have said anything and knew it.
He said, “You’re spoiled because you’re pretty and people do things for pretty girls.”
She didn’t know what he meant. First, about being pretty. Her legs were pink and white like a plucked chicken. Her eyes were invisible behind blond lashes. The only good feature she could identify was her hair, which right now felt like dried-out cotton and was so snarled and ruined that she thought she’d have to cut the tangles out.
“But one day you won’t be so pretty,” he continued, “and then you’ll be very truly fucked, just so you know.” He took a toke from the bowl, but it went dark. He sucked the pipe and got nothing. “Jesus Christ, it’s out again! What a rip-off fucking no-smoke goddamned pipe! This is not my reefer’s fault.”
She wasn’t so sure. The draw on the pipe was weak, but the grass was young and it made a lot of smoke and wouldn’t keep a light anyway. She took the bowl once again, added some fresh leaves, and relit it, handing it to him like medicine. But it was out in ten seconds and he groaned in frustration and shoved it back in her direction, saying, “Fix this fucking thing.”
“How?”
He leaned forward and took one of the antennae off the dash and said, “Break this up and poke it down there and get out all the shit.”
Remarkably, she knew what he meant. The pipe was bunged up with resin that needed clearing. But she didn’t want to touch the antennae, which seemed to her as lethal as a gun. Anyway, she could not easily break them in two. He suddenly swerved the car to the left, passing a driver who wasn’t traveling at a hundred the way they were, and she felt a sloshing inside her guts as they moved sideways all at once like that. The antennae dropped to the floor and landed, sharp side up, bent in her direction as though pointing.
“God, Craig,” she said.
“Give it to me,” he said.
“What?”
“The TV thing, that, what’s next to you, on the floor. Jesus, Barbara.”
She thought of the motel manager all over again. She wished Craig hadn’t brought the antennae. “What happened with that guy in the room. Is he all right?” she said.
“He’s five hundred of my dollars richer, is what he is.”
And then she remembered: the money.
It was rolled into a log in her back pocket. She almost reached into her pocket to make sure it was still there but stopped herself. Instead, she put some weight onto her right buttock, trying to feel if there was a lump there. Slowly, secretly, she moved just enough to tell if there was some tiny resistance from the roll of bills. If he found out she had the money, he’d go wild. She could not risk that he’d find it. Could not risk it.
“But you have the money,” she said weakly.
“I have this!” he said, and pulled out a flattened stack of bills, wadding it into the ashtray next to the grass like it was an oil rag. “But my other five hundred is fucking disappeared.”
“But the guy—”
“What about him?”
“He’s not—” She didn’t know how to say it, how to ask if the guy was dead.
“He’s a fucking fairy!”
“But…alive, right?”
Now he laughed. He laughed and told her he was hungry and to watch out for the golden arches because he needed a drive-through. Then he picked up the antennae in his non-driving hand and broke them against his knee, which made the car jerk to the shoulder. She held the dash and watched him as he poked around the pipe and pointed the car toward a turnoff that led to a stretch of road where the radio station would eventually be found. It was already midnight and she did not understand why he wasn’t tearing his hair out, then heard the DJ on the radio say he was playing an album, which meant Craig had another half hour or so before he’d have to be sitting in the studio.
“He’s playing an album, Craig, did you hear that?”
“So what?”
“So you can relax,” she said, meaning he could go a little slower.
“That only gives me so much time.” He pinched the air to show her how little time. “And I’m hungry.”
—
HE PULLED INTO a McDonald’s, circled into the drive-through, and leaned toward the microphoned clown. He said he’d need two Big Macs, large fries, and a Coke, plus a milk shake. That was for her, the milk shake.
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
“Yes, you are.”
They drove around to the window and a young guy in eyeglasses and a brown nylon uniform stood waiting for the money, the paper bags beside him and the cardboard drink-holder, too, plus all the napkins and straws and plastic pouches of ketchup and slim packets of salt, assembled in a messy pile like a salad.
The guy told Craig it would be three dollars and something and he said, “Fuck that’s a lot for a couple of burgers,” and then looked at Bobbie for the money.
“What?” she said.
He held out a hand. “We need four bucks.”
“Three seventy-fi
ve,” the McDonald’s guy said. He had a tag on his lapel that read Dan and curly hair that spiraled around the cap on his head.
“I don’t have enough money,” she told Craig. These words seemed dangerous to her. She wondered if this was a trick, that he knew she had the other five hundred and this was his way of showing her he knew she had it. One of his little tests.
“You left the house with nothing?” He didn’t move. He didn’t look in his own pockets or in the glove compartment, only at her. His eyes were slits of pink and his mouth hung open like he was caught mid-chew.
She said, “Not four dollars.”
He shook his head slowly, like he was at the end. At the very end. He had no time for this. “Give me some money, Barbara, so we can eat! People need to eat, you know.”
Again, she wondered if this was a trick, like she was supposed to hand over the five hundred now. Why else would he have stopped at a McDonald’s when he was already supposed to be on the air? Why else would he demand that she pay for his food? She didn’t even understand how he’d lucked into having the DJ before him play a whole album as his last record. Craig must have called him from the motel and told him he was going to be late. It was the only explanation, and suddenly the whole thing felt like it had been staged. He must know she had the five hundred. On the other hand, she’d had a few tokes while lighting his pipe and maybe she was paranoid. She always got paranoid when she smoked pot. It was one of the reasons she didn’t like getting high.
“I don’t have any—”
“Bullshit!” He was furious now. It was over. She would give the money to him, give him all the money. She didn’t want it anymore. She couldn’t remember why she had taken it in the first place. It had rolled its way up to her, right up to her face, that was why.
A story came to mind, one Craig had once told her about the Hope Diamond. He’d said everyone who had the large and beautiful gem came to a terrible end. It was cursed. She concluded now that the money she’d found in the motel was cursed, like the diamond. He could have the cursed money, every last dollar. She reached into her pocket to get it. She couldn’t wait to hand it over and have this done with. She wished that after she gave him the money she could get out of the car. All at once, this seemed a fair exchange. He got the money, and she walked free. Free from him not just now but always. It was a bargain. She felt the roll, a sense of immense relief filling her heart. But just as she took it in her hand, everything changed. Craig pulled up the emergency brake, gave a great groan of impatience, and now she watched in confusion as he pushed his body toward her, then over the back of her seat. She pressed the money toward him but he knocked into her again, reaching his arm to the seat behind where her handbag rested. He grabbed the handbag and threw it at her, threw it at her face, so the buckle slapped her teeth, the strap stung her eye.
“Get some money!” he shouted.
“Sir, we can take a check if that helps,” the McDonald’s guy said. But nobody was listening to him.
Craig’s eyes were fully on her now. “You think I’m so stupid I don’t know your mother will not let you out of the house without cash?”
“My mother wasn’t home—”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up.”
She still had the fist of bills, but he didn’t notice. He grabbed the steering wheel with both hands as though steadying himself on the ropes of a boxing ring, then he said, “You’re a trial, Barbara. Do you know that? It makes no difference what I do with you! You have to make everything difficult.”
She closed her fingers over the five hundred, hid it deep into her palm, then dug into her purse and found some change, mostly dimes. In her lipstick case she kept an emergency dollar. But she couldn’t make it four dollars without handing over one of the fifties.
“Sir, if you don’t mind me saying,” the MacDonald’s guy began. He was stuck in his little brick-and-glass box; he was a head in a square of glass. His hair curled against the dull uniform and you could see the reflection of sweat on his chin. His name tag, Dan, seemed like something a small child would wear.
Craig whipped his head around to the McDonald’s guy. “WHAT?” he said.
“If you don’t mind me saying—” The guy suddenly stopped. He was nervous, was young himself, only sixteen, seventeen at a stretch. His beard looked like stray hair that needed plucking. His hair had a hedge shape of tight curls. “In the car there I can see quite a bit of cash. More than three dollars seventy-five. Just there, sir. In your ashtray.”
Craig glanced down at the roll of bills in the ashtray, then at Bobbie, then at the McDonald’s guy again.
“What is this all about!” he yelled, as though the two of them—Bobbie and Dan the McDonald’s guy—were working together to swindle him. “Everyone, his dog, and his uncle, wants to separate me from my goddamned money!” He pointed into the ashtray with a single strong shake of his arm as though trying to hurl his index finger into the pot of cash. “That’s mine, son! You got that? Nobody is touching this money! Now here, take this!”
It was Bobbie’s money, almost three dollars. She watched as Craig handed it up to the boy, who nodded and thanked him. She waited as he counted.
“You going to give us our burgers, man?” Craig said to Dan. “Or are you going to stand there with our money and our food, working out how to wipe me clean of every red cent?”
The boy finished counting, then looked unsteadily at Craig. Bobbie could see the reflection of the car in the windowed booth and Craig’s face snarled in the yellow-and-red lights that pricked the glass.
“Sir—” The boy looked distressed now, truly distressed. He stood on one foot, then another. He opened his mouth to speak and stuttered out the words, “This is…this is only three twenty-five.”
“Oh. Fuck. You,” said Craig, like he was tired now, wiped out with all the bullshit this kid was giving him. “Come on, sunshine, give us our burgers!”
The boy licked his lips. His shoulders were thin and sharp. He had a hollow chest, long arms, bony wrists, slender fingers, and you could see every pore on his face in the fierce laboratory-bright light. He leaned on his arms and sunk his head into his neck, then looked over his shoulder and back at Craig, and spoke again, this time in a voice that sounded even younger, “I’ll ask my manager. Maybe he could do something—”
She felt Craig flinch and the colossal spear of his approaching anger. She saw how he fixed his eyes on the boy and knew what this meant. It was impossible to keep silent. The idea that Craig would hurt the boy filled her mind completely. It didn’t matter that there was a window and, in fact, an entire wall between the car and the boy. Her mind was stuck on the memory of the motel manager, the sight of him down on the carpet, his face bent ninety degrees from center so the side of his nose pressed against the floor, mouth contorted, eyes squeezed shut, hands raised, swatting at the antennae as Craig pinned and beat him. It was all she could think about. From where she sat stiffly in her seat, she now leaned forward and caught the boy’s gaze and motioned with her head in small, fractional side-to-side movements. No, she told him silently, wagging her head almost imperceptibly, so that Craig would not see. Do not get the manager.
She saw the subtle change in the boy’s expression and heard him say, “Never mind,” and she nearly collapsed with relief. “This is fine,” the boy said. He tried to smile, but it didn’t look like a smile. He handed the bag of burgers, the cardboard tray of drinks, all the straws and slim packets of extra salt, and the napkins through the McDonald’s window. Reaching toward Craig’s open window with the bag, moving as carefully as he could with shaky hands, he delivered the whole thing down to Craig, who passed it all to Bobbie in a swift movement and then told the boy he was a peckerhead.
“You’re a peckerhead,” he said to the boy. “Do you know that?”
The boy said nothing. He stared at Craig, swallowing hard.
“Say it!” demanded Craig. “Say, I’m a peckerhead!”
He waited until the boy did as he was tol
d. “I’m a…” The boy was trembling. “I’m a peckerhead?” he said, his eyes fixed and staring.
“Yes, you are!” Craig laughed, then put the car into gear and they got the hell out of there.
—
THEY LEFT MCDONALD’S and sailed forward, the car now filled with the smell of burgers. It was midnight and she was caught in the cloud of noise from the radio and the road and him saying, “Take the wheel while I unclog this thing,” meaning the pipe. She scooted over and sat close to him, her head pulled back away from the spear of the antenna as he held the pipe in his mouth and poked the sharp end inside, then took it out and examined the bowl in the passing glare of streetlamps. Her fingers were locked around the steering wheel and she tried to watch the road out ahead the way he had instructed her many times before, not allowing herself to focus on the bleached cement that fed itself under the car just in front of the hood, which was where she naturally looked.
The road was straight, banked occasionally by leafy birch trees with bark that peeled in silvery paper upon their trunks. Above them was heat lightning and a faraway storm, but also the silent, sure flight of a jetliner aiming for the airport. If she weren’t having to concentrate so hard on keeping the car on the road, if she didn’t have to drive, she might have leaned against the door and stretched her vision up to the pretty halo around the moon, then tracked the plane’s red-and-white lights across the map of sky.
“Keep her steady,” he said.
“Next year I can get my license.” She squinted ahead, shifting her legs so they unstuck from the sweaty seat.
“Don’t remind me. You can already see it happening. Girls change. You’re already argumentative and pissy. You’ll be finished by sixteen.”
“I’m not pissy,” she said. She wondered what he meant by finished. “Am I driving okay?”
“Fourteen is optimal. I liked you better then. And I thought you’d turn out better than you did, too. Stay a bit straighter. Here,” he said, and pushed the wheel with his thumb.
“How far ahead should I be looking? Like a hundred feet or fifty feet or ten?”
Age of Consent Page 8
