Ray liked her. Liked looking at her in the shadowy room, talking to her. This was Ray White's one and only opportunity to speak with an intelligent woman, even if he did have to pay eighty bucks an hour for the privilege. Christ, he'd paid a lot more for a lot less.
Ray was wearing khaki Dockers with the pleated fronts, blue-and-white striped shirt, red suspenders, Weejuns. He'd considered wearing a bow tie, but thought better of it. Intelligent women liked preppy clothes, L.L. Bean apparel. Personally Ray leaned more toward Italian styles, silver shirts with geometric patterns, black-and-gray checked pants, pointy loafers with tassels. Racetrack attire, he called it. But, hell, he was willing to accept a few compromises in the clothing area to make a good impression on Tricia.
Ray was saying, "Every morning he wakes up, goes into the bathroom, spends a couple of hours on it. He shaves all his body hair, plucks out his eyebrows, his goddamn eyelashes, the hair on his toes and knuckles. It's a fetish, I think."
"And this has been bothering you."
"Bothering me, yeah. I guess you could say that. But mainly I'm trying to figure out why he's that way. See if I can do anything, nudge him back to mental sanity."
"Can you tell me why your brother's hygiene practices should be a problem for you?"
"Hey. It's not my problem, it's my brother's problem. I got my own set of issues. But body hair isn't one of them."
"Your brother seems to derive some satisfaction and pleasure from this activity. Is that what disturbs you? Do you feel uneasy when he experiences happiness?"
"You put a rinse on your hair, Doc?"
"I told you, Ray. I'm not a doctor. I have an MSW."
"Yeah, I know," Ray said. "It's just that I think of you as my doctor."
Tricia didn't say anything for a few seconds. Uncrossed her legs, recrossed them the other way. Right hand rising up to touch her hair, then dropping away. Didn't wear a wedding ring.
"Why do you ask about my hair, Ray?"
"If you have it done professionally, you should stick with that guy. Color's very natural-looking. And if you don't dye it, that's fine, it's just the right color for your skin tone. And this is something I've made a thorough study of; I take an interest in such things — women's hair color. I consider myself something of a pundit on these matters."
"You were talking about your problem with your brother."
"It's not my problem, I told you. It's his problem. I think we should get that straight. I don't pluck my hair. I mean, yeah, I shave my face, but that's it. I'm a normal guy."
"Is that important for you, Ray? To be normal?"
Ray White considered telling her about the kid he'd shot yesterday, left bleeding in his pickup. He'd seen in the paper this morning that the old lady had died on the scene. The kid was in serious but stable condition. Still alive at Jackson Memorial, hooked up to their machines. But before Rayon could tell Tricia about shooting somebody, he believed he needed to get to know her better. You couldn't spring something like that on a woman unless the foundation was strong. Anyway, he wasn't absolutely sure about shrinks, if it was the same as priests and lawyers, tell them anything, they had to keep it confidential.
Maybe next week.
"I'm a normal guy," Ray said. "I don't go out of my way to be normal. I don't worry about it. That's just how I am."
"So why do you need my help, Ray? If you're so normal. Why do you come to see me every week?"
He looked at her over in the shadows. Pretty woman, blue eyes, freckles. She could ask good questions, too, like that last one. She could tie him up in knots when she tried.
"I don't want you to waste your money, Ray, if there's nothing serious bothering you."
That's how it was to talk to an intelligent woman. They didn't let you get by with bullshit. They nailed you.
"Doc," said Ray. "I truly believe I'm getting my money's worth seeing you. Believe me, I feel better and better, week after week coming here. Trust me, you're helping."
***
After his session Ray drove to the drugstore on Red and Sunset, got his photographs, took the packet back out to the Volvo without opening them up. Started the car, let the air conditioner run. Sitting in the parking lot of Ace Hardware, cooling off the interior.
It was an eight-year-old black Volvo. Zero to sixty in five minutes, give or take. Ray didn't require the G-force that Orlon thrived on. Hell, Orlon would never own a car that couldn't slam his skull against the headrest and keep it pinned there while he worked through the gears. For Orlon, Detroit died the day they slipped below four hundred horses.
Ray just sat for a minute or two, letting his heart throttle down. Out his windshield there were the usual throngs of thirty-year-old mothers coming and going, dragging their blond kids with them, the young and the breastless. Going into the hair salon, health food store, tennis store. Ray watched them pass. Out in the Wednesday sunshine running their errands, everybody in their track shoes, their jogging shorts. All of them healthy, tanned, no fatties.
Ray felt like he did every Wednesday after he left the redheaded shrink. He liked to sit in his car and imagine he had a wife like her, somebody to give him towheaded kids he could take to soccer practice on Saturday morning, a woman who'd go with him to Ace Hardware afterward, the two of them could pick out a new trash can, bring it home, they'd stand around and look at it and say, hey, that's nice. Good wheels on it. Can't wait to fill it with all our happy-family garbage.
But then he'd think of Orlon, what would happen to him if Ray found a woman, got married, all that. And when he started considering the reality of it, moving out, leaving Orlon on his own, the fantasy soured, left a greasy lump in the pit of his belly.
Ray pulled open the packet of photographs. He could feel his heart thumping. A roll of thirty-six. Nice sharp color. Ray took his time, looking at each one. Wanting to hurry, but holding back. First ones were a couple of mosques, just like Orlon predicted. One or two after that of the swimming pool at the Holiday Inn in Kuching. Ray recognized it, having stayed there once on his first trip over, making connections with the local trappers. In the Holiday Inn pool a twenty-year-old girl was waist high in the water looking up at the camera, fingers pulling at the corners of her mouth, sticking her tongue out, mugging. Short blond hair, same length as Ray's. Good tight body inside a black tank suit. Nice round breasts, nipples at attention. Resemblance to Allison around the mouth, the eyes, too, so Ray assumed it was the dead girl's sister.
The two photos after that were wide-angle shots of a longhouse, one of those huge Borneo wooden shacks built on stilts over the swamp. Like a cheap, slapped-together apartment building, even worse than the projects in America. Twenty, thirty families sharing the place, dingy building but with very bright clothes hanging out on the porch.
He set the tourist shots on the passenger seat. Dealt off the next one, the one after that. Chinese herbal shops, then more snapshots of the open-air market in Kuching, stalls of fruit, sides of beef hanging out in the sun, fish and clams and oysters lying in their wood boxes, no refrigeration, no ice. Botulism central. Christ, just walking through those markets made Ray's sphincter muscles loosen.
The photos were a cut or two above your average tourist shots, arty in what she'd focused on, an old woman with black teeth, smiling, pointing at her wooden tray full of gleaming white beads. Black, white. Teeth, beads. Ray could see what the dead girl was driving at. Some kind of contrast, irony or whatever it was called. Same as with the longhouses, rundown buildings with colorful clothes outside. Interesting.
He worked his way through thirty of them, forming an idea of the woman they'd killed, finding he connected with her a little, the way she saw things. But at the same time starting to get a sinking feeling, 'cause there was nothing in the photos he was looking for. No jungle shots at all. Just places around town, people, marketplace, some narrow, sandy road with shadows on it that looked like bayonets. Ray moved through the pile, came down to the last couple, and then bing, bong, boom, there it was.
Two sets of rifle barrels pointed upward, gleaming, but a palm frond hid the faces of the hunters. And the last one, the one on the very bottom of the stack, by God — there was the one he'd been hoping for. The dead girl had edged to her right around the palm, and gotten a clear angle on the shooters. There was Ray in profile and beside him was their business partner. Their esteemed colleague, in sharp focus.
Ray switched off the Volvo, went back to the drugstore. He stood in line behind some old lady who was angry none of her pictures had come out.
"You probably forgot to take your lens cap off," said the kid behind the counter. "That's how it looks to me."
"That was my fiftieth wedding anniversary," the woman said. "Can't you do something to fix these?"
When it finally came Ray's turn, he stepped up and said, "You guys do blowups?"
"Enlargements, you mean," the kid said. "That's what they're called."
"I don't care what the fuck you call them. I want one."
***
"It'll be ready Saturday," Ray said to Orlon. "A blowup."
"Blowup." Orlon smiled, smacked the side of his head with an open palm. "Christ, I been trying to remember that. The name of that English movie. Blow-Up. A guy in Hyde Park or somewhere, he's taking pictures, catches something on film he didn't see at the time, a murder, I think. Anyway, I remember them playing tennis without the ball at the end. Out there swatting at the empty air with their rackets. Lot of good skin in that movie. Good old British nudity. We should see if it's on video, rent it for tonight. Smoke some dope, have us some heavy-duty hippie flashbacks."
Orlon was naked, floating on a raft in their lagoon swimming pool, hidden from their neighbors by tall oleander bushes. Orlon's latest dickthrob, buxom Betty Penski, floated naked beside him, faceup. Big, bristly patch of blond pubic hair on display.
A few weeks before they left for their Far East trip, Betty had waited on Orlon and Ray at the International House of Pancakes over on Bird Road. Buxom Betty brought their pancakes and flirted with both of them pretty much equally. But as usual, Orlon wound up being the one to take a dip in her maple syrup.
"I need to talk to you about something important."
"You can talk in front of Betty. Can't he, Betty?"
"Ray can do anything in front of me," she said.
"And behind you, too, I bet," said Orlon.
"That's right. Either side. Either one of you."
"Over easy," Orlon said. "Right, Betty? You'll take two over easy?"
"I'm always ready to take your order, sir."
The two of them laughed together. Betty wasn't twenty yet. Just Orlon's type: big breasts, laughed real easy, a few crucial wires loose in her cortex.
"Come inside when you're ready to discuss this." Ray turned his back on them and went back into the house. Waited ten minutes in the living room till Orlon came in. Hadn't bothered to put his suit on. Standing there slick as a seal.
"What's eating your ass, man?"
Ray opened the photo packet and held up the photograph. Orlon came over, took it out of his hand and carried it over to the living room window. He held it up to the sunlight.
"Not bad, not bad. Makes you look kind of like that guy, you know, that hunter guy, Ramar of the Jungle. You remember? Those reruns, when we were little, on TV."
"We need to talk about this," said Ray. "Serious talk."
Orlon came back over and sat down on the couch opposite him. When they bought this house three years before, they'd hired a decorator to choose the couch, rugs, drapes, wallpaper, everything. Orlon insisted on a young homosexual to do the work, 'cause he said those people had the best taste of anybody on the planet. The house was done up in eclectic traditional. That's what the gay guy called it anyway. A few antiques, English primitives, some Shaker stuff. Quilts hanging on the walls, slipcovers burgundy and hunter green. The walls painted some kind of dull pinkish color. Straw baskets, dried flowers, some art deco pieces thrown in here and there, a pink neon sculpture of a flamingo that stayed lit day and night.
All in all, it was a living room you could bring a girl's mother over and show her, and the mother would say yeah, sure, go ahead, take my daughter if you want her. Trouble was, the White brothers never got that far, to the mother stage.
Orlon said, "So this is the photo you're so excited about? Man, I hate to be the one to break it to you, Rayon, but this is bullshit. The guy's aiming his goddamn gun up at the trees, that's all this is."
"Tell me something, Big O. What's that thing tied to his belt? You see that thing? Behind the frond there."
Orlon took another look. Squinted.
"An orangutan."
"That's right. A severely endangered animal. Our guy is out there in the woods shooting his gun, with a woolly ape tied to his belt. We get this photo enlarged, I think this would be a major source of embarrassment for our friend if it was showed in the right circles. Might even create some minor legal traumas. Could cause him to completely lose his station in life."
"I don't know. It's just a picture. And anyway, what's the goddamn hurry, man? This'll wait. This is my day to bop Betty. Her day off, my day on."
Ray took the photo back, sat down on the couch opposite Orlon. A long pine coffee table between them.
Ray said, "I guess you didn't listen to the answering machine this morning, did you, little brother? Didn't notice the red light flashing when you walked by?"
"No, I had a couple of other things on my mind."
"Yeah, that bimbo."
"Hey, that's a very smart young lady. And she's a hundred percent liberated feminist too. Burned her training bra and never bought another one, had a year of junior college, studying to be a nurse. And man, let me tell you, that young lady has already developed herself some very fine nursing skills."
"I don't want to hear about it."
"You know, Ray, you really should go out, find some mud for your turtle. Get your glands drained, maybe your Jockey shorts would loosen up. You'd calm down."
"Our man called us on the phone," said Ray. "He wanted a meeting. Sounded very ominous to me."
"So?"
"Now look, I've thought about this. And I've decided."
"Yeah? You have, huh?"
Buxom Betty was standing naked outside the sliding door. She looked at her reflection for a second and primped her hair. Then, smiling at Ray, she leaned forward and very slowly smushed her breasts flat against the glass and gave the White boys a big House of Pancakes wink.
Then she turned around, peeling her buttocks apart, and pressed her prodigious rear against the glass.
"Hey, tell me, Ray, do I know how to pick my women, or what?"
"Listen, man. You gotta concentrate here. You gotta stay on the same channel with me. This is serious business we're entering into. We have to talk this through, make contingency plans, blueprint it all out."
Orlon was watching Betty spread her cheeks, press them hard against the glass. She was looking over her shoulder at the effect she was having. Orlon touching his crotch in answer.
"Get rid of her," Ray said. "Get that monstrosity out of here."
"Hell, no, I'm not getting rid of her. Look at that. That's the sun and moon and stars above. That, Rayon, is the ass that passeth all understanding."
Ray got up, walked over to the sliding glass door. He reached up and yanked the curtain cord and the Laura Ashley flowered drapes zipped across the window. He put his hand behind the curtains, made sure the lock was set.
He turned around, glared at his brother.
"So let me guess," Orlon said. "You want to use this photograph to blackmail our guy?"
"No."
"Hey, why not? Shit, we could leapfrog from fairly well off to totally rich in one jump. Burn our bridges with this guy. I never did like him anyway."
"Burn our bridges with us still standing on them is more like it," Ray said.
Orlon looked at the Laura Ashley curtains. Betty was out there knocking on the glass. Knocking w
ithout letup.
"Look," Ray said. "What we're going to do, we're going to keep this photo to ourselves. It's our kryptonite. We see we're in trouble with this guy, he starts making threatening noises of some kind, then we bring it out, use it to save our asses. But no blackmail. Nothing like that."
"Kryptonite," Orlon said. "I like that. Hey, I may finally be making some headway with you, big brother. Getting you to look at the world with a more cinematic perspective."
***
The orangutan stood in front of the open refrigerator cooling himself. There were several bottles of Miller beer inside the old Kenmore, several more broken on the concrete floor. The orangutan had licked up all the beer, and taken a small cut on his foot from the glass.
Now he stood before the cool box and looked around the warehouse. The oak desk was upside down, books and magazines flung across the floor. The first-aid box and the snakebite kit lay open, their contents scattered from one end of the office to the other. Band-Aids, gauze, adhesive tape, iodine, scissors, wooden sticks, and cotton balls.
The orangutan had ripped open a large Band-Aid package and one flesh-colored strip had become snarled in the hair on his leg. In the far corner of the room the watercooler was on its side, the plastic container lying nearby, a pool of water leaking around it.
Leaving bloody footprints as he went, the young ape walked across to the film of water, bent his head down and licked it. He continued until it was gone. Then he rose and walked to the bathroom, looked around, touched the toilet paper roll, spun it around, a yard or two of paper coming off, then he ripped the roll off its holder and dropped it in the toilet.
He leaned down and looked at it, then pulled the soggy mass out and let it drop on the floor. He stepped on it, squished it beneath his cut foot, then picked it up, brought it to his nose, sniffed, then slung it at the wall.
Back in the office, the orangutan climbed up onto the desk and looked around. Papers and pens and pencils lay on the floor. The computer had tumbled onto its side and electricity frizzed inside it every few seconds. Each time the current sputtered, the orangutan jerked his head up and listened.
Gone Wild (Thorn Series Book 4) Page 18
