The Lipless Gods

by Brian Stillman

  Chapter 36

  Picking the phone up almost soon as it started ringing, Susan looked at the caller ID. She sighed. Swung her legs out from under her trunk and set them on the living room floor. She stood up from the couch. The third and fourth rings sounding before she answered.

  “Hey-hey,” said Zeke.

  “’Hey-hey’ yourself. What’s going on?” Susan on automatic. Making it sound almost like she’d been waiting for Zeke’s call. Briefly, back in L.A., early L.A. Susan, long before the Old Man scooped her up, she’d dipped her toe in the phone sex trade. Trick to it, besides aceing the suck and slurp on a phantom cock, producing the perfect invitational tone to the customer ready and willing to part with $3.99 the first minute and $1.99 each additional minute.

  “Just checking in.”

  “Pretty late check in for an old man.”

  “Or old woman.”

  “Right out of the gate. Mr. Charming.”

  “Ha. Aren’t you the one, telling everyone who cares to listen how rough it is, staring down the barrel at fifty?”

  “Naw. I’m used to it at this point. Squeezed all the juice out of the topic.”

  “Look forward to it at all?”

  “Resigned to it.”

  “Probably better off. Wait until you look in the mirror one day and realize you’re north of sixty. That one is the one that shakes you up.”

  Zeke warming her up with glimpses of his mortality. Sometimes the late night calls a drink-fueled bootie call, sometimes he couldn’t sleep, but wouldn’t own up to it. Just wanting to talk to someone. Briefly, he and Boog owned a club in the SoDo district, and Zeke got used to the late hours, trailing off to sleep right before dawn. The Mariners still had Junior back then, no one knew an Ichiro from a Pikachu. Other words, it’d been awhile. Still, Zeke kept the hours, even if he rarely had things to fill them with.

  “Any word?” asked Susan.

  “Word?”

  “About the package lost in Oregon.”

  “Funny,” said Zeke.

  “Funny?”

  “Guess where I am?”

  Susan stood beside her cat tower. The calico that claimed the upper tier slit her eyes while Susan’s hand slowly rubbed fur. Susan’s hand slowed. Realizing.

  “Oregon,” she said.

  Zeke laughed.

  “I thought you sent Mikhail.”

  “Uh-uh. No. Nonononono. Something like this you don’t send a fist. You send a guiding hand.”

  “I told him…” She sighed. The black cat on the lower tier murped at her. Well-trained, Susan abandoned the calico, started petting the younger cat, not confused about the Oregon-deal, realizing immediately Sipe had probably freaked out thinking the Wub was headed his way.

  “I know,” said Zeke. “Asshole move. Sometimes you got to be the asshole. The adult. But it’s worth it. Best thing about it, hold on. I’m gonna send you a picture. There’s these things all over the goddamned place. Had ‘em at the restaurant, in the motel lobby, and even got ‘em in the rooms. Hold on.” Zeke’s voice getting distant like he was carrying something. “Going to set ‘em next to the lamp. Plenty of light. There’s two of ‘em in here with me.”

  Miracle of technology, almost instantaneously, Susan looked at the photos Zeke forwarded. Given the mattress cover, the particleboard looking headboard, it was a motel room. And dolls. Figurines. An old man with a white beard, cradling a jug of whiskey. A little girl, two beaver-like front teeth, a rash of freckles, hugging the world’s ugliest alley cat against her scrawny, definition of the waif frame.

  “What am I looking at?” asked Susan.

  “Beepers,” said Zeke.

  “’Beepers’?”

  “Apparently they’re all the rage.”

  “They’re ugly.”

  “Oh, yeah, shit yeah, but so were Cabbage Patch Dolls. So were those, what were those? Beanie Babies. Those were ugly, too. People still lost their minds.”

  “You looking to invest, Zeke?”

  “I don’t know about that. I invest in something, I invest in mutual fund like things. Sure things. The boring stocks. Slow churners, solid earners. But Beepers, I tell you what, I think they’re kind of cute.” The way he said it, Susan could tell he was looking right at the Beepers in his motel room, maybe even had one in hand, the little bucktoothed girl, giving it the once over.

  “What does Sipe think of Beepers?”

  “Didn’t ask. Besides. You know, you ask Sipe most things, all he does is shrug.”

  Susan smiled. That was spot on.

  “The package?” she asked.

  “Secure.”

  “Good.”

  “You been watching the news?”

  “No.”

  “Susan. Shit. This little town, Little Creek? Ground zero. Connie’s girl flipped her shit. Tried to kill Sipe. Again, I mean. She shot up half the town then ran into the woods. And I mean literally ran. That’s how close the town is to the trees.”

  “Connie’s ok?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Sorry. Is Sipe ok?”

  “Half his face is a bruise. He’s alive. Hiding out from the cops. Well, they’re looking for a car, he hid it from ‘em. They don’t know to look for an ugly little guy made uglier by bruises.”

  “Connie? I mean. Not his body. But…How is he? Emotionally?”

  “Mean is he a basket case?” said Zeke.

  “Right.”

  “What’s the word I’m looking for…Chagrinned? I think he knows he was listening to his dick more than his brain. Learned a lesson. Your can dip your dick in the sweetest honey, but if there’s too many bees about, or the one wrong bee, you got to say goodbye.”

  Susan had turned on the TV. Muted. Flipping for one of the news channels even though she knew the best bet Googling. Once she was off the phone, she’d get up to her elbows in Little Creek, Millie.

  “How much does the Old Man know?” she asked.

  “Ask him.”

  “Well, what did you tell him before you flew out?”

  “Car trouble.”

  “’Car trouble’?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “You told him what? Sipe and Connie had car trouble and it necessitated you going out all the way to Oregon?”

  “I’m expediting the process. I get down there, get Connie home, Sipe deals with the car shit. That’s what I told him.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “I interrupted his nap. That’s what he said. ‘You interrupted my nap’. Then, now that I got him awake, he wants me to time him, walking up those goddamned stairs, worried about his knee. His nap. His knee. More important to him than his kingdom crumbling down. More important than Connie.”

  “What do you tell him now? Now that it’s a mess?”

  “Mess? I don’t care about any mess. I don’t see any mess to care about. Connie’ll be home tomorrow. Some crazy shit happened in the town, some crazy shit happened in the town. What do we know about it? Pure coincidence.”

  “Wow. I wish I was as cool as you.”

  “Most do. Suze, see, thing is,” said Zeke, “and don’t tell me you don’t know this, because you know this, we all know this, the Old Man is about to lose two, three, four, maybe four brain cells, and then he’ll be dropping turds in his pants and using them for Crayons. He isn’t hard of hearing. He’s hard of understanding. Everyone knows that. Anything we do, we’re doing it out of respect for who he was. Not who he is. What I’m doing right now, what I did, fuck Sipe over a little, who do I run that past? A shadow. A ghost in a shell. Honestly, I run it past Connie if anyone, problem being, Connie doesn’t want to acknowledge it. He thinks he has options. He thinks he has options.”

  “And if not Connie, then who?”

  “It’s you or me,” said Zeke. “Tell me who else is in the running?”
r />   “I don’t know. Not me.”

  “Right. But you could be. See. You don’t want it. That’s why people come to you. Run things past you.”

  “Apparently not everything.”

  Zeke laughed. “No. Not everything. If it was something else, Alaska related, Aberdeen related, Pullman, sure as shit, I need numbers crunched, numbers verified, invest in this, cancel that, boom, you’re my first, you’re my only call. You’re all business. You have no agenda. People get that about you.”

  “Maybe my agenda is coming off as having no agenda.”

  “Shit. Wouldn’t put it past you. But see me, it’s not me either. I know it’s not. I know I was never in the running. Maybe we’re more accepting, this day and age, put a man of color in charge, but I’m old. Too old. I’m older than the Old Man. See, that’s the thing that chills me. He’s a feeb, an honest to God feeb, and I’ve got five years on him. Makes me wonder, ponder, you know? When I go, when the lights go out, but I keep going, the body at least, how fucking long do I keep living, the living that isn’t living?”

  “But think of all the art you’ll make with your turds.”

  Zeke laughed. Susan smiled.

  Once Zeke settled down she said, “You could’ve told me.”

  “About what?”

  “The Wub. Not sending him.”

  “No. See. You would’ve told Sipe.”

  “That might’ve kept things at a low boil.”

  “Sipe knew I was coming out, he would’ve sat and waited. But, Sipe thinks the Wub is coming, he’s going to move his ass and get his house in order.”

  “So we’re talking dominoes.”

  “Yes. Wait. Dominoes?”

  “They’re all set up,” said Susan. “They fall soon as you knock one over. If Sipe thinks you’re coming, he doesn’t touch the first domino. The Wub’s coming, boom, he instantly topples that first domino, and it plays out, all the way to its natural conclusion. Including a town getting shot up. Including Connie being put in harm’s way.”

  “Probably.”

  Susan laughed. “That’s a problem. Right? Tell me you see that that’s a problem.”

  “Shit happens.”

  “Zeke? Fuck. I mean, just…Fuck.”

  “Connie’ll be home tomorrow. Is that the most important part of all of this? Yes or no? Yes? Or no?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s all good.”

  Susan stared at the TV, some commercial for a car playing.

  “I got to find one thing out for sure though.”

  “What?”

  “They were telling me when I was checking in, there’s a shop here, honest to god, sells nothing but Beepers.” Tone to his voice, Susan could tell he’d slipped on his little half glasses. The ones he didn’t want anyone to see him using. “Let me see here. These things got a sticker? A ‘Made In China’. Oh shit. Here we go. Orley.”

  “Orley?”

  “Mmm-hm. Orley, Oregon. We’re going to check that place out. Come on home, Connie, me, Sipe, and who knows? Maybe enough Beepers in the goddamned car six months from now we can all retire. Fuck the Old Man and his knee and his stairs climbing ass. How does that sound?”