CHAPTER FOUR
JIM
So that was then. So this was now. So I was doing what I was told, following Teresa as she meandered down the sidewalk. And Rollins had been right; my head still hurt.
She looked better from behind, I had to give her that. Most women do. All hookers do. I suppose she would have been considered attractive in a different day: Halloween, say. Or in another age: the Stone Age, perhaps. There's a reason hookers come out at night, but she was good enough in the light for a car with two teenage boys inside. They slowed, pacing her, gathering nerve. Teresa looked over and smiled. The kid closest said something unintelligible, stuck out his tongue. She waved. 'Come on over.' Even on the way home there would be time to break in a rookie or two. But they weren’t that brave, not yet, and the car moved down the boulevard.
Across another street, down another block, further from civilization. Between a tire store and a furniture outlet were two rows of dirty, rust-stucco box buildings. Hi-Way Inn a sign read, a remnant reminder of when the road had been the main thoroughfare through town, before the freeway rumbling in the distance had brought deterioration. She walked onto the broken asphalt drive between the boxes and past three sets of bungalows before stopping at the last to open the door and let us in.
It was a pit. Even the roof seemed to sag. It was basically one big room which the different types of flooring separated into the different living areas. Dirty rust carpet: living room. Scratched and stained white linoleum: dining room. Stained and greasy white linoleum: kitchen. Another square of golf course green carpet was the hallway, leading to the bedroom and bath. A kitchen table, couch and coffee table were the extent of the furniture. Early Dumpster decor.
Teresa dropped her belongings onto the table and opened the refrigerator.
It was then he came in from the bedroom.
"You're early." He wore a dirty t-shirt and a thick leather belt around his ripped jeans and a red calico bandanna around his head, giving outline to his blond hair and long beard. Half-biker, half-Indian. Probably neither.
She shrugged without turning.
"How much?"
She shrugged again, wearily indicating the table with her eyes.
He grabbed her bag and jammed his hand inside, removing bills and counting. "Seventy-five?"
She said nothing.
He breathed out disgust, stuffed the money into his pants, and walked back to the bedroom.
She turned back to the refrigerator, scanned the shelves, picked up a Coke, put it back, shut the door. He should have been happy. Her one customer that morning had been fast and free with the cash; a twice-around-the-block with a short, fat sales type with delusions of glandular whose sweat beaded out of every pore, dripping onto Teresa's hair and soaking his dress shirt. I gathered by the approach and subsequent conversation that he was a semi-regular, and he had the usual clichés down pat.
“Oh, baby, you missed this, didn’t you? You were waiting for me, weren’t you? I told you I’d come back for you, now take it, take it!”
And all without running a light or over a pedestrian before reaching the stretch and taking the checkered. I was sure he’d have a heart attack before the finish, with his face beet red and other things beat purple. But this was his time to shine, to imagine himself a giant amongst dwarfs, and when he recovered I could already see the change in stature--despite diminishing returns--as he was taken to a place where short was tall and fat was svelte and an inch was the same as a foot. Just a poor sap who needed to let off a little froth now and then to prove he was alive. And the seventy-five bucks Teresa earned in that ten minute span–and she earned it--was the equivalent of $450 an hour in the corporate world, or $3,600 for an eight-hour shift, or $18,000 for the week with weekends off, or $900,000 a year with two weeks for Christmas. For the first time I was jealous of the hooker and not the john, for she was well on her way to wealth and the good life. She just needed more customers, and word of mouth, after all...
He came back fully dressed, which meant boots. He ran his hands through his hair and fixed it into a pony tail. He stroked his beard and mustache.
"I'm going out."
She squirmed. "I'm not feeling good."
He stopped at the door without turning. "Then you'll have to do better than seventy-five.”
He left the door open as he strutted off. Teresa stood until he was gone from sight and a few minutes more before walking over to close the door. She walked slowly into the bedroom and over to the closet and knelt down. Pushing clothes and shoes aside, she reached until she touched the back wall, felt something and pulled. A small square of previously cut drywall came off in her hand. She reached into the hole behind it and took out a glass pipe and set on a chair nearby, then reached in again, finding a plastic bag half full of individually rolled cigarettes. She took out two and put the bag and wall and clothes and shoes back where they'd been, got up and clumsily knocked the chair, tipping the pipe which fell to the floor and broke in half.
Her face froze in panic, and she dropped the cigarettes and picked up the pipe. She held it gently, like a dead animal, biting her bottom lip, then turned and removed the drywall and put the pipe in the hole and put the drywall back. She pushed more clothes against it, then picked up the pot and left the room.
She went back to the couch and sat down and lit one of the cigarettes. It was then I noticed how much her hands were trembling.
It took a joint and a half before the shaking stopped and she could close her eyes. I suppose the pot could have been called medicinal, but it was a mere placebo to her. She needed something stronger to do what she did day after day, and the signs she exhibited since I’d known her all pointed to meth. Who could blame her; she needed help keeping that fixed smile on her face. But at the moment she was looking to go down, not up.
After a while she nodded off, head rolling to rest on the back of the couch. I killed time looking around. His name was Jim, I discovered from various pictures and papers. Other things: this was not the first place they had lived together; he once owned a Harley; she once played guitar; they rarely did laundry and when they did it was in the bathroom sink; she liked horses; was brought up Catholic; had very dry skin and wished she were dead.
Amazing what you could learn without touching anything or anyone, but I’d lived my life doing both and all those facts were gathered by simple observation. Except her wishing she were dead...instinct told me that. No, common sense.
I sat and watched her sleep. The smoke was dissipating, mercifully, letting the original urine/pesticide/cigarette stench of the place fill the room. She breathed in, she breathed out. She drooled slightly out of the corner of her mouth. Detective work had taught me patience. Eternity gave it a whole new meaning.
So I reflected on the task at hand. I'd seen dozens of these motels, hundreds of hookers, and there had to be people in the world more worthy of my time. Why her? I wondered. Why not? I supposed. She was the one, as Rollins said, that I would make the most important person in my life and stay with every waking, and non-waking, moment. But for what? Was she the key to the future of the world? Did she possess the knowledge which would somehow save the planet from a collision with an errant asteroid? Was she the illegitimate daughter of a former President, the result of a tete-a-tete between himself and the wife of a South American dictator, discarded at birth but soon to be an unwilling and unwitting pawn in a plot involving drug wars, arms dealing and attempted assassination?
Or was she simply a methed-out mess of a pot-headed prostitute, with more past behind than future ahead, living each day the same until she was found on the street, still standing, still smiling, still waiting for the next customer without realizing life had left with the last john and the only thing coming was the heavenly trolley to take her to that big street corner in the sky.
Whatever the reason, I was just thankful to be involved.
The afternoon was all but gone before she stirred again. A few minutes later she opened her eyes and stared at me wit
hout moving her body or head. I waved my hand in front of her face foolishly, but she wasn't seeing anything right then, or maybe seeing too much.
Jim came in the door and stopped, focusing his eyes. The perfect couple. He was drunk or stoned. He stopped and stared. "Why aren't you out?"
"I'm going now," she said, got up, fell back, stayed there.
He staggered a few steps, straightened as if with dignity, and walked into the bedroom. Moments later there was the anguished cry of a bull that had just lost its oysters. He came storming out holding the two pieces of the pipe in his hands and the bag of joints under one arm.
“You took some stuff."
Teresa leaned away. "I didn't."
“And this?” He held it out with the same look Teresa had when she had picked it off the floor.
“It was an acci–“
He grabbed her and slapped her across the face, snapping her head back. "I told you to never touch my stuff."
He grabbed a clump of Teresa's hair, pulling her to her feet and throwing her at the wall in the same motion. She hit hard, sliding back to the floor and gasping for breath. He reached down and slapped the top of her head, then picked her up and threw her face forward onto the couch. Blood appeared at her mouth and she tried to get up but he pushed her back.
"Don't!"
"Shut up!" he yelled. "You deserve this."
In what seemed one motion, he had his pants off and her skirt up and panties down and was trying to have sex with her as she cried and bled onto the couch. But he couldn’t. The only thing worse than forcing yourself on a woman, I guessed, was the inability to. After thrusts of trying, he began hitting her with his fists on her back and Teresa’s cries came out with a sort of jungle rhythm as they were expelled from her chest. And since he couldn’t use his own equipment, he used other things, beginning with that same fist. When he reached for a knife I felt it prudent to leave.
I'd seen worse, but never so close or without a tub of popcorn. I walked out the door, leaving the love birds their nest. Rollins was sitting on the bottom step and I hit him with the screen door as I came outside.
"Oh, you finally decided to show up.”
“I’ve been here,” he said.
“What are you doing out here?"
"What are you doing out here?"
"Little miss echo," I said, stretching, scanning the surroundings. The parking lot courtyard was quiet, and the cars speeding by on the main road created a steady hum that seemed to nullify life itself. The muffled cries and yells I heard behind blended into the hum to become unrecognizable. Like the waves of an ocean to people lucky enough to live so close, it created a soothing resonance never noticed unless all else were to be suddenly capped silent, and that never happened. Everything fell into the black hole of white noise; whether it was a laugh, or a cry, or a scream, or the tinkling glass of a broken pipe. Nothing was ever heard.
Or seen.
Maybe that was part of the--
“You need to stay with her."
–part of the psyche of the city, as well. Part of the gestalt. The white noise had its accompanying visual void, as well--white light--into which all action fell. The same laughter, screams or slaps would never been seen, becoming part of the visual fog with no more or less importance than any particular car passing by. Since no sound contained the human intensity to reach above the hum line, no human activity would rise above, either. In the safe suburbs it would bring the police, and fast. Here it was the ignored routine.
“Go back in there with Teresa.”
Consequently, this was the birthplace of all the late night news clichés. “A body was found...” “An apparent murder...” “Another shooting...” Because of the deafness and blindness, no one saw and no one heard and no one noticed. And no one cared.
Of course, if someone happened to break your pipe or take some of your drugs, your opinion of that theory might differ.
I sat down. The early morning cloud cover was burning away and the asphalt was baking, sending up waves. Even Rollins was sweating, though it looked to be in exasperation.
"She’s not out here,” he said.
I motioned with my head. "They're having a private moment."
"You still need to stay with her."
“I’ll wait till they’re done.”
He stared at me in silent expectation.
“Why?” I said. “Why do I need to be in there right now? To witness that?”
“Because of that. You need to see what her life is really like.”
“I read ‘Little Women.’ I get the jist. So did she.” I laughed.
“You need to see what she goes through."
“Thanks, but no thanks. Besides, if won’t make any difference. It’s the whole–“ I indicated the surroundings, “–it’s the whole gestalt of the thing.”
He pursed his lips. “You need to gestalt your butt back in there.”
“Hah. Bad joke.”
“It’s nothing you haven’t seen before.”
“And nothing I want to see again.”
“And it’s nothing you haven’t done before.”
I snorted dismissively. “Yeah, right.” His face had a blank expectancy. “What?”
“Go back inside.”
“Why?”
“Maybe you’ll see your reflection in Jim’s face.”
“Whatever that means.”
“What do you think it means?”
“I think it means I’m wasting my time. This is idiotic. I could be with my family and I’m stuck here. What is this all about, anyway? I already know how whores live.”
“I thought you would have noticed the parallels.”
“To what?”
“Their life, your life.”
I leaned away, glaring. “Are you trying to tick me off? Between our lives?” I leaned back. “Yeah, now that you mention it, I do see the parallels... because parallel lines never meet. So I agree, one-hundred percent.”
“They're not so different.”
I made a deep, guttural grunt of warning.
He remained unfazed. “It’s right in front of you.”
His face looked serious enough, but I also knew he sometimes said things to get a rise. It was working. “Rollins, you don’t know what my life was like. You said so yourself. There’s no question I’ve seen a lot of this type of thing. In my line of work you couldn’t help not. But I’ve only seen it. That–“ I began, looking into the bungalow, then I shook my head and waved off the rest.
“You’ve just forgotten.”
I stood up, taking a breath. “Rollins, the difference between them and me is like night and day, good and bad, or, if I may be so bold, black and white.”
He stood, brushing off his pants. He looked me in the eye and said again, gently, “You’ve just forgotten.”
I pushed my finger in his chest. “I didn’t forget anything. You don’t know. Why do you think I want my life back if it was so horrible? Now, if this had been my life...my lie...my wife...”
Words started forming on their own, then falling off my lips as if bouncing on jelly. I reached up to move them but they felt numb as if full of Novocain. I began to feel dull and drowsy and wondered if somehow the drugs I’d been around were having affect. I squinted. He had an out-of-focus, mocking smile that tilted in the sunlight. His hand reached out to me slowly. I tried to push it away but found my arms stuck to my sides, my brain no longer controlling my actions, and he put his hand to my chest and gave it the slightest push.
I left the ground and floated backwards up the steps and through the door and into the bungalow. I came to a stop standing over Teresa who was kneeling on the carpet and holding her face and heaving out tears onto the carpet. I could hear Jim in the back bedroom, and as I turned toward the noise the hallway suddenly began to close. I watched with stupid wonder. A breeze blew through the room and the clapping of the screen door made me look over dully to see it close, becoming solid, then popping out as if it were a children�
��s book to become a shower. Windows closed, furniture dissolved, the wall moved inward. The girl at my feet blurred, transformed, and became someone more familiar. A feeling of anxiety filled my chest, a loud slap took my energy and my right hand began to throb.
I squeezed my eyes shut and forced a tremor through my body to shake me back to reality, then opened them again to find myself in a place I no longer wished to see and could no longer touch.
Trace the Dead Eye Page 4
