Big Machine (43 page)

Murder said, “You are staying with us.”

He made it sound like a bed and breakfast. Murder’s B & B, butterscotch served at nine
A.M.
How I wish I could’ve said something like that, witty and cool. Instead I groaned.

“All right, then,” Wilfred muttered. “I’m gonna go.”

That bastard even sounded bored.

Murder said, “I was speaking of you too, Wilfred.”

Talk about screaming! My cousin worked his lungs.

But of course the Belgian was in the right. Instead of taking twenty-four thousand dollars to the thug who was owed, Wilfred had brought it to Murder. Got paid eighteen hundred dollars for the service. With me dead Wilfred could just blame the loss on some unreliable junky. It all smacked of a loser’s logic. The kind of plan hatched by an idiot at last call. But now Murder wanted to make sure there was no one alive to speak his name, because the Belgian wasn’t a fool. Wilfred should’ve just sent me in there alone and sped away. But he knew I’d never have stepped inside by myself.

When Wilfred went to the floor, it trembled. The wood planks beneath the carpet rolled like a wave. Even Murder lifted an inch out of his seat. But he didn’t drop that bag of candies.

After the screaming stopped, Wilfred promised that he wouldn’t speak a word of this. He’d erase it from his own memory. He’d move out of state. Today.

The Belgian reached into his plastic bag and swept his fingers through the butterscotch candies. They clacked like gnashing teeth.

Murder said, “I doubt this.”

THAT MORNING HAD TO BE
the worst traffic day in Garland’s history. Intersections lose their definition when you can’t turn left, right, or around. And the problem wasn’t just down there on MacArthur Boulevard or along Lakeshore, but above our heads too, on the elevated lanes of I-580 west, headed into San Francisco. Full-on frozen. Packed streets and highways. Ms. Henry and I rode our bikes on the uneven sidewalks, and we were the fastest things moving.

People in their cars craned their necks trying to see something,
anything
, as if a solution was just up the road. I felt surprised so many people had come out of their homes at all, considering the threats and the bombs. But if employers hadn’t closed their businesses, then most employees couldn’t afford to skip work. Paychecks pulled them out of hiding.

Garland’s manners were breaking down around us: car horns played by the dozen, drivers yelled at other drivers through rolled-up windows. Some wore a look of rageful contemplation, thinking about pressing the gas and plowing through. Others only cradled their heads.

As we crossed Lakeshore Avenue, we had to get off our bikes and walk them between car bumpers. We stopped in front of a burger joint. They were open, but weren’t busy. It wasn’t a sit-down place. You walked up to the glass and made your order, watched them prepare it. Then they slid it through a door in the bulletproof shielding. Inside, a man and woman in clean white T-shirts leaned against the counter, watching the congestion. They stared at the gridlock the way one might stare into the Gobi Desert, with a mix of awe and depression.

Ms. Henry pointed to a walking bridge above the highway.

“Let’s go up and see what we can see.”

We had to walk our bikes uphill along the southern side of the highway. At the top of the hill I-580 was almost hidden, tucked down between trees and bushes. The westbound lanes were so congested that people had stepped out of their cars. Some climbed onto their trunks, trying to see how far this mess went, but even from my place on the walkway—twenty-five feet above them—I couldn’t see the end of it. It ran right up to Stitch Bridge, and across it. Many people mingled in the breakdown lane.

The parking lot of the burger joint lay just below us, had a couple of cars parked there. I saw a figure crouched down behind a hatchback, couldn’t tell if it was a woman or a man. Trying to take a quick piss, I thought, and this made me nostalgic for New York. So I actually stared on, waiting for that special gesture of relief, the shoulders relaxing as the bladder empties. And because of this I was the first to see the figure rise to full height. Not pissing but vomiting, not a woman but a man. A bum. He stepped out from behind the car.

He slumped forward as he walked. The guy looked downright malarial. His motto was malnutrition. He teetered toward the crowded street carrying a small green sack.

“Ms. Henry,” I said, and pointed down to where we’d just been.

The guy threw out his arms and screamed, “Solomon Clay is a lion in the wilderness!”

Every face turned to him.

Ms. Henry was on her bike seat in less than two heartbeats, and I managed almost as good a time. But we were slowpokes by comparison. Down below, a red Volkswagen lurched from the street onto the sidewalk. It clipped that homeless dude right in the leg, sent the wasted man backward, five feet into the parking lot. He lay still for a moment, but then stood again.

The driver popped her door and shouted to a passenger. Meanwhile the man and woman inside the burger joint ran out from the safety of their bulletproof glass. The guy carried a spatula and the lady held a long knife.

The homeless guy didn’t run. He lifted his arms again and smiled.

They kicked and punched. The guy with the spatula brought its handle down on the homeless guy’s head like he was driving in a spike. The woman waved the knife, but used her foot instead. Three other people got out of their cars and ran toward the fracas. They surrounded the homeless guy. They beat him.

They beat him pretty bad.

When they were done, the woman from the red Volkswagen pulled up on the guy’s ratty coat, and his head fell back, limp.

“Why didn’t he just blow them up?” Adele asked.

“Maybe he didn’t have time to light the fuse.”

“He stood there and taunted them. Why?”

Ms. Henry looked back to the highway, the eastbound route, at the crowds gathered in the breakdown lane. And then off to her left, to Grand Avenue below.

“Look there,” she said.

I leaned against the warm metal and felt heat through my sleeves. I watched the street, but only saw more gridlock. Some pedestrians crowded bus stops while others walked to work. And a little ways behind that scene lay Laguna Lake, cordoned off by police tape.

“Forget everything else,” Ms. Henry said. “Look at those men.”

She wiggled one finger to lead my eye.

Fourteen men marching in single file.

But nobody on the street paid attention to them because their clothes weren’t tattered. They’d dressed better than they’d probably done in a decade. Either sweatpants or khaki slacks. Button down shirts and cheap sports coats. Camouflage.

But Ms. Henry recognized them. And I did too. Those men slinking down Grand Avenue had a familiar posture, stooped from a lifetime of defeats and dirty dealing. A bum by any other name is still as shabby. Each carried a gym bag or a briefcase or a book bag.

Ms. Henry said, “That other guy was just a decoy.”

WE WERE CARRIED DOWN CONCRETE STEPS
and left in Murder’s basement. Wilfred made faint panting sounds as soon as we were alone. He seemed to be hyperventilating, but I wished he was choking to death. And told him so. I whispered threats first, then questions. How could you do me dirty like this? Did that for a long while, but stopped asking eventually. He wasn’t going to answer. He cried and he muttered, that’s all he could do. The tears ran down his round cheeks and into his gaping mouth. It actually calmed me to see Wilfred’s panic. It was like watching distant lightning in the dark. The storm over there means it hasn’t reached me yet.

At least the basement floor was padded. That’s what I noticed when I looked away from Wilfred. There were old mattresses on the ground and piles of torn clothes, discolored sheets stacked on top of them. It looked like someone had robbed a Salvation Army bin and then left the spoils there to rot. We were having a sleepover party at the dump.

It was an unfinished basement. Dirt floors peeking up from areas the mattresses didn’t cover. And there wasn’t any heat. Exposed pipes and wiring ran just above our heads. There were holes in the foundation, but it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t be crawling off, because my hands were tied behind my back and my ankles wrapped in rope. In the face of Wilfred’s silence, I lay there for an hour, lost in my own quiet fog.

“How’s your parents?”

I was so used to Wilfred’s heaving breathing that I didn’t even realize he’d spoken. I looked around in confusion, as if a lump of clothes had asked the question.

“Your mom and dad,” he said.

Then I realized it was him. I guess he’d finally swallowed his fear. But I didn’t respond.

“My mom got saved a couple years ago,” he whispered. “She’s living in Wichita.”

We left it at that until nighttime. I could see the light change through the holes in the walls. And when it got dark, a horde of feral cats crawled in through them. About a dozen.

They casually rambled through the holes and broken basement windows until they noticed us and stopped, midmovement. Two dashed back out immediately, but the others stayed and sniffed the air. They padded around our bodies, keeping far enough away, and watched.

They looked at one another.

Which of them would be brave?

Eventually this one bobtail crept closer. A long-haired cat, its fur a mix of silver, black, and just a little gold. Tufts of white hair stuck out of both ears. Its short tail lay flat against its ass. The bobtail inched closer to see if we’d lash out, but we couldn’t use our hands or feet. That wouldn’t have mattered anyway, because Wilfred was half-passed-out and the lack of dope in my system was already making me a little weak. Soon enough the cats knew we were harmless. When you considered diseases and fleas, their claws and teeth, we had more to fear from them.

They settled into the pillows and curtains all around us. That bobtail, the brave one, plopped down closer than the rest.

They formed a semicircle around our bodies and stared. A jury of feral cats.

Then I heard Wilfred repeating his name.

“Wilfred Tanner,” he whispered. “Wilfred Tanner.” As if introducing himself.

And upstairs?

Murder’s house mumbled throughout the night. Pots being dropped onto the oven range, loud as shouts. The murmur of boiling water. They might’ve been making pasta or cooking crack, I couldn’t say, because my nose was already blocking up and I couldn’t smell anything. That’s when I understood I was going into withdrawal.

But my ears hadn’t stopped up yet, something that usually happened to me whenever I tried to quit. So I could hear. And always, always, the creaking floorboards. I imagined Murder moving above me, dragging his weight from one room to the next. That big Belgian finally on his feet, dancing on my grave.

THE NEXT DAY
, in the afternoon, I had such awful diarrhea that I expected Murder to send someone down to spray me with a hose. But no one came, and by evening the backs of my pants had dried and stuck to my skin. I felt lucky for the stuffy nose then. All the feral cats had run off except for the bobtail. It was still there and, if anything, even closer. It wasn’t more than a foot from Wilfred’s gigantic skull, which only made the cat seem smaller, like it was resting in the shade of an enormous hill.

And you know what? I got jealous. I was lying on my hands in some Belgian’s basement in Iowa, couldn’t even feel my fingers anymore, a powerful thirst was scratching at my throat even as my withdrawal chills were getting worse, and yet all I wanted was for some dumb cat to come play with me. The bobtail had chosen Wilfred, and this seemed like the last insult. The final injustice. Talk about pathetic. I watched it huddle near Wilfred and felt the deepest outrage.

“Hey, cat,” I whispered. “Get your ass over here!”

Surprisingly, that didn’t work. The bobtail only blinked at me and snuggled closer to him. Wilfred Tanner opened his eyes then and gave me a very dizzy smile.

“It’s just like Annabelle,” he whispered. “Ladies love Wilfred.”

He giggled, the sound coming through his runny nose.

“Annabelle Cuddy killed herself,” I said. “She jumped in front of a train in 1993.”

I knew it would hurt Wilfred to hear that, so I told him more hurtful things. I couldn’t yell at this point. Anything more than a whisper tore through my dry throat. We’d been down there for nearly two days by then.

I said I’d probably shot up with his now-saved mother in some tenement years before. That I’d watched his father turn her out just to buy more crack. My God, the things I told him. And he didn’t argue, not even about his mother’s honor, which surprised me, because that boy loved his junky mom more than Navajos love fry bread.

As the second night wore on, I thought of more taunts, but I’m too ashamed to share them. While I spoke, Wilfred inched himself up. He had the silhouette of a manatee that’s made the mistake of washing ashore, but really he was just a scared man looking for something, anything, that would provide a little warmth. The bobtail was a better bet than me. It touched him. It didn’t run away.