Authors: Peter Leonard
Bobby was surprised. He'd never seen Megan act like this. She'd seemed different than most of the girls he'd gone out with. Not moody or bitchy or a pain in the ass. The only thing he didn't like were the fucking cats, but she was fun and seemed to get things and liked to drink and she had great tits that Bobby referred to as her fun bags. Everything was good until now. And now all this rage was coming out like he'd hit a nerve, pressed some button that flipped her out, made her lose it. He hoped the thing with the Greek's woman worked out because this sure wasn't. Bobby said, "Listen, I'll get your money and bring it to you."
Hearing that calmed her down. She picked up his cosmo off the counter and took a big drink. That seemed to help too.
Megan said, "My B-my bad… I just…"
Bobby wanted to finish her sentence: "Went fucking schizo."
Megan said, "I didn't hear from you. I was mad. I guess I overreacted."
She moved to Bobby and put her arms around him, holding him close, not moving now, hugging him.
"You okay?" she said.
Bobby stood there frozen, staring down at the mess on the floor,
Megan clinging to him. She freaked and asked him if he was okay. Huh? Bobby said, "Sure." What else was he going to say? "You don't sound like you mean it," Megan said. "Everything's wonderful," Bobby said, "tip-top," putting a little more energy into it.
Lou Starr was in Vegas at a restaurateurs convention, excited because he was staying at the Wynn. It was the nicest hotel he'd ever seen in his life. Karen should see it.
"Cost almost $3 billion to build," Lou said, with pride in his voice. "Makes the Bellagio look like a Super 8. They've got a championship eighteen-hole golf course. They've got a spa. They've got a casino. And you're not going to believe this, they've even got a Ferrari/Maserati dealership in the hotel."
Karen hadn't heard Lou that excited since he'd added all-you- can-eat moussaka to his menu.
"There's even a wedding chapel," Lou said. "We could come out here and elope, spend our honeymoon gambling, going to shows and screwing."
Karen wanted to tell him there wasn't going to be a wedding or a honeymoon in Vegas or any other place, but this wasn't the time. He'd been driving her crazy for months. Karen counted the things he did that annoyed her, and the list kept growing. Clearing the phlegm out of his throat. She'd hear him horking in the bathroom and say, "Come on, Lou, that's disgusting."
He'd say, "Want me to choke to death?"
Picking his toenails in bed was another one. Leaving hair on the floor of the shower like somebody skinned an animal in there. But the real deal breaker was his pushy, demanding attitude—telling her things he wanted her to do every day like she was the hired help. The list went on and they'd only been living together for eight months. Eight months going on eight years.
She'd met Lou on the rebound. It was a fix-up, a blind date. At the time she didn't have any great desire to go out with anyone, the breakup with Samir was still fresh in her mind. It had been three months since she'd walked out of that relationship and her good friend Stephanie said, when you fall off a horse you've got to get back on. Stephanie was dating a disc jockey named Michael Harris who had a friend named Lou Starr. Why not meet him? Stephanie said. What do you have to lose?
Her first impression of Lou: he was too short and too old. But he redeemed himself, taking her skeet shooting at the Metamora Gun Club on their first date.
He'd said, "Ever fire a gun?"
She'd said, "Does a BB gun count? My dad and I used to shoot empty Coke and Bud cans in the backyard when I was a kid."
Lou said, "A BB gun, huh? I'm impressed."
At the range, after telling her skeet was a Swedish word that meant "to shoot," Lou put a Krieghoff 20 gauge over-and-under in her hands and taught her the basic fundamentals: how to stand; how to tuck the gun inside her shoulder to minimize recoil; how to swing through; how to lead and point out; how to hold position and when to call pull.
Lou said, "Know how many muscles it takes to pull a trigger?"
She assumed it was a trick question and said, "One."
He said, "One? Try twenty-seven."
"Come on?" Karen said.
"It's a fact. Twenty-seven muscles in the upper and lower arm and hand to pull a trigger. And only four or five to let it go." He grinned to let her know he was just goofing around with her.
They shot from eight high and eight low stations. Lou was perfect. He hit every target and she only missed three out of thirty-two. She liked the balanced feel of the Krieghoff, bringing it up from below her waist, swinging it across her body, aiming two feet in front of the target and pulling the trigger-
Ka-boom,
watching the clay pigeon disappear in an explosion of dust.
"You're amazing, a natural. You sure you've never done this before?" he said, giving her a questioning look.
"Positive," Karen said.
"What'd you think?"
"It's a blast," Karen said and added, "No pun intended."
Lou smiled. "That's good. You always this clever?"
Karen said, "I guess you'll just have to wait and see." She was surprised how much she liked skeet shooting and Lou. It was her best first date ever.
Over dinner, elk steaks in the gun club dining room, they talked movies and music: his favorites were
Jurassic Park
and Led Zeppelin.
Karen's picks were
The Godfather
and Van Morrison.
They started going out after that and became an item. Karen had pretty much decided she didn't want to jump back into another relationship and before she knew it, she was involved in his life. Lou had a house on Walnut Lake filled with trophy heads, large and small, he had shot on his many hunting trips and safaris. The heads hung from the walls in the living room like some bizarre hunting museum, and it creeped her out.
When Lou asked her to move in she said, "I'd like to but I can't live here with all these animals staring at me." It seemed like something out of a Stephen King novel.
Lou said, "If they bother you, I'll get rid of them. You're more important."
Karen liked that, a man with his priorities in the right order.
They had fun together. He took her to the Santa Fe Wine and Chili Festival, to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and pheasant hunting in North Carolina. But the trip that really brought them close together was the safari in Kenya.
Lou said, "Want to go to Africa, hunt the big five?"
Karen said, "What're the big five?"
"Lions, leopards, buffaloes, elephants and rhinos," Lou said.
Karen said, "I don't want to shoot animals for sport, I just want to see them."
He surprised her a few days later with plane tickets to Nairobi. He said, "Ever see the great migration of the wildebeest?"
"It's been a while," Karen said. She had no idea what he was talking about.
"Want to?" Lou said. "It's a wildlife safari, no hunting."
That appealed to her. "Can you tell me a little bit more about it?"
"Every year a million and a half wildebeest and zebras come up from the Serengeti into the Mara looking for food. And right behind them are the predators: lions, leopards, cheetahs, jackals and hyenas. It's the cycle of life."
Karen said, "I know you're talking about Africa, but where?"
"The Masai Mara in southern Kenya—largest game reserve in the world, hundreds of square miles of grasslands and savannahs. You can't imagine how incredible it is. Wildebeest, a massive herd, from horizon to horizon."
Karen said, "I don't even know what a wildebeest is."
"It's a kind of antelope that looks like an ox and has horns like a cape buffalo, with a horse's tail."
"Are you making this up?" Karen said.
"No," Lou said. "That's what it looks like."
"The migration of the wildebeest, huh? I have to tell you it doesn't sound all that great."
But it was.
From Nairobi they flew in an Air Kenya prop plane forty-five minutes and landed at the Musiara Airstrip, with its collection of Quonset huts made out of corrugated steel, in the middle of nowhere. A tall thin dark-skinned guide named Jomo, who had the whitest teeth she'd ever seen, was waiting in a Land Rover and took them to the camp. On the way Lou spoke to him in a language she'd never heard. Karen said, "What is that?"
"Swahili," Lou said. "And Sheng, a mix of Swahili, English, and Maa. I'm telling him where we live."
"Where'd you learn Swahili?" Karen was impressed.
"I picked it up over the years. I've been here a few times."
The camp was like something out of a Hemingway novel-a small village of white tents. Theirs had twin beds and a toilet and shower but no electricity. At night they lit kerosene lamps and it was romantic. Lou showed her where they were on the map, a dot in the Mara Triangle in southern Kenya. He showed her the Serengeti Plains in northern Tanzania where the great migration started and ended. They took a hot air balloon ride, looking down at the giant herd of wildebeest. They took a boat ride down the Mara River, watching crocs and rhinos sunbathing on the banks. They had breakfast and lunch outside, watching the action. There was always something interesting—lions or elephants or wildebeest or zebras or Masai tribesmen herding cattle. It was like a nonstop wildlife film. Lou would point out the different animals, many Karen had never heard of.
"There's a topi," he would say. Or, "I don't believe it. Ever seen an orbi? There's one right there."
Karen said, "What's that," pointing at a big tan-colored animal with long horns that angled back.
"An eland," Lou said. "What you're eating."
"I thought it was beef," Karen said.
Lou said, "No, it's antelope."
"It's good," Karen said.
Lou told her lions were colorblind and when they saw a herd of zebra it looked like one big mass of stripes. The lion had trouble picking out an individual zebra to attack. He told her about the Masai, the tall good-looking tribesmen she would see in the distance, carrying spears and wearing red shoulder cloaks called shukas.
"They believe the rain god Enkai gave them all of the cows to tend," Lou said.
He told her the Masai lived in huts made out of cow dung and grass that baked and hardened in the sun. He told her the women shaved their heads.
Karen said, "Maybe they've got the right idea. It would save a lot of time. They don't have to worry about the current style or washing and blow-drying their hair every day."
Lou said, "Why don't you try it. I think you'd look cute."
After dinner they'd take their port or cognac and sit outside, staring out at the plains, and the distinctive plumes of acacia trees in the distance, the sun going down—red sky fading. Lou was next to her, the rakish big game hunter who spoke Sawhili and wore tailored safari outfits.
In retrospect, Karen thought the tranquil bliss of the safari had clouded her judgment, thinking this was what life was going to be like with Lou. He proposed in Mombasa a few days later. They were at a resort on the Indian Ocean, drinking champagne when he popped the question and Karen said yes.
A few weeks later Lou said he wanted to elope. Let's just do it, let's get married. I can't wait any longer. Karen put him off then and kept putting him off and finally realized she'd never be able to go through with it.
Living with Lou for eight months had been a distraction, but as things began to fall apart she thought more about the $300,000 she'd given Samir to invest and had never seen again. She wanted it back and decided she was going to get it. How exactly she wasn't sure until Bobby and Lloyd broke in that night and got her thinking, gave her an idea.
Karen went looking for Wade Robey Tuesday afternoon, three days after Bobby and Lloyd broke in. She heard he hung out at a biker bar in Royal Oak, and there he was, sitting at the bar, drinking beer with an occasional shot of peach schnapps, smoking Marlboros like he was on death row. Karen watched him for a while, sitting at a table, drinking vodka tonics. She knew he'd be there. He'd been out of Jackson prison for three months after doing five years for armed robbery. He was looking for a gig too. Karen had found all that out from Fantasy, the sister of a friend she'd modeled with. Fantasy was a skinny blond stripper whose real name was Bobbi Jo Shipp. Fan had gone out with Wade before he went up. Fan said he was kind of dumb and he'd do anything. That fit the job description of the person Karen was looking for.