Wolf Point (18 page)

T didn’t know much about violence. Once, at the gaming tables in Las Vegas, he had seen a man attack a dealer. He had gone with Brooke to Vegas, and at one point in the trip, he had been playing blackjack when the player next to him grabbed the dealer by her throat and pulled her over all the other players, scattering their cards and chips. The dealer was a strikingly beautiful woman in her twenties, with short dark hair, and he had thrown her to the ground, ripped her blouse half off, and punched her in the face multiple times before security finally gave up on trying to wrestle him off her and simply knocked him unconscious with a series of blows to the head using some kind of weapon T couldn’t quite make out, something small and lethal. The dealer had lost her shoes when he
dragged her over the table, and she stood up, barefoot, with her blouse ripped open and her bra down around her stomach, and pushed people away from her—the people trying to attend to her—and went back to her station to resume her dealing position. She had already picked up a deck and was feeding it into an automatic shuffler before people realized she was in shock and forcibly covered her up and carried her away as she screamed curses for them to leave her alone and put her down. Within minutes, two minutes, three at the most, everything was back to normal; everything was exactly as it had been: dealers dealing, players playing, pit crew doing what they do. The whole violent incident was like a momentary disturbance in a fast-moving river.

But T had never forgotten what it felt like to be right there next to that woman when she was attacked. It was as if the ordinary world were suddenly ripped away, something red and huge exploding out of a hidden place to pull her over the table and onto the floor. Almost impossible to explain how the very fabric of the world seemed to rip as the man’s heavy fists crashed down on her face, bloodying her lip and nose. When he pulled off her clothes, it was as if he were trying to tear through her skin. Later, T used words like
savage
and
vicious
to describe the attack, but there was no way, really, to get across how the world seemed to melt away under his feet, how everything felt suddenly changed and violated.

When he rubbed Jenny’s shoulder, she opened her eyes, turned her head slightly to look up at him, and then closed her eyes again as if settling back into sleep.

“Jenny,” he whispered, “you need to wake up.” He patted her hair and kissed her on the cheek. “Jen,” he said.

“What?” she pushed her head down deeper into the pillow, her voice husky with sleep.

“Lester’s got a gun,” he said. “He was pointing it at us; pointing it at me.”

She turned over onto her back and crossed her arms under her head. She seemed immediately awake. “Lester pointed a gun at you?”

“Did you know he had a gun?”

She nodded. “A little one. A .38. He pointed it at you?”

“He’s acting completely different,” T said. “I think he might be high.”

“What do you mean
completely different?
”

“I mean he’s like a different person. He doesn’t even sound the same. Now he’s got this country-Southern accent he didn’t have before.”

“Fuck,” Jenny said and closed her eyes. She added, “The shit’s country to the bone. Comes out when he’s wrecked. He can’t hide it.”

“What’s going on?” T asked. “Is he dangerous?”

“Fucking jerk,” she said. “He didn’t have his works out, did he? Please don’t tell me he had his works out.”

“What are works?”

“Needle, spoon—haven’t you ever even seen a movie of somebody shooting up?”

“I didn’t see a needle or any of that,” T said. “I did see a blue rubber thing, like they wrap around their arms.”

“Just that?” Jenny asked.

“It was inside the guitar. I saw it through the hole.”

“I don’t know,” Jenny said. “It doesn’t sound like he shot up.”

“He shoots up? What, crank?”

“Every once in a blue moon. He won’t mess around with that shit but, you know, maybe a few times a year.”

T climbed onto the bed and sat up next to Jenny. “He’s crazy. What the hell are we supposed to do?”

“Ride it out,” she said. She put her head on his thigh. “Just stay away from him till morning.”

T stroked her hair. Lester was quiet in the living room. The only sounds were gusts of wind in the trees and rattling cabin windows. He relaxed against the headboard and shifted his weight to get comfortable. Jenny wrapped herself around him, holding on as if he were a blanket or a talisman that made her feel more secure. He closed his eyes and tried to settle in for the night. He thought, how different this moment in the Thousand Islands with Jenny and all those other moments half a lifetime ago with Carolyn. Now it was Jenny clinging to him as if he might keep her afloat through this night, and back then he had been the one clinging. He ran his hand along Jenny’s shoulder and over her arm, feeling tender toward her, for a moment seeing himself in her, remembering that feeling that someone else was in control and all you had to do was hold on and they’d take you with them along the right path, the safe way, the good way. But Carolyn had taken him nowhere. Her train stopped at the awarding of his degree, and once on his
own he rambled as if lost for many years after. About that Alicia had been right. He had thought a great deal about what she said for a long time after she said it: he’d drifted for years until he married Brooke. Brooke gave him Maura and work and a path to follow, and he’d married Alicia to keep him on course. As he stroked Jenny’s arm in the wood-smoke-scented air of the bedroom, his thoughts rushed along the whole course of his life, as if in those few moments in the dark bedroom he might be able somehow to make sense of it, the life road he’d followed, the path that took him from a childhood on Long Island, to college in Syracuse, to a love affair with his professor, to years of wandering, to Brooke and marriage and Maura and a life in business, to abandonment by Brooke, as he had been abandoned by Carolyn, to Alicia and Evan and a few good years of their blended family, and then abandonment by Alicia, and he’d honestly never before that moment in bed with Jenny seen it that way, that every woman he loved abandoned him, and it hit him with enough power to make his body stiffen as he asked the obvious question, which was why that should be so—and when he had no answer, he let it go, and continued following his journey which led him after Alicia to Salem, and from there to here, back in the Thousand Islands, where he lay in bed with Jenny Cross, a Southern girl born into squalor and abuse and on the run from drug dealers, and outside beyond the closed bedroom door Lester high and brandishing a pistol, and T in a silent few moments casting the net of his thoughts over all of it as if there were an answer somewhere to find, and then the disturbing notion shot through him like a premonition
that he needed to figure it out, to put his story together, this instant, this moment, this night.

“I’m sorry,” T said. He’d heard Jenny ask a question, but the words hadn’t registered. “What was that?”

“Did you say he pointed the gun at
us?
” Jenny asked. She looked up at him, her head still resting on his thigh. “Before? Is that what you said?”

“He was in here while we were sleeping,” T said. “I woke up and he was pointing it at my head.”

“But not me?”

“No,” T said. “He pointed it at me. At least that’s all I saw.”

Jenny put her arms around T’s waist and snuggled up comfortably, as if she were ready to go back to sleep. “He probably popped some shit and got himself totally fucked up,” she said. “He’ll be all right in the morning.”

“I’ve got a bad feeling. I’m nervous about all this.”

Jenny put a hand on his knee and kissed his thigh. “Guy just pointed a loaded gun at your head,” she said. “Only natural you’d have a bad feeling.”

“You think that’s it?”

“Sure it is,” she said, and the instant she said it, Lester kicked the bedroom door open and then stood there in the hallway.

Jenny grabbed T around the chest, as if trying to jump into him. “What the fuck are you doing?” she yelled at Lester. “You scared the shit out of me!”

Lester grinned. His hair was pushed back roughly off his forehead and tucked behind his ears, as if he’d been trying to keep it off his face. The pistol was tucked down into the elastic band of his underwear, which showed through the half-open zipper of his jeans. He folded his hands over his chest, and the muscles in his shoulders and arms stood out dramatically in the moonlight. His eyes were dark and wild. His face was tight: the rectangle of it, the squarish chin and flattened plane of mouth, eyes, and nose, looked as though it might have been carved out of weathered stone. “I sneaked up,” he said softly. “I was hoping to hear you two getting down.”

“Lester,” Jenny said.

Lester said, “How many times you doing this guy, Jenny? Till it kills you? What up with that?”

Jenny said, “You’re spun. Look at you.”

Lester’s grin changed into a mischievous smile.

“You’re going to blow this whole thing,” she said, her tone of voice shifting unmistakably into intimacy with him.

Lester said, “You a piece of work, Jenny Cross.” He stared at her a long moment, the smile disappearing along with the mischievousness, and then he walked away, his footsteps traveling down the hall and out the front door.

T said, “What ‘whole thing’? What was that about?”

Jenny climbed over T, out of the bed, and put on the sundress Lester had bought for her. She wrapped it around her, tying the belt savagely with a knot. “Fuck,” she said. “He’s spun. He’s out of control. I don’t know what the hell he’s doing.”

“But what was that about?” T said, standing in front of her. “What ‘whole thing’ were you talking about?”

“Look,” Jenny said. She put her hands on T’s waist. “Far as Lester knows, we’re scamming you. We get the cash, and then we take off.”

“And not come back for me?” T said. “You’re conning me out of the money?”

“Far as Lester knows, that’s the story. I’m just playing you so I can get him the money.”

“But it’s not really—”

“No. Jesus,” she said. She pressed her body into his, wrapping her arms around him tightly. “Can’t you tell?” she said. “Don’t you know?”

T didn’t answer for a moment. Then he wrapped his arms around her and held the back of her head in his hand. “Okay,” he said. “All right.”

When she pulled away from him, her eyes were wet, and he wiped them gently with the back of his hand. “The story you’ve told me,” he asked, “is that true, about this Willie character and the drugs?”

“It’s all true,” she said. “I swear to God.”

“So what is this about with Lester?” he asked. “What’s he doing?”

“He’s crazy like this,” she said, and covered her eyes with her hands for a moment, as if trying to think. “He’s just— There’s no dealing with him.” Then she looked to T as if hoping he might know what to do.

T took a second to think, then went out to the hall bathroom with Jenny following behind. He found his pants on the back of the john. The pockets were empty, front and back.

Jenny said, “He’s got your keys?”

“And wallet,” T said. As he said it, the front door of the cabin banged open, and then Lester was standing in the bathroom doorway.

“What the fuck you guys doing in here?” Lester put his hand over his heart, as if shocked to find Jenny and T together in the bathroom.

T held up his pants. “Lookin’ for my wallet,” he said.

“What you need your wallet for, Tom?” When T didn’t answer, Lester took a step into the bathroom as he pulled out the pistol and then let it dangle at his side. “I said what you need your wallet for?” His breathing was suddenly slower and deeper.

The bathroom was small and dark, with only the faintest moonlight glowing through a window over the tub. Jenny leaned against the wall with her feet spread and her fingers looped through the belt of her sundress. T turned to her, and it occurred to him that she looked like a cowgirl with her wild head of blond hair and her fingers in her belt. It was an odd thought, given the situation—but he knew he wasn’t about to come up with a response for Lester. Whatever words he might have ever had were jammed down in his belly somewhere at the sight of the gun in Lester’s hand and even more at the tone of Lester’s voice and the look about him as he took that step into the bathroom.

Jenny said, as if amused, “Lester? Isn’t this like some kind of bad dream, the three of us cramped up in a dark little room like this?”

Lester said, “Why you doing me this way, Jenny?”

Jenny said, “What are you talking about? Lester? What are you thinking?”

Lester didn’t answer. He appeared disappointed in Jenny. He appeared saddened by her.

“Can we go outside?” she said. “Can you and I talk a minute?”

“No,” he said. “Ain’t no fuckin’ reason for that anymore.”

She leaned toward him and crossed her arms over her chest in a gesture of mock bravado, as if she wanted to be aggressive but was obviously scared. “What’s going on?” she said. “What’s that mean, no reason?”

“Mean ain’t no reason.”

“Why not?” she asked, as if straining to understand him. “Why not?” she repeated. “What’s changed?”

“You changed,” he said. “You think I don’t know you, Jenny? You think I don’t know you inside out?”

“For God’s sake,” she said, exasperated. “How high’d you get, Les? How fuckin’ cranked are you?”

“Cranked,” he said, and he looked behind him, at a plastic wastebasket in the corner. He turned it over and sat down on it. “Don’t mean I ain’t got you nailed down. You think I don’t know what the fuck you doing, Jenny?”

“Just crank?” Jenny said. “That all? ’Cause you really—”

“I don’t know,” Lester said. “I’m got a bunch of shit going on.”

“You got a bunch of shit going on,” Jenny echoed. “What’s that mean? Did you cook—”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, will you, Jen?” Lester looked to T. “You even think you know what you trying to get yourself into here, T? You even think you got a clue who this girl is?”

“All I know—” T said, finding his voice, surprised at how solid it sounded, “all I know is that I thought we had a deal.”