Colonel Rutherford's Colt (21 page)

The world had become confused, a shadowy film blending lights and darks into a muddy constituency of unfamiliar objects. It seemed Aaron was dwindling, falling away inside the vastness of his own soul. With a mighty effort, he pushed against the presence that against all logic had invaded him. Less a push than an effort of will, of denial. After a brief struggle, the voice receded, reduced to a whisper, and the world was sharp again. He felt weak, tremulous, as though he had only just shaken off a delirium, but the sight of the fire lashing upward from the ember-coated logs served to steady him.

“Why do you want it?” the colonel repeated.

“I don't.” Aaron left the thought unfinished, still not quite certain of himself.

“Look, I don't know what you've got in mind. Whatever it is, I'm willing to listen. I'll go along . . .”

For no other reason than he wanted to stop the colonel from questioning him, Aaron hooked a log with the poker and dragged it out onto the floorboards. Blue flames danced up from the varnish.

“What are you doing?” The colonel stared at the log with horrified amazement, as though its presence abrogated a sacred principle.

“Stoking the fire,” said Aaron, comfortable now with what he had done. “I'm quite cold.”

He hooked a second log out to join the first, then plucked a burning stick of kindling from the hearth and proceeded about the room, torching the curtains one by one, while the colonel pled and cursed and screamed. The patch of floor in front of him was starting to catch, and flames from the curtains were licking at the ceiling. Before long the room was illuminated by a kind of hellish daylight, and the several fires came to have a greedy, lip-smacking sound. With a tremendous effort, the colonel succeeded in wriggling out of the chair and worm-crawled across the slick boards. The cords prevented him from making much progress. Dollops of burning pitch dripped from the edges of the ceiling, and one of the throw rugs caught and went to blazes in a matter of seconds, a little magic circle of heat and light. Smoke accumulated in the corners. The colonel propped his chin up on the boards, peered at Aaron, who stood not far from the entryway, and, each sentence more agonized than the one preceding, said, “What do you want? I'll do anything . . . anything you say. What do you want?”

A sprig of mercy brought forth a leaf in the wasteland of Aaron's emotions, but could not sustain growth amid the airlessness of the place. “Ask your questions of she who sent me. Ask them of Susan.”

The colonel, with renewed desperation, wormed a few inches forward, then looked again to Aaron, words rushing out of him. “I'll tell you about Susan . . . everything I did to her. Just get me out!”

“You admit your guilt?”

Hesitantly, the colonel said, “Yes . . . yes! I'll tell you everything.”

“Tell me quickly,” said Aaron. “The fire is spreading.”

Hope abandoned the colonel, and the residue of his strength dissolved. “Shoot me!” he implored. With his pleading eyes, his droopy mustaches, his checkered costume, he looked pitiable and clownish, an absurd figure trapped on stage during the first and final performance of an apocalyptic opera whose merry, crackling music was starting to out-voice its tenor's lament. Fringes of flame ate pitch from the seams of the boards above him; two leather chairs nearby began to smolder. He wriggled forward a few inches more. “For God's sake, shoot me! Don't leave me like this!”

As Aaron opened the door, the colonel spoke the last words he would utter to any worldly authority. “Come back!” he cried. “Christ! Come back!”

Aaron hurried down the path, not daring to stop and admire his handiwork, not wanting to stop. Every step he took, every impression of the dark watchful forest, every breath of cold, damp air, seemed each a more profound confirmation of the parasite that had attached itself to him, the black crablike creature-form of murder riding between his shoulders, infesting him, seeping into his flesh, until at length its every particle would converge inside his chest, there to counterfeit a heart. But as the fire came to roar at his back, to brighten the path ahead, he could not resist turning to watch the union of flames shape itself into a red-gold glove pointing skyward, exploding up from the enormous skull of pitch and logs it was consuming, as if to direct his attention to or announce his infamy to God. Embers showered upward from the conflagration, scattering onto the ground and among the boughs. The configurations of doors and windows showed demon black within garlands of yellow fire, and other structural features, too, seeming mystical in their design, were darkly visible within the blaze. This was the sight Susan had envisioned at her mad window, the vision she had employed him to create, yet he derived no joy from having pleased her. Sickness assailed him. Heart-sickness. His spirit tottered and lost balance on its platform of bone. He wandered off the path and sat upon one of the boulders that sprang from the moist, wormy earth, and without a thought of self-destruction, acting as if by reflex or upon instruction from some infinitely subtle source, he drew Colonel Rutherford's Colt and placed the barrel to his temple. One twitch, and the infirm essence that demanded immortality would be whisked away. It was unreal, the whole of it. The entire process a fabrication, every life a flimsy buttress of fear and violence contrived to shore up the rickety conventions of an insane narrative. No story truly ended. They were merely done with, slaughtered, left with broken necks and severed spines, starved, beaten, impaled, strangled, poisoned, eviscerated, axed, made ill, denied by justice, gutshot, blown up, drowned, and burned alive . . . eventualities which no reader mourned. Though it was plausible, he supposed, that such a story might be the product of a cosmic exercise in self-absorption, that it might have an author, a constellate figure whose mythic purpose it was to entertain an audience of one, a woman fashioned of stars and darkness, alone and unhappy in another quadrant of their lover's sky . . .

For reasons no more material than those that had moved him to suicide, though perhaps his appreciation of a universal indifference had some motive force, Aaron slipped the Colt into his pocket and set out along the path. It was much colder than it had been, a dampness that penetrated to the soul. He hunched his shoulders, wrapped his arms about himself, his thoughts leaping high and crackling with the dumb immediacy of flame, walking briskly as if he had somewhere to go and little time to get there.

 

* * *

 

Rita found Dee at the end of the bar just as the band was calling it a night. They smooched, shared a dessert drink, smooched. Single men were wandering about, searching for their last chance; couples were leaving. The white stage lights brought up scars and scuffmarks from the empty dance floor. The jukebox was on, but low. It was forty minutes to last call, and people were crowding the bar, trying to get drunk enough to drive. When Rita asked how it had gone with Janine, Dee made a woeful face. “I don't know. Maggie drove her home. I did the best I could for her.”

“Well, if I'm a judge,” said Rita with a grin, “that means she's probably feeling pretty good about now.”

Dee blushed and spanked her on the arm. “Talking to Janine about anything serious, even when she's straight, she always makes it into a sarcastic game. She was going like . . .” Dee struck a pose and in an affected voice, said, “ ‘Like I totally understand. You're attracted to her.' ” She gave a dismissive gesture. “After a while I just said, ‘Fuck!' She'll probably call me tomorrow.”

A bouncer pushed up to the bar beside them and spoke urgently to a chunky barmaid with dyed-black hair, grape lipstick, and a pierced nose. The barmaid reacted with a concerned look. Once the bouncer had left, Rita snared the barmaid's attention and asked what was wrong.

“Biker cut some guy in the parking lot,” the barmaid said. “Gainer's useta be a biker hang-out, and they hate the way the place is now. They come around all the time. I suppose they got nothing better to do than hassle people.”

“It's a way of life for some,” said Rita.

The barmaid turned liquor service professional. “Can I get you ladies anything else?”

“Maybe couple shots.” Rita looked to Dee, and then, together, they said brightly, “Tequila!”

“Two shots?” the barmaid asked.

“Better bring six,” said Rita.

The barmaid pursed her lips. “You ladies driving?”

“I got a ride supposed to be coming,” Rita told her. “He don't make it, we'll call a cab.”

Dee acted disappointed. “You have a ride?”

“This friend of mine was gonna party with me tonight, but he had to finish a story. He might come by late to give me a ride home. I'm at a motel in Issaquah.”

“He's a screenwriter?”

“Just stories.”

Two guys in their thirties, salesmen maybe, with yuppie haircuts and mustaches, tried to move in, hemming them in against the bar, one saying, “I'm afraid of the dark—one of you ladies help me find my Ferrari?”, and the other saying, “I told him to say that,” and laughing, like it was a joke, like they'd been having a lame-line contest. Rita told them a ten-second story about the future and they left. Dee laid her head against Rita's, drew a kiss from the corner of her lips. “I want you to teach me everything,” she said huskily.

“Only thing you need to know,” said Rita, “is take what you want.”

“I mean . . .” Dee hesitated. “About sex.”

“I know what you mean. Sex is what I'm talking about. You take from someone, they take from you. If what you take is what they wanna give and vice versa, it's great. Sometimes it's great even if you don't fit that way.”

Dee expressed confusion, and Rita said, “You telling me you don't know nothing about taking? You took from me tonight. Remember I wanted you to go slow? But you went right on and took what you wanted.”

“I guess I didn't intend it that way.” Dejection ground an edge off her good looks. “I thought you liked it.”

“Aw, honey! I did! I gave you what you wanted. Give and take.” She chucked Dee under the chin. “Next time I might want it hard and you give it slow. We'll work it out. We'll have us a night.”

Another two-legged fly buzzed them, and this time Dee swatted it away.

“Take what you want.” Rita lifted a second shot, peered at Dee through the tequila color. “It's the one rule you need to follow in life . . . especially you wanna be an actress.”

A screw tightened behind Dee's gaze.

“That sound cold, does it?” Rita asked her.

“A little.”

“That's 'cause it is. But it don't mean you have to ice up all through. You keep things separate. Cold's for the world. Hot's for your friends. Your true friends . . . and you ain't gonna have more than one or two of them.”

“Are you going to be one of mine?”

Rita had a keen sense that the question was not altogether playful, that there was an undertone of hopefulness. She wasn't with Jimmy, she thought, she'd be tempted to say Yes . . . even though Dee was trouble to the bone. “I can tell ya how it goes,” she said. “I can tell ya how it all goes. I can show you how to make the decisions you'll need to if you're gonna be a taker. How to separate your mind from what you think you know and act on who you are.” She did the shot, let the burn in her belly fade. “Years from now, that might make me a true friend. Your true friend. You might see it that way.”

“But not now?”

“Things were different . . . maybe. But I'm on a whole different road from you. You know that.”

Dee pressed her lips together and, with a forefinger, traced the letters spelling the name of the bar on a cocktail napkin.

Rita gave her a nudge. “Want me to tell ya how it goes?”

Dee built a solid nod from what started as little more than a tremor. “If you kiss me first.”

“I can handle that,” Rita said.

The kiss inspired her to do another shot, then a fourth. She was feeling it now. Drunk and ready to gamble. Looking at this grace of a girl with a fractured diamond soul who thought that she, Rita, was some kind of weird star, and maybe even saw through the disguise to the exact kind of star she was, an actress for real . . . it sparked her to think seriously about leaving Jimmy, about letting herself fall in love and dragging Dee off on as long and wild a ride as they could survive, mad nun and novitiate, arcing through heaven and burning out in the sky over Albuquerque or Minot or Coeur D'Alene. Waking up to that perfume-ad face on blue-mountain mornings north of Taos, or with gray mist and seabirds on San Juan Island. It might be worth the crack-up. Rita allowed the idea to get comfortable, to own her. Imagined they were already in that life. They sat on their stools facing in different directions, as on a love seat. She caressed Dee's waist, her thigh, kissing her, saying words that quickened her breath, and other words to teach her.

“Bad shit happens in life,” she said. “Fucked-up love, rape, abuse . . . being poor. It's happened to me. Sometimes you can see who done it to ya, sometimes not. I've had people walk all over me, wipe their feet, spit, then just go on about their business. I couldn't even touch 'em.”

“What did you do?” Dee whispered, and the whisper had a formal dimension, like the voice of a chorus issuing from beyond, a rapt prompting from the angels.

“What was I gonna do? I coulda wasted years goin' after 'em. There was times I did. But that just set me back. When somebody stops you from taking what you want, or takes something you don't wanna give, you keep it in mind, but y'don't let it control you. You just step to the side and go forward. It ain't easy, but you get the hang. And once you do, once you learn to use your frustration, your pain, there ain't a thing can stop you.”

Dee said nothing, her breath fanning Rita's cheek.