Cross Country Murder Song (6 page)

Song 3: Free

The sky was different to how he remembered it, even the times when he was allowed out into the exercise yard. There the light was always bordered by the high prison walls, the heavens made into a rectangle. He was always looking skyward hoping to see it uncontained. That was his idea of freedom: no guards, no fellow inmates, no noise, the air unhindered. He'd served eight years of a twelve-year sentence and as he stood outside the gates in the sunlight – the stone walls and steel mesh fences behind him – he looked up and took it all in until his eyes hurt and his neck ached.

Hey, get out of here, you can't come back in, laughed one of the guards from an observation tower somewhere off to his left. He lowered his head and waved and shouldered his bag, walking towards the bus stop as surefootedly as if he knew where he was going or what he was going to do once he got there.

The station stood at a fork in the road, a low flat-topped building with a seating area and snack machine and matching doors at either end, one facing west, the other east. Visitors to the prison disembarked there and made their way home via there too once visiting time was over. Tired-looking mothers and their sad-eyed children trailed in and out of those doors, loitered on the seats, kicked their feet and waited for a bus door to hiss into life, its gears to grind into place and take them away again. He took a seat in the middle of a bench that looked as though it had been liberated from a church, even down to the bracket at the back where he could imagine finding a small, leather-bound bible. It was quiet; there was no one there from the prison as far he could see. A young couple sat a few spaces down from him arguing in low, intense voices about the next move they should make. He wished he could help; he had no money to give them (the government had given him a meagre handout as they pushed him out of the prison doors) and he knew that was what they needed more than anything else. That and a few more options. He'd once kept moving like they were moving, trying to resist life, hoping that his rootless self could somehow evade consequence, but it almost always came down to places like this – he surveyed the muddied windows that rattled in their frames each time a truck passed by, the empty vending machine, the old magazines, the toilet where the light didn't work and the lock was broken, the locks were always broken. But some winter nights when he'd been on the road, refusing to yield, then places like this had passed for sanctuary; well lit, sheltered and dry – a refuge from the endless night overhead.

I don't want to go back there, said the girl, gathering her jacket around her shoulders, He glanced at them and they both shot him a look back. He quickly averted his gaze and felt the rattle of a truck pulling slowly past. The building vibrating up through his boots and making his ears tingle.

Where else is there? said the young man, we've run out of places to go. The door opened and a woman in a peaked cap walked in, took a black marker pen from a cup next to a large board and started writing down the bus times for the rest of that day. The pen squeaked with each stroke. He saw that there were four buses coming through that afternoon. He looked at the board and determined to take the third one wherever it was going. The young man got up and stood close to the board as if willing the list of destinations to change. He sat next to the girl and said something to her and she shook her head softly and then rested it on his shoulder, pulling her legs up underneath her as she did so. A bus came into view, describing a wide arc and momentarily blotting out the afternoon light with its glass and chrome bulk. It shuddered to a stop and passengers, some he recognised from the visiting hall at the prison, trooped past, their shoulders low, their posture inclined towards the slight hill that led up along the curved road that would eventually take them to the jail and out of sight. One man nodded at him as if in recognition and he knew that he must have passed him as he sat waiting for his father or brother to come and see him. It always took longer than any one of them would have liked to filter through the combination of gates and bag searches before they arrived in the main visitors' hall itself. His brother, without fail, would always ask him what in the hell he was doing in there. It was a signal that he'd already run out of things to say. His father was more reflective and would bring him books and critique them slowly before handing them over. He'd sit there opposite his son with his hand laid flat across the book cover and explain the nuances of the plot, the strengths and flaws of the characters, sometimes even revealing the story's denouement before pausing theatrically and then apologising in a soft voice. Only then would he slide the book across to him. He looked forward to both their visits, though. His brother would reveal sports results as if they were magical tricks he'd pulled from the air. He half expected him to reach over and pull a quarter from behind his ear each time he told him that the Bears had lost.

We get the papers here, he'd say to his brother. We've got a TV room, I see the sports results. But his brother would wave the words away like a cynic dismissing an urban myth and start in with a very literal blow-by-blow account of a title fight he'd seen the previous Saturday night.

Sadly, his brother had got married and moved away which made his visits less frequent the last few years. His father had died two years before when his heart gave out as he was crossing the street three blocks from their home. In the letter his brother had written him afterwards, he told him how his father had reached out and touched the bonnet of a car that had paused to let him pass. The engine idled while his dad had rested there a moment, one hand flat on the bodywork as if it were a book, and then he placed the other palm across his pressed shirt and slid silently to the floor, his head coming to rest against the fender of the car. The car's driver had told the police that he looked like Jimmy Stewart lying there. As he sat in prison reading the letter he was pleased with the analogy, it made him think that his dad's death was peaceful, dignified. His brother had offered to come and get him when he was released, even suggesting he stay while he got back on his feet, but he wanted to roam a little first. He promised to head west to his brother eventually, but for now it was imprecise patterns and hasty plans that he wanted to make.

He'd gone to California as a young man to dream. He vaguely imagined attending film school (waking from sleep, he often saw himself helming a camera, shouting directions attracting admiring glances from his cast and crew), but when he got there, he found that all the women were actresses and all the men potential leads waiting on their break or embittered hacks who only resembled the successful scriptwriters and novelists they emulated in the amount of booze they drank. He was three weeks away from having to give up his tiny apartment at the Villa Elaine when he got a temp job at a suddenly prospering talent agency. He fetched coffee, ran scripts and tapes between departments and offices, manned the front desk and phones and then one day his boss asked him to take an envelope to one of the agency's biggest names. He was the lead in a popular comedy drama that had earnt him a Golden Globe nomination. He lived in an apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a fashionable chunk of the Hollywood hills and was in a robe and a pair of shorts when he answered the door. He was charming and his skin glowed as if he'd just stepped off a sunbed or been freshly moulded from plastic; he looked malleable.

Drink? he beamed, walking very quickly towards the kitchen. He'd plucked the envelope from his hands as soon as he'd let him in.

Sure, he said uncertainly as he stood admiring the view of the parched hills and the uncertain white apartment blocks and houses below. Even with the unrelenting air conditioning he could feel the sun through the glass. He looked for the Hollywood sign, but he couldn't see it. The actor returned holding two tall glasses filled with something clear and lots of ice that clinked as he handed it across.

Vodka and tonic, the actor said. That okay?

He nodded and with a gesture the actor invited him to sit. A low glass table with a chessboard sunk into its centre stood between them. The actor opened the envelope and tipped its contents on to the board.

Checkmate, he said and he smiled broadly.

He imagined it was something the actor had said before. The cocaine was compacted from the envelope, but the actor quickly broke it down with a razor blade he'd produced from his pocket. He scooped some up on the corner of the blade and snorted it loudly before offering the blade across and indicating he take some. The actor tipped his head back and sighed happily, then took a long gulp of vodka; he was smiling expectantly, his robe hanging open, he was the kind of brilliant brown you see in imported furniture stores.

He balanced a small crumbling mound of cocaine on the blade and brought it quickly towards his nose before he spilt it. It felt clean and instantaneous as it rushed through him. He looked up at the actor who was holding his drink forward for him to toast. They touched glasses and he said cheers while the actor saluted him with his free hand. Then the actor leant forward and pushed more cocaine on to the blade before inhaling it hungrily, then he dabbed his finger into the powder and rubbed it emphatically on to his gums, poking out his tongue, so his smile looked lopsided.

He didn't go back to the office that afternoon; he didn't go back to the office again. He doubted they'd let him back in if he did. The actor said he liked him, said he could use him, asked him if he needed a job.

I've got this one, he said, but the actor just laughed incredulously. It transpired that the actor didn't just get nominated for Golden Globes, win critical plaudits and ingest cocaine, he moved it around town too. He only dealt to friends and associates, he said, and needed someone to deliver it on his behalf, someone, he said, waving the razor blade around, that wouldn't get into his own stash, someone he could trust. Because, and he emphasised the word, wrapped his lips around it, people trusted him and who was anyone without their reputation, especially in this town.

He stopped and looked around as if only just realising that it was dusk and his apartment was now dark. His head bobbed and his snorting seemed like it was the only sound ricocheting around the hills. He looked up, a white frosting crusted around his nose. It looked like it was glowing in the half-light.

Got a car? the actor asked.

He spent the summer moving from one gated community to another, from isolated hilltop mansions, gleaming and white, to sprawling ranch houses with their own basketball courts and views of the city he'd never seen before. Sometimes, he'd swoop back down into the canyon and feel like he was riding a helicopter over the jutting brows of the hill, LA below, dusty and listless in the daytime, expansive and dreamlike at night. He'd visit the actor three, sometimes four times a week to pick up the supplies and his cash and then he'd work his regular route unless there was a major party or launch happening and then the demand would rise, like people ordering in extra milk over the holidays. The actor would insist that they celebrate their good fortune and thriving business before he set out. A razor loaded with cocaine and a tall glass of vodka and he'd be back out on the sharply inclined streets feeling fresh and alert, always driving too fast for the first twenty minutes or so.