Gun Church (32 page)

I didn’t quite accept it was Renee until I was a foot away from her, her chest heaving, a panting cloud of white vapor in front of her face. Her cheeks were raw and red from the cold and her eyes watery, but, god, she was lovely. Screw me if, under the anger and confusion, I wasn’t excited to see her. Even this close, I couldn’t accept it was really her. Then her face turned from neutral to dead serious.

“Your wife is beautiful, Ken. She has the prettiest eyes.”

“What’s going on, Renee? What’s this all about?”

“I miss you all the time. It really hurts.”

“I miss you, too. I think about what I gave up to come here, but—”

“He’s watching us, so be careful.”

“He?”

“Jim.”

“Hug me.”

“Hug you?”

“Please, hug me. I need you to hug me.”

I did as she asked. Her body was so terribly familiar in my arms. Everything about her—from the feel of her hair on my face, the floral scent of it, to the heat of her breath on my neck—all seemed so natural, but something was wrong. She tensed in my embrace and put her lips close to my ear.

“Go along with him,” she whispered. “Do what he asks. Things aren’t what they seem and they never have been.”

“The package with the manuscript chapter, did you—”

“Forget that. It’s too late now. I hoped you would understand.”

“Understand what?”

She didn’t answer, but I felt her hand slide beneath my jacket, along my belt line, and down into my back pocket. She let her hand linger there in my pocket for a moment before removing it. It was an odd little moment of intimacy between us.

“What was I supposed to understand about the chapter, Renee?”

She untangled herself from my arms and stepped back. “Renee! Don’t you mean Zoe?” And before I could react, she slapped me across the face. “Which one of us were you fucking all those months, Ken, me or Zoe?”

I was stunned and cold again inside and sick to my stomach. I was being pulled in so many directions it rendered me immobile. But there must have been a question on my face, because Renee answered it.

“That’s right, Ken,
Gun Church
. I’ve read every word of it and so has Jim. You should have changed your password. Pandora was just too easy for me to guess.”

“Fuck!” I heard myself say.

“Jim’s in his truck on the corner by the park. I don’t know why I care, but I do, so don’t upset him. If he gets pissed, you’ll put Amy in danger.”

With that, she walked back in the direction we’d come. I was reeling, barely conscious of the passage of time and when I looked up, Renee was completely out of sight. I was so unsteady, I might not have moved at all, but her warning about Amy had gotten my attention. Somehow I put one foot before the other and made it to the corner.

And there he was, Jim leaning on the front fender of his F-150, a broad and goofy smile painted across his face. Again, as with Renee and in spite of myself, part of me was joyful at the sight of him. Seeing him there—his quirky, rough-hewn looks, remembering our morning runs, shooting together in the woods above the falls—made me acutely aware of what I’d sacrificed and how lost I’d been since returning to New York. The St. Pauli Girl’s dire warnings notwithstanding, there was a measure of warmth and comfort in Jim’s being here. Although I knew it wouldn’t last, it freed up my limbs enough that I might approach him without completely freaking.

Yet even as I crossed the street, the warmth and comfort flowed out of me, down through my legs, out the soles of my old shoes, and onto the cold and pitted pavement of Avenue A. As I crossed the street, Jim Trimble’s goofy, boyish smile morphed into that knowing, superior smile of his. From the day Jim first walked into my classroom and tried to be the teacher’s pet, I’d had my niggling little doubts, doubts that I’d willingly, even eagerly, overlooked. But there was that smile again and my doubts were now full blown. I could feel my limbs seizing up on me. I was within a foot or two of him when panic fell like a shroud. Angry horns blared as I stopped dead still in my tracks. I was buffeted by the winds of passing cars and self-doubt. A cab was bearing down on me. I winced, bracing for the impact. A strong hand pulled me out of the way and I thumped into the side door of the old pickup.

“Are you crazy?” Jim was shouting at me. “Christ almighty, Kip, I didn’t go through all this shit for you to end up road kill.”

I wanted to speak. I really did, but the panic was choking me, making it impossible for me to string thoughts together. Jim had no such trouble.

“The way you wrote about this park in
Beatnik
Soufflé
,” he said, “I thought it would be a real dump, but it doesn’t seem so bad.”

I managed a syllable. “What?”

“You described Tompkins Square Park as a kind of a hellhole. I watched an interview you did once where you said you meant the park to be allegorical. That since Moses Gold’s most famous poem was called ‘Rumors of Purgatory,’ it was only fitting he winds up living here as a homeless junkie.”

“What?” It seemed to be the extent of my vocabulary.

“Get in the truck, Kip.” Jim’s voice was inhuman. I’d disappointed him already.

When he pulled away from the curb, I heard the familiar scrape and rattle of the exhaust. I once again lost track of time and place, my mind racing with myriad scenarios, one worse than the next. I wasn’t conscious of where Jim was driving to or what would come next. I remembered Renee’s warning not to piss him off, how it would be bad for Amy, and I rediscovered my voice.

“Our books live in our readers’ heads, Jim, not ours. Writers forget their books after they’ve written them.”

That explanation seemed to meet with his approval and the temperature inside the Ford’s cab rose a few degrees.

“What’s going on, Jim? What’s this about?”

“You,” he said. “It’s always been about you.”

“Me?”

“Sure, who else?”

“I’m a little confused,” I confessed.

He shook his head. “You know, when I set this all in motion, I thought you’d have figured it out by now. From everything I’d read about you, I knew you were a sharp guy.”

It. This
. What the fuck was he talking about? Renee had said something similar about the chapter from
Flashing Pandora
, that she had hoped I would have understood. I was ready to mention that to Jim, but I stopped the words before they got to my lips. I knew Renee was involved in whatever
it
or
this
was. What I didn’t know was the extent of her involvement. She had warned me about Jim, after all, and I wasn’t looking to hurt her anymore than I had already.

“These days I’m about as sharp as a bowling ball. Too old. Too many drugs. It catches up to you.” I took a deep breath, a long pause and said, “So, you’ve been reading
Gun
Church
?”

I didn’t think the question was particularly amusing, but Jim apparently found it quite wry and witty. “Yep,” he said, still sort of chuckling. “Started reading it after I borrowed your car that weekend. What a great book. It’s inspirational and—hold it!” He tugged the steering wheel hard right and we skidded to a stop, my head nearly slamming into the dashboard. “Got to belt yourself in there, Kip. I can’t afford to lose you now.”

I held my tongue, asking instead about the unexpected stop.

“Look.” He pointed at a red neon sign, Maggie’s Joint, above a bar.

It took me a second to time travel, to picture the place without the red neon, when its façade was very different, and I was a much, much younger man. “The Hunt Club,” I whispered almost involuntarily.

He seemed surprised. “You remember?”

“This was my life, Jim. I’m not likely to forget this place. Most of the stories I told you up in the woods started with me here.”

“You, Bart Meyers, and Nutly, right? Bet you couldn’t measure how much pussy you got here over the years,” he said.

“I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

I kept forgetting about just how much Jim loved hearing those stories of the Kipster’s exploits and how much he loved my books. I’d had so little respect for myself for so long, I found it difficult to fathom his fanboy obsession.
Fanboy!
Fuck me, so that was it, I thought. Maybe that’s what this had all been about, Jim’s obsession and Renee’s hurt and anger at my abandoning her. Maybe Jim was just as angry as Renee at being abandoned, maybe angrier. It was easy for me to forget sometimes just how young and naïve Jim and Renee actually were. Weak with relief, I felt I could breathe again, finally.

“Come on,” I said, slapping Jim’s shoulder, “let me buy you a drink.”

You’d have thought he’d just won the lottery, and he was out of the truck like a shot.

Maggie’s Joint was pretty empty and pretty much what I expected: an Upper West Side bar dressed up, no doubt at great expense, to look like a shithole dive in Sheepshead Bay. You’ve got to love Manhattan. No wonder everyone was moving to Brooklyn.

“Barstool or a booth?” I asked Jim.

He was so wide-eyed, he didn’t answer. I found us a booth by the retro jukebox. Jim ordered a Bud because he didn’t know any better. The barmaid nodded her approval of his low-rent chic. I ordered a Laphroaig neat, to blur the lines between Kant Huxley and me. I figured to play into Jim’s obsession, hoping it would make it easier for him to explain himself to me. I waited for Jim to settle down a little and for our drinks to be delivered before asking him about what he and Renee had been up to.

“I guess you’re pretty upset at me about my basing some of the book on you guys,” I said.

He looked at me like he didn’t quite understand what I was saying. “Why would I be upset about that? It’s more than I could have hoped for when I started this whole thing, Kip.”

And with that, the grip I thought I had on the situation slid right out of my hands. I inhaled my scotch and twirled my index finger at the barmaid for another round. Jim, following my lead, polished off his Bud in a gulp.

“I’m sorry, but you just lost me. What did you mean when you said it was more than you could have hoped for?”

“Man, Kip, you weren’t fooling before about being slow on the uptake.”

“Apparently not.”

Our second round arrived and I told the barmaid to keep the drinks coming.

“Okay,” I said, “we’ve established I’m missing something here, but what?”

He ignored the question, answering one I hadn’t asked. “I liked it better when the book was called
Gun Queer
. That came from me. How could you change it without asking?”

My stomach clenched at the subtle malevolence of his tone and the proprietary nature of his question. As the seconds passed, it was becoming increasingly difficult to cling to the notion that whatever Jim and Renee were up to was fairly innocent and innocuous. There was nothing innocuous in Jim’s voice, nothing innocent about his expression.

“Changing it wasn’t my decision. It was about marketing. Writing is art. Well, at least sometimes. Publishing is a business. In that battle, business almost always wins.”

“You shouldn’t have let them change it.” Jim sucked down his second beer and waved at the waitress for another. He seemed disinclined to continue chatting until he got his third beer, so I finished my drink as well. The barmaid was catching on, bringing over two Buds and my third scotch. Jim made short work of the third can and started on number four.

“You know, Kip, I get the feeling you don’t appreciate what I did for you.”

“But I do. Being with you guys, the chapel, it changed my life. I had this book I wanted to write forever, but I never got past the first line. Without you guys, I’d still be at the first line. That’s why I dedicated the—”

He cut me off. “It wasn’t easy for me to give her to you like that.”

“What? Give who to me?”

“Renee,” he said, his voice cracking ever so slightly.

“What do you mean, Jim?”

He chugged his fourth beer, his expression turning dour. “Brixton’s not like here. There aren’t so many beautiful girls everywhere. Anyway, it’s different for a guy like you. Girls, they can’t help themselves with you. I’ve seen it for myself. They get all flustered around you. It’s not like that for me. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to get Renee to even talk to me? I practically had to beg her and I don’t like begging.”

“No, I bet you don’t.”

“Fucking A.” He was really feeling the beers now. “The Colonel used to want me to beg him to stop hitting me, but I wouldn’t, not once, no sir. But I gave her to you and now she won’t have me back.”

“What do you mean you gave her to me?” I signaled to the waitress for another round.

“You still don’t see it?”

“Don’t be surprised. The last few months have been more than a little disorienting for me.”

He smiled, but it was a maudlin smile I didn’t know he had in his repertoire. “She thinks I don’t know about the trip she made to your apartment in Brooklyn the day of the snowstorm and the package she left for you, but she can’t fool me.” His smile drooped into drunken self-pity. I knew that look only too well. I’d seen it in bathroom mirrors a thousand times. “I know how much she loves you. She’d do anything for you, even risk her life by defying me.”

I didn’t want to go there. The more Jim said, the less I understood. I was having trouble getting my head around any of it. I was light-headed, blood rushing in my ears, and the scotch wasn’t helping. I tried to get him to focus on details, so I could latch on to something, anything.

“How did Renee get that chapter? I destroyed all the copies.”

His face turned to stone. Christ, he was all over the place, emotionally. That made two of us. “Renee didn’t get shit.” He slammed his palm on the table, the few people in the bar turning to look. “The only thing she did was steal it from me.
I
got that chapter. Me! That’s how this all started. Without that chapter … ”

The waitress brought our drinks. Jim grabbed the can from her hand and not gently. Out of his line of sight, I waved my hand at the waitress to stop bringing drinks. She nodded that she understood and left, rubbing her hand as she went.