Hard Bite and Other Short Stories (4 page)

He excuses himself to the men’s room, nods a greeting to the elderly attendant. Stall or urinal? More important, what about condoms? No chance of finding any in here. Jock socks are strictly behind-the-counter items at pharmacies.

The attendant reads his mind. “What d’you need, son? Maybe I have it.”

He’s about to respond—of course, the old guy probably makes a few bucks bootlegging rubbers—then catches himself; what a square. A fox like Jasmine would be on the pill. Protection is so fifties. He signals “no” and hurries into a stall. Suddenly Laura pops back in his head along with her mother. They’ve been marooned by Hurricane Jasmine’s flash flood of alcohol and adventure.

His future Mother-in-Law cautions Laura, “You women’s libbers go gallivanting off on business trips—leaving him alone—inviting trouble!”

Laura’s insistent defense, “Mom, it’s not like that anymore! Chad and I trust each other.”

The word “trust” sobers him. He hasn’t done anything yet. No promises made, no invitations extended. Just a harmless little drink, or three, but who’s counting. Time to skeedaddle out of there. He fumbles with the stall door and tosses a Washington into the tip basket. The old man nods in thanks. Prepared like a Boy Scout to leave this place, he returns to the cocktail table.

Jasmine is prepared too. One slender leg crosses over the other, showing off her skin-tight jumpsuit, fire-engine red. “Everything copacetic?” she offers dreamily.

On the tip of his tongue: Gotta close the shades, babe—

Seeing flight in his eyes, she tightens the noose. “Can you drop me at my pad? It’s not far, promise.”

He takes in those stems swinging, imagines them next to him in the car.

***

With a long filter-tip smoldering between her fingers, she waves him over at the Topanga Ranch Motel—boxy little cottages from the 20s with sand where lawn should be, and a midget picket fence. If the booming Pacific on the other side of the highway ever comes in ten yards too far, the whole pile of sticks would float away without protest.

“
You’re living in a motel?“

“
Just while they paint my place. It’s temporary.”

She leans into a kiss, yellow lights of the dashboard gleaming on her skin. A long minute later, he’s drunk on that kiss, the look of her hips swinging through the entranceway. She kicks the door closed with one platform heel and presses her full length of slinky satin against his body. Underneath his shirt, sweat trickles from between shoulder blades to the waistband of his good slacks.

“
Thanks for the hospitality, Jasmine. I really gotta get going.”

High beams flash across the motel window. Jasmine jumps back with a cry, “Oh no!”

“
Huh?” He doesn’t move the curtain back.

“
It’s the repo guys.”

“
You have a car?”

“
I can’t drive it right now ‘cause if they see it, they’re gonna take it.” The beams rake away from the window and pass by. Jasmine’s tongue darts out and licks her lower lip. “Hey—could you get it out of here for a while? Please?”

“
Jasmine, look. I can’t drive your car and my car at the same time—“

“
I already made the payment! When the office opens tomorrow, I can drive there myself and show the canceled check—“

“
Nawww.“

“
If I follow to your place? Leave the car and pick it up tomorrow?”

“
You have no way back here.”

“
A cab. Promise. Park ‘n leave. Pleeeease?”

***

Malibu moonlight silvers everything it touches; the cars, the Pacific Coast Highway, the sea fidgeting beside them. An old Esso station looms ahead, one of the last hold-outs against the new Exxon brand name. Gas: 57 cents a gallon. Chad flicks his gaze to the rearview mirror and the Pontiac Grand Prix following—a vinyl hardtop with smoked opera windows in the rear. Jasmine’s face glows like a cameo behind the wheel, intently watching the back of his Triumph. She’s not a bad driver. He relaxes a little. Maybe this really is what it appears; a small favor for a deserving lady in distress.

They near his home turf, Sherman Oaks. Expansive front yards edged with Mexican sage, climbing roses and banana palms. It’s ten degrees hotter than the coast. Pulling alongside the bungalow that Laura’s folks helped them buy, he waves the Grand Prix in, then pulls his Triumph in behind. Although chances are remote they were followed, no repo guys will see the plates from the street.

The bungalow is vaguely Spanish with terra cotta tile and purple wisteria climbing a trellis beside the front door. The sight strengthens his resolve. Ahead, Jasmine’s platform shoes swing out of the Grand Prix and tap on the driveway. He watches them close in.

“
Let’s call a cab,” she says, all business.

“
Sure, sure. This way.”

***

The bright Malibu moon that followed them here tags along to the doorstep and stares in as they toss both sets of keys on a bow-legged hall table. Neither moves to turn on a light.

He paws at the table. “The Yellow Pages are right here, somewhere.”

It takes a moment to find the book. When he lifts his head, she’s stepping out of a pool of red satin on the floor—naked Venus rising. Platform shoes tap towards him on the hardwood. Moonlight whitewashes her body moving.

The Yellow Pages land in a heap.

***

“
Where’s your wife?” she pants during a pause.

“
Not my wife, we live together.

“
My book, you’re single till it’s legal.”

“
Yeah but tomorrow—“

“
There is no tomorrow. Gimme some more.”

***

Morning.

Bed sheets in a tangle across the room. His shirt hangs drunkenly from the bedside swag lamp. The moon is on the lam; morning sun streams in like a search party. Where is Jasmine? Chad scrambles for some pants. His wallet, his wallet…there!...nothing missing.

Downstairs, only one car in the driveway—the Grand Prix. No Triumph. Barefoot, he shuffles outside. Even from the terra cotta walkway he can see the man in the rear seat. His head is thrown back. For good reason; there’s a bullet through his forehead.

Chad blinks hard. Surely he’s imagining. This is his driveway, bathed in butter-yellow California sun. The same sun shining on Laura, three hundred miles away in San Jose. He blinks again, but blinking doesn’t make the corpse disappear. Chad’s scalp crawls, realizing the dead man must have driven here last night with Jasmine at the wheel—already dead while they flirted at the motel, while they drank at the bar. He’ll have to prove he didn’t do it. Truth will have to come out—to cops, news reporters, neighbors, Laura and her folks. Either way life as he’s known it is over, good as dead. Dead as the backseat driver.

Or…

What if the Grand Prix disappeared and the body with it? The question seeps into his hung-over brain. He looks around a little. Neighboring houses show no sign of stirring. It’s Saturday morning, a lazy 7:45 ayem. Nobody’s even cracked an eyelid. He could head up the coast, abandon the vehicle in Oxnard or Ojai and catch a bus back. Or better yet, find a solitary bluff, set fire to the car and send it over. He imagines pouring gas—no, alcohol’s better—over the upholstery, pushing it to the brink of an ocean bluff with a good, steep drop—a hundred feet at least—flicking a match in the window, one good push, over it goes.

Down it falls, the rock face gouging chunks out of the frame, slamming grille-first into a protuberance, leaping backwards in a corkscrew dive. As flames lick the interior, opera windows burst into a thousand flying shards. The car takes another crushing rear-end jounce. Flames reach the gas tank and the Grand Prix blasts into a fireball, consuming the whole car. Including the man in the back.

Chad steps on a pebble in the driveway and the pain brings him back to here and now. Maybe he’s still a little drunk. It seems like a good idea, but is it really? He should call the cops, really should. The time is 7:46 and counting.

He walks back inside the house. Finds a pair of gardening gloves in the back door, shoves a pair of shoes on his feet, and gets a 40-ouncer of tequila from the kitchen that he and Laura brought back from Tijuana the last time they were down. Tells himself if the Grand Prix keys are missing, it’ll be a sign to call the cops. In the front hall, the keys are right where Jasmine tossed them.

He pulls gloves over his hands and goes back out to the car. Puts his gloved hand over nose and mouth before opening the door. The smell still makes him retch. He slides behind the wheel and cranks the driver’s-side window down, then wrestles the top off the tequila and takes a good pull. If the car won’t start it’ll mean it’s time to call. The starter rumbles to life on the first try. Okay, he’ll head back to the PCH northbound. If he gets stopped, he’ll just say he was heading straight for the police station to get help. He was still mulling it over when the gear slips into reverse. He throws one arm over the backrest of the passenger side and inches down the driveway, avoiding the dull stare of the backseat driver. †

Mama Knew

It was the suckers that pushed me over the edge. He took them up when I put my foot down about the cigars. The stogies came out of his mouth and he stuck the suckers in. Not only did that little white stick poking out of his pie hole look stupid, but the candy rattling in his teeth drove me insane.

Tinkle, tinkle, rattle, clank.

And then he chewed the dang thing crunch, crunch, like ground glass going around in there. I tried earplugs, but the sound of my own breathing was worse than the rattle.

I just needed it to stop.

It was a mistake getting married, but Mama died so sudden and I was missing someone to be close to. It came as an awful surprise, since she passed two short months after Daddy died when it was all supposed to be hunky dorey—just Mama and me, happy at last.

Anyway, Mama was gone, and I met Brock and married in way too much of a hurry. Lo and behold if he didn’t start up with the same stuff Daddy had plagued Mama with all their marriage. Oh, Daddy was terrible. Mama was always saying she was ready to kill him. And she was. But she never did. Daddy up and died first.

Brock surely pulled every trick in the book to make me want to kill him too, just like Mama went through. Oh, the hours I stayed up with her, as she shook with rage and wept over the very same things it turns out! Like hogging the TV remote and secretly turning the heat DOWN, when we wanted it UP. Brock and Daddy, two peas in a pod. Brock caught onto the toilet lid business early on (how Mama used to shriek about that one)...but the toothpaste cap? Not in this lifetime.

Once the bee got in my bonnet, I watched all those reality crime shows where one spouse has the other murdered, and they proved very disappointing. It never worked out. Hit men are idiots and leave clues, and before you know it, you’re in jail as well as out ten grand to the hit-idiot.

An accident seemed the way to go. Trying to set it up as assailant unknown was tricky. Once the police suspected murder, they trolled for the teeniest clues. But an accident, open and shut, cut and dry, now that was something else. They just collected the stiff and went to lunch.

There were many scenarios to consider: falling downstairs, bleeding to death, eating poison, crushed by an object, electrocution, suffocation, drowning in sink, bathtub or wading pool, or my favorite: starved to death and eaten by animals. There was location. Should it be at home, at work, on vacation, or just after church?

I personally favor the scenario of Brock torn apart by wild dogs, but they aren’t very plentiful in the suburbs where we live.

I wrote down all the possibles on yellow recipe cards and put them in three piles. And when I pulled one from each pile, the cards read that he was supposed to drown in bed at home. Now how the heck was I supposed to make sense of that?

Well, technically, when a person’s lungs fill up with liquid, they drown.

***

“
Here kitty, kitty.”

That’s how I called the neighbor’s cat. He scooted right in the door, as soon as he smelled the tuna. I coaxed him on the bed and wrapped a pillowcase around my hand and stroked him from head to tail, picking up hair and dander.

When the pillowcase was coated front and back, I tweezed off the hair, but left the natural oils and invisible dander intact. Then I slipped the case on Brock’s pillow, and smoothed it back into place on the bed. By that time, the cat had the plate licked clean and allowed himself to be shooed out.

Mama always said, Work with what you got. And Brock’s allergy was my gift from God. I worked with those allergies. Bad, bad allergies. If he drank his usual two beers in front of the TV before bed, with half a sleeping pill dissolved, he would wake up much later into an asthma attack. And if the inhaler happened to be lost, he might die while I pretended to find it. Mixing beer with pills is bad, but not suicidal. Insurance don’t pay for suicide. People do die from asthma attacks. Insurance pays for that.

And that’s pretty much how it went. I’m just waiting on the check.