Ride Around Shining (22 page)

I've always thought of myself as someone with a great and tenacious will to live, the sort who if dropped into the ocean for five days would cheerfully hang on to the stinking, half-eaten carcass of a whale, and even gnaw it himself, to get back to the human world and all the things he'd left undone. But in the rare cases when someone's so much as suggested the assertion of their physical will, I never fight it at all—I just go along gracefully and tell myself it probably isn't serious. Pharaoh walked ahead of me, and Wedge behind, and we went into the lounge to a corner booth without a hand being laid on me. When I die I'll probably go so quietly it'll be like I made it my last trick to struggle the least of anyone, to feign the utmost peace.

“What you doin' with Leef's girl?” Pharaoh was sipping from a copper cup and pulling on his cigar, and though he did both slowly, he moved from one to the other so regularly I didn't see where he got the breathing in.

“I work for her, too,” I said.

I felt a waiter appear over my shoulder. “Chateaubriand and an ostrich filet,” he recited in a proud, muted tone.

“You bring that '57?”

“Yessir. Anything for this gentleman?”

“He'll have a mineral water,” Pharaoh rasped. “So?”

“She was at the game with your friend Goat. She wanted me to come get her out of here.”

Pharaoh made an impatient noise. “You think Leef and her gon get back together?”

“Why do you care?”

He looked at me in ridicule and gave a short laugh. “For his happiness, ma'fucka. Why you think?”

I didn't think he knew what I knew, and I couldn't tell if he was sincere.

“I think they might,” I said.

Pharaoh looked at Wedge with a hard twitch of his lips you couldn't call a smile. “Nah,” he said. “I think you wrong there.”

“Okay.”

“You wanna make a bet?”

“No,” I said.

“I'll lay you real good odds. How 'bout this. Wedge here will stake you two hundred at ten-to-one they don't. He ain't even want a cut. Then I'll show you how to make it happen. Easy money, right?”

“That's two grand,” I said.

“Boy can count.” Pharaoh laughed mirthlessly, uncapping his sauce.

I looked down at the mineral water that had appeared. I was sure it would taste like brine. “I thought your issue was his happiness.”

“It is,” he said. “I don't wanna see it no more.” He put a cut of steak into his mouth and chewed in violent satisfaction.

“I hear you're going to marry Odette,” I said. I just meant to delay him for a minute, to parse the Pharaoh's sudden change from a vague malevolence to a specific one. He seemed to know, all right.

He stared at me in disdain as he hurried to swallow. “I can't marry no white girl,” he said finally, wiping his lips and throwing down the napkin.

“And Calyph shouldn't either?”

“It ain't good for us.”

“Why?”

He put down his fork, and for a second he looked only discouraged. “You ain't about to understand,” he rasped.

“I'll take your bet if you just tell me why.”

He shook his head. “You got any wisdom on this piece, Dub? Why wouldn't you marry a white girl?”

Wedge paused with a slice of ostrich halfway to his mouth. “W. E. B. Du Bois say,” he said, and then he put the meat in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. He kept his eyes on me as he ate, and then he swallowed and wiped his mouth politely on the white cloth napkin. “He say never marry a girl who let you assfuck.” Then he winked.

Pharaoh nodded solemnly and leaned forward into the candlelight. “You need us to ship you any more of our voodoo know-how, you just ask. In the meantime, can we get on?”

I felt a strange humiliation, like I was just the latest in a line of white people who came awkwardly into their world, trying to appear natural, looking for the ultimate truths they had failed to find in their own neighborhoods.

“But what did he ever do to you?” I asked.

“Same thing you tried a couple weeks back.”

“She probably just went to him,” I said softly, “since you don't want her.”

The Pharaoh glared at me furiously. “Listen, mother—”

“I want five,” I said.

Wedge gave a high laugh and put out his hand as if to give me a slap upside.

“Leave the fool be,” Pharaoh said, instantly all hard business again. “I'd need pictures for five.”

“How do you want it done?” I asked. I don't think I had any real idea yet what he wanted of me.

“However you want. I just want pictures, and I want 'em to show shit, and I want 'em to be good. Get yo megapixels all over that. I don't want there to be any question.”

“All right,” I said vaguely. “I'll look into it. If she's into it, okay.”

“Into it!” Pharaoh laughed. “Ma'fucka, you think we gon be relyin' on yo charm here?”

Wedge reached into his coat and slid an envelope across the table. Inside was a yellow slip of paper, a key, and a small vial.

“This here is a little Georgia Home Boy. The other is if you need a quiet place to go. Use it or not. Address is in there, and a number to call when you done it. You don't know what to do with Georgia, I don't know what to tell you.”

I felt the hairs rising of the backs of my hands. “I know,” I said.

Wedge gave me a backhand wave and I stood up. At the door I stopped and looked back through the mellow smoke. As I watched, the Pharaoh ground out his cigar and pushed his plate slowly away, as if these appetites had all been for show, and lifted his dull cup to drink.

When I got back
to the public lounge, the food was just arriving, and Goat opened his arms as though to magnify the generosity of the spread. “Where you been?”

“Long line for the ladies.”

Antonia looked at me curiously as she took back her purse.

Goat threw his arm abruptly around me. “I'm going to give this guy a job soon, if he can learn kilometers.”

“I got a job,” I muttered.

Antonia waited for Goat's attention to turn. “What's that about?” she asked in a low voice. Returned to her familiar presence, those things the Pharaoh wanted seemed to belong to a lurid world beyond reason. No one would want to do that to Antonia.

“I gave my notice a little while ago. It's nothing.”

“You what? Why?”

I explained about Pharaoh and Joseph Jones, how our week there had come with a pitch and they wanted everyone to have Lost Boys. “I didn't want to get in the way,” I said.

“Don't you need the money?”

“I'll be all right.”

“Let me guess. Your fallen family left you a trust?”

“Yeah. Well, sort of. It's—”

“I don't know how you get Calyph to believe any of that shit,” she said abruptly. “Anyway, you had it pretty good with us. I don't see why you'd want to work for Lucas.”

I stared at her, and she looked back at me coolly. I couldn't decide whether to protest or just to give it up. Of course she'd known all along that I had no such family, that I was making it up—her whole past was an instruction on the fine gradations between the few people who were like her and all the rest who were not.

“They thought I fooled around with the Pharaoh's girl,” I said at last. “Now don't feel sorry for me.”

She seemed to stare yet harder, and where I hoped I'd see confusion, or even a little wounded pride that my touch of home-wrecking was not exclusive to her, there was only an intent disbelief, almost joyful in its dubiousness. “You don't expect me to believe that, either, do you? You don't even like girls.”

I felt my eyelids peeling back. A wave of numb lulled through my legs. I shook my head, I tried to talk, but there were only a hundred little fragments of unfit things to say.

“You know who you really want,” she added.

Again I stuttered. I felt my tongue moving behind my teeth, trying to get some traction. But I could only stare. I felt my face pull close to hers.

“Oh, admit it,” she said, narrowing her eyes joyfully.

“Can't I want everything?” I managed finally.

She looked at me doubtfully, not as if she disbelieved me but as if she saw right away how little value there was in everything. She must have known all too well that to want it all was a desire fit only for summer songs. I'd wanted nothing in particular for so long, and then I'd found them, and a focus at last. They'd given me the whole world new again, and now it was theirs that was lifeless and declining.

“I'll prove what I want,” I said. “I'll prove what I am.”

“All right,” she said, giving half a laugh. “Anything to get out of here.”

I drank the rest of my Spanish and stood. Goat sensed something and looked over with a piece of cheese in his teeth.

“We out,” I told him.

“What?”

I threw what money I had down on the table. “Thanks for the box. I'll be in touch.”

“Where you going?”

“I'm taking this one home,” I said.

“Let's all go,” Goat said quickly. “Let's all go someplace else.”

“We got to get home,” I repeated, hearing that rhythm creep into my voice. It was Calyph's of course, but it was so suited for the moment, stripped down and empowered. I felt undeniable.

“It was good to see you again, Lucas,” she said.

She took my arm and we went past the solemn musician toward the door.

She glanced back. “Oh God, he's getting up.”

“Where's his car?”

“I'm sure he won't follow us,” she said doubtfully.

Out on the pavement she jogged ahead of me. “This,” I said, pointing to my sad ride. “See what they left me with?”

She got her own door and slid in the front. “You shouldn't have let that lisping girl do those things to you,” she said, drawing the belt quickly over her.

“She's degraded,” I told her. “You can't believe anything she says.”

I started the car and we came back south along Broadway. As we went by the Gaucho, I saw Goat on the sidewalk. Antonia made a pained face and put her hand up to shield herself.

“There's no way he's actually coming after us.”

At Taylor we had to stop for a light. The yellow came on me suddenly, and Antonia pitched forward a little and looked over, appraising.

“I'm fine,” I said. “Spanishes perk you up.”

We were alone at the line and the car felt exposed in the middle of the street. A pigeon pecked a drunken circle at the crosswalk's edge. When the light turned again, I thought I heard a roar coming on us from behind.

I could've turned down the next street—I could've gone down Salmon to Naito to Macadam home. It could've all been avoided. But I knew how to drive. I wasn't afraid.

As we went by the concert hall, I saw the Maybach behind us. I took my foot off a little and it roared up, with the ghostly float of a broad car with an overlarge engine. One of its headlights had burned out, and the remaining shone out dazzlingly, like he'd gone to the brights to compensate.

She made a scoffing sound. “That's someone else.”

“Weren't you just in his car?”

He began to honk.

She gave a little sigh. “I guess we could pull over and see.”

“Naw,” I said. “I got this.”

Down toward Market I started to slow, watching the crosswalk lights, looking for a yellow to jump. The walks were blinking deeper into their count each block. They were all timed—if you went steady you could sail right through downtown, and I picked up speed as slowly as I could as the Maybach floated nearer.

Under the PSU overpass a yellow came while we were still half a block short. “You're safe with me,” I said, and then I hit it. It clicked red just as I went through, but Goat blew through behind me in a blast of scorched soy.

A freeway ramp lay ahead, and I got into the exit lane like I was going to take it and then juked back at the last minute. The Maybach had fallen back a little, and stayed smoothly behind. Next was the five-corners leading onto 99, and again I juked coming up to the light and shot off, out of the main stream, toward Broadway Drive and the southwest hills. It was my last real chance to lose him all at once, and this time his tires screamed out in blatant pursuit.

“I guess it's possible that's him,” Antonia allowed. She'd pulled a piece of gum from somewhere and was chewing it wildly.

The narrow road wound sharply and we were losing speed, struggling up between the dark terraced houses and sudden trees. The Mazda's engine was no fit for an uphill chase, but I didn't know if the Maybach could handle it or if the bio-fit slowed it at all—and I knew the roads. Above us was Council Crest, the highest lookout point in the city, and as we sped toward it through a warren of twisted old streets, I built up a lead until all I could see of the other car was the side of its single, overbright beam, pointing at things other than us.

There was a fork at the entrance to the park, with one road leading down again to the city. I counted on losing him there—the park itself was a dead end, and I veered off, into the streets that twisted down and away. I could feel her beside me, hanging on, one hand on the door and the other on the side of my seat. His headlight faded, my rearview was dark, and all at once I felt the fun of it all. Just that day I'd held a spear; I'd broken into her house and she had no idea. I'd won at a car chase and seen ostrich eaten and imposed myself a little at last on the vast soft surface of the indifferent earth. For so many years I'd assumed the ground beneath me so impenetrable it wasn't even worth challenging, but suddenly I saw that it was soft, so soft in the hands of any willful man. I could become new and new and new.

“Could you not . . .” Antonia said. I must have been unconsciously revving or something. I could hear the gum held tightly between her teeth.