The Animals: A Novel (19 page)

HEY.

Nat looked up from the coffee as Rick slid into the booth across from him.

How long you been here?

Hour and a half, Nat said. How’s the new job?

Eight hours of dishes. What do you think?

The sound of the casino floor was muffled but there was still the chattering and banging, the ringing of bells, the bleeping.

You hungry? Rick said. I get a discount.

Naw, Nat said. I’m pretty dang tired, actually.

Long day in the mines?

Something like that.

Rick’s apron hung limp over his shoulder. His eyes darkly ringed.

You don’t look much better, Nat said.

Shit, man, Rick said, that’s what bennies are for. You want? He tapped his shirt pocket and Nat nodded and Rick handed across a roll of pills wrapped in cellophane like a thin roll of candy Life Savers. Nat pushed two into his palm with his thumbnail and handed the roll back. Susan’s on her way over, Rick said.

Cool, Nat said, but even at the sound of her name he felt a jolt of guilt and longing run through him in equal measure.

So out-of-pocket on my mom’s surgery is gonna be eleven hundred dollars, Rick said.

What the fuck?

Yeah, I called her on my lunch break. That’s what she said. There’s some fuckup with Medicaid so they’re not covering all of it.

Shit, Nat said. Eleven hundred dollars. Jesus Christ.

Hopefully they’ll just do it and I can pay off the bill for like twenty years or something. He looked out toward where the café opened onto the casino itself. They might not do it because there’s still a big bill from the last time.

It’s Medicaid. They’ll do it, Nat said. I think they have to. It’s the Hippocratic oath or something.

We’ll see, Rick said. He returned his gaze to Nat. You all right? he said.

Yeah, yeah. Just wiped.

Shit man, don’t pussy out on me. It’s only like six or something.

I’m all right. Need to wake up is all.

He looked up but Rick was looking past him now. There’s my girl, he said.

How he wanted to turn to see her walking toward them, toward him, but he did not, focusing instead on his coffee cup, that black circle surrounded by the white porcelain of the mug.

Hey baby, she said, slipping into the booth next to Rick, their lips meeting just for an instant and then her eyes turning toward him. What’s up with you? she said. You look like hell.

Totally, Rick said.

You need a pick-me-up?

I just took one.

Dr. Susan is in the house and she’s got just what you need.

Nat looked up at her now. Her smile. Her eyes sparkling in the café’s yellow lights. She unzipped her tiny purse and extracted a small ziplock. No way, he said.

Yes way, she said.

This is why I love you so much, Rick said.

Very funny, she said, slapping him playfully on the chest. Shall we?

Oh yes, Rick said. We certainly shall.

THEY PILED
into one of the stalls in the men’s bathroom and Rick cut the cocaine into three thin lines on the surface of Susan’s makeup mirror with a long-expired credit card he kept in his wallet for this reason alone. Nat stood against the metal partition. She was so close to him in that tiny space, her body bumping against his, her hands resting on his shoulders. Her hips. Her breasts brushing against his back. How he wanted her. How he remembered those breasts, those hips. God how he wanted her again, a thought followed immediately by the rushing current of his guilt.

You’re up, Natty, Rick said.

He leaned over the mirror, taking the rolled dollar bill from Rick’s hand and inhaling the only remaining line and then standing upright again, sniffing. That familiar stinging numbness. Susan clapped and giggled next to him and wrapped her arms around Rick and kissed him deeply, Nat pinned against the partition until they were through.

At the sink he laved water over his hair and across his face and nose and when he looked at himself in the mirror the visage that stared back at him was a wrecked shell, hair stringing down across his forehead and eyes sunken back into his skull. It would take ten minutes before the cocaine would fully enter his system and he wondered if he could even wait that long before passing out. Susan stood next to him smiling into the mirror and sniffing water up her nose from her wet fingertips. Ugh, she said. That’s better. Rick at another sink farther down doing the same. A man entered the bathroom and looked briefly at Susan and then disappeared into a stall. A moment later came the sound of him urinating.

Christ almighty, buddy, Rick said. You really look terrible.

I feel terrible, he said.

Maybe you’re getting the flu or something.

Could be, Nat said.

Susan put her hand on his forehead. It felt cool and smooth and he wanted her to hold it there for the rest of time. He could see himself leaning into her, her arms coming around him. He could see her naked, riding him on that stained mattress in his bedroom in the apartment midway through Rick’s prison sentence.

You feel hot, she said.

He had closed his eyes at some point but he opened them now. I’m gonna go outside and get some air, he said.

You want us to come? Rick said.

Naw, I’ll just be a minute or two.

Don’t go too far, Susan said. Party’s going to start soon.

He nodded but did not look at her. Could not. He pushed out through the lobby. From the receding hall that led past the Fireside Lounge and on to the Fish Bar and the room where he had just ground himself back to zero again came the harsh and tinny sounds of the poker slots, even now a siren calling him. Then the glass doors that led outside.

The night had gone cold in the hour and a half since he had first arrived at the casino and the air seemed to blow through his skin and into the dark red center of his body. He extracted a cigarette and asked a passing man in a blue suit for a light but the man continued to walk and Nat stood there with the unlit Marlboro in his hand. Susan was somewhere behind him, inside among the bright clanging machines. And Rick. The thought of them together almost too much to bear. And yet he had waited and waited and waited for Rick to return and what had happened between him and Susan would never have happened were it not for his friend’s absence. He believed it and would keep on believing it as long as it took to become true. How desperate and lonely he had been. How desperate and lonely he still was.

But the cocaine was coming on now, the first hot thrill of it coursing up through him, and with it whatever he had been feeling—self-pity or guilt or the beginnings of some illness, he knew not what—was blown back from him as if upon the long foaming line of a receding wave. He had been leaning back against the cold smooth surface of the casino’s outer wall and he stepped forward from it now, feeling his legs shake off their fatigue. He was not even cold anymore.

But then he looked up toward the parking lot and the cold chill of the night returned all at once. Idling before him was a rust-colored El Camino, its paint dull and its door dented in. Behind the wheel, peering at him through the open window, was the thin tattooed man he and Rick had beaten at Landrum’s, one black-ringed eye staring out at him, the other clear and bright. His lips curled into a grin. From between the fingers that gripped the wheel, a cigarette’s smoke twisted from the open window in concert with his steaming breath.

Nat turned toward the door, nearly breaking into a run, but he had hardly moved a step when a hand grasped his arm.

Hey, hey, where you going in such a hurry? the voice said.

The hand turned him, spun him in place with an effort that seemed marginal to its effect. Standing before him was Mike, his hand still gripping Nat’s arm just above the elbow. Behind him stood Johnny Aguirre himself: short, black hair slicked back, white sports coat pulled over a turquoise T-shirt as if he stood not in the cold night of Reno but in the warm afternoon of Miami.

You got someplace to go? Johnny said.

No, I just … His voice trailed off. He glanced to where the El Camino had been but in its place was a long gold Lincoln Town Car.

You’re on my list to track down.

I was gonna come see you, Johnny.

Is that right?

Nat placed his unlit cigarette between his lips, an action of habit, and a moment later Mike’s free hand came up before him, clicking the wheel of a silver lighter, the flame like a hot orange teardrop. He leaned into its light and the cigarette burned before him.

So you have something for Johnny, right? Mike said, clicking the lighter shut and returning it to his pocket.

Nat looked at him. The cocaine was surging through him now, the cigarette burning down in his mouth as if he was breathing in the fire.

Johnny Aguirre’s mouth traced a faint smile. He wore a gold chain around his neck and the colors of the casino lights chased up and down its length. Nat, Nat, Nat, he said slowly, shaking his head from side to side. What am I gonna do with you?

Nat looked at the men who stood before him, their faces models of seriousness. The effect made him giggle despite his attempt not to, the cigarette bouncing upon his lips.

This funny to you? Johnny Aguirre said.

And now Nat could not stop. It all seemed too ridiculous to be real. Nothing could happen to him now. He was invincible.

Let’s take a walk, Johnny Aguirre said.

Mike’s thick hand came around Nat’s forearm and then they were moving, drifting out of the haze of light that fled from the interior of the casino and into the darkness of the parking lot beyond.

PART II

THE KILLERS

8

YOU ARRIVE IN IDAHO BEFORE THE FIRST SNOW BUT IT IS
well below freezing and the ragged houses that peer out at you from the forest along the road each send a pillar of smoke into a crystalline blue sky. It is late November 1984, and you stand at a pay phone, your breath steaming, the cigarette you hold between your fingers trembling as the other clenches the receiver to your ear. The Datsun is parked just a few feet away, one of its headlights crushed and the bumper askew.

When your uncle answers, you expect to have to explain but he does not seem surprised to hear from you.

Just keep driving north until you see the sign for Naples, he tells you. There’s a pay phone at the bar there. Call me and I’ll come get you.

All right, you say.

What are you driving?

An old blue Datsun 510.

I’ll find you, your uncle says.

Uncle David arrives ten minutes later, rumbling out of the trees in a rusty pickup, swinging in beside you and then waving you forward to follow. And you do follow: up off the highway through a forest so choked with foliage that it seems impenetrable. Scraps of cloud drifting through pine and cedar and spruce. Like paradise. And like a place where you will never be found.

When you reach the trailer, your uncle smiles and embraces you, his expression one of mingled joy and concern. This is quite a surprise, he says.

Did my mom call you?

Nope. He taps a pack of Camels against the palm of his hand. Smoke?

You nod. At forty-seven, your uncle appears much older than you remember, a mustached man with dirty blond hair streaked with gray who looks not unlike Bill. You have thought all your life that Bill looked like your father but now you realize that you were probably wrong.

You are handed a cigarette and then a lighter. There is a wooden picnic table next to the trailer and your uncle sits on its edge and when you return the lighter he lights his own cigarette and the two of you are silent for a time, blowing smoke into the pine-scented air.

I’m guessing you’re not on some kind of vacation, your uncle says at last.

No.

You’re in trouble?

Yes, you say. You have told yourself that you will not cry but now your eyes fill with tears.

Hang on now, your uncle says. That’s not gonna help.

I’m sorry, you say.

How much trouble are you in?

A lot.

Police trouble?

You nod.

Your uncle stands and looks at you. The sun is behind him and his body cuts a black shape against it. Let me get a Pepsi, he says. And then you’d better tell me what’s going on.

The two of you sit outside at the picnic table, both drinking the Diet Pepsis your uncle has retrieved from inside the trailer, and you tell him the whole story, every part of it, Rick and Susan and the job at the car dealership and Johnny Aguirre and Mike, pausing momentarily when your eyes fill again. It feels like it is someone else’s story at times, as if you are narrating something out of a movie, but it is your own and it pours out of you like a torrent.

Christ you’ve had a run, your uncle says into the silence that follows.

I’ve done some pretty bad things.

Well shit, that’s why people come up here. To start over. That’s what the whole place is about.

I don’t know what to do.

Well, your uncle says, you’re gonna need a new name for one.

A new name?

Am I whispering or something?

No.

Good. There is no Nathaniel Reed. I don’t know anyone by that name and neither do you. So what do you want to go by? Jack or Tom or something?