The Bones (41 page)

Then just like that the car starts to roil. Slowly at first, then gathering speed. They've been waved through and they're
gliding over the bridge and across the border. Mercy had to answer a few questions about where she was going, telling the
guards with a flirty smile she was just day-tripping. They told her to head into Nuevo Laredo to get a tourist card and a
vehicle permit, which she does, pulling over behind an abandoned building to let Frank and Lloyd, both sweating profusely,
climb out of the trunk and get into the car. After Mercy procures the vehicle permit, which takes all of ten minutes at the
immigration office, she heads back out to the parking lot. Frank and Lloyd are sitting in the car with the weak air-conditioning
on, Frank in back, Lloyd in front, low-profiling it. Even though they made it across, no one's smiling. Mercy climbs in behind
the steering wheel and puts the car in gear.

"Mercy, stop the car," Frank says. They're cruising down the commercial strip in Nuevo Laredo, past a market.

She pulls over and says,
"Please
always helps."

"And leave the engine running. We need some bottled water for the trip. You want to go in and get it, please?" Frank says,
smiling now.

"I'll get it," Lloyd offers.

"You stay here, Lloyd. You and me need to talk." Lloyd shrugs, whatever. "Mercy . . . please?"

"Alright," she says, shaking her head and laughing as she gets out of the car. "But once we're away from the border, you're
workin' for me."

Frank watches her walk toward the market feeling a twinge of regret for what he is about to do. The second she disappears
into the store, he jumps out of the car, goes to the driver's side, yanks the door open, gets behind the wheel, and floors
the gas before the door's even closed.

"What are you doing?" Lloyd asks from deep inside his own fear, the burst of acceleration pushing him against the seat, looking
over his shoulder to see if Mercy is chasing the car.

"We're leaving her here. For her own good. She didn't do anything back in Tulsa. If we get nailed, or the cops start shooting
. . . it's better if she's not with us." Frank's looking in the rearview mirror now, and for the first time in his life he's
feeling guilty about something. But it's a strange sort of guilt because what he's feeling guilty about is doing the right
thing, which is also a new sensation for Frank. The light catches a piece of silver on the front seat and Frank looks down
and sees Mercy's knife, the pearl inlay, the onyx handle.

Now Lloyd's at the wheel and they're traveling toward Frank's beach shack in Playa Perdida, a couple of hours out of Puerto
Vallarta. The car heaves along the highway, heading south on Highway 85 toward Monterrey, where they plan to spend the night
before heading to the Pacific Coast the next day. There they intend to reconnoiter and weigh their limited options, which
for Lloyd consist of finding a good lawyer and negotiating his return to Oklahoma and eventual reintegration into society.

"You think we should have taken Mercy along?" Frank asks, running his finger along the now-open blade of Mercy's gravity knife.

"Nah, you did the right thing. Send her a postcard."

From Frank's look, not only can Lloyd tell he doesn't agree; he's actually a little put out by the response. "We made a mistake,"
Frank tells him. "I did, anyway." Lloyd does not answer for a moment, so surprised is he at what his traveling companion has
said. The Bones admitting to a misstep? The Bones displaying incipient signs of pining? Hasn't this day been strange enough
already? Lloyd feels the need to take the nascent melancholy blooming in Frank's breast and strangle it before it manifests
in some behavioral way.

"You didn't make a mistake. No mistake was made. Taking her would have been a mistake," Lloyd says, not having fully forgiven
Mercy for sticking the knife in his lower back. He wishes Frank would put the thing away.

***

"Dustin, if you don't eat your chicken fingers, Mommy's going to turn off the television."

"I'm not hungry."

Stacy and her son are facing off in the breakfast nook of the Brentwood kitchen, where a bright midday sun pours through the
windows and coats the room in a flat light. Dustin, riveted to the cartoon he is watching on the wall-mounted combination
TV/ DVD/VCR, is ignoring his food despite his mother's harangue. Stacy is wearing her exercise clothes and is desperately
wishing she were in her two-thirty Pilates class right now. Instead, it's just afternoon and she must endure another couple
of hours of Dustin's company before she can drop him off at a friend's house for a play date. She is particularly eager to
get to class this day since her last telephone conversation with Lloyd so upset her that she consumed most of a quart of Cherry
Garcia ice cream last night and is desperate to perform sweat penance.

"Dustin," she says, irritated, but before she can formulate some kind of threat, the telephone rings. Stacy picks it up, checking
the caller ID: MARISA PINSKER. What could she possibly want? Stacy hadn't talked to her in months. Well, it would be a relief
from dealing with her recalcitrant son. "Hello?"

"Stacy, it's Marisa."

"How are you?" Stacy chimes, hoping she has effectively feigned interest.

"So are you watching TV?"

"Dustin's got cartoons on," she replies, wondering why Marisa would ask this.

"Put on CNN. They're talking about Lloyd."

Stacy grabs the remote and, over Dustin's effusive protestations, changes the channel to CNN, which is where she learns that
her husband is wanted for shooting a police officer.

"Are you watching? Stacy? Hello?" But Stacy can't hear Marisa's voice emanating from the receiver she is now holding at waist
level. She can't hear Dustin's yammering. She can only hear the sound of her life crumbling.

"Lloyd, let me ask you something," Frank says, still playing with Mercy's knife, the car speeding through the wastes of northern
Mexico. "Why didn't you help me out back in L.A.?"

"What are you talking about?"

"When I was doing the pilot."

"Aren't we done with that?" Lloyd looks at Frank and can see from his expression that they are clearly not done with that
so he says, "Because I had my own problems." Lloyd suddenly feels the intense heat cutting through the feeble air-conditioning,
the dryness of his lips, his mouth. Involuntarily presses harder on the gas, then catches himself as the car shoots forward,
lets the juice ride out, not wanting to touch the brakes. A semi blows past them in the other direction carrying a cargo of
melons to Texas.

"I'm just asking because if you had done me a solid . . ."

"If I had . . . what?"

"Maybe we wouldn't be here."

"You're kidding, right? You think if I had punched up that script, the show would have been picked up? That's so ridiculous,
I don't know what to say. And how can you even think about it now? I mean, Frank, for godsakes! We're in some kind of traveling
dreadfest and you're ragging about a pilot?"

"Because if you had, maybe I'd be a TV star instead of on the run in Mexico with a wannabe badass like you."

"Now I'm a wannabe badass? Who shot the guy when he had a gun in your mouth, Bones?"

"You said it was an accident."

"Considering you were about to get your head blown off at the time, I'd say you're splitting hairs."

"You'll never be me, Lloyd. No matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, until you can take the risks that get you there.
You're always going to be skating on the surface, Brentwood Boy. You're just a careerist. You got nothing, no philosophy,
nothing at all . . ."

"
I
have no philosophy? What, I'm on the run with Descartes now? I'm fuckin' Hegel's copilot?
You
have a philosophy?" Lloyd feels his body heat rising, the anger center in his brain starting to flex.

"Burn till there's nothing left but the bones," Frank says, looking at Lloyd in a way meant to end the exchange. "Put that
in your book."

Lloyd had to admit it was an impressive articulation of Frank's animating principle. But he does not say so. Instead, he retorts,
"About an hour ago I was lying next to you in the trunk, Frank. I was human cargo," which does not articulate any philosophy
at all other than survival.

"Because you were with
me.
I made you do it."

"Hey, you didn't fuckin' make me, Frank, okay? I did it to help you out because I was ready to turn myself in back at the
gas station, remember? Just like I helped you out by not pressing charges when you destroyed my house or like I helped you
out by shooting the cop or like I was trying to help you out by writing the book, but I'm done with that now, Frank. I'm done
with it because I see what you do is confuse extreme behavior with being an artist, as if acting like a madman somehow justifies
the creative result, which in your case is pretty slim pickings if you want to know the truth." Here Lloyd takes a breath
and looks at Frank, calculating the effect of his words. Frank remains quiet, staring out the window, his face impassive.
Sensing his blows are landing, Lloyd presses on, nothing to lose now. "I used to envy your talent, but whatever chops you
had?—they went up in crack smoke a while ago. Not that you can't still be funny or say clever things, but you drove your life
into a tree and you've been lying on the hood of the car for years now, looking just the way you did in my living room with
the broken glass and the blood, and by the way, did I ever send you a bill, which is obviously a rhetorical question because
the answer's no since I had too much respect for the talent you pissed away. I'm sorry the pilot didn't work out for you,
because you got nothing left. It's over, man. You're lucky you're in Mexico."

Lloyd's spent now. He looks away from Frank and out the windshield, wonders how long he's taken his eye off the road. Frank
is too exhausted to respond but knows in his soul everything Lloyd says is true, and the sudden and overwhelming sense of
loss and futility he experiences almost makes him stop breathing. As for Lloyd, if he could have consistently harnessed the
energy he'd just expended and tapped the emotions he was feeling, his career might have gone in an entirely different direction,
but Frank was not the only one for whom it was too late. Trembling now, not from fear but from agitation, Lloyd looks at the
Bones, sees the target of his diatribe fingering the knife blade, wonders if he's going to stab him, almost not caring, not
realizing Frank is like Her to stick it into his own neck because if a fraction of what Lloyd said is true, what's the point?
Then Lloyd feels something in the vicinity of his heart. A tightening? A pulsation? Is this the warning sign of a massive
coronary that will end his life in the middle of this ridiculous situation? Snapping out of his dark meditations he realizes
his cell phone is vibrating in his breast pocket. His cell phone! Vibrating! Still in his own life! He reaches into his pocket
and quickly opens it, greedy for the ordinary, loving the simple familiarity of the act.

"Hello?"

"Thank God you're all right." It's Stacy. Lloyd, an astronaut getting a buzz from Houston, never happier to hear a friendly
voice. "Where are you?"

"Somewhere in Mexico," he manages in a near whisper, spent from his explosion.

"Lloyd, they're saying on TV you shot a policeman. Did you?" Her voice crackling with anxiety for their future, her future.

"It was an accident!"

"They're saying you're lucky he's not dead."

"He's not dead?"

Could he have heard that correctly?
Not
dead? Was this a second chance, an opportunity to rewind, reedit, re-everything the worst moment in his life, to adjust if
not the facts then the ramifications? Did he just slip away from the shadow of the hangman?

Frank hears
He's not dead
and nearly levitates through the car roof, the bitter aftertaste of Lloyd's words momentarily evaporating. "He's not dead?"
Frank asks, unable, due to the enormity of the implications, to recast the information more elegantly.

"Are you sure?" Lloyd asks his wife.

"According to CNN, he was wearing a bulletproof vest."

"Oh my God!" Lloyd exhales, almost expiring from relief.

"He's not dead?" Frank repeats, his ordinarily silvery wordcraft having entirely departed.

"They're saying on TV he was wearing a vest," Lloyd tells him.

"Are you with Frank now?" Stacy wants to know.

"He's right here."

"If you had written that show when Robert Hyler asked you, you probably wouldn't—"

But Lloyd cuts his wife off before she can finish the thought, saying, "Can we not talk about this now?"

"Sorry, I'm a little upset," she says justifiably.

"You think
you're
upset? Let me tell you about
my
day."

But this time it's Stacy who calls a halt to the familiar marital conversation pattern and asks, "Where are you?"

"I don't know."

"What do you mean you don't know?"

"I mean I don't know. We crossed the border a while ago and right now I have no idea where we are."

"When you get a bead on it, I want you to call me, and don't call on the house line. They could get a tap by then and trace
you. Call me on my cell."

"What are you going to do?"

"I'm coming down there and I'm going to get you out of this mess."

"But you hate Mexico."

"Your life is on the line, hon. I'll deal with it."

As Lloyd hangs up, he has no idea how she intends to do this, but he knows that when Stacy is determined to effect something,
woe to those who stand in her way.

Up in Otis's office, the lawyer is saying, "I haven't seen him since yesterday." He smiles at the camera being wielded by
Jane Lee, who is in the middle of a shoot. Otis shifts in his chair, giving Jane a new pose.

"If he gets in touch with you for any reason—" Faron says.

"I'll be sure to let you know," Otis leaning back in his chair and putting his hands behind his head, smiling at Jane's lens.