The Garden of Last Days (26 page)

“Don’t you lie to me, Virginia. Don’t you goddamn
lie
to me. I heard some talk, damnit. I heard some goddamn
talk
.”

A hundred yards up ahead the dented sign for Myakka City called to him, his headlights glinting off it like a turn east was possible. The look on Deena’s face when he’d knock on the door holding this baby girl. He’d stand out there tired and hurt and tell her he had no choice but to help, but how could he do that without tipping his hand about the Puma? About his expensive habit there? About Marianne? And even if she took the girl in for the night—he knew her—she’d worry about the girl’s mother and call the law. No matter how bad it might make him look, she’d call the police and wash her hands of it. But it was too late now. He couldn’t turn around and drive back to the Puma, try and convince some county sonofabitch he’d probably saved this kid from the kind of man they’d take him for. And he still hadn’t forgotten the two who’d come when Deena called, the way they took her words like they were straight from the Bible and pinned his face to his own wall, handcuffing him in front of Cole, standing there so damn quiet. It almost would’ve been better to hear him cry than hear
that quiet coming from where he’d stood in front of the TV in his shorts and T-shirt stained with peach juice.

“It’s okay, Cole. Daddy’s comin’ right back.”

“You shouldn’t lie to him like that.” The big one had jerked his cuffed wrists behind him and shoved him out of his home, Deena just as quiet, standing off in the bright kitchen with her bruised cheek he didn’t mean to color at all and you could almost call it an accident, his arm flying out from his side just to stifle her bad attitude, just to get her to back away from him one damn minute, that’s all—and it was like watching somebody else’s arm fly out and catch her across her cheek and nose as she seemed to lift up and fall from some force that couldn’t be just him.

Like Deena was some perfect mother. How many times he catch her locking Cole in the car when she ran into the drugstore or 7-Eleven to get something? Cole said:
I wanted to go with Mama, Daddy. But Mama said she’s coming right back. She always comes right back, Daddy
. How many times she check on him at night before they went to bed? Never. AJ’s the one always walked in all soft on his feet, Cole’s covers kicked off, his pillow half off the bed, his neck bent in a bad way. So he’d gently lift him and set him in the middle of the mattress, raise his head and adjust the pillow, pull the covers up over his chest and shoulders, bend down and kiss his forehead. Leave him, his son, to his dreams.

Close to one-thirty now. In five hours he had to be in that ditch on Lido Key. His stomach burned from the Tylenols and his mouth was dry and he fought the urge for just one more cool beer. He’d already had way over his personal limit for driving a child. With Cole, he never drove him after more than two beers. If they went out to eat and he had three or four, Deena drove. If she didn’t feel like it, she knew to tell him before his third and he’d switch to water or Coke. These little things that never came up before a judge who’d write an order on you locking your ass out.

His eyes burned slightly. He could feel himself hunching over the wheel. He was just so damned tired. When he got that Caporelli
money, he was going to rent a cabana out on Longboat Key, open the windows and sleep in a Gulf breeze for days or weeks. Then he’d wake up, shower and shave, go take that anger class he promised Deena he would. She’d let him move back home and they’d both work hard not to fall back to how it used to be. He’d pay off all those credit cards and layaway accounts, maybe sell their place off Myakka City Road for one closer to the water. Not the lake and Deena’s folks, but the Gulf. One of those creamy-looking condos on sugar sand, a place where Cole could play and swim. He and Deena watching. A place with a view of the sun sinking into the sea every night.

But then he saw him and Marianne there. The two of them making love on a moonlit blanket.

He’d never been one for lying or cheating or stealing. Never. Even running Walgreen’s late at night. How easy it would’ve been to skim here and there. Mess with the merchandise inventory figures. Pocket the difference. But they trusted him and he wasn’t about to make them regret it, and what he was planning to do now was hardly even a bad thing. Caporelli had the insurance. He wouldn’t lose anything from his own wallet and anyway he needed a good kick in the ass for neglecting his equipment. Leaving that and too many other damn details to his piece-of-shit son. And it wasn’t like he’d be stealing from an insurance company either.

Well maybe he would be. But a hundred grand was a quarter down a street drain to those fuckers and, man, anyway it was
his
turn, damnit, A.J. Carey’s turn to cash in on nothing but hard work nobody ever really seemed to appreciate.

Why hadn’t he thought about it like this right away? Because you have always thought
small
, that’s why. You have never thought
big
. Always happy just to have twenty or thirty bucks in your pocket and the bills for the month paid and something good to eat and cold Millers in the fridge. A woman to love him. A boy to hold. Maybe Deena tossing your ass out was the best thing could’ve happened, AJ. Shock your sorry ass out of the small and into the big. Time to goddamn think BIG.

With his new money he’d encourage her to go get some hobbies, maybe join that World Gym in Samoset, take a night class somewhere. He’d build onto the house, add a second floor with a master bedroom and a deck overlooking the pines. They’d make love again, have another baby, a little brother or sister for Cole to play with. At night, after the kids were asleep, they’d sit out on the new deck under the constellations, get a book and learn their names. Deena’d be happy and forget she was ever disappointed in him and that he’d done to her what he did; maybe he’d be happy, too. Whatever that was. Maybe happiness was just not being hungry or thirsty for anything much anymore. Satisfied to pull your boat into the slip and tie it off for good.

A boat. How many years had he wanted a
boat
? His whole life on the Gulf Coast and he’d been as locked on the land as a man in Iowa. How many hours of his life had he dreamed of owning something sleek and white and fast he could live on? That’s one thing Eddie did. He did do that. Took him out four or five times on a charter boat down the Intracoastal Waterway between Sarasota and Venice. A lot of fathers and sons, a few women, fishing for snook and sheepshead, mangrove snapper, pompano, and amberjack. Eddie, lean and red-faced and unshaven, would crack his first Miller about thirty feet out, laughing it up with some other rummy drinking before 8:00 a.m. too. But it was good being out in the green-blue water, the early sun and salt wind in AJ’s face, speeding by all the big homes on the beaches with their clipped bahia lawns and royal palm trees, like he could just reach out and pick one for himself. Then later, round noon, the sun high overhead, everybody chatty and relaxed, catching something or happy just to sit there in the gentle rock of the waves and wait. Off to the west and south, where the green haze of the water met the pale blue sky, there’d be boats, all kinds, some with tall sails filling and snapping in the breeze. There’d be speedy outboards hauling water-skiers. Big inboards with a fly bridge and a sunning deck on the bow, a kitchen and sleeping cabin below. Even then that’s what he liked the most. The fast ones you could live on. Where all you needed
was gas and maintenance money, a slip to dock it. If you lived on it, that couldn’t be much money, could it?
Maybe Deena would go for that
. But the thought died in his head before it could take root. She didn’t even like going out on the lake in her old man’s outboard. She said it was boring and made her feel sick. And she wouldn’t let Cole live on a boat. Be near all that water all the time. He saw his son falling overboard, him abandoning the wheel to dive into the white wake of his own motors, blinded by the salt water, swimming hard for what he could only pray was his boy’s bobbing blond head.

He passed the sign for Oneca. The road was dark and empty, the occasional flash and glitter of broken glass in the gravel on either side. No, if he was real careful and made that bucket-drop look as bad as he could, made Caporelli look even more negligent than he was, he might get enough for his house
and
a boat. Daddy’s boat. Something for at night and the weekends, a small cruiser. What was wrong with that? A little something to lighten his load. A place to go clear his head.

It’s how the Puma felt at first. The first half hour of the first night before the first dancer came over and tried to hustle him for a twenty. Before that, there was just his drink and the soft, blue light, the good music, a naked woman with black hair and blue eyes dancing up there just for him. He knew she wasn’t but that’s what it felt like. How she’d let him look at whatever he wanted. The way she turned and arched her back to give him a better view. That little smile. Marianne.

In the rearview the child’s cheek was touching her shoulder. He should pull over and adjust her head so she won’t get a crick in her neck. But he might wake her up and then she’d get all confused and scared and start crying again. And how about when he got to Mama’s? He couldn’t leave the girl with her while he was gone for—what?—maybe half the day? He tried to calculate it: thirty minutes to the job. Another thirty or forty to put a tear in the bucket line and then crawl down and wedge his hand under it. That’s an hour and ten minutes. Another twenty or thirty for Caporelli Jr. to drive up and get the bucket off him and take him to the emergency room. Two hours
already. Add another two or three for X-rays and a cast and a call to a lawyer. A good half day before he could get back.

By then something might be on the TV Mama kept on all day long. Maybe they’d flash a picture of the girl. And even if that didn’t happen just yet, even if the little girl wasn’t so scared waking up to his old mama that she cried till neighbors called the law, even if Mama and the girl somehow got along for the morning, what was he going to do when he got back? Drive the child back to the Puma in the midday sun? Bring her back to the same damn place he’d rescued her from?

No, he shook his head and accelerated toward the dim lights of Bradenton miles ahead: he was going to have to drop her off somewhere tonight, a place she’d be safe and he could keep an eye on her till the law came, a place he’d be close enough to her he could jump in if some sonofabitch approached her but far enough away the law wouldn’t notice him as he pulled away. But what was to keep her from taking off? Or stepping into the road? Or coming back to his truck or pointing him out to some county badge happy to do him harm?

Deena one morning last year. She’d taken that liquid Benadryl and squirted a stopperful into Cole’s juice for their long ride to her cousin’s wedding in Jacksonville. Four and half hours and he slept through the entire drive. But even after AJ got some into this little one, where could he leave her? It couldn’t be just anywhere. And why didn’t he search through Spring’s glove box for her registration and address? He could lay the girl down on her own front stoop, ring the bell, then gun it out of there. But what if nobody was there?

A cool sweat had broken out across his forehead and upper lip. He reached over and turned the AC up just a bit. Getting close to two now. 301 curved off to the west, the neon lights of sleeping Bradenton coming closer. This was a good dry stretch and he wanted to push a wave of gas through his engine, not because he wanted to get there faster but because he wanted to feel the force and power under his foot and fingertips, this steel cage of his flying through this Gulf Coast September night like it was any other and he was in control and knew just what he was doing and what he should do next.

He shouldn’t even try to sleep. Not with everything he had to do. There was an all-night Walgreen’s on Manatee Avenue not far from Mama’s. He’d stop there, lock his truck up, and keep an eye on it through the plate glass of the store. The same way Deena confessed she watched Cole, though he never liked hearing about that. Never did.

He glanced back up in the rearview at the sleeping child. Her head was so tilted to the side her hair covered most of her face. It was just as blond as Cole’s. She could be his sister. Really. She could.

TWO DOORS NO
windows.

Two doors no windows.

Those first stark seconds or minutes when she couldn’t have breathed and couldn’t remember now what she’d said or who she’d said it to, that’s all April could think of—that there were no windows in Tina’s office or the dressing room or bathroom, that Zeke had guarded the door and Franny couldn’t’ve gone the other way or she’d be onstage so
where
was she?

Tina was saying something and Louis had appeared and Zeke and now Retro, but April was trying to be Franny, trying to be as small as she was, and whatever everyone was saying was just a zip of chatter in her way as she yanked Tina’s couch from the wall and saw darkness, a coat hanger, a condom wrapper, a plastic lighter. She pushed past Tina, her hand pressing into her silicone flesh, and every locker with no padlock she jerked open calling her daughter’s name, though
she couldn’t hear that either, just felt it in her throat and face and air in front of her, the metal doors clanging one against the other, all of them empty; her ankles kept buckling in her stilettos and she bent over and uncinched them, kicking them away. She looked under the makeup counter, saw dozens of sneakers and sandals and pumps, there were tote bags and duffel bags and bare linoleum in between and now things began to blur and she wiped at her eyes and yanked open the bathroom door again—pink toilet and sink, round mirror in a pink frame, Tina’s rotation tacked to the pink wall, and her daughter’s name was in the air, her throat straining behind it; she turned and rushed past Louis on his cell phone, Tina and Retro gone, Zeke standing there like a useless piece of garbage, and she headed for the blue-lit corridor to the stage. She stopped and rifled through the dusty curtain, she looked to the right into the black corner, squatted and waved her hand, felt air, the painted plywood wall. She felt now how empty her hands were, the money—where was it? Where did she put it? But it was like worrying about your coffee spilling as your car rolls over and over down the highway, and she peered into the blue darkness to her left, she saw two holes on either side of the stairs to the backstage. Then she was there, sticking her head in—