Blackout, page 3
Rudy Vass’s battered pick-up appeared. Boyle climbed inside the cab, which smelled of damp dogs. Wet dog hairs stuck to his black jeans. ‘You want to invest in one of those deodorant tree-shaped things you hang on the mirror, Rudy.’
‘The smell get you down? Funny, I don’t notice it.’
Vass, a lean man with a goatee that gave him the look of a redundant hippie, changed gear and the old pick-up groaned. Empty beer cans rattled around in the back, where Vass kept a puzzling array of stuff: rope, a winch, hubcaps, discolored tools, dog bowls.
‘Your place?’ Vass asked. ‘I got the goods.’ He tapped the breast pocket of his leather jacket.
Boyle thought, Tempting, very tempting. He looked at the empty streets, scanning for Almond. Here and there the feeble lights of a bar or coffee shop burned.
‘There’s a guy I want to see first, Rudy.’
‘Who?’
‘Crassman.’
‘Crassman? That guy with the funny leg?’
Vass snorted into a suspect old handkerchief he’d pulled from his pocket. He had a bronchial problem exacerbated by the fact he didn’t look after himself. Boyle had once tried to impress upon him the merits of vitamin supplements. ‘Fuck vitamins,’ Rudy had said. ‘Vitamins are so goddam bourgeois. Only the demented want to live for ever.’
‘That raunchy trailer park,’ Vass said. ‘I hate going over there.’
‘Take a few minutes, that’s all. You got a gun on you?’
‘Yeah I got a gun but –’
‘It’s only for show, Rudy.’
‘Guns are never only for show,’ Vass said. ‘Forget Crassman, Lee. Let’s go to your place and do this shit that’s burning a hole in my pocket.’
Boyle said, ‘It’ll keep.’
Vass revved up the truck and drove through a variety of suburbs to the trailer park where Crassman lived in a camper shell supported by cinderblocks. He’d attached a half-assed wooden extension to it, which he used as a kind of living room. You didn’t need planning permits for anything at Shadow Oaks. The place was a poorly lit slum filled with a jumble of trailers, campers, pick-ups, jeeps. There were always snot-faced screaming babies here, oversized women in baggy cheap floral dresses, and a range of animal life, some domestic, some not.
‘This is the pits,’ Vass said. ‘Makes my place look like a goddam show home.’
‘Everything’s relative,’ Boyle said. Vass lived in a converted gas station. He’d turned the interior into a workshop, and when he needed cash he carpentered furniture in blond Scandinavian style and sold it.
‘Over here,’ Boyle said.
Vass parked outside Crassman’s place. A mutt chained to a metal pole barked a couple of times and then was silent. Shadow Oaks gave Boyle the impression he’d entered the sludge at the bottom of American life. You looked at the windows of campers and trailers and you couldn’t help feeling that the people inside were busy rehearsing heavy family traumas – incest, repressed rape memories – in case they got the call from Oprah.
He stepped down into mud. Vass followed him reluctantly along the path to Crassman’s front door. A light was visible in the wooden extension.
‘You bring the gun?’
Vass patted his jacket. ‘I’m a walking felony, man.’
Boyle slapped his palm on the door.
Crassman was a long time answering. The door opened a slit. The man’s face was tiny and oval, his nose sharp. He reminded Boyle of a cross between a human and a ferret, the offspring of a bestial coupling.
‘Why, hey, Lee,’ Crassman said.
‘Bad night,’ Boyle said, and shoved the door and stepped past Crassman. Shrugging, Vass followed.
‘Let’s go inside this living room of yours,’ Boyle said. He kept moving. The camper shell was cramped, the ceiling so low you had to stoop. The extension wasn’t much higher. It had a sofa and an old velvet armchair. A lava lamp bubbled on a wooden packing crate.
‘Look at this, Rudy,’ Boyle said. ‘When did you last see a lamp like this baby?’
‘I read someplace they made a comeback,’ Vass said. ‘You don’t keep in touch with trends, Lee. Retro, they call it.’
‘You saying Crassman’s at the cutting edge of style?’
‘I don’t know shit about style,’ Crassman said. ‘I got it at a garage sale.’ He rubbed his hands together nervously. He had a gloss of sweat on his upper lip. ‘Figured it was kinda nice. Cost me two bucks.’
Boyle picked up the lamp and watched the colors expand. ‘You think it’s nice, Rudy?’
‘I covet it,’ Vass said.
Boyle set down the lamp and surveyed the room. The paneled walls were buckled and the air smelled of kerosene. Copies of Ring and Hustler were scattered here and there. Crassman’s fly was halfway open.
‘I hope we didn’t interrupt you in any self-administered five-fingered massage,’ Boyle said.
Crassman tugged up his zipper. ‘Nothing like that, Lee.’
‘Tell me, sport,’ Boyle said. ‘How’s your wallet?’
‘Things ain’t so good,’ Crassman answered.
‘How bad are they?’
‘This leg’s been acting up.’
‘Oh, yeah, right. The hunting accident.’ Boyle looked directly into Crassman’s eyes. ‘You ran into a stag with an Uzi, I remember.’
‘Ha ha. You know damn well I shot myself in the knee,’ Crassman said. ‘Rainy weather affects it, Lee. So I can’t go out and find work.’
‘You never worked in your life. You’re a welfare artist.’
‘Now, Lee, that ain’t exactly true –’
‘You know every welfare scam going.’
‘They tightened up on all that,’ Crassman said.
‘My heart is bleeding,’ Boyle said. ‘How about you, Rudy?’
‘I’d be crying in my beer if I had one, Lee.’
Boyle stared at Crassman. ‘It’s payback time, sweetheart.’
‘I’m not in a position –’
‘Don’t fuck with me,’ Boyle said. He wondered if Plumm felt this way, if he had this same kind of exuberance going through him when he threatened one of his tardy debtors. This little rush of power you felt when you knew you had somebody by the balls. ‘You owe me one thousand dollars, which I was foolish enough to loan you three weeks ago because you said you had this deal with a quick turn around that was going to net you beaucoup bucks. And my thou was going to grow like some magic mushroom into fifteen hundred overnight. Funny thing is, you don’t answer my calls, you don’t show up at my place with cash, you don’t phone.’
‘It didn’t pan out, Lee. Some things went wrong.’
‘Figures. So how much can you pay back?’
Crassman looked trapped and miserable. ‘God’s honest truth, I’m down to my last twenty.’
‘Twenty? Twenty?’
Crassman tugged a crumpled bill from his back pocket. ‘Here. Take this on account, Lee. Go on. Take it.’
Boyle knocked the bill from Crassman’s outstretched hand. ‘Pass me your gun, Rudy.’
‘Lee, come on,’ Vass said. ‘Let’s blow this place.’
‘Give me the goddam gun, Rudy.’
‘Gun?’ Crassman asked. ‘You don’t need no gun, Lee. I swear I’ll get the bread for you.’
Lee Boyle took the gun from Vass’s hand and pointed it at Crassman’s head. Crassman’s expression was a mixture of despair and incredulity. Boyle poked the end of the barrel into Crassman’s chin. There was a pecking order of things, Lee Boyle thought. Plumm picks on me. I pick on Crassman. Who does Crassman pick on? His mutt in the yard? A few harsh strokes of the whip?
‘Twenty’s a fucking insult, Crassman,’ he said.
Rudy Vass made a clucking sound of disapproval. ‘Be careful with that gun, Lee.’
‘Give me one good reason I shouldn’t just blow this roach into the promised land, Rudy,’ Boyle said. He pushed the gun into Crassman’s larynx.
‘Because homicide’s a very bad rap,’ Vass said. ‘Just take the guy’s twenty, Lee.’
Boyle smiled at Crassman. ‘So, Crassman. Do I take the twenty or pull the trigger? You see my dilemma.’
‘I can raise another hundred tomorrow,’ Crassman said. ‘Somebody owes me, Lee. He’s good for it.’
‘I hate this shit. Somebody owes you. You owe me. I owe somebody else. I swear to God, I really hate these chains of debt. I gave you a grand in good faith. You exploited my generosity.’
Lee Boyle increased the pressure on Crassman’s throat. ‘Down on your knees, champ.’
‘Good Christ, Lee,’ Crassman said.
‘Down.’
Crassman went into a supplicant’s position. This was it, Boyle thought, the undiluted essence of glee.
‘Please, Lee. Look, I can probably raise two, two hundred tomorrow.’
‘Spare me the mumbo-jumbo,’ Boyle said.
‘Maybe even three. I don’t know yet, I gotta do some chasing around.’
Lee Boyle struck Crassman’s skull with the gun in a swift downward motion. Crassman pitched forward, covering his head with his hands and whimpering. Boyle stepped back. It wasn’t enough. He felt unfulfilled. He grabbed Crassman’s collar and hauled him halfway up, and this time hammered him with the butt of the gun across his nose. It made a hard cracking sound, steel on bone. Blood flowed from Crassman’s nostrils. Boyle drove his knee into the guy’s chest and Crassman slumped to the floor.
‘This is only minor violence, Crassman,’ Boyle said.
‘Lee, forget it,’ Vass said. He’d picked up the twenty and was holding it out to Boyle.
Boyle ignored the offering. He grabbed Crassman’s hair and yanked it, forcing the man’s face up into the purplish light from the lava lamp. He picked up the lamp and brought it down on Crassman’s head and the glass cracked and warm colored liquid spurted out. The light went out and now the room was lit only by a bare bulb overhead. Crassman lay face-down in a small pool of his own blood and liquid from the lamp.
Rudy Vass said, ‘This is a bad scene, Lee. Come on.’
Boyle squatted alongside Crassman, and with the tip of his finger opened the guy’s left eye. ‘I’m taking the pitiful twenty, Crassman. But if you don’t call me tomorrow with some good news about a sizeable installment, you don’t get off so lightly in the future. Comprender?’
Crassman’s eyelid fluttered.
Lee Boyle gave Vass his gun back and went outside to the pick-up. Vass came behind him, blowing into his handkerchief. They got inside the truck.
‘That was cruel, Lee,’ Vass said.
‘Yeah, well, I’m desperate,’ Boyle said.
‘You were crazy to invest in any scheme of his.’
‘A moment of unjustified optimism, Rudy.’
‘You know what I think? You don’t like your life. That’s what I think.’
‘So it’s not exactly a pleasure dome.’
Vass drove for a mile in silence. Then he said, ‘I remember a time when you wouldn’t even have considered doing that violent shit.’
‘In my glorious yesterdays,’ Boyle said. ‘When I was a college boy and the world was all sunshine and I could get high on Keats and Shelley. When I didn’t need substances. Yeah yeah yeah. I am not the buoyant thing I was of yore, quote unquote.’
‘Fuck it. Let’s just get wasted, Lee.’
Boyle thought about Crassman’s blood, streaks of which dampened the twenty-dollar bill he held in his fist. Blood money.
‘Yeah. Let’s do exactly that.’
6
Samsa entered the house quietly. He went at once up to his bathroom, where he removed a bottle of painkillers from the medicine cabinet and shook a couple out into his hand. He dropped them on the tiled floor, stooped to gather them up, swallowed them with water. Then he swirled Listerine round in his mouth, and when he spat it out he saw dark metallic pieces of an old filling.
He tried to avoid his reflection in the cabinet mirror. Blood had darkened and dried on his lips, and there were bruises and streaks of dirt on his face. He was white and unrecognizable, his eyes lackluster, as if somebody had turned out the lights behind them. His thick graying hair was wet and plastered flat across his skull, and his cheeks, normally full, appeared deflated.
This doesn’t look like me. This isn’t Greg Samsa.
He took off his shoes, undressed, stuffed his clothes in a closet alongside other garments he’d gathered to take to the dry-cleaners, then stepped inside the shower, where he worked a lather of warm soapy water into his face. He scrubbed his hands and fingernails briskly again and again with a small hard-bristled brush, and ran shampoo through his hair. Wash, dry, put on a robe – it was a series of steps and tiny performances. Pantomime. Doing normal things. Looking the part. He was operating in a haze and it terrified him, and he couldn’t allow himself to feel that way.
He heard Darcy’s voice beyond the bathroom door. ‘Dad?’
He said, ‘A minute, honey.’ He knotted the belt of the robe before he opened the door.
‘You look bad. Are you hurt?’
‘You should see the car,’ he said.
‘Seriously. Are you hurt?’
He placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘I could use a drink.’
‘What happened exactly?’
‘Skidded,’ he said. ‘Off the road and into a field.’
‘Where?’
‘You know the old Purchase property?’
‘What were you doing over there?’
‘Just driving,’ he said.
‘I bet you were driving too fast. You always do.’
He thought how little he could see of Harriet in her. She had his coloring, his very dark-brown eyes, the same slightly stubborn set of mouth – but softer, infinitely more attractive. It was as if Harriet’s involvement had stopped at the birthing process. She’d left no mark on this girl. Here’s our daughter, Greg. She’s all yours. I’m empty now. And she’d stayed that way.
They walked downstairs to the living room. He went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a large cognac, noticing the Scrabble game on the coffee table. ‘Nick gone home?’ He needed to make small talk. Where you didn’t have to think. As if you were concussed.
‘A few minutes ago.’
He swallowed some of the brandy. He sat down, and the room rushed at him all at once as if it had turned over just like the Chrysler. He was dizzy and faint and felt like an astronaut inside a space capsule. There were inversions, strange flips, optical illusions. A voltage spike on the graph of perception. Photographs turning over, Harriet’s lovely face upside down on the mantelpiece, the hands of the clock hurrying backwards.
His fingers shook. The brandy in the glass rippled. He closed his eyes. What he saw behind his eyelids was the shallow pool of water and the broken branch and something black flapping in the air like a predatory bird, eyes lethal.
‘Are you really okay?’ Darcy asked.
‘A little shook up. It’ll pass.’
‘I’ll call Pascal if you like.’
‘I don’t need a physician, honey.’
‘How do you know you don’t? There might be internal bleeding or something.’
‘I’d know,’ he said.
‘Okay, okay. I’m only trying to help.’
How can you help, dear Darcy?
He opened his eyes. The room had readjusted itself, but seemed to exist precariously in an unfamiliar dimension. Darcy began to stack the Scrabble tiles inside the box. He watched her. Fifteen, full-breasted, suffused with the confidence of youth and yet riddled at the same time by insecurities, the whole all-out nuclear rage of her hormones. Fifteen, a young woman, time flying away, and Nick Mancuso sniffing round her. He felt love and sadness simultaneously.
He finished his cognac. He needed another to blunt his mind.
‘Your hand’s shaking,’ she said. ‘Maybe you should take a tranquilizer.’
‘What I need is another brandy,’ and he rose to pour himself one.
It happened then, a zap out of nowhere, a crushing sensation around his heart, breathlessness. He reached out, supported himself against the liquor cabinet, thinking coronary, meltdown in the aorta. Does she have parents somewhere wondering about her? In some faraway house in another part of the city, another part of the nation, were two people waiting for the phone to ring and a daughter to say, Hi, I’m fine, I’m doing okay?
He raised the bottle. He could hardly hold it.
‘Here,’ Darcy said. ‘I’ll do that. You’ll spill it all over yourself.’
He watched her pour into his glass. He said, ‘That’s a miserly amount.’
She added another tiny drop. ‘It’s all you’re getting.’
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘This is cruel and unusual punishment for a guy that just survived a car wreck.’ He attempted to infuse a certain flippancy into his tone, but it was like trying to maintain a shuttlecock of lead in the air.
‘Drink it slowly. I’m going to find you a pill. There’s some upstairs.’
‘Darcy, I don’t want a pill,’ he said.
But she was already gone from the room and he could hear her hurrying up the stairs. He imagined her rummaging in the medicine cabinet among the tablets Harriet used to take. He wondered why he’d never gotten round to throwing the entire pharmacy out. For the same reason he’d kept all her clothing, all her jewelry, he supposed. Whatever that reason was called. Something the heart stoked up. The demands of love, the deranged idea that you kept the essence of the person by hanging on to their possessions – as if one bright afternoon she might just materialize under a halo in the doorway and say, Sorry I left you alone this long, my love. He didn’t need this and he didn’t need to look up at Harriet’s photograph either, goddamit – that oval face and those solemn eyes with melancholy secrets hidden in them, things she’d never explained, couldn’t have explained, monsters trapped in the dead-end labyrinth of her mind.
You drifted from me, he thought. And I fill the cold emptiness any way I can.
Darcy came back in the room. ‘Here.’ She was holding out a pill to him. ‘I’m not sure it’s the smart thing to take it with brandy,’ she said.
He looked at the sky-blue tab. It was called Limbitrol, he remembered. It was only one of a bunch with names that rolled easily off the tongue. Elavil and Surmontil. They sounded like futuristic candies. Here, kids, chew these down. Try some Prozac while you’re at it. They’d done nothing for Harriet except drive her deeper into that impenetrable pocket where she’d lived her life. He placed the pill in his mouth and swallowed it with brandy. Quickly. He didn’t want the taste of it.
