A Stranger Like You (21 page)

“I’m okay.” He didn’t really feel like holding hands and was glad to get into the car. The sun was starting to rise in his rearview mirror.

“Take me to your motel.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not, Hugh?”

“You’re not going to like it.”

“I want to know you,” she said. “I want to see where you live.”

“All right. If that’s what you want.”

The motel lobby was dark and empty when they got there. It was light enough to see the sort of place it was. She didn’t say anything, but he could tell she was a little shocked by it. Maybe she had made something up in her mind. Maybe she thought he had money, class. Back home he did. Back home, he was a respectable citizen. But this motel was seedy, he knew it, and his heart had turned seedy, too. For now, this was who he was. He opened the door and they walked in.

“You said you wanted to know me.”

“Yes.” She looked around uncertainly, a little frightened.

“What if I’m not the man you think I am?”

“Show me,” she said. “Show me who you are.”

“I’ll show you,” he said. “Take off your clothes.”

He watched her in the glare of the open window. Naked, she stood there waiting for him. He looked at her. Then he went to the windows and yanked the curtains closed. The room went dark. He sat down on the bed and had her stand between his legs and he caressed her and she went damp and milky like a baby calf. Her body was warm, soft, and she was trembling just a little. He was still angry at her for laughing at him with the others. It wasn’t nice of her. He wasn’t sure he could forgive her.

“Why don’t you lie down?”

His head hurt. It felt dense and heavy. She climbed onto the bed and he stretched out beside her in his street clothes. “Turn over,” he said.

“What?” She sounded frightened.

She lay on her stomach expectantly. “Keep quiet,” he said, opening his pants. “Don’t say a word.”

They woke a few hours later. There was a little blood on the sheet. She had cried. She lay on her side, turned away from him, remote. That was all right with him, he didn’t want to look at her now anyway. He could hear people in the adjacent rooms getting up, starting the day. A man with a deep, guttural laugh. Toilets flushing, water running through the pipes. The shades were drawn and the room was dark, nearly black, save for the stripe of bright light that was the slit in the curtains. Outside beyond the awful room there was a whole world.

Ida sat up, pulling the sheet around her. Her hair was mussed and her eye makeup had run. In a kind of personal fury, she started getting dressed, pulling on her shirt, her little skirt, her boots.

“You were right,” she said. “You’re not who I thought you were.” She shook her head and looked at him fiercely. “I thought you were somebody else.”

Then she walked to the door and went out.

For some reason he called Marion. The phone rang and rang. His wife wasn’t picking up. He tried to imagine what she might be doing. They’d been married for nine years. It seemed to him that he should be able to figure out where she was, but his mind came up empty. It came to him that he was completely alone. You think you know someone, and then you realize that you’ve just supplied your own convincing version of them—eventually reality takes over and you realize that the person you’ve made your life with is a complete stranger.

After he’d taken the car he’d driven around in the rain for a while, looking for a place to buy a gun. The rain was a comforting distraction and he was glad for it. The pawn shop was behind a Chinese restaurant on a side street off the Sunset Strip. It was a tiny place, a little larger than a phone booth or a coffin, depending on your mood, and the man behind the counter was an ex-marine. He showed Denny one or two pistols he wasn’t interested in, and then when Denny told him he’d just come back from Iraq he took out the Glock 17, a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun. It was the same gun the Iraqi police officers used, a sweet little weapon—the man would not say where he’d gotten it. It was light, ready to fire once you loaded the clip. He counted out his money. After he bought the gun he ate in the Chinese place, watching the chorus of sweaty cooks, the wild hiss of the woks, the shimmer of passing cars.

Having the gun made all the difference.

After that he’d called Daisy on that number she’d given him, but she didn’t answer. Something in his gut told him he needed her; he didn’t think he could go on without her. To pass some time, he drove down to the public library and went in to wait out the rain. In an empty corner, he fell asleep for a while, until one of the old librarians shook him awake and said it was time to go. It was nighttime when he stepped outside, and it was still raining.

Finally, she picked up her phone. “Can I see you?”

“Something happened,” she said. “Something sad.”

She wouldn’t tell him anything over the phone. She was staying in a room over the bowling alley on Pico. He parked the car in the bowling alley lot, near the fence. She had a part-time job washing the lanes, waxing the floors, and they let her sleep upstairs. Nobody answered for a while. He just stood there in the doorway feeling stupid with the rain blasting down. A cat watched him from under some orange crates somebody had piled up. Every so often it shook the rain off its whiskers then licked its paws. Finally, she came to the door. In her hands was the dead rat, her pet. “What happened to it?”

“It got into something.”

“Maybe there was some poison around.”

“Help me bury it.”

They went outside in the rain. There was a patch of dirt, a failed garden. They dug a hole and put the rat into it and covered it back up. She crouched down with the rain on her back and he put his hand there.

“Things won’t be the same,” she said.

“That’s true. They won’t.”

“Are you scared of it?” She looked up at him. “Dying, I mean.”

He thought of lying, but then admitted, “Everyone is.”

“Not me.”

“No?”

But she reconsidered. “Maybe a little. Do you think there’s a heaven?”

“Yes,” he said, “yes, I do.”

That seemed to cheer her up a little. She took his hand and they went back inside and dried off. She had a mattress with just a light blanket and they lay there together without doing anything, just curled up like that, and the next thing he knew it was morning. You could hear the sound of the bowling alley downstairs, the sound of the pins falling down. It was a good sound. Chairs moving. Bottles clattering. She had to work for a couple of hours. He told her he had to get out of L.A. for a while. “Come with me,” he said, and she looked out the window with the light in her eyes mulling it over and then looked back at him. “I guess I could go with you.”

Then she told him about some film she was in, a screening that night. “I want you to see it first,” she said.

Thinking back on it now, seeing her up on that screen had been weird. That wasn’t the Daisy he knew. She wasn’t the person he’d put together in his head, based on what she’d told him or the way he felt when he looked into those crazy blue eyes. During the screening, he’d shifted around in his seat. He guessed he wasn’t the type to share his problems—and he had
plenty
to complain about. Then again, maybe a film like that could enlighten people. Maybe seeing that stuff would convince people how fucked up things really were, deep-down, under all the other bullshit where it counts. There was just so much here to take for granted, and maybe that was all right. Maybe that was the American way. But when he thought about it, you couldn’t compare some of the things he’d witnessed in Iraq—random acts of terror he called them—in a single day there were too many to count. He could appreciate what these movie people were trying to do, but when you came right down to it, things weren’t all that bad here. People didn’t know how good they had it.

Now she was sleeping. They’d been driving for three hours and the moon was high. Flat, open land stretched for miles. They were about halfway to Nevada. She’d been mad at him for hitting her friend, but Denny didn’t feel too bad about it. He’d taken one look at that son of a bitch and had his number.

He had a little money left. He was old enough to gamble. With a little bit of money he could make a fresh start.

Daisy stirred on the seat. “I’m thirsty.”

“We’ll stop. We’ll get some breakfast in a little while, soon as the sun comes up.” He glanced over at her uneasy face. “You just leave everything to me, honey,” he said. “I’m going to take good care of you. You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded at him. Nobody had ever taken care of her before. She’d pretty much been on her own. One day he would track her mother down and tell her what he thought of her—he would do it, too.

All he had to do was gaze into her smile and his whole world went bright. He wanted to do things for her. Work—he wasn’t lazy—he could make her happy. He had a strong body. He could do anything. Make a life for them. Maybe even have kids one day. All he had to do was get to Vegas. A plan had taken shape in his mind, a way to get out. An army buddy of his had told him about a guy down in Vegas who sold fake passports. They were probably expensive; he’d figure that out later.

She moved over and curled up under his arm. That night on the beach, they had talked a little about their dreams. She had confided in him, said she’d done things she regretted. Made mistakes. She was just a girl who’d had a little bad luck. Same with him. But she hadn’t been corrupted, yet, like some of the girls in his neighborhood. The way he saw it, she was meant for him, handpicked by the higher powers above. Soon as they got settled some place he’d take her to church. It would be nice to be in a church with her. He could just about picture it. They would confess, they would pray for absolution. Light some candles together. They could let go of the past. They could start over.

“There’s something in the trunk,” she said.

“What?”

“Something’s rolling around in there.” She turned around, looking out the back windshield. “That, don’t you hear it?”

“It’s just some junk of my uncle’s,” he lied. He hadn’t told her he’d stolen the car, it would spoil everything. Daisy thought he was a big success. Big, handsome hero back from the war. Stupidly, he had forgotten to look in the trunk. He would sell it, that’s what he would do. Find some shifty dealer who didn’t need any papers and he’d get rid of it. Buy something else. One of these days the owner would come back from his trip, looking for it. Somebody could put two and two together, the fact that Denny had never come back to work, the fact that the car was missing—it would appear suspicious. Hopefully, that guy had gone on a long trip someplace.

“I’m sorry about before,” she said. “When I cried.”

“I understand.”

She put her hand on his leg. “You make me feel safe.”

It was the highest compliment. “I’m glad, Daisy. I feel safe with you, too.”

Sometimes in Baghdad he would see kids, he would talk to them. A couple of times they’d played soccer with the boys in the neighborhood around their encampment. They’d all had a good time and for that hour and a half it was like there wasn’t even a war going on at all. Sometimes they gave the kids their MREs. He’d never seen anyone eat so fast. They were hungry, skinny kids, curious what the big American soldiers ate every day. Kids were the same everywhere. They just wanted people to be nice to them. They just wanted to feel safe. It wasn’t all horror and killing. They’d done a lot of good things over there. But that wasn’t the kind of stuff people heard about or read in the papers. They had made a lot of people feel safe. There had been important moments, graceful exchanges. And there had been times when he’d actually felt like a warrior, a true hero. It was the best feeling in the world. One thing people back here didn’t get: Heroic acts happened on a minute-to-minute basis. The military was full of heroes and that’s what he tried to focus on. People like him and Ross, who’d done some good, who’d made a difference.

After a while they came to a truck stop and got out to stretch their legs. It was still dark and the air had cooled and there was a little wind. Truckers had turned in here for the night, their trailers like huge sleeping animals lined up in rows. Daisy went in to use the restroom. He walked around to take a look in the trunk. Right away he noticed some dents in the top. The trunk was locked. He tried the key, but the lock was stripped. He would need a crowbar.

Then he heard something strange. Something that lowered his body temperature about a hundred degrees. It sure as hell sounded like somebody was in there. Somebody moving around like they were in pain.

Maybe he was hallucinating. He hadn’t slept for a while and had drunk too much beer. No; he wasn’t hallucinating. He’d put money on it. There was somebody in there.

“What’s in there?” Daisy said, smelling like toothpaste and truck stop soap, drinking from a bottle of water.

“Just some junk. Come on, let’s go.”

The road was empty and dark. The moon shone down on the distant canyons. He turned on the radio, hoping she wouldn’t hear anything coming from the trunk. “Find something you like,” he said.

She tuned in a Beatles song and sat back, looking sleepy.

“Why don’t you go back to sleep?”

“You don’t mind?”

“No, honey, I want you to rest.”

“All right.”

He looked over at her pale face. “You feeling okay now?”

“Uh-huh.” She bunched up her jacket to make a pillow and leaned on the door and he reached over and pushed down the lock so she’d be safe. While she slept, he drove and tried to think. He was in enough trouble; he didn’t need any more of it. It came to him that he was cursed. Bad luck followed him around like a starved puppy. Maybe he was just stupid. Stupid people got into trouble, that’s what his uncle always said. How was he supposed to know there was somebody in the trunk? Seemed like he was always taking the rap for other people’s crimes. That girl in Baghdad—couldn’t have been more than thirteen—and what they’d done to her. He should have taken Hull out, that’s what he should’ve done. He regretted it now. Should’ve done it before they’d hurt her. But he’d been too freaked out. They’d all just jumped right in before he could stop them. He guessed the girl had told her parents and he guessed the parents had told the police. He wondered whatever happened to Hull and the others. Far as he knew, they were still in Iraq. He was the only one who’d gotten out. That meant he’d be tried here at home, in a regular court—if they caught him, that is—and he didn’t plan on getting caught. It didn’t seem right that he’d have to go to jail—he hadn’t done anything to the girl. He was innocent, but there was no way to prove it. Only the girl could say. And he knew she wouldn’t. All around it was a bad situation. War brought out the animal in you; it had brought a monster out of Jason Hull. Every time Denny thought about it he felt sick. When he reimagined the incident in his head, he took Jason out and saved the girl, but in reality that girl had suffered horribly and he couldn’t erase those memories, flashes of anguish that were stuck there, like splinters, in the softest tissue of his brain.