Duncan Delaney and the Cadillac of Doom (28 page)

“These make it easier for the lawn mowers,” he explained.

Duncan sat by the grave. The grass was cool and moist and a breeze off the freeway rustled his emerging hair.
She Died for Love,
the inscription on the stone said. Duncan thought it true. He sat there for an hour thinking about the other reasons for her death until he saw Sheila coming. Even from a distance he knew it was her. Despite the knowledge he remained. He was too tired to get up and too hopeless to care. When she was twenty yards away, he lay across the grave. He closed his eyes and felt the earth’s strength beneath him. A shadow passed over his face. He opened his eyes and sat up with difficulty when he heard her sobbing. Sheila sat a yard away, her right arm in a cast and her head against her left hand, her eyes wet and dull. A silver pistol lay on the grass beside her.

“I loved her too,” she said. “Maybe more than you.”

“Maybe.”

He resigned himself to death. Here was as good a place as any and now was as good a time. Sheila picked up the gun and held it flat in her hand. She looked at it like it was an apple or a calculator or anything but a gun.

“I like the stone.”

“I picked it out. Benjamin said it was okay with him.”

“I’m sure she would like it.” Duncan pointed at the gun. “What were you planning to do with that?”

“I don’t know. Shoot myself. Maybe you.”

“I don’t think she would appreciate either.”

Sheila stared at the gun. “You’re probably right.”

She laid the gun on the stone. She stood and walked away. Duncan sat there until the sun threatened to set. He picked up the gun and walked towards the cemetery office. On the way he passed an open, empty grave, raw earth beside it. He dropped the gun in the hole and kicked sweet, moist dirt onto it. He reached the office and asked for the manager.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Delaney?” The manager asked after Duncan introduced himself. He was a fat man with professionally sad eyes.

“My wife was buried here without my permission.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. Do you find the accommodations unsuitable?”

“No, it’s a nice grave as far as graves go. But it’s not what she wanted. She wanted to be cremated.”

The manager called for a file. He put on glasses and scrutinized the pages within. He looked up.

“The funeral was paid for by a Ms. Rascowitz. She paid for one of our eternity plots. I’m afraid we can’t make a refund.”

“I don’t want you to. I want you to leave the plot the way it is. Stone and all. I just don’t want her to be beneath it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Let’s see if you understand this. Dig her up. Dig her up and cremate her. Then put the grave back the way it is now.” Duncan was determined to follow Pris’s wishes, but he wanted to leave a cenotaph for Sheila. “Call me when you’re done and I’ll pick up the ashes.”

“This will be expensive,” the manager said.

“I really don’t give a shit,” Duncan replied.

Duncan took a cab to his studio. He was thirsty so he went inside the mini-mart to buy a soda. Assan smiled broadly and hugged him. Duncan looked at the wall over the counter. His painting of Assan hung there. Duncan smiled despite himself.

“Nice painting,” he said.

“Oh, yes. Everybody loves it.” Assan frowned. “Except for one ugly woman with short hair who screamed when she saw it. For a moment I thought I would have to equalize her with my Benelli.”

“Did she leave on a Harley?”

“How did you know?”

“Lucky guess.”

Duncan paid for his soda and a candy bar and went upstairs. When he opened the door, he saw a woman sleeping on the couch with an orange cat on her lap and for one exhilarating moment he believed his life had been a nightmare from which he had suddenly awakened. But the woman stirred and he saw it was Misty. She sat up.

“Hi, Duncan. How are you doing?”

“They tell me I’ll have good and bad days. Still waiting on a good one.”

Misty looked down. “Your mom asked me to take care of Cat. Hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

He had forgotten Cat in his grief. He felt guilty as hell. Cat rubbed his leg. Duncan smiled and picked him up and sat on the couch beside her.

“I saw our painting hanging in a museum the other day,” Misty said. “Can you believe it? Some kid on a field trip says to me,
‘hey lady, isn’t that you?’
I’m there with Tommy Bertone. He plays guitar in a band called
Forced Entry
. He’s kind of a jerk.” Misty knew she was babbling but could not stop. “Anyway, Tommy doesn’t like someone recognizing me and not him and the teacher leading the group asks me what you’re like and Tommy says,
‘fuck you lady,’
so I smack his face with my handbag and the guard throws us out. He left me in the parking lot but I didn’t care.”

Duncan smiled. “That sounds like fun.”

“Yes, it was.” Misty eyes were as brown as Tiffy’s but where Tiffy’s were hard Misty’s were soft. “When are you going to paint again?”

“I don’t know.”

“She would want you to.”

Duncan stood. “Come on. I’ll walk you downstairs.”

When they reached the street Misty got in her car and rolled down her window. “Can I come see you some time?”

“Sure.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. A month or two. I’ve got some things to work out.”

“All right.” She started the car.

“See you, Misty.”

“Damn right you will,” she said. She drove off.

Duncan went back upstairs and looked around. But there was nothing there he wanted anymore, only memories, and he kept those with him always. He called a cab and carried Cat downstairs to wait and he left the door open behind him.

Three days later the mortuary called. Angela was at the office and Benjamin was surfing with Woody so Duncan put on his jacket and his Stetson and carried Cat the three miles to Bolo’s house. His mother had changed the curtains and pruned the hedges to let in more light. Pieces of Fiona’s life now lay about, mail on a shelf by the front door, her reading glasses on the table where Bolo’s had been. Bolo’s pictures were gone from the mantle, replaced by Duncan’s graduation photo and an enlargement of his wedding picture. Duncan walked through the house collecting his things. Hard as he avoided it he eventually came to the bedroom.

The blood was gone from the floor and the bedspread had been replaced. He emptied his clothes from the drawers and put them on the bed. He held one of her sweaters to his nose. He thought he smelled her in the fabric. But that hurt too much so he put the sweater back and took a suitcase from under the bed and packed it. He opened the garage door and put the suitcase in the Cadillac’s trunk. He started the engine and put the top down. He pulled the car out of the garage and parked it in the driveway. He went back inside the house and found a piece of paper.

Gone to Wyoming,
he wrote,
Love, Duncan.

He stuck the note on the refrigerator and left the house, locking the door behind him. He got in the Cadillac and drove to Angela’s office. She was out to lunch, but Marie was there, and Duncan retrieved
Sleeping
Pris
. He put the painting in the back seat. For weeks after, Duncan slept every chance he had, hoping to see her in his dreams, but the harder he tried the less he slept and his dreams were devoid of her. One terrifying day he had to look at his painting to remember what she looked like. But that was weeks in the future and now he was just glad the painting was not sold.He moved Cat to the front seat. He drove to the cemetery and picked up Pris’s ashes. He declined the decorative urn for an additional three hundred and fifty dollars. He got in the Cadillac and put the box of ashes on the floor. Cat sniffed the box once. He meowed sadly and fell asleep on the seat beside Duncan. Duncan put on his sunglasses and pulled down his hat.

Then he got on the 10 freeway and drove East.

Twenty One

On the clear blue Sunday of Duncan’s twenty second birthday, Misty sat inside her BMW convertible outside the Circle D’s gates. It had taken longer than anticipated to find her way there, but she had much to accomplish before making the journey. First, she quit working at the Hollywood, and with the money she had saved stripping, she had her breast implants removed. She felt good to have the foreign objects evicted from her interior and she felt better about herself for having abjured them. After the operation she was surprised by how little her chest shrunk.

“The implants burst long ago,” the doctor explained. “Luckily they were of the saline variety. You must have grown some in the meantime.”

She had developed in other ways too. After she recovered sufficiently from her operation, she dyed her hair back to its original brown, then went back to school to study for and receive her high school equivalency certificate. She was no brighter, but at least what light she now emitted illuminated a larger world, and as a result, she was far more confident. But confident or not, as she sat inside her car, she was nervous enough to vomit.

“It’s okay,” she told herself, “he’s just a guy.”

She drove the last half mile from the highway and parked outside a big white house. The Cadillac of Doom, open to the weather, rusted in front of a garage. All four tires were flat and the seats were torn and stained by the rain. She got out of her car. She wore the knee length skirt, white cotton long sleeved shirt, leather vest and boots she had purchased in Cheyenne hours before. Everyone at the store was so friendly and helpful that at first she thought they were mocking her. But a waitress treated her the same when she ordered a vegetarian omelet in a highway diner and she concluded that was just how people here were. And the fat man at the market with the cross around his neck and the tattoo of a snake on his forearm was positively helpful when she asked for directions.

She looked in the Cadillac. A key was rusted fast to the ignition. The car had not budged since Duncan parked it there close to one year before. He had opened the garage door vaguely intending to pull the Cadillac in and shut the door behind him with the engine running. But the car had died when he got back in and would not start though it had plenty of spark and enough gas and Duncan finally gave up and picked up Cat and brought him and the painting and the ashes inside. Misty turned away and climbed the front steps. Cat sat on a rattan chair on the porch, licking a paw and otherwise ignoring her. Misty ran her hand across his back. He purred once then went back to the paw. She breathed deep, stepped up to the door and knocked. When no one replied she looked in the window.

“God,” she said, “what a pig sty.”

A horse whinnied from afar. She turned. Duncan rode towards the house, an empty box under one arm and a sleeping bag tied to the saddle behind him. He had spent the last two days building a cairn at the site of Sean Delaney’s death. That morning he had spread Pris’s ashes around the rocks, finally releasing her and fulfilling her last wish as best he could. He spurred his mare when he saw Misty. He reined the horse in front of the house and jumped off.

“Hi,” Misty said.

He hugged her. “I didn’t recognize you at first. You dyed your hair.”

“No,” Misty said, “this is my real color.”

“Well, it looks good.” He tied the horse to the porch rail. “What brings you out here?”

“You invited me. Remember?”

“Of course I did.”

Duncan set the box on the steps and slapped the dust from his pants with a glove. His red hair had grown back long below his Stetson. His beard covered most of his chin and some of his cheeks with a fine, red stubble. He had filled out since she saw him last. He was now lean bordering on muscular. He stepped onto the porch and opened the door.

“Come on in.”

She followed him inside. The remains of meals lay on a table in front of the television. Magazines and books were scattered on the couch and on the floor before it. The carpet needed vacuuming and while the house did not exactly smell bad, neither did it smell good. Duncan removed his hat.

“Sorry about the mess. I wasn’t expecting company.”

“I should have called.”

“I wasn’t here anyway,” Duncan said. He transferred magazines from chair to couch. “Make yourself at home. I’m going to shower.

Instead of sitting, Misty wandered through the house. One room contained an easel and twenty canvases stacked against a wall. All were landscapes of lonely, barren vistas. Another room was almost empty.
Sleeping Pris
hung without benefit of frame on the wall opposite the window. Misty shivered and closed the door. She went into the kitchen. Dishes lay piled in the sink and on the table. She looked at a postcard stuck to the refrigerator with a magnet. It was from the Hollywood Tropicana, and it depicted tanned, oiled women whose synthetic breasts strained the limits of string bikinis, except for the vaguely familiar blond girl in the center, a girl with chocolate eyes and strawberry lips, and breasts the size of softballs, though much softer and not as white. Misty turned the card over.
Thought you might enjoy this,
it said,
Benjamin
. She put the card back. A letter from the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office lay on the table. She politely ignored it. If she had read it she would have discovered that Sheila, as part of a plea agreement brokered by a Los Angeles city councilwoman, had pleaded guilty to one count of aggravated assault and was placed on three years probation, fined five hundred dollars, and was ordered to serve four hundred hours of community service. What the letter did not say was that subsequent to the sentencing the councilwoman purchased three of Sheila’s paintings at a substantial and deep discount.

Misty put on an apron she found on a hook. She filled the sink with hot water and soap, and spent the next fifteen minutes washing china and cutlery. Duncan found her there when he came out of the shower. His hair was wet and his freshly shaved skin was pink and soft. He wore a loose flannel shirt untucked over his blue jeans and his feet poked white and thin from the cuffs.