Lovesick (35 page)

6

Before we left Drexel at the camper, he and Lonnie packed a pipe and smoked some drugs—an awful-smelling concoction like burned plastic that had been soaked in cat piss. Drexel made sure Lonnie had some extra for the road, and we took off together. So many times I had imagined Lonnie and I traveling, perhaps to Charleston or Savannah for a weekend of sightseeing. Instead, when we hit the interstate, we turned northwest toward Florence and Columbia. After about an hour, Lonnie pulled off at a truck stop, smoked some more from his pipe, and then roamed around to some of the parked rigs, peddling drugs to the truckers. While he went from truck to truck, I watched the usual assortment of men—young, old, married, ugly—as they entered and departed the Gentlemen's Agreement Adult Bookstore and Video Lounge next door. In the past, I would have been excited to be in such a place, wondering at the prospects and opportunities inside. Now, it only depressed me and seemed a pathetic waste of time to see the stream of traffic in and out its doors. It didn't take Lonnie long to earn what he needed, and after another short drive down one of the back roads flanking the freeway, he deposited me at the Peach Bottom Motel, which promised free cable TV for only $39 a night. I say deposited me because once we were in the room, Lonnie tied me to a chair and taped my mouth. He knew I would run if given the chance, and he was right. My mind was working frantically trying to find a way out.

Before he left, he gave me another chance to give him access to the bank accounts, to sign the business over to him. “This is gonna happen, M.R. You gotta believe me when I tell you that. Now, if you sign the paper, maybe you and I can make us a deal that Drex doesn't have to be a part of.” I merely shook my head. “Have it your way, then,” he said, turning the TV on. He turned the volume up loud enough to cover up any attempts I might make to call for help, but not so loud that the manager would come knocking to tell me to turn it down. “Don't want trouble,” he said. And with that, he disappeared through the doorway, bolting the lock as he went.

He wasn't gone long, maybe half an hour or so, when I heard the key in the door and some laughing just outside. When the door flung open, Lonnie was carrying a twelve-pack of beer and literally fell into the room—the only thing that kept him from hitting the floor was the fact that a youngish man, a boy really, was holding the back of Lonnie's belt in his right hand. Under his left arm, he clutched a bucket of chicken.

They were drunk as sailors, and the young man laughed as Lonnie broke free from his grasp and landed on the bed. “Damn, man, you almost made me spill this durn chicken all over the floor.”

“You drop it and I'll kick your ass,” said Lonnie. He smiled large as he rolled over on the bed and pulled a beer from the box. I had seen this look before. “Now, lock the door and drop your pants.”

The boy, tall and gangly with a shock of reddish brown hair, turned to put the food on the table, his free hand already undoing his belt. He stopped abruptly when he noticed me.

“What the fuck, man? You didn't say nothing about somebody else.”

“Don't mind him,” said Lonnie. “He's just here to watch.”

“I don't know. What's the matter with him? Why's he all tied up like that?”

“Ain't nothing the matter with him. He likes that.”

The boy studied me up and down and broke into a shaggy grin. “I saw that in a magazine. But I never seen it in real life. What's he do?”

“He does what I tell him to do,” said Lonnie. “He'll suck you if I tell him to. You want him to suck you while you suck me?”

“I don't know,” said the boy. “He's kind of old—I thought it was just gonna be you and me.”

“Yeah, well, he's gonna be here, and he's gonna watch everything we do, so if you want him to suck you off, tell me and I will untie his mouth. He sucks good.”

“What's his name?” the boy asked.

“What the fuck do you care what his name is,” said Lonnie, lying back on the bed. He had his pants off and the bulge of his dick pressed up through his boxers. “His name is ‘Mister' to you. So when you get done socializing, come over here and get down to bidness.”

“Howdy, Mister Mister,” said the boy, saluting me. “My name is Sammy. Sammy Hutchens. Proud to meet you.”

Sammy stripped down naked except for his socks, and he and Lonnie smoked more from Lonnie's pipe. Then, for what seemed like an eternity, he and Lonnie fucked on the bed not three feet from me. It was as if I had been brought there to record the deed, and if ever I attempted to look away, Lonnie would kick a foot in my direction or curse at me until he had my attention. The drugs gave Lonnie an animal zeal, and he fucked Sammy Hutchens hard and long. Where I had only been permitted to touch Lonnie below the waist, these two wrestled in front of me with abandon, their hands exploring, clutching, stroking, their mouths and tongues licking, sucking, devouring. For all this time I had only wanted Lonnie to notice me, but now I tried to will myself invisible.
Let me just evaporate into mist,
I prayed.
Just let me disappear.

When they were done, Sammy asked if he could take a shower. Lonnie shrugged his approval, and Sammy scurried into the bathroom, light and steam pouring out from the open door. Lonnie lit a cigarette and opened a beer and came over to me, untying the gag from my mouth.

“Why do you do this to me?” I asked. “Is this what you want . . . to show me how little I mean to you?”

Lonnie flexed and stretched, running a hand through that jet-black hair of his. The hair on his chest was damp with sweat, his cock still plump from sex. Even then, I wanted him, would have forgiven him all the injustice if he had untied me, and said, “Yes, that is what I wanted.”

But as Sammy emerged from the bathroom, a towel wrapped around his boyish hips, I could see that Lonnie was not done with either of us. And as Sammy stepped around me, he opened the bucket of chicken, and said, “Hey, little mister. We got extra crispy. It's my favorite. Lon bought it special just for me.”

And then the moment. Lonnie's massive hands gripped Sammy's head in that relentless grasp. At first Sammy thought it was more sex play and laughed. Lonnie commanded me to not look away. “You need to appreciate this,” he growled. I could then see the confusion that turned to fear and then to hatred and finally to understanding as Lonnie held Sammy's head in his hands, lifting it up and away from Sammy's shoulders, twisting it around back and forth, front to back, so the bones in Sammy's neck began to creak and the gurgle in Sammy's throat became a sad, high-pitched whine. Until the bones unable to stand the strain began to splinter and the only sound was a low, guttural sigh that was Sammy's final breath. “Now you know,” Lonnie said. “Now you know and you'll believe what I tell you.”

Sammy shit all over the floor as he died, and Lonnie dropped him in a heap so that he lay stretched out in front of the door like a barricade, his broken neck tilting his head so that it crooked up against the door. Lonnie took the chicken off the table and sat back on the bed. “This is your fault,” he said. “None of this had to happen except you wouldn't do like I asked. Now, can you and me come to an understanding, or do I need to fetch me another youngin' in here? I can stack 'em up like firewood, M.R. It don't mean nothing to me.”

“Take me home,” I said. “And I will give you whatever you want.”

“I'm too fucked up to drive now,” he said. “I think I'm gonna crash for a spell. We can set out in the morning.” Then he walked over to me, untied me, and said, “I expect you may need to use the toilet. Then we can get some rest and head back to Morris early in the morning. We got a busy day in front of us.” With that, he turned on the TV and started flicking channels on the free cable TV until he found what he wanted to watch. I stood up slowly, moving ever so gingerly around the dead body that had been Sammy Hutchens to the bathroom. There was no window, and the air was still thick with moisture from Sammy's shower. I splashed water on my face, relieved my bladder, and came back into the bedroom. I sat on the other bed, waiting for Lonnie to go to sleep, but knowing there was no way I could touch Sammy to move him out of the way in order to leave. I was trapped here. Lonnie knew that. There was a phone, but whom could I call for help? Who was to say that I wasn't a part of this whole thing, had helped Lonnie to lure this boy to the motel for a sex game gone bad? So I sat and I waited until it was morning and time for us to leave.

There are churches in Europe—
ossuaries,
they are called—where the bones of the dead are stacked in decorative arrangements around the sides of the church. A pile of skulls used to make a cross. Femurs, fibulas, humeri, and ulnas mounded into pale, moon-colored mosaics so the joints resemble a peacock, a shell, a martyr's rose. In the San Bernardino alle Ossa, the decapitated skulls of the damned sit in a silent row at the rear to oversee all that passes in front of them: the endless eternal parade of baptisms, communions, weddings, funerals. Perhaps that is what hell is: the knowledge that life is there in front of you, but you are unable to participate. In the silence of the motel room, I saw myself as a severed skull, watching the parade of life that had passed through my shop, unable to touch it, to feel its texture. That is why Lonnie had chosen me. He and Drexel knew that I lived only on the fringe of life, and that when they wiped me away, it would be as insignificant as a speck of sand washed from the shore. A house cannot blame the tornado for the wind that blows it down. A tree cannot blame the fire that consumes it. A rabbit cannot blame the wolf. Lonnie was right. This had been my fault. If I had not refused him, then Sammy would still be alive. I also knew that he had a taste for killing. That whatever bond existed between him and Drexel would lead to this scene or one like it: a dead boy in a corner, an innocent man's head blown off, a lonely waitress dumped in a field. I also knew that it had to end—with me.

I woke Lonnie up just after it was light. I recognized that it was important for us to get away from the motel before the other customers began to stir with the new day. It took a few moments for him to realize where he was, and when he saw Sammy's body stretched out across the floor, all he could say was, “Oh, yeah.”

He showered, and after he was dressed, he pulled the body into the far corner of the room so that it was not the first thing the maid would see when she walked in. As we left, I tried not to look at the nightstand separating the beds. I hoped Lonnie did not see me looking.

He bought sausage biscuits at a drive-through window and we drove back to Morris in silence, a couple whose vacation had ended badly. The morning chill persisted, unwilling to give way to the cool winter sun. I looked out the window at the wax myrtle, the red bay trees, the scrub pines streaming past my window. In a month, these desolate lowlands would be full of green, new plants fighting for survival. As Lonnie would say, it wasn't anything personal, it was only business.

Arriving back in Morris, I was struck with a sudden sense of longing and loss for all the years I had spent here. Wanda's Main Street Cafe was open for business, and as we drove past, I could see some of the businessmen having their eggs and bacon and coffee, ready to start the work day. Shirley Cooper was turning the sign on the front of the bank to open for business. But I also saw Simmons Independent Insurance agency, empty of all the office furnishings, only the sign painted on the front window to remind the town of what it had once been, that there had been life inside. It would be the same with me, I suspected. Everything that I had valued so much, taken so much pride in, everything that I had given my life to build was now going to be wiped away like scribblings on a chalkboard.

Lonnie pulled to the back of the driveway, as far from the street as possible. He came around to help me out of the car, and I was struck by his newfound decorousness. The house felt cold and still inside, and I turned the light on in the kitchen to bring some life back into it—it reminded me too much of a tomb. I offered to make Lonnie coffee, but he declined.

“So,” I said. “I guess then we just need to get down to business.”

“Probably best.”

“I'm going to write out a paper here that will give you access to all my accounts,” I said, “and will make you an equal partner in my business. That way, you will have the right to sell anything you see fit to sell. What will you do with it all?”

“I don't know,” he said. “Drex and me got an idea that we can go out West to learn to drive long haul trucks. If you got a record, you can still get a license to drive.”

“Even if you have been convicted for drugs?” I asked.

“No, not for that. But Drex says he knows a man who can give him some papers. Or, if we can't do that, then he might just use your . . .” His words trailed off and Lonnie hung his head, as if embarrassed by his admission. I wondered which one of us he was trying to protect.

“Drex will use my identity,” I said. “I see. A trucker. How very butch of me.” I offered a feeble smile and directed Lonnie to the front of the house. “I keep my letterhead and business accounts in the shop, but you know that already. We will need to go in there to write the contract.”

As Lonnie followed me into the shop, I remembered the afternoon so many months before where I had shown him the house, the shop, hoping to impress him with my affluence. Had he been scouting me even then? Had Drexel told him about me in prison, that I was an easy mark? Was my inviting him to the house to seduce him merely a coincidence in a plan where I was not the player but the one being played? If that was true, and I knew that it was, I felt that my heart could burst with sadness, that if I began to cry for the level of this deception that had been thrust upon me, that I could not cry hard enough or long enough and that I would surely split in two from grief. I was now not only prepared to die, I welcomed it.