Sideways (27 page)

I stared at her, speechless. It was all a little too much to absorb.

“I’m sorry.” She rose implacably from the bed. “I hope you don’t hate me.” She looked at me one last time. “And I did think there was something between us last night besides just sex. It’s too bad it had to all shake out like this.” She picked up her purse and fled, slamming the door behind her.

“Maya?” I called out after her.

The room plunged back into darkness. I tried to swallow what I was feeling, but I couldn’t. I crawled off the bed and staggered jackknifed over at the waist into the bathroom. I collapsed to my knees in front of the toilet and threw up over a thousand dollars’ worth of Burgundy’s finest.

A
round ten thirty that morning the door opened and Jack swaggered in. I rose swiftly from the chair I’d been parked in for four hours, stepped forward, and slugged him right in the face. He staggered back a few feet, then sat down hard on the carpet, clutching his nose. I shook my hand, which hurt like hell.

“What the fuck was that for?” Jack yelled, sprawled on the floor.

“You know what the fuck that was for!”

Jack stared at his bloodstained hand in shock. “I’m bleeding.”

“Get up, motherfucker,” I said, standing astride him.

Jack remained anchored to the floor. I could see that he wasn’t getting up right away, that there was no retaliatory fight in him, so I found a hand towel in the bathroom and tossed it to him. “I hate the sight of blood,” I said.

He wadded up the towel and pressed it to his nose. “What’d you hit me for?” he said crossly.

I scooped up the fifties and flung them at him wildly. The bills fragmented in the air and rained down on him like large feathers. “You actually gave Maya a grand to have sex with me? What the fuck is up with that?”

Jack heaved himself to his feet, still woozy from my haymaker. He plodded over to a chair and planted himself heavily in it. “So what’s the big deal?” he said feebly.

“What’s the big deal? You turned the woman into a fucking hooker. That’s what the big
deal
is.” I spread my arms in disbelief. “And just when I was beginning to have feelings for her.”

“It wasn’t my idea. It was Terra’s.”

“Oh, right.
She
put you up to it? Is that what you’re telling me?” I telescoped my head forward, daring him to explain himself.

“That’s right.” He glanced at the towel, saw that he was still bleeding badly, then returned it to his face.

“Come on, give me a fucking break.”

His voice rose a little as his argument started to take form. “I told Terra that you had a problem sleeping with someone just for the hell of it, and
she
was the one who suggested I give Maya some money and set the stage, so to speak.”

“It was really Terra’s idea?” I said.

Jack nodded.

“Jesus. I thought I’d hit rock bottom. But I guess I’ve got a few more floors to go!” I sat on the edge of the bed and buried my face in my hands. “I just don’t fucking believe this.” I lifted my face up out of my hands. “How do you think this is supposed to make
me
feel?”

“Well, she wasn’t supposed to tell you for Christ’s sake!”

“But she did! Now, among the other indignities in my life, I’m left with the ignominy of a woman having fucked me because she was paid to.”

“Don’t go Webster on me.”

“I need an explanation here before I head for the nearest overpass.”

“She wanted to sleep with you, Homes. She digs the shit out of you. You wanted to sleep with her. She was waiting for you to make your move. I just orchestrated it, lubed the chassis.”

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe there was a
reason
I wasn’t making my move?”

“Yeah, what?”

I didn’t say anything in response. It was all just too absurd.

“I just wanted to get you laid, man,” Jack said remorsefully.

I looked over at him gloomily. A malignant silence fell over the room. I was a hair’s breadth from packing my bags and abandoning him on the spot, but in my anger I still possessed the requisite forbearance to realize that this rash move, no matter how warranted by his traitorous actions, would severely compromise him. Besides, I had resolved in my paradoxically moral way to somehow make sure that he made it to the goddamn altar. If for no other reason now than that I could jettison him from my fucking life.

“How was she?” he asked sheepishly.

“Fuck you.”

“She gave the money back.” He gestured to the bills scattered on the carpet. “That means she likes you.”

“Did it ever occur to you when you were dreaming up this nuttiness that if I did like her and found out that you

“Oh, come on, don’t be like that.”

“I can’t believe you did it.”

“I just wanted to give her a nudge.”

“A thousand-dollar nudge?”

“That was way over a thousand dollars’ worth of wine, you fucking grape geek. It was our birthday gift to you.”

I shook my head over and over again. I couldn’t decide if we’d just been drinking too much and had momentarily lost our grip on reality, or if there actually was a justifiable foundation to his madness.

“I didn’t say, ‘Here’s a thousand dollars, sugar, go fuck my friend,’” Jack said. “It didn’t go down like that. I did not pay her to seduce you. I just told her that you liked assertive women.”

He kept his eyes welded on mine to prove his sincerity. His defense, at first unconvincing, slowly began to gain some merit in its unfolding, and I felt myself, against my will, beginning to soften.

“How was the wine?” he asked meekly.

“Rapturous,” I grudgingly admitted. “Beyond words.”

“See. It all worked out.”

I straightened my bone-weary body from the bed, drifted over to the window, and parted the curtains. Sunlight streamed into the room; another chamber-of-commerce morning in Buellton. I squinted against the glaring light. Then I gave a backward glance to Brad’s Remington and wondered mordantly if it was still loaded.

Jack rose cumbrously from the chair. He still had the blood-soaked towel pressed to his nose and it occurred to me that he might be seriously hurt. “I think you broke it, man.” He grimaced.

“Sorry,” I murmured. “Sorry.”

He hobbled into the bathroom with heavy footfalls. A moment later I heard the shower hiss to life. I lay down on the bed and waited for him to finish up so we could figure out what to do with the long day stretching ahead of us. Maya’s fragrance lingered on the pillow and I inhaled it over and over, hoping it would sear itself indelibly in my memory.

When Jack finished his shower and had dressed, his nose was still bleeding. Against his objections, I chauffeured him back to Lompoc Hospital. We didn’t talk a whole lot—hangovers, betrayals, hurt feelings—on the short trip west down 246. As we approached Lompoc, a dense marine layer had trundled in off the cold ocean and dimmed the sun, transforming the surrounding topography into a featureless gray.

“Any messages from last night?” Jack finally spoke.

I shook my head.

“That’s weird.”

“What?”

“That means Babs hasn’t called in over twenty-four hours.”

“Maybe she’s backing off. Letting you have your little last
hurrah
.”

He frowned and shook his head.

“Are you worried?”

Jack shrugged. But I could tell by his expression that he was.

In Lompoc, a mostly cheerless town sprinkled with cheap Mexican restaurants and minimalls with American franchises, ad nauseum, I remembered the way to the hospital without needing directions. Inside the emergency

“You guys are becoming frequent flyers,” he joked.

I chuckled, but Jack didn’t crack a smile.

“So, what happened to your nose?” the doctor asked, pointing at Jack’s swollen schnoz.

“I ran into a door,” Jack lied. “Think I might have broken it.”

The doctor narrowed his eyes skeptically and gave Jack’s nose a cursory look. Then he reached a hand up and pressed it gently with his index finger. Evidently not gently enough because Jack leapt back, yelping in pain. “Hey, come on, Doc.”

“I think you’re right. It may be broken. Let’s get you down to radiology and get a CT Scan.”

The intern led a reluctant, shambling Jack down a drab green corridor. I retreated into the same fluorescent-lit waiting room I had haunted two days before and found a seat. Directly across from me, a young couple was sitting together gripping and regripping each other’s hands. The girl was sniffling and the boy was attempting to console her by imploring her to pray with him. I bent forward and rooted around in the out-of-date magazines on the coffee table, searching for the issue that had featured the self-esteem test I had taken on our previous visit. After a night with Maya I was eager to see if I had gone up—or fallen down—a notch. I couldn’t find it, but I did happen across my horoscope for the month. It read: “Remember those times when you looked and felt like a million dollars—and had the self-assurance to know it? Although this year has been turbulent, Venus and Mars (the passion

I decided this was an auspicious time to check for messages, so I crossed the waiting room to the pay phone, praying my glory days were about to begin.

“You—have—no—new—messages,” intoned the electronic voice. I hung up, wondering if I was projecting mournfulness into the uninflected voice or if Panasonic deliberately made him sound that way. And why not a charming female voice? Have her reply cheerily: “No messages, but I’m sure there are some on the way. Hang in there, Miles, your glory days are coming!”

An hour later, Jack came back to the waiting room wearing thick surgical tape over his nose and his nostrils packed with gauze. He wouldn’t have looked so comical were it not for the fact that the tape was crosshatched to his face. The discoloration of his eyes only added to the comical effect. His look dared me to laugh at him. I brought a hand to my mouth to muzzle myself. Then, finally unable to maintain my composure, I started snickering through my nose. Jack turned his back on me and marched toward the exit.

Back in the 4Runner I turned over the engine and let it idle for a moment. I turned to Jack, who was staring morosely into space. “Two X-rays in two days. You’ve got to be radioactive, Jackson.”

After a few minutes, he turned his head slowly toward me. Close up, he looked monstrous. “Drive,” he ordered.

“So, what’s the verdict?”

“Deviated septum,” he answered sullenly.

I pointed to the tape. “And that … is going to fix it?” Laughter engulfed me and I lost it for a moment and I had to bend over the steering wheel for support.

“No,” Jack said calmly. “It’s precautionary.”

“I’m not going to punch you again,” I blurted through snorts of laughter.

“I appreciate that, Miles,” Jack noted. “I appreciate that.”

I shifted the 4Runner into reverse and started to back out of the parking lot. “So, what are they planning to do?”

Jack, unable to contain himself any longer, slammed his fist on the dash and thundered: “After the wedding I’m going to have to see an ENT and have it set! Either that or end up with a nose like fucking Gérard Depardieu!” His face was tomato red, his eyes apocalyptically wide, and the hair on his head spiked skyward.

I steered onto the main drag and headed out of town, suppressing retorts like
“Vive le France”
and “What about Jimmy Durante?” Jack attempted to don his sunglasses but he had difficulty getting the frame to rest on the bridge of his now-colossal nose. He finally got them settled, the shades protruding from his face so he resembled some kind of human arachnid. After a moment, his gaze swung slowly over to me. I returned his look. There was a slight delay, then the floodgates opened and I lost myself in another paroxysm of eye-watering laughter. Jack, maintaining his cool, flipped the visor down and studied himself in the makeup mirror. Then—slowly at first—he, too, began laughing. It was really all there was left to do.

We needed some way to kill the afternoon, but Jack didn’t feel like hitting more wineries with his grotesque nose bandage, so we decided to head over to La Purisima for a friendly round of golf—“No bets this time,” Jack announced—since we were more likely to be on our own out there. Jack wasn’t sure his fractured rib could tolerate his savage swing, but he wanted to give it a try.

We pulled into La Purisima and lugged our bags out. While I paid the green fees and cart rental—the least I could do—Jack loaded up on beverages at the snack bar, desperately in search of an attitude adjustment.

Hindered by his injury, Jack’s normally ferocious swing became the flailing of a caveman clubbing his dinner to death. After four painful holes and a succession of worm burners that deflated his spirits, Jack decided his rib was hurting too much to continue. He retired to the cart, happily resigned to chugging Firestone Ales and watching me finish out the round. The wind was up, the marine layer had retreated under the hot sun, and the sky was once again bright and azure. One didn’t need to be playing to appreciate the scenery.

“I’m sorry I punched you,” I said sincerely as we carted down the humpbacked sixth fairway.

“I didn’t think you had it in you,” Jack said, two Firestones into recovery and beginning to regain his sense of humor.

“I think the last time I actually hit someone was in fourth grade,” I said. “I was really steaming mad, I have to admit.”

“I understand,” Jack said conciliatorily, “but I just can’t believe that chick told you and gave you the money back. Doesn’t make sense.” He shook his head, bewildered. Then, as if a light had popped on in his foggy brain, he peered intently at me. “Did you say anything to her?”

“No,” I lied. Under the circumstances, I didn’t think it was the right moment to disclose that I’d spilled the beans about the wedding.

“Well, something must have ticked her off that she would give you the thousand back,” he said suspiciously.

“Maybe she thought the sex was so dynamite she didn’t

“Now I
know
you’re lying,” Jack said, twisting the cap off his third beer and taking a long pull.