The Rabbit Factory: A Novel (24 page)

“Do you work?”

“Well…not exactly.”

He took another sip of his drink and set it back down.

“You mind if I pull up a chair?”

“Please do,” she said. He was friendly and nice and easy to talk to. She could tell he’d been around. A mature man who’d seen much of the world maybe. Somebody it might be interesting to talk to. Somebody who might even be sugar-daddy material. Potential sugar-daddy. She took a sip of her beer. Sugar-daddy-in-waiting maybe.

He pulled up a chair and when she fished for another cigarette, he outed with a gold lighter and she bent her face to his flame. She raised her eyes to him and smiled. She was glad now that she’d touched up her lashes.

By the time she’d switched to Dickel and gotten some cigarettes, he’d had another drink and was telling her about fishing for blue marlin off the coast of Cuba, and watching killer whales off the south coast of Africa.

By the time she’d finished her wings and that drink and ordered a second one, they were sitting close together and she was tipsy and wanting to kiss him. He said he knew a great steak house where they could get the best porterhouse in the whole city. Kobe beef from Japan, he said, raised in dark sheds and fed beer mash and massaged daily for the ultimate in tender T-bones.

“Well, let’s see,” she said, and looked at the clock above the back bar. It was about fifteen till seven and she knew Harv was getting hungry because he’d already mentioned it once. She never had called up to the room or checked the front desk to see if there were any messages waiting for her from Lenny. There hadn’t been time. She’d been too busy laughing and talking with Harv because he was just plain fun to be around. One of those kinds of people.

“You need to eat, don’t you?” Harv said. He looked at her drink.

“Hell, they’ve got a bar. Come on, let’s go.” And he started getting up, so she just went with him.

When she woke up, she felt surprisingly refreshed.

When she looked out the window, it was getting dark.

When she stretched and yawned, it felt pretty good.

But when she reached for her leg, it was already gone.

He looked in the rearview mirror. Something was behind him. He had the gun there in his pocket and he pulled it out and laid it on the seat. They weren’t going to take him alive if he got a chance to shoot. He’d already made up his mind about all that stuff. Fuck going back to that place. There was a paper sack on the seat and he’d noticed it when he’d first gotten in. The headlights back there weren’t getting any closer. He tried not to worry about it. If it was cops, they wouldn’t turn their lights on until they could read the tag and determine that it had been stolen. The person at the store was probably just now calling somebody for help. Everything took time. It took time for the truck to get hot. It took time for meat to thaw out. It took time to serve time.

He reached his hand out and felt the side of the sack. It was cold, it was hard. He wasn’t going to believe that. But his fingers found the fold of paper and opened it up and he stuck his hand down in it and felt cold round tops with pop-up tabs, meshed in a plastic template. He separated one and pulled it out and held it up. In the dim blue light from the dash, he could see that he was holding a cold Miller tallboy. Like a gift from some ragged angel. It said right there on the label that it was the champagne of bottled beers.

Then the leg began to move again.

It was black as the inside of a tomb down there, which was real good. He just swung on in like he lived there, and wondered if anybody did, because there weren’t many tire tracks, just a few, and he couldn’t tell if they were fresh or not. If things could go his way, just for a few minutes, he could open the back of the truck, pull the deer out of the way, pull a few boxes out until he saw the one with the red streak, get it, and be on his way. If a cop stopped him, he’d just have to kill him. He was past the point of doing anything else now.

Slow, slow, he pulled around the curve. The truck was sitting right there where he’d left it about twenty-four hours before. Maybe this was just a farming road. Maybe there were some fields on down past the rest of these trees and maybe the only vehicles that ever came in here were tractors and combines and fuel trucks. Maybe nobody who came down this road would think anything about a truck left sitting for a day or so. He’d just have to make it fast.

He stopped right behind the reefer truck and left the stolen pickup running. He got out and went quickly to the back door. When he opened it, he could see the whitetail’s horn. He grabbed it and pulled him out, and let him fall to the ground. Then he started pulling out boxes. They had thawed out some and some of them were soft. He pulled out four, then he thought he saw the weed box, but he had to lean in and catch the corner of it with his finger, but he hooked it into a flap and tugged it toward him. He slid it closer and stepped slightly aside so he could read the side of it by the light of the pickup’s beams and there it was:
PRIME RIB.
With a red slash across it. It was money he needed to help him get somewhere else in the country. Oregon was looking pretty good. Rain. Ocean. Cliffs. Hang gliding.

He turned to put it on the seat of the truck or throw it in the back end and Rico stuck a pistol up beside his head and cocked it and said: “For some reason, dumb sumbitches
always
return to the scene of the crime. So, dude, like, where’s my little brother?”

Domino looked at him. He had a couple of Band-Aids on his swollen face, and he had one tooth knocked out, but he was grinning through a blood-soaked piece of gauze and he just didn’t look real good. He looked like he might be getting a little unstable right here almost at Christmas.

The bar had filled up with lots of men and women and there was laughter and music filling up all the air. She could smell cigar smoke, which she liked, and folks were starting to crowd in beside them.

Tyrone had switched from scotch to bourbon and he had a couple of them under his belt now. He’d patted Helen on the arm a couple of times during some laughs and had touched her knee lightly once, but it was plain to see that he wasn’t one of these guys who was overly aggressive with his advances toward women. He wasn’t going to grab her tit or anything. She looked toward the door again, and Tyrone leaned toward her.

“What about your friend?” he said. “He’s not standing you up, is he?”

Helen smiled thinly. Was Tyrone being an asshole?

“He had to get off work,” she said. “He might have had some late customers.”

“What does your friend do? If you don’t mind me asking.”

Helen picked up her drink and finished it. She didn’t know if she wanted to go to bed with Tyrone or not in case Eric didn’t show up. And what if he didn’t? What was she going to do? Just stay here? If she got any drunker, it would be dangerous to try and drive home.

“He works in a pet shop,” she said.

“Oh. You want another drink?” Tyrone said.

“I hate for you to keep buying my drinks. I’ve got money.”

“I know you do. But I’m sticking it all on my expense account.”

He called for Ken to give her another round and finished his own drink. Ken gave her another look. The clock on the wall crept closer to ten-thirty and still no Eric came through the door. The drink came and it was getting hard for her now to think of things to say to Tyrone. He was actually pretty boring, kind of like Arthur.

“Are you hungry?” Tyrone said.

“Not really.” And it was true. The drinks had removed any appetite she might have had. She knew she’d probably feel like absolute hell tomorrow, always did when she drank heavy and didn’t eat, like this morning. Then almost kissing Eric. Then yelling at Arthur. Then going to sleep. Then getting up, feeling like shit with another hangover. Then starting to drink again to get rid of it. And look where she was now. Sitting here with some boring although generous dickhead waiting for somebody to come over who might not even show up. And drunk again. Damn it. How did it happen all the time like this? She didn’t ever mean to do this. But this is how it always turned out. And by the time she realized that it had happened again, it was too late to do anything about it but sober up. And she didn’t want to do that yet.

“Well, I could use a sandwich,” Tyrone said. “I noticed a deli down the street that stays open all night. You want to go down there with me and get some coffee to sober up on?”

“I don’t think so,” Helen said. “But you go if you want.”

“I think that’s what I’ll do,” Tyrone said. “I think I’ll get a sandwich to take back to my room. I’ve got an early flight in the morning.”

Helen didn’t say anything, didn’t ask him where he was going, didn’t ask him what time he was leaving because she didn’t give a shit and didn’t care if she never saw him again. Tyrone Bradbury. Big fucking deal. He wasn’t even any kin to Ray. So he bought her a few drinks. So what? He probably had a limp dick, too. Tyrone called for his bill and Ken brought it over and eyeballed Helen with a clench in his jaw and Tyrone pulled out a credit card and paid the bill. After he got the card back, he pushed his stool back and stood up. He was a little drunk, but probably not bad enough for the bicycle cops to get him. He extended his hand.

“Helen,” he said. “It was a pleasure to meet you.”

She shook hands with him, not too hard.

“It was nice to meet you, too, Tyrone. Tell Ray I said hi if you see him. And thanks for the drinks.”

“Anytime,” he said, and laughed, and gave her a little wave. Then he turned and made his way through the people and out the door. Helen looked at the clock. It was ten-thirty on the dot. Eric had had plenty of time to get over here from the pet shop. So maybe he wasn’t coming after all. And how much longer was she willing to sit here and wait? Till closing time?

She looked at the people around her. Some were laughing and talking and telling stories and others were sitting by themselves just looking down into their drinks. She saw a couple of men looking at her but she broke eye contact with them. She turned on her stool and looked across the back of the bar at the bins of ice and the wineglasses stacked back there and the nozzles that spewed whatever into the glasses. It was ten thirty-five.

She lit another cigarette and crossed one leg over the other. Arthur was sitting home worrying about her. And what had he done for her to treat him this way? All he’d done was get old. And when she married him she’d always known that was going to happen one day. But it hadn’t seemed to matter so much back then, twenty years ago, when he could still do it pretty good or at least regularly, when his hair wasn’t solid gray, when he was twenty years younger than he was now. Maybe if she could have had children, it would have been different. Of course it would have been different. She would have been wrapped up in their children’s lives and that would have given her a source of happiness. It would have kept her busy and she wouldn’t have been able to brood so much. Drink so much. But that wasn’t what she had, was it? Nope. What she had was ten-fourty and her glass half empty. She stubbed the cigarette out. The easiest thing to do would be to just finish it, walk out and flag a cab, leave the car here, and go safely home. Not risk a third DUI. Fix herself a sandwich and maybe a cup of coffee. She had a new romance novel she’d bought at Burke’s bookstore that she’d been wanting to start reading. How would that be any different from what she’d been doing for a long time already? It wouldn’t be. But being so damn tired of that already was the thing. It was old.

She decided she’d wait, have one more drink, give him a little more time. She remembered imagining what his mouth would have tasted like, like tobacco and good scotch whiskey. How strong his hands would have felt on her butt. How hard he would have been against her lower belly.

Okay. If he wasn’t here by eleven-thirty, she’d go on home and forget about it. That was all she could do. She didn’t see anybody in here she wanted to mess with. Just Ken. And his place smelled bad. And he had roaches. And fucking Barry Manilow all night long.

She’d wait a little longer anyway. Maybe he’d come on in. It still wasn’t too late for him to show up. He might have had car trouble with that old thing he drove. But she didn’t need to wait too long or get too drunk because she still had to get home someway. If she left the Jag and called a cab, she’d have to call another cab to come back and get it. That would be a pain in the ass tomorrow afternoon sometime. And she wasn’t just crazy about leaving it in the parking lot overnight anyway. Arthur had traded in the Seville on it after she’d finished her last alcohol-safety education program and gotten her license back and promised him she wouldn’t get in any more trouble with the cops. And she didn’t want any more trouble with the cops. It was the last thing she wanted. The classes had been hard for her to take, being thrown in with all those people in the class whose only connection with her was that they all had been caught driving drunk. Some of them looked slimy. Some of them had tried to hit on her while the classes were going on, once a week, for eight weeks straight. But it wasn’t just that. It was also the films they made them watch, which were of gruesome car wrecks, and bodies under sheets lying in the middle of highways, and some dead babies on a table who had been killed in drunk-driving wrecks. She couldn’t shake those last images from her mind, the cut and torn little bodies, but she couldn’t seem to handle her problem either, because here she sat again. Maybe she did need some help.

She kept sitting there and watching the people. There was one couple in one of the booths she couldn’t help watching. The young man looked to be about Eric’s age, and the girl maybe a bit younger. They were sitting side by side in the booth and he kept holding on to her hand while he talked to her. She had only one hand on the table, so she had to have the other one on him somewhere. And the look on her face was pure love. They were just kids. They didn’t know anything. They didn’t know shit about the way life could turn around on you and leave you with nothing and no remedy for it except something drastic. Either that or just suffering in silence.

At eleven o’clock she ordered another drink and when Ken brought it, he leaned over the bar toward her and smiled uncertainly.

“You’re out late tonight,” he said. “What’s the occasion?”

She held the straw with her fingers and swirled it around in the glass.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I just didn’t feel like sitting around the house tonight I guess.”

“Everything okay at home?”

She looked up at him. He had this terrible-sounding laugh, too, high and in the back of his throat, like a gargling rooster.

“Things could be better,” she said. “As usual.”

“I can make them better. Always do, don’t I?”

“I always have to go home, too, Ken.”

“I guess so. Since you’re married. Unless you get unmarried.”

Ken picked up a cherry from a garnish tray of sliced limes and oranges and lemons and pulled the cherry from the stem and chewed it. She watched his mouth chew it, watched it stop chewing. Then he put the stem in his mouth and his tongue did some things she couldn’t see and when he pulled the stem back out of his mouth, he had tied it in a knot.

“How you like that?” he said.

“That’s pretty interesting,” she said. It wasn’t very subtle, but it was pretty interesting. His tongue was the most interesting thing about him.

“It took me a lot of practice to learn how to do that.”

“You been getting to practice much lately?”

Somebody yelled for him and he turned away and went to another customer. She picked up her drink and sipped it. She hated herself for doing it, but she kept watching the clock, and the minute hand kept creeping its slow inexorable way around the clock’s face. It was about eleven-fifteen. Before long it would be eleven-thirty. Then it’d be time to make a decision. Keep sitting here or go on home. Or…?

“You need another one, Helen?”

She looked up and this time Ken winked at her.

“Yeah,” she said. “I think I’ll have one more for the road.”

But she didn’t. She had three, and sat there while people started to go out, by ones and twos, while the level of noise dropped inside the bar, while her mind clouded and hashed and rehashed her problems, while the traffic in the street out front diminished, while the night grew longer, and the hours left before morning ticked off slowly one by one on the clock, and again, one more time, Ken got to gradually looking better and better, at least in her messed-up head.