Vanilla Ride (6 page)

“No one else to ask,” Leonard said. “No one else would be so stupid.”

“You have a point,” Marvin said.

“My take is the dirty cops might not like we fucked with their guys,” I said, “but I can’t see them doing anything about it. They don’t
really know who we are. Gadget didn’t tell them, ’cause she didn’t even get our names right. They know we’re connected to you, though. That I’m sure of.”

“I sort of let slip how much I enjoyed you beating Tanedrue’s ass with the walking stick,” Leonard said. “But then again, I wasn’t really trying to hide. We didn’t do no sneakin’. I did want to mention, however, that Gadget said you said we thought we were funny, as if it weren’t confirmed.”

Marvin ignored that.

“It was pretty much our usual plan,” I said. “We just went in there and beat the hell out of ’em, tossed a dog out a window, shot one of ’em in the leg, and messed up the paneling. It got a little wilder than we thought. I know that’s a synopsis of a synopsis I already gave you, but that part about us not being really funny, that really hurt, man, and I didn’t want to revisit that territory.”

“I see scratches,” Marvin said, nodding at my face.

“He tried to fuck a cat,” Leonard said, “and the cat didn’t like it.”

“Those look like some pretty good claws,” Marvin said. “Like maybe Gadget did it.”

“Now I remember why you were a good policeman,” I said. “I had to hit her. I’m not proud of it.”

“You did what you had to do, I’m sure,” he said.

“We got to go,” I said. “Gadget, she’s got to have some serious detox, buddy.”

“That costs serious money,” Marvin said.

“Maybe so,” I said, “but unless you’re going to lock her in a room and feed her soup through a straw while she’s tied down to a bed wearing a strait jacket, you got to find a way, man.”

“I know,” he said. “And I will. But I am worried about you guys. When I asked for help I was thinking about Gadget, and not much else. I should have known better. I did know better. All I could think about was her, and the only people I knew to ask were you. I knew it could have consequences for you, for all of us. But I had to get her out of there. Listen, I know two, three guys we could get for protection. There’s Jim Bob, and maybe that friend of yours, Veil.”

“I hope Veil doesn’t hear you address us as friends,” Leonard said. “He might shoot us all. As for Jim Bob, no need to stir him up.”

“And there’s another guy that owes me. He could help.”

We shook our heads.

“You fellas sure?”

“We been over this,” Leonard said. “We don’t need anyone, and you don’t owe us a thing. Besides, those guys today, they don’t want to mess with me and Hap again because we are two badass motherfuckers. Didn’t I tell you Hap threw a dog out a window?”

As I drove us away, I said, “Two badass motherfuckers?”

“Sound convincing?”

“It sounds like you have been watching too much
Shaft
or
Superfly.”

“Marvin has enough to worry about. We knew what we were getting into when we took the job.”

I nodded. “Absolutely.”

We chatted a bit about how we actually thought things would be okay. About how they were small-time goobers and they wouldn’t mess with Marvin either, ’cause there was no mileage in that.

By the time we got back to LaBorde, we had almost convinced ourselves that we were in fact badass motherfuckers. Had we felt any tougher, we’d have stopped by the side of the road to shit in plain sight and wipe our asses on dried grass with sticker burs in it.

By the next day things seemed to have gone back to normal. You know, the basics: killing another perfectly good day and knowing you weren’t going to get it back.

Brett was working at her nurse job, and I at a typically shabby day job at a construction site. Actually, it was a crummy two-day job picking up lumber and nails and all the stuff the major workers dropped. When I was hired, my boss, a black guy, told me, “You’re just one of the niggers, or wetbacks. Used to be they did what you’re doin’. I did what you’re doin’. Now you got to do it. That’s the job, take it or leave it. You’re late, I hire a beaner at half your price.”

I took it. I got paid by the day, and that was good. I still had a little money from another job I’d done that had to do with the sort of stuff Leonard and I excelled at. Intellectual work, like kicking someone’s ass up under their ears and convincing ourselves it was for the greater good. It was rough on the knuckles, bad on the shoes, and tough on the conscience, or at least it was on mine.

Anyway, in the money department, Brett and I weren’t rich, but we had most everything paid off and weren’t hurting. And, as always, another job would pop up. Also, Marvin was starting a private investigations company and Leonard and I had been promised work from him once he got that up and running. I couldn’t wait to peep in windows and take pictures of the wrong couples coming out of cheap motels.

I got off work and went home and showered the sweat off and read a little from a book by an author who didn’t use quotation marks and was
scared to death his work might be entertaining. I gave up on the book and put it in the to-be-swapped pile for the used bookstore, went upstairs, and watched TV

There was some good History Channel stuff, and some Discovery Channel stuff on, but I watched a show about some dumb blondes who had access to a lot of money and didn’t do much of anything all day but plan ways to spend that money. I couldn’t take my eyes off the program. I told myself down deep they couldn’t be as dumb as they seemed and that there was something spiritual about them. I think their most spiritual aspect was their lack of clothing. Their benefactor was an eighty-year-old gray guy who walked around in a house robe and took Viagra so he could bang all three and sleep in the bed with them all at the same time. He was my hero.

When I heard the front door slam, I switched the channel. Brett was home. I found a history program about Genghis Khan. I had seen the program before and had enjoyed it. Seen it twice even, but by this go-round I knew Genghis was dead and he wasn’t coming back.

Brett came upstairs. She looked cute in her nurse’s uniform. Her flame-red hair had slipped out from under her cap and was hanging over one eye. She took off the cap and sighed and threw the cap on a chair. She came over and turned her back to me. I sat up on the bed and unzipped her dress. She wiggled out of it.

“I want to order pizza,” she said, “and then fuck like a couple of greased weasels.”

“My lucky day.”

“And don’t you forget it.”

She sat on the edge of the bed and picked up the phone and called the pizza place. I unsnapped her bra and played with her breasts while she called.

When she hung up, I said, “Bet we could do it before the pizza delivery gets here.”

“He’s ten minutes away,” she said. “What fun is there in that?”

“About ten minutes’ worth.”

“You are correct, sir,” she said. She rolled onto the bed and I took her in my arms and we kissed. “Will you wear the bunny slippers, baby?”

“Oh, hell yes,” I said.

But I didn’t. The rest of it just happened naturally.

We ate the pizza downstairs and Brett read the newspaper and I read part of a Western novel and thought it was pretty good, even if the author did talk about starting his herd with two steers; that didn’t exactly endear me to his Western lore or his grasp of basic biology, but the story was all right. Then there was a knock at the door. I went to the curtain and pulled it back and looked out. The glass was fogged over from the cold outside. I had to wipe it a bit, and then I could see Leonard standing by the door, looking toward the curtain. When he saw me he lifted a hand.

I let him in, and felt the air blow past. It had really turned chilly.

“Winter’s here,” Leonard said. “My nuts have frozen up to the size of raisins.”

“Now, don’t brag,” I said.

Brett got up from her chair and came over and hugged Leonard, said, “We still got some pizza, baby, you want it.”

“No thanks,” Leonard said. “Well… how much pizza?”

“Couple of pieces?” Brett said.

“I can do that. And then I could maybe have some of those cookies Hap got for me and some of the Dr Pepper he got me special too.”

“I like that stuff myself,” I said.

Leonard winked at me. “You are so cute,” he said.

I sat at the kitchen table with Leonard while he ate and Brett went back in the living room to finish reading the paper. When Leonard finished eating the pizza and was ready to start on the cookies, I put a pot of decaf on, said, “Okay, what’s going on?”

“What?” Leonard said.

“Why are you here?”

“Because you’re my bestest goddamn buddy in the whole damn world. My brother. My doppelganger. My—”

“Yeah, but why are you here?”

“I always come over.”

“And you’re always welcome. But where’s John? Why haven’t you mentioned him? You know better than to jack with me, Leonard. I know you better than anyone in the world. Better than you know you.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Leonard pushed a vanilla cookie around on his plate. “John and I aren’t doing so good.”

“Could it have anything to do with you crappin’ in the bed?”

“I was mad.”

“You? Oh, say thee not such foul lies about your own sweet self.”

“I said some things.”

“Another surprise.”

“I’ve sort of been staying somewhere else.”

“Where?”

“Motels. I get off the security job, I been picking a different one each night. Quite the thrilling experience. One of them, it has one of those old-time beds where you put a quarter in a machine and the bed vibrates. … Course, it doesn’t work. But the mechanism is still there, and you can’t imagine how the nostalgia comforts me. Hey, and there’s this one cheap motel, the sheets, they got shit stains on them. I stayed there twice, two different rooms, shit stains on blue sheets. I guess it saves on laundry soap, leavin’ them like that.”

I got up and poured us some coffee and got some sweetener and cream. We fixed our coffee. I stirred mine longer than was necessary. I said, “Have you tried to talk to John?”

“I have.”

“And what’s the sticking point?”

“He doesn’t like me.”

“Bullshit. What’s going on?”

“The queer stuff.”

“You’re both queer, Leonard.”

“Really? Well, that puts some things in perspective.”

“So, John feels guilty about being gay?”

“John’s brother hates him because he’s gay. He tells him he doesn’t have to be gay. He’s telling him God doesn’t want him gay.”

“Even if God made him that way?” I said. “Provided there was a God.”

“If there was one, and he made someone gay wouldn’t God his own goddamn self be responsible?” Leonard said.

“In my book, yes. But in the Christians’ book, that rascal can do no wrong. Someone survives a hurricane, it was God’s mercy. Someone drowns, it was God’s will. I don’t like him. He’s a bully.”

We touched fists. It’s a manly bonding thing.

“Or maybe,” Leonard said, “God is gay and it’s the rest of you people who are messed up and going to hell. You ever think about that? Maybe there’s another Bible out there that tells us to stone you guys and not to lie with women because it’s strange. It is, you know.”

“Brett and I like it.”

Leonard sipped some coffee. “You see, John is starting to feel he’s not supposed to be gay, and unlike us, on some level he believes that God stuff. He thinks he’s violated God’s law, so he’s going to church counseling to get straight.”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake.”

“That’s what he thinks. For heaven’s sake.”

“It’s a figure of speech.”

“I’ve tried to tell him that even if there is a God, the New Testament is the one to go by, and it’s not tough on us queers. It’s just the old mean version of God that gives us a hard time. Motherfucker in the Old Testament won’t even let us have a pork chop.”

“God must have finally got laid between the Old and the New Testament,” I said. “’Cause between those two books, he sure mellowed out.”

“Who’d he lay, male or female?”

“Either … Look, Leonard, I’m sorry about John.”

“Not half as sorry as I am. I’ve called him, I wrote him a letter. I even did an e-mail from one of the hotels on my laptop.”

“You got a laptop?”

“John bought it for me. At home I even got a printer and some paper to print out on.”

“You are so cosmopolitan.”

“Tell me about it. But the thing is, he’s going to take these classes so
he can tell his brain and his dick that he’s been confused and he likes women. I can’t think of anything yuckier than learning to like that old pink snapper.… No disrespect to you and Brett.”

“I get your point. You want me to talk to him?”

“I don’t know. I thought about that, thought about asking you. But it won’t matter. He thinks he’s on the road to hell and wang and butt hole are no longer on the smorgasbord.”

“Leonard, thy middle name is romance. You and Tanedrue, you should get together, write a book on courting. Look here, you’re not staying in any motel. You’ll park your happy ass on the couch tonight.”