Wild Horses (19 page)

Soon to end, at least. Another hour and a half, and this town would be behind her. Her ride had said he would be here at 8:15.

She showered, then camouflaged the damage as best she could with makeup and the length of her hair, brushed forward to fall across the worst side. Finally, she broke into a giddy smile at the steamy reflection, the prospect of escape sinking in at last.

Her suitcase and duffel were packed already, late last night after work just before she collapsed for a few hours. Her stubborn refusal to slink away in total disgrace had been worth additional tips. Better still, it had seemed to unnerve Loretta, take some starch out of her swagger.

Outside, the day was bright and already plenty warm. The low quilt of clouds had blown over, and with them the suffocation in the air. Forty-five minutes until the van would be by, just enough time for her last bit of business in town.

Her boots kicked up dust along the half-formed road, as she passed a few other trailers and the patches of scrub that grew snarled beneath the withering sun. Gazing toward the khaki hills and red rocks, as imperious as ruined castles, she admitted that the land did possess an austere beauty that would have been so much more apparent to her were it not for the ugliness that the squatters had brought with them.

At the final bend of the road, before it hooked to the main street, was another patch of blight, given over to the remains of machines that had been used up and cast aside. A few old trucks sat burned or rusted down to their skeletal frames. With them lay the insectile pieces of an oil pump, slathered in grease. Broken washers and dryers. Hardy weeds. She took note of it this time only because of what didn’t seem to belong.

The car was some sporty Japanese model, coral paint pristine beneath a layer of dust, so unlike the faded, blistering surfaces Allison was used to seeing here. Its windows were down. A gorgeous young woman was sitting in the passenger seat, her dark hair limp with heat and sweat. It looked as if someone else might be in there as well, asleep, the driver’s head in her lap.

What’s her story?
Allison wondered as their eyes locked across the dustbowl of the road. She looked so young, so fresh and unspoiled, like a little china doll but with a tan and a hundred-dollar haircut. Ornate bracelets rattling on one wrist. Another hapless life sucked in by the peculiar gravity of Coyote Ridge. She smiled at the woman, got a shy, even embarrassed, smile in return.

“You might want to get inside somewhere before long,” Allison told her. “Or at least find some shade. It won’t matter if your windows are down or not, this sun’ll turn your car into a kiln before the middle of the morning.”

“Thanks, I know, I’ll have to do that,” she said, then stared at Allison for a beat too long, as if thinking they should know each other from somewhere but unable to place it. Then she turned her head away to yawn, as a large crow descended to perch on a scrapped wooden door and pick at the carcass of a lizard.

Allison walked on, recognizing this stranger for what she so obviously was: younger by a few years, less mauled by time, with vital decisions yet to make that she might still make wisely.
She doesn’t look like she belongs here,
Allison thought.
And I do.

A few minutes later she stepped inside the gun shop.

Officially it wasn’t open yet, but she’d heard talk enough, and there they were: eight or nine aging cronies who gathered on Saturday mornings as regularly as their wives went to church come tomorrow’s sunrise, to sit around and chew the fat of today and all their yesterdays. Slim-legged and potbellied, faces and hands as tough as pemmican, they drank coffee by the gallon and squinted through the window at the problems of the world.

She banged the door shut and all conversation ceased, their kingdom violated. Allison reminded the owner that she’d been in last Sunday, had looked at a nickel-plated .38 revolver and put down a ten-dollar deposit to hold it.

“Yes ma’am,” he said, and strolled behind the counter. “Are we putting down another ten today, or are we going whole hog?”

Allison pulled the cash balance from the pocket of her cutoff shorts and held it under his nose. The conversations resumed behind her, quiet and sporadic, the old men watching now with amused tolerance.

“Not planning to up and shoot Loretta, are you?” one asked.

“No,” said Allison. “I think I’ll just let her poison herself from the scalp in with red dye number five.”

They guffawed at this, slapping thighs. A couple dredged up tin cans from beside their chair legs; hawked and spat into them.

“If you don’t mind me saying so, young lady,” said another, “you surely do take a mean punch.”

Allison smiled faintly toward the floor, suspecting it was the closest thing to approval she could expect in this town. She busied herself with the paperwork that the owner brought out. Had to show him a valid Arizona ID, and had brought along a driver’s license with a few months left on it, from the year she’d lived in Tucson before moving to Seattle.

Revolver and a box of bullets totaled $242. After rent and meals, it was nearly everything she had. She still wouldn’t have made the total if not for last night, cleaning up at closing time. Not proud of it, she’d stolen a trio of twenties peeking from the wallet of a man passed out face-first on his table. The theft went down easier after she imagined he’d been one of those laughing hardest while she bled.

The dealer started to hem and haw when he realized that she expected to walk out with the gun this morning.

“Seven-day waiting period after purchase,” he said, and a few of the old men grumbled petulantly. “You can thank the Brady Bill for that.”

“I started paying you a week ago. Are you saying that doesn’t count for anything?”

“Sorry. Layaway, that was, not purchase.”

“Oh, hell, Farley, just backdate the damn slip and sell the girl her gun.” This from one of the hardier old gents in their circle. “Cash sale, who’s to know? You never sent a one of us out your door empty-handed for a week. She’s not off to kill nobody.”

No,
Allison almost said.
Not in Arizona, anyway.

Halfway back to the trailer, she took the gun from its paper sack. It felt heavier when held properly, by the grip; more real than it had moments before, an anonymous weight in a bag. She scuffed along the road, saw that the young woman and the coral car had vanished from the junklot. Thought of firing a few test shots at the wreckage, then decided against taking the time.

The bullets felt like smooth, cool pebbles in her palm. She opened the cylinder and slid six of them home; put the gun in the sack again and felt no different than if she were coming home from the market.

She didn’t notice the door to her trailer standing open an inch until she was reaching for the handle. The thin metal frame was bent where it had been pried open. Damn this town — they knew she had next to nothing, yet they would pilfer even that?

From inside the trailer came the sound of something sliding, then a thump; a muffled voice, evidently unhappy. Good. His day was about to get worse. Allison held the gun, let the sack with the rest of the bullets slip to the dirt as she walked in. Through the window she saw that the coral car was parked just behind the trailer, out of sight from the road.

The small, sweaty young woman noticed her first, saucer-eyed and frozen in guilty surprise in the kitchen, where she’d been going through cabinets. In front of the sofa, Allison’s duffel bag and suitcase lay spilled open, contents strewn out. She came up behind the man who hunched over them, urgently rooting through it all, shaking his head, and there was something dreadfully familiar about him, even from this angle.

“Uh,” said the girl. “Um. Oh wow. Sweetie?”

Allison thumbed back the hammer on the revolver as she aimed down at the back of the familiar head. It couldn’t be. The click of ratcheting metal got his attention in a heartbeat. He froze, hands raising in slow surrender.

“What do you think
you’re
looking for?” she asked.

“Oh, this is a bitch,” the burglar groaned.

“Boyd?” she cried, and looked incredulously at the shamefaced woman in the kitchen. “You’re with him?
Him?
”

“We’re … we’re soulmates,” she offered weakly.

“Oh yeah?” Allison could not suppress a laugh. “Who told you that? Did he?”

“It was a mutual revelation,” Boyd said from the floor. When he turned around, she was taken aback to see that his moustache was gone. A Boyd she’d never seen, a smooth Boyd who looked as though he should be doing pouty cologne ads in magazines written for the terminally vapid.

“Allie, listen,” he said, “can we be honest with each other?”

“You shut up a minute.” She waved the revolver, and rather enjoyed the sight of him retreating against the sofa. She turned to the hand-wringing young woman in the kitchen. “The thing about Boyd is, he’d lie to see if he could get away with it when the truth would save his life.”

“Don’t listen to her, Krystal,” Boyd said, then glared up at Allison with halfhearted defiance. “Obviously, you underestimate my self-preservation skills.”

“They don’t seem to be working very well today, do they? You break in here like this, you seem pretty
un
skilled to me.” Allison sighed, imagined the playwright somewhere up above, how he must be chortling by now. “
Damn
you, Boyd! You’re just lucky you didn’t find me a week ago, I’d’ve shot you on sight.”

“So you,” he said hopefully, “so you’re over that now, huh?”

“I’m not over a damned thing!” For a vivid moment she thought it really might feel good to shoot him — not fatally, maybe just a flesh wound to make him think awhile. “Do you have any idea what you did to me? It’s all your fault I’m even here!”

“Come on, Allie, let’s not get all caught up in blame. We both said and did some things I’m sure we regret—”

“Shut up. Just
shut up
. I don’t want to hear anything you have to say.” She lowered the gun, eased the hammer down. “You’re sitting on my panties. Get off my panties and start repacking this mess you’ve made.” She flicked the revolver at Krystal. “You too, airhead, as long as you’re such soulmates.”

Nine minutes past eight. Allison glanced out the door for any sign of a van coming down the road, asking for a few more minutes, a prayer to the playwright. As she watched her belongings being jammed back together, curiosity got the better of her.

“How’d you find me, anyway?”

“We made posters,” Boyd said. “Your face is in windows in a two-hundred-mile or so radius around Las Vegas. So … if you run into anyone who looks at you kind of funny, like they’re wondering if you’re off your medication … that might be why.”

“Medication? No, that’s enough already. I don’t want to know any more.”

“People really were sympathetic to you,” said Krystal, as if to cheer her up. “Weren’t they, Boyd?”

He nodded, said they sure were, as he folded a pair of jeans and patted the back pockets. She asked what he was looking for, what they were doing here in the first place, and Boyd smiled that annoying so-glad-you-asked-that smile he’d perfected selling pools in Seattle. Started asking if she remembered the night before they split up, trashing the hard drive of his computer and leaving a ransom note behind. Ha ha, nice joke, Allie, good one, but could she please give him the backup disks, because some of the files contained crucial family genealogical trees that would mean the world to his poor grandmother, if she could just see what he’d found out from the Mormon archives in Salt Lake City.

“I don’t have the faintest idea what you’re talking about,” she said.

“Come on, don’t you remember? You were drinking pretty heavy that night? Even the note you left me looked slurred. You signed it ‘The bitch you shouldn’t have betrayed.’”

A small facet of memory began to clear. That’s right, she
had
wiped it all clean. It was starting to come back, barely, through the Southern Comfort mist—

“So are the disks here,” he went on, “or are they inside that package you left back in Vegas three or four days ago?”

—then she lost the strand of thought, for now she really had no clue what he was talking about. More lies. They’d finally begun tripping him up regardless of which way he turned.

Eight-twelve. Whatever Boyd was trying to chisel out of her would have to keep, and if it had to keep forever, that served him right.

Allison stepped to one corner, where a lamp wobbled atop a rickety table. The day after moving in she’d told the landlady how frayed its cord was, down to bare wire in places; she’d been given a roll of electrician’s tape to take care of it herself. Tape in hand, she ordered Boyd and Krystal into the kitchen. Pulled a chair away from the table and tossed the sticky roll to Krystal.

“You,” she said to Boyd, and jabbed with the gun. “Sit down. And you” — to Krystal — ”tape him to the chair.”

“Hey,” Boyd said. “Aren’t we getting a little carried away?”

“I’ve got a ride coming, and I don’t want you following me. I don’t ever want to see you again, period. Don’t want to hear your name. I don’t want to know you exist.”