Bluetick Revenge (19 page)

I benched 445 today. You’re a puss.

I found a black marker at the counter and wrote “Return to Sender” across the back of the card, then dropped it into the slot
for outgoing mail.

W
E MADE LOVE THAT NIGHT
and fell asleep in each other’s arms under a layer of cozy quilts my grandmother had made many years ago. The wind, always
present between October and May, picked up after midnight. It comes right down off the Continental Divide, sometimes reaching
speeds exceeding one hundred miles per hour. I always laugh when people refer to Chicago as “the Windy City.”

An incredibly loud bang woke me from a sound sleep just after one. I reached into the top drawer of the table on my side of
the bed, grabbed my Glock, and looked out the window. The only thing I saw was the plastic lid to a garbage container, skimming
along the ground like a flying saucer. I was sure it belonged to my neighbors, Luther and Missy, and that the wind had sucked
it up at their place and slammed it into the side of my house. I put the Glock away and climbed back beneath the covers. Jayne
was half awake.

“What was it?” she said.

“Just a lid from a garbage can,” I said. “Probably one of Luther’s.”

“When did you start sleeping with a gun next to you?” she asked.

“When I started babysitting Karlynn.”

“But you’re done with that, aren’t you? You said there’s a warrant out for her arrest.”

I had concealed the truth from Jayne once early in our relationship, and it had taken a long time to win her back. I didn’t
want to lie to her. Not about this. She had a right to know.

“Bugg may be onto me,” I said.

“How did he find out?”

“Some members of his gang saw me with Prince up in Idaho and I guess they put two and two together.”

“He’ll come after you.”

“I’ll deal with it.”

“How?”

“I have some ideas.”

“Want to share them me? I’m scared.”

“He won’t come after me here,” I said. “We’ve got Uncle Ray out front, and the PD and the sheriff are driving past here every
half hour. Bugg’s not that stupid. And even if he was, Scott installed motion detectors and floodlights on all four corners
of the house.” This did not seem to lessen her concern. “He offered to build a tactical nuclear weapon for me,” I added, “but
I told him it wasn’t necessary.” She laughed—a little.

“I just want to enjoy our time together,” she said.

“We don’t have to stay here. We can go to your place, take a trip, anything you want to do.”

“I rented my place to some students, remember?”

“We’ll take a trip, then. Where do you want to go? Aspen?”

“How about Vegas?”

“Vegas?”

“Yeah, a woman I met in China has a brother who manages Treasure Island. She said she could get us a luxury suite at a great
rate. Maybe Scott and Bobbi could go with us. It would be fun.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’ll call them in the morning, but I don’t know about Treasure Island. I think I’d prefer Bellagio or the
Venetian—someplace with fewer kids.”

“But a suite will cost a fortune at those places.”

“We can afford it,” I said.

I managed to sleep past eight, and I have to say that sharing my bed with Buck, Wheat, and Jayne was an improvement over Buck,
Wheat, and Prince. When I came downstairs, Uncle Ray had already made coffee and put wood on the fire. He was seated at the
kitchen table reading the Sunday paper, and Prince was at his feet.

“I think Jayne and I are going to go to Vegas for a few days,” I said as I poured some fresh coffee into my Scooby-Doo mug.
“Do you mind staying here a few days with the dogs and keeping an eye on the place?”

“Don’t mind a’tall,” he said. “This here is livin’ high on the hog for your ole uncle Ray.”

I found the sports section and sat down across from Ray. One of the problems with having Ray as a houseguest is that he can
talk your ear off. I hadn’t completed the first paragraph of the first article when he said, “Ya know, I had me a dog like
dis here Prince when I was a boy growing up in Alabama. Name was Chester, and he was a fine tracking dog. Yessuh, I think
Prince here might be a pretty good tracking dog himself.” I didn’t say anything, just kept reading, but Ray went on to explain
how to choose a tracking dog, how to train a tracking dog, and he even talked a bit about the history of the breed. “Yessuh,”
he continued, “they used to use these blueticks as guard dogs at some of the prisons, don’t you know. Their sense of smell
is almost as good as that of a bloodhound, but they don’t slobber near as much and they easier to train. You see, a bloodhound
can be tracking a man’s scent, but they can be downright stubborn …”

Jayne came down in a terry-cloth bathrobe just as I was finishing the sports section. “Did you call Scott and Bobbi yet?”
she asked.

“I’ll do it right now.” I picked up the kitchen phone and depressed the speaker button so I could pour more coffee while I
spoke. Scott answered. “You and Bobbi want to go to Vegas?” I said. “Jayne’s worried about the Bugg situation.”

“I can get a luxury suite at Treasure Island for next to nothing,” Jayne added.

“It’s damn cold out,” Scott said. “Vegas is looking pretty good right now, but we can do better than Treasure Island. Too
many kids.”

W
E LANDED IN
V
EGAS
late that afternoon and found a suite at the Venetian with a fake fireplace, purple carpeting, and two bedrooms connected
by a spacious living area. It cost a small fortune, but what Jayne didn’t know is that Scott and I had been permanently banned
from Treasure Island a few years back because Scott had consumed a fair amount of alcohol and had politely asked two-fifths
of the offensive line of the New Orleans Saints to put their fucking cigarettes out. A scuffle had ensued, and we held our
own, but the security people got on top of everyone pretty quick, and nobody was arrested or seriously injured.

Scott and Bobbi went to see a show, but Jayne had her heart set on a night of blackjack. With her IQ, memory, and mathematical
ability, Jayne knows how to beat the casinos, and she loves doing it. I think she also gets a kick out of the fact that people
underestimate her because she’s a woman. I watched her for a while, then wandered around until I found the nickel slots and
played them for a while. It struck me that a Vegas casino is the only place in the world where you can see a person on oxygen
smoking a cigarette.

Jayne was up about a thousand dollars when I made my way back to her. She was having fun, but she saw me and finished her
game, cashed in her chips, and then we went outside to walk the Strip. It was a mild night, about sixty-five degrees. Balmy
by Nederland’s standards. We held hands, stopping to look in store windows and at anything else that interested us.

We walked back to the Venetian, but Scott and Bobbi had not yet returned, so we had room service send up a bottle of cabernet
and locked ourselves in our bedroom. We watched
The Big Chill
on cable for a while, got ready for bed, looked out at all the lights in what had once been uninhabited desert, and climbed
into bed. She put her head on my chest, and we lay quietly for a while.

“What are you thinking about?” we said simultaneously.

“Two, four, six, eight, jinx,” I said. “You owe me a diet Coke.”

“I don’t have any soft drinks with me,” she said. “Is there something else I can give you?”

“We can probably work something out,” I said.

Later we again found ourselves lying in bed with her head on my chest. Out of the blue she asked, “What do you think about
our relationship?”

“I like it,” I said.

“I know that. Do you ever wonder where it’s going?”

“Do you worry about that?”

“I don’t worry about it, but I ponder it more than I used to.”

“‘Ponder’ is a good word,” I said. “People don’t ponder enough these days. They get their opinions from sound bites.”

“Answer the question,” she said.

“I don’t think about it much,” I said. “I’m glad I have you. I hope I’ll have you for a long time.”

“Do you think about marriage?”

“You’ve always said it’s not important to you.”

“I know, but do you think about it?”

“I guess I feel like we are married. We just haven’t formalized it.”

“Why do you think that is?”

“Why haven’t I asked you to marry me?”

“Yeah.” I thought about it.

“I guess deep down there’s a part of me that thinks you can do better. I mean, I think too much, I don’t have a real job,
I’m on the wrong side of forty, and you’re probably twenty points ahead of me on the IQ scale. And as my puss brother pointed
out just yesterday, my maximum bench press is one hundred pounds less than his.”

“Who says my IQ is higher than yours?”

“You earned a doctorate in mathematics at Harvard.”

“Does it bother you?”

“I’m a man,” I said. “Nothing about you bothers me as long as we have sex regularly.”

“I want to adopt a child,” she said.

“The kind you have to feed and care for?” She ignored my attempt at humor.

“A little girl from China,” she said. “There are thousands of them in orphanages over there because their families abandoned
them.”

“I know.”

“I’ve thought about this a lot. It feels right.”

“So your question about marriage was really a question about getting married and adopting a child?”

“Yes.”

“I’d be honored to have you as my wife, but I don’t know about a child. I’m kind of old to be starting a family.”

“I think it might help you find some meaning in your life.”

“I think it might mean getting a real job.”

“I’m not asking you to give up what you do. I’m not asking you to give up how you live. I’m not asking you to go back to practicing
law.”

“Someone has to care for the child,” I said. “Are you willing to give up teaching?”

“Yes.”

“I mean, you can’t just put the kid in day care and continue your career as if nothing had happened.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“How are you going to feel the first time I come home and say, ’Hi, honey, Scott and I are gonna head up to Idaho and search
for some fucker named Skull this weekend’?”

“I imagine that you and Scott will head up to Idaho and find the fucker named Skull.”

“Yeah, but how are you going to feel about it? You’re a successful professional woman. I think you’re going to resent being
a stay-at-home mom and having a husband who lets you do the bulk of the child rearing.”

“Don’t try to read my mind. You don’t know how I will feel. I’m not the same person I was when we met. And neither are you.
I love you, and I think you’d make a great father.”

“Why don’t you just raise her for the first fifteen years, and then when she gets old enough to have a boyfriend I’ll take
a more active role. I’d be real good at intimidating the boyfriends.”

“I need to do this,” she said. Then she gave me a peck on the cheek.

“I’m going to need some time on this one,” I said.

I slept for a few hours but woke up around two in the morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I wandered out into the common
area to get a cold beer from the refrigerator and watch TV. Scott was on the couch in his underwear, drinking a beer and watching
a program on an educational channel. I sat down in a recliner beside the couch.

“Can’t sleep,” I explained. No response. “What are you watching?”

“It’s about these codes that a bunch of rabbis and statisticians say are hidden within the Hebrew text of the Old Testament.
I don’t usually buy into this shit, but these guys make a compelling case.”

“Who put the codes there?” I asked.

“God put them there when he dictated the Old Testament to Moses letter by letter. Why can’t you sleep?”

“Jayne wants to get married and adopt a little girl from China.”

“And you don’t want to?”

“I’d love to marry Jayne, but having children isn’t something I had on my list of things of do.”

“Why not?”

“Humanity is rolling downhill like a snowball headed for hell. We’re going to be the first generation in history to leave
our children a lower standard of living than we had. Who in their right mind would bring a child into this world?”

“As I understand Jayne’s proposal,” he said, “the child has already been brought into the world, so you can’t use that argument.”

We continued watching TV, listening to proponents and skeptics debate the existence of the Bible codes. Some proponents claim
a fiery war between Islam and the West will soon destroy the world. Others claim a comet will slam into Earth and end life
as we know it in 2012.

“That’s a cheerful set of alternatives,” I said.

“Relax,” Scott said. “The comet is going to miss by about two miles. I ran the numbers. We’ll put some beers on ice and watch
it from your deck.”

“What about the battle between Islam and the West?”

“As soon as a terrorist sets off a nuclear device in the United States, whoever happens to be the rich guy sitting in the
White House will retaliate by launching nuclear strikes on Damascus, Tehran, and Baghdad. Game, set, and match. It’s a shame
hundreds of millions of innocent people will die, but that’s life.”

By this time we were both laughing at our own dark humor. When the laughter died down, Scott said, “I think you should doit.”

“Marry Jayne and adopt a child?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“I just have a good feeling about it.”

“I thought you were an empiricist.”

“Look, I’ve known you for more than forty years, and the time you seemed happiest was when you were living with Joy and you
had that big white dog that you got from the pound and used to bring to class every day. What was that dog’s name?”

“Cochise.”

“Yeah, Cochise. You know, it still amazes me that you brought that dog to every class through three years of law school and
nobody ever said a word.”

“Everyone thought it was funny,” I said. “He was our class mascot.”