Cold (15 page)

•

Warren turned into Bobby’s driveway and the Camaro pulled in right behind him.
 
He leaned over and got his .38 out of the glove compartment.

“What the fuck now,”
Leah whispered.

“Shut up.”
 
He opened his door.
 
“You just go in the house and I’ll take care of it.”

He got out and walked back to the driver’s side of the Camaro, holding the gun against his leg.
 
The car window rolled down and there was the smell of stale beer; Pete was behind the wheel and he was alone.
 
Warren glanced across the roof of the car and watched Leah go in the front door of Bobby’s house.
 
Looking down, he saw Pete’s arm come out the car window.
 
He touched Warren’s crotch with the barrel of a pistol.
 
“Hey, want another blowjob?”

Warren dropped his gun in the snow and didn’t move.

“Now drop trow.”

“What?”

“You heard me.”

Slowly Warren unfastened his belt, his fly, and then he let his jeans and shorts fall down around his knees.

Pete touched the head of his cock with the cold muzzle of the gun.
 
“Cute.”
 
He smiled.
 
“What was the price of that shit?
 
Did you say it was going to go up or down when this next storm comes in?
 
I think you said down, right?
 
Down, like way down.”
 
Pete opened his door, knocking Warren hard in the shoulder.
 
He got out and kicked Warren’s gun into the snowbank alongside the driveway.
 
Tucking his gun in his belt, he said, “I hate these things.
 
They’re for chickens.”

His fist came up out of the dark and caught Warren on the left cheekbone.
 
Warren broke his fall with his hands in the cold snow and he scraped his right palm.

“Give it to me,” Pete said.

“I don’t have it.
 
It’s gone.”

“What do you mean
gone?
 
You sold it?”

Warren was on all fours and he stared down at his blood in the snow.
 
He thought it was coming from his nose, but it could have been coming from his mouth too.
 
If he said he’d sold the coke, he’d probably have to give the money to Pete.
 
“No,” he said.
 
“We just used it up.”

He waited and after a moment he thought perhaps that would settle it.
 
Then Pete leaned over and punched him again, this time behind the left ear.

“Free?” Pete said.
 
“Free?
 
Christ, if she starts expecting free hits of coke every time she goes parking, a lot of guys will end up just staying home and whacking off.
 
You got no sense of civic responsibility.”

Rolling on his side in the snow, Warren reached into his coat pocket, took out the plastic vial of pills and held them up.
 
Pete took the vial and Warren heard it rattle as it was stuffed into the pocket of his jeans.
 
Pete’s leg swung out and his boot caught Warren in the ribs, knocking the wind out of him.
 
He lay on his back, sucking in air.
 
His eyes were closed and it seemed that Pete was walking away.
 
Then the car’s door opened and closed, and the headlights passed over him as the Camaro backed out of the driveway.

Though Warren lay still, he had the sensation that he was turning slowly to the left.
 
He hadn’t felt this sensation since one night in the Gas Lamp Quarter of San Diego.
 
He kept his eyes closed and tried not to think about throwing up.

Suddenly Leah was kneeling over him in the dark.
 
She swore as she tried to help him pull his pants up, but he pushed her away.
 
He crawled toward the snowbank and searched in the snow until his hands were numb with the cold.
 
He couldn’t find the gun.

•

The phone was ringing and when Norman put it to his ear Noel said, “It’s five-thirty.”

“Okay, thanks.”

She took a breath and he waited for her to speak but she didn’t.
 
When they first started seeing each other he had been nervous on the phone with her.
 
Some guys could pick up a phone and talk to a girl for hours but Norman wasn’t like that.
 
She understood that and she did a lot of the talking at first, asked a lot of questions.
 
But most of all there were times when they just wouldn’t say anything over the phone.
 
There was an intimacy to her breathing as it came through a telephone that was like nothing else.
 
It was as though her mouth were right there next to his head.
 
Once they started sleeping together he would sometimes lie on his back with his ear almost touching her mouth, so he could hear her breathe while she slept.

“I was thinking,” she finally said into the phone.
 
But she didn’t go on.

“Yeah?”

“A good time for you to cross the border might be a little before eight in the morning.
 
When businesses open.
 
People go to work.
 
Trucks make deliveries.
 
You know.
 
Maybe they’ll be a little busy and won’t pay as much attention.”

“Maybe.”

“But in this weather—I don’t know how much traffic there’ll be at the border.”

“Yeah.”
 
She was leading up to something; he could feel it.
 
“But what?”

She inhaled.
 
“You really think you have to go, to Canada?”
 
She exhaled.

“Can’t exactly stay here in North Eicher.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that.
 
For anyone.”

They didn’t speak for a while and he held his breath so he could hear her better.

“Why don’t you ask me things?
 
Norman?”

“Like what?”

“Like what was I doing with your brother.
 
Like what happened at the trial.”
 
Her breathing had changed.
 
She sounded slightly winded now and there was a quiver to her inhaling that he recognized.

“I’ve thought about those things—a lot,” he said.
 
“I’ve had the time.
 
After a while they don’t seem that important.
 
I’ve known my brother’s—well, I’ve known
my brother
since we were kids.
 
You didn’t know anything about him.
 
Then he returns from the Navy and he’s like worse than ever.
 
I could see it, but how could you?
 
He conceals it pretty good, at first anyway.”

“You think he’s bipolar?”

“What’s that?”

“It’s like manic-depressed.
 
I read about it in a magazine.”

“Uh-huh.
 
I don’t know any medical terms for it.
 
I just know that we never got along.
 
Even when we were real little, and it wasn’t just some
brother
thing, you know, fighting over toys and stuff.
 
It’s strange.
 
We could get along on a certain level—a surface level.
 
You know, we could do stuff, go out, have a beer, talk, and everything seems just fine.
 
But on this other level, I don’t know, there’s something else going on.
 
After Dad took off for good it was just us and Mom and she couldn’t control us at all.
 
I never understood it.”
 
There was silence for a while, then he said, “All right, why did you and Warren, you know—”

“I don’t know,” she said.
 
“He just seemed to offer something I thought I needed.
 
It’s like he convinces you that he’s got something no one else has.”

“Yeah, I first bought into that when I was about four.”

“This probably sounds—I don’t know, weird—but at first I thought I had to go
through
Warren to get to
you.
 
There was always a part of you that was closed off.
 
You’re a very tight person, Norman.
 
I loved that about you, but I wanted inside of it.
 
And when your brother shows up, and he’s all, all
big
and
out there,
and well I thought this is the part of Norman he won’t let anyone see.
 
You know?”

“Yeah, I guess I do.”

“And it had to do with sex.
 
Obviously.
 
I can say that now, Norman.
 
I don’t know what it was, I don’t want to make excuses—I was nineteen—but at some point it seemed necessary.
 
I don’t know what it is with me and men.
 
It wasn’t something I wanted really, not in a conscious way.
 
It was like I had no choice.
 
I really thought I could sort of get
through
Warren, and then it’d be over and done with.”

Norman took a long deep breath.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not,” she said.
 
“You were so fucked up then.
 
We
all
were, but
you
were out of control.
 
Warren was always giving us stuff.
 
It was part of
his
control.
 
Take this, smoke that, snort this, drink that.”
 
She caught her breath, and for a moment Norman thought she was going to start crying.
 
But she continued, her voice now rushing swiftly through the phone receiver.
 
“I got taken in, Norman.
 
Completely.
 
I wasn’t forced to do anything; I wanted to do it.
 
Before you found us together I was seriously considering telling you that we had to call everything off, the wedding, everything.
 
But something told me that that’s not what Warren really wanted.
 
He didn’t
want
me the way you
had
me.
 
He wanted me because he wasn’t supposed to, because it was secret, because we had to do it on the sly.”

“At the trial it came out like it was all my fault.”
 
He waited, listening to her breathing.
 
“I know I really lost it, but a lot of it’s still fucked up in my head.
 
I
was fucked up.
 
I don’t remember everything.
 
Some things, yes.
 
I know I hit you.
 
I have images of you, of my brother, of the shit that happened out in the woods—the stuff with Raymond.
 
No one believed me—that Raymond was hunting me, and because he had suddenly disappeared it only made it worse.”

“I was angry during the trial,” she said.
 
“I really
did
lose the hearing in my ear, you know, and I still get these incredible headaches a lot.
 
I have prescriptions for them, and your brother he also keeps me well supplied—it’s that con
trol
thing he has.
 
I really wasn’t faking that business about my head, which I know you thought during the trial.
 
You know what it’s like to hear out of only one ear?
 
You think it’s all silence—no, it’s noise.
 
You hear all this
noise
inside your head.
 
It’s like you can hear your
blood
moving and your
brain
working, and when you eat a po
ta
to chip it’s enough to drive you
nuts.
 
At the trial I was just—I was just
so
angry that everything had fallen apart.”

“At the trial,” he said slowly, “everybody made like I was the reason why Raymond Yates didn’t testify, because he had disappeared.
 
Afterwards I got sent away and you married Warren.”
 
She didn’t answer and he couldn’t hear her breathing.
 
It was like she’d disappeared.
 
“You there?”
 
She hung up, and he knew that now she was crying.

•

Warren lay on the couch in the living room, listening to the mattress springs in Bobby’s bedroom squeak and groan and twang.
 
Sometimes they sounded like a dying animal.
 
The ice Warren had wrapped in a towel had melted long ago, but he still held the cold damp cloth against his swollen cheek.
 
When he inhaled a sharp pain jolted through his ribs.
 
Closing his eyes again he tried not to listen, but the mattress springs began moving faster, and Leah’s moans seemed to be pleading for understanding, and Bobby grunted as though he were trying to clear his throat, and the headboard knocked against the wall, and then the bed legs thumped the carpeted floor.