Last Call (4 page)

She belted herself in and left the swarming lot. As she pulled into the feeder lane and began to accelerate, she passed a gray campervan idling on the shoulder. When it eased into traffic behind her, she failed to notice.

* * *

“Shit,” Trish said. “Shit, shit,
shit
.”

The southbound lanes were grinding to a halt now, brake lights coming on ahead of her like falling dominoes. She decelerated and checked her watch.

Two-thirty.
Three hours since Dean’s call.

God damned traffic.

She brought the Jetta to a stop and it stalled. The dash lights came on and seemed to mock her. She turned the key and produced only a high, breathless
whiz
. The engine didn’t even turn over.

“No. Not now. Not today.”

Traffic was creeping ahead now, leaving her stranded in the sun. Behind her the driver’s door of the campervan opened and a worn cowboy boot clocked down onto the blacktop.

Trish turned the key again and the engine started. She dropped the shifter into Drive and the car lurched forward. Ahead of her, moving at a snail’s pace, three lanes merged grudgingly into one.

She inched along with the window open, the backs of her legs tacky against the vinyl upholstery. She was a quarter mile from the bottleneck now, close enough to see that it was road construction causing the holdup—there was a flag girl up there, waving a SLOW sign in the heat shimmer—and not an accident, which was good; it meant there was at least a reasonable chance of getting through without too much further delay. She’d made the trip with her mother once last summer, and they’d ended up deadlocked for three hours while cleanup crews first disentangled then towed the wreckage of a seven car pile-up. She just needed to be patient.

She was still dating Dean back then, making the journey to his apartment in Toronto whenever she could, usually by bus, depleting her finances and her peace of mind in a vain effort to sustain an increasingly shaky long-distance relationship. She’d met him the previous spring during a week-long stay in Barrie, where she’d been learning to barefoot waterski. Dean was one of the instructors, and Trish was taken by his charm, skill and ambition, not to mention his striking good looks. He seemed so unselfish at first, and Trish fell hard, giving him her virginity a few months later. But he chose to take it in the back of his father’s van with a six pack of beer in his belly, ignoring her mild objections about the location and making her feel trampy, just one of many lapses of consideration she began to notice once the fog of infatuation lifted. It wasn’t long before the true depth of his self-centeredness became apparent, but by then Trish was committed, determined to make the relationship work...and avoid ending up like her mother, always chasing love away.

A monstrous yellow machine came roaring along the breakdown lane to her left, billowing dust and diesel exhaust. It’s towering flank came within a foot of Trish’s elbow on the sill, startling her, and she cranked the window shut against the choking reek of the thing. Within seconds the interior of the car was an oven.

And traffic came to a halt again.

* * *

On a radio signal from Rob Toland, the site foreman, Patty Holzer rotated her traffic sign from SLOW to STOP. Rob was approaching her now, all tan and buff and gorgeous coming out of the office trailer, and Patty smiled at him and thought how appealing she must look in her hardhat, grimy jeans and orange reflective vest.

But when he returned her smile, she knew she had him.

Standing next to her now, Rob pointed north and Patty saw a big CAT 657E scraper lumbering toward them in the breakdown lane. He said, “I need you to make room up here, Patty, help Fletch get that scraper turned around.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

“Park him on the median for a bit,” Rob said. “Hector’s ready to blast the overhang off that rock cut down there,” pointing south now, “then I want you to move some of this traffic through. If Fletch hasn’t fallen asleep by then, get him turned around so we can finish clearing this bottleneck.”

“Got it.”

Grinning now, Rob said, “We still on for Zak’s tonight?”

Patty tilted the hardhat back on her head and frowned. “I thought you made it a policy never to fraternize with the hired help.”

“But, I thought we...”

Patty laughed, pleased at how dejected he looked. She said, “I’ll
be
there, mister. With bells on. But in the meantime, see if you can’t grow a sense of humor.”

Grinning, Rob shook his head and returned to the action. Patty watched him go, admiring the snappy fit of his jeans, then turned her attention to the scraper.

* * *

Aided by the flag girl, the big machine butted in at the head of the line, then angled onto the grassy median. A strident siren blared in the near distance, followed by a thunderous
!whumph!
Trish felt in her feet. Then the flag girl spun her sign and the line was moving again.

Clutching the steering wheel, Trish said, “Come on, come on...” willing the Jetta through the bolthole. She was ten car-lengths from the flag girl now and still moving, the dump truck in front of her creeping along. “Come on...”

She opened the window and an errant breeze blew the band photo off the passenger seat. Trish leaned into the footwell to retrieve it—and when she straightened, the dump truck’s rear end was right in her face.

She stabbed the brake pedal and the Jetta stalled. The line ahead began to move. Trish cursed and bit back tears. A horn sounded behind her, then another.

She turned the key.

Whiz!

All the vehicles ahead of her had made it through the funnel, and now twin rows of cement road dividers flanked the Jetta, making it impossible for the other drivers to go around her.

The flag girl was waving her through. A trickle of sweat stung Trish’s eye. The yellow machine was backing into the lane up ahead and now the flag girl was shrugging, rotating her sign from SLOW to STOP.

Trish said, “Come
on
, you son of a
bitch
,” cranked the key—and the Jetta started. She slammed the shifter into Drive and gunned the engine. The car lunged, spitting gravel, and the flag girl shouted something Trish couldn’t hear.

As she shot past the flag girl, Trish saw the yellow machine closing the gap in front of her and every instinct screamed at her to hit the brakes—but she punched the accelerator and deftly squeaked past. When she checked her rearview there was nothing in it but the machine.

“Eat
that
,” she said and wound her way quickly through the construction site. When she hit open blacktop again she pushed the Jetta up to one twenty-five, praying she had enough gas left to take her the rest of the way.

* * *

Patty Holzer couldn’t believe her eyes. First the ditz in the Jetta, now this asshole in the campervan. When the Jetta took off, he’d booted it too, ignoring her stop sign and coming within an ace of slamming into the side of the scraper. They weren’t paying her enough to deal with shitweeds like these.

Maybe it was the heat, but she’d had enough. She marched over to van, ready to tear the guy a new one. He opened his window and she brandished her sign at him, saying, “Can’t you read?”

The guy said, “Well, aren’t you the frosty cunt,” and Patty’s anger crumbled into ash. He was grinning at her now, exposing the most grotesque-looking dental work she’d ever seen, perfect white teeth randomly interspersed with decaying stumps.
Like a half-rotten cob of peaches ’n’ cream
, Patty thought, shuddering in spite of the heat. His eyes, an odd amber color, sparkled in the sunlight, and his gaze seemed to slither on her flesh. His ears were set low on his head and weirdly malformed, the lobes fused to the angles of his jaw, and he was fondling the ornaments on a snug necklace—small, intricate carvings that looked like ivory—the act somehow deviant, making her skin crawl.

Cutting her gaze away, Patty said, “Please back it up, sir, and wait for the sign,” then she returned to her post.

He did not back up.

Patty unclipped her walkie and considered having five or six crewmen come over here to reason with the guy...then she thought better of it. Instead, she called her partner a half mile ahead.

“Clear a path, Sandy. I got a perv up here and I wanna move him through.”

“Gonna be about five,” Sandy sent back. “Want me to dispatch some of the boys?”

“Negative. Just hustle, okay?”

“Copy that.”

Reflecting off the tinted windows, the sun turned the cab of the camper into a black hole, but Patty could feel his eyes on her. “Come on, Sandy,” she said in the dusty heat. “Let’s get ’em moving.”

* * *

The bitch had given him the slip. That made two in one day, which had never happened before, not ever, and he could feel her getting farther away with each furious heartbeat.

This fucking heat. Sweat stung his eyes, stoking his rage. He cranked his side window shut, the heavy tint blocking the sun.

There was a time not long ago when his rage had ruled him. At the slightest provocation it sprang up full blown, filling his skull with a tidal roar, and he lashed out at whatever set him off, be it a fridge or a dog or a human being. He was feared, that much was true. But the law got on him. Trouble dogged him all the time. Until he learned how to harness that anger. That rage. He could contain it now, like nuclear energy. When somebody jerked his chain, he could wait, indefinitely if need be, for the reckoning that was bound to come. It was an art he’d learned from a bobcat that hunted his property. He’d spent hours watching and learning. And when he understood, he’d taken the cat’s name as his own.

“Bobcat, that’s me,” he said to the flag girl through the sunblasted windscreen, eyes feasting on her snug, faded jeans. She was on her walkie now, spinning the sign to SLOW, the road ahead clear. She did not look at him.

Bobcat waited. Horns blaring behind him now.

He waited.

Two surly crewmen spotted the situation and strutted up to the camper, giving him their best badass glares.

And still, he waited.

Until the flag girl looked into the cab. Only then did he inch forward. Though unable to see inside, she gazed directly at him, like a dove in the sway of a cobra.

“Well, girlie,” Bobcat said as he rolled past. “Looks like you’re the catch of the day.”

––––––––

TRISH PULLED INTO the visitors’ parking lot at TGH at four o’clock that afternoon. She found a spot near the main entrance and hurried inside, making a beeline for the reception desk. Dean intercepted her before she was halfway there.

“Hey, Trish, I decided to wait.”

Startled, flustered, Trish said, “Dean, please, not now.” She could feel her face flushing crimson and hated it.
Just leave me alone.

She resumed her course and Dean said, “Look, I can get you through the red tape a lot faster. Let me do that; then, if you still want me to, I’ll go.”

Trish nodded and he led her to a bank of elevators. They were alone during the quick ride to the basement and Trish said, “Have you heard anything yet?”

“Not yet. As far as I know he’s still in surgery.”

The admissions department was across the hall from the elevators and Trish followed Dean inside. One of the girls at a console in there smiled and waved him over. Trish went after him, feeling a pang of something nasty. She buried it quickly, listening as Dean explained the situation to the girl and her manicured fingers worked the keys.

The girl said, “He’s listed as a John Doe,” speaking to Trish now. “Do you have a name for him?”

“James Gamble.”

“Date of birth?”

“December eighth, nineteen seventy-three.” She’d found it on the album sleeve, along with the same information on the other band members.

Getting to her feet, the girl said, “Alright. Just give me a sec.”

* * *

The bobcat had shown him how to cut his losses. He’d watched the sleek feline stalk a pheasant one day, creeping low through the weeds, closing the distance with infinite patience and stealth; but in the last possible instant as the cat pounced, the bird broke skyward with a startled squawk, leaving only tail feathers in the animal’s hungry maw. Unperturbed, the bobcat had slunk back into the trees to content itself with a few tardy field mice and a nice juicy toad, knowing there would be other pheasants, other days.

And tonight, that was what he, Bobcat, was about to do: content himself with a nice juicy toad.

His gaze was steady, fixed for the past hour on the entrance to a highway roadhouse called Zak’s, a rustic watering hole favored by road crews and long haul truckers. She’d gone in with a guy Bobcat recognized from the construction site—one of the hard-ons that strutted up on him at the bottleneck, radiating menace—but she’d arrived alone in her own car. With any luck she’d leave alone, too. Not that it mattered.

All he had to do now was sit tight.

* * *

Patty already had a pretty good buzz on when Rob kissed her for the first time. They were on the dance floor, slow dancing to Patsy Cline’s “Crazy” coming out of the jukebox, and Rob leaned in and smacked her one right on the lips. Patty didn’t see it coming and their teeth clacked together in the awkward suddenness of it, Rob red-faced now, pulling back, saying, “Oh, shit, Patty, I’m sorry,” and Patty put her hands on his face and guided him in for another, this one soft and warm and delicious. And when she said, “You wanna get out of here?” with their lips still touching Rob could only nod his head, the electricity of the moment almost unbearably sweet and exhilarating.

They broke for the exit holding hands, Patty leading the way.

* * *

The roadhouse doors opened and Bobcat’s eyes narrowed, his little toad appearing on the arm of the crewman now, both of them looking tipsy.
Good,
he thought,
makes ’em pliable
, and began to salivate, his pulse rising a few beats. An easy tension surfaced in the muscles of his lean body and his penis stiffened slightly.

“That’s it, lovebirds,” he crooned in the dark of the camper. He could hear their laughter from his vantage, twenty feet away in the shadow of a bordering maple. He heard her call the guy ‘Rob’.