Loser's Town (28 page)

Potts unlocked the door of his house. He reached in, flipped on the light, and stood aside to let Ingrid enter first.

‘It ain’t much,’ Potts said to her.

Ingrid went in. She walked around the living room, looking at things, smiling to herself.

‘It’s lovely.’

Potts pulled back the patio curtains. ‘Out here’s the patio. I got a grill. And there’s a horseshoe pitch, if you like that sort of thing.’

Ingrid came to the picture of Potts’ daughter, the one taken two years before. Potts had only managed to get it from her last year. He’d practically had to beg and wound up promising her fifty dollars before she’d sent it.

‘Is this your daughter?’

‘Yeah, that’s Brittany. Her grandparents, my wife’s family, they got custody of her right now. Back in El Paso. I’m fighting to get her back. I’m going to bring her out
here, give her a real home. That’s what I got this place for. She’d like you. You two would get along. You’d be a good influence on her.’

‘She’s very pretty,’ Ingrid said. ‘She has a lot of character, like you. I think we would get along fine.’

‘You think so? You think you would?’

‘I know so. I can tell by her face. We’d get on like a house afire.’

Potts could feel happiness come over him like a cool mist.

‘I got some money coming in soon, from this job I got to do. Not a whole lot. But enough to get my business started, I think. Enough to rent a garage and get some tools, hire me somebody to help. It won’t take much. All I got to do is get through the first month and it’ll be fine. And I can pay this lawyer, he’ll get Brittany for me. And you two can meet each other.’

‘I have some money,’ said Ingrid. ‘I could help you a little. And Mother won’t be around much longer, there’s that house, I don’t want to be all alone in that house.’

‘It’s going to be good, ain’t it? Everything is going to be so good.’

She laughed. ‘You say that like there’s something wrong with it.’

‘I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t want to jinx it. Sometimes you shouldn’t say a thing out loud, you know. No matter how happy you are.’

Ingrid came over and put her arms around him. ‘I think
you should say it aloud especially when you’re happy. I think you should celebrate it.’

‘We ought to get some champagne,’ Potts said, his arms around her. ‘You think you could pick us out a good bottle of champagne? And we could celebrate for real. We ought to celebrate me and you. We’ll get some champagne, and I’ll grill us some steaks in the backyard.’

‘It’s been so long since I was happy. You make me happy. Do I make you happy?’

‘Hell, yeah. I’ve never been this happy. I reckon I could get used to it.’

Ingrid kissed him, then went over to the patio door and looked out.

‘Amos,’ said Potts.

Ingrid turned around. ‘What?’

‘Amos,’ repeated Potts. ‘My first name is Amos.’

‘I love you, Amos Potts,’ she said. ‘Do you love me?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then everything is going to be just fine.’

Twenty

Something about sex makes it better in desperation. Maybe so much of what sex is about involves forgetting. Maybe so much of why we fuck is about, for as long as we can wind it out, for as long as we can push our bodies and our senses to their extremes, not remembering who and where we are. People wonder why the poor have so many children, but fucking is free, at least in the beginning, at least until the kids come along. Fucking is like a drug, you forget where you are, who you are, don’t care, as long as you’re cranking up to an orgasm and then the blessed event itself – everything else goes away. Marx was wrong. Fuck religion. As everyone in advertising knows, a good shag is the Opiate of the People.

Terry had nodded off for a bit and Allison had a chance to think about this. Terry excited and pleased her in a way no one else had done before, though she was unable to say why this was true. He was a good lover but it wasn’t a
matter of technique. She thought maybe it was because, even though she felt safe with him, he still confused her. He was unpredictable – in making love, in everything he did, up and down the scales between tenderness and violence. The possibilities were endless, which is why it was so easy to accept his blarney. With any other guy you could write it off as just hot air, but you never knew with Terry, and that is what got to her. With Terry, the lines between reality and fantasy sort of got blurred. It made him a great lover but it also made him dangerous, she knew.

Allison and Richie had gone out to dinner that night they’d argued in the club, the night he talked about taking her to Cabo. Alison was so tired of resisting that she simply gave in, let him have what he wanted, to get it over. The worst part was that the sex wasn’t bad and she’d always been a little attracted to Richie in spite of herself. Maybe this is what made him so relentless. He was nicer in bed than she’d imagined. No marathon lover and not terribly original, but he’d been uncharacteristically gentle and anxious to please. Being Richie, she’d worried about whips and chains, maybe something with razorblades. Instead he was almost boyish, uncertain. He’d climaxed and she thought it diplomatic to fake hers. He didn’t appear to notice and was grateful. But there was that vacuum afterwards. Nothing to say, no warmth, no laughter, you roll apart like boxers to neutral corners. As far as Richie was concerned, she could have been anybody. And she felt the same about Richie. Did Allison feel like a whore? No. It’s
the twenty-first century, when sex and power are so clearly confused that nobody worries about it anymore. Allison didn’t feel any better about herself, though it was one less thing to struggle against. Richie would stop hounding her now and do whatever he was going to do.

Well enough.

Except now there was Terry again.

Terry, showing up like the proverbial bad penny. As hard to get rid of as dogshit on a shoe.

If she’d known she’d be seeing Terry again, she’d never have slept with Richie. But she’d promised herself that Terry was history, that he was nothing but trouble, him and his grandiose plans for taking Richie down. She never should have told Terry, the persuasive little shit, about Martin and the dope runs. That was a mistake, even though she couldn’t imagine how Terry would ever be able to use it, or that Richie would ever find out it was her. Nevertheless, she should have kept her mouth shut. Richie was nobody to fool with.

Allison lit a cigarette and watched Terry sleep and found herself wanting him again. As if the very act of worrying about it aroused her. The more she worried, the more she wanted the sex. The more sex they had, the more she’d worry. Like a drug. She stubbed out the cigarette and reached down between the sheets to wake him up. She wasn’t crazy about this whole boat thing, but there was something erotic about the sound of the water and the gentle rocking, and the fact that, a mile from shore, they
could be as loud as they wanted. There’d always been the child and the neighbors or guests or something. The freedom to let yourself loose, say what you wanted as loud as you wanted, was an additional spice. Now she could scream if she felt like it and no one would hear.

The skiff made its way over the water toward the sailboat. Potts sat in the stern steering the thing while Squiers sat perched up front like George fucking Washington crossing the Potomac. Squiers had even tried standing up at one point until the craft lurched precipitously and Potts told him to set his fat ass down. It was dark and they ran without lights, though the only real danger was getting ploughed by some motorboat. No one else was on the water, though, and the skiff simply followed the line between the lighted harbor and the bobbing lights of Terry’s boat anchored a mile out.

The evening had started out badly and wasn’t getting any better. Richie had worked out this elaborate plan involving an ‘amphibious assault’ on Terry’s boat. Like the D-Day invasions, it sounded plausible until you tried it, then the real problems popped up out of nowhere. Like getting a boat. First you get a small boat, says Richie. Only Richie knows shit about boats, large or small. Richie has seen too many fucking commando movies. He envisioned a rubber, Jacques Cousteau-like Zodiac creeping up in the night. In reality all Potts could get was a frail, wooden piece of crap that took on water like a sieve and had an
engine that wouldn’t blend mayonnaise yet sounded like a freighter. And even this had cost them two hundred bucks to borrow from an old smelly bastard who sold bait on the docks and wanted three hundred until Squiers leaned on him a little. Periodically Potts would bitch at Squiers to pick up the fucking bucket and bail.

Then there was the small matter of the drugs.

Potts’ drug days were long behind him, though God knows he sucked down enough tequila and beer to float a barge. On this particular evening he’d felt the need for something more appropriate, however. He was a nervous wreck about the whole fucking thing, didn’t want to do it, didn’t know if he was actually capable of doing it, though he was desperate for the bonus Richie had promised. His stomach had been churning since Richie had laid this on him, so drinking was out, but he was shaking too hard to carry it off without aid. What he needed was a Xanax or something to take the edge off and forestall a grand case of the whirling-twirlies. Potts had rummaged through his medicine cabinet and the various drawers in his house before leaving and could find no worthy chemicals. So he hit the tequila, which only made things worse, since now he felt ready to both shit and puke on himself.

It was here he made his great mistake, from which all others would follow: he listened to Squiers. Normally he would never do this for the obvious reasons that Squiers was insane and a pathological liar and was only useful for the threat of violence, which he was good at. As they left
LA headed toward Ventura, Squiers was driving as usual and Potts was squirmy in the passenger seat.

‘You nervous?’ Squiers said to him, smiling.

‘I’m fine,’ said Potts, though clearly he wasn’t. He was one short step from telling Squiers to pull over and let him out so he could puke on the side of the road and hitchhike back home. He couldn’t go through with this. It was Squiers’ type of job, though Squiers couldn’t be trusted to do it without getting out of hand.

‘You want a Xanax?’ said Squiers.

Potts felt a ray of hope when he heard the word ‘Xanax’, like a small gift from God. Of course he knew better – this was Squiers after all – but he was desperate. ‘You got any?’

‘Sure,’ said Squiers. He reached into his coat pocket and fished out three vials of pills. This in itself was a bad sign. Squiers liked chemicals and carried around a small pharmacy. Potts never knew if the pills explained Squiers’ insanity or merely kept it from getting worse. Squiers studied the labels of the vials in the headlights of oncoming cars, then opened one, dumped out a couple of tablets and handed them to Potts. They clearly weren’t Xanax.

‘These aren’t Xanax,’ said Potts.

‘Same fucking thing,’ said Squiers.

Potts stared at the pills. It was like falling out of an airplane with only an umbrella. You might as well open the thing, you’re fucked anyway, it couldn’t hurt.

Potts, in his own moment of madness, took the pills.

By Calabassas the pills had kicked in and Potts realized,
with a certain bemusement, that he had finally crossed over into Squiers’ universe. It wasn’t bad, far easier to cope with than Potts’ own version. The churning gut went away, as did the feeling that somebody had inflated his veins. He was hot and sweating a little and suddenly thirsty as hell. A small price to pay. Objects took on a slight aura and sounds appeared to be relayed through a third source, reaching Potts’ ears slightly behind his vision. This was not unpleasant once you got used to it. Potts felt his muscles unknot and he sighed and sat back in the seat.

‘Good, huh?’ said Squiers. His own eyes were aglow with God knows what. The evil twin maybe of whatever Potts had taken. Potts was mellow but Squiers was amped. Squiers drove far too fast down the long, steep, snaky grade into Cabrillo. Potts normally would have been hopping up and down, telling Squiers to slow down. Instead Potts studied the soft glow of the lights on the plain below. The car rocked back and forth with the curves. It was like being in a glider, sailing in for a landing. Wow, thought Potts.

Now they were on the water with the exhausted whine of the pissant motor rattling Potts’ drug-addled brain. Things had been fine as long as there were no problems, and Potts was allowed to sail along padded in a fat little drug-bubble, cushioned and slightly separated from a world he did not particularly like anyway. Then came the search for a way out to the sailboat and the smelly old man and Squiers having to lean on him a little. Nothing too physical, just that looming, glaring thing that Squiers
did so well, grabbing the man’s scrawny wrist and forcing the two hundred bucks into his hand, take it or regret it. The old man took it but now the vibes were all wrong. It was then that Potts’ mellowness took a U-turn. The pleasant bubble-wrapping against reality now felt like tying your shoelaces with oven mitts. Things were increasingly difficult to grasp, leading to confusion and not a little paranoia.