Nature of the Game (10 page)

Pain squeezed his whole body. Jud moaned.

“You big bum! Hope———Christ you broke goddamned back!”

The sun was two hands over the horizon, burning into Jud's eyes. He squinted at the gap-tooth mouth yelling at him.

The old man was Vietnamese.

In tacky cowboy gear. Jud fought back the urge to sweep the old man's feet, realized he probably couldn't do it anyway.

“Just needed a ride,” Jud said, sitting up.

“Need ride! Need ride!” The old man's eyes found Jud's bags in the truck's cargo box. “Hah!” Like a monkey, he scrambled into the cargo box, threw Jud's bags at him. “These need ride, too, yes! Hah!” Scrambled back to earth.

The desert, thought Jud. Flat, scrub brush, brown. Sawtooth, powder-blue mountains for a horizon. A big empty.

“Everybody need ride! Nobody pay! Nobody give me!”

About a mile ahead, across the two-lane blacktop road: a cluster of buildings, a trailer house. Café? Gas station?

“Do you know what time it is?” asked Jud.

“What time? All same time for you. Is now. No time.”

The old man tipped back his hat, hooked his thumbs in his belt like he'd seen
true cowboys
do in Caliente, Nevada, USA.

“You pay me, bum, I take you up road with me.”

Dien cai dau!
Jud wanted to say, but his lips were dry. Nature saves your cover, he realized. He floated back to Saigon. Never let the other guy see you lose control. Never dignify him with a curse. Keep your face and rob him of his.

“No thanks,” said Jud. “Right here is fine.”

“Hah!” The old man spit in the sand between them. “No thanks. You mean no money. No money, no nothing.”

He stomped to the cab of the truck, spun a cloud of dirt and sand over Jud as he roared back onto the highway. Gone.

The dust cloud settled. Jud sat by the side of the empty desert road. Tumbleweeds bounced past him. Sage and sand tinged the air. A lake mirage shimmered on the blacktop between his Buddha in the dust and the buildings a thousand meters hence. Something flicked in the corner of his eye—a jackrabbit—then it was gone, back in the scrub brush. The desert. Not like the high dry of Iran. Its own place. This desert. Is now.

He rose, ignored his thirst and his pains, the heat flowing to the land. Bags in hand, shuffle in his step, he circled away from the highway and looped toward the buildings.

Two cardinal rules of Escape & Evasion are Don't Be Seen, and when that maneuver fails, Don't Be Noticed. Jud stopped next to a cluster of brush fifty meters from the café. A wooden sign dangled from a post above the door, black letters burned into weathered pine: NORA'S. Half a dozen cars were parked between the front of the building and two gas pumps. Jud's stomach rumbled. But if that many people saw him, that many people would notice him.

Behind the café, a battered trailer house pointed like a finger into the desert. Beyond it was a squat adobe house, flowers planted beneath brightly curtained windows.

The cars left over the course of what Jud estimated to be a half hour. Five cars carried men, one ferried two women who wore head scarves over blue-gray hair. No new cars arrived. No delivery trucks from bakeries or beer companies. No fuel haulers came to refill the pumps. No station wagon driven by a deserted housemom came by with a fresh load of newspapers for the three metal vending machines by Nora's front door.

The screen door creaked when Jud stepped inside, out of the eye of the world. A woman with curly, faded-blond hair trimmed below her jaw sat at the counter, reading a newspaper. Alone. Swinging doors led back into the kitchen. Her face was tan and pretty, with time lines in the corners of her wide-spaced blue eyes. Her white blouse and pants were not a waitress uniform. Jud filled her eyes, then she looked over his shoulder, saw
no vehicle
out here in the big nowhere.

“I can pay,” he said quickly.

“Looks like you already have.” Her voice was husky from too many cigarettes. “What do you need?”

“Are you Nora?” asked Jud.

“Sure.” She smiled. “What can I do for you?”

“Can I have breakfast? Lots of breakfast? And coffee?”

“Sit down,” said Nora, standing. She moved with easy grace. “I'll bring you coffee and a menu.”

While she disappeared into the kitchen, Jud took a stool at the counter that let him watch the door. A fly buzzed across the room. From the kitchen came whispers of daytime TV, a portable black-and-white with a coat-hanger antenna. The screen door banged once, twice, hung silent. Jud smelled grease and bacon, fried eggs, beans. Three stools around the horseshoe counter still had dirty dishes in front of them. One of the booths along the wall and one of the small tables hadn't been cleared either.

“'Scuse the mess,” said Nora as she pushed through the swinging doors. “My cleanup man skedaddled with the wind.”

“Gone,” said Jud.

“Good 'n' gone.” Nora put a mug of coffee in front of Jud, slid over a creamer and sugar shaker.

“Where …,” said Jud, hesitated to not seem dumb (and noticable), then figured what the hell. “Where is this?”

She smiled. “You're on Route One Twenty-seven halfway between Baker and Shoshone. Death Valley's up ahead. Nevada ain't far. I didn't like this place's name, so I gave it mine.”

“Good as any.”

“That's right.” She handed him a menu. “Take your time.”

“Can't decide,” confessed Jud.

“How's your stomach?” she asked.

“Strong.” He sighed. “Whipped.”

“
Huevos rancheros
,” she told him. “Not too spicy and Carmen can cook that real good. Giant orange juice. Home fries on the side. Run you about six bucks.”

She took his order into the kitchen, then turned on the air conditioner above the door and went back to her newspaper. Jud slumped on his stool. A squat Mexican woman in blue jeans and a pink sweatshirt padded through the swinging doors. She wrinkled her nose at Jud, put steaming plates of fried eggs over beans and tortillas and greasy potatoes in front of him. Nora brought him a glass of orange juice, a napkin, and silverware. Jud had cleaned half his plate before Carmen made it back to the kitchen to turn the volume up on her daytime serial in which everyone was beautiful and before Nora finished the wire service story about a new wave of genocide in Cambodia.

When Jud was on his fourth cup of coffee, three aspirin and a trip to the bathroom under his belt, car tires crunched gravel out front.

A white Cadillac parked by the door.

The driver swaggered inside. He was further into his forties than Jud. Like Jud, he carried too much beef between his chin and his hips. His open-collared white shirt showed a gold chain, his sleeves showed the Rolex watch his cousin had snared in a Hong Kong alley for only fifty bucks. His hands were manicured, with one diamond ring. He wore gold slacks suitable for golf course or office, two-tone-brown, Italian-design loafers with tassels. His jowly face was salon and windshield tanned.

“Hi, honey,” he called out to Nora.

She kept her eyes on her newspaper as he straddled a counter stool. Jud sat to his left, Nora off to his right.

“You talking to me, Harold?” she told him.

Harold panned the room; did a double take when he saw Jud's scruffy form slumped on a stool.

“I sure as hell ain't talking to
him
,” said Harold.

Seen
, thought Jud.

“You should be more careful who you let in here,” Harold told her, his eyes on Jud. “This place could lose its class.”

Noticed
, thought Jud.

“I can dream,” said Nora. “You want something, Harold, or did you just crawl in off the desert to hide from the sun?”

“Oh, I want something, but how about a cup of coffee?”

“I got one, thanks,” said Nora.

“What's a guy have to do to get some service around here?” said Harold.

The words that came out of Jud surprised him as much as they did Nora and Harold: “You could try asking nicely.”

Don't
, he warned himself.
Forget it
.

“Nobody asked you anything,
Fatboy
,” snapped Harold. He sniffed. “'Cept maybe when you had your last bath.”

Jud dropped his eyes to his dirty plate. Breathed slowly. In, out. In, out. In. Out.

“You want some coffee, Harold?” said Nora, standing, moving behind the counter. “I'll get you some coffee.”

“How 'bout sugar?” drawled Harold.

“Your one-cal stuff is on the counter.”

As Nora stood at the coffee urn, Harold craned his neck so he could stare at her hips. He made sure Fatboy was watching him. Saw the pig body, matted hair, face bent down—and the whites of two eyes.
Good
, thought Harold. He flicked his gaze back to Nora, wondered if the geek appreciated the way her ass twitched.

She put the coffee in front of Harold.

“Hey, Nora,” drawled Harold. “I knows some guys who know some guys in Vegas. Gambling money spills over state lines. I could fix you up with punchboards. The badges around here, they'd understand. They like you. Everybody likes you, Nora.”

“Stick to wholesaling women's shoes, Harold,” she told him. “I'll stick to Carmen's cooking and my coffee.”

“Honey, I can't figure why a sweet woman like you runs a shithole like this.”

“Guess it's so guys like you have a place to go.”

The air conditioner gurgled, clanked; chugged on.

“So I see,” said Harold, pointedly glaring at Jud.

“Come on, Harold”—she smiled—“lighten up.”

“Hard to do around you,” he said. He sipped his coffee. “You could damn near break a man's heart.”

“I aim lower,” promised Nora.

Jud laughed.

“What the hell you laughing at,
Fatboy!
” snapped Harold.

Stop it there
, thought Jud, though he wasn't sure if he was talking to Harold or himself.

His gun was zipped in a bag on the floor.

“Somebody wants something out of you,” snapped Harold, “somebody'll pull your chain.”

“Harold,” said Nora.

“We don't like bums like you around these parts,” said Harold. “
Homeless
, my ass: bum. I know your kind. If you were any kind of decent man, you could get yourself a home. This is America, asshole. Not a junkyard for losers like you.”

“You done with your coffee, Harold?” said Nora.

“Guy like me, I got a home. I got it all. I got me some friends on the Highway Patrol. And I got me a mind to tell 'em there's a bum loser
Fatboy
dragging his sorry ass around Highway One Two Seven. A walking sack of litter.”

You might do that
, thought Jud.
Burn me to play big man
.

The vision shimmered before him, pure and beautiful.

“We who are called upon to serve,” he whispered.

“What did you say?” snapped Harold.

Jud kept his eyes down as he stood. He sensed Harold stiffen. Jud turned the other way, walked around behind the counter as Nora said, “You should have left long ago, Harold.”

A gray plastic tub of dirty dishes, glasses, wadded napkins, soggy toast, cups, and soiled silverware sat on a shelf under the counter. Jud picked up the tub, kept his eyes down as he cleared away his dirty dishes.

“What the hell!” mumbled Harold. Nora frowned. Harold said, “He's the damn hired help! Dishwasher Fatboy. Nora, don't you know business? Never let the hired help bug the customers.”

“You're no customer of mine,” she said.

Jud moved to the next dirty setting on the counter. He was four stools from where Harold sat.

“Honey,” said Harold, “forget him. He's so gone he ain't even here. Carmen in back, plugged into her TV set, all that empty road, nobody else but us two: we could have a fine time.”

“On the road, Harold,” she mumbled, watching Jud.

“Someday it's gonna happen.” Certitude and crumbling caution danced on Harold's face as his eyes ate her. “Nothing you can do about it, so you might as well relax and enjoy it.”

“I'll be in my grave first,” Nora snapped.

Jud wiped the counter with a rag from the tub. The next pile of dirty plates was on the other side of Harold. Jud put the rag back; kept his hand in the full gray plastic container, slid it along the counter. Toward Harold.

“Oh, hell, Nora!” said Harold, flashing his great teeth his palms flat on the counter. “Where's your sense of humor?”

Jud whirled from the plastic tub, stabbed a dirty table fork into the back of Harold's left hand.

Harold screamed.

And Jud leaned his
Fatboy
weight into the fork, the tongs piercing Harold's flesh. Harold screamed again, clawed at Jud's fist with his free hand only to have Jud slap it away. Jud wanted to push into the fork with everything he had, drive it down to China with his
chi
. Except he couldn't find his
chi
and he felt Nora's eyes on his back; felt her hurry behind the cash register by the door but not reach for the phone on the wall. Jud roared:

“
DON'T! FORK! WITH! ME!
”

“Please! Please! Please!” whimpered Harold. Streams of blood trickled across the back of his hand. Jud eased the pressure, but kept Harold pinned.

“
Please?
Pretty please? Pretty please with one-cal sweetener on it?”

“Yes! Yes! Anything! Anything!”

“
Everything
, asshole!” Jud used his gravel laugh. “You fucked with the wrong Fatboy, didn't you? And you're jerking her around and she's my friend. Now you're forked. Maybe I'll eat this piece-of-shit hand. Maybe I won't. But you know what you'll be thinking if I let you go?”

“Nothing, honest, mister, I'm sorry, I won't think, I—”

“You better think! You better think and remember. You'll think about your
friends
on the Highway Patrol. Give 'em a call. Send 'em down here. I'll give 'em something to run through NCIC. Then they'll come after
you
. They got some
swell fellas
in San Quentin. You'll all get real tight,
honey
.”