The Mortal Nuts (7 page)

On the way back to the motel he pulled in to a Kmart. Leaving Carmen in the truck, he went in and bought a Sony Walkman with Mega Bass.

Carmen's mood leapt from sullenness to childish joy as she tore into the box. She gave Axel an enthusiastic hug and kiss. The Walkman had cost him $49.95 plus tax, plus

another four bucks for the batteries. Expensive, but worth it if it made him feel less guilty for his outburst, not to mention the wear and tear it would save on his truck speakers. Carmen plugged in the headphones, installed the batteries, and cranked up the music. Axel could hear the tinny shrieking spill from the miniature headphones. Smiling, Carmen bounced up and down on the seat all the way back to the Motel 6.

Carmen gave him another hug when he parked the truck in the motel lot.

“You sure you don't want to drive over to Landfall with me later?” he asked.

“What?” She pulled the headphones away from her ears.

“You want to go see your mom? I'm going to pick her up in a couple hours and go back out to the fairgrounds. The employment office is sending me some kids to look at—supposed to meet them by the stand at three. We need to hire three more girls.”

“Gimme a break, Axel. I'm going to be spending too much time already with Sophie. Besides, you had me out there all morning.” She put the headphones back in her ears. “Thanks for the tunes,” she said, waving the Walkman, her voice two notches louder than usual.

Axel locked the truck, watched her enter her room, then walked slowly over to his own room, keeping his back straight, hoping that a handful of Advils and a short nap would get him through the rest of the day.

Axel woke up with his heart pounding. That dream again. The one where the fair was starting, and he hadn't ordered any tortillas, and he hadn't hired any help, and he couldn't find his restaurant. Carmen was following him, laughing.

He eased himself off his bed. The back felt stiff but serviceable. Must've been a muscle spasm, nothing to worry about. He looked at the clock. Two-thirty. Damn. Axel's naps usually lasted about twenty minutes, but this one had gone to nearly two hours. He washed his face, rinsed his mouth, splashed on an extra dose of Skin Bracer, and combed back the white remnants of his hair. He thought about calling Sophie to tell her he was going to be a few minutes late. Either way, she'd be pissed. But then, that was nothing unusual.

Chapter 9

“Okay, okay, okay,” Axel said. “You can drive it. Just don't crash it, okay?”

“I'm not going to crash it,” Sophie said, her voice tense.

Axel was puzzled. What was she so mad about? He'd agreed to buy all her sugar and salt and stuff at the regular wholesale price, the same price he always paid at Pillow Foods. He'd even rounded up the amount to an even twenty bucks. She'd snatched the money away from him, practically tore the twenty in half, mad as hell.

Sophie put the truck in gear and rolled out of the trailer court about twice as fast as Axel liked. “Jesus!” he said, grabbing at the armrest. “We being chased or something?”

Sophie, her jaw set tight, drove directly from the access road onto the entrance ramp, a slight tap on the brakes her only acknowledgment of the stop sign.

“I said you could drive it. I didn't know we were going to do the Indy 500.” Axel did not like being a passenger in his own truck. Sophie was always talking him into doing things he didn't like. “The hell's the matter with you?”

“You know.”

Axel considered. “You mad about the sugar and stuff?”

Sophie stared grimly ahead.

So that was it. “Jesus, Sophie, that stuff is cheap as hell. What am I supposed to do, pay you ten times what it usually costs me?”

“I been saving it up all year. And I saved all those coffee cans for you.”

“So you made twenty bucks—what the heck's wrong with that? And I don't need any more coffee cans. Would you please slow down?”

“My purse is ruined.”

“What?”

“Those sugar packs break open, you know. My purse is all sticky inside. My purse cost more than twenty dollars.”

“I'll buy you a new purse,” Axel said.

“I was going to buy a new awning. I need an awning.”

Axel looked out the window and took a deep breath.

“You don't even appreciate it. I been saving sugar and salt for you for a year, and you just think how much cheaper you can get it from Pillow Foods.” She pushed down on the accelerator pedal until the speedometer reached seventy.

Axel cleared his throat, reached into his pocket, extracted a small plastic box, and took a yellow pill.

“What's that?”

“Nothing.”

“That was a heart pill, wasn't it?”

Axel shrugged. “I'll be okay.”

“Then how come you had to take a pill?”

He did not reply. It had only been a vitamin tablet, but it was working beautifully. Sophie slowed the truck to fifty- five miles per hour, and they rode the rest of the way to the fairgrounds listening to the mellifluous voice of Cannon on ‘CCO, Sophie giving Axel an occasional worried side glance.

Kirsten Lund wore lip gloss, a pink oxford shirt, stone- washed blue jeans, and her newest, whitest, white-on-white L.A. Gear cross-trainers for her job interview. Her mother had told her she should wear a dress, but her best friend, Sheila, who had worked last year at the Cheese-on-a-Stick stand, said to just wear blue jeans. Kirsten usually tried to please her mother, but this job was important to her. She was supposed to meet the guy at three o'clock but had been waiting since two forty-five, sitting at one of the picnic tables on the mall in front of the concession. It was almost quarter after. A couple of the other kids had gotten tired of waiting and left, but Kirsten needed this job really bad. All of her clothes from last year were totally embarrassing. She crossed her legs and looked up at the sign,
AXEL'S TACO SHOP.
There was this picture of a guy with a Mexican hat on. He was smiling, and he looked like a nice guy. She caught herself biting her fingernail, took a file from her purse, and repaired the rough edge she had left. The fair would last twelve days. Sheila had told her if she worked every day she could make six or seven hundred dollars. That would buy a lot of clothes. Kirsten unwrapped a stick of Freedent and folded it into her mouth.

At three-twenty, two more girls walked up to Axel's Taco Shop. They both had dark-brown hair and were wearing jeans and T-shirts. Kirsten thought they looked Mexican, which was not good. She figured that Axel, who might be the guy on the sign, would hire Mexican girls first. The two girls stood looking at the stand, pointing and talking, then sat down on the grass, in the shade provided by the stand, and lit cigarettes. A boy with long hair, wearing a Metallica T-shirt, wandered over and squatted in front of them. One of the girls gave him a cigarette and lit it. A few minutes later, two more girls, fortunately not Mexican, had arrived. Kirsten frowned at her competition. She had to get this job.

Five minutes later, a white pickup truck pulled up to the curb at the lower end of the mall. A tall, balding old man and a woman with bleached hair and sunglasses got out and approached the taco stand. The old man didn't look like the guy on the sign, but Kirsten was sure he was the one. He looked like an Axel. She closed her eyes and swallowed the wad of gum, took a deep breath, stood up, and walked to meet them.

“Hi,” she said, intercepting them twenty feet away from the taco stand. She put out her right hand. “My name is Kirsten Lund, and I'm here to apply for a job.”

Axel stopped, a little startled. He reached out and shook the girl's hand, then looked past her at the five kids who were sitting in the shade, watching sullenly. Kirsten Lund was tall and healthy-looking, and her shoes were white and clean. Her blond hair was teased up into a sort of halo around her forehead; the rest of it cascaded down her back in a torrent of heat-treated curls. She looked strong, her shoulders pulled back and her breasts thrust forward, and she was smiling so he could see her excellent teeth. She looked like a tennis player.

“You're hired,” he said. He turned to Sophie. “Okay with you?”

Sophie frowned, crossed her arms, and examined Kirsten Lund. She wasn't sure she liked the way the girl had come right up to them and asked for the job. A girl like that would be asking for things all day long. She would be wanting to have her way.

“You have any fast-food experience?” she asked.

“Sure,” said Kirsten. “I always work at the pancake breakfasts at my church.”

Sophie looked at Axel. “She makes pancakes at church. You still want to hire her?”

“I'm real fast,” Kirsten said.

“Can you work Friday and Saturday nights?” Axel asked.

Kirsten hesitated, then said, “Sure. I can work whenever you want. I'll take all the work you can give me.”

“You're hired,” said Axel. He regarded the other five applicants. “We need two more,” he said to Sophie. “You go ahead and pick 'em. Ask 'em if they know the difference between a taco and a burrito.” He turned back to Kirsten. “Are you a tennis player?”

Wow. Kirsten couldn't believe she had actually done it. Walked right up to him and got the job. And he said she could make $700 easy, maybe even more if she worked every day. In less than two weeks she would have all that money, more money than she had ever had at one time ever in her life. Plus, Axel was a really nice guy. He was going to give her six dollars an hour, which he said was a dollar an hour more than he was paying anybody else, because he said he knew right away she was a hard worker. He told her not to mention this to any of the other help.

Waiting for the bus that would take her back home, Kirsten began mentally to spend her earnings. By the time the bus arrived, she had gone through three hundred dollars, and she still saw herself in the sweater department at Dayton's.

Chapter 10

Carmen held the french fry between her thumb and forefinger, smiling at it. Sophie looked up from her salad, irritated.

“Are you going to eat it?” she asked.

Slowly, Carmen inserted the fry in her mouth, bit the tip off, and chewed.

“I don't think she's hungry,” Axel said.

“I'm hungry. I just like to eat slow.” She took another small bite.

Sophie fished an olive from her salad bowl, watching Carmen.

“So,” Axel said. “Tomorrow's the big day. The weather's supposed to be perfect. Should be a good crowd.”

Both Carmen and Sophie ignored him. Sophie's narrowed eyes were locked on her daughter; Carmen gazed dreamily back at her.

“You're acting like a zombie,” Sophie said. “Why don't you sit up straight?”

Carmen giggled and slumped farther down in the vinyl booth.

“We should've let her stay in Omaha,” Sophie said. “Look at her.”

“She looks all right to me,” Axel said. “She's just tired.”

“That's right, I'm just tired.”

“You're both nuts.” Sophie stabbed a chunk of lettuce.

Axel, who had finished his porterhouse a few minutes before, rattled the ice in his glass. Every year, he took Sophie and Carmen out to dinner at Flannery's Steakhouse the night before the fair. Neither of them ever ordered steak, and every year they found something to argue about. It wasn't worth it. Next year he'd just give them each some flowers and let them order takeout.

Carmen was slowly dissecting her deep-fried walleye, scraping off the breading, separating the fillet, picking out the tiny black veins, every now and then placing a small piece of white flesh in her mouth. Axel could see Sophie struggling to keep her mouth shut. It wouldn't last. She was right about her daughter, of course. Carmen was acting as if she was terminally bored. Maybe this was one of those things young people did to drive old folks crazy. He'd done his share, Axel recalled. He wasn't going to worry about it. Once the fair started, she wouldn't have time to be bored. Once those customers got a load of his new menu item, the Bueno Burrito, she'd be too busy to feel anything.

“Can I watch TV in your room?” Carmen asked as she stepped down from the truck. They were stopped in front of her room, number 19.

Axel put the transmission in Park and leaned past Sophie. “Why? Don't you have a TV?”

“It's a little one. You got that big screen.”

“Well, you can't watch it. I don't like people in my room when I'm not there.”

Carmen pushed out her lower lip. “I just want to watch for a little while.”

“Not tonight. I have to take your mother home.”

Carmen slammed the truck door. Axel waited until she had let herself into her room, then he rolled out of the parking lot.

“Why wouldn't you let her watch your TV?” Sophie asked.

Axel took a minute to reply. “I don't want to get home, have my room stinking of cigarettes.”

Sophie nodded. “I'm glad she wanted to be dropped off first. She was getting on my nerves.”

“She's always got on your nerves.”

“Not always. Only since she turned twelve.”

“That's a tough age.”

“So's thirty-nine.”

Axel laughed. Sophie had been thirty-nine for nearly a decade.

Sophie said, “What's so funny?”

Carmen lay on her back on the bed, finding animal shapes in the ceiling tiles. So far she had found a wolf, a kangaroo, and two bunnies. The bunnies were screwing. She was glad she hadn't had to ride all the way over to Sophie's. Axel was probably pissed that she'd insisted on being dropped off first.

Actually, now that she thought about it, he had seemed sort of relieved.

She wished she had something to drink. The Valium was nice, it had kept her calm during dinner, but a drink would make it even better.

Someone knocked on the door. Carmen sat up, startled. Was Axel back already? She went to the window and peeked out around the edge of the curtain, but she couldn't see who was knocking. Axel's truck was gone. She opened the door.

“Hey, Carmen,” said James Dean. He buried his index finger in her left breast. “How they hangin'?”

Axel did not think it was love. Not the kind of heart- floating, bowel-stopping love he had experienced in his younger years. He could not think of himself loving this woman, with her bleached hair and her aging body. He thought about her dark eyes, always squinting because she would never admit to needing glasses. It was not love.

Nor was it lust. There was not the hunger, the desire, or the breathlessness.

Beneath him, in the dark, Sophie was breathing through her nose. Sounds like short, sharp sighs. Axel moved his hips slowly and rhythmically, feeling himself sliding inside her, separated only by a generous layer of K-Y jelly.

There was affection, certainly. For all her pretentious snottiness and selfishness, he cared about her. There was a bond. He wanted her to be happy. But the sex had nothing to do with that.

Once every couple of months they fell into bed together. They did not talk, never discussed it before or later, never acknowledged their physical relationship in the light of day. It was something that just happened between them, almost accidentally, a kind of random bonding, like molecules colliding, briefly adhering, flying apart. No sense of dominance, or of tenderness, or of submission. They remained separate, inside themselves. She never flattered him, and she displayed no particular interest in pleasing him.

The patient rhythm of their movement flowed through the narrow bed to the shell of the mobile home; Axel could hear faint creaks as the trailer body flexed in sympathy.

If it was neither love nor lust that drew them down onto this foam mattress, then perhaps it was the need to know that it was still possible that affection could manifest itself physically. That the plumbing still worked.

Sophie's breathing was coming more rapidly now; he increased the tempo of his movement. It was good. In the dark, though he could not see it, he was sure that her face was changing. She would look more like her daughter now, younger and softer, without the hard shell of fear and mistrust. At these times he wished that he could have met Sophie in her younger years, before they had both grown their hard, dry shells. Sometimes he could even believe it was still possible, that they could both become young again.

He felt himself unlocking inside; the swirl of sensation low

in his gut would soon become an orgasm. A thought from some other part of his mind appeared: In twelve hours, they would be at the fair. The smell of hot oil. Sophie's breath had become harsh and loud. He pictured her in the taco stand, rolling a burrito. Her mouth was wide open now, and he could hear air rushing through her throat, feel it hot in his ear.

His thoughts fragmenting, Axel came.

Bill Quist, night manager of the Motel 6, stood behind the glass door in the lobby and watched room number 19. What he should've done, he should have called her and told her she had a visitor. He shouldn't've just given the kid her room number, especially a kid as weird-looking as that one, especially with the kid not even knowing her last name or anything. But he'd been watching
Rescue 911
, and it had been easier to just tell the kid what he wanted to know.

He had turned away from the TV long enough to watch the kid drive his beat-up Maverick across the parking lot to her room. Carmen, old Axel's daughter or niece or whatever the hell she was, had let the kid into her room. After
Rescue 911
was over, he noticed the kid's car was gone. A little later, he saw the kid return with a shopping bag, and she let him in again. So he figured everything must be okay.

Tired of watching, Quist replaced his greasy eyeglasses in the front pocket of his flannel shirt and returned to the comfortable chair behind the counter. He leaned back and closed his eyes and thought about what he had seen. He wondered if old Axel knew what was going on. Probably not.

Quist smiled. Mostly his job was a snore, but now and then it got sort of interesting. Shit happened. Opportunities occurred. He sat up and put on his glasses and looked again at number 19. He was pretty sure they were in there screwing. He figured she would be on top, hanging those big tits in the kid's face, bouncing them off his cheeks. None of his business, of course, but it was interesting to think about.