The Watchman (21 page)

Pike turned at the corner. An alley behind the storefronts led to a parking lot, where a parking valet in a tiny kiosk guarded the entrance. It was still early, but already the lot was filling, with one valet waiting at the kiosk while another parked a car. A small group of people was gathered at the club’s back door.

Pike didn’t waste time with the parking lot or attempt to find the BMW. She would be here or she wouldn’t, and if she wasn’t he would move fast to continue his search. Pike pulled over behind the Vietnamese bakery and got out of his car. The valet at the kiosk saw him and hurried across the alley, waving his hands.

“You cannot park there. Parking there is not allowed.”

Pike ignored him and pushed through the crowd. The whine was back, and louder than ever, but Pike didn’t notice. He shoved past young women with brown cigarettes and smiling men whose eyes never left the women. He stepped into a long narrow hall where more people lined the walls, shouting at each other over a booming hip-hop dance mix that still could not drown out the whine. He shoved open the men’s room door, looked, then shoved open the women’s room. The people around him laughed or stared, but Pike moved on without paying attention.

The hall turned, then turned again. More and more people were packed in the hall as Pike neared its end, and the music grew louder with a throbbing bass beat, only now the beat was underscored by the crowd. The people were chanting, their palms overhead, pushing with the beat as they raised the roof, chanting—

GO baybee, GO baybee, GO baybee, GO—!

Pike threaded between the sweating bodies that spilled into the main room, and saw her. Larkin was up on the bar, peeled to her bra, playing the crowd like a stripper as she rocked her ass with the chant. She made a slow turn, running her hands from her hair to her crotch as she squatted toward the bar, making the nasty smile, and all Pike saw was the dolphin, jumping free over her hips, screaming to be recognized.

The girl saw him as he reached the bar, and stopped dancing as abruptly as if she were a child caught being naughty. She straightened and stared down at him, looking guilty and scared. Pike stopped at her feet, and in that moment they were the only two people not raising the roof.

Pike shouted over the pounding bass.

“Get down.”

She didn’t move. Her face was sad in a way he found confusing. He didn’t tell her a second time. He wasn’t sure she had heard him.

Larkin did not resist when he pulled her off the bar.

Pike turned away with the girl, and the crowd did not know what to make of it, some laughing, others booing; but then the two oldest cousins and a thick man with a large belly fronted him, the oldest cousin stepping close to block Pike’s way as the thick man grabbed Pike’s arm. Pike caught the man’s thumb even as it touched him, peeling away his hand, rolling the hand like water turned by a rock, snapping the man face-first into the floor like a wave exploding on shore.

The people around them pulled back.

Pike had not looked away from the oldest cousin, and did not look away now.

The crowd surrounding them edged farther away. No one moved. Finally, when Pike felt they understood, he led the girl out of that place.

THE PEOPLE crowding the hall and the back door had not seen her dancing or what happened at the bar, but Pike pulled her directly to the car. She got in without a word. He backed out of the alley fast, then jammed it for Sunset, all the while deciding what to do about the cousins, and whether or not they should go back to the house. Pike was angry, but anger would only get in the way. His job was to keep her alive. He didn’t speak until they were two blocks away.

“Did you tell them who you are?”

“No.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Mona.”

“What?”

“My name. They had to call me something. I told them Mona.”

Pike kept watch in the mirror, checking to see if they were being followed.

“Did anyone recognize you?”

“I don’t—how would I know?”

“The way someone looked at you. Someone might have said something.”

“No.”

“The questions they asked. A comment.”

“Just dancing. They asked if I dance. They asked what movies I like. Stuff.”

They were four blocks away when Pike pulled to the curb outside a liquor store. He cupped her jaw in his hand and tipped her face toward the oncoming headlights.

“Are you drunk?”

“I told you I don’t drink. I’m sober a year.”

“High?”

“A year.”

He studied the play of light in her eyes and decided she was telling the truth. He let go, but she grabbed his hand and kept it to her face. He tugged but she held tight, and he didn’t want to hurt her.

She said, “Take off those stupid glasses. Do you know how creepy this is, you with the glasses? Nobody wears sunglasses at night. Let me see. You looked at my eyes, let me see yours.”

She had wanted to see his eyes up in the desert when they met. She had been all attitude then, but now she was angry and frightened.

Pike said, “They’re just eyes.”

He opened her fingers and took back his hand. Gently, so he would not hurt her. Not like with the man at the bar.

“What you did could get us both killed. Do you want to die? Is that what you’re doing?”

“That’s stupid—”

“Tell me what you want to do. You want to go home, I’ll take you home. You want to live, I will end this.”

“I didn’t—”

Pike clamped both her hands in his.

“I will sell my life dear, but not for a suicide. I will not waste my life.”

She stared for a moment as if she was confused.

“I’m not asking you to—”

Pike gripped her hands harder and cut her off again.

“If you want to go home, let’s go. If you want to die, go home,
then
die, because I will not allow it.”

Maybe he squeezed too hard. His hands were gristle and bone and calloused, and he was strong. Her chin dimpled and her eyes filled with tears.

“All I was doing was driving my car!”

Pike slapped the steering wheel.

“This wheel, it doesn’t care. The air we’re breathing, doesn’t care. Suck it up—”

“You’re an asshole!”

“Do you want to live or go dancing? I can have you home in twenty minutes.”

“You don’t know what it’s like being me!”

“You don’t know what it’s like being me.”

Headlights and taillights played on her, moving the way light plays in water; yellow and green and blue lights on the shops and signs around them painted her with a confusion of moving color. She didn’t speak, and didn’t seem able to speak.

Pike softened his voice.

“Tell me you want to live.”

“I want to live.”

“Say it again.”

“I want to
live!
”

Pike let go of her hands, but she still didn’t move. He straightened behind the wheel.

“We’re not so different.”

The girl burst out laughing.

“Ohmigod! Oh my God—
dude!
Maybe
you’re
high!”

Pike put the car in gear, but kept his foot on the brake. Their sameness seemed obvious.

“You want to be seen; me, I want to be invisible. It’s all the same.”

The girl stared at him, then straightened herself the way he had straightened himself.

She said, “An idealist.”

Pike didn’t know what she was saying, so he shook his head.

She said, “Your friend. Elvis. He said you’re an idealist.”

Pike pulled out into traffic.

“He thinks he’s funny.”

She started to say something but fell silent the way people are silent when they think. They drove back to the house in that silence, but once, just the once, she reached out and squeezed his arm, and once, just the once, he patted her hand.

LATER, when the rhythm of her breathing suggested the girl had fallen asleep there on the couch, Pike turned off the final lamp, and the room and the house went dark. He would go out later, and wanted no light when he opened the door.

Pike sat quietly, watching her. They had eaten the Indian food, though not much of it; speaking little, her mostly, making fun of the music on Cole’s iPod, and now, still wearing the headphones, she had fallen asleep.

The girl seemed even younger in sleep, and smaller, as if part of her had vanished into the couch. With her asleep, Pike believed he was seeing her Original Person. Pike believed each person created himself or herself; you built yourself from the inside out, with the tensions and will of the inside person holding the outside person together. The outside person was the face you showed the world; it was your mask, your camouflage, your message, and, perhaps, your means. It existed only so long as the inside person held it together, and when the inside person could no longer hold the mask together, the outside person dissolved and you would see the original person. Pike had observed that sleep could sometimes loosen the hold. Booze, dope, and extreme emotions could all loosen the hold; the weaker the grasp, the more easily loosened. Then you saw the person within the person. Pike often pondered these things. The trick was to reach a place where the inside person and the outside person were the same. The closer someone got to this place, the stronger they would become. Pike believed that Cole was such a person, his inside and outside very close to being one and the same. Pike admired him for it. Pike also pondered whether Cole had accomplished this through design and effort, or was one with himself because oneness was his natural state. Either way, Pike considered this a feat of enormous import and studied Cole to learn more. Pike’s inside person had built a fortress. The fortress had served, but Pike hoped for more. A fortress was a lonely place in which to live.

Pike decided Larkin’s original person was a child, which might be good but might be bad. A child could not hold for long. A child would weaken with the strain of holding the outer person together, and something would give. The child would be crushed and torn into something else, which might be good or might not, but either way the original person would change. Some philosophies believed that change was good, but Pike wasn’t so sure. That belief had always struck him as self-serving; change often seemed inevitable, so if it was inevitable, we might as well put a good spin on it.

After a few minutes, Pike moved to the dining table, broke down his pistol exactly as he had that morning, and set about cleaning it for the second time that day. He had no intention of sleeping. He still had to decide whether or not they would abandon the house, and much would depend on the Armenians. Pike was waiting for them.

Pike had no trouble working in the dark. He swabbed the parts with powder solvent, but was careful not to use much because he didn’t want the smell to wake her. He wanted the girl to be asleep when the cousins returned.

Pike was brushing the barrel when he heard them. He went to the front window and saw the five cousins getting out of their BMW.

Pike slipped through the front door and down off the porch. The oldest cousin got out from behind the wheel. They didn’t see him until he reached the sidewalk, and then the youngest, who was on the far side of the car, said something, and they turned as Pike stepped into the street.

It was quiet, this late, there in the peaceful neighborhood. The porches were empty. The old people and the families were sleeping. Cars were parked and streets were empty except for Pike and the five cousins, there in the cone of blue light.

Pike stopped a few feet away, looking at each of them until he settled on the oldest, the one who had tried to front him in the bar.

Pike said, “I figure she didn’t tell you we’re married. I figure you didn’t know, which is why you took her out. I figure now that you know, we won’t have this problem again.”

The oldest cousin raised his palms, showing Pike he regretted the misunderstanding.

“No problems, my friend. She said you just shared the house, that’s all. Roommates. She said you were roommates.”

The younger one nodded along.

“Hey, we were just chillin’ out here, dude. She came out and started talkin’ with us.”

The youngest had become so Americanized he spoke hip-hop with an Armenian accent.

Pike nodded.

“I understand. So we don’t have a problem between us.”

“No, man, we are cool.”

Pike read their expressions and body language, not to see if they were cool, but to see if they had recognized her. If they or someone they knew at the club had recognized her, they would have been talking about it the rest of the evening. Pike decided they neither knew nor suspected. Larkin was just another out-of-her-mind chick to these guys, another girl gone wild. He decided they were safe.

Pike said, “Mona has done this before and it’s caused problems. There’s a man, he’s been stalking her. We moved, but we know he’s trying to find her. If you guys see anyone, will you let me know?”

The oldest said, “Of course, man. No problem.”

Pike put out his hand, and the oldest shook.

The second oldest, who had been staring with a kind of awe, finally spoke.

“What was that you did at the club? What do you call that, what you did?”

The youngest laughed.

“He opened a can of whup ass, fool!”

Two of the cousins laughed, but not the oldest, who told them it was late and they should go inside.

The oldest cousin waited until the others were gone, then turned back to Pike with sympathy in his eyes.

He said, “I am sorry you suffer this, my friend. You must love her very much.”

Pike left the oldest cousin there in the blue light and returned to the house. Larkin was still sleeping. He brought the spread from her bedroom, covered her, then went to the kitchen for a bottle of water. He drank it. He took the carton of leftover jalfrezi from the fridge, but did not eat much. Pike resumed cleaning the pistol. He enjoyed the certainty of the steel in his hands—the hard and definite shapes, the predictable way the assembled weapon would function, the comfort of its simplicity. He didn’t have to think when he worked with his hands.