Wild Horses (36 page)

Waiting for a dead man to make another move.

That quickly? It was over that quickly?

He stood, wobbly, and grabbed the Bible to stare down at its mutilated pages, cut with a pistol-shaped hollow. Flipping from Old Testament to New with his heart squeezing up the back of his throat, in case he still found that family tree.

“Tom?
Tom?
You…”

Hands on walls, Allison braced herself steady in the doorway.

“Oh, Tom. What have you done?”

“He … he wanted his Bible,” Tom whispered. “I didn’t know.”

“What, no atheists in foxholes, at the end?” She walked over, very slowly, stepping around the blood and the shit, staring at the man she called her father. This creature of dreadful hunger who ruined lives, slumped now in a chair with his gray-whiskered chin drooping to his chest, calm malice dimming in his open eyes. “No. Not him. Never him.”

Tom understood that he would never truly know what Allison was feeling as she brushed trembling fingertips over her father’s stilled skull, his face, his hard wide shoulders. She looked relieved and she looked cheated, and not quite sure how she should feel about either.

Tom tossed her gun onto the table. It landed with a heavy clatter, spinning slowly, like the bottle in a more innocent game that even brothers and sisters had been known to play.

“Two bullets left. He won’t feel them anymore.” Tom chewed at the side of his lip. “But … maybe … you still might.”

Allison took forever to wrap her hand around the wooden grip, then lifted the gun and cradled it to her breast, eyes closing as she seemed to dwell on something, thinking on it so fiercely that whenever she opened them again, those green eyes would demand nothing less than recompense for the compounded sins of twenty years and more. All in one shattering moment.

Tom turned his back, knowing that this should remain solely between her and her father. Hoping he wouldn’t jump like a scared rabbit when the trigger was squeezed, the cylinder rotated, and the hammer fell.

Waiting for Allison to tell him that he could turn around again.

CHAPTER 21

A high ball of hot white glare, the sun already had it in for him when Boyd came to Wednesday morning. He threw back the sheet and blinked groggily across at the other pillow and Krystal’s tiny feet, neither of which so much as twitched until he finished coughing himself the rest of the way awake. One foot flexed, then the other, her toes beginning to spread experimentally. When she kicked him in the head, it wasn’t hard enough to do any damage, although it did stir into life a dormant headache, and she came awake with a torrent of apologies.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, then ran one hand beneath his back and crinkled his nose. “But I would like you to recognize how sexually democratic I am. Looks like we were both sleeping on wet spots.”

Krystal attempted to sit up, propping herself back on both elbows. “I know how awful champagne hangovers can be — are you sure your head’ll be okay? If you want, I can get out my snowflake obsidian and my hematite, and see if we can make it better.”

“This is no job for the rocks, babe. I’m pretty sure I’ve got Tylenol and codeine packed away somewhere.” Boyd flopped off the bed and let the motel room settle around him; rummaged in his suitcase until his grab bag of pills for all occasions surfaced. He washed down three Tylenols, then poked a hesitant finger into his crusted pubic hair. “Shower’ll take care of the rest.”

It made a new man of him, and while it was making a new woman of Krystal, he walked dripping over to the phone and called the Wainright house. When Constance answered, he stamped one foot in disappointment, pinched shut his nostrils to disguise his voice, and asked for Lars. She informed him he had the wrong number and that was that. He’d really blown it last night — as long as he’d had the woman in such a chatty mood, he should’ve thought to ask what she had scheduled for today. Ten to one she’d have given him an hourly itinerary.

He scouted the dresser-top wasteland of champagne bottles and ice buckets, but found nothing left. A crying shame, considering the significance of the day. As cool water pounded in the shower, Krystal sang a somnolent little tune that Boyd recognized from one of her CDs. She had apparently memorized the Gaelic lyrics. Maybe remembered the language from a former life.

At the very least they deserved a celebratory breakfast, so he called the manager and promised his high school dropout son a ten-dollar tip if he’d run down the street for fresh strawberries, two peaches, and one more bottle of champagne. Boyd barely had the fruit sliced and soaking by the time she finished drying her hair.

“Oh sweetie, you shouldn’t have!” Krystal launched herself at him, arms and legs clutching eagerly as she wrapped herself around him from waist to shoulders like a skinny pink koala.

They sprawled across the rumpled bed; fed themselves and each other, smothering their giddy nouveau riche laughter with kisses sweet and sticky, wondering how best to spend the money.

“Remember the night we first met, and how I said the only shortcoming you had was that you weren’t twins?” he asked. “Well, for starters, I’m thinking of having you cloned.”

“That’s so amazingly adorable, nobody’s ever wanted to clone me before.” She offered him a slice of peach from her own lips, licking away the stray drops of champagne. “Umm … why, exactly?”

“I’d think the answer is obvious.” He slapped the mattress. “Just imagine a three-way under circumstances like that … both of you knowing what the other was thinking and feeling at any given moment. Haven’t you ever wanted to make love with yourself?”

“Wow. Oh, wow.” From the misty look in her eyes he could tell she was halfway to bliss already. “I have to confess I’ve had that fantasy. But I always imagined it happening on, like, more of an astral plane.”

“Well, we’ll work on that too,” he said, and then, speaking of astral, let his head wobble back and forth, light as a helium balloon on a dandelion stem. “Champagne and codeine. I am feeling
damn
good this morning.”

“No comas,” Krystal warned. “That would be such a downer at this point.”

“Not to worry. My judgment remains as sound as ever.”

Agog with wonder and thanksgiving, Boyd gazed down into his lap as Krystal suddenly squirmed her head into it, poured herself a half-mouthful of champagne, then treated him to an astonishing display of oral coordination as she took him past her lips without spilling a drop. Like cool, effervescent velvet, it was, a galaxy of tiny stars bursting across his tumescent skin. Here was an entirely new frontier in sparkling wines — clearly, he had not known it all. The explosive revelation left him so drained he couldn’t even find his voice long enough to propose they consider holy matrimony the instant they hit Las Vegas again.

Reverie shattered only when he checked the clock and realized how much time had elapsed, so he called the Wainright home again, without success. After two more calls throughout the morning, he began to get the feeling that Constance was a stay-at-home mom with too few outside interests.

“We’ll give her another couple of hours, and if she’s still there, fine,” Boyd explained. “We’ll revert to our backup plan.”

“There’s a backup plan?” Krystal sounded mildly concerned.

“Well, there will be in a couple of hours.” Now she
looked
mildly concerned. “You have nothing to worry about. I have total confidence in myself.”

“Okaaay.” A little spot between her eyebrows furrowed. “But why do you keep calling that poor woman up and asking for Lars?”

“We can’t very well sit out on the street in broad daylight and wait to see if they all vacate the house at once. So that leaves the phone. But it’s going to strike her as odd if she gets a string of hang-ups with nobody saying anything. That happens too many times, it starts to creep people out. But play like you’re some yutz who can’t dial a phone, all you do is annoy them, instead of turning on their radar.”

Krystal nodded. “So, with all these calls for Lars, is she getting annoyed?”

“No! She’s got to be
the
most understanding person on earth! The last time, she offered to check the phone book for me. She’s too nice, I can’t stand it.” He sank onto the bed and sighed. “I got half a mind to call her up again, tell her it’s Lars, and ask if there are any messages.”

In midafternoon, he made one last call and got the welcome sound of the other end ringing away unchecked. Triumphant, he seized Krystal around the waist and twirled her off the bed. It was finally time to go endorse that check of destiny.

“I know the way this woman thinks,” he told Krystal in the car. “I’m almost certain she’s one of these old-fashioned trusting types, still leaves her doors unlocked. But even if she’s not, then sure as Buddha’s got droopy earlobes she leaves a key out on the porch somewhere. Under one of those flower pots, probably. So, either way, we basically let ourselves in, find the boxes Allison shipped, and correct this misunderstanding between her and me, without inconveniencing extraneous bystanders. I think it’s damned considerate of us, taking everything into account.”

“And suppose she’s back home again by the time we get there.”

“Then we employ our backup plan, and its beauty lies in its bold simplicity.” It had settled upon him not ten minutes ago, as if gently blown by the inspiring holy breath of God. He didn’t know why he fretted so over these things. “You, my love, are Allison’s new roommate up from Jackson to pick up her stuff while she’s out on job interviews. Oh, you two go way back, when she used to live in Seattle, except you lost touch after she moved to Vegas. But now you’re here, you just got engaged — that’s where I come in, I’m a medical intern by the way — and damned if you don’t need a responsible roommate to help you save on expenses until the wedding.”

“And what am I supposed to say when she wonders why Allison didn’t even call to tell her we were coming?”

Boyd shrugged it off. “I think the phone’s out or something.”

Krystal probed him for a few extra details, most of which he extemporized as she steered the car past those glorious old houses he remembered from last night. Between her sweet-faced sincerity and his own inside track on the details of Allison’s life, he had no doubt that they could not only walk out of there with boxes and Constance’s blessings, but maybe persuade her to advance Allison a modest cash loan, as well, until that first paycheck came through.

“Umm, Boyd?” Krystal said. “What if nobody’s there and we’ve let ourselves in, and then she comes home?”

“That
would
be a faux pas, wouldn’t it?” Three blocks away. It was good Krystal was thinking ahead like this. “Okay. Okay. The backup plan still holds, except now you’re pregnant and you can’t wait out in the heat any longer. She’s a mom, remember. Play your cards right and she’ll probably pour you a nice foot bath.”

“This may sound strange, coming from me,” she said, and Boyd assured her that was quite impossible, “but I’m going to be sorry when all this is over. This is, like, the coolest vacation I’ve ever been on. Except for when you almost got killed the other morning. Oooo, I just love these old houses, don’t you? They have so much character.”

“Oh yeah. It’s like we fell asleep watching an old movie and woke up inside
To Kill a Mockingbird
.”

Krystal nodded. “After we leave here, what then?”

“We’ll hop back across the country to L.A., go see my giant-headed brother Derek. He’s brokering the deal with the guy who’ll get this money transferred back onto U.S. soil for us.”

“Giant-headed?”

“Hugest head you’ve ever seen on a human being. It was like growing up with the Elephant Man. And hard, that big noggin of his? God have mercy.” Boyd shuddered. “When we were kids, my other brother was buzzing us with a radio-controlled airplane and lost control. I thought Derek was dead for sure when that thing went slamming into the side of his head.” He looked at Krystal with undiluted awe. “
It shattered.
Derek, the most he lost was a patch of hair where the propeller chopped it away. In fact, my other brother? He lost more blood than Derek because Derek beat the snot out of him, right there in the car on the way to the hospital.”

Boyd realized then what a formative experience this had been. As he recalled, he’d tried to make a bet with a total stranger in the emergency room over which brother would need more stitches. Clearly, everything he was today he had family to thank for.

Krystal eased off the gas as they neared the Wainright house. No one was moving on the porch or in the yard. No black vans with Florida plates. No psychopaths with eye problems. No former lovers howling for his emasculation.

They parked two houses down, then backtracked toward the Wainrights’. When Krystal gazed intently down the street where they’d just come, he feared someone had been following, until she pointed halfway up the block, at a preschool-age child meandering across his yard atop a tricycle.

“I know it’s all so totally conventional,” she said, “but do you ever sometimes wonder if you might be missing out on something by not living on a street like this?”