The Indian lifted his buckskin shirt, pulled a card from his waistband, and handed it to Lonnie Ray, who glanced at it and spun the Indian around by one shoulder, pointing him out the door.
Lonnie ground the barrel of the Python into the Indian's spine, stood on his toes, and whispered threateningly into the Indian's ear. "You didn't come here and you didn't see me. You understand?"
The Indian nodded.
"He's upstairs," Lonnie whispered. "Now go!" He shoved the Indian out the door. "And never, never fuck with a brother of the Guild." Lonnie closed the door. "Fucking A," he said with a giggle.
Upstairs, Calliope said, "Tell me what you know, Sam."
"About what?"
"About anything." She sat down next to him on the bed and brushed his hair back with her fingers. "Tell me what you know."
The silence that followed would have been awkward except Calliope seemed to expect it. She stroked his hair while he tried to think of what to say. He sorted through facts and figures and histories and strategies. Clever retorts, meaningless jokes, sophistries and non sequiturs rose in his mind and fell unspoken. She rubbed his neck and found a knot in the muscle that she worked her fingertips into.
"That feels good," Sam said.
"That's what you know?"
A smile rose to Sam's lips. "Yes," he said.
"What do you want?" she asked.
He shot her a sideways glance and saw the candlelight gleaming in her eyes. She was serious, waiting for an answer. "Is this a test?"
"No. What do you want?"
"Why don't you ask me what I do for a living? Where I live? Where I'm from? How old I am? You don't even know my last name."
"Would that stuff tell me who you are?"
Sam turned to face her and took her hand from his neck. He still had a niggling mistrust of her and he wanted to let it go. "The truth now — Calliope, are you part of something he cooked up? Some trick?"
"No. Who's he?"
"Never mind." Sam turned away from her again, stared at a candle flame on the dresser, and tried to think. She really didn't know about Coyote. What now?
"Well, what do you want?" she asked again.
He snapped, "Dammit, I don't know."
She didn't recoil or seem hurt, but began rubbing his neck again. "You came here because you wanted me, didn't you?"
"No. Yes, I guess I did." It wasn't bad enough that she had to keep telling the truth; now she was expecting it back, and he was out of practice.
"We've had sex. Do you want to go now?"
Christ, she was like some gorgeous New Age district attorney. "No, I…"
"Do you want a bowl of chocolate marshmallow ice cream?"
"That would be great!" Sam said. Off the hook, no further questions, Your Honor.
"See, it's not that hard to figure out what you want." She got up and left the room, heading for the kitchen again.
Sam sat back and waited, realizing that it had been some time since a door had slammed downstairs. Suddenly he was very uncomfortable with the silence. When he heard footfalls on the stairs outside he leapt to his feet and ran to the kitchen.
CHAPTER 17
A White Picket Fence Around Chaos
Santa Barbara
Sam hit the kitchen just as Yiffer stepped through the screenless section of the screen door.
"Cool! Ice cream!" Yiffer said, staggering to Calliope's side at the counter.
"Keep it down, Yiffer. I just got Grubb and J. Nigel down." Calliope picked up two full bowls of ice cream and nodded to the carton on the counter. "You can have the rest."
"Bitchin'." Yiffer grabbed a serving spoon from the empty salad bowl and dug into the ice cream, shoveling a baseball-sized clump into his mouth. Sam watched in amazement as Yiffer mouthed the ice cream until he got his jaws closed around it, then swallowed the whole clump, dipping his head snakelike to facilitate the passage. "Oh, shit, man," Yiffer said as he dropped the spoon and bent over, grabbing the bridge of his nose. "Major ice cream headache. Ouch!"
Sam heard footsteps on the stairs outside, ran to the door, and popped his head out to see who was coming, ready to duck back inside should it be the crazed biker from downstairs. To his relief, Nina was trudging up the steps, obviously a little drunk herself. "Did Yiffer come home?"
Sam said, "He's punishing himself with ice cream as we speak."
"I'll kill him." She ran the rest of the way up the steps and Sam helped her wrestle the door open, then he stepped out of harm's way as she stormed by him to Yiffer, who was still bent over, now holding his temples.
"You jerk!" Nina shrieked. "Who was that woman at the bar? And where the hell is my money?"
"Babe, I'm in pain here. I'm suffering."
Nina raised her fist as if to hammer Yiffer's back, then she spotted the serving spoon, picked it up, and began whacking the surfer unmercifully on the head with it. "You want pain (whack!), I'll give you pain (whack! whack! whack!). Suffering? (whack!) You wouldn't (whack!) know (whack!) suffering (whack!) if (whack!)…"
"Well," Calliope said. "I guess you guys need a little space. C'mon, Sam." She led Sam out of the kitchen and back to her bedroom. They sat eating and listening to Yiffer whining under Nina's attack. After a few minutes she was losing momentum and Yiffer's whines turned to moans. Soon Nina was moaning with him rhythmically. Sam stared at the candle on the dresser as if he hadn't noticed.
"They do this all the time," Calliope offered. "I think Nina gets in touch with that male energy that equates violence and sex."
"Excuse me?"
"Hitting Yiffer makes her horny."
"Oh," Sam said. He flinched at the sound of breaking dishes from the kitchen. Nina screamed, "Oh, yes, you asshole! Yes!" Yiffer groaned. The house shook with the sound of a door slamming downstairs and J. Nigel joined the din with a wail of his own.
"Lonnie must think that we're doing it," Calliope said.
"Do you think he'll give us time to explain before he shoots us?"
"Don't think about it." Calliope stood and stepped out of her dress, then gestured for Sam to take off his shirt. The moaning in the kitchen was rising in intensity and J. Nigel was wailing like a siren. The windows rattled with a salvo of door slams.
Sam looked at her and thought, A bowl of ice cream, a load of loonies, and thou… "Now?" he said. "Are you sure?"
Calliope nodded. She pulled his shirt off, then pushed him back on the bed and took off his shoes. Sam let her undress him as he tried to put the noise out of his mind. As she pulled the sheet over him and crawled in beside him, he imagined the two of them being shot in the act. When she kissed him he barely felt it.
In the crib next to them Grubb began to stir, and with the next series of door slams and a crash from the kitchen he came awake crying. Despite Calliope's soft warmth against him and the smell of jasmine on her hair, Sam was unable to respond.
"He'll be okay," Calliope said. She stroked Sam's cheek and kissed him gently on the forehead.
"I'll be back in a second," Sam said.
He got up and wrapped his shirt around his hips, then, checking the hallway, he darted out of the room and into the bathroom. He closed the door behind him and leaned against it, staring blankly at the ceiling. The sex sounds from the kitchen reached a crescendo with a piercing scream from Nina, then stopped, leaving only the sounds of crying babies and slamming doors. Sam took a deep breath. "I can't do this," he said to himself. "This is too weird. Too fucking weird." He lowered the lid of the toilet and sat facing the shower stall, assuming the posture of Rodin's Thinker. For once in his life, it really seemed to matter that the sex be good, but this was like a combat zone. "I can't do this," he said.