Over the next few days, I explored my new home and fell in love.
9
Beyond the window streaked with grime, the flat, featureless landscape slipped past like a loop of film repeated interminably Where the hell were they? After three days on the road, he’d even lost track of what state it was. The occasional towns they hit offered no clue, just the usual run-down Main Street, a few parked cars and pickups, a cluster of people waiting to board the Greyhound, a row of hardscrabble businesses, a water tower with some no-hope name painted on it.
Pat glanced at his watch. Still another three and half hours to go. He looked across the aisle at the girl in the leather jacket and tight jeans. She had sweet, mean, trailer-trash looks, and a body to match. He knew just how she’d fuck, but how would she die? He imagined pressing the pistol to her head, just behind the ear, the way he’d practiced so many times. Ease the muzzle right in there, in the little hollow he’d have licked if he’d been going to fuck her.
She’d like that. After all the guys who’d just climbed on top of her and shot their wad, she’d appreciate a little gesture like that. She’d think he was classy. But not if it was a revolver he was sticking in there. That would make him just like all those other guys, plus she’d be dead. But then maybe she already was. You couldn’t tell, that was the whole point. Not until you tried.
Sensing Pat’s eyes on her, the girl turned and stared right back at him, sassy and challenging. He looked away, feigning a sudden interest in what was happening outside the window. Which was nothing. And if he’d had to shoot her? Would he have blown that, too? In that case, of course, everything would be different. He’d be psyched up and ready to go, and Russ would be there to help. Even so, nothing could guarantee that he’d be able to go through with it. Dale had proved that once and for all.
Pat still found it very difficult to accept what had happened to Dale. For a couple of days in there, he’d almost lost his faith. And he wasn’t the only one. Even the real hard guys like Mark and Lenny had been shaken.
Andy had laid the whole thing out for them: how he and Dale had found the house empty, how he’d tricked the real-estate agency into revealing the time of the next viewing, how they’d dressed up as joggers and circled the block until the client and the agent showed, then followed them inside. Everything had gone without a hitch. The victims had been positioned, cuffed and taped. All that remained was the act itself, the ritual revelation of Life and Death which would raise Dale to the ranks of the initiates.
But then it had all gone wrong. Pat and the others had listened in stunned silence as Andy described how Dale had broken down and then turned the gun on himself, leaving his partner to execute the witnesses and withdraw as best he could.
It was a brutal reality check for all of them, but especially for Pat. He and Dale had been real close. They had arrived at almost the same time, and a bond had formed between them back in those early days when everything could seem kind of creepy at times. Plus they had similar tastes in music and movies. They’d even shared the same woman for a while. And now Dale was gone. Even worse, he’d never really been there in the first place. That was the hardest thing to accept, but there was no other possible explanation. Facts were facts. Get over it.
Pat had tried, but the best he could do was to separate the two Dales in his mind: the dead one, and the person he’d joked and bullshitted with for hours on end, day in, day out. He hadn’t admitted this to any of the others, of course. He knew it was heresy. But there was no way he could convince himself that the Dale he’d known had been any less real than he was himself.
But how real was that? Pat shivered. That was the scariest thing about the whole business. Not only had none of them known the truth about Dale-Dale himself hadn’t known. If he had, he would never have gone along in the first place, knowing what the outcome must be. Why take a test you’re bound to fail? So he couldn’t have known. No one had known. Until the moment of truth, no one could ever know. The people at 322 Carson Street didn’t know, Russ didn’t know, Pat himself didn’t know. That’s why he was going, to find out. That’s what the whole thing was about.
“You got the time?”
It was the girl across the aisle. Pat checked his watch.
“I’ve got a quarter of two.”
The girl made a face.
“I could really use a rest stop.”
She straightened up, turning away from him. For a moment Pat was tempted to try to keep the conversation going. It would help pass the time, and take his mind off what was going to happen when he arrived. But that was against the rules of engagement.
His palms were sweaty. He rubbed them against the smooth, faded denim over his thighs. If only he had the gun with him. Knowing that it was tucked up in his bag, up on the rack, would make him feel better. Just knowing it was there. The gun was solid enough, at least, while the rest of it sometimes seemed kind of flaky. It was one thing back home with the others, everyone buying into it and no distractions. Everything made perfect sense then, as Los expounded the scriptures, laying out their hidden meanings and making you see how it all related to your own life. But out here, bombarded by headlines and billboards and neon signs and reader boards and electronic counters telling you how much Americans had saved by switching to MCI, there were moments when Pat felt himself losing touch. Everything seemed brighter and louder and faster and more confusing than he remembered. Sometimes he found himself reeling under the onslaught of sensations, even though there was nothing really happening, just a bunch of people hanging out in some greasy spoon where the bus stopped. Above all, it was the people who bothered him. There were too many of them, and they were too different. He had to struggle to recall that this was all an illusion, repeating the lines of scripture he’d memorized as part of his self-reprogramming exercise.
That’s why they hadn’t let him take the gun, of course. They had it all figured out. As it was, there was nothing to tie him in to them. If he flipped out and went to the police, he would have nothing to give them but a story so crazy that no one would believe it for a moment. He didn’t even know where Russ was staying. All he knew was the address of the house they were going to hit, and that wouldn’t mean anything until afterward. And afterward he would be guilty of first-degree murder, videoed in the act by Russ, a permanent record of his initiation which would send him straight to the gas chamber or the electric chair or however they did it in Georgia.
When he thought about it now, that seemed kind of crazy too, having to come all this way, spending days and days on buses, and all because his dad had happened to be posted to Fort Benning the year Pat was born. In fact his childhood had resembled this cross-country journey more than it did his destination. The family had moved when he was two, and he’d never been back. He couldn’t remember a damn thing about Georgia, but he had plenty of memories of other places all over the States, mostly unhappy. His sister had taken new homes and schools in her stride, settling down and making friends, the perfect military brat. For Pat it had been a struggle. By the time he was ten, his life already seemed like a school notebook full of botched attempts, unfinished assignments that never got beyond the first paragraph.