“No… I mean, yeah, that’s right. You mentioned something about that, didn’t you?”
Do you see why I feel like I’ve been stranded in a life skills class for the developmentally challenged? Don’t laugh. The whole world rides the short bus, you included.
“Letme look into it,” I said. Okay, just because I score large with the ladies doesn’t mean I understand them. They always seem to come at me sideways. Here I think we’re taking a pleasant stroll in the park heading toward soft pillows and cool sheets and suddenly, click-
I’m standing on a land mine.
Nolen beat an awkward retreat partway through our dinner. Neither of us said much-just munched in that silent too-much-fun-in-the-sun way. It seemed a joke, driving the car across the street to the motel. It happened too fast for me to pick up on any telltale signs. In all honesty, I was doing cartwheels of joy inside, the way she simply followed me to my door after we got out of the Vee-Dub.
Naked time, I thought as I ushered her in. I could almost feel the soft skin of her ass.
“Us?” she cried the instant the door clicked shut. “Us?”
The thing about carnal fantasies, I find anyway, is their stickiness. Typical daydreams wink into nothingness at the first sign of trouble. Spike them with the promise of sex and they get as hard to flick as boogers or gum.
So I could only stare at her, trying to blink her clothes back on. Fawk.
“Don’t play stupid, Disciple. You’re not stupid.”
That was when I realized she was talking about my collection scam.
“Well, technically, you are standing next to me when they break open their wallets.”
Now I know you know exactly the kind of bewildered gaze she shot me, either because you’ve weathered it a thousand times, like I have, or because you’ve looked it just as many.
“Are you a sociopath, Disciple? Are you a fucking lunatic?”
“No, babe. Just stupid.”
“Ah!” she cried. “Fucking aaaah!”
“Molly… C’mon.”
But she was laughing to herself-rarely a good sign. “You know, Disciple, I fucking knew this would happen. I glanced at you on my way in and said to myself, ‘Now that guy, Molly my girl, is bad fucking news.’”
I was actually relieved to hear this, vain prick that I am. Here all along I’d worried she had said “Eew” because of my age.
“Well there you go,” I said with a grin. “News is news. You had no choice but to cover me… “
The shadow of a smile.
“This routine of yours actually work?”
I tugged her closer by the hands. Maybe I could turn this around after all.
“Only on intelligent, sensitive, highly educated nymphomaniacs.”
“Nymphomaniacs?”she cried. “Is that word even, like, legal anymore?”
She laughed aloud this time, and I really thought I had clinched things-I really did. But she abruptly pushed back against my chest, backed away looking down, shaking her head with four fingers held to her forehead.
“No…” she said, her eyes fluttering. “No. I’m not going to let you charm your way into my pants. This is serious, Disciple. I have a fucking career I’m trying to build here. A fucking career! And not to mention poor fucking Jennifer Bonjour! But does Disciple Manning give a shit? Noooo. Apparently Disciple thinks-”
She was on one of those finding-her-way-back-to-her-anger rolls. I remember it all word for word, of course, but I suspect you’ve pretty much heard the whole thing before. The important thing, the crucial thing, was that she had mentioned Dead Jennifer, who had become, without me realizing it, a trigger of some kind.
And a strange one.
You know that feeling you have when you’re fighting with your husband or your wife, that aimless disgust which seems to blanket the world corner to corner? It has no bottom, believe me.
“The whole thing is a murderous con!”Mandy Bonjour cried.
“And if you suspect us,”Xenophon Baars said, “you will waste time and resources investigating us, time and resources that I fear Jennifer Bonjour desperately needs.”
“We’regoingto do this, aren’t we?”Caleb Nolen asked around a mouthful of potato chips. “We’re going to save this girl. ”
There was too much crosstalk for me to recognize, let alone solve, the problem fuming before me. “I have some Xanax,” I heard myself say, not so much as an insult but because I knew that was where I was headed.
She glared at me in horror.
(“You want some Xanax? You could probably use it more than I could.”)
She stormed out, leaving my door swinging, then slammed the door to her room (which was immediately adjacent) so hard that the goofy floral prints hanging on my wall rattled. I thought that was uncalled for.
“Drama queen!” I bellowed. But all I could hear through the wall was her TV cranking out the theme song to Jeopardy.
Can you believe that? Fucking Jeopardy…
Women like that make me happy to be banging my secretary.
Now I know her sociopath comment has got you thinking. My army therapist used to tell me I have nothing to worry about, that unlike true sociopaths I actually have the neural machinery for “social emotions,” as the eggheads like to call them: guilt, shame, compassion-all that bullshit. The only way I can explain it is this: think of your worst long- term relationship, the way it just got to a point where you just couldn’t feel anymore, the crap was piled so high. Well, that’s pretty much how I feel all the bloody time.
Burnt out, not emotionless.
But still, I worry sometimes. It seems to me that even though I’m not a sociopath per se, I am kind of one, you know, for all practical and romantic purposes. I mean, when I think about all those people forking over their cash to help the Bonjours hire me to find their dead daughter when they had, like, already hired me, I know I should feel guilty… But then I think about Vegas and hookers and Jimmy Beam and I smile.
Circus Circus, baby. Where the cheapskates go to win.
Perhaps I am a kind of “as if” sociopath, pretty much indistinguishable from the real deal-except, of course, for the odd times when all that unfelt remorse comes crashing back in and I try to kill myself.
I continued mentally arguing with Molly as I drove into downtown Ruddick, looking this way and that for the bar, Legends, where Dead Jennifer was last seen alive. I pretty much kicked her verbal ass-same as you, I always win the fights in my head. I was about to land the argumentative death blow, some comment about her mother (whom I knew nothing about), when I sighted the joint on the corner of Talbot and Ross. Chapped paint. Covered windows. Half the sign’s neon had died, so that LEG S was all that glowed.
All in all, it struck me as my kind of place. Like school in July: no class.
A smart-ass-opath, I decided. That’s what I am. Fawk.
This is something I do quite often, pretend that I’m working a case when I’m actually looking for a way to get blotto. I’m a huge fan of booze, always have been, always will be, simply because I’m not a big fan of feelings.
Feelings fuck you up.
The irony, of course, is that booze turns you into an emotional slob. Drinking generally points you in the right direction-good times, baby-but things always turn, and like any rock tossed skyward, you end landing in the same dirt. Only harder.
So why do it? Why go toe-to-toe with the law of psychological gravity? Why hide in a bottle when that’s where the floodlights are certain to find you?
I could just as easily ask why you waste your money on lottery tickets. The laws of probability are just as ironclad, pretty much.
But you never know, do you? You could be a winner. I drink for the exact same reason. Someday I might find that perfect bottle of Jack or Johnnie or CC and blast myself into orbit. Good times forever.
That, and because it’s less addictive than crack. So there I was, Legends, pretending to be working the case, wanting to get wasted, scoping the dance floor for poon. The place was gloomy in that bricked-in way. It smelled like an old houseboat, dank, like the underwear you peel from the bottom of the hamper. An asthmatic’s nightmare.