The actor entered his life one late afternoon when he and Aram and Eugene were coming off the water at Lake Mead, at a spot about fifty miles north of Vegas. Jimmy didn’t like talking away no prize, but the day had been restful, and at that hour he liked seeing the lake form a blue hole in its center as the ripples at the edges increased. He liked seeing how the reeds turned a deeper green on the underside as a stronger wind laidthem over. He enjoyed the ring of mountains turning rose at top and purple at the bottom with the sun’s slow going down.
Aram was driving. Eugene started in with his harmonica. Jimmy was cool about it all until the notes called up that picture again of how his wife looked the day she told him their account was dry and so was she, goodbye.
Jimmy was about to knock that bar of metal out of Eugene’s hand when Aram called their attention to a pair with their truck high-centered on a boulder. Dumb shits did it while hauling out their boat. Nice boat, too. Okay, thanks, thanks, all around when the rescue job got done. Now get the fuck out o’ my territory, dorko.
But Jimmy didn’t have that feeling right then. No, it was not until the next afternoon when the emotion formed itself into a thing that could be spoken, when they again returned from the lake with only a couple of stripers, no bluegill, no trout, no catfish. Again they met up with the actor and his woman, this time in Overton, thirteen or so miles from his fishing spot. At first it was just disdain for dumbfuck’s manner, his look, his too-happy take on the world. Take this, suckah, was the unarticulated feeling in Jimmy then. The three were eating hamburgers in the Red Rooster when they saw the actor again. Mark Mandelkorn was his name. He came in with his twig of a girlfriend and commenced to brag about what a great angler he was. Three sheets to the wind after only a couple of beers, when he starts giving a fishing lesson. Shit.
“Pretend you have a rock in your left armpit,” the twerp told everyone. “The rock keeps your arm in the proper position, preventing backlash, for better control of your cast.” Dumbfuck Eugene was taking it all in like a girl. Meanwhile, the actordork continued to hold forth: “Your bait held in your right hand should be even with the reel, so when you make the pitch the bait won’t come down like a stone and hit the fish on the head.”
Who’d this L.A. crud think he was? Make it worse, Pauline, the bartender, who was at least a hard 50, posed her body in a way so Jim knew she was flirting with Mr. Ass-a-minute, and that made him sick.
The moron said, “I like your sign, Pauline.”
“What sign would that be?” She smiled and walked around tothe jukebox, casting a glance back at the girlfriend, preparing to slip in a coin.
“That one.” The actor read from a placard:
There ain’t no town drunk here!
We all take turns.
“Oh yeah. I don’t hardly see it no more.”
“And I’ll bet you’re about to play my favorite song there, hon, aren’t ya?”
“Now what song would that be?”
“My favorite: ‘I Been Roped and Throwed by Jesus in the Holy Ghost Corral’? Got that one in there, Pauline?”
But the topper was when the prick and his snatch made to leave. The better part of two hours Jim had been dropping quarters in the slot machine nearest his stool; he could just lean to the side and plunk it. He’d turn back before the spinners even stopped, casual-like, as if winning or losing were the same thing.
Then fuckmouth up and says, “Tiff, go see if you can fix that machine for the man.”
One quarter. One quarter, and the machine coughs 4,000 of them out for her. Or flashes the sign, same thing. For him. The actor.
Jimmy D was an unhappy man. He snagged no fish that day, he, a damned good fisherman, and some chump-fag actor walks off with his dough.
Tiffany hadn’t drunk anything but soda that evening, so she was at the wheel pulling the boat back to Vegas, where it was rented from a friend for a few days. She said to Mark, “Jeez, honey, I wish you wouldn’t get so loaded.”
“I wasn’t that loaded.”
“You are.”
“Nah. I could drive.”
“And I could walk the moon.”
“Well, listen. Are you happy? Are you happy, huh? Girl justwon herself a thousand bucks. A thousand bucks! Man. Is the girl happy, huh? Happy?” He tickled her where her shirt spared the waistband of her jeans. She wagged her head in assent and gave off with a grin that said, “It’ll do.”
Aram didn’t like looking at the pockmarks in Eugene’s face on his right side, where they were more volcanic than on the left. Therefore, Aram always chose to drive. Coming away from the Red Rooster, the three were silent. Eugene’s harmonica was in the hip pocket that didn’t hold the can of Red Devil snuff.
Jimmy stared straight ahead as if on the lookout for wild burros that sometimes cross the road like part of a hill broke off and slid. Now and then, Aram shot a glance Jimmy’s way to see if he could detect how bad a mood he had been put into by that girl winning at the juke.
Before turning to Jimmy, Eugene poked Aram with his elbow, winked, and then said, “I got it figgered now, pal. Only reason you didn’t get lucky today is your pole’s too short.” Eugene entertained himself with his own hearty laughs. Jimmy said nothing, though there was a twitch at the back of his jaw. So Eugene grew more thoughtful. This time he said, “That guy going on about how anglin’ is an art? I bet you didn’t know anglin’ is an art, the none of us did, did we? Who-o-ee!”
Jimmy said to the windshield: “I don’t need no pussy lessons outta some Jew-boy from L.A.”
Eugene replied, “No, we don’t need none o’ that. Nope,” and rode silent.
When Tiffany came back into the hotel room from a workout in the downstairs gym, she found Mark shaving. She said, “Those guys last night? They sure gave me the creeps.”
“What for? I didn’t see anything wrong with them.” She looked sweet, a little bit damp for her effort. Yesterday’s outing had toasted Tiffany to a honey shade. Her light-brown hair held wheat-colored stripes, all of it tied up on top of her head now in a dust-mop ponytail.
She frowned and said, “I hope we don’t see them again.” She made him recall how Pauline followed them outside, saying to no one in particular, “I got to get some cigarettes from my car.”
Though it had cooled down a lot, Tiffany still had to wrap a Kleenex around the car door handle to open it. Mark opened his door then, and the two stood letting the heat out, looking off into the distance where the jagged, treeless mountains were a flat rust color coated with milky haze. At the end of the street, heat waves still shimmied. In the other direction, a bunch of cars lined up at the Inside Scoop, the ice cream parlor, even though near dinnertime.
Pauline came up and said, “Just a word of advice.” Her skin was of a grayish hue and the pores of her forehead were tiny tattoos. Sunlight fired the fine hairs on her upper lip and the sturdier ones along her jaw. She shaded her eyes and said, “I’d watch my step with Jim Daniels and that bunch.”
Mark said, “They seem all right to me. Good guys, matter of fact.”
“You’re not from around here. But in case you’re thinking of staying a few days, just so you know, Moapa Valley police have been looking at Jimmy for a murder about two months ago.”
“A murder?” Tiffany said. “That man who helped us out at the lake?”
Pauline said, “I’m saying a stranger got caught out in a flash flood, stranded to the axles. Somebody saw them three helping him out there, too, just like y’all. Next time they saw the fella, turkey buzzards picked him pretty much to pieces. His truck was stripped, and his family said his blackjack winnings was gone. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”