‘This is good champagne,’ Ishmael said, though he wasn’t sure it was.
‘I only shoplift the best,’ Marilyn replied.
They took off their clothes and got into bed.
To cut a long story short, Marilyn’s tattoo was on her buttock and it was of a snake. They made love. Ishmael offered the opinion that it was transcendent though he didn’t have much to compare it with, only Debby and a girl called Eunice whom he’d met very briefly at a party.
‘What’s your favourite position?’ he asked.
‘Foetal,’ Marilyn replied.
She explained that was another joke. Ishmael suddenly thought he should have brought his vibrator and attachments in from the car.
♦
At five o’clock Karl rings the bell to Cindy’s apartment. She isn’t ready for him but his earliness seems like a good sign. She quickly puts on old jeans and a sweatshirt and runs down to the front door of the apartment building to greet him on the doorstep. They kiss. It is passionate enough.
‘Come in,’ she says.
‘Nah,’ says Karl. ‘Let’s go for a drive.’
‘Where’s the car?’ she asks, looking up and down the street.
‘There.’
♦
Marilyn got out of bed to have a shower. Ishmael was dozing and thinking higher thoughts when he heard the gentle crunch of metal from outside. He got up and looked out of the window. Someone had run their car into a bollard in the car-park. It was a Rolls-Royce. It was Marilyn’s parents’ car. Enlightenment was clearly visible in front of Reception. Mother and father got out. They looked at the damaged rear wing, shouted at each other accusingly and strode into the lobby of the motel.
There was nothing else for it. There are times when a man does not run. He was going to have to reason with them. He put on his blue leathers. He stuck his head into the bathroom and told Marilyn he was popping out for some fresh air.
♦
Karl points to a white 1968 Corvette parked at the corner of the block.
‘Why?’ Cindy asks.
‘Well,’ says Karl, he has obviously been rehearsing this. ‘When you’re out in Texas, in that big country, a Volkswagen Bug seems just kinda small, inadequate, like a toy, immature almost. There isn’t the power, the acceleration, the handling. I wanted something more. You’ll love the Corvette, I know you will. That’s what I’ve been doing these last few days since I got home. I had to trade-in the Bug, had to arrange another loan.’
♦
Ishmael ran to his car, got out the claw hammer, and waited. Marilyn’s parents caught sight of him through the glass doors of the motel lobby and came hurrying out. Father arrived first, winning by a couple of lengths.
‘Where is she?’ he bawled.
‘Who?’
‘My daughter, who do you bloody well think?’
Ishmael smiled in what he took to be a wry manner.
‘You mean the motel wouldn’t tell you?’
‘As a matter of fact they wouldn’t.’
‘Marilyn’s in one of the rooms,’ Ishmael said. ‘But there are a lot of rooms.’
‘He’s got a love bite on his neck.’
It was the mother who said this. She seemed outraged. Ishmael hadn’t been aware of the bite until now and was suddenly filled with pride.
‘Did Marilyn do that?’ the mother demanded.
‘Who else? How many women do you think I had in there?’
She nearly smiled at that.
‘Don’t talk filth in front of me,’ the father said.
‘I’ll talk filth in front of anybody I like,’ said Ishmael. ‘Piles, urethra, prepuce, labia minor!’
The father was sweating freely. So for that matter was Ishmael, but on hearing this ‘filth’ Marilyn’s father’s face turned startlingly red and he screamed, ‘If you’re looking for trouble young man, you’ve found trouble.’
He stripped off his jacket, tossed it to the ground with a flourish and started to roll up his sleeves. Ishmael took a step forward, lazily raised the claw hammer and swept it in an accelerating arc that made contact with one of the newly bared elbows. Marilyn’s father let out a cry that was part pain and part disbelief, and he paced exaggeratedly in a circle flapping the injured arm.
‘I’ll sue for that,’ he said.
Ishmael laughed.
‘To live outside the law you must be honest,’ he cajoled. ‘I’m not looking for trouble, that’s the very last thing I’m looking for. There are a million things I want to find, but trouble isn’t one of them. I want to find an army with the motto ‘Yield’. I want to find a timetable that obeys a body clock. I want to find a roundabout called stillness. I want to find a milkman who doesn’t know how to whistle. I want to find me and I wouldn’t mind finding you. I want to find a bypass on the ring road to oblivion. I never knew that I wanted to find Marilyn but now that I have found her I realize that I was looking for her all along. I want to find the still point in the turning circle. I want to find a Messiah who doesn’t believe his own press releases.’
He could have gone on. He was feeling quite inspired.
‘This boy is raving,’ the father said.
Ishmael said, ‘Your daughter isn’t running away. She’s running towards something — towards herself. The lay-by cannot stop the accelerating lane from joining the motorway. You cannot stop Marilyn. You can only bid her bon voyage, wish her a pleasant journey and hope that she arrives at her chosen destination.’
The mother moyed with grace and speed, pulled the hammer away from Ishmael and before he could react she had smashed both of Enlightenment’s headlights. A tyre blew out in his head. He was mad. He grabbed the woman by the throat and forced her to the ground, but as they hit the tarmac the father was on him. The three of them wrestled around for a while. Ishmael received a hammer blow in the groin. The woman was deadly with that thing. Meanwhile the father had Ishmael’s head gripped firmly in both hands and was banging it against the Beetle’s rear nearside wing. One or other would lose its shape.
Ishmael, never the street-fighter, was now dragged to his feet. He stood, or rather was held in front of Enlightenment. A stylish upper-cut threw him back on to the car’s bonnet. Tiny neon strips in gold and red burst behind his eyes. They looked pretty enough. He slowly slid down the slope of the car while being kicked regularly, accurately and with enormous passion.
He would certainly have taken a lot more punishment if Marilyn’s voice had not then said, ‘Leave him alone. It’s me you want.’
The father was fighting mad. He put an armlock on his daughter.
‘Run away, Marilyn,’ Ishmael shouted. ‘Save yourself.’
But it appeared Marilyn did not want to be saved. She didn’t struggle. She allowed herself to be bundled into the Rolls-Royce. All Ishmael could do was keep still. The pain was less that way. As a parting shot the mother threw the hammer at him. It missed but took a hefty chunk out of the Beetle’s paintwork. The Rolls drove away.
♦
Cindy sobs, slams the front door of the building and runs back to her own apartment. Karl leans on the bell for a long time but eventually stops. Cindy hears the loud engine and the Cherry Bomb exhaust as he drives away.
♦
Ishmael was down. His leathers were scratched. The Rolls was out of view. There was no longer any hurry to go anywhere.
But as he lay there he became aware of a jacket on the tarmac, not very far away. It was, of course, the jacket that Marilyn’s father had taken off and thrown down. Ishmael reached for it. There was a wallet in the inside pocket. It contained a photograph of Marilyn, perhaps a hundred pounds in cash, a gold American Express card, and a driving licence that gave Marilyn’s father’s name, age and home address.