I woke the following morning with a pistol barrel poking my nose and Rickey’s hand on my throat and his burnt-out eyes giving me a close-up of the dark sour-smelling rathole they opened into. It was like the little room he lived in was inside him, too. Straggles of hair curtained off his face, but did nothing to filter his rotten breath.
—Motherfucker, you stole my dope! he said.
Leeli gave a squeak and rolled off the bed, covering herself with the sheet.
—Where the fuck is it? Rickey asked.
—I took four goddamn tabs! I said. You want ’em back, you gonna have to scrape out my nose!
—Don’t think I won’t! He screwed the barrel down hard against my cheek. I’m missing a bottle.
—He didn’t take nothing! Leeli said. I promise!
—You check around by your chair? I asked. Jesus, you could hide a Volkswagen under all the crap you got on your floor.
His face lost some intensity.
—I guess you were so clearheaded last night, you couldn’t have set it down somewheres and forgot, I said. You would know if you give it a kick accidental when you got up to piss or something.
Thought confused his expression. He backed away from the bed, the pistol angled toward the side.
—Jesus Christ! I sat up and swung my legs onto the floor. Fuck you so crazy about, anyway? You said you had a good goddamn supply.
—It’s gotta last the weekend, he said sullenly.
—You run out, I know you’ll get you some more. I pulled on my undershorts. What’s wrong with you, man? Busting in here like that. I ever cheat you before? I ever treat you anything but righteous?
Rickey puzzled over that. The words came slow from his mouth, like slobber off a bull’s lip. I can’t recall.
—Well, you’d remember if I did, wouldn’t you?
—I s’pose so. Yeah. He lowered the pistol and let out a soggy, rueful snort of laughter. Fuck, man. Y’know, I…just people been fucking me around a lot lately.
—If you can’t find it, don’t come back in here busting on me about it. You know you gonna find it sooner or later in that mess. Someday you run out, you gonna be stumbling around and it’ll turn up under your big toe. Be like finding a diamond in a cornfield.
This fairly brightened Rickey—he nodded energetically, seeing a vision of that glorious day. I noticed Leeli cowering in the corner, looking extra fine with her breasts gathered above her arm and her ass sticking out from the sheet.
—Hey, Leeli. Get your tail over here, I said. This here’s my ol’ pal Rickey.
I tried to move Rickey on out of there before he could get paranoid again, but his eyes were leaving tracks all over Leeli, even after she covered everything up, and he kept hanging around. He began asking why we needed to hide and such. I told him some lies and when that didn’t stop his questions, I said I wanted to borrow his car so we could buy food and stuff. The best way to derail Rickey’s suspicions always was to beg a favor. If he could deny you something, he’d start feeling masterful and forget whatever was bothering him. I argued and pleaded, but he was resolute. Nobody drives my car but me, he said. Like everyone in the world was dying to park their behinds in his funky-smelling shitbox so they could race off to Monaco and display this automotive jewel before graceful society. It ended with Rickey agreeing to bring us food himself and stalking off to search for his missing Dilaudid with head held high.
—That was sly, way you managed that, Leeli said, giving me a smooch. You’re pretty smart for white trash.
—Guess what that makes me in the real world, I said.
Rain and guns. I think it must’ve been raining when the first gun was drawn hot from its tempering fire, because when it comes rain, I get a itch to handle a gun if I’ve got one. Which is a roundabout way of saying it rained and Rickey went for food, Leeli hunkered beside me on the bed fixing her nails, while I sat turning Ava’s Colt in my hands, picking at the plaque on the grip, rubbing a little raised, rough patch alongside the chamber, thinking gun thoughts, testing its heft and balance, knowing that if I was really pretty smart I would walk down to the water’s edge and toss it on in. Having a gun was not in my best interests. Without one, if I was at a beach party, let’s say, and some worthless drunken individual tipped over my beer and said diddley dog about it, the worst could happen was busted knuckles and a hospital trip—but I had a gun, God knows, that beer might seem like the very selfsame beer for which the Founding Fathers sacrificed their lives, and I’d be called upon to uphold its sacred honor.
It was an uncommon hard and lasting rain. A drizzle started about ten o’clock and five minutes later it was like a billion hailstones were bouncing off the roof, filling the house with a roar. A weird slivery darkness ensued. The cloud bellies passing over us were black as Satan’s boot soles and the wind flattened the marsh grasses with a constant rush. The rain slacked off many times during the day, a couple of times it stopped altogether and the land yielded up a sodden, animal smell; but it kept returning in strength. Rickey drove off to buy food. Carl and Squire sat on the porch playing a hand-held game of some kind. Leeli got a little closer to her new best friend, Mr. Dilaudid, and fell asleep. I wedged the Colt in my waist and paid a visit to Ava.
Her door was open a foot and I stuck my head in without knocking. She was standing at the window, stark naked, arms folded beneath her breasts and hair loose about her shoulders, gazing out at the rain. She must have felt me there, because she turned her head and delivered me a flat, unsurprised stare. What do you want? she asked.
—A few words would be good.
—I guess it’s inevitable.
—I’ll wait out here while you throw something on.
—No need. We’re like family now.
Ava went back to watching the weather and I let my eyes out for a run. Though her face was hagging out, her body belonged to a woman in her prime. She wanted to give me a show, it didn’t bother me none. The door proved to be stuck open. I eased in and perched on a straight chair set next to a dresser with its drawers stove-in. Her room was shabbier than ours. Rat turds speckled the boards along the molding and spiderwebs spanned the corners. The bed was so swaybacked, some of the springs were flush to the floor.
—I sneaked a look at your photograph album last night, I said.
—Oh? What did you think?
—I think you’re damn sexy for a woman’s gotta be in her fifties.
—Sixty-one, she said. I’m sixty-one.
—Okay. A woman in her sixties. And Carl, how old is he?
—Carl. Her smile had a fond quality. Carl’s ageless.
—Squire, too. He ageless?
—In a way.
She crossed to the bed with a three-step stroll and laid herself out, back against the headboard, arms spread on the pillows. Her pubic hair was trimmed to a neat strip and she had a long waist to go with her trophy chest. She reminded me of this naked woman in a painting one of my high school teachers had prattled on about, some rich horny bitch from another century lying on a couch and looking at you with a similar scornful, seductive attitude.