She stood beside him now. With him sitting on the stool they were the same height Her breasts were heavy and low in the tank tops she always wore and she had a way of brushing them against his back when she did this teammate thing. She ran her fingers over the duct tape he wore around his body, casually scratching it through his shirt, like it itched her as much as it itched him.
Months ago she had gotten him to admit that he wore the tape to hold down his budding breasts. That he folded squares of toilet paper to go over his nipples so they wouldn’t get pulled when he removed the tape.
He had been livid at her lack of manners and at himself for making such an admission, and at Holtz and Pratt for their big gossiping mouths, but to his surprise Lydia had never made reference to the tape or his breasts again. Other than the light fingernail scratch she offered without comment every time she let her hand rest on his body.
“You let me and Pratt know if we can testify or anything,” she said.
She always called her husband by his last name instead of his first, which was Marvis. She always wanted to help. Like a mechanic/ex-car-thief/beer guzzler or his wife were going to make you look good to the parole board, he thought. She had a thin dark body and lank dark hair with ears that showed through it and a little nose that stuck more up than out.
“Yes.”
“How’d we do today, Matty?”
He told her. It surprised him that for such a dusty, poorly stocked, out-of-the-way place, Pratt Automotive managed to take in close to two thousand a week. And the heart of the business was the custom work that Marvis and Garry did in the back. That made some bigger money and he never saw so much as a dollar of it. It was a cash thing between car lovers and he was told from the first that there were really two “operations” — the store and the custom work — and Colesceau was to mind the store. Only. He knew that Pratt was in cozy with AI Holtz, which is why he was offered the job here. And Pratt was also in cozy with a lot of custom car and biker types and Colesceau wondered if part of Pratt’s deal with Holtz was an occasional betrayal.
“Why don’t you go ahead and split,” she said. “I’ll take the bag to the bank.”
This was no surprise because Colesceau, though trusted with the handling of cash and checks during his workday, was never asked to make the nightly deposit. He assumed this was some furtive directive passed from his PA to his boss. Colesceau had long since lost his amusement over how Holtz demanded his trust but wouldn’t trust him back.
He thanked her and went to the back to say good-bye to his boss. Pratt stood in the high bay behind the office, his arms crossed, looking down at the brilliant yellow Cobra with the black hood and the chrome roll bar and headers. It was an $80,000 car, Colesceau had heard. Four hundred fifty horses, top speed up near 180 mph. You had to register it in Nevada because it wasn’t quite legal in California. Colesceau had a brief vision of himself at the wheel and his lover beside him, peeling across the lawless American desert at top speed, outrunning the world. Garry came from the refrigerator with two more beers. Cchht. Cchht.
“Next week we’ll crack one for you,” said Pratt.
“I haven’t had alcohol in seven years.”
“All finished up next week, aren’t you?” asked Garry, though Colesceau knew he already knew the answer. Garry was a man who pretended to be stupid. He believed that you would tell him things because of that. But Colesceau had been around him enough to understand that he was as quick and self-serving as a dog.
“Yes, next week.”
“Here’s to you, my friend.”
Garry tipped his beer at Colesceau and took a sip.
“Five hundred and four dollars today, Mr. Pratt. And the Ford dealership says the EGR module for the Bronco will be here tomorrow morning.”
“Thanks, man.”
Back in the store he saw that Lydia was outside smoking. In spite of the strong smell of machined metal, motor oil and solvent, Marvis Pratt forbade his wife to smoke inside the establishment. She’d put a wrought-iron patio table and two chairs out there, her smoking area. Pratt had donated a ground-out piston head for an ashtray, but the piston head was full and the ground was littered with her butts.
Colesceau searched under the counter for his lunch box but remembered he’d left it in the back. He was going through the short hallway that connected the retail store to the work bay when he heard Garry say something about tits, then the low-pitched, wicked chuckles.
Colesceau pretended he hadn’t heard, and grabbed his lunch box off the counter above which hung the centerfolds of beautiful women in bathing suit bottoms and no tops. Today he’d put his lunch under a brunette with a gorgeous smile. His heart was beating hard and he could feel it against the tape. There was a heavy, clumsy silence as he nodded to the men and headed out again.
He stopped in his driveway at 12 Meadowlark in the Quail Creek Apartment Homes and used the remote to open his garage door. The faded little pickup truck chugged at idle while he waited. A moment later he was inside the cool of the garage and the door was coming down.
Inside the apartment Colesceau moved in the dim light. Lights off, drapes drawn. He was a pale man who preferred a little shade with his sunlight, a little dampness with his day.
The California sunshine didn’t want you to have secrets like that: just look at what those people had done to him yesterday. How is your libido... erection and ejaculation... physical sexual arousal... do her with a Coke bottle or your fist?
Amazing, he thought, just what people in the government would do to a man. Humiliation. Control. Chemical castration. No better than the state police who had executed his father, really, just different methods, slower rates of extermination. And no dogs, so far.
On the way past the bookcases he glanced at the scores of eggshells, his mother’s treasures. Most of them were pastels — baby blue and pink and pale yellow. Sickening, infantile shades he thought. The ones with the little skirts of lace and bric-a-brac and lace were by far the worst. In his mother’s hands, egg painting wasn’t so much a noble Romanian folk art as a garish display of inner imbalances too acute for Colesceau to ponder.
He didn’t linger on the eggs however, because he knew that a twenty-six-year-old man must have more to think about than his mother. Not for the first time he wished she lived just a little farther away. The idea that she might move in with him was distressing.
He went into the kitchen. Colesceau knew for a fact that if the police exposed him and the neighbors rallied to have him removed, then his mother would move in to protect him. It would be her duty. She would fight them like a bulldog. He shivered and felt the tape up tight against his breasts. Thank God he’d looked ahead, seen the possibilities, made arrangements.
He made a very strong Bloody Mary. The vodka was in the freezer and the mix was in his refrigerator. He loved his drinks cold. But he liked them hot, too. So he ground half a teaspoon of black pepper, shook four jets of Tabasco and three of Worcestershire sauce into the jar, then broke off a stalk of celery and stirred it. It cooled and heated his lips at the same time. Nice.
After dinner and two more drinks Colesceau dialed Al Holtz’s office number. He knew the fat PA would be home by now, but he thought he might sum up his case for mercy with a brief message on Holtz’s machine. He always saved a little bit of old-world formality for law enforcement:
“Yes, hello Mr. Holtz, this is Matamoros Colesceau. Moros. I want to say thank you for the interview of yesterday. I will successfully satisfy my parole next week. I hope that you will allow me to maintain my life and privacy here on Meadowlark. I will continue to live up to my obligations as in the past I have done. I will never again harm any person. Thank you very much. I look forward to talking with you. Good-bye.”