We drive around for an eternity in our newly painted car. After circling Studio City several nerve-racking times, John finally winds up the steep road to Laurel Canyon toward Eddie’s.
Is this to be our death ride? I wonder in despair. My gut twists in knots, and I cannot comprehend that I am in a car driving up to the home of the drug lord who has contracts out on our lives. I get down low out of habit as we approach Eddie Nash’s house on Dona Lola Drive.
Listening intently, I hear every footstep John’s boots make up the brick walkway, then the creaking of the mailbox opening and closing shut. I hunch my shoulders down, bracing myself for a blast or gunshot, but instead hear the heavy thud of John’s footsteps running back to the car.
At the bottom of the Canyon road, he rips open the end of an envelope with his teeth and looks inside. “Fucking bastard!” He flings the shredded envelope to the floor.
“What?”
“He only gave me half! Son of a bitch!” John’s fist hits the steering wheel, and veins bulge in his neck as he punches on the gas pedal, peeling onto the freeway to head out of town.
Half. That’s Eddie’s thing, isn’t it? The understanding leaves a bad taste in my mouth. But with every mile farther and farther from this wretched place, this place of broken dreams and pain, I feel lighter and less oppressed. John reaches over to hold my hand tightly as we near the desert… and our new beginning.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
No!
From behind the shadowy ridge of hills in the east, the desert sun rises, magical hues of pink and gray thrown across a barren desert highway. Memories of the wonder I had in my heart when I traveled cross-country with my dad to California almost six years ago entertain the silent hours as the miles slip behind us.
I lift my head from John’s lap to look at him and smile.
“Hey, baby. Sleep good?” His voice is like a soft, sweet song in my ear.
“Mmmm. Where are we?”
“Almost to Vegas.” He brushes my hair from my face.
“Where are we headed, John?”
“Montana. We’ll go to my sister Anne’s in Billings. She’ll let us hang out for a while till we can figure something out. If we like it enough, we might even settle down there.”
“Yeah. That sounds good.” I snuggle up next to him and rest my head on his shoulder. Spinning the dials on the radio, John finds only country music and then shuts it off, content to listen to the engine whirr through the desolate plains. Thor’s warm, four-pound body fits perfectly in the crease of my leg under the scratchy, orange polyester comforter.
The moment is peaceful for once. We’re alone in the desert, secure in the thought of leaving the city. It’s just John and I and the fading stars.
WHAM! A large feathered bird smacks the windshield dead-on.
“What was that?”
Color drains from John’s face. It’s as if he has seen a ghost.
“What, John? What is it?”
He swallows. “A hawk.” His tone is low and sad.
“Wow! That was huge!”
“It’s bad.”
“What do you mean ‘bad’?”
“It’s a bad omen for a hunter to kill a hawk… real bad.” John squeezes my hand, and I tense with the familiar apprehension of dread at the prophecy that fell from the sky. Now the fear of an unknown future is real again and as big as the sharpening outline of the mountains in the distance. I am afraid.
Gripping my hand tightly enough to crush my knuckles painfully into each other, John summons the strength to face the road ahead.
The car’s reduced speed and the stifling heat wake me. The parking lot at the Las Vegas Stardust Hotel is sporadically lined with cars, the air a blast of hot oven wind.
“Shhh. Take Thor for a pee, will ya?” John asks before I have a chance to say anything.
“What are you doing, John?” I ask, annoyed at seeing the casino.
“Just fifteen minutes, baby. I just want to place one bet on aught double aught. You know, and my lucky numbers… to see if we can double our money.”
John is already out the door before I can argue. “Hurry up, John. I got a bad feeling here. This place is too public.”
He blows me a kiss for luck and walks off, yanking at the back of his jeans, smoothing his wrinkled T-shirt.
After watering Thor, I kick back on the shaded backseat, my feet sticking out the window as I pick at a leftover glazed doughnut. The sun glares off the parked cars, and each minute that ticks by grows hotter.
Abruptly, a quickly moving figure rushes toward me through the bright glare of the sun. It is John. Shirt collar pulled up to his ears and head ducked down, he slides into the driver’s seat. “Get down,” he orders.
“What is it?”
In swift movements, he turns the ignition and slides the gear arm into reverse. A trail of dust gathers behind him.
“John? What?”
“A hit man.”
“Eddie’s?”
“No!” He is visibly trembling, his hand fumbling on the dashboard for a cigarette.
“Did he see you?”
John ignores me, pulls in a lungful of smoke, and steps on the gas.
Get out of here. Get out of here. Get out of here, I think, real danger suffocating me like the terrible desert heat. It is what the police told us. There are many… many contracts out on us. They are everywhere.
Then I remember the hawk.
It is good to be out of Nevada. After crossing through the red colors of Utah, we hit the plains of Wyoming and head up to Montana with a detour at the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. John wants to stop and walk through the gravestones that mark Custer’s last stand. Cowboy drips out of him in the way he talks and walks. It’s as if he has changed into a favorite old pair of jeans, and I remember how much he loves John Wayne.
It is beautiful—the countryside of America—and it has a calming effect, one that irons out the static of our fear. Soon we are laughing and playing around as we did in the old days. With no drugs around, John is his old lighthearted self. It’s the first time in so many years that I feel kind of happy again.
Billings, Montana, seems like a town with ancient history. Redbrick buildings line either side of downtown, and the trees grow thick and tall. With plenty of space and light, their branches stretch up to the sky in bountiful twists and curls.
John’s sister, Anne, lives in an older, one-bedroom brown-stone. When we arrive, she welcomes us at the door in her faded pocket housecoat.
John slides into a down-home country accent, a little more childlike than his John Wayne drawl. He and his sister laugh and joke and genuinely enjoy each other’s company.
Anne is a plain, pear-shaped woman in her late thirties with long mousy-brown hair parted down the middle, reminding me of the style John likes me to wear. I can see a resemblance to her mother in the long oval shape of her face and her small brown eyes. Soft-spoken and shy, she doesn’t mention Mary except to ask John if he has talked to her since he left California. John pretends not to hear her question. She offers us the pullout couch to sleep on for as long as we are in town.
John doesn’t tell Anne the full story of what happened to us in LA. I don’t think she wants to know. I’m burning with curiosity about what her mother may have told her about me, but I don’t ask.
Our lives are simple again for the first time after so long. John and I are romantic, taking lazy summer walks, holding hands under the full shade of the trees, and browsing through antique and secondhand stores. Our meals are filled with laughter, fried chicken, beans, and a sense of home, making it easy to forget the terror of the past, until…