Part 7 (1/2)

I put both feet on the floor. ”I don't come in. I'm sure you're both perfectly nice ex-drunks, except maybe him''-I motioned at Shane-”but I have no desire to continue this relations.h.i.+p.”

Shane did the bob-up-and-down-on-his-hands deal. ”Listen to the college girl firecracker. 'Continue this relations.h.i.+p.' I'll give you twenty dollars to see your t.i.ts, little missy.”

”In your dreams, p.r.i.c.k face.”

Shane's face ducked low and went sly. ”What if I said I was dying and I could go peacefully if only you'd give me twenty minutes of nice?”

”I'd say your death isn't worth twenty minutes of my time.”

Lloyd stepped toward me. ”Do you have a driver's license?”

”What are you guys, an act?”

He rubbed his right hand on his overalls leg. ”We both lost ours to alcohol.”

”I could get mine back if my legs worked,” Shane said.

I said, ”You shouldn't drink if you can't handle it.”

The ripple pa.s.sed through Oly again. Faith t.i.ttered. ”Ain't it amazing, Lloyd's sober and can't drive because the law thinks he's drunk, and Maurey's a drunk but can drive because the law thinks she's sober.”

”Irony,” Shane shouted. ”Get yourself planted in a wheelchair and the world explodes with irony.”

”What's a wheelchair got to do with it?” Faith asked.

This a-drunk taking for granted was wearing thin. n.o.body said ”Maurey's drunk”; they said ”Maurey's a drunk.” I hadn't admitted that yet, and everyone else's unquestioned conviction of the fact showed a lack of sensitivity.

I stood up from the bar stool. ”None of this relates to me, I'm going home.”

Shane hunkered down. For a man living on wheels, his head did an amazing amount of vertical action. ”Where's that?”

”What?”

”That home you're going to? Is home the tent with the list?”

Lloyd took another step toward me. He's one of those guys who can make his eyes go totally unguarded. ”If you have a driver's license, we can take you to North Carolina.”

”I'm not going anywhere.” I wondered if I slapped him would Lloyd blink. In the unnecessary-movement category, he was the exact opposite of Shane. ”Why would I go to North Carolina?”

Shane hooted again. ”Don't play stupid with us, la.s.sie.”

Lloyd said, ”You have a daughter there you need to be with.”

”How do you-”

”And the people in charge will never return your son if you don't get off the front lawn.”

You know that tone you imagine Jesus talked in, that's Lloyd. I met a guy in college had deep-sizzled his brain on LSD who talked the same way. It's like the speaker is wearing a sweats.h.i.+rt that says ”I am gentle. Kick me, I won't mind.”

”Why does the whole d.a.m.n state know my business and feel the right to offer an opinion?”

Faith cackled. ”You're the valley entertainment right now, Maurey. Unlucky for you it's off-season. Middle of July n.o.body would've cared that you've gone nuts in public.”

”I'm not nuts.”

Lloyd still hadn't blinked. ”Nuts or drunk, you need to get out of sight and we need help hauling a load of Coors to North Carolina.”

I looked over at the pinball machine and the jukebox. The jukebox had a picture of a ferris wheel on the back with a happy couple in the top chair. Next to them was a pay phone with hundreds of numbers written on the wall. ”Why North Carolina?” I asked.

Shane wheeled toward me too. I was being surrounded. ”Because the cur Ashley Montagu burned Granma's barn.”

”I knew it would be something like that.”

”And Lloyd's looking for his wife who ran off.”

Faith spoke from the backside of the surrounding forces. ”Watch out, he'll show you her picture any minute now.”

Lloyd finally blinked with a moment of insecurity. I wondered what the picture of his wife looked like-a skinny-armed farm wife with a dust-colored face, or maybe a small-town beauty operator type. The kind who chewed gum and gabbed while they touched women on the head.

”You drive all the time,” I said. ”I've seen you show up late for AA.”

I looked at the hair on Lloyd's arm while he talked. I've always been into hair on men's forearms. Lloyd's arm muscles were stringy yet tough. The hair lay dark and uphill instead of inside to outside like on most people. ”I can drive fine, just not legal. Mangum knows I'm clean so he lets me loose on the north end of the county, but we can't take Moby d.i.c.k on the road without a licensed driver.”

”And one hundred cases of Coors,” Shane added.

All men want something from me, but usually it's out-front man-on-woman stuff. These guys had dreamed up some scam or another that involved more than s.e.x or mothering. ”I'm outta here.”

”Maurey.” Lloyd used his unguarded eyes as a weapon-like a sheep dog left outside at thirty below zero.

I neatly deflected his needs. ”You'll have to save yourselves because you're not using me.”

p.i.s.sed-off thunderheads piled up over Yellowstone, but the Tetons sparkled in the west, clear and real. I stood on the Sagebrush mud mat breathing fresh air and listening through the door for the word that always follows when a man wants something and a woman won't give it.

”Holy Hannah, what a c.u.n.t.” That was Shane. I couldn't hear Lloyd's answer. I remembered his eyes, though, and the hair on his forearms, and I pretended to myself he didn't say ”Dumb b.i.t.c.h” or ”Women.” He probably did and I was just wishful thinking. Sometimes I'm not cynical enough.

The white ambulance out front was like an antique, the kind of bus you think about Hemingway nailing nurses in the back of while outside the Spanish civil war rages in the olive groves. Shaped like a loaf of Wonder bread, it had stretched windows along the sides, what appeared to be an extra layer of white sheet cake on top, and airplane running lights at the eight corners of the loaf. Over the two-pane winds.h.i.+eld a sign read Ambulance backward, so when it came roaring up on a car the driver could look in his rearview mirror and see Ambulance written the right way. Below that was another hand-lettered sign-Moby d.i.c.k.

That explained one of the out-of-the-blue references they'd tossed off inside. Lloyd had personified his vehicle. I did the same daily with bottles; that was natural. I guess he did it with cars. Lord knows the piece of junk looked like a white whale.

I cupped my hands around my eyes to peer in the back window. Engine parts and loose playing cards lay over ratty blankets and sleeping bags. They read a lot of magazines-Playboy, Popular Mechanics, Reader's Digest, and Guideposts, some others I couldn't see their covers. The prevailing motif was grease. Jesus himself couldn't have fit a hundred cases of anything in that back end.

The d.i.c.k did have a trailer hitch, which seemed odd for an ambulance. A trailer would solve the s.p.a.ce problem, but I'd have to fumigate before stepping in the door. If only there was a way to tape Shane's mouth shut. Two thousand miles cooped up with that hoot of his and I'd commit murder.

”Whoa,” I said out loud. ”Don't even think it. Better to rot in jail.”