Night Trail
by Lawrence Seinoff
Copyright 2012 Lawrence Seinoff
Smashwords Edition
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Table of Contents
The Director of College Counseling stared again at the pile on his kitchen table. He’d never seen ten thousand dollars in cash. He’d also never been threatened before. Stein didn’t look like the scary type, but the words spoke for themselves. “Take the money and don’t complain. Or, if you prefer to complain, just realize that someone else has already received an equal amount of money to take care of you if you complain or should you not get our little Johnny into the school of his choice.”
It had been such a good side business too—until the appearance of Stein. He’d gotten at least a hundred families to fork over $4,000 each. And sure, it was a conflict of interest, the stupid bastards.
But no one had dared to complain, no matter how much money they had here in Spring Harbor, home to an asshole-ridden high school and a bathtub full of sailboats. They didn’t complain because Kingman had connections and could get kids into schools. And he enjoyed having these hotshots genuflect before him while they droned on about their brilliant children.
Now, what was Kingman to do about Stein? Obviously Stein wasn’t the kind of person you could reason with. And little Johnny’s choice of school was Dartmouth because little Johnny knew Kingman had gotten many a Spring Harbor kid into that splendid Ivy League institution.
Unfortunately, little Johnny was dumb. In other words, he was lucky to get into a remedial reading program, let alone an advanced placement class. And as for sports, he’d never been on a single team. And this was the kind of school that accepted anyone on their teams, the kind of school that stroked the parents until they blasted off into orgasm land. In fact the kind of school that jerked itself off in every conceivable way.
As if these obstacles weren’t enough, Johnny Stein had never volunteered for anything and had just hint of a lisp. Yeah, that would go over big with the interviewer.
Kingman had his work cut out for him on this one.
But maybe he was being too hard on the kid. Maybe Johnny just wasn’t Ivy League material. Who the hell was? He didn’t really know the kid, who was a non-entity in a school in which every student did everything, from advanced placement to advanced volunteerism, if there was such a word.
So Kingman hit the Internet to get the lowdown on little Johnny’s father. It didn’t take him too long to figure out that Victor Stein was a serious porn king with serious mob connections. This was just great. He’d probably surfed one of Stein’s snatch-laden websites without even knowing it.
Kingman picked up the phone and dialed his brother in beautiful Patagonia, Arizona. Unlike the lazy teachers in his school, Kingman wasn’t one to waste time. Besides, if he did a really good job, who knew? Maybe Stein would shoot him up with Viagra and give him a guest porn slot. Kingman had seen worse-looking guys in skin flicks, albeit for cinematic effect, but who cared? He was sure he could do it, even with the cameras rolling. Besides, the cameras were always trained on the girls.
“Hello, my brother. I figure you’re home, so pick up the phone,” he said to the answering machine.
“Should I be here?” said an identical voice.
“You still have those trailers with their own addresses?” Kingman asked, never the one to beat around the cactus.
“Why?”
“Because your brother’s a genius.”
“I’d expect no less from my twin.”
“That just makes me ugly.”
“How’s the teaching business?”
“I’m a college admissions counselor.”
“Oh, excuse me. So how’s that business?”
“Depends on you.”
“Here we go.”
“Now, don’t go saying that I only call you when I need something. It’s not like I’ve never bailed you out. Speaking of bail, I hope you’re doing something slightly legitimate at the moment. No more cargo, I hope.”
The cargo Kingman was referring to were of the illegal alien variety. They traveled by truck and either made it to a couple of little trailers in Patagonia or fried like oysters on the desert. With the way immigration was cracking down, his brother was going to be the one frying.
But he imagined, after all these years, his brother had helped transport at least one academic super star. Good board scores, high average, glowing recommendations, a college counselor’s dream. Then he thought of Victor Stein, literally turning Kingman into a Dr. Frankenstein, forcing him to perform a monstrous transformation on his son.
“Are you finished with the lecture, my un-esteemed brother?”
“Yea, I’m finished.”
“So what gives?”
“I need to create a residency in your esteemed community for a student.”
“You need my damn trailer, you mother.”
“Maybe just your trailer-trash address.”
“No way, I keep my inventory there.”
“I don’t want to know what kind.”
“Give me a break, man. I’m diversifying.”
“You better be diversifying into something kosher.”
“People, plants it’s all the same.”
“Jesus.”
“Come on, it’s not Meth, You want my help or not?”
“Yea, I want your help.”
“Why does it feel like I’m going to end up on the wrong side of the umbilical cord?”
“Because you think I got more of the cord to begin with.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t try to strangle me with it.”
“Then you wouldn’t be here to help me now.”
Perhaps Zig Falcone would have loved his adoptive father if he’d named him Zig instead of Bobby. But, Falcone had had to come up with the name himself. Even if Big Sal had named him Zig, it wouldn’t be as good as the Zig he had grown into. And, of course, Big Sal couldn’t possibly have named him Junior like most of the other neighborhood kids. How would it look having a little Korean kid named Salvatore Falcone, Junior?
So Falcone had come up with the name himself, but not without a little help from Tony Animone, Junior, the one who’d called him Mr. Zigzag in the first place, back in the schoolyard, before Animone’s brain got a little damaged. Yeah, little Tony was still thinking like Junior. He hadn’t aged one bit.
But you should never tell someone that his eyes are all zigzagged from his parents because that just sets things in motion. It forces you to rename yourself and not tell anyone about your secret name. You could state his eyes were slanted because that would be true. But you shouldn’t throw a kid out of whack and tell him his eyes came out the opposite way from his parents because he may have to whack you, or put you in a whacks museum, or maybe just on a respirator.
Still, if Falcone could help Tony now, he would. In fact, maybe he’d pay him a visit real soon and put him out of his misery. He wondered how Tony looked these days anyway, and if he could go to the bathroom on his own. Did someone have to shave him or did he have a beard down to the floor? Maybe his skin was looking a little yellow and he could use some sun or, in his case, the yellow son.
They still didn’t know who had introduced Tony’s head to the parked car outside of the schoolyard, but, then again, they didn’t know that Bobby Falcone was secretly the Zig. And they didn’t know any of the good shit the Zig did. Where were they today anyway, his traveling audience, his little moving targets, shopping at the fruit stand or working there, his brothers and sisters, his parents?
Let them rot in hell, Falcone thought, rearranging chairs in the empty bar. It would be nice if he had some help, here. But why should anyone share his excitement and get to the bar three hours early? They were just workers, little out-of-work actors who couldn’t even play themselves. Of course, their fathers hadn’t given them a bar to run, but then again there was only one Salvatore Falcone Senior, alias Big Sal, adoptive mob father of Bobby Falcone, aka the Zig, the Korean kid from Howard Beach.
Ed Kingman had a license to teach English, but that wasn’t how he defined himself. No, what really defined him was the sweet revenge he’d once extracted while working as an educational assistant and doing a librarian stint in order to get his place secured at the plush North Shore school just fifteen years earlier. As he was leaving the school with a stack of stolen books in his briefcase, one of the pimple-faced students cracked a joke about how his bag was probably stuffed with stolen books. He would have popped the student in the jaw, but instead exercised cool and patient self-control. Several months later, Kingman changed a couple of grades on the asshole’s transcript and placed a nasty note signed by a non-existent teacher in his file.
His other job at the school back then defined him, too. He would enter students’ grades and SAT scores into a computer, sit with them in a claustrophobic room just outside of the library for about fifteen minutes, and listen to their aspirations. He’d ask them all kinds of questions. Did they prefer a big city? Were they into fraternities or sororities? Did they prefer lecture halls or small classes? Then the printer would excrete a list of potential institutional fits just as he would be wishing he, and not them, would be the one about to start a new life.
And that was how he came to be who he was. It took a little larceny, some nonsense graduate courses, and a few college contacts, not to mention an older-by-five-minutes twin brother who had a real horticultural talent for growing weed. Kingman just wanted a green thumb too. At four thousand a pop, his whole hand was getting green.
Right from the start, the trip down to Patagonia sucked. Saturday was supposed to be a lazy day, not a day in which you woke up at 5:00 a.m. and waited two hours to get on a plane. If he hadn’t been such a cheapskate, he could have flown first class. Instead, Kingman, a pretty thin guy, found himself sitting between two fat, drooling slobs who should have been forced to purchase two seats each out of sheer spatial logic.
The only thing decent about it—no, much more than decent—was one of the stewardesses. He could tell she was getting a real kick out of his predicament. She was in her mid thirties, roughly his age, and Kingman could read her life story at a glance. He had a real knack for that. Yeah, this one had never been married and had let herself get tossed around a little too much. But there was something about her, a certain waning tautness, he decided. He didn’t mean it in a derogatory way. It was just there, right between being young and being old, dead center and sexy as hell, just like him.
Kingman also decided to pass the time by writing her a note that he would hand to her upon exiting the plane. He had about a fifty-fifty track record with this approach, provided he remembered to leave his phone number. He hadn’t changed his technique since the fifth grade.
Five hours later, in Phoenix and as planned, he handed her the amorous letter as he hobbled off the plane, his sides aching from his tormentors’ jabbing, flabby elbows. She didn’t even look surprised. Yeah, she was as dead-center as he’d ever seen. Hopefully she threw all her notes into a hat once a month and picked the sorriest one she could remember.
Kingman could have flown into Tucson because it was closer to Patagonia, but that would have meant changing planes in Dallas or Chicago. Now he faced a three-hour drive to Tucson. At least the slobs weren’t in the car with him. He’d decided to spend the night in Tucson and drive to Patagonia in the morning. It was just an hour from Tucson, but there were only two places to sleep in Patagonia—either with his brother or at a bed-and-breakfast. Neither choice appealed to him. He preferred to case out the area in the morning, checking things out before he popped in on brother dearest.
Eventually, he checked into a hotel near the Tucson airport. It wasn’t like he travelled much. But when he did, he liked staying near airports because of the strip joints—in case he got so totally bored that he had to park somewhere other than in the room. He was like his old man in that respect. He got bored easily, and enjoyed relieving his boredom with what he knew was a pathetic fantasy.
And like his father, he was an English teacher. And also like his old man, who had lived through the drug-riddled sixties and enjoyed getting high with his twin sons, as well as with his students, Kingman liked to party. He just didn’t have the twin sons’ part covered yet. Or a dead wife. And, he wasn’t dead yet himself.
Despite the fact it was a non-smoking room, Kingman lit up a joint as soon as he’d shut the door. They were obviously referring to tobacco, he reasoned. Why get depressed? He was on vacation, at least for a couple of days. The mistake had been not getting off during the drive. But he only liked getting stoned in a car when he was listening to music, and he’d never liked listening to music in a rental. It was like wearing someone else’s headphones. And with his luck, which Kingman had to admit hadn’t been too bad so far, he’d get stopped by a state trooper.
Then he would probably say one stupid thing and end up getting pulverized. Like the time when he spit a beautiful wad of teenaged phlegm off a banister and hit some older kid who turned his face into a punching bag after Kingman tried to smirk his way out.
He walked over to the bathroom and spit in the sink just for old time’s sake, half-expecting to see blood whirlpooling down the drain. Then he looked in the mirror. There he was, blue eyes and all. He still had his hair, too. He’d be plausible in a porno flick. He wouldn’t be the star, but he could fill in on a scene or two. They could use his brother as a stand-in. No one would know, not even the girls. He could go in the bathroom between scenes and his brother could come out in his place, refreshed and ready for action. They could save on the Viagra.
Kingman took a quick shower and took to scouting for strip clubs. First he looked in the Yellow Pages, which, as usual, had gone all seedy in the “gentlemen’s clubs” section. It still didn’t offer much comfort to know that he wasn’t the only sweaty-palmed loser that had passed through.
But he wasn’t totally gone. At least he was still introspective. There was just sometimes nothing better to do. What was he supposed to do, wander the desert and look at cacti? Instinctively, he switched on his cell phone. Sure enough, he had a message. It was probably his brother, but you never knew.
Carla Benton opened the curtains and looked at the real thing rather than a glossy desert sunset photograph on the wall. No doubt, the others would already be in the bar. This captain had already received one warning, but they were off-duty for seventy-two hours. Happy Hour at the hotel bar didn’t exactly slow things up, either.
Carla now turned her attention to the note written by the cute guy who’d been mercilessly sandwiched between the two butterballs. The pilots probably thought he was just handing her some trash before deplaning. She’d known right away it wasn’t trash, just some trashy thought. It even had a stain. At least it was coffee. At least the guy had a sense of humor.
You owe me for this seat and for that sly smirk. When you come to New York, call me. Call me, even if you never come to New York. Here’s my cell phone number: 631-472-7279.
He sure didn’t beat around the bush, did he? She pulled her cell phone out of her pocketbook and was going to dial the number, when the phone in her room rang.
“You going to join us, smiley?”
“Not tonight,” she told Captain Boyd.
“I’d say it was your loss, but it’s mine.”
There was a click and no goodbye. He wasn’t indecisive either. That was the problem. Converting his attention to friendship was another problem. He just liked her. She’d stupidly told him not to take it personally, when she knew full well pilots took rejection very personally, especially a captain like Boyd, who was in serious need of a vacation.
What a mistake, placing yourself inside a flying hell hole. It was almost as bad a mistake as who she sold her bar to. At least being on the ground, you could go out for some air. If she went out for air on this gig, she’d only get a thirty-second scream heard by no one. Well, it was finally out of her system. No more planes. She returned to the cell phone and dialed the number.
“Hello, you’ve reached Ed Kingman. Please leave…”
Carla hung up. He was the King, huh? Thinking of playing cards immediately, she matched him with the king of clubs—a nice chummy card. She could detect in his voice the possible need for an ace or a joker too. It was nice though, almost announcer-like, with just a taste of Brooklyn. She knew the accent well from her bar-owning days with the customers singing their karaoke. They had yet to create the karaoke machine that eliminated Brooklyn accents.
There was no reason to leave a message either. The King would know that he missed a call. If he had even a little brainpower, he might even realize who the number on his cell belonged to, unless his brain had been squashed during the flight. He looked pretty damaged as it was, but his instincts were good.
Carla walked into the bathroom and threw some cold water on her face. What was really bothering her wasn’t Captain Boyd trying to get into her pants as well as her brain. That wasn’t it at all. She could handle it for now, at least until he got drunk. But moving on as going to be more difficult this time, demanding more effort, especially since she had no clue at all what she wanted to do.
She did know one thing. The guy who’d bought her bar stopped paying the note. It wasn’t her fault New York City banned smoking in restaurants. She didn’t care how badly the bar was doing. How could she move on if she had to go backwards? Now, unless she could take the place back and make something out of it, some lawyer was going to take everything anyway. They always took everything.
Thinking about “taking everything,” she hopped in the shower and checked her breasts. No lumps, which meant she wasn’t about to follow in her mother’s steps—not just yet. Still, she needed a check-up one of these days. Those radiologists could come up with all kinds of goodies, couldn’t they? No, they couldn’t. Her mother had gone like clockwork, had never missed a turn. They said it was a quick grower, but Carla didn’t exactly believe them. You never laid eyes on a radiologist either. They were invisible, like photographers in darkrooms—the worst kind of voyeurs. The one who looked at her mother’s must have really been in the dark because he saw zero when he should have seen infinity. And he left her zero in the mother department.
Now they had MRIs for breasts—she’d heard about it on the radio. They could see every tissue and every cell. There was something awfully symbolic about that. The science was getting closer to the matter, but nothing really mattered because, as soon as they found the secret of eternal life, an asteroid was bound to hit. Isn’t that how it went? And, was there any denying the irony? She’d read it in the esteemed airline magazine, how they were increasing the life spans of certain worms from one day to twenty days. All they had to do was to trick nature by switching off a couple of genes. And now they were scrutinizing every atom inside the breast—even the implanted ones.
Instinctively Carla went for the shampoo. She’d have to spend time drying her hair now, but at least it stopped her from practically feeling herself up in search of tumors. Her hair would look good, but for whom? The king was probably playing golf somewhere or visiting his mother or selling snake oil. She wondered what he did. He was obviously no Shakespeare, which was good because she hated observers. They were lawyers without tongues. But what was she giving off that led one grown man to pass her a note and another to stalk her.
And why was she about to go downstairs and throw Boyd a bone? She supposed she had to keep him at bay with a little attention while at the same time gently telling him to get lost until he found someone else to hang captain’s his hat on. Yes, it was better to keep an eye on Boyd and leave before he got drunk. Her survival skills suggested this. She was listening more and more to those lately, beginning to see the merit in taking little, preemptive strikes.
She’d have a look around the bar also. She may have hated observers, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a people watcher herself. In fact, that’s all she did, whether in the air or on the ground. As for physical contact, it had to be a year already. What did it matter? She was getting a bit of nature on the trail, she supposed.
Blasting the hairdryer, she turned her thoughts to Sabino Canyon. One of the stewards had showed her an easy hike on her first trip to Tucson and she’d done the trail a dozen times since. It was like a drug, just a simple way for a city girl to feel like a cowgirl. Now, she hiked the trail whenever they were planted in Tucson. Unfortunately, they were planted in Phoenix but it wouldn’t matter soon.
An hour later, in city-girl mode, Carla sat at the bar next to Captain Boyd. He was off alone, as usual, while the rest of the flight crew was busy partying at a table situated a little too close to bathroom for her taste. Boyd was trying to have a conversation with the bartender, who looked about nineteen. A cute thing with a little pearl on her tongue and a nose ring, half his age and not much more than half Carla’s. She looked amused too. With Johnny Cash in the background singing “I Walk the Line,” it appeared that Boyd was serenading her.
“Glad you changed your mind, Carla.”
“You want a little hand with your prey?”
“I am not a man of the cloth.”
“Funny.”
“I don’t believe in prayer. Besides, you’re here now.”
“I’m here to watch.”
“Don’t botch.”
“Better stick to flying and give up the poetry.”
“You know, I would have loved to be around when stewardesses were stewardesses. Now they say things I don’t understand. I’m a simple guy. They’re too mature these days.”
“I’m sure you could buy a doll. You’re the one playing with the words. Boyd, how many drinks have you had?”
“A few.”
“Makes us look better?”
“Makes me feel better, that’s all. Makes the music sound better. You like Johnny Cash?”
“He’s alright.”
“He’s dead.”
“I know.”
“So’s his wife. Now that was love.”
“Boyd, cool it.”
“Come on, Carla, help me with my prayers. Have a drink.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You know, I wouldn’t be in limbo if you saw things my way.”
“That’s not the way the world works, Boyd.”
“You mean A + B doesn’t equal C.”
“If B likes A, it does.”
“Are you A or B, Carla?”
“Boyd, you’ve had more than a few drinks.”
“You’re a C, son of a gun, C for Carla. I could have said something else, but it would have been a lie. That’s the furthest thing from who you are.”
“Take it easy, Boyd, okay?” Carla said, glancing over at the flight crew. A steward lifted his glass up to her and smiled. She raised her fist, returning the toast.
“You know what the problem is with the equation?” Boyd said, lifting his glass as if the steward had toasted him. “You think I’m a bad guy when I’m a good guy.”
“You’re just not my guy.”
“Well, that’s another problem, I guess. Want to play pinball?”
This was a funny goodbye, Carla thought, and pretty symbolic too—she with the flight crew in the bar, almost like they were all about to take off into outer space in this self-contained alcohol powered ship. Then there was Johnny Cash singing “I Walk the Line” while no one in the place could walk a straight line and Boyd just wandering away obliviously.
The phone book had pointed Kingman toward a street called Speedway where all the clubs were, and the woman at the front desk, a gum-chewer with a tiny diamond pasted on the side of her nose, sent him off with a smirk, seeming to know immediately where he was heading when he asked for directions.
Perhaps there was no other reason to head to Speedway. But it wasn’t like he really wanted to go. He wouldn’t even be in Tucson, if not for Stein. Everything was going fine. He’d turned his life around. It was legitimate, what he was doing. Questionable maybe, but legitimate. The reality was, he was helping kids get into schools. It wasn’t fair that, just because he knew the ropes, he was being lassoed by Stein.
And Jews weren’t supposed to be like Stein. They were supposed to be mild-mannered, educated intellectuals. They were supposed to be urologists or artists. He was the one with the Irish blood. He was the one with the fireman-like father. He was supposed to be the tougher of the two, not Stein. So much for stereotypes. It was just his luck, Kingman thought, as he drove into the parking lot of The Red Garter opposite about a dozen Harley’s.
He sat in his car staring at the entrance. The front doors were painted bright red, a wooden figure of a cheesy girl carved above the entryway. She was on her stomach with one of her stocking-clad legs bent at the knee and pointing upward, revealing a red garter. She wore giant sunglasses, and her head was turned toward him, returning his stare.
Kingman had seen enough. It was a real odds-increaser, and, although it had a neighborhood feel, he just wasn’t part of the neighborhood. He was backing up his car, when a biker, replete with the requisite red bandanna, black T-shirt, and tattooed arms, pushed through the red doors and came out clutching a Budweiser.
The biker looked prepared to take a leak. He also looked prepared to throw up, Kingman thought. But he appeared apologetic in a way, even with that pouting grizzly face, almost like he was sorry he’d scared Kingman away.
Pretty soon he was back on Speedway. He thought he was heading west, but he wasn’t likely ever to be mistaken for the Human Compass. The sun looked like it went down in that direction, anyhow. He passed several other clubs, but they all had the same uninviting neighborhood feel and their parking lots were filled with a combination of old pick-up trucks and motorcycles. They had uncreative names too, like Foxy Lady or Speedway Dancer. Didn’t they have any imagination? What was wrong with this place? He had hoped to find clubs catering to travelers, not local bikers. Wasn’t there someplace that catered to your typical transient New Yorker who was trying to straighten out his life?
After about ten minutes the area got a little fancier, and he pulled into the parking lot of a Barnes and Noble. He was an English teacher, wasn’t he? Not really. Not anymore. Now he was the man with the college plan. He was soon alone in the section that defined him and began eyeing the thick books that promised to demystify the college application process. Maybe he could write off the trip. He was doing research, seeing how the people without the four thousand dollars lived.
Soon a man in his early fifties wearing a pair of khaki shorts, probably a vacationer, wandered into the aisle. He picked up a Baron’s guide while Kingman watched his eyes. It became readily clear the man was actually gaping at the women in the bookstore. Kingman figured the guy’s wife was strolling in some other section, perhaps looking for a gift, or perusing cookbooks, trying to learn how to prepare a new chicken dish for her man, as he sat across the store lecherously ogling young girls. They were all dogs, especially him. He was just afraid of bikers.
Kingman followed the vacationer to his next section: Men’s Health. He was perusing an herbal cure book. Kingman pieced together the whole situation pretty quickly. The guy was having prostate trouble. He was sure if he followed him into the bathroom and listened to him pee, the stream would be as intermittent as a windshield wiper in a drizzle.
When the observee finally started eyeing him back, Kingman wandered away. The place was packed, a real Tucson Saturday night. At least, just like in New York, you could go directly from a strip club to a book store. It was at this point he saw the usual Starbucks located right inside the store. He wasn’t in the mood for coffee, but a piece of cake would do. Not only did the pot give him useless insights about people, it gave him a sweet tooth that a chemo patient would die for.
After satisfying his sudden craving with some banana bread, Kingman wandered toward the Cookbook section trying to find the vacationer and his wife. He couldn’t spot them, but he did eye a couple of books. One, A Thousand Pasta Dishes, had to be the dumbest book he’d ever seen. The author had obviously run out of ideas somewhere around dish number 100 and started listing moronic recipes like Pasta with Canned Tuna or Pasta with Figs, or, Kingman’s favorite, the Great American Pasta Sandwich.
Another book, with the cool title, Gross Wine Descriptions, did manage to entertain Kingman. Each page included a picture of a wine bottle and some juvenile imagery referring to its taste, such as “Hints of prostitute sweat, feces, and subtle blackberry make this wine memorable,” or “Gunpowder and snot mixed in, explodes in your mouth and nose.” The bottles also bore nutty labels, some sexually suggestive and some disgusting, like dogs urinating on grape vines. Kingman’s favorite was of a monkey drinking from a bottle containing a banana.
Once again, he’d seen enough. It was time to head back to the hotel. The vacationer would get more action than he would. Instead of a party, Kingman would have room service, but he’d have to skip the dessert since he’d already been there. It was just as well. Sublimation was the key to pulling together loose ends without self-destructing. This was a business trip, after all. Unfortunately he was the business, and a little detoxification was also in order. One had to stop smoking pot sooner or later. In his case, later. He left Barnes and Noble thinking of his father again and how cool his old man thought it was getting high with his twins. It did seem cool back then.
The pounding on the door startled Carla, and immediately she assumed the hotel was going up in flames. She jumped out of bed and ran to the door.
“Who is it?”
“Open up. You know who it is.”
“Boyd, go to sleep. You’re drunk.”
“Come on, Carla. I need a smart stewardess, the smartest stewardess.”
“You’re making noise.”
“You’re the smartest stewardess in the whole world. Do you know that?”
“I’m going to call the front desk.”
“I’ll be quiet. Just open the door, please.”
“Get lost, Boyd.”
“You think I give a shit about the front desk?”
“I’m going to complain to personnel tomorrow.”
“Why wait till tomorrow? I don’t give a shit about them either. We don’t make any money anymore. Goddamn union. I can make more money dusting crops. Open the door. It’s a team thing, A + B.”
“Boyd, go to sleep.”
“I’ll be normal if you let me in.”
“Last chance.”
“I’m going, but I had a nice little epiphany tonight, Carla. It happened to me when you left the bar. I closed my eyes just for a second, and when I opened them I saw something that made me smile. It was my reflection on a bottle of Scotch, but you were inside the bottle and you were in trouble. That’s when I realized that I have to help you. Now I’m a happy guy again because I have a purpose.”
“I don’t need your help. You’re the one who needs help. Get out of here.”
“You see, A + B equals C after A helps B.”
“Come on, Boyd, stop it.”
“I’m going.”
“You need help.”
“Maybe I’ll sleep by the door. I’m a little harmless puppy.”
“Go, now.”
“Okay, okay. Can I just tell you the dream I had last night?”
“No.”
“Okay, okay. Bye for now, Carla.”
If she were on the ground floor, Carla would have packed her stuff and climbed through the window. Why couldn’t she have just kept her mouth shut and not egged him on? She was amazed that people hadn’t started banging on the walls. Were they deaf? If it had been the TV, she would have gotten a call from the front desk, but if she were being beaten to death, there’d be no complaints. It was her fault. She hadn’t really led him on, but she should have kept her distance instead of entertaining herself.
Carla picked up the phone and dialed her airline—not to complain about Boyd (it was three in the morning), but to find out how early she could catch a flight to Tucson. She needed to think, and the Sabino hike was about the best place in the world for thinking.
Boyd’s drunken declaration that he’d decided they were a team and that he would help her was certainly cause for finally moving on. She just hadn’t figured him as being this far gone. He wasn’t the needy type. He was an action figure with plenty of resolve. He was a pilot, and he was supposed to keep himself together. Now that he had his jets set on her, she wasn’t about to get on any more jets with him.
But Boyd had gotten drunk once before with her at a bar in Miami. He’d told her about one of his dreams then too, which is why she didn’t want to hear another one. “I dreamed that we took a jet full of people on a joy ride,” he’d said, ever so peacefully. “We didn’t hurt anybody. We just did dips and turns and spins and all kinds of tricks. No one was scared. We all had fun and they applauded us. It was an ordinary flight other than that. We served meals and everything, right in the middle of all those cool loops. The food wasn’t even sliding off of the trays.”
She’d thought he was joking, spicing up his dream, perhaps even goofing on her. It had only been a few months ago, but now she thought he really had had the dream, or worse: a fantasy. She’d have to tell someone. She really would. And then she’d move on.
Thankfully no puppy was sleeping on the doormat the following morning, only a multicolored USA Today. Carla glanced at the front page before tossing the paper on her bed. There was a feature on red wine and how it was supposed to be good for the heart. That was great, if you had a heart to begin with.
Carla felt her own heart beating as she quickly gathered her things. There was a small turbo prop leaving in an hour that she could catch without much difficulty. Still, she found herself rushing. Change tended to make one rush, to make one’s heart beat a little differently, as well. She thought of the heart under her mother’s breast. There wasn’t a more loving person in the world than Carla’s mother, at least to her.
She wondered about Boyd’s mother. He’d grown up in a military family and his father had also been a pilot. That was the extent of her knowledge about him. He’d been so tight-lipped until this sudden meltdown. Now he seemed capable of muttering only muddled riddles. He was like a foreigner at an airport.
She carried, rather than rolled, her suitcase to the lobby. There was no need to wake him up as she passed his room. That’s the way the world worked sometimes. One small mistake, like waking up the wrong individual, could stop the change from happening. It was like going into the wrong 7-11 at the wrong time and getting your head blown off. It wasn’t your fault that some nut-job crossed your path. But you didn’t have to walk into the store to begin with either. You could have gone into a normal supermarket at a normal hour. Or you didn’t have to smoke in the first place.
Fortunately the shuttle bus was waiting outside the lobby, so she was at the airport with plenty of time to spare. She wondered how Boyd would react to her absence and who would replace her. Actually he wouldn’t have that problem, would he? This wasn’t a 7-11 thing. Lives were at stake. She didn’t want him acting out any of his dreams. Nor did she want to be in his presence after she made her little contribution to society and blew the whistle on him. She knew Boyd would only see black and white—and maybe red—when it came to her.
In contrast to Boyd, the pilot on the small jet was gentle and unthreatening, and treated her like a guest in his home. He also looked like he was barely old enough to drive. There were only a few other passengers on the plane; the airline had to be losing money on this flight. No wonder they were cutting everyone’s salary.
One of the passengers, a young-doctor type, sitting diagonally across from her, looked pretty scared, like he didn’t want his precious education to have been all for naught. He could have driven, Carla thought. She could have driven also. She wished she had. It was one of those crazy decisions she’d just went with. You thought you were going to save two hours, but you lost fifty years instead.
Carla got her wish twenty minutes later and was heading in a Ford Taurus toward Sabino Canyon. It was a little early when she turned right on Tanqe Verde, so she pulled into a small shopping center and parked outside a place she’d eaten at twice before, the Eclectic Café.
An hour after that, just minutes before the turn-off to Sabino, she pulled into a Circle K and parked next to a beat-up pickup truck. No one said she had to take her own advice. Just like you shouldn’t go into a convenience store at 3:00 in the morning, there was something that made it the right place to buy your water and snacks before a hike, especially if you were a city girl, taking one of your four or five yearly nature walks.
She was surprised when she got to the Sabino visitors center and found it had been jazzed up, totally remodeled. They even sold snacks out front now. There were also two Mexicans selling T-shirts that were spread out over two tables arranged alongside each other. A sign next to the table informed buyers this was a private enterprise and that proceeds from the T-shirt sales were not remitted back to the park. It was obvious the Mexican hadn’t placed the sign, but it didn’t stop anyone.
Carla purchased her ticket, made a restroom stop, and sat on a long bench alone, waiting for the tram. She was alone because everyone else was at the table with the T-shirts. She held onto her cell phone and stared at the group. There were about a dozen people, including one baby and one old woman who looked like she might be going up the mountain to find Moses. They were probably spread over three or four families and circled the table with their necks bent down toward the T-shirts.
The tram to the top left on the hour. That hadn’t changed. She still had fifteen minutes to kill so she finally did her duty and dialed the airline’s personnel office. She was alone anyway, except for a lizard that had crawled up and was looking at her from where it perched on a small rock. Maybe her mother was keeping an eye on her.
“Yes, I can understand why you’re taking a leave,” said the female supervisor who Carla had eventually been transferred to. “This is quite serious. You will have to come in at some point. There could be a hearing. You may have to be available. We’ll also need a written statement.”
“Whatever I can do to be of help,” Carla responded. She watched the long tram slowly approaching from down the paved mountain road, looking almost like a subway car without a roof. She’d better not get too chatty with the supervisor or she’d have to settle for a walk up and down the paved road, rather than taking the tram up and the trail down.
“You’re a brave girl.”
“Not really,” Carla said. It was time to hike, and time to put the airline behind her.
“Well, we will be in touch after we hear from Captain Boyd,” the supervisor said, just as the tram reached the bottom, circled, and parked in front of the visitors’ center right by the bench. It was empty except for the driver, a tan guy in a safari hat and a khaki park uniform, who hopped out of his seat and started calling for passengers.
He looked like he was on the wrong continent, Carla thought, as she hopped onto the back section of the tram. She knew it meant inhaling more exhaust fumes, but the view was better from the rear and she wanted to be as far away from the tourists as possible.
She also knew she had made the airline supervisor’s day. Someone was going down. At least it wasn’t a plane. In the airline business, you were guilty until proven innocent. It had been the undertone of their entire conversation. Boyd would have time to work on his equation, it was that simple.
As the tram finally headed up into Sabino Canyon and into the Catalinas, Carla welcomed the driver’s folksy but authoritative voice over the loudspeaker. She practically knew the words by heart. Yes, there were still seven bus stops on the way up, and yes, stop number three was still the last one with drinking water, and yes, this stop still had the last picnic table, this one led to the swimming hole, and, this one was a favorite Tucson wedding spot.
Around some of the curves, he pointed out the usual saguaros, prickly pears, cottonwoods, and mesquites. He was also struck by the commonplace observation about how prevalent life actually was in the seemingly inhospitable desert, and by how much water there was in the canyon from the winter’s snow runoff. Finally, as they approached the top, where he continued his script and talked about the road ending due to a lack of funding, he pointed to the spot where Ranger Andersen fell to his death in 1947 while saving a hiker. He also pointed out the section of a distant rocky cliff that supposedly resembled Snoopy, though she could never see it.
It took the tram about twenty minutes to reach the top and another ten for Carla to hike the switchback up from the end of the road to the Phone Line trailhead. What a bigshot city girl she was, hiking down Sabino alone. At least it would clear her mind—no supervisor, no Boyd, no karaoke bar, just an easy trail down an easy mountain.
Kingman drove slowly on Interstate 10 despite Arizona’s unruly 75 mph speed limit. Despite going 65, he was continuously being overtaken by truckers, who were zooming by at 80 and 85. It was Sunday. Where were they heading to in such a hurry? Church? Delivering illegal aliens? They all seemed to be giving him the finger, too, but Kingman knew it was his imagination, a pessimistic mirage. What did they want? He was in the right lane already. Did they expect him to drive on the shoulder?
The paranoia only lasted fifteen minutes until Highway 83, the exit to Patagonia, came up. Now this was a relaxing road, and not desert-like at all. In fact, rolling hills is how he would have described it, which didn’t quite make sense to him. But that’s what they were, rolling hills in the desert, and fairly lush ones at that. He was no geologist, but it became clear the further south he went, the closer he got to Patagonia (and to Mexico, too), and the greener the land became. In another twenty minutes he started seeing cattle grazing as well as—ridiculous though it seemed—an Arabian horse ranch.
Then, a sign that really through him for a loop: “You Are Entering Wine Country, Sonoita.” It was true. In another few minutes, just where 83 ran into 82, a huge painted image of a grapevine said to go left—meaning east—to Sonoita. Meanwhile, a small arrow pointed west to Patagonia. Kingman turned left. Business was business, but pleasure was pleasure. Wine was healthier than pot, and better for his heart and his lungs, not to mention his head. He had to check out the desert grape. Maybe, as with desert oysters, he could expect some aphrodisiac benefits.
Kingman drove east for a while, almost like he was heading back to New York. Soon the road, which was a lot more narrow than 83, curved south toward Mexico. That was when the vineyards started appearing, weedy, anorexic looking things that seemed even sparser when set against the strong desert mountains off in the distance. It certainly wasn’t Napa. It wasn’t even the North Fork of Long Island. But vineyards they were.
After a few laughs, he pulled into a dusty parking area next to a rinky-dink, shack-like structure. Above it, almost on stilts, a sign read, “Welcome to Saguaro Vineyards.” He parked next to the only other car in the lot, a black limousine, which is why he’d even pulled in there in the first place. Someone had been in the mood to drink. He was just curious about who would hire a limo down here. This wasn’t the Hamptons.
As he got out of his car, Kingman spotted the driver, who was not behind the wheel but sitting on the steps by the entrance smoking a cigarette. Kingman thought the man was looking at him oddly, maybe even enviously. The guy was wearing a suit, but Kingman could see in the sun that his jacket was a slightly different color than his pants. They were both dark, but the jacket looked black whereas the pants looked blue. In either case, Kingman couldn’t imagine the driver keeping his jacket on in another month. It was still early April, but this wasn’t exactly the Arctic.
Kingman nodded as he approached the driver. “Nice day for a glass of wine.”
“And a smoke,” the driver said, coughing loudly. “It’s peaceful, too.”
Except for your coughing, Kingman thought. He imagined the driver’s lungs being a blackish color, somewhere between the pants and the suit. “It is peaceful. Hey, you’re from around here—is this wine supposed to be any good?” he asked.
“I don’t drink wine, but my girlfriend does. She says it sucks in the restaurant, but it’s good here. She told me this morning. She says that’s why the restaurants in Tucson stopped serving Arizona wine. Something about the bottling. It doesn’t keep.”
“Well, I’ll catch you later,” Kingman said. It made sense that the driver had a girlfriend. Somehow certain men, no matter how old, just looked like they had a girlfriend and not a wife. Kingman figured that he probably fit that category himself.
“See you later,” the driver said. “Tell those two old farts in there that I don’t have all day.”
When he opened the door, Kingman immediately noticed the old couple at the counter. They were the only patrons and leaned against each other blissfully, like they’d been happily married for fifty years. The woman behind the counter—a real country, sweaty type with frizzy, brushed back, reddish brown hair—appeared glad to see him, just to dilute the happiness.
“Okay,” she said, “next victim.”
“That be me,” Kingman cheerfully stated. “Watcha got?”
“It’s six dollars for a tasting.”
“I think I can handle that.”
“We better get going,” the older gentleman said to his spouse.
“We don’t want to get too tizzied,” said the missus.
“Not yet, anyway.”
“You should have a driver, young man,” the woman told Kingman as she and her lover left for their own driver. “And thank you, dear. You’ve been sweet.”
“I’m not young,” Kingman answered, but the couple was already gone.
“You’re not old either,” the sweaty lady behind the counter said. She already had five separate glasses of wine arranged before Kingman, who hadn’t noticed her pouring any of them. Aside from that, there was a little too much wine in each glass. No wonder they had a limo.
“Are you what they call a sommelier?” he asked. He looked over her head at a picture of a cat.
“I’m what they call a wine pourer,” the woman said. “My husband’s family makes the stuff. They know what it’s supposed to taste like. We give a tour for ten dollars. We can show you how it’s made.”
“Why not?”
“Well, have some wine.”
“Is there an order to this?” Kingman asked, trying to coax out of her some decent information about what he was swallowing. Most people weren’t suited for their jobs, but this was ridiculous. She reminded him of the wife in Petrified Forest, the one who wanted the gangster who’d come into town to take her away. Kingman bet she would wash her hair for the right person. It wasn’t him either, that was for sure.
Perhaps Stein would be right for her. Perhaps, like in the Redford movie, he’d have his limo pull up to the place, and he’d make her an offer she couldn’t refuse. Then they could have a whole new family and Kingman could get the bunch of them into Ivy League schools, even if they were morons with 200s on their SAT’s.
After downing a couple of sips from each glass and ignoring the burnout’s lifeless descriptions, Kingman thought about how he’d glibly told Stein to build a college library right before the ten thousand was tossed on his desk.
“I’m not into spending millions, dickhead, or whatever your name is,” Stein had said, apparently feigning toughness, like he was trying out for the Jewish bookkeeper part in a gangster movie. He should have punched him out right there, but he was not the punching-out type. Besides, there was the ten grand.
“Thousands maybe, but not millions,” Stein had said. “I like games, don’t you? I got the idea when I received the school newsletter attesting to your skills. And when I found out about your little side business, the game got good.”
“This is no game. I can’t do what I can’t do.”
“But you can do what you can do.”
Kingman realized he had said the last words aloud.
“Excuse me, sir.”
Oh, now she was calling him sir. “I was just talking to myself.”
“Wine will do that to you.”
“Life will do that to you.”
“Which one did you like the best?”
“No idea.”
“The last one was the special reserve. You didn’t hear me before, I know it.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s cool. How about the tour?”
“Sure.”
Kingman threw a twenty on the counter and told her to forget about the change. It wasn’t ten thousand, at least. He followed the woman through a side door into what appeared to be a garage. This was truly a mom and pop operation. There was a little label-making machine and maybe a few hundred cases of bottles. The only marginally high-tech aspect of the operation was the stainless steel vats behind a glass enclosure on a slightly lower level. A guy in overalls was adjusting some controls just on the other side of the glass wall, almost like he was trying to look busy.
“That’s my hubby,” the woman said, trying to spin a homey feel to her description, but Kingman had seen enough. He could envision the restaurants in Tucson throwing out the wine after half the bottles went bad. He was barely going through the motions and was ready for his brother now. “He’s making sure about the temperature.”
“You know, I’m running late for my appointment. I better go. I’ll have to catch the tour another time.”
“I was about to take you out to the vineyard.”
“How about if I just buy a bottle of the reserve?”
“Sure.”
Good, that got the wine Madonna off my back, Kingman thought as he followed her out of the broom closet back out to the counter.
“You come see us again,” she said as she handed him the cream of their crop. Kingman noticed immediately that the label was coming off. Couldn’t they even get that part right?
“Whenever I’m in town.”
“Where you from, anyway?”
“New York.”
“Should have figured that,” she said as Kingman let the door swing shut behind him. “The way you were talking to yourself.”
He glanced at the vineyards as he tossed the bottle on the passenger seat next to his cell phone. He’d been pretty hard on the poor woman, but he was more concerned about his phone. He shouldn’t have left it to bake in the sun like that. His head was spinning a bit, too—not enough so that he couldn’t make it to his brother’s, but enough to make driving a bit of an adventure and get him locked up if he got pulled over. As he burned a little rubber and left a cloud of dust, he headed west toward his twin. But then he pulled into a church parking lot almost as soon as he got back on 83. He’d better give himself a little time.
Kingman got out of his car on rubbery legs and stared into the back of a pick-up truck at a dusty Lincoln welding machine. He pictured the welder and his family sitting in the church pews. He pictured a hard worker wearing a mask and welding goggles spouting a light from his torch just like he was carving out the Ten Commandments. Then he pictured himself taking a leak, so he went inside the church to relieve himself.