Blood Highway Page 14

I stepped on the backs of my sneaks and unbuttoned my pants, shuddering, panting, doing a one-woman bum’s rush for the bedroom, hoping the bathroom was next to the stairs. It was, and I walked into a shower the size of a casket, shucked my shirt and jeans and underwear, cranked the spray. Uproariously funny, the two-dwarfs thing. So funny I had to sit down and laugh about it. I was laughing; that’s all I was doing. I was alone, so no one could say I was doing otherwise. I was alone, and it wasn’t fair.

  It’s not fair, so okay, cry about it. Cry, you fucking crybaby. Cry here in the dark, that’s all you know how to do.

  The water never got warm. When it got butt-cold, I had an actual shower. A shelf held a mini shampoo and conditioner, plus a mini soap still in its wrapper. I took a towel off a rack. The medicine cabinet offered a buffet of travel-size hygiene, labels facing out. I used the Visine and the Neutrogena and the Jergens and the Oral-B and the Crest, and then I stopped and sat on the toilet, too drained to move.

  The alcohol had kicked in. It didn’t make me happy or mellow, as it had the handful of times before when I’d imbibed: sleepovers with fizzy Boone’s Farm. The thick syrup upstairs was liquid maudlin. Maybe I’d done it wrong; maybe I needed more. The bottle, in the kitchen, out this room, up those stairs.

  I may as well have been fighting a g-force keeping me on that crapper. Which of course was absurd.

  That flash of self-awareness didn’t help at all. None. I missed her. I wanted to watch TV with her while she ate ice cream and pretended I wasn’t there. I didn’t want to be dragging past the front door, where its window showed me Johnny was gone. Just me in this cottage in a dark, dark forest, scrambling past this dinette table, past this counter, toward the bottle that I saw now was Wild Turkey. These objects existing in a world where she was dead.

  The fridge hummed. There’d be food inside. This place had a caretaker, and that’s what a caretaker does—puts towels in the bathroom, puts food in the fridge, and leaves the fridge unlocked. I opened it: Take-and-bake spaghetti, lasagna. Macaroni salad, chicken salad, tuna salad in plastic convenience containers. The door was lined with beverage choices. I rested my head on the freezer door.

  My hand was hanging at the end of my arm. I had to concentrate to make it rise, settle on a Nantucket Nectars orange-juice bottle.

  Orange juice to cut the bourbon—that’ll work.

  I picked it up. Numbness spread through my fingers. I heard glass shatter, far away. Sticky wet splashed my ankles. I put my hands over my ears, not knowing I’d pinched my eyes shut until I opened them wide, startled.

  Johnny walked out of a shadow by the dinette set. I was about to jump, but he moved too fast. He caught me, threw me over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. I screamed and pounded on his back, wriggling like a caught fish. When he set me down after about four steps, I toppled over, onto the table.

  Johnny stalked for the kitchen. He disappeared behind the tiny counter. Glass crashed together. He stood, holding a white rag that I realized was his T-shirt. He carried it to the trash can, pushed the pedal, raised the lid, and slid a load of glass shards into the garbage with a sound like chimes. He went back and did it again. And again, the pieces getting smaller. He went back, and the sound became that of mopping. He got up, stormed to the sink, and wrung out his shirt, peeking down at his visible ribs, his unbelievable pallor. He put the T on awkwardly, pulling the wetness from his chest, making a face at the sensation. He turned and looked longingly at the guesthouse’s door.

  But I was in the way. Braced against the table with my towel, which was, by whatever miracle, still hiding everything important. I gaped at him with extreme stupefaction, remembering what Blaine had said about shagging strangers to cure loneliness: it helps for a little while.

  The terry cloth felt itchy against my skin. I moved exactly right, and it fell.

  Johnny made a sound like something trapped. I walked the two steps to him. He was too tall. I reached to pull him down; he wouldn’t let me. I took fists of his sticky shirt. “Please.”

  He peeled my hands away. Under his belt, the teeth of his zipper glittered, pushing forward. I grasped at his wrists. Weird mews came from far back in my throat.

  “Shh,” he said. “Shh.”

  I stepped back. He let me go. The moon by now was daylight-bright. He glowed.

  I boosted myself onto the table, propped a foot onto either chair and lay back. Trees outside were silver, hung upside down. I reached with my right hand and covered my mouth with my left. He could just watch if he wanted. I unfolded me and goaded me, and it was wretched, my sounds muffled by my palm.

  Johnny pulled the hand from my mouth and pressed it to the table. “I have HIV,” he said, “but I brought condoms.”

  I was shocked, but not. “Okay.” I sat up. He stepped between my knees. I worked at his belt buckle while he pulled a string of six condoms from his pocket, flapped them onto the table. He helped with his zipper. We shoved his pants and boxers down.

  I’d never seen one so close. Johnny’s looked huge, but what did I know? He was wincing a condom on, got it to the base. I grabbed the bowl of his pelvis. He said, “Wait,” and put a second condom over the first.

  He had me lie back again. “Don’t cover your mouth. I wanna hear when it breaks.”

  His fingers were uncertain and cautious and a complete waste of time. I moved his hand to my hip. He leaned far forward, focused.

  Oddest feeling. You know, logically, that there’s a space, and that it can be filled. Except knowledge is no match for the sanctity of your own body: the mine-ness, the you-can’t-come-in-ness.

  He checked on me. He was being careful, and it was excruciating for him. I tilted, put my heels on his back and arched up. Proud of myself when he gave a high yip of alarm and fell in. Proud of the pain, which was instant and blinding. It sprang to either end of my body like a cut piano wire. It hurt too much to scream.

  Johnny held the border of the table. His wet shirt suckered our fronts together. After a few seconds, I understood that it was over. “It’s okay,” I said, and licked the shell of his ear, suddenly so fond of him. “Everything’s okay.”

  His grip on the table relaxed. He pushed off, standing. I hissed, catching at emptiness. Johnny waddled in the shackles of his pants to the trash can. He stepped on the pedal, unrolled the condoms, tied a knot, and tugged paper towels off a roll by the sink before wrapping the condoms and placing them—not dropping them—into the garbage. He returned to the sink and scrubbed himself thoroughly. He shut off the water, tore more paper towels, dried the basin and the floor. He shuffled to the trash can and threw a final fistful of paper.

  Then he stood there. Looking longingly at the guesthouse’s door.

  But I was still in the way. He looked from the door to me. He crossed his arms, his pants heaped at his feet, his shoes still on. His penis dangled.

  I had assumed we’d snuggle. Movies made this seem so easy. Though nobody seems to have HIV in the movies. “Have you had sex before?”

  “Yeah.” He sounded amused.

  Outside, a bird called.

  Johnny bent down and picked up his pants. He was doing the button when I got to him and jerked at his jeans, letting them drop. I wasn’t sure what I wanted. I didn’t want to put my clothes back on. And I didn’t want to be naked while he had clothes on, so he needed to be naked with me. I liked him. Or I wanted to like him. Or something.

  Nothing—absolutely nothing—made sense right now.

  His arms hung stiffly at his sides. I shifted up. I wasn’t tall enough to get his shirt off. I hopped once and laughed. Johnny pulled the shirt over his head and looked at me inquiringly.

  “How tall are you?” I said.

  “Six three.” He gave me the shirt, like I might want it for a reason. I tossed it by my towel, took his hand. He stepped out of his pants, and I remembered his shoes. I bent down.

  He seized my shoulders. “You can’t. We can’t do that. I read up on it. You can get it from one drop, the b
ook said.”

  “I’m . . . I was gonna take off your shoes.”

  Johnny let go. “Oh.” He put an unsteady hand on the kitchen counter.

  I got on my knees and undid his laces. He’d double-knotted. I lifted the back of his heel. His feet smelled like he tried to keep his feet from smelling: pine. I skinned off his sock, did the other. I took his hand again, leading him past our christened dinette, toward the stairs and the bed at the bottom of them. His hand escaped. He went back and hunkered down to his pants. I guessed what he was getting, even before I saw the cigs. I nabbed the condoms off the table.

  The bed’s comforter featured fish with hooks in their mouths, smiling. I folded that to the foot of the bed, then the sheets, and got in. Johnny stood with his Newports and Bic until I patted the mattress. He got in like beds were foreign to him.

  “Can I have a cigarette?” I said, thinking he needed to calm down.

  He lit mine first. An ugly silver box in the shape of two linked hearts sat on the nightstand. He set it between us for an ashtray.

  “You went to prison for stealing cars?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How old were you?” I said.

  “Eighteen.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  Johnny was ashing after every puff, using it as an excuse to glance at my boobs. He stubbed a butt and lit another one, absently adjusting an erection that tented the sheet in his lap. The athlete in me admired his recovery time.

  I put my finger to my nipple. “Do you wanna touch them?”

  Johnny nodded. He picked the Newport from between my fingers and doused it, hitching toward me.

  I reached for him. He stopped my hand and set it on my thigh.

  “We have four more.” I picked up the condoms.

  “That’s twice. I’m using two every time. It’s safer.” He took the condoms and placed them at the foot of the bed like they were precious. He reached for my breasts the same way. “Can we do it once at sunrise? Right before you go?”

  “Go?” I climbed onto his lap. “Why sunrise?”

  “I’ve never done it then. I slept on a cot. My girlfriend didn’t like cots, so every time she left right after.” He tipped me backward. “At night, it’s a secret. But in the morning, it means you stayed all night. You can’t go now anyway. A lot of animals hunt at night. I read up on it.”

  I had no idea what he was talking about, but I had zero inclination to ask. He used his hand, the way he’d seen me do it. When I bucked and cried out, he was hovering above me, watching as though I were the series finale to a show he’d been a fan of for years.

  “How do you know me?” I said.

  He said nothing, just stared.

  “For real,” I said. “You’re looking at me like you know me.”

  Johnny gathered a section of sheet and pulled it off the bed, tucked it under the mattress. He picked up his Newports and shook them. There was a rattle at the bottom. He tweezed the cigs to the side, held the pack over his hand. A pill fell out, and he dry-swallowed it.

  “What’s that?” I said.

  “Ephedrine.”

  “What for?”

  “Keep me awake.” He put the pack back and touched my knee, but then quickly moved like he’d made some wildly inappropriate advance. “Sorry.”

  I rolled up, leaning toward him. When I tried to kiss him, he recoiled. I tried again, more slowly. He recoiled more slowly. I asked, and couldn’t believe I had to ask, “Can you kiss me?”

  “I forgot how. He never wants to kiss.”

  “He?”

  Johnny bit down.

  “Who’s he?” I said.

  “Nobody.”

  My brain was endorphin soup. I laid my head on his shoulder. “Where am I going? In the morning.”

  “Town. There’s a trail. I’ll show you at sunrise. It’s eight miles, but you’ll make it.”

  “Won’t Sam be mad at you?”

  “I’ll blame it on the girls.”

  “Don’t blame them. What if he leaves them stranded?”

  “He won’t.”

  I bent Johnny’s chin to me and kissed the cleft. “I’m not going anywhere in the morning. I wanna do this same thing tomorrow night. And the next night and the next. Wherever we stop, we’ll—”

  “You have to run at sunrise. You have to, Kat.”

  “Rainy.”

  “What?”

  “My name’s Rainy. Call me that, okay?”

  Johnny got up and moved in jitters, his every nerve needing to fire. “I’ll try. I’ve been hearing him call you Kat for four years, so it might take me a while. Rainy. Rainy, Rainy. That’s nice. That’s nicer than Kat.”

  It was novel watching a naked man pace—loose, swingy pieces chicks just didn’t have. I put my feet to the floor, sitting almost primly.

  “Your part’s easy,” he said. “If you tell me where the money is, I can take Sam to it. Once he has it, he’ll leave you alone.”

  “What money?”

  Johnny’s foot froze. His weight came forward with pure inertia. “The money. The robbery money, the four million your mom hid. Sam says you know where it’s buried.”

  I threw a pillow at him. “Right.”

  “Tell me you know where it is.”

  Any of my remaining happy-head chemicals got set alight by Johnny’s obvious panic. He resumed wearing out the floor. He smacked his fists together. I thought he was overselling. He needed to learn proportion—low six figures; that I might have believed. But I was touched that he was creating a scenario to make the sex more exciting.

  “Don’t worry,” Johnny said, kneeling in front of me. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change your part. I’ll show you the path in the morning. You run, get to town. Call your cop.”

  I pulled him to sit on the bed and set his arm over my shoulders, moving him like a prop.

  “Blaine?” I said.

  “He’s been on the scanner all day. He’s got everybody but the National Guard after us. That’s why we’re sticking to off roads.” Johnny’s heel tapped the floor. “He made great time. That ’55 he’s driving isn’t an easy car. He must’ve customized it with rack and pinion—that’s the only way I’d push a hundred on the highway. Even then, one bump and it’s over. He’s got the top up, but still, it’d—” A pat to my shoulder. “Never mind. Five more hours and the sun comes up. I’ll show you the path. I talked to the same guy Sam talked to, in the House. Guy who owns this place, he’s in for tax evasion. They couldn’t get him on his real stuff, so they got him for tax evasion.” Johnny’s knee began to bounce. “Guys in the House blab about escaping all the time. Where they go wrong is, they make it too complicated—Sam just bribed a guard. My plan’s even easier. You just run.”

  “And call Blaine.”

  “He’ll have to double back. Or maybe he’s doing that anyway—it’s what I would do. If he ran the math on an ’89 Outback versus a ’Vette, he’d have expected to pass us. Blaine, you said?”

  “Right.”

  “Did he do the work himself? The steering?”

  “No clue.”

  “Not an easy car.” He squeezed and released me. “I gotta get up, Kat.”

  “Rainy.”

  “Told you it’ll take me a while.”

  I was thirsty. I went to the bathroom, turned on the light. Now that I’d finally tried it, I wanted to fuck again. In the mirror, Johnny was giving his cock a dirty look. He shoved it down; it sprang back up.

  I shut off the bathroom light, walked over, and got in his way. “I can remind you.”

  “Mmm?”

  “How to kiss.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” He hummed as my fingers crawled up his neck. “Kat—”

  “Rainy.”

  I didn’t tug, just bumped him toward me in gentle intervals. He undid some distance every time, but not all of it. “What’s wrong?” I pecked him.

  “I don’t wanna give it to you.”
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  “It’s kissing,” I said. “I won’t get it from kissing. Trust me.”

  His hands moved, stopping low on my spine. He set his forehead to mine and said, fast, “You don’t have to do this. I’ll help you anyway. I’ll help you get away anyway.”

  I let go of him and went to the bed, got on my hands and knees, looked with what I thought was primal sexuality over my shoulder.

  “Not like that.” He said the same thing four or five more times as he rearranged me. Sat me as if for fine dining. He backed up and examined the result. I slouched. This was way too tedious. “Ka—” He caught himself. “Rainy?”

  That’s when I quit. I fell back on the mattress. “Chill, okay? Sorry I pushed. Whatever your problem is, please just relax.”

  After a minute, he came and settled beside me. “It’s a face.” Johnny pointed at water damage on the ceiling. “There’s the nose. There’s the chin. That’s the hair.”

  “Or a vase. If you look at the light part.” I outlined the contours. “Or a naked lady—the curves, see? Or a candlestick. Or a mountain road like we drove down today.”

  “You were always really good at this.” His mouth closed audibly.

  “When was I good at this?”

  The tendon by his ear hopped, holding things in.

  “Hey, what’s that mean? When was I good—”

  He kissed me, a peck but a firm one, a “shut up” one. He rolled me under him, and I laughed down his throat: Gotcha. I snarled my hands in his shaggy hair, taught him tongue. His reeducation on kissing took about five seconds. After that, we lost our minds. I got on top of him; he didn’t like that.

  “Please,” I said, since it worked last time. Except this time, it came out tender.

  He hid his face in the crook of my neck. “Always,” he said. “You were always good.”

  I was so wet that the extra must have flooded my eyes. It was the only explanation. It wasn’t how he shook reaching for the condoms on the nightstand. It wasn’t his glad agony putting one on, and another, and bracing his forearms to plank above me. His noticing my tears and changing, diametrically. “We don’t have to,” Johnny said. He took the sheet and dabbed. “You’ll go in the morning. You’ll be okay.”