Tapping the Source, page 21
He thought along these lines, polishing off the last of the malt liquor, occasionally punching out a chair or kicking the wall, the thought of Michelle’s sweet ass in Hound Adams’s bed spreading like some cancer through his system until the room was too small to hold him. He was reaching for the door when he saw the fucking board propped against the wall, and was somewhat surprised that he had not turned his attention to it before now. The fucking board. The fucking hot stick with its tucked-under rails and flashy airbrush job. Looking at it made him sick, and he laughed out loud when he remembered his reasons for going to see Hound Adams about it. Shit. It had been like everything else, a lie. He had wanted the board and had found a way to get it. He snatched it away from the wall and lurched out of the room, bashing the board against the doorjamb, running the pointed nose into the wall in the hallway with enough force to create a tiny explosion of plaster. He didn’t know if the board had gotten bigger or the hallway smaller, but he couldn’t seem to take a step without running into something, and by the time he reached the darkness that waited at the foot of the stairs there were people yelling for quiet and cursing him. He stopped just long enough to yell back, to flip off the whole fucking building, and then he was gone, lurching through the streets of the town, the board tucked beneath his arm, headed for Hound Adams’s house.
30
All sorts of grotesque scenes took shape in his mind as he walked, unspeakable perversions that he might interrupt. But he was not in the mood to consider consequences. He did not bother to knock, but dropped the board on the porch and pushed wildly through the door.
The living room was dark, but he could see light coming from one of the back rooms. And that was where he found them. So many crazy scenes had filled his head getting there that it took a moment for the real scene to sink in. He stopped in the doorway and stood looking at them, the single loudest sound the rush of his own blood in his ears.
It was very simple, really. Michelle was seated on the floor near Hound Adams. One of the Jacobs brothers sat on the couch. Everyone was fully clothed. The room smelled of grass and some kind of incense. Everyone seemed to be looking at him; their faces swam before him in a watery haze. He lurched a few steps into the room, fighting to maintain that singleness of purpose that had driven him through the night.
“Come in,” he heard Hound Adams say. “Sit.”
He looked for a moment at Hound and then at Michelle. He was certain he did not want to sit down. “I want to talk to you,” he said to Michelle. His throat felt very tight and he was able to force out the words only with great difficulty.
Michelle seemed to be floating somewhere in front of him, in that thick haze that filled the room. Her face was blank. He could not tell if she was angry or embarrassed.
“What do you want?”
“We have to talk.”
“We can talk here.”
He saw her look at Hound, then back at him. He wanted to step forward, to pull her to her feet. It was like the whole situation was slipping away from him, like he was drowning in the thick smoke.
“God damn it.” He was aware of his voice being much louder now. “I came here to talk to you. Will you get off your fucking ass or what?”
She didn’t get off her ass. She just kept sitting there, floating there, this slightly blasted expression on her face. It was a terrible expression, the sort that needed to be erased with the toe of one’s shoe. He started toward her with no real idea of what he was going to do when he got there, only that it would be something she deserved. But he never reached her. Hound Adams was up quickly, standing between them. He put a hand on Ike’s shoulder and Ike knocked it away. He was fairly certain that Hound was going to kill him, but the malt liquor had washed away most of his fear; he was determined to go down swinging. Hound, however, only took a step backward, his hands at his side. “Jealousy’s a very negative trip, brah. Think about it.” His voice was calm.
Ike stood still, watching Hound Adams, never hating him more than at this particular moment.
“What is it?” Hound asked. “You want to jump bad? Spill some blood, maybe? We can fix that.” He turned abruptly and stepped to the dresser at the side of the couch, leaving Ike to stand there like he was nailed down, to stare at Michelle, who had turned her face to the wall. Then Hound was back, pushing something into Ike’s hand. It was a gun. The metal was cold against his skin and he looked down at it stupidly. It seemed to be sort of dangling from his hand, as if it were attached in some way and he was not really holding on to it. Suddenly Hound snatched it back from him and pointed it at a wall. The gun went off with a deafening explosion. A new odor hung in the room and Ike’s ears rang with the sound of the blast. Hound put the gun back into his hand. “You’ve got the bullets,” he said, “and you’ve got the gun.”
Ike felt as if he had a high fever, as if nothing in the room was quite real.
“You think you own me,” Michelle said suddenly out of the silence that had come to fill the room. She was looking up at him now, her face twisted with anger. “Boys are so fucking stupid, they think they can own you, that you’re supposed to be their property or something while they do any fucking thing they want to. I know all about your little parties. So why don’t you take a walk, because you don’t own me. Nobody does. Why don’t you go back to the sticks where you belong?”
“You fucking cunt.” He couldn’t keep his voice from shaking now. It was like her words struck too close to home and he wanted to strangle her for them. He called her a fucking whore cunt and she was up on her knees screaming back at him. He didn’t know what they said. If there had been nobody else in the room, he would have fought her. They could have rolled on the floor and clawed at each other’s eyes. At least Hound’s presence spared them that; it was bad enough as it was. His stomach was a knot of pain. The floor spun beneath his feet. He threw the gun at the couch and staggered back through the house, across the wooden porch, and into the night.
• • •
There was no relief in sight and no place to go. He stomped through lawns, kicking flowerpots, cursing small yapping dogs. He stumbled down alleys, trash cans tumbling in his wake. People yelled at him: disembodied voices reaching him in the darkness. And he screamed back, his voice going hoarse, losing itself among the run-down buildings.
He finally wound up down by the tattoo parlor on the Coast Highway and a brilliant idea came to him. He suddenly realized why certain people had tattoos all over them. It was because they were fuckups and they knew they were fuckups. He could suddenly see how guys in jails could get into sitting around carving on themselves. They knew they were assholes and they defaced themselves for it. It made perfect sense. He might have gotten into that himself, a little ink, a penknife, but then he figured he probably wouldn’t have the guts to go through with it and it would be disastrous to try and fail. No, he would get one from the shop. He would climb into that chair and it would be all over except for the buzzing of the needle. He’d seen how it worked. You just picked the one you wanted and gave the man your money. He checked his pockets to see how much he had. It would be nice to get a large one, preferably a very stupid one to boot, the larger and stupider, the better. A member of the fuckup club for life and there would be no hiding it.
The shop was stuffy and warm, filled with a peculiar odor, a kind of medicine smell, as if he’d stumbled into some third-rate doctor’s office. He went up to the wall and examined the selection. He finally settled on a set of Harley-Davidson wings. Only in the middle, instead of that little shield and the word Motorcycles, this one had a skull and crossbones, and beneath the bones it said Harley-Fuckin’-Davidson. There was another one that was even better. It had the same wings, the same skull and crossbones, only on top of the skull there was a naked woman, her legs spread so you could get a good look at her big hairy snatch. But the price on the second tattoo was too steep. He asked the guy if he could pay him some now and the rest later, but the guy said, “No way.” He was an old guy with a bald head and heavily tattooed arms. He stood around chewing a cigar while Ike made his selection, then he sat Ike down, checked once to make sure of the design, and went to work.
Ike was getting it on his shoulder. The way he figured it, he could keep it covered with his T-shirt, then sort of spring it on people as a surprise, just when they were starting to think he was okay. It would be a little like having a secret identity. The old man passed a razor over his shoulder then washed it down with alcohol. He transferred the image with some kind of stencil. Ike felt hot and dizzy. He looked out through the greasy plate glass and into the street. There were a couple of very weird-looking chicks standing outside on the sidewalk now, watching him. They had haircuts sort of like Jill’s. One’s was very blond and the other’s was a strange shade of red, purple almost. The night, the malt liquor, the hot yellow lights, the punk chicks on the other side of the glass. It was like a dream. And the old man was full into it now with that needle. He worked with the needle in one hand and a sponge in the other to wipe away the blood.
At first his shoulder just felt hot and prickly, but the feeling seemed to grow and spread until he could feel the sweat breaking on his forehead and down his back. A wave of nausea hit him and for a moment he thought he was going to be sick. He asked the guy if they could take a break for a minute, but it must have been that the old guy couldn’t hear him, because he just kept going. Ike closed his eyes, wondered if he should try to force his voice a little louder, but in the end he just sat there, grimacing, until the old guy spun him around like he was in a barber’s chair so he could get a look at the tattoo in a small mirror over the sink. He gave it a quick swipe with the sponge so Ike could see it, before covering it with a piece of gauze and taping the gauze to Ike’s shoulder.
Ike had wanted a big one, but he was still a little shocked to see how big the damn thing actually was, it covered his whole fucking shoulder. It had somehow looked smaller than that on the wall. The shock passed, however, into a certain grim satisfaction. He had done it. He had joined the fuckups.
He damn near passed out getting out of the chair. The old guy had to give him a hand. “You all right, pardner?” the old man wanted to know. Ike said he was, that all he needed was a little air.
It was better on the sidewalk. There was a breeze off the ocean laced with the smell of the sea. Then he noticed those chicks again. They were about half a block down now and there were a couple of guys with them. They were hanging around in the shadows of some storefront. He heard one of the chicks say, “That’s him.” Someone else said, “Hey, man, show us your tattoo.”
He told them to fuck off and they all started walking toward him. So he turned and ran, back around the corner of the tattoo shop and down the alley. His legs felt like rubber and his chest burned, but he could have cared less. He had this half-assed plan of leading them down an alley and then ambushing them, beating their faces in with trashcan lids. He was even sort of laughing while he ran, alternately cackling and gasping for breath. They didn’t follow him very far, though, a few hundred feet down the alley. He even turned and yelled at them once, but they went back the way they had come. They probably thought he was crazy, or had a gun or something. He remembered Gordon telling him once that if you could make people think you were crazy, really crazy, they would almost never mess with you. He guessed maybe it was true, at least once in a while.
• • •
He took a leak in the alley then walked out to Main. He was starting to feel a little less drunk and his shoulder hurt, but he did not think of going home. The night grew cooler and the sweat dried on his face. Where he finally wound up was across the street from Preston’s duplex. He could see that there were lights on inside now, but he did not go to the door. Instead he sat down Indian style in the damp patch of grass that bordered the sidewalk, and stared. He was not exactly sure why he had come, or why he could not go to the door. Maybe the fact that he had come had something to do with the tattoo. But, whatever the reasons, he did not want to leave. It was almost as if there were some force holding him there. He stayed until the light went dead behind the curtains, leaving just the porch light, forgotten, drawing moths out of the night to flutter stupidly in its warmth, and even then he did not leave.
31
He must have passed out on the grass, because when he opened his eyes, the sun was bright and hot on his face, and he was still in the same spot. There were cars in the street now and blackbirds singing in the palms above his head. He sat up slowly and looked around. He was a bit amazed that he had actually slept here, like some wino at the edge of the curb, and that he was still breathing, having escaped punk gangs, rape artists, and God knows what other scum that crept from the shadows to prowl the streets of surf city when the sun sank into the sea. He felt a stab of pain in his shoulder and looked down to see some gauze and tape sticking out from beneath his sleeve. It took a moment for the night’s events to sweep back over him, and when he thought of what lay beneath the gauze, a sudden feeling of nausea passed through him. But then it was gone and he was thinking that it was what he had wanted, that a certain justice had been served.
He was just in the act of getting to his feet, no simple task, when he saw Barbara coming down the walkway toward the street. For a moment he looked for a place to hide but saw there was none and that it was too late, for she was already crossing the street, moving toward him.
“Jesus.” That was the first thing she said when she saw him, putting the back of her hand to her head. “Ike, you look terrible.”
“I feel fine.”
“I didn’t even know if you were still around. You really look bad.”
“I feel fine, really,” he said, swaying slightly. “I’ve been by a couple of times, but you were gone.” He thought, now that he was getting a closer look at her, that she did not look so good herself. She seemed paler and thinner than he had remembered, and she had been thin to begin with.
“I’ve been living with my parents. Actually, I moved back in with them, but I’m looking for my own place. I’m just here to help out for a couple of days. Jesus, Ike, what’s that on your arm?”
He turned to look at it himself, as if he were noticing it for the first time. “I fell.”
She bent some at the waist. “No, you didn’t. I’ve seen enough of those. You got tattooed, Ike.” She straightened back up, shaking her head.
He felt that he should apologize for something, but he didn’t, and it would have taken too long to explain. So he just stood there, feeling sheepish, staring into the grass at his feet.
“Well, look,” she said. “I’m not going to be around very much longer and I’ve been hoping we could talk. Why don’t you come with me? I’ve got to go to the drugstore and I’ll buy you breakfast on the way.”
• • •
They wound up in the depot restaurant, the seediest place in town, but it was across the street from the drugstore. Ike was feeling dizzy and very washed out by the time they got there. It was hard to concentrate on the present because he kept dredging up some forgotten detail of the night, and his shoulder was hurting. He ordered a cup of coffee and waited to see what Barbara had to say.
“I called you a couple of times at the Sea View,” she said, “but couldn’t get you. I was hoping you had left town, if you want to know the truth.”
“Why?”
“Preston told me why you’re here.”
He stared into the chipped Formica before him.
Barbara placed her hands on the counter and studied her fingers. When Ike said nothing, she went on. “It’s not really like him to talk about things like that. But then he talked about a lot of things while he was in the hospital, particularly during the first few days after the operation. He was pretty doped up.”
A waitress came and poured coffee, took their orders. Ike wrapped his fingers around the mug. “What else did he talk about?”
“A lot of things; some pretty crazy things. He didn’t always make sense.” She paused for a moment. “He mentioned Janet Adams,” she began again, slowly. “He called to her. And some of the time I think he thought he was talking to her, thought I was her or something. But I guess it made me start thinking back to what you and I had talked about. Anyway, one day I went to the library. They keep old newspapers there on microfilm and I wanted to see what had been in the papers about Janet Adams. All I had ever heard on the subject was talk; and like I told you, it was some time ago.”
Ike took a sip of his coffee and burned his mouth. The waitress showed up with their breakfast. Plates rattled against the counter. The greasy smell of fried eggs hit him in the face.
“I found the articles, one in the local paper and another in the L.A. Times. There were a number of things I hadn’t known or hadn’t remembered. You asked me once about Milo Trax. Well, the article in the Times concentrated mainly on him. He is the guy who owns the Trax Ranch. Apparently his father was one of the first Hollywood movie moguls. He was the one who bought the land and had the house built. At any rate, his son Milo owns it now, he’s some kind of playboy, I guess, and for a time he was into making surf films. Evidently that was what was going on when Janet died. Milo Trax had taken Preston, Hound, and Janet down to Mexico on his yacht. Then the men came back alone, without Janet. The first story was that she had drowned. Then some Mexican fishermen found the body, and that was when it was discovered that her death had been drug-related. And they found something else out, too, that she had been pregnant.”
