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'Jude. Tell Pete I'm going to be late.' 'Where are you?' she says. 'It's Larry, Pete.' 'I don't know.' 'Oh, fuck,' she says. That means something. I know her. 'What?' There's a pause on her end, and Pete's voice saying something I can't understand in the background. 'No, what?' 'I'll just feel better when you're here,' she says. 'Me, too.' Maybe I'll kill Pete. He just took a shower. I'm sitting on the bed. When he fucked Jude, neither one of them took off their clothes, so I'm sort of in shock. 'Almost ready,' he says. He starts looking through his backpack for some thing clean to wear. 'Yeah,' I don't know what else to say. His arms are all crisscrossed with cuts, scrapes, and little notches. His chest, back, and stomach are equally scarred all to hell in different ways, and his legs are slightly zigzagged from having been broken and not repaired right, if at all. Worst, his dick's really small, like he never grew up, and I guess it's been burned, or else partly cut off. 'How's she doing?' he says. 'Fine. I don't know.' 'You know, I'm not in love with her,' he says. 'I know. Hurry up.' 'You know I'm not in love with Jim, either,' he says. 'I know, but let's not talk about that.' We drive back to the truckstop I noticed. I'd figured the girls hanging out there were whores. A few of them are, but they're not all that young. They're seated around a picnic table drinking beer with some truckers. I let him choose our whore, and she gets in the car. It costs me extra to watch, but that's the point. When we reach the motel, she goes right in the bathroom. He gets undressed, and lies down on the bed. I start to strip, then change my mind when he looks at my chest. I'm too thin, and Jude tells me my hips stick too far out like a girl's. So I pull the shirt back on.  'Sit on his face.' It's the meanest thing I can imagine. She straddles his face, and starts to masturbate him. Once in a while, she lifts her ass, and lets him take a breath. 'Don't do that. If he can't breathe, that's not your problem.' 'What in the world?' she says. His hand leaves her thigh and searches around the bedding, maybe for me. But I'm not even close. 'I'll pay you whatever you want. And no one will know.' His hand's moving around. I can't decide if I should sit over there, and let him find me, or stand here, and wanting to sit over there means I'm gay. 'He's a child,' she says. 'It's okay. He wants to suffer.' About then his hand gives up on me, and makes a fist. It hits the bed. 'Sick fuck,' she says and sits down hard on his face, then nervously crosses her arms. 'All your weight.' The boy's sick to his stomach in the bathroom. Since he's on his knees over the toilet, that's loud. She saved his life, at the last second. I could have made her keep going. It's in his notebook. I wish I'd never read it, or else waited. The whore just yelled something in Spanish, and left. I feel like that stuff with her wasn't enough or seemed too short. By the time I got my pants off, it was over. 'What are you thinking?' says his voice. 'I don't know.' 'You're nervous,' says his voice. 'Maybe.' 'I'm nervous too,' says his voice. 'Yeah, you don't understand.' I don't know what's going on, but I walk in the bathroom. He doesn't get up or even turn. That gets me upset, so I take off my T-shirt and pull it over his face. Then I punch him so hard in the back, he falls forward, and hits his forehead. Blood is staining my shirt, so I pull it off, and force him to face me. He doesn't look like he understands what I'm doing at all, which is confusing. I've just grabbed his throat, so he'll realize how violent I'm ready to get. 'You understand?' 'Yeah,' he says. He won't look at me. 'Don't do that.' 'Do what?' he says. 'I swear to God.' I throw the punch that killed Rand. It clips his nose, and gives him a flash walrus moustache of blood. He grabs his nose, and says not to hit him again, but I do. He tries to crawl away, so the blow clips the back of his head, and seems to knock him unconscious. But he could be pretending. I wouldn't put it past him. 'Pete. Jesus fucking Christ.' I told Jude that I was really upset, and to put his stupid ass on the phone. 'You sound strange,' he says. 'Why does the guy want him dead?' 'I thought you didn't want to know the . . .' he says. 'Just tell me.' 'Don't . . .' he says. 'Just fucking tell me.' The senior's an acquaintance of ours, Gilman Crowe. It's about the boy's notebook, Pete says. That wasn't the reason until I told Pete, and I guess he told Gilman. Knowing Pete, he thinks it's something gay. I think it probably has to do with how Gilman's the head of this Nazi style group. But I don't care enough, and Pete won't say. He's just supposed to kill the boy, bring Gilman the notebook, and get paid. 'Okay, no problem.' 'I know it's fucked up,' Pete says. He means how he just asked me to wait so he can watch, and how I owe him. 'Everything is.' 'Whatever,' Pete says. That reminds me. 'If you fuck Jude, I'll kill you.'  'It's okay,' he says. His voice is raspy and choked, either from when I was strangling him, or could be sad, too. 'You keep saying that.' 'It's okay,' he says, and looks at me. His reflection does, I mean. 'I like you.' 'No, it's not that.' 'That's why I let you read my notebook,' he says. For some reason, I suddenly figure out what he's been saying he knows. Or else I let myself think it. Then it takes me a second or two to make sure. This is really hard. 'Jim told you?' The boy turns, I mean all the way around and looks right at me for real. It's intense. 'Yeah,' he says. 'What did he say?' Then I start crying again. It's the end. I guess he thinks I want to talk, but I can't even move. Anyway, he comes out of the bathroom, and stands in front of me. When I don't do anything, he puts his arms around my neck. 'Oh, God.' I put my arms around his waist. 'What?' he says. 'Nothing.' It could have been so different. Rand died from a punch to the face. Afterwards, he seemed fine, just a little dizzy. There wasn't even blood. I guess he died in his sleep. That part bout me hitting him is the truth. But it wasn't the car or the drugs. It's because he got all protective of Jim. I knew he liked my brother, but I thought it was nothing. Anyway, that turned out to be bullshit. I got to keep his car when he died. When Jude and I cleaned it out this one time, we found some naked pictures he'd taken of Jim. They're hidden in my bedroom. She doesn't know I didn't throw them away, or tell Jim, or what that means. When Rand died, I turned into this. If it wasn't for words, I wouldn't know how to put the lies between me and everyone else, just by how I use them. I used to talk a lot, but now, it's sparse. Jude says you can feel me in there, but it doesn't add up to that much, even when you know me. I guess she's the only one who still wonders why not. The cabin's at the end of a long, unmarked dirt road. I couldn't find it at first. I hug Jude, but she pushes me off. I think she's just pissed that the boy is with me. I guess Pete didn't tell her. The boy seems confused about Pete being there, so he sits on a couch, and starts to write in his notebook. I can't tell what he's thinking. He writes for a while, then shuts the notebook, and puts it away in his backpack. By now, Pete's saying sarcastic things about the boy being gay, and just told him to strip. 'Pete, come on.' 'I'm sorry,' the boy says. Pete gets him straightened out on his stomach, and pulls down his underwear and jeans. 'Someone's had some fun,' he says. 'Fuck you. Jude?' She's somewhere around, and I need her to hug me right now. So I feel the air behind me. 'Jesus Christ,' Pete says. He just ripped the boy's shirt off, and saw all the scars. 'What,' she says. That sounded angry. 'Tell Pete to stop.' 'Why?' she says. So I guess they did fuck. Jude just read the boy's notebook, or the part about sleeping with her. I held the book, so she couldn't read anything about me. She's crying, and I almost am too. We're over by the couch, talking softly to him. Pete just iced the boy in the stomach and back. Then I finally told Jude about the murder for hire. Pete's in the other room, reading the notebook. I insisted. I fucking threw it at him. I don't care if he reads all the parts about me, and I kind of hope he will. 'Look, we'll stop this,' Jude says, and strokes the boy's hair. 'Seriously?' he says. 'Yeah,' she says. 'Somehow.' 'I don't know,' he says. He looks down at his legs, and I think tries to move them around. But they don't stir, and he gets this shocked look on his face. 'No, you don't. I read your notebook. I know you don't.' I hear a fluttery noise, then what sounds like the boy's notebook hitting a wall. Pete walks back into the room, looking incredibly annoyed. 'Yeah, so?' he says. 'Did you read it?' 'I read it,' Pete says. 'He wishes he was dead. Big news.' 'No, he doesn't,' Jude says. 'Sure he does,' Pete says. 'No, he doesn't.' I look at the boy, but he's looking at Pete. There's something about what's going on in his eyes. Or that he's showing it to Pete. I don't know why, but that does it. It makes me start to cry and punch him really hard in the face. 'Whoa,' Pete says, and laughs. 'No, you fucking don't.' |
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