Crooked Little Vein Page 6

  Early evening had set in. Lights were on in all the houses. Dogfight noises were coming from the neighbor’s place. I could hear kids playing down the street, and the game sounded like it involved death of some kind.

  I held on to my pants with my left hand, and lifted my scrotum with the other. Carrying my testicles, I walked to the car as fast as I could. Which, you know, wasn’t as fast as all that.

  I don’t like to think about what I looked like, hefting my own gonads down the front yard path to my car. I thought, in those slow painful moments, that I’d finally hit bottom.

  Which was just fucking stupid, really.

  Chapter 16

  I found that I had to kind of limbo into my car, leaning back and almost heaving my hideous genital weight in ahead of me.

  With the car door shut and my scrotum on my lap, I sighed, switched the car radio on, and settled down to wait for Trix. Looking at my watch. Looking out the window. Wondering exactly how long it took to inflate a woman’s labia until they passed as gonads. Minutes crawled.

  Pressing buttons at random found me something that sweetly declared itself to be “Ohio’s Liberal Voice,” but what followed appeared to be nothing but a recording of someone screaming at a very high pitch for a very long time.

  I stabbed the deck some more, cycling through a soft-rock station, some weird broadcast of a woman doing nothing but reading numbers very slowly, and what I guessed was a local church channel. A man was explaining in a very loud voice, as if speaking to a child, that everyone in California likes anal sex. “I like churches. They like anal sex. I like families and children. They like having abortions. No, it’s true. They are all secular Jews who hate Jesus and America. And they call me a Nazi when I say that. But let me say this. Hitler was always very respectful of the church. And he hated cigarettes.”

  An announcer’s voice came in to tell me that I’d been listening to Proinsias Kernahan, president of the Catholic League, and to ask me to wait until after these messages to hear the rest of the evening news. Dear God, but it was time for a cigarette. I punched the search button again, fished out a half-crushed pack of Dunhills, and lit up with relief. The radio scanned around a bit and landed on something that sounded oddly amateur. Listening and smoking, I came to understand it was a micropower radio station. A couple of kids broadcasting out of a back room somewhere. And somewhere close by, too. The kids, only one of whom sounded hopelessly stoned, explained that their signal didn’t reach more than a couple of miles, and even that only if the wind was behind it and you were standing downhill with your arms out and a wire coat hanger stuck on top of your head.

  The unstoned one was pretty smart. In between the music—which apparently was all by local unsigned bands, and some of it wasn’t bad—he talked about what they were doing and why. By playing local indie music, they were both supporting his community and broadcasting donated content that didn’t require a royalty payment. They weren’t, they insisted, pirates. They were even observing band adjacency, he said—this one, the guy who hadn’t smoked a field of weed, was obviously the Head Geek—broadcasting on 94.2, clear space between two “lite”/soft-rock channels. And that was the point, he figured—most of Columbus’s dial was all eaten up by soft rock, country, and Christian radio. All the major monolithic radio entities ran stations in Columbus, but they all broadcast exactly the same kind of material. They all had a Christian station, they all had anesthetic adult easy-listening rock stations playing the kinds of records we used to lift out of our parents’ collections and use as ashtrays when I was a kid.

  It suddenly occurred to me: I didn’t remember the last time I went to a gig. Couldn’t remember the last time I heard live music. Or went to a club to hear a DJ.

  They played something by another local group, that had the real thump and clang of live music. The drummer started up on the toms, and collapsed into a glorious mess that sounded like he’d kicked the drumkit down a flight of stairs. The bass walked in and made the back of the car rattle. The lead guitarist went screaming down the strings and I laughed out loud, it sounded so good. And then there was a fuckload of static, ten seconds of silence, and a fight. Someone had entered their makeshift recording studio, and one of the kids, probably the smart one, had put the microphone back on.

  “We are the FCC,” a loud voice proclaimed. “Take off your clothes and put these orange jumpsuits on.”

  “The fuck?” said Herb Boy.

  “Pirate radio operations have been reclassified as Broadcast Terrorism. You’re going to be wearing dogs in your asses at Abu Ghraib for the next five years, you dirty bastards.”

  “This is community radio!”

  “If we wanted communities, we’d make Clear Channel pay us to run them. Put on the hoods, too. No more devil music for you, Radio bin Laden.”

  I switched off the radio, miserably, wondering if it was all my fault for listening and daring to enjoy it.

  I got a little angry.

  Not long after, the passenger-side door opened, and Trix climbed in, grinning.

  I took a deep breath and said, “All set?”

  “Sure. You should have stayed.” She looked at the dashboard. “What happened to the radio?”

  “It broke.”

  “Looks like someone kicked it in. Did someone break into the car?”

  “Must’ve.” I started up the car. “Let’s go. I need to buy plane tickets.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Texas,” I grunted.

  She looked at me. Up. And down. And giggled. “Well, they do say everything is bigger there.”

  “Oh, ha fucking ha.” I went to adjust my shirt. And found that things had changed.

  I guess I’d been in the car a couple of hours. My balls had diminished to an approximation of their standard size. My penis, however, was significantly bigger than I was used to. Like half a dozen times. And, not having rearranged my shirt, I found that I was sticking out of my pants like I was an incompetent salami smuggler.

  “They told me that the saline diffuses out in an hour or two,” Trix said. “I guess it migrates on the way.”

  She leaned in way too close and whispered, “If that happens to me, my clit is going to look like a pool ball.”

  I threw the gearshift and gunned the engine. “You better get some sleep. Neither of us are going to be laying on our fronts tonight.”

  “I don’t mind you laying on your back,” Trix said.

  “I’m going to order plane tickets and make a phone call, and then I’m going to get so drunk that I cannot see. You can find something to do tonight, right?”

  “Sure. I’m going to jerk off like a freak. Want to watch?”

  “Jesus, Trix…”

  “What is wrong with you, Mike?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you! I’m all tingly as hell, I’m hornier than a dozen rabbits, I’ve seen you looking at me, and suddenly you’re a monk. Are you scared of me?”

  “Of course I’m not goddamn scared of you.”

  “Well, you’re pissing me off, anyway. You want me to go home tomorrow?”

  “You want me to buy you a ticket home?”

  “That’s not what I asked. Do you want me to go?”

  “I’ll buy you a ticket home, if you want.”

  “What are you, eight? Answer the question, Mike.”

  “No.”

  “Christ! What no? No to me leaving?”

  “No, I’m not eight.”

  “Mike, I could snap your neck using only my pussy lips right now.”

  “Oh, for…”

  I pulled the car over, in sight of the highway back to the hotel.

  “Trix…No, I don’t want you to go. If I’ve been shit at hiding that I look at you sometimes, then I’m sorry. I never meant to make you feel uncomfortable. If you want to go because I’m being creepy, then I’ll buy you a ticket, pay you for your time, and we’re cool. And I’m sorry. Okay?”

  Trix sighed. Looked out the window. Looked ba
ck at me.

  “Mike. I am asking you to have sex with me.”

  “…oh.”

  “Oh? Did the easy-reading version work?”

  Chapter 17

  If you think I’m telling you about having sex with Trix, you’re insane.

  Chapter 18

  “I think it’s finally going down,” Trix said.

  I took a look. “Yeah. You no longer have girl-balls.”

  She gave that little tinkling giggle and snuggled into my arm. “I have decided that we need to do that more often.”

  “Fill our bits with salty water?”

  She bit my nipple. “No. The other thing. Although, you know…”

  “No chance. One-time thing. I’m not carrying my nuts around in a wheelbarrow for you.”

  “And I thought you liked me. Didn’t you have to make a phone call?”

  “Shit. So I did. Someone distracted me.”

  “So it’s all my fault now?”

  “Absolutely.” I kissed her hair. “I’ll call him later. He’ll still be awake.”

  “Who do you need to talk to?”

  “Bob Ajax. Guy I knew back in my Chicago days. He moved to San Antonio a few years ago. A little local knowledge might help.”

  “You don’t look happy about it.”

  “Oh, I like Bob fine. He’s a good guy. What bothers me is who we have to go and see.” I sighed, tried to relax. “Doesn’t matter. Not right now.”

  “No. It doesn’t. You stay right here. How long since you last got laid?”

  “Well, I remember saying, Mr. Lincoln, when am I going to meet a nice girl?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Since my girlfriend left me, pretty much. A few years.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish.”

  “A few years? I would have died. It would have healed over.”

  “If you check the condom, you’ll find a bunch of gray pebbles in the end.”

  “Oh, that’s gross.”

  “You bring out the best in me. I need a cigarette.”

  Cold and sticky, wobbly knees, rooting around in my jacket, something occurred to me. Because I can’t just leave things alone.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why this.”

  She coiled around onto her front, feet on the headboard, and considered me. “I think I want to meet your ex. And kill her for whatever she did to your brain.”

  “No, really. Was it just because…?”

  “Because what? Because your dick was full of brine? Because when I’m horny I just jump into bed with the first available live body?”

  “No,” I lied, because when she put it like that I sounded like an asshole, and that couldn’t be right. “I just…You weren’t interested in me like…that.”

  She stared. “Oh my God, Mike.”

  “What? You came for the thesis and the job. I know that. That was the deal, I’m not pissed or anything.”

  Her eyes were like saucers. “You. Are. Such. A. Retard.”

  “What did I do now?”

  “Mike. I wanted to kiss you the first time you made me laugh. But you’re always so…freaked out. By everything. Mike, you’re a really nice guy who made me laugh and you wanted me to go on an adventure with you. You think that happens to me, you know, ever? Do you have any idea when anyone last wanted to talk to me for what was in my head?”

  I stood there like an idiot with the cigarettes in my hand, unable to think of anything worth saying.

  “I’m not getting through to you, am I?” Trix smiled.

  “…um.”

  “Okay. Easy-reading version. I wanted to spend time with you and see what happened. I am kind of a big slut, but I don’t give it away for candy bars. I sleep with people I really like. I really like you. I am not here for the money or the thesis. I am here because I really like you, and because you took me on an adventure with you. How’s that?”

  “…big slut?”

  “Come here.”

  I went back to the bed, forgetting the smokes. She reached up, grabbed me by my nipple, and pulled me down.

  “Here’s what’s going to happen. We are going to continue our trip for as long as it lasts. We are going to learn about each other and be together. We are going to be friends. We will go back to New York and we will still be friends. And we are going to have sex, you know, a lot. Because that’s what I do with my very best friends because it makes us closer and because it is fun. You will agree now.”

  “Yes.”

  “There. See how easy that was?” She flipped me onto my back and looked at me thoughtfully. “Hm. We may need some ropes.”

  “…oh my God.”

  “God can’t help you now, Mike. There’s only me here.”

  Chapter 19

  Bob? It’s Mike McGill.”

  Bob had acquired a bit of Texas in his accent.

  “Mike! Jesus, man, it’s been years! How you been?”

  “I followed you out of Chicago. Set up on my own in New York.”

  “Good for you, man. Always said you were the smartest guy in the agency. So what’s up?”

  “You still in San Antonio?”

  He laughed. The laugh had a bit of edge in it. I filed that away, nervously.

  “Sure. You need something?”

  “Listen, me and my partner need to fly down there today and do some digging. Any chance you could give us some local knowledge?”

  “Damn, I’ll pick you up at the airport. Got a flight yet?”

  I’d already booked tickets by phone, and gave him the details. That was that, and we hung up.

  “Huh,” I said, standing over the phone.

  “Problems?” Trix said from the bathroom.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t sound right.”

  “Define.”

  “Nothing ever got to Bob. He was Teflon—everything just slid right off him. Stuff only ever came out when he was drunk. He sounded…not stressed, but edgy. Not like Bob.”

  “Been a while since you saw him, though, right? I think I like being your partner, by the way.”

  “Well, what the hell else was I going to call you? I couldn’t tell him you were my girlfriend or anything.”

  Waited.

  “No, you couldn’t,” came her voice.

  Shit.

  “Friend-with-benefits doesn’t sound too professional, either,” she laughed. Making damn sure I had no idea where things stood.

  She tripped out of the bathroom, flames around her eyes. “So what’s the plan, boss?”

  “Bob’ll pick us up, we’ll find a hotel, and he’ll give us some background on the next visit.”

  “Which is?”

  “Ever heard of Roanoke Oil?”

  Her face set. “Yes, I have. Serious eco-criminals.”

  “I didn’t know that. Well, we’re going to have some fun. Because the thing was bought from our briny friends by the Roanoke family.”

  “Oh, wow. That’s interesting. How long ago?”

  “Three years, I think.”

  “Wow. You know one of the Roanokes tried to take a stab at the presidency last time around?”

  A few things went click click click in my head. And, I don’t know, call it an aftereffect of the exfiltration of vintage semen, call it suddenly becoming uncomfortable with only ever having told her part of the story, call it what you fucking like, I don’t care. But I asked her to sit down, and I told her what the book really was. Told her what I’d been told it was and what it was for.

  After a while, she blew out a breath and said, “Holy shit.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “You said that.”

  “What do you think he wants it back for?”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s a magic book. I think it’s a little bit of history that he wants safely swept under his own carpet, rather than floating around out in the world.”

  Trix stood up. Sat down again. Thought for a
moment. Stood up. “Can I have one of your cigarettes?”

  I handed her the pack and the lighter. There was memory in her fingers as she lit up. I felt bad for bringing on a relapse. She sucked the smoke down, and coughed it back out in big blue puffs. “What the fuck are these?”

  “They’re organic.”

  She looked at the pack. “You smoke cigarettes called ‘American Ghost’? Jesus, Mike. Organic what? Dead bodies?”

  “Feeling better?”

  “No!”

  “Oh.”

  She stabbed the cigarette to death in the ashtray. “Mike, I’m working for the White House.”

  “It’s an adventure.”

  “It’s the government.”

  “It’s their money we’re spending. It’s their money I’m giving you. They are paying for our adventure because, well, they’re nuts and they think there’s a magic book on the loose in America. It’s not a magic book. It’s a faintly embarrassing antique that they are handing over stupid amounts of money for me to attempt to return to them. That said—”

  Trix found my eyes. “—that said, one of the Roanokes tried to take a stab at the presidency last time around.”

  “Yeah. So you said. What happened?”

  “The guy couldn’t get on the ballots. Had worse problems than Nader. Spent a lot of money, but it all fell apart. Indymedia called it Bush Envy. See, what threw people was that he had no experience at all, in anything. He made Ross Perot look like JFK, you know? No one knew what made him think he could win. But, what I’m now thinking is, see, if he had the thing, the book, an actual honest-to-God whole other draft of the Constitution…”

  “Yeah.”

  “Yeah. If he’d managed to get into the political fight, he could have, I don’t know, shown it off, or used it as secret leverage…”

  “Hold on.” I quickly lit myself a cigarette. “You’re a bit ahead of me. Mentioning him running for office, that put up the red flag, because it’s the first political connection to the book I’ve had so far. But you think it could actually leverage someone into office?”