“Interact with her,” Ultra said.
“You. I’ve never done this.”
“She can’t see you, don’t worry.”
“Where is she?”
“Interact!”
“Hi out there. What’s your name?” Cassandra asked us. She stroked the dead bear and bit her lower lip. “Are we going to play tonight? I like to play.”
“It’s Ultra. From the Fox Hole,” Ultra said.
“Ultra,” Cassandra repeated. She looked confused. Behind her small bed was a poster of a boy band popular with seven-year-old girls.
“I’m here with a guy who says he wants to meet you—a guy from the club. He knows a friend of yours. I’m turning this over to him so I can eat.”
Our waitress approached with a thermal coffee pitcher but took in enough with one glance to understand that earning her tip meant ignoring us tonight.
“Cassandra, my name is Brian Schick,” I said. “I work at Oasis Pizza with your friend Crush. He didn’t show up for work last night. We’re worried.”
Cassandra set the stuffed animal aside, rolled off her panties over her long legs, and intimately displayed herself. “You like it? It’s yours if you want it. Check it out.” She reminded me of a 4-H kid with a prize rabbit. There was genuine pride in her face, a kind of glow.
“I’m wondering if we could meet somewhere and talk. Like a restaurant,” I said. “Tomorrow. Somewhere real.”
“This is my real.”
“I’m serious. I’ll buy you lunch,” I said.
“Impossible. I’m no longer based in Montana. I haven’t been there for sixteen months. You’re reaching me in a coastal Southern state famed for its theme parks and laid-back way of life.”
“You’re not in Billings?” I looked over at Ultra, who ignored me, cutting up her heap of sticky pancakes. These ladies stuck up for each other, which I admired.
“As for Crush,” said Cassandra, “there’s not much I can tell you. I really don’t know him. We’ve never met in person. Only like this, like you and me right now. He says he used to watch me dance, but I don’t remember. The lights were in my eyes.”
“But he’s paying for your Grand Cherokee,” I said.
“He’s been lagging on that, if you want to know the truth. I had to deactivate him.”
“Deactivate?”
Cassandra reached over and retrieved the bear. She stood it between her legs to block my view and then held up one of its arms with her right hand and waved goodbye with it. “I’ll catch you later, Brian. Have Ultra explain real life to you someday.” She switched off her feed and my screen displayed the bill: $27.50.
Ultra said, “Check your statement for that card. Close the account if you start to see weird charges. That probably wasn’t the most secure transaction.”
“No, it didn’t feel like it.” I drank the rest of my coffee, which was cold. The creamer had formed a skin across the top that stuck to my lip in a wrinkled little sac that I picked off and set on a napkin. Horrible.
“Let’s go to my place,” said Ultra. “Let’s keep this rolling. Drop some Molly. Drink a little wine.”
“I’m broke,” I said.
“This is friends. This isn’t business. This is two adult individuals in Billings who don’t keep normal hours or have relationships and may as well pass out together, not alone.”
“Romantic,” I said.
“I think it’s romantic. I think it’s about as romantic as it gets.”
Years later, when I was living in Las Vegas flying Grand Canyon tours for a nice salary that could have supported a family if I’d had one, I thought back to that line and realized she was right.
* * *
When Crush reappeared a week later, a Friday night, his eyebrows were completely gone. He looked like a man who’d been sleeping in his clothes and eating out of a microwave, sporadically. His earlobes were badly sunburned, which seemed strange, since Billings had been cold and overcast, and his fingernails were different lengths, the ones on his right hand trimmed, the left ones long. I asked him where he’d been, what he’d been up to, but he busied himself with his orders and blew me off. Oasis was crazy that night, a pizza jam, as though there was no other source of food in Billings. Coming and going with our deliveries, we repeatedly missed each other in the shop, and not until five or so did business slow down enough for me to try to question him again.
This time he answered. “Tarpon Springs,” he said. “A Greek sponge-fishing village on the Gulf Coast. Except now there aren’t many sponges left. Fished out.”
“You went to Greece?”
“It’s in Florida.” He bit his left thumbnail down to match his right one as Ray ghosted by with his haul from the night’s frenzy, headed for the Magic Diamond, jazzed. The machines had been good to him lately, but still no cheese. He’d learned to count on us to handle that part.
“Florida,” I echoed once Ray was gone. I’d never visited and didn’t plan to. My dad had lived there, near Pensacola. Florida is the state we stage our wars from. Florida and Texas. Consistent weather.
Crush brought out his phone, a new model, extra wide. He typed with his left hand, with his long nails. It made a bony clicking sound, so ghastly. I recognized the website when it popped up. First, there was a tiny pink heart, which beat, grew larger.
“You should see this,” he said. “It’s what happened to our love. It’s what happens to love in general now.”
“That’s okay,” I responded quickly, but Crush went on ahead. I’m sure that he’d heard me, but he was being hateful. And he knew it was late enough that I’d look at anything—the garbage hour, when your mind is empty and people like us hardly care what fills it up.
She wasn’t okay. That was clear from the first frame. Was it live or a recording? Like I’d ask him. She lay facedown on the bed under the poster, her naked legs tight together, mermaid style. Her hair was Ronald McDonald red. A wig? I knew it wasn’t a still shot because a meter was clicking away in the corner of the screen, racking up the charges for our visit. I waited for her to move. I got my hopes up. She didn’t move. Her bear was at her side. It looked cuter than last time, fluffier, less crumpled. I concentrated on its little paws, or at least I tried to. It was late. The brain goes wherever it wants at that hour, seeking energy, seeking a target, seeking heat.
“I’m sorry I’m making you watch this,” Crush said, sighing.
“It’s okay,” I replied.
And it was in a way, I’ve decided, since we weren’t there.
Motherlode
by Thomas McGuane
Jordan
Looking in the hotel mirror, David Jenkins adjusted the Stetson he disliked and pulled on a windbreaker with a cattle-vaccine logo. He worked for a syndicate of cattle geneticists in Oklahoma, though he’d never met his employers—he had earned his credentials through an online agricultural portal, much the way that people became ministers. He was still in his twenties, a very bright young man, but astonishingly uneducated in every other way. He had spent the night in Jordan at the Garfield Hotel, which was an ideal location for meeting his ranch clients in the area. He had woken early enough to be the first customer at the café. On the front step, an old dog slept with a canceled first-class stamp stuck to its butt. By the time David had ordered breakfast, older ranchers occupied several of the tables, waving to him familiarly. Then a man from Utah, whom he’d met at the hotel, appeared in the doorway and stopped, looking around the room. The man, who’d told David that he’d come to Jordan to watch the comets, was small and intense, middle-aged, wearing pants with an elastic waistband and flashy sneakers. Several of the ranchers were staring at him. David had asked the hotel desk clerk, an elderly man, about the comets. The clerk said, “I don’t know what he’s talking about and I’ve lived here all my life. He doesn’t even have a car.” David studied the menu to keep from being noticed, but it was too late. The man was at his table, laughing, his eyes shrinking to points and his gums showing. “Stop
worrying! I’ll get my own table,” he said, drumming his fingers on the back of David’s chair. David felt that in some odd way he was being assessed.
The door to the café, which had annoying bells on a string, kept clattering open and shut to admit a broad sample of the community. David enjoyed all the comradely greetings and gentle needling from the ranchers, and felt himself to be connected to the scene, if lightly. Only the fellow from Utah, sitting alone, seemed entirely apart. The cook pushed dish after dish across her tall counter while the waitress sped to keep up. She had a lot to do, but it lent her a star quality among the diners, who teased her with mock personal questions or air-pinched as her bottom went past.
David made notes about this and that on a pad he took from his shirt pocket, until the waitress, a yellow pencil stuck in her chignon, arrived with his bacon and eggs. He turned a welcoming smile to her, hoping that when he looked back the man would be gone, but he was still at his table, giving David an odd military salute and then holding his nose. David didn’t understand these gestures and was disquieted by the implication that he knew the man. He ate quickly, then went to the counter to pay. The waitress came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dishcloth, looked the cash register up and down, and said, “Everything okay, Dave?”
“Yes, very good, thanks.”
“Put it away in an awful hurry. Out to Larsen’s?”
“No, I was there yesterday. Bred heifers. They held everything back.”
“They’re big on next year. I wonder if it’ll do them any good.”
“They’re still here, ain’t they? I’m headed for Jorgensen’s. Big day.”
Two of the ranchers had finished eating and, Stetsons on the back of their heads, chairs tilted, they picked their teeth with the corners of their menus. As David put his wallet in his pocket and headed for the door, he realized he was being followed. He didn’t turn until he was halfway across the parking lot. When he did, the gun was in his stomach and his new friend was smiling at him. “Name’s Ray. Where’s your outfit?”
Ray had a long, narrow face and tightly marcelled dirty-blond hair that fell low on his forehead.
“Are you robbing me?”
“I need a ride.”
Ray got in the front seat of David’s car, tucked the gun in his pants, and pulled his shirt over the top of it, a blue terry-cloth shirt with a large breast pocket that contained a pocket liner and a number of ballpoint pens. The flap of the pocket liner said, Powell Savings, Modesto, CA.
“Nice car. What’re all the files in back for?”
“Breeding records—cattle-breeding records.”
“Mind?” He picked up David’s cell phone and, without waiting for an answer, tapped in a number. In a moment, his voice changed to an intimate murmur. “I’m there, or almost there—” Covering the mouthpiece, he pointed to the intersection. “Take that one right there.” David turned east. “I got it wrote down someplace, East 200, North 13, but give it to me again, my angel. Or I can call you as we get closer. Okay, a friend’s giving me a lift.” He covered the mouthpiece. “Your name?”
“David.”
“David from?”
“Reed Point.”
“Yeah, great guy I knew back in Reed Place.”
“Reed Point.”
“I mean, Reed Point. Left the Beamer for an oil change, and Dave said he was headed this way. Wouldn’t even let me split the gas. So, okay, just leaving Jordan. How much longer, Morsel? . . . Two hours! Are you fucking kidding? Okay, okay, two hours. I’m just anxious to see you, baby, not being short with you at all.”
Lifting his eyes to the empty miles of sagebrush, Ray snapped the cell phone shut and said, sighing, “Two fucking hours.” If it weren’t for the gun in his pants, he could have been any other aging lovebird. He turned the radio on briefly. Swap Shop was on the air: “Broken refrigerator suitable for a smoker.” Babies bawling in the background. He turned it off. David was trying to guess who Ray might really be—that is, if he was a fugitive from the law, someone he could bring to justice, in exchange for fame or some kind of reward, something good for business. He had tried everything he could to enhance his cattle-insemination business, even refrigerator magnets with his face on them that said, Don’t go bust shipping dries.
He asked, “Ray, do you feel like telling me what this is all about?”
“Sure, Dave. It’s all about you doing as you’re told.”
“I see. And I’m taking you somewhere, am I?”
“Uh-huh, and staying as needed. Jesus Christ, if this isn’t the ugliest country I ever seen.”
“How did you pick me?”
“I picked your car. You were a throw-in. I hadn’t took you along, you’d’ve reported your car stolen. This way you still got it. It’s a win-win. The lucky thing for you is you’re my partner now. And you wanna pick up the tempo here? You’re driving like my grandma.”
“This isn’t a great road. Deer jump out on it all the time. My cousin had one come through the windshield on him.”
“Fuckin’ pin it or I’ll drive it like I did steal it.”
David sped up slightly. This seemed to placate Ray and he slumped against the window and stared at the landscape going by. They passed an old pickup truck, traveling in the opposite direction, a dead animal in the back with one upright leg trailing an American flag.
* * *
After they’d driven for nearly two hours, mostly in silence, a light tail-dragger aircraft with red-and-white-banded wings flew just overhead and landed on the road in front of them. The pilot climbed out and shuffled toward the car. David rolled down his window, and a lean, weathered face under a sweat-stained cowboy hat looked in. “You missed your turn,” the man said. “Mile back, turn north on the two-track.”
Ray seemed to be trying to send a greeting that showed all his teeth but he was ignored by the pilot. “Nice little Piper J-3 Cub,” Ray said.
The pilot strode back to the plane, taxied down the road, got airborne, and banked sharply over a five-strand barbed wire, startling seven cows and their calves, which ran off into the sage, scattering meadowlarks and clouds of pollen. David turned the car around.
Ray said, “Old fellow back at the hotel said there’s supposed to be dinosaurs around here.” He gazed at the pale light of a gas well on a far ridge.
“That’s what they say.”
“What d’you suppose one of them is worth? Like a whole Tyrannosaurus rex?”
David just looked at Ray. Here was the turn, a two-track that was barely manageable in an ordinary sedan, and David couldn’t imagine how it was negotiated in winter or spring, when the notorious local gumbo turned to mud. He’d delivered a Charolais bull near here one fall, and it was bad enough then. Plus, the bull had torn up his trailer and he’d lost money on the deal.
“So, Dave, we’re about to arrive and I should tell you what the gun is for. I’m here to meet a girl, but I don’t know how it’s gonna turn out. I may need to bail and you’re my lift. The story is, my car is in for repair. You stay until we see how this goes and carry me out of here, if necessary. My friend here says you’re onboard.”
“I guess I understand, but what does this all depend on?”
“It depends on whether I like the girl or not, whether we’re compatible and want to start a family business. I have a lot I’d like to pass on to the next generation.”
The next bend revealed the house, a two-story ranch building with little of its paint left. Ray gazed at the Piper Cub, which was now parked in a field by the house, and at the Montana state flag popping on the iron flagpole. “Oro y plata,” he said, chuckling. “Perfect. Now, Davey, I need you to bone up on the situation here. This is the Weldon Case cattle ranch, and it runs from here right up to the Bakken oil field, forty miles away, which is where all the oro y plata is at the moment. I’m guessing that was Weldon in the airplane. I met Weldon’s daughter, Morsel, through a dating service. Well, we haven’t actually met in real time, but we’re about to. Mor
sel thinks she loves me, and we’re just gonna have to see about that. All you have to know is that Morsel thinks I’m an Audi dealer from Simi Valley, California. She’s going on one photograph of me standing in front of an Audi flagship that did not belong to me. You decide you want to help, and you may see more walkin’-around money than you’re used to. If you don’t, well, you’ve seen how I put my wishes into effect.” He patted the bulge under his shirt. “I just whistle a happy tune and start shooting.”
David pulled up under the gaze of Weldon Case, who had emerged from the plane. When he rolled down the window to greet the old man again, Case just stared, then turned to call out to the house.
“It’s the cowboy way,” Ray muttered through an insincere smile. “Or else he’s retarded. Dave, ask him if he remembers falling out of his high chair.”
As they got out of the car, Morsel appeared on the front step and inquired, in a penetrating contralto, “Which one is it?” Ray raised his hands and tilted his head to one side, as though modestly questioning himself. David noted that the gun was inadequately concealed and turned quickly to shake Weldon Case’s hand. It was like seizing a plank.
“You’re looking at him,” Ray called out to Morsel.
“Oh Christ!” she yelled. “Is this what I get?” It was hard to say whether this was a positive response or not. Morsel was a scale model of her father, wind-weathered and, if anything, less feminine. Her view of the situation was quickly clarified as she raced forward to embrace Ray, whose look of suave detachment was briefly interrupted by fear. A tooth was missing, as well as a small piece of her ear. “Oh, Ray!”
Weldon looked at David with a sour expression, then spoke, in a lusterless tone: “Morsel has made some peach cobbler. It was her ma’s recipe. Her ma is dead.”
Ray put on a ghastly look of sympathy, which seemed to fool Morsel, who squeezed his arm and said, “Started in her liver and just took off.”