Vanilla Ride

  Turning, I saw Vanilla Ride was standing with her arm to her side, her gun in her hand. Her man lay on the ground squirming, holding his groin.

  “Right in the goober,” she said, and started walking toward him.

  He saw her coming. One hand went away from his groin and clawed in the dirt for his dropped handgun. He never got to it before she stood over him and shot him twice in the head.

  She came walking back toward me. I could see her right side was stained with blood. She didn’t seem to notice. My left arm had grown heavy, and then I felt as if it was being set on fire. The way she walked, the way she was coming toward me made me nervous. I said, “We still good?”

  “We are,” she said, and walked right past me.

  57

  “If she hadn’t been good,” Leonard said, “I was going to shoot her.”

  He was standing at the edge of the house with the deer rifle. He had gone out the back door. He said, “You’ll find the guy you shot, he’s also got a rifle shot in his chest.”

  “I thought I missed.”

  “Nope. You hit him. I just hit him again.”

  “That was cheating,” Vanilla Ride said to Leonard. “Ganging up on the guy.”

  “Damn straight,” Leonard said. “You think I’m going to let that motherfucker kill my brother?”

  She grinned at him.

  My knees buckled and I fell down.

  Inside the house on the couch, Leonard looked at my wound. Vanilla Ride came over. She had removed her shirt and was wearing a sports bra and a bandage around her waist, different blue jeans. She said, “I got hit, but it went through.”

  “He’s still got the bullet in his arm,” Leonard said, as he pulled the splinter out of my face.

  She took hold of my arm, looked it over, making me wince. “You’ll be all right, tough guy. We got to push the bullet all the way through. It’s in the fat of your arm. You didn’t lose a lot of blood.”

  “Any is too much … what did you say?”

  “You’re lucky it missed the serious muscle,” she said.

  “About that pushing it all the way through business,” I said.

  She went away for a while and I lay on the couch, kind of going in and out. She came over and I looked up and she had a kitchen knife, about half of it glowed red-hot.

  “Now wait just a goddamn minute,” I said.

  “Hold him down,” she said.

  Leonard got on top of me and kept my back pinned to the couch, held my injured arm down and at my side. “It’s for your own good, dumb ass,” he said.

  “I hate you,” I said.

  Vanilla Ride took the knife and stuck it quickly into the wound and pushed and I felt the knife touch the bullet inside of me, and then I passed out. When I woke up, she was cutting at the back of my arm, freeing the bullet. I passed out again.

  When I came to I was bandaged up and sick to my stomach. There was a lot of sunlight now, but it was very cold. Leonard was sitting on the couch with the rifle across his knees. He said, “She’s gone,” and when he spoke a cloud of white mist came out of his mouth. “We should have killed her, I guess. She had it coming, Tonto, the kids and all. But she did help save our ass.”

  “What?”

  “Gone. She left us four hundred thousand dollars. Took the Volkswagen, told me to tell you if she was older, or you were younger, you might be her meat.”

  “She said that?”

  “She did.”

  “But we came to kill her.”

  “Doesn’t seem to hold it against us. I feel sort of mission unfinished, you know, but she patched you up, brother, so what was I gonna do?”

  “What?”

  “You keep saying that.”

  It was because I was so stunned, I didn’t know what to say. After sitting there stunned for a moment, I found a few words. “The money. I don’t get it.”

  Leonard patted the duffel bag, which was lying next to him on the couch. “Look, man. Focus. She gave me three hundred thousand to return to the Dixie Mafia, with her regards, and gave us a hundred thousand to keep, or pretty close to it—minus what the kids spent, we spent, and she spent. But, man, it’s still over ninety thousand. She kept a hundred thousand for herself.”

  I sat up on the couch. “She trusted us to return the money?”

  “I know. What you gonna do? She asked for my word.”

  “And you gave it?”

  “Of course.”

  “And she accepted it?”

  “Duh. I got the money, don’t I? What the fuck is wrong with your hearing?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “The world feels like a big banana.”

  “What?” Leonard said.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It don’t mean nothing.”

  “You’re delirious,” Leonard said.

  “Maybe,” I said, and passed out again.

  58

  It was a few days later and I had my arm in a sling, courtesy of a veterinarian Marvin knew who wouldn’t report he had treated a gunshot wound. He said whoever had done the first aid had done a good job.

  Anyway there I was in a sling and we were in No Enterprise sitting in the little station/cafe with connecting grease monkey shop. It was me and Leonard and Marvin Hanson, Conners and his fat friend, and two other guys. One of them was Cletus Jimson, and he was a fortyish guy with tattoos on his knuckles that I couldn’t make out but were meant to be some kind of symbols. I guess they were Chinese, which, considering he was supposed to be a stone racist and the current head of the Dixie Mafia in this part of the country, seemed odd to me. Marvin had managed to get us in touch with him through Conners. The guy with Jimson had a lot of bulges in his coat. Some of them were muscles, some of them were guns. His head was shaved and he had a crease on the side of his head that looked to have been put there by a blunt instrument.

  “So, you kill a bunch of our guys, and you want to come and make a truce?” Jimson said.

  “That’s about right,” I said. “We also bring gifts.”

  “Gifts,” Jimson said. “What kind of gifts?”

  I had a box with me and it was tied with ribbon. I picked it up and put it on the table and he untied the ribbon and picked up the lid and looked inside. I knew what he was looking at. Three hundred thousand dollars.

  “That’s not a gift. That’s what’s owed me.”

  “Not by us,” I said. “We sort of came into this deal sideways.”

  “Yeah?” Jimson said.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “He come over and pistol-whipped us,” Conners said.

  “Actually, most of it was done with a blackjack if I remember correctly,” Leonard said. “Oh yeah, and there was that part where I just plain ole pure-dee whipped your black ass with assholes and elbows.”

  “Yep,” I said. “That’s the way I remember it too.”

  “So you brought me my money home,” Jimson said.

  “Courtesy of Vanilla Ride,” Leonard said.

  “She really a woman?” Jimson said.

  “Oh yeah,” I said.

  “How about that,” he said. “A split tail that’s a gunner. That’s some precious stuff, that is.”

  “Precious,” I said.

  “Conners here,” Jimson said. “He tells me he knows Marvin here, says Marvin says you guys went to kill her and didn’t, but killed my guys instead.”

  “That Marvin, what a blabbermouth,” I said.

  Marvin Hanson chuckled.

  “It seemed like the right thing at the time,” I said.

  “I don’t like that,” Jimson said.

  “Get some better guys,” Leonard said.

  Jimson sat back in his chair and looked at Leonard. If he thought Leonard was going to flinch he was out of his mind.

  “So,” Jimson said, “you two, you’re tough guys, huh?”

  “That’s about it,” Leonard said. “But we’d like to end this. We got put into this when we didn’t want to be.”

  “How’s tha
t?”

  I explained.

  “That’s some story,” Jimson said when I was finished.

  “It’s true,” I said. “I say you’ve wasted a lot of guys on us, and I say it’d be best we didn’t shoot at each other anymore. There’s your money back.”

  “It wasn’t about the money,” he said.

  “I know that,” I said, “but it’s our peace offering, your money back.”

  “Yeah,” Leonard said, “and now we’re going to sweeten it.” He reached inside his coat pocket and brought out ten thousand dollars in ten one-thousand-dollar bills.

  “That’s nothing,” Jimson said.

  “It’s ten thousand dollars,” Leonard said, “and it’s money we don’t owe you. Call it a present, a peace offering.” Of course, Leonard failed to mention that there was a little over eighty thousand dollars we had left for ourselves.

  “Like I said,” Jimson said, “it’s not about the money. I spent more trying to have you guys hit.”

  “And what they’re telling you,” Marvin said, “is why spend any more?”

  “I could pop you right here,” Jimson said. “All of you.”

  “No,” Leonard said, “I don’t think so. You could try, but I don’t know it’d work out.”

  “You people,” Jimson said, “you always got to be smart-asses.”

  “When you say ‘you people,’” Leonard said, “do you mean queers or niggers? I’m a little perplexed on the matter.”

  “You’re queer?” Jimson said.

  “I’m so queer queers call me queer.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That’s pretty queer.”

  “Isn’t it?” Leonard said.

  “You aren’t going to do anything here,” Marvin said to Jimson. “That would be plain stupid.”

  “I got some law here,” Jimson said. “I could make it look the way I want.”

  “Maybe,” I said, “and maybe not, but it won’t do any good if you’re dead, now, will it?”

  Jimson grinned. “All right. All right. You guys, I give you this, you got you a set, both of you, queer or not.”

  “It’s just me that’s queer,” Leonard said. “I’d rather not be included with heterosexuals. Bad for my reputation.”

  Jimson turned and looked out the window, then picked up his coffee and drank. “We call it even, that means you stay out of my business, right?”

  “Unless that business gets into our business,” I said. “And I don’t know how Vanilla Ride feels about things. Me and Leonard and her have a truce. But you guys, I don’t know. She might not like you sent men to kill her.”

  “I sent them for you.”

  “Well,” I said, “far as I know, they’re still in Arkansas.”

  “I’ll worry about Vanilla Ride,” he said.

  “Just a polite warning,” I said.

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  “But we owe them one,” Sykes said. “Me and Conners.”

  “That’s your problem,” Jimson said. “Me and them, we’re done.” He hesitated a moment, then turned to Conners and Sykes. “And you know what, you two, you’re done too. Leave them alone. They come around on some other matter, that’s something else. But on this, you’re done. You took a lickin’. Learn to like it.”

  “Good advice,” Leonard said.

  “Don’t push it,” Jimson said, stood up and pushed his chair back. His man got up at the same time. Conners and Sykes got up too.

  Leonard said, “Been good doing business with you, and just one last thing. Keep your word. We expect it. You don’t, we won’t like it.”

  Jimson smiled. “Say you won’t?”

  “Absolutely,” Leonard said.

  “Yeah … well,” Jimson said, and he and his man and No Enterprise’s finest walked out and got in their cars and drove away.

  We ordered pie.

  59

  Couple months later, upstairs in our bedroom, my arm all healed and wrapped around Brett, she said, “You’re not exactly hot with the flesh pistol tonight.”

  “No,” I said, “I’m not.”

  “A lot on the mind?”

  “You know it.”

  “You told me everything, didn’t you? Got it off your chest?”

  “Yep. But I still feel like I have a hole in me.”

  “You’re healed up fine.”

  “I don’t mean that, and you know it.”

  “It’ll pass, baby.”

  “I hope so. I just don’t think I was cut out to do what I do and not feel bad about it.”

  “Leonard’s not bothered.”

  “No, he’s not. He said, ‘If they deserve it, I got no problem. They don’t deserve it, then I got a problem. They deserved it.’”

  “Words to live by.”

  “I guess.”

  “Vanilla Ride … Leonard said she sort of liked you.”

  “He has a big mouth. And I think she said what she said as a kind nod to my courage. Truth was, I was scared to death.”

  “But you went out there and did a stupid thing knowing it was stupid.”

  “That’s called stupid, not courageous.”

  “I have to agree.”

  “I guess I was caught up in the moment. Thing I got to think—to consider—is Vanilla Ride. Beautiful young woman like that, what was done to her? Why is she like that? Why did she learn the skills she learned?”

  “Some man is at the bottom of it, I can promise you that,” Brett said.

  “Most likely. Probably childhood. Bottom line is she killed Tonto. He wasn’t any friend, but he was our partner, so we were supposed to do something. The kids, they didn’t deserve it. They were just stupid. Shit, she tried to kill us. All that, and in the end we let it slide.”

  “But she helped you against the others.”

  “True.”

  “And she cut out the lead in your arm.”

  “Also true. It makes the whole thing kind of confusing, at least in the sense of trying to figure where loyalties lie.”

  “So, she was beautiful?”

  “Not like you.”

  “You liar.”

  “Really.”

  “Keep on.”

  “You are the beauty of all beauties.”

  “That’s what I want to hear. Bet her real name isn’t Vanilla Ride.”

  “Bet you’re right.”

  “But you’re thinking about her, aren’t you?”

  “She’s got me stumped. She let us go. She could have killed us.”

  “You like that she had a sense of honor, don’t you, baby?”

  “I guess I do. But I still wonder why she is the way she is. The killing part… I’m not like her, am I?”

  “You do what has to be done and for the greater good. She does it for money.”

  “That’s what I keep telling myself.”

  “You do odd jobs, Hap, and you’re an honorable man, but you don’t do psychology. Quit trying to figure her out, or yourself. There’s no clear answer.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.”

  “Say you could figure out all the ills of the world, it wouldn’t stop them from happening. Humans suck.”

  “When you’re right, you’re right. How was it in Arizona with Marvin and his family?”

  “It blew. I like Marvin, hate his family. Gadget is a little bitch who not only needs rehab, she needs a daily beating and someone to cuss her for an hour every Thursday.”

  “You’re open for that, aren’t you?”

  “If it was a paying gig. What about Leonard and John?”

  “You talk to him all the time. Why are you asking me?”

  “I didn’t want to ask him about that. I thought it might make him sad.”

  “But I can ask him?”

  “You two talk about stuff like that, and you know it. What’s the skinny?”

  “Not working out. Not yet anyway. They talk now and again. Leonard has his own place, not a motel room but an apartment. Just got it. Me, I’m not that hopeful they’ll work it o
ut, but then again, tonight I’m not exactly full of cheer.”

  “You have half of eighty thousand dollars,” she said. “A gift.”

  “A little more, actually. Leonard split it right down to the penny.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  “I keep thinking about where it came from. Women flat-backing and dumb asses mainlining, or whatever.”

  “So it’s bad money you can put to the good for eating and renting this house and you also don’t have to work out in the weather for a while.”

  “Yeah, I thought about that. A lot.”

  Brett snuggled up close to me and rubbed my stomach. “You want to try again?”

  “Not just now. I think he’s sleeping.”

  “It’s okay. I love you even if you are a failure sexually.”

  “Thanks. I needed that.”

  “You know I’m joking.”

  “Sure.”

  “Now don’t brood. There’s always tomorrow morning. And afterward, I’m going to make waffles.”

  We snuggled awhile, and then Brett fell asleep. I thought about Vanilla Ride and the way she had looked, the way she had marched around with that bandage across her stomach, and wondered if she had been hit worse than she let on. I had wanted to kill her badly, and now I wondered where she was and why she was what she was, and if Brett was right about me and Vanilla Ride being all that different. Down deep it seemed to me that at some point, me and her, we were exactly the same.