Crying Wolf

16

“Thought you had a laptop,” said Ronnie Medeiros, rummaging through the stuff in the back of the goddamn hippie van as they drove down to Fitchville. “My uncle has a thing for laptops.”

“You thought wrong,” Freedy said. There was a laptop, of course. Freedy had decided to keep it for himself. He’d never owned a computer before, knew nothing about them, but the CEO of a pool company would need to be completely whatever the word was with computers. So he was going to learn in his spare time. How hard could it be?

“Still,” said Ronnie, climbing into the front, “not a bad haul. My uncle says you’re doin’ good.”

It was starting to snow again, little dark pellets more like buckshot than flakes. Freedy turned on the wipers, turned up the heat. “Why’s it so fucking cold?” he said.

“Maybe you’re low on coolant,” said Ronnie. “Or else the coil’s fucked.”

Freedy glanced sideways at Ronnie, all toasty warm in his plaid hat, wool mittens, and padded jacket out to here. Looked like a complete asshole. He hadn’t been talking about the goddamn car. “Why’s it so fucking cold in general?”

“You mean because there’s s’posta be global warming?”

Freedy wanted to hit him; not brutally, just hard enough to straighten things out, clear the air. “How can you stand it?”

“Hey, it’s home.”

“The flats,” said Freedy. “You call that home?”

“Could do worse.”

“How the fuck would you know? You never been anywhere.”

“That’s not true. I was down to see my cousin in Fall River just last spring.”

“Fall River,” said Freedy. “You heard of Bel-Air, Santa Monica, Rancho…” Rancho what? He couldn’t remember. Like: was the whole thing, his whole California life, his real life, fading away? That scared him. This pool thing-pool business, concern, corporation-was going to happen. No matter what. Have an idea, make a plan, and then… for a moment, he couldn’t remember the third part.

“Jesus,” said Ronnie, throwing his hands up over his face, “you almost hit that guy.”

“Fuck you, Ronnie. I’m in total control.” He must have said it loud, because everything was quiet after. And in the quiet, having a chance to think for once, he remembered the third part from the infomercials: stick to the plan. Idea, plan, stick, stick, stick.

“Everything’s cool,” he said.

“Okeydoke.”

“Say, Ronnie.”

“Yeah?”

“Got any access to crystal meth?”

“You into that?”

“Wouldn’t say into. It’s just, you know, an enhancer.”

“I tried it. Couldn’t sleep for two nights.”

“That’s what’s fun.”

“Not for me. I need my sleep. Can’t perform otherwise.”

Perform? What the hell was he talking about? He wasn’t some high-powered something-Jew word-he was Ronnie Medeiros, Portagee loser. “You got access, yes or no?”

“It’s around.”

“I know it’s around, Ronnie. This is the U.S. of A. What I’m sayin’ is can you get me some?”

“Sure, for a price.”

“You fuckin’ people.”

“What’s that mean? Who fuckin’ people?”

“What I said.”

They drove the rest of the way in silence, Freedy shivering because of the coolant or the coil or whatever the fuck it was, and still wearing California clothes, and Ronnie toasty warm hunched inside his padded jacket out to here, looking like an asshole. Imagine Ronnie in California. The thought made Freedy laugh out loud, a good long laugh. He could feel Ronnie thinking, What’s so funny? but he didn’t explain. Does the wolf explain, or the tiger?

“Thought there was a laptop,” said Saul Medeiros. It was cold in his office back of the collision place; cold in the office, cold in the car, cold everywhere, like all the heat was on the fritz.

“No laptop.”

“You sure?”

“Fuck I’m sure,” said Freedy. “Think I got it hidden in that goddamn toaster?” A good line, California cool, especially if he’d said it quieter.

“ ’Kay,” said Saul, wiping his nose on the sleeve of his greasy jacket, that nose with the hair growing right on top. “If there’s no laptops, there’s no laptops. But you know why I like laptops?”

“ ’Cause they make you think of pussy,” said Ronnie, smoking in the corner. They both turned to him. “That’s what they make me think of,” Ronnie said. “Every time I see a laptop I think of one of those lawyers, like on TV in a miniskirt.”

“Ronnie?” said Saul.

“Yep.”

“How about takin’ the dog for a walk?”

“What dog?”

“The junkyard dog, for fuck sake. What other dog is there?”

After Ronnie left, Saul opened a drawer in his desk, took out two nips of V.O. and a jelly donut with sprinkles. He pushed one of the nips across the desk, tore the donut in half, leaving a black thumbprint on powdered sugar, said, “Help yourself.”

“Not hungry,” said Freedy, unscrewing the tiny bottle.

Saul shrugged, ate the donut, speaking between mouthfuls, or actually during them. “What I like about laptops is the way they fly out of here.”

“Yeah?” said Freedy, downing his drink.

“Fly. You’re doin’ pretty good, but you start bringin’ in laptops you’ll be doin’ better. ’Pendin’ on the model, I pay up to three C’s for a laptop.” He raised the V.O. to his lips-lips with sugar powder in the corners-paused. “One thing.”

“What’s that?”

“You bein’ discreet?”

“Sure.”

“Discreet means you never mention my name.”

“Why would I?”

“Otherwise I get anxiety. That’s no good for anybody. Me because of my hypertension. You because…” The ugly little bastard stared at him with his ugly little eyes, one of them bloodshot. Then he polished off his drink and said, “Let’s do business.”

They did business. For Saul that meant shaking his head a lot, saying, “This I can’t move for shit,” “No one wants these anymore,” “There’s a new model out now,” “It’s missing that thingamajig at the back”; for Freedy it meant getting ripped off.

“You’re doin’ good,” said Saul, paying him off.

“Then how come this is all I get?”

Saul did that head-shaking thing again. A tiny green drop quivered at the end of his nose. “Has nothin’ to do with me,” Saul said. “Market forces goin’ on here. Globalization market forces.”

A hundred and seventy-five dollars. Driving back by himself up the highway, Freedy knew he just had to work harder. He was willing. This was the U.S. of A., and he was a native son. Men just like him had built the whole goddamn country, so there was no problem with work. He wasn’t some lazy name-the-ethnic-group. He popped an andro dry, ready to work at the drop of a hat.

But what about fun? There had to be fun too, or what was the point? Female fun, especially. The image of the video girl in glasses, and what had happened to those glasses, jumped up in his mind. He toyed with the idea of paying for it. He’d never paid for it in his life: with his body, it would have been like-something, one of those complicated comparisons. But where, as he rolled into Inverness, shivering now from the cold, would he even find a hooker in this town? In LA… but that was another story.

He had an idea. It came to him, just like that. Proved how amazing he was: he figured out, with help from no one, where hookers might hang out in Inverness. The bus station. Pure inspiration, the kind of inspiration that makes all the losers say, “Why didn’t I think of that?”

Freedy cruised by the bus station. It was empty. What a town. Not just no hookers. No nobody. He had to really assert control over his hands to stop them from squeezing into fists. While that little struggle was going on, a bus pulled in at the back of the building. Freedy parked in front of the station door, waiting to see who would get out.

One person got out, one measly person. But a woman. Freedy watched her through the glass wall of the station, coming across the floor with a suitcase. Probably not a hooker, not with the suitcase, but how would you tell a hooker in this fucking cold? This woman, a young one, was wearing jeans, hiking boots, a long, hooded sweatshirt. Probably not a hooker. She disappeared into the rest room.

Freedy waited. Why not? The day was shot. And what did that matter? He worked at night. Plus, those jeans-as far up as he could see-had looked pretty good on her.

She came out of the rest room. Surprise: maybe she was a hooker after all, because the hiking boots and jeans were gone, replaced by shoes, not high-heeled but not flat either, and a clingy blue skirt or dress, one of those cocktail things. She still wore the sweatshirt, but even a hooker had to stay warm. Freedy rolled down the window as she came outside.

A good-looking girl, and if a hooker, one of the innocent-on-the-surface types. She turned this way and that, new in town, no doubt about it, and then spotted him. He showed her that smile. And she came; slow, hesitating, shy, but she came.

“Excuse me,” she said, standing on the sidewalk, not putting down the suitcase.

“Hey,” said Freedy, not the smoothest line, maybe, but he made it extra smooth with his voice.

“I’m looking for Inverness College,” she said.

“The college?” What the fuck do you want up there? But he didn’t say that, didn’t even let it show on his face, kept smiling, even bigger.

“Yes,” she said, taking a piece of paper from her jacket pocket. All crumpled up, and she had trouble uncrumpling it, like she was nervous or something. Probably aware all of a sudden of the vibe between them, of how big and buff he was: that would explain it. “Plessey Hall is the name of the building,” she said, reading what was on the paper.

“I just know the numbers,” he said.

“I’m sorry?”

The numbers. Not what he’d meant to say at all. Plessey-which one was that? Forty-six? Eighteen? “Tell you what,” he said, “since you’re a stranger and this is a real friendly town, how about you just hop in and I’ll run you right up there.”

“Well…”

“Lickety-split, you know? And you’ll be out of this fu-this wicked cold.”

“That’s very…” Her gaze shifted past him toward the passenger seat. Lying on the seat was a skin magazine that Ronnie had brought along, which was really unfortunate. She backed up two steps. “Very nice of you, but… I just remembered I was supposed to call. When I got in. If they’re already on the way, you see…” And she retreated a few more steps, said, “Thanks so much anyway,” turned, and went inside the station. On the back of her sweatshirt it said Arapaho State College.

Really unfortunate. He could have taken her somewhere, not home because of his goddamned mother, but somewhere-like down in the tunnels! — and then. And then. Lickety-split, down in the tunnels. Instead; instead he picked up the skin mag and flung it out the window. He was going to have to do something about Ronnie Medeiros.

Freedy had calmed down a little by the time he went to work that night. For one thing, Ronnie called to say he had some crystal meth, and he’d gone over to Ronnie’s and scored it for a cheap price, then pumped some iron. For another, he’d done some thinking. CEOs, like Bill Gates, say-oh yes, he’d done his homework, think Bill Gates’s name didn’t come up on infomercials? — CEOs like Bill Gates, who started companies in their garage, did they hang around bus stations, sniffing for cunt? No-first came the money, and then cunt came sniffing for you. That was what Bill Gates and the rest of them had found out. Idea, plan, stick, stick, stick. Clipping a flashlight to his belt, Freedy raised a grate in the parking lot behind the football field and entered tunnel F.

He felt good right away, optimistic, psyched. He was investing in his future. Besides, he just liked being in the tunnels, especially appreciated the current of warm air stirring in this one. Down F he went, down because F was the deepest tunnel, passing under the football field and the rink, intersecting Z, then crossing right under another tunnel-N, as he recalled-somewhere beneath building 68, the one with the dome, going on all the way to building 17, the science building, had some Jewish name. But that wasn’t the point. The point was: science building. Why? Because science meant computers, and computers meant laptops! Inspiration had struck again. Freedy had a vision of himself in his headquarters office down in Florida in the not very distant future, and voices out in the hall whispering, The guy’s fucking brilliant.

It was really going to happen. He was going to do it, and do it by stripping the college bare. His stake sat waiting up above, the stake to get him started in the pool business. It was-what was the word? A perfect word existed, he could feel it coming, coming, comingjustice! The word was justice. The college would get him started: justice. What were colleges for, anyway? Cobwebs brushed by his face; he hardly noticed, just sneezed a good big one and kept going.

How much did he need to get started in Florida? Thousands, right? Saul paid three C’s per laptop. That meant ten laptops was three grand, right there. And what was ten laptops? Cake. There had to be thousands of laptops on College Hill. Say he only got a hundred, for Christ sake. He giggled aloud as he worked out the math. Three zero zero times one zero zero-so many zeros! — that made Freedy stopped dead. Someone was singing, real clear and real close by. A woman, no doubt about it, with a high voice. Sometimes sounds drifted down pipes from above, but never this clear-like it was coming from the other side of the goddamn wall-and never down in F, F being so deep. But she was singing, singing in some foreign language, and what was more, there were instruments playing too. What the fuck? Instruments too, and way down here. That scared him, like something was happening to his mind. Where was he? Freedy flicked on the flash-hadn’t even been using it, hadn’t felt the need-and shone it around. It was just F-steam pipe, cable pipe, phone-line pipe-dipping down a little ahead and bending left, where it passed under N. Just F: but his heart was beating, too fast, too light, not the heavy boom boom it usually did. How much of Ronnie’s meth had he tweaked? Couldn’t recall. He took a few deep breaths, felt better.

But the woman was still singing, still close by. He put his ear to the tunnel wall. Fucked if she really wasn’t singing just on the other side.

What did he have on him? Pliers, couple screwdrivers, pocket knife. He opened the knife, took it to the drywall, cut out a fist-sized hole. The singing grew even louder, even clearer. And what was that? A woman’s laugh? He stuck his hand in, felt not cement or brick, what the tunnels were usually lined with, but nothing. Taking the knife, he cut a neat door in the drywall, stepped through.

He shone the flash. He was in a little square room with a dirt floor, nothing in it but a stool, a heavy old wooden stool-he’d seen a few like it over in storage-placed by the opposite wall. If you sat on it, he saw, you’d have access to a hinged flap in the wall. Freedy blew the dust off the stool, sat down. He opened the flap.

A tiny round hole: he put his eye to it. A spyhole! Amazing. He snapped off the flash.

What Freedy saw he couldn’t take in, not all at once. Candles burning, dozens of them, in a room-no, more than one room, there was at least another through a door at the back-a room straight out of a palace or castle. Music came from somewhere, horrible old scratchy music, not live. But there were live people in the room, live people from the present day, a guy and two girls.

Two girls. One sat on a couch near the guy, the other was standing in front of them. She, the blond one, said, “How do I look?”

She looked fucking incredible. So did the other one, the brown-haired one. Also fucking incredible. The girl at the bus station was pretty, but these two. Fox wasn’t the word. Freedy shifted his peering eye from one to the other, trying to decide which was better-looking, unable to make up his mind. Then the guy said something Freedy missed, and the two girls laughed. That kind of pissed Freedy off. He took a look at the guy-some kid, college kid, that he could break in two. Bust through the wall, break the college kid in two, take the girls back into that other room, where he could see some sort of weird bed, and fuck their brains out. Get them to do a few things together, and then- whoa, Freedy. Getting ahead of yourself, boy. He reached for his stash, took one little sniff, just to stay grounded.

When he peeked back through the hole in the wall, things had changed. They were all up, finishing their drinks, drinks a little lighter in color than Saul’s V.O., and blowing out the candles. The room went dark candle by candle. They went through the doorway to the other room, started blowing out candles there too. Freedy thought he could make out a rope ladder hanging down from above. One of the girls climbed it, then the other, finally the college kid, carrying a candle with him. They all went up the ladder easily, the college kid easiest of all, like he was an athlete or something, but that didn’t fool Freedy. He could snap him in half. Like Thanksgiving. Crack.

The college kid disappeared from view, and everything went dark. Completely black. That didn’t bother Freedy. What bothered him was the fact that the music was still playing, the woman with the strange, high voice singing on and on.

When Freedy got back home that night, his mood was mixed. The bad part was he hadn’t gotten into the science building. He’d found it all right, building 17 at the end of F, but from the other side of the door leading to the utilities room had come voices, maintenance guys working on some electrical problem. So no laptops, just a fax machine and a cordless phone with speed dial he’d grabbed from the lounge in 51. The good part, though, the very good part, was the strange place he’d found where F passed under N somewhere beneath building 68; and those girls. He’d worked in maintenance with guys who were lifers, sorry assholes, and no one had ever said anything about rooms, fancy rooms, under 68. But it existed, and those girls knew about it. That was so promising. Freedy didn’t know how exactly, or at all, just knew that it was.

He went in the house real quiet, what with the phone and the fax, past her bedroom, toward his bedroom at the end of the hall. The door was open and blue light leaked out. Freedy looked in, saw his mother, in that Arab getup, standing before the open laptop. He walked in behind her, but real quiet, stuck the phone and the fax under the bed before he spoke.

“Little Boy is home,” he said, reading the poem title right off the wall.

She jumped, actually got airborne, which was pretty cool, jerked around, said, “Oh my God,” holding on to her tits. “Why do you scare me like that?”

“I said hi. You just didn’t hear me, what with concentrating so hard on my laptop.”

Her gaze went to it. He moved closer to see what was on the screen, saw what had been there before:

To: Phil. 322

From: Prof. L. Uzig and all that.

Then her gaze was on him, that dark, stoned gaze, right into his eyes, like she was trying to see inside. “What’s going on, Freedy?”

“It’s for business purposes,” Freedy said. “I got it off Ronnie Medeiros for a song.”

“I didn’t know Ronnie took Phil three twenty-two,” she said.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” Freedy said.