Tapping the Source

28

“Some like ’em skinny, some like ’em round, can’t tell the difference when they’re upside down.” It was a song Gordon’s brother used to sing. Once, at the shop in King City, Ike had walked in on Jerry and one of his friends while they were fucking some girl. It had been out back, in the storage shed, and the girl had been on her knees, Jerry in back, the other guy in front, and Ike could still remember how the shed had been hot and close, charged with a strange odor, and how he’d run, back across the dirt yard and into the shop, his teeth chattering while Jerry’s laughter hung on the air. And later that night in the shack back of Gordon’s, he had imagined it all over again, certain that what he’d seen that afternoon would be as mysterious forever as it was just then.

Funny how everything had changed, how what was once so strange was now so familiar. What had once seemed a mystery without clues was now a puzzle solved with such pitiful ease that there were times when the whole process just seemed stupid and boring. And there were times when he felt that he was full up with something, some feeling in his guts he could never puke away.

He didn’t know. At first, after that night with the redhead, he had tried not to fuck them, just to recruit them for the parties, sad stupid little girls. And he had laughed at himself for ever thinking there was more to it, something magical, even, and he both wished back the magic and sneered at himself for ever having believed it there. And most of the time it turned out to be too hard not to fuck them. When he was skulled, half crocked. He wanted to fuck them then, from the top, the back, the bottom, like putting moves together across the face of a wave.

Frank Baker had been right about paying for the board. It was not a simple thing, locked as it was into the Process, woven into the design of the Machine. “It’s not the money,” Hound had told him, “but the spirit in the giving.” And so even though he was on the payroll now, and Hound paid him well enough, it was hard to know about that board. Mornings were still spent with the dawn patrol, in the shadows of the old pier. Then it was home for breakfast and back into bed, only this time the bed was Michelle’s. And then it was back to the shop, or down to the beach with a pocketful of Hound Adam’s dope and an eye out for the girls, down in the hot sand and maybe a noseful of coke, because he had discovered where Hound Adams found the energy to party all night and surf all day.

He learned other things about Hound as well. He noticed, for instance, that Hound never made it with any of the girls. He was always there, watching, but never taking part. Still, it was Hound who decided when there would be parties and when there would be movies, and he was fairly picky, Ike learned, about the girls he used for the films. He liked having a lot to choose from, but there was only a handful who were encouraged to stay, or to come back. And if something got started with a girl who didn’t like it, or who freaked, Hound would call it quits right away and he would make sure the girl got calmed down before she left. What had happened that first night, with the redhead, was an exception and nothing like it had happened since. But Hound had slipped up that night. He had come close to blowing it very badly and he had been scared, and Ike had seen it.

The incident had proven to Ike that Hound was mortal, that he could screw up, but nothing had come of it. That was an odd word—nothing. There were times when he repeated the word to himself, as if testing it for shape and weight. He would think about it in connection with those weeks he had now spent in the service of Hound Adams. Certain questions presented themselves. The questions were obvious and had to do with his search for Ellen, revenge for Preston’s maiming. The answers were more obscure and much of the time it seemed enough for him simply to say that things were not the same. Because for him they were not. Something had gone out of him and with its leaving, something had changed. It was as if those stakes he had once imagined had been tampered with once again. There were days at a time now when he did not even think of his sister, and when he did, he thought of her in new ways. It was like he had seen too many things. He could still not believe the kind of girls he’d met on the pier, and at the parties, girls you could do anything to and watch them crawl back for more, girls who would let the Jacobs brothers slap them around and fuck them in the ass and still be back the next day giving head for a line of coke. It had been two years now since he’d seen Ellen and he would think of that day she had gone, how she’d walked right past him without so much as a good-bye, and how he’d seen her out there on the edge of town in her dust-caked boots and tight jeans, waiting to flag down some trucker, and he would think maybe it was like Gordon had said. He would think about those nights in the desert, alone, Ellen out on a date, partying somewhere beyond the dark boundaries of the town. Partying. The word had a new meaning for him now.

He didn’t always like himself for thinking those things, but he thought them anyway. He couldn’t help it. Maybe it was her karma. And maybe what had happened to Preston was his karma, too. All he knew for certain was that his perspective had shifted, that the summer was slipping away and that what he had come for was slipping away with it, joining itself to another place and time, a place and time that seemed to him more foreign and more distant by the day, less connected to the person he had become. It was as if some piece of himself had fallen away—or perhaps some former shell; he was like a snake shedding skin.

But then the easiest thing was not to think about it at all. The easiest thing was just to let it slide, to make it work for you and not let it get you bummed. And so that was what he did. He stayed stoned and he surfed and he watched it all go by. He became a spectator at the zoo, as Preston had once called it, that collection of crazies on land and on sea. And sometimes, on warm summer evenings when the air was soft and laced with the scent of the sea, he would collect young ladies and make movies for Hound Adams. There was, as Hound had once told him, nothing to it. And it might have gone on that way for a long time. It might have gone on that way for too long and the summer might have slipped away altogether had not something come along to end it. Something did. It began when Preston Marsh returned to Huntington Beach.

He had been gone for over a month. There were various wild rumors that had been circulated: He’d lost his hands, his arms from the elbows down. Been brain-damaged and sent to some veteran’s home, a vegetable for life. Or that he had just cleared out, had enough of H.B. and split for good. Ike was not sure what to believe. Earlier, toward the middle of July, he’d been back to the hospital and found Preston gone. He had tried a couple of times to get hold of Barbara, but she seemed to have disappeared too. Still, he did not think they were gone for good. On his two visits to the duplex he found a growing stack of yellowed newspapers on the front porch, drawn curtains, and a side yard thick with weeds. Obviously there were no new tenants. So he listened to the rumors, and he wondered, left it to the workings of karma, and went his own way. And then one day there he was, Preston Marsh, standing on the sidewalk and staring into the Main Street Surf Shop.

Ike was in the shop. There was not much of a swell and he was taking care of a few things for Hound. He was putting a leash on a board at the time. He was on his knees near the counter when he happened to look up and see Preston. The change in Preston’s appearance was shocking. His skin looked darker somehow, but an unhealthy sort of darkness, the way winos get that dark look that comes from too many broken blood vessels, too much sun and dirt. He wore a beat-up-looking army jacket and a dark cap. There was something about the cap that was familiar, a dark green beret with a small gold shield sewn into one side near the front, and Ike recognized it as the cap Preston was wearing in one of the photos Barbara had shown him, a picture Barbara told him had been taken just before Preston went overseas. Ike noticed too that Preston’s hair had been cut very short. Even though it was a hot day, Preston had the jacket zipped to the neck. He was standing with his hands pushed down into the pockets, and he was listing to one side. With the beret and army jacket and unshaven face, he looked like some burnt-out revolutionary. He looked out of sync. And there was something frightening about seeing him there, like a ghost in broad daylight.

Ike did not get up but remained kneeling by the board. He could not tell if Preston saw him or not, or if he did, if he recognized him. He was just standing there, staring into the glass out of his new dark face. Then, as suddenly as he had appeared, he was gone, jerked offstage.

Ike stood up quickly; he felt as if someone had slapped him. He walked to the front door and watched Preston moving down the sidewalk, toward the Greyhound depot and coffee shop. Ike could see there was a whiskey bottle jammed into the hip pocket of Preston’s jeans, and that the jacket, which should have hung down to at least keep the bottle covered, was hung up on it, tucked behind it so that the bottle was flashing in the sunlight. And then Ike was aware of someone else standing beside him. He turned to see that Frank Baker had come out from the back room and was standing at the door. Together they watched as Preston lurched toward the corner, zigzagging his way down the sidewalk until at last he collided with a rack of newspapers in front of the depot. There were actually several racks, held together with chains, and Preston seemed to have gotten his leg tangled in one. They could see him cursing and kicking at the racks. People closest to him were moving away, though a few others, at safer distances, stopped to laugh. Then some old man in a white apron came out of the restaurant and started yelling. Ike couldn’t hear what he was saying; he couldn’t tell if the guy was more pissed off about Preston creating a disturbance in front of his place, or about Preston’s cap. Ike could see him point at his head, then back at Preston. And then suddenly, Preston pulled a hand out of the coat and swung at the guy. And even half a block away, Ike could see that it was a strange-looking hand, somehow more like a club than a hand, and that was how Preston seemed to use it, swinging it in an uncharacteristically awkward fashion. More a swat than a punch, the blow caught the old man on the collarbone with enough force to knock him backward into the restaurant. But Preston went down too, apparently from his own momentum, and Ike could hear the whiskey bottle busting up as he hit the pavement. Ike watched a family who had begun to cross the street, moving in the direction of the depot, stop in the middle and go back to the other side. He figured he should do something but was not sure what, and when he turned to look at Frank he was nearly as shocked by the change that had come over Frank’s face as he had been by seeing Preston. He did not know when he had seen such a look of disgust, though he was not sure disgust was the word for it; it was more than that. But Frank had apparently seen enough. He shook his head and disappeared into the shop.

When Ike looked back down the street, he saw that Preston had succeeded in getting to his feet, and that the old man had returned with a broom. The man was trying to get close enough to get in a lick without getting hit again. But Preston was not paying much attention to the old guy. He was shooing him away with one arm while staring back up the sidewalk toward the shop. And then, as Ike watched, Preston raised one of his strange-looking hands into the air, the back turned toward Ike as if Preston were flipping him off, except that there were no fingers there to do the job. But somehow, just now, they were not needed. The meaning of Preston’s gesture was clear. And then he was gone, around the corner and out of sight, leaving the old man alone at the edge of the street.

Ike walked back into the shop on shaky legs. He found Frank Baker in the back room. He was standing in front of the Labor Day photograph. Ike stopped beside him. Although he had worked with Frank a number of times, Frank had never had much to say and Ike had always assumed that Frank did not think much of him. But now Ike had this odd feeling that they had both been affected by the sight of Preston, that it was all right to ask something he had often wondered about. “Were you the one who took it?” Ike asked.

Frank looked at him for a moment then back into the faded colors of the photograph. “I took all of them, all the photos in this room.”

Ike was silent, wondering how much he could ask. He wound up asking about another photograph that had always interested him, a shot of Preston carving a bottom turn from the base of a huge dark wall. It was a good picture in that you could sense the power of the wave, the speed with which he was coming out of the turn, feel the force that was driving him down into a crouch. It was a backside bottom turn and you could see the lines of concentration on his face, the way in which his hair was swept back, as if he were riding into a strong wind, and you could see the great fan of white water thrown back into the face of the wave by his board. “I like this one,” Ike said, pointing to the photograph, and he told Frank what Hound had said about Preston’s bottom turns.

“Surprised he remembers,” Frank said, and Ike was surprised by the bitterness in Frank’s voice.

“Hound says he was good.”

Frank continued to stare at the wall. “He was good.”

“Better than Hound is now?”

“Preston was the man. You know what I mean? He was the guy who won the contests, the guy who made it work.”

“Made what work?”

“The business. If you want to make a living out of surfing, you’ve got to have somebody with a name. That was Preston.”

“And Hound?”

“He was good, but he was more into the business end of it. He was the one who brought in Milo.” Frank suddenly stopped talking when he said that, almost in midsentence, as if he’d caught himself actually having a conversation with a wimp like Ike, and answering too many questions. But the added note of bitterness that had crept into his voice at the mention of Milo Trax had not gone unnoticed.

Frank shrugged it off. “Ancient fucking history,” he said. “It’s over now. You saw what was left of the star today.”

Ike did not have the opportunity to ask any more. Frank left him alone with the photographs and walked outside. Ike went to the window. He watched the thin, blond-haired figure of Frank Baker cross Main Street and go into a bar.

29

If Preston’s return was the beginning, then what happened with Michelle was the end. She had been, he supposed, the fly in the ointment for some time, the one aspect of his life that did not compute, that was not colored by what went on with Hound Adams—or so he liked to think. The matter of his sister was rarely mentioned, and when Michelle did bring it up, he would just tell her that he was still working on it, still trying to learn something from Hound, and that it would take time. And when she asked him about what he had learned, or what he did, he would get vague, and he would look for ways of changing the subject. Pretty soon she stopped asking. But she had this accusing way of looking at him sometimes, as if she thought he was copping out. But to tell her the whole story, to tell her how what he had really learned from his association with Hound Adams had affected his perception of his own past, seemed an impossible task. It was easier here, too, just to party down, get high on Hound Adams’s stash, to make love and lay plans for some distant future when they would be on their own, together, visiting exotic places. And he loved her hard. Because in one part of himself he still believed in their plans. He still believed that Michelle was something special, and that he could still keep their relationship separate from what went on at Hound’s, from how he made his living.

This business of keeping the two things separate was, of course, no easy task. Michelle knew about the time he spent with Hound, and even after she quit asking him about it, he knew that his not telling her pissed her off. And Hound Adams, for his part, could see that Ike was keeping Michelle out of it as well. When the subject came up between them, as it did from time to time, Ike would always make some excuse, and Hound would just shrug it off and say, “Later,” and Ike would double up on his determination to keep the two things apart. He found at times, however, that he was haunted by a particular image—Preston Marsh seated at a campfire, saying how it was that with some things you either wanted them a certain way, or you didn’t want them at all. And by the time he realized just how crazy and impossible and unworkable it all was, it was over. Too bad he hadn’t taken the hints along the way.

Like this one morning. It was late and hot and the sheets were wet with their sweat. They’d been making love for a long time. And while he was fucking her he started playing with this fantasy, that they were doing it for the camera, that the Jacobs brothers were standing in line. He was repulsed by it and excited by it at the same time. He wanted to fuck her so it hurt. He slid out of her and got her up on her knees so he could fuck her from behind, but somehow that wasn’t quite enough. There was a square of sunlight on her back and the small of her back was slick with sweat, his own as well as hers. He slipped out of her once more. He started working his fingers around in her cunt, then back into her asshole, getting it wet. She started to pull away from him for a moment, to turn, but he held her tightly, pulling her back and then going into her, slowly, painfully at first because it hurt him a little bit too, but he could see that it was hurting her more and that was what he wanted. He fucked her harder, pushing himself as deep as he could until he came and fell against her, panting like a madman, his heart slamming against her back. Then he was off of her, and standing outside on the wooden porch, letting the sun and wind dry his legs and chest. He was naked in the bright light, squinting, hearing the traffic on the highway and beyond that the distant pounding of the surf and all he could think about was that something was wrong. He had never had to fantasize like that before, not with her. The moment itself had always been enough. Now he stared into the dead grass, the oil-spattered machinery of the well, trying to think about it, to clear his head. But it was hard to think, what with that sunlight too bright in the yard and his head wound up tight as a clutch spring after two coked-out days and no sleep. And then Michelle had suddenly appeared on the porch beside him, wrapped in a beach towel, and he could see that she had been crying. She wasn’t saying anything, just staring at him out of those green eyes gone glassy and red-rimmed. The sunlight caught on the tracks of tears moving across her cheeks and on the tips of her two front teeth peeking at him from beneath her upper lip. And it was like she was waiting for him to offer some explanation, to explain something that he did not understand himself, at least not in this damn heat with the sunlight gone crazy in the yard, pinstriping everything with neon beads, from the grass and trees right up to Michelle’s face, which would not stop staring at him, and asking, until at last he reached out to knock it away, hard, so his open palm rang from the blow. And then he was down on his knees, uncertain of how he got there, pushing his face into the beach towel that circled her waist and crying like a baby while she smoothed his hair.

And then it ended: all the shucking and jiving, the fancy footwork. It ended on a Thursday; he would not forget that, the same week in which Preston had returned to Huntington Beach.

He’d gotten up early to surf a small mushy swell out of the west. Hound Adams had not been in the water. Ike surfed for about an hour, then left for home. He liked waking Michelle in the mornings. He liked the way she looked, all sleepy and warm with the morning light coming through the rippling glass. He liked the way she smiled, still half-asleep, when he slipped beneath the covers to let her warm him with her body. Later they would walk down to the coffee shop for breakfast.

He hung his wet suit off the balcony and slipped into jeans and a T-shirt, then walked down the hallway to her room and tried the door. Normally it was unlocked. Thursday morning, however, was different. He heard voices, bare feet on the wooden floor. He was certain that something had gone wrong, and it was becoming difficult to draw a deep breath in the cramped corridor. The first thing he noticed when she opened the door was the strong scent of grass. The first thing he saw was one of Hound Adams’s Mexican shirts draped over one end of the couch. He could not see her bed, but he didn’t have to; he could see her face. She looked slightly flushed, he thought, and very beautiful. Her hair appeared mussed and there was a damp strand curled against her skin near the corner of her mouth. He turned without speaking and walked away. The door closed behind him.

And that was it—the end of everything that had been special between them. He couldn’t sit still. He couldn’t stay in his room. He did not have the desert to walk in, as he had the day his sister had run. He finally put a cold and slimy wet suit on and went back to the beach. The swell, if anything, had gotten worse and he spent the better part of the day scratching for rides in the mushy surf, cursing the waves and anyone reasonably close to his own size who got close enough to crowd him. It was the first time he had ever yelled at anyone in the water. A true local at last.

By late afternoon he was tired and chilled to the point of sickness. He found some guy he knew from the dawn patrol and got him to buy a sixer of Old English 800, the most rotgut stuff he could think of. Then he spent what was left of the afternoon in his room drinking. He waited. He watched the sun go down beyond the buildings that blocked his view of the sea. He waited for the sound of her footsteps in the hall, but they did not come. She should have been home from work by now. Maybe she had not gone. Perhaps she was still with Hound Adams, at his house. Perhaps they were making movies right now.

He was set upon by a nearly uncontrollable compulsion to go there, to find her. All sorts of wanton and perverse acts took shape in his mind. And yet how could he blame her? How could he judge her now when he had been the one who had ruined it? The parties, the movies. He had told himself there was a reason. Was there? Or was it his own selfishness? He should have taken Michelle and run, as far away from Hound Adams as possible, should have given up the charade of looking for his sister, the charade that had become nothing more than a mask for his own lust. Shit, he had stayed because he liked it. The girls, the movies, it was all some sort of crazy ego trip and now he had paid the price. Why was he such a goddamn fuckup? What was wrong with him? Everything had been a lie, his whole stay here. He could see that now. He had simply run away. He had endured the old woman’s hateful stare, the silence of the desert, as long as possible and then he had run. It was just that his sister’s disappearance, the kid’s story, had given him some reason, the necessary push, to do what anyone else with more guts would have done long before. He was twisted in some way, had to be. It was his mother’s blood. He had found a good thing here and a bad thing and he had gone after the bad. Maybe the old woman had called it after all. Maybe he was the one who had been wrong at the ranch—all that stuff about responsibility and guilt. Shit. He had left because he didn’t want to stay without Ellen; responsibility and guilt had nothing to do with it. Maybe the old woman had been right about all of them, his mother a common whore, his sister no better, and him a goddamn degenerate—the whole bad line of them winding down to him. He’d come to Huntington Beach and he’d found a way to get high, to get laid, to make money without working for it. And he’d gotten off on it. But of course he wanted it all; he wanted Michelle, too. And now he was whining and sniveling because it was all going wrong. Jesus. Crying just like the fucking punk he knew in his heart he was.

He thought along these lines, polishing off the last of the malt liquor, occasionally punching out a chair or kicking the wall, the thought of Michelle’s sweet ass in Hound Adams’s bed spreading like some cancer through his system until the room was too small to hold him. He was reaching for the door when he saw the fucking board propped against the wall, and was somewhat surprised that he had not turned his attention to it before now. The fucking board. The fucking hot stick with its tucked-under rails and flashy airbrush job. Looking at it made him sick, and he laughed out loud when he remembered his reasons for going to see Hound Adams about it. Shit. It had been like everything else, a lie. He had wanted the board and had found a way to get it. He snatched it away from the wall and lurched out of the room, bashing the board against the doorjamb, running the pointed nose into the wall in the hallway with enough force to create a tiny explosion of plaster. He didn’t know if the board had gotten bigger or the hallway smaller, but he couldn’t seem to take a step without running into something, and by the time he reached the darkness that waited at the foot of the stairs there were people yelling for quiet and cursing him. He stopped just long enough to yell back, to flip off the whole fucking building, and then he was gone, lurching through the streets of the town, the board tucked beneath his arm, headed for Hound Adams’s house.

30

All sorts of grotesque scenes took shape in his mind as he walked, unspeakable perversions that he might interrupt. But he was not in the mood to consider consequences. He did not bother to knock, but dropped the board on the porch and pushed wildly through the door.

The living room was dark, but he could see light coming from one of the back rooms. And that was where he found them. So many crazy scenes had filled his head getting there that it took a moment for the real scene to sink in. He stopped in the doorway and stood looking at them, the single loudest sound the rush of his own blood in his ears.

It was very simple, really. Michelle was seated on the floor near Hound Adams. One of the Jacobs brothers sat on the couch. Everyone was fully clothed. The room smelled of grass and some kind of incense. Everyone seemed to be looking at him; their faces swam before him in a watery haze. He lurched a few steps into the room, fighting to maintain that singleness of purpose that had driven him through the night.

“Come in,” he heard Hound Adams say. “Sit.”

He looked for a moment at Hound and then at Michelle. He was certain he did not want to sit down. “I want to talk to you,” he said to Michelle. His throat felt very tight and he was able to force out the words only with great difficulty.

Michelle seemed to be floating somewhere in front of him, in that thick haze that filled the room. Her face was blank. He could not tell if she was angry or embarrassed.

“What do you want?”

“We have to talk.”

“We can talk here.”

He saw her look at Hound, then back at him. He wanted to step forward, to pull her to her feet. It was like the whole situation was slipping away from him, like he was drowning in the thick smoke.

“God damn it.” He was aware of his voice being much louder now. “I came here to talk to you. Will you get off your fucking ass or what?”

She didn’t get off her ass. She just kept sitting there, floating there, this slightly blasted expression on her face. It was a terrible expression, the sort that needed to be erased with the toe of one’s shoe. He started toward her with no real idea of what he was going to do when he got there, only that it would be something she deserved. But he never reached her. Hound Adams was up quickly, standing between them. He put a hand on Ike’s shoulder and Ike knocked it away. He was fairly certain that Hound was going to kill him, but the malt liquor had washed away most of his fear; he was determined to go down swinging. Hound, however, only took a step backward, his hands at his side. “Jealousy’s a very negative trip, brah. Think about it.” His voice was calm.

Ike stood still, watching Hound Adams, never hating him more than at this particular moment.

“What is it?” Hound asked. “You want to jump bad? Spill some blood, maybe? We can fix that.” He turned abruptly and stepped to the dresser at the side of the couch, leaving Ike to stand there like he was nailed down, to stare at Michelle, who had turned her face to the wall. Then Hound was back, pushing something into Ike’s hand. It was a gun. The metal was cold against his skin and he looked down at it stupidly. It seemed to be sort of dangling from his hand, as if it were attached in some way and he was not really holding on to it. Suddenly Hound snatched it back from him and pointed it at a wall. The gun went off with a deafening explosion. A new odor hung in the room and Ike’s ears rang with the sound of the blast. Hound put the gun back into his hand. “You’ve got the bullets,” he said, “and you’ve got the gun.”

Ike felt as if he had a high fever, as if nothing in the room was quite real.

“You think you own me,” Michelle said suddenly out of the silence that had come to fill the room. She was looking up at him now, her face twisted with anger. “Boys are so fucking stupid, they think they can own you, that you’re supposed to be their property or something while they do any fucking thing they want to. I know all about your little parties. So why don’t you take a walk, because you don’t own me. Nobody does. Why don’t you go back to the sticks where you belong?”

“You fucking cunt.” He couldn’t keep his voice from shaking now. It was like her words struck too close to home and he wanted to strangle her for them. He called her a fucking whore cunt and she was up on her knees screaming back at him. He didn’t know what they said. If there had been nobody else in the room, he would have fought her. They could have rolled on the floor and clawed at each other’s eyes. At least Hound’s presence spared them that; it was bad enough as it was. His stomach was a knot of pain. The floor spun beneath his feet. He threw the gun at the couch and staggered back through the house, across the wooden porch, and into the night.

There was no relief in sight and no place to go. He stomped through lawns, kicking flowerpots, cursing small yapping dogs. He stumbled down alleys, trash cans tumbling in his wake. People yelled at him: disembodied voices reaching him in the darkness. And he screamed back, his voice going hoarse, losing itself among the run-down buildings.

He finally wound up down by the tattoo parlor on the Coast Highway and a brilliant idea came to him. He suddenly realized why certain people had tattoos all over them. It was because they were fuckups and they knew they were fuckups. He could suddenly see how guys in jails could get into sitting around carving on themselves. They knew they were assholes and they defaced themselves for it. It made perfect sense. He might have gotten into that himself, a little ink, a penknife, but then he figured he probably wouldn’t have the guts to go through with it and it would be disastrous to try and fail. No, he would get one from the shop. He would climb into that chair and it would be all over except for the buzzing of the needle. He’d seen how it worked. You just picked the one you wanted and gave the man your money. He checked his pockets to see how much he had. It would be nice to get a large one, preferably a very stupid one to boot, the larger and stupider, the better. A member of the fuckup club for life and there would be no hiding it.

The shop was stuffy and warm, filled with a peculiar odor, a kind of medicine smell, as if he’d stumbled into some third-rate doctor’s office. He went up to the wall and examined the selection. He finally settled on a set of Harley-Davidson wings. Only in the middle, instead of that little shield and the word Motorcycles, this one had a skull and crossbones, and beneath the bones it said Harley-Fuckin’-Davidson. There was another one that was even better. It had the same wings, the same skull and crossbones, only on top of the skull there was a naked woman, her legs spread so you could get a good look at her big hairy snatch. But the price on the second tattoo was too steep. He asked the guy if he could pay him some now and the rest later, but the guy said, “No way.” He was an old guy with a bald head and heavily tattooed arms. He stood around chewing a cigar while Ike made his selection, then he sat Ike down, checked once to make sure of the design, and went to work.

Ike was getting it on his shoulder. The way he figured it, he could keep it covered with his T-shirt, then sort of spring it on people as a surprise, just when they were starting to think he was okay. It would be a little like having a secret identity. The old man passed a razor over his shoulder then washed it down with alcohol. He transferred the image with some kind of stencil. Ike felt hot and dizzy. He looked out through the greasy plate glass and into the street. There were a couple of very weird-looking chicks standing outside on the sidewalk now, watching him. They had haircuts sort of like Jill’s. One’s was very blond and the other’s was a strange shade of red, purple almost. The night, the malt liquor, the hot yellow lights, the punk chicks on the other side of the glass. It was like a dream. And the old man was full into it now with that needle. He worked with the needle in one hand and a sponge in the other to wipe away the blood.

At first his shoulder just felt hot and prickly, but the feeling seemed to grow and spread until he could feel the sweat breaking on his forehead and down his back. A wave of nausea hit him and for a moment he thought he was going to be sick. He asked the guy if they could take a break for a minute, but it must have been that the old guy couldn’t hear him, because he just kept going. Ike closed his eyes, wondered if he should try to force his voice a little louder, but in the end he just sat there, grimacing, until the old guy spun him around like he was in a barber’s chair so he could get a look at the tattoo in a small mirror over the sink. He gave it a quick swipe with the sponge so Ike could see it, before covering it with a piece of gauze and taping the gauze to Ike’s shoulder.

Ike had wanted a big one, but he was still a little shocked to see how big the damn thing actually was, it covered his whole fucking shoulder. It had somehow looked smaller than that on the wall. The shock passed, however, into a certain grim satisfaction. He had done it. He had joined the fuckups.

He damn near passed out getting out of the chair. The old guy had to give him a hand. “You all right, pardner?” the old man wanted to know. Ike said he was, that all he needed was a little air.

It was better on the sidewalk. There was a breeze off the ocean laced with the smell of the sea. Then he noticed those chicks again. They were about half a block down now and there were a couple of guys with them. They were hanging around in the shadows of some storefront. He heard one of the chicks say, “That’s him.” Someone else said, “Hey, man, show us your tattoo.”

He told them to fuck off and they all started walking toward him. So he turned and ran, back around the corner of the tattoo shop and down the alley. His legs felt like rubber and his chest burned, but he could have cared less. He had this half-assed plan of leading them down an alley and then ambushing them, beating their faces in with trashcan lids. He was even sort of laughing while he ran, alternately cackling and gasping for breath. They didn’t follow him very far, though, a few hundred feet down the alley. He even turned and yelled at them once, but they went back the way they had come. They probably thought he was crazy, or had a gun or something. He remembered Gordon telling him once that if you could make people think you were crazy, really crazy, they would almost never mess with you. He guessed maybe it was true, at least once in a while.

He took a leak in the alley then walked out to Main. He was starting to feel a little less drunk and his shoulder hurt, but he did not think of going home. The night grew cooler and the sweat dried on his face. Where he finally wound up was across the street from Preston’s duplex. He could see that there were lights on inside now, but he did not go to the door. Instead he sat down Indian style in the damp patch of grass that bordered the sidewalk, and stared. He was not exactly sure why he had come, or why he could not go to the door. Maybe the fact that he had come had something to do with the tattoo. But, whatever the reasons, he did not want to leave. It was almost as if there were some force holding him there. He stayed until the light went dead behind the curtains, leaving just the porch light, forgotten, drawing moths out of the night to flutter stupidly in its warmth, and even then he did not leave.

31

He must have passed out on the grass, because when he opened his eyes, the sun was bright and hot on his face, and he was still in the same spot. There were cars in the street now and blackbirds singing in the palms above his head. He sat up slowly and looked around. He was a bit amazed that he had actually slept here, like some wino at the edge of the curb, and that he was still breathing, having escaped punk gangs, rape artists, and God knows what other scum that crept from the shadows to prowl the streets of surf city when the sun sank into the sea. He felt a stab of pain in his shoulder and looked down to see some gauze and tape sticking out from beneath his sleeve. It took a moment for the night’s events to sweep back over him, and when he thought of what lay beneath the gauze, a sudden feeling of nausea passed through him. But then it was gone and he was thinking that it was what he had wanted, that a certain justice had been served.

He was just in the act of getting to his feet, no simple task, when he saw Barbara coming down the walkway toward the street. For a moment he looked for a place to hide but saw there was none and that it was too late, for she was already crossing the street, moving toward him.

“Jesus.” That was the first thing she said when she saw him, putting the back of her hand to her head. “Ike, you look terrible.”

“I feel fine.”

“I didn’t even know if you were still around. You really look bad.”

“I feel fine, really,” he said, swaying slightly. “I’ve been by a couple of times, but you were gone.” He thought, now that he was getting a closer look at her, that she did not look so good herself. She seemed paler and thinner than he had remembered, and she had been thin to begin with.

“I’ve been living with my parents. Actually, I moved back in with them, but I’m looking for my own place. I’m just here to help out for a couple of days. Jesus, Ike, what’s that on your arm?”

He turned to look at it himself, as if he were noticing it for the first time. “I fell.”

She bent some at the waist. “No, you didn’t. I’ve seen enough of those. You got tattooed, Ike.” She straightened back up, shaking her head.

He felt that he should apologize for something, but he didn’t, and it would have taken too long to explain. So he just stood there, feeling sheepish, staring into the grass at his feet.

“Well, look,” she said. “I’m not going to be around very much longer and I’ve been hoping we could talk. Why don’t you come with me? I’ve got to go to the drugstore and I’ll buy you breakfast on the way.”

They wound up in the depot restaurant, the seediest place in town, but it was across the street from the drugstore. Ike was feeling dizzy and very washed out by the time they got there. It was hard to concentrate on the present because he kept dredging up some forgotten detail of the night, and his shoulder was hurting. He ordered a cup of coffee and waited to see what Barbara had to say.

“I called you a couple of times at the Sea View,” she said, “but couldn’t get you. I was hoping you had left town, if you want to know the truth.”

“Why?”

“Preston told me why you’re here.”

He stared into the chipped Formica before him.

Barbara placed her hands on the counter and studied her fingers. When Ike said nothing, she went on. “It’s not really like him to talk about things like that. But then he talked about a lot of things while he was in the hospital, particularly during the first few days after the operation. He was pretty doped up.”

A waitress came and poured coffee, took their orders. Ike wrapped his fingers around the mug. “What else did he talk about?”

“A lot of things; some pretty crazy things. He didn’t always make sense.” She paused for a moment. “He mentioned Janet Adams,” she began again, slowly. “He called to her. And some of the time I think he thought he was talking to her, thought I was her or something. But I guess it made me start thinking back to what you and I had talked about. Anyway, one day I went to the library. They keep old newspapers there on microfilm and I wanted to see what had been in the papers about Janet Adams. All I had ever heard on the subject was talk; and like I told you, it was some time ago.”

Ike took a sip of his coffee and burned his mouth. The waitress showed up with their breakfast. Plates rattled against the counter. The greasy smell of fried eggs hit him in the face.

“I found the articles, one in the local paper and another in the L.A. Times. There were a number of things I hadn’t known or hadn’t remembered. You asked me once about Milo Trax. Well, the article in the Times concentrated mainly on him. He is the guy who owns the Trax Ranch. Apparently his father was one of the first Hollywood movie moguls. He was the one who bought the land and had the house built. At any rate, his son Milo owns it now, he’s some kind of playboy, I guess, and for a time he was into making surf films. Evidently that was what was going on when Janet died. Milo Trax had taken Preston, Hound, and Janet down to Mexico on his yacht. Then the men came back alone, without Janet. The first story was that she had drowned. Then some Mexican fishermen found the body, and that was when it was discovered that her death had been drug-related. And they found something else out, too, that she had been pregnant.”

Ike had not touched his food. He was still staring into the pink Formica. The sunlight was coming through the glass behind them now, heating up his neck, and there were flies buzzing against the glass. Barbara put down her fork. She reached into her purse and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “I’ve just started,” she told him. “Stupid, isn’t it?”

Ike shrugged. The only thing he could think of just now was the similarity of two stories: two trips to Mexico. Two girls who had not returned. When he closed his eyes, he saw the faded photograph in the shop, Janet Adams smiling at him out of the palest of skies. Certainly the similarity had not been lost on Preston. Was that why he had never said more, because to admit that he had a good idea of what had happened to Ellen would be to admit some involvement in the death of Janet Adams? New questions were forcing their way into his aching head with frightening speed.

“I don’t know how you think all of this connects with what may have become of your sister,” he heard Barbara say. “But I figured maybe that was why you were so interested in Hound and Preston. Preston said that your sister had been involved with Hound, or so you thought. And that was what you were up to, trying to find out something.”

“Is that all he said?”

“Basically. It was a fairly one-sided conversation. I know he thinks it’s a bad idea, that you’re going to wind up involved in something you may not find it so easy to get out of.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” But he knew well enough what it meant.

Barbara shook her head. “I don’t know. But I have the feeling he’s probably right, for once. I’m frightened for you, Ike. You can’t get involved with people like Hound Adams and expect any good to come from it.”

The trouble was, he was not even listening now. A new and terrible thought was slowly seeping into his consciousness. If there had been other trips to Mexico, other girls who had not come back, what about the future? What about Michelle? He had already heard Hound talk it up, and he had heard Michelle say she wanted to go. Christ, she would go in a minute now. He was sure of it. And then another thought struck him: the girls, the parties, the movies. Could that have been what Hound was up to, looking for a certain girl, the right girl for some terrible end? He felt his pulse hammering in his temples, and when he thought back on his stupid attempt to talk to her at Hound’s, he felt that he might be sick on the counter. He even imagined that he was responsible, that he had driven her to Hound with his own paranoia and erratic behavior. But he was sure of one thing: He would not stay in Huntington Beach and see Michelle leave with Hound Adams. He would not wait for Hound Adams to come back alone. It would not happen like that this time. He would find a way to stop her. He would find a way and he would make it work. It was suddenly all that mattered.

He could scarcely remember what else he and Barbara said to each other on the way home. All he could think about was Michelle, and that he wanted to talk to Preston again, consequences be damned.

They came upon the duplex from the backside this time and stood near a small hedge that separated the yard from the alley. There was a gate in the hedge and Barbara stopped with her hand resting on it.

“I should come in,” Ike said. “I should talk to him.”

She had taken her shades out of her purse and slipped them on. “Not now,” she said. “I’m sure he’s sleeping. He had just taken some medication when I left. It always knocks him out for a while. Then he wakes up and starts drinking.”

He told her about seeing Preston in front of the shop.

“Happens all the time,” she said. She turned away for a moment, then looked back toward him. “I’m leaving him for good, Ike. I’ve put some applications in at some schools. My father’s going to foot the bill. But I’m getting out.”

He wasn’t sure what to say. He waited.

“You think that’s terrible, running out on him when he needs me? Something like that?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t handle it anymore. It’s like I’ve woken up to what I told you that night in your room. I’m not going to sit around and watch my life go down the tubes any longer. I’m going to get on with it. And he’s killing himself, Ike, for sure now. It’s just a question of time. I can’t watch any longer.”

Ike felt the sunlight on his shoulders. He felt very tired and somehow unmoved by what Barbara was saying. After all, it was his fucking karma, wasn’t it? Damn him. All he wanted now was to talk to him once more. Let him live long enough for that, at least. “I’m coming by,” he said. “Tonight.”

“Not tonight. His parents are supposed to be coming by later today. And I’m packing. They’re going to give me a ride into the city. That should be a scene.”

“I’ll come by late.”

She shrugged. “Suit yourself,” she said. “I don’t know what to tell you to expect. He’s bad, Ike.” She dropped her cigarette in the alley and stepped on it. Then she reached into her purse and took out a matchbook and pen. She scribbled a number on the inside cover. “Call me if anything happens. If you’re still around. Good-bye, Ike.” She put a hand on his forearm, then turned and started down the walkway without looking back.

Ike stood for a moment in the alley, watching her. He felt irritable and slightly dizzy as he walked back toward the Sea View apartments; there were times when he actually thought he was disappearing in the heat waves that rose from the pavement at his feet.

He climbed the stairs to his room, aware now that his shoulder had begun to throb again, and he went to the bathroom to peel the gauze from the still bloody-looking act of madness. He felt the breeze, cool on his hot skin. He wondered what had happened to him. He wondered who he was and was frightened to discover he could not recognize the crazy face and tattooed body caught in the ancient discolored glass above the sink.

32

“The cunt left me” was how Preston greeted him. Ike came in from the alley, through a cluttered kitchen where a single naked bulb provided the only light for the rest of the apartment. He walked between half a dozen bags of trash and into a dark living room where Preston sat, sunk into a sagging couch surrounded by empty beer cans. A slightly medical odor seemed to come from the living room to mix with the sour scent of garbage, the smells of sweat and beer. Ike had waited until late to come. He had been tired and he had done the last of his coke just to keep awake. Now he felt wired, on an edgy kind of high.

Several weeks earlier, while Preston was still in the hospital, Ike had worked out some ideas for converting the Knuckle to a suicide system—a plan he figured would make it easier for someone who had lost his fingers to ride a bike. He had almost come without them, but had at last changed his mind. Perhaps it was a failure of nerve, the drawings providing some excuse for the visit, a buffer between himself and Preston. And now, standing at the entrance to the dark, stuffy room, his head spinning, he was glad he had brought them.

He took a few steps into the room and placed his drawings on a chair near the front door. “Mind if I turn on a light?” he asked. “I want to show you something.”

“Suit yourself,” Preston told him. “Turn every motherfucking light in the house on if it makes you happy. But get me another beer while you’re at it.”

Ike got the beer. He walked back into the living room, flipping on lights as he went. Preston did not look good in the light. His face still had that new dark look about it Ike had noticed at the shop. And the pale blue eyes seemed to have retreated somehow, to have sunk farther into the face until they were like distant chips of ice. There were the reddish tracks of stitch marks across the bridge of his nose, and another thin red scar running across his forehead just below the hairline. He needed both hands to take the beer from Ike, and the hands rose up until they were practically pushed into Ike’s face. Ike studied the scarred stumps and he felt more than saw the sneer on Preston’s face.

“Pretty, huh? Well, fuck it. It’s not a fucking thing. A man sows what he reaps, or some such shit. That’s what my old man would say. You know that fucker was here? You know that?”

Ike didn’t answer. His resolve to question Preston, the nervous high that had carried him here, were dissipating quickly in the heavy air and he was reminded of what he had thought only the night before, when those punks had chased him into the alley and he had scared them off, that business about people not wanting to mess with a crazy person. He guessed it was that way for him now, because he did not doubt that Preston had at last gone over the edge, that he was as crazy as you would find them.

“Yeah, he was here, the self-righteous bastard.” Preston raised the can to his mouth and Ike noticed the open Bible, facedown among the litter on the coffee table at Preston’s knees.

“But he showed me something,” Preston continued, his head cocked to one side now, those blue chips of ice burning in their deep wells. “What do you do when a thing is rotten?”

Ike stared back, trying to imagine what kind of answer Preston might want.

“Come on, what do you do when something’s no good? It’s right here.” He made a move to pick up the book, but it slipped away from him and fell on the floor. Ike started to retrieve it, but Preston waved him back. “Doesn’t matter. Fuck it. I know what it says. ‘What communion hath light with darkness?’” He laughed. “Didn’t know I could quote Scripture, did you? Shit. You don’t know shit. ‘If thy hand offend thee, cut it off.’” He held the ragged stump of a hand up to the light. “Cut the beggar off,” he said. “Rip it out by the goddamn roots. Get it? If it’s rotten, you get rid of it.” He rocked back on the couch and sat waiting for some reply.

Ike had taken the seat by the door and he sat there now, fingering the drawings in his lap, knowing it made little sense to show them to Preston. But still he was here, and he had brought them, and he had to say something. “I want you to look at something,” he said.

Preston stared dumbly back, as if they were talking in different languages.

Ike walked across the room and knelt at the coffee table. He pushed aside enough trash to make room for the drawings. “You can still ride your bike,” he said, and realized as the words left his mouth what a ludicrous thing it was to say. In Preston’s condition he would be lucky to make it across the room, much less across town on a bike. But he had started now; he continued: “I figured a way to alter the grips,” he said. He tried to force a bit of enthusiasm into his voice, but his throat and mouth were dry as cotton. “With a suicide shifter you can shift with the palm of your hand. All you’ll have to do up top is work the throttle.” He looked up to see how Preston was taking it.

Preston wasn’t even looking at the drawings. He was leaning back on the couch, the beer resting on his thigh, his eyes closed. When Ike was silent, Preston opened one eye and squinted down his nose, across the red tracks. “You dumb shit.”

Ike blinked back at him.

“You stupid shit, you think that makes any difference now? You think you’ve got it all figured out, don’t you? Shit. You don’t know shit. Working for Hound Adams. You think I don’t know what goes down? What’re you doing for him, pimping or letting him fuck you in the ass?”

Ike stood up. He felt slightly dizzy and there was this funny screaming sound in his ears.

“You don’t know shit,” Preston repeated, looking up now.

The screaming continued, like a kettle about to boil over. He reached down to collect his drawings, then flung them back at Preston so they floated in the air all around him. “If I don’t know shit, it’s because you never told me shit.”

For a moment the sneer died on Preston’s face. He blinked hard and stared back at Ike. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just what I said. You never told me shit. You never told me that you knew Hound Adams, that he was your fucking partner. You never told me there had been another trip to Mexico, another girl who didn’t come back. You never told me about Janet Adams, or Milo Trax, or why we went to the ranch.”

Preston’s face had been getting darker as Ike spoke. Suddenly he made an awkward attempt to get up, banged his knees against the table, and sat back down, managing only to knock his beer to the floor, where it lay spraying foam onto the carpet. “You little fucker,” he croaked. “You little son of a bitch whore asshole.”

Ike wasn’t inclined to stay and listen. He wanted out, away from the stench, and the screaming in his head. He leaned over and shook his middle finger in Preston’s face. Hell, Preston couldn’t even get off his damn couch; he didn’t know what he’d been so scared of. “Go fuck yourself,” he said, and started away. That screaming sound was going crazy now, but above it he could hear Preston fighting to get off the couch. He could hear the coffee table hitting the floor and all the shit sliding off of it, Preston cursing and kicking his way over it. And suddenly Ike was running for the kitchen door and Preston’s boots were tearing up linoleum to get there ahead of him.

Actually, Ike did reach the door first, but Preston was just a split second behind him, punching the door closed as Ike was trying to pull it open, and Ike saw that stump of a hand hit the wood with enough force to leave a bloody smear where the hand slid across the yellowed paint. And then Ike was turned around and staring up into those crazy eyes and Preston was holding the door shut, blocking Ike’s way with his arm. And Ike noticed all of a sudden that the screaming sound had stopped, that there was just the sound of his own breath, and Preston’s, coming hard in the silence. “You little fucker,” Preston said, between breaths, leaning against the door. And it appeared to Ike as if maybe some of that crazy light had gone out of his eyes, as if the race to the door had sobered him just a bit. “I said you don’t know shit and you don’t. Hound Adams. Milo Trax. What’s all that shit supposed to mean? You think you’re really on the trail of something, right?” He paused for breath and to wipe his forehead on the sleeve of his shirt. “You wanna know about Janet Adams? I’ll tell you. She killed herself. She found out she was pregnant. She took too many drugs and she fell off the damn boat. She took her own fucking life.” He swung his big head from side to side. “Now what does that tell you about your sister? What does that tell you about anything? I tried to tell you at the ranch, man. You’re not going to find out anything around here.” He waved at the room with his free arm, but it was a gesture meant to include the town. “Your sister’s not here. But what did you do? You hung around, started whoring around for Hound Adams. And what has it gotten you?” Preston paused for more air, sucking it down, suddenly looking more beat than crazy. His question went unanswered.

Preston stepped away from the door. The tattooed arm swung down. He lurched back to the refrigerator for a fresh beer. “You’re blowin’ it, Jack. You should’ve left when you had the chance. Now you can get the fuck out of my sight.”

Ike put his hand on the doorknob but did not go out. He felt that maybe he had been wrong again, that something was slipping away from him here.

“Hey. I said split, man. You’d better start movin’ while you still can.”

Ike turned and went out the door, down the walkway and into the alley.

33

Sleep did not come easily. He kept thinking about what Preston had said, that part about him blowing it. Perhaps he had been blowing it for a long time, not just here, but before, as far back as that night on the flats when Ellen had needed him and he had let some need in himself turn it all around.

What Preston had said to him at the ranch seemed to make more sense now, too. About his sister either being gone or being dead, how either way there was little he could do. He had thought then that he had owed her, but what? Perhaps the price for information was too great, had come to involve too many people besides himself. There was already one man dead, another maimed. And now there was Michelle.

Maybe she would have wound up with Hound Adams anyway; she had, after all, known him before Ike had come along. But that would have happened without Ike’s knowledge. Whatever Preston had to say about it, the fact remained in Ike’s mind that there had been more than one trip to Mexico, more than one girl who had gone and not come back, and what he had promised himself that day with Barbara still held—he would not wait around to see the same thing happen to Michelle. The problem now was how to get her back, or at least how to get her away from Hound Adams. Nothing else seemed to matter anymore. The rest was in the past and he could not change it. Whatever it was that was going to happen with Michelle, though, was still coming down, could still be changed. And maybe that was what he owed his sister, he thought, just that it should not happen again.

He spent the next day looking for her, walking the streets and feeling like a ghost himself, washed out and ill with something besides fatigue. The day passed without results. That evening he went to her door, where Jill informed him—a stupid smirk on her face that he would have liked to remove with the back of his hand—that Michelle was staying with Hound. It was not what he wanted to hear. He went back to his apartment alone. Later he walked downtown and bought a couple of long-sleeved T-shirts. They worked better for hiding his stupid new tattoo.

He woke with a start the next morning, feeling even as he slept that something was wrong. When he opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was his surfboard propped against a wall.

“The board was a gift,” Hound told him as their eyes met, “from a friend.”

Ike had been sleeping in one of his new T-shirts and a pair of shorts. He got up now and pulled on a pair of jeans, sat back down on the edge of the bed, still without speaking to Hound.

Hound watched him, still seated on the floor, his legs crossed beneath him, his back against the wall.

Ike rubbed at his eyes with the heels of his hands. There was something oppressive about Hound’s presence. The prospect of some stupid conversation seemed almost too much to bear. “What do you want?” Ike asked him.

“Brought your stick back, brah. Missed you.”

“I gave it back to you. Remember?”

Hound shrugged. “You’re confused,” he said. “About a lot of things.”

Ike shook his head. “Jesus.”

“You’ve also been acting like a real asshole. You know that?”

“Why did you tell her about the parties?”

“Hey, brah, do me a favor. Don’t lay your guilt trip on me. Why didn’t you tell her? I wasn’t under the impression that there was anything to hide.”

Ike didn’t answer. He was not really in the mood for one of Hound’s lectures. Still, there was something in the question that bothered him.

“No answers? Maybe I can run something down for you. You thought what was going down at the house was wrong, something you had to hide from Michelle. Now all of a sudden you think everybody’s playing games with you. You think I stole your girl, something like that.”

“Didn’t you?”

“I didn’t know she was yours to steal. I think maybe you’re the one who’s playing games.”

Ike looked away, his face feeling suddenly tight and hot.

“Michelle’s a young girl, man, you’ve got to give her some room. Okay. But that’s one thing. The other thing, the bigger thing, is you deciding you had to hide all this other stuff from her, that there was something wrong with it. I would like to know how you reached that conclusion.”

Ike shrugged. He had been around Hound Adams long enough now to pick up on his changes of character. Today Hound was the guru. There would no doubt be a lecture on values, on ways of seeing, a lecture that would surely end in some offer of friendship and reconciliation. That was how the game would be played today.

“Still no answers? Well, think about this: I say people have been filling your head with shit. All your life, and you don’t even know it. You have a family? They all get along? Everything all right?”

Ike did not answer, but he thought about the desert, the old woman hidden away in the house, Gordon at his station. He thought about his mother and the father he had never seen.

“Fucked up, aren’t they? But don’t they still know all about what’s good and evil? And aren’t they always ready to run it all down for you? That’s what my family was like. No communication, everybody so cut off from everybody else they couldn’t even touch each other. But they still knew what was good, and what was bad, what was acceptable behavior. Bullshit. It took me a while, but I soon began to see they had it all turned around. Almost everything they thought was bad turned out to be all right, and what they thought was acceptable turned out in my mind to be evil of the worst kind, the kind of evil that sucks the life out of people without their even knowing it, leaves ’em shells, fucking lifeless zombies.”

Ike had been staring at the floor, braced for the lecture, but he looked up now. There was something in Hound’s voice that made him do it. The morning light was coming through the window and striking Hound Adams full in the face so Ike could get a good look at it, at the crow’s-feet spreading around the eyes, the uneven pigmentation that betrayed the years of exposure to sunlight and water.

“I don’t know about you, little brother,” Hound went on, “but I haven’t seen anything bad at the house. I haven’t seen anyone getting anything other than what they came for. And I’ve seen some people having a good time, blowing off a little steam, maybe breaking down some barriers. Why hasn’t it been the same for you? The guilt you lay on it? But where does the guilt come from? Maybe from those people back home, those zombies you see driving up and down the Coast Highway on the weekends, screaming at their kids? You beginning to see my point? I think maybe you’re letting other people fix your values for you, do your thinking. Not uncommon. Most people go through life that way. I’m trying to get you to start looking at things for yourself. I want—” Hound suddenly stopped talking. It was very abrupt, in the middle of a sentence. He brushed his hands on his pants and stood up. “There anything you want to say?”

Once again Ike had nothing to say, but he was startled that the lecture was ending so quickly. He had known Hound Adams to go on forever, whether anyone was listening to him or not.

Hound took a step toward him and offered a hand. “You do what you want,” he said. “But no bad vibes, okay? Hermanos del mar, no?”

Ike took the hand, which was dry and strong.

“Listen,” Hound said. “Michelle and I are going sailing tomorrow. Why don’t you come along? I think she would like for you to. And there’s somebody I would like you to meet, an old friend of mine. What do you think?”

“When?” Ike asked.

“Early. Six. Michelle and I will come by and pick you up.” Hound turned as if to leave, but then stopped and came back. “There’s something else I want to say to you,” he said. “Because I know it’s on your mind. Frank told me about Preston coming by the shop. I know you think I had something to do with all of that.” He paused for a moment. “But you’re wrong if you think that. I’ve seen something like this coming for a long time. But I took no pleasure in it. It was not my doing, but his own. Preston has brought this end on himself. It’s his karma, surely you can see that? I would have saved him if I could.”

“Saved him?” Ike met Hound’s eyes. He might have been thrown off-balance a bit by the abrupt end of the lecture, but he was not going to be taken back in that easily.

“Let me ask you something,” Hound said. “Who do you think opened that gate for him at the ranch?”

Ike was ready to say more, but the question stopped him cold. He thought back suddenly to Preston’s words that night, his question to Ike about being able to find the truck, and later, his hiss of astonishment when the gate was open.

“Yeah, I saved his ass that night. And yours, too. Right? Some of those cowboys had guns. There were even a couple of guys there who knew Preston. And not everybody is as fond of that big fucker as you and me.”

Ike started to say something, but Hound just waved him silent. “What happened here, that was between him and the Samoans. I was hoping he would be smart enough to split. But of course he wasn’t. If you want to know the truth, I think maybe that’s the way he wanted it—except that he’s still alive.” He stopped to stare for a moment at Ike, his dark eyes charged with an odd light. Ike stared back. What was there about Hound’s expression just now? Something familiar. Something besides his usual cool, or a coked-out high, something a trifle wild, maybe even desperate, and then it came to him where he had seen that look before. It was the same expression he had once seen on the face of Preston Marsh as he sat squinting into the fire at the ranch, what Ike had taken for fear. He was aware of Hound continuing to talk, something about how he had seen all this coming, but how he had taken no pleasure in it. “The man was my friend, Ike,” he heard Hound say. “And I loved him.”

When Hound had gone, Ike sat for some time, alone in his room. That stuff about the ranch was hard to figure, leaving as it did a number of holes in Ike’s theories. Maybe that whole cat-and-mouse business had been something Ike had invented. It didn’t make sense. There was the possibility, of course, that Hound was lying, that this was for Ike’s benefit. But he had Michelle now, what did he still want with Ike? Ike rose and paced the floor of his room. Beyond the window, the sun was climbing fast, turning the sky hot and blue. It was confusing, but then the confusion was bound up with the past and Ike was done with that. Hound could have his little mysteries, and his games, Preston his karma. All Ike wanted was out, but he wanted Michelle with him. She was the reason he had shaken hands with Hound Adams, the reason he would go tomorrow. Still, as he stood at the window, a cloudless sky spreading above the rooftops before him, he could not help but wonder who that friend with the sailboat would turn out to be. A name seemed to hang there, at the tip of his tongue. But he did not say it.

34

They picked him up the following morning in Hound’s Sting-Ray. It was cramped inside the car. Ike and Michelle had to squeeze into the same seat and all the way there he was conscious of her shoulder pressing against his, of her thigh against his own. She wore a pair of white shorts and a light-colored tank top with a seagull on it. He had not seen the clothes before and wondered if they were gifts from Hound Adams. Michelle did not seem particularly pleased to see him. She acted as if he made her uncomfortable, so he wondered if she had really wanted him to come along, as Hound had said.

It was a strange trip. Ike contented himself with looking out the window, watching the beaches slide past. It was the first time he had ever been south of Huntington Beach and he was surprised at how quickly the landscape changed. The oil wells and squat brick buildings of Huntington Beach were soon replaced by large beach-front homes. They passed a sign that said NEWPORT BEACH CITY LIMITS, turned right off the highway and onto a bridge that spanned a huge harbor. The harbor was wide and blue. Its edges were lined with docks, sections of white beach, and high-rise buildings. There were boats everywhere, colored sails brilliant against the blue expanse of the bay. The traffic was thick on the bridge and it gave Ike a chance to take in the view. He could scarcely believe that they were only minutes away from downtown Huntington Beach, that the coastline could change so spectacularly within such a short distance. There was no similarity to any desert town here. This was southern California as he had imagined it: white sails in the sunlight, signs of opulence everywhere, and he found himself thinking back to something else Preston had once told him, something about Hound having friends with bucks.

“Ever seen the harbor before?” Hound asked as they waited in traffic.

Ike and Michelle answered at the same time. Apparently Michelle had not been this far south either.

Hound smiled and nodded toward the water. “Lots of money,” he said.

The Sting-Ray crept down the bridge and onto what Hound told them was a peninsula. Two blocks later they turned left and crossed a second bridge. The homes here were unlike any Ike had ever seen, save perhaps the mansion he had glimpsed above the point. Everything was concrete and glass, wood and stone, manicured trees, flashes of white sand and narrow walkways blocked by gates and signs that said PRIVATE BEACH. The walkways led down toward the blue water of the bay.

Hound pulled into a small lot near a guardhouse and parked. It was bright and hot and there were heat waves dancing at the edges of the lot. Ike stood alone at the side of the car while Hound locked the doors. Michelle did not look at him but stood several yards away, watching Hound. When Hound had finished with the doors, he walked to the trunk and removed a cardboard box, then motioned for them to follow.

Michelle walked at Hound’s side and Ike brought up the rear as they passed the guardhouse and headed down a long gray finger of dock. They were on the bay now, passing through a forest of masts. Rigging snapped and creaked all around them. White hulls brushed against rubber bumpers lining the docks. Across the bay there were more docks, more boats, more huge homes and private beaches.

At last they came to a large single-masted sailboat with a white hull bearing a green stripe and the name Warlock. The deck was a maze of glittering chrome gadgets. There was a white set of boarding steps set up on the dock and Hound led them up and onto the deck. Ike was last up the steps. He went over the lifeline and felt the deck roll slightly beneath him. For a moment they were alone on the deck with the crack of the rigging, the gentle slap of wind waves against the hull. Then a man’s voice reached them from somewhere beneath their feet and soon a face appeared in the cockpit.

Ike watched as a body materialized after the face and soon the man was standing on the deck, walking to meet them. It was the man Ike had seen in the photographs at the shop. He recognized at once the small straight mouth and pointed chin. Certain features were the same and immediately recognizable. But there were changes. The body seemed much thicker than in the pictures, not fat, but thick and powerful in a way that did not match up well with the face, which had an almost elfin quality in its small chiseled features, and small dark eyes.

The man was dressed in a blue shirt and a white pair of shorts. His legs were well tanned, short, and heavily muscled, flexing in the sunlight as he came toward them. His height was deceptive. It was not until Ike stood looking him in the eye that he noticed that the man was only about half an inch taller than himself, though probably outweighing him by a good fifty pounds of muscle.

“Ike, Michelle,” Ike heard Hound say. “I would like for you to meet a friend, Milo Trax.”

And though Ike had known it was coming, there was still a slight chill that ran down his back upon hearing the name. He thought back to the bitterness in Frank Baker’s voice, to his words: Hound was “the one who brought in Milo,” as if that had been the beginning of the end.

Ike took the offered hand. It was a thick, firm hand, like the body, and he felt that his own was thin and frail by comparison. He met the eyes, which were very dark and bright, almost boyish, features that had not been apparent in the photographs.

“Yes,” Milo said, and there seemed a genuine enthusiasm in his voice. “Ike Tucker, I’ve heard a lot about you. Pleased to have you aboard.” Then he turned to Michelle, leaving Ike to wonder what he possibly could have heard.

They went out of the harbor under power, Milo at the large silver wheel in the cockpit, Michelle at his side, Ike and Hound Adams on the deck. The harbor seemed to go on forever, winding out of waterways into ever-widening channels. The water went from deep green to a blackish blue, and looking over the side, Ike could see small schools of fish darting beneath them, like silver coins cast into the water. They glittered and fell, passed from sight.

The closer they got to the harbor entrance, the bigger everything seemed to get, the size of the beaches, the homes, the yachts, and Milo Trax seemed to know whom everything belonged to. He pointed out a number of famous racing yachts, other boats and houses owned by certain movie stars. Like some wonderland, it slipped past them, a world of money Ike had never even imagined in the desert.

At last they were moving down a channel, passing between two long jetties and then out into open sea. Milo got them all moving now, telling them which line to pull on and when. At last there was a great rattling of rigging, a tremendous explosion of sail as the sky went white and yellow. The hull seemed to leap beneath them, shuddering as it met the ground swell. Suddenly Ike’s face was wet, his lungs full of a fresh sharp wind. They were under sail. He scrambled back into the cockpit, where Milo stood grinning and Ike could not help but grin back. The ship heeled. Spray swept the deck.

“You can go anywhere on a boat like this one, Ike,” Milo told him. “Hound says you like to surf. You would be amazed by the places we’ve seen.”

They spent the day far from land, the coastline a distant mirage glittering on the horizon. Around noon they ate sandwiches and beer. When they had finished, Michelle took the things below. Ike volunteered his assistance and followed her down.

She was standing at a small sink in the galley, rinsing plates; the sea had grown calm and the boat rode easily, no longer bucking a ground swell. She looked over her shoulder as Ike came down the steps, then back into the sink.

He stood beside her. She had pulled her hair back into a small ponytail and he studied the wispy strands of hair that curled about the back of her neck. “I’ve been looking for you all week.”

“I’ve been at Hound’s,” she said, her voice flat, eyes still turned toward the sink.

“Michelle, look, I’m sorry, about everything.”

“I thought you were different,” she said. “You’re just like all the rest.”

“I know it was wrong. I thought it would be a way of finding out something.”

“Sure. About your sister.” She said this in a sarcastic way.

“I did in the beginning,” he said. “I know it probably doesn’t look that way to you, but I did in the beginning. And I had already taken that damn board. I had to pay for it.”

“With the movies?” Her voice was still sarcastic and she was still staring into the sink, although he noticed she had stopped washing dishes. Her hands were still, floating in the soapy water. He was a little afraid of saying too much, of upsetting her in a way that would let Hound know something was going on. “Look, Michelle, just listen to me a minute, okay?”

She did not answer and he went on. “I was looking for my sister. I wanted to find out what had happened, but I wanted to find out some other things too, about Preston and Hound. And I got sidetracked. I know that now. I mean, I just got caught up in some things I couldn’t handle and it was stupid. I know that. But I never thought you were like those other girls. I mean, it was different with us. It could be that way again. It’s what I want, just to be together.”

She looked up at him and her eyes were glassy, slightly red. “What you want?”

“We had something special. Don’t you see? That’s all that matters. And there’s other things I can tell you, but not here. We can’t really talk here. Just say you’ll think about it, that we can talk again, later.” He was talking fast now, worried about staying down too long. He put his hand on her shoulder, and she turned to face him, her hands dripping water on the floor between them. She looked him square in the eye and there was something in her stare that made him want to flinch. “I’m all that matters? What about your sister? She doesn’t count anymore?”

“No, it’s not like that. It’s not that simple. Damn it, Michelle, I know I’ve fucked up. I mean, you don’t even know how badly I’ve fucked up. But I have learned a few things too. Just say we can talk someplace, soon. Tomorrow.” He waited, watching her face, but then the silence was broken by the sound of another voice. Milo Trax. He must have been lying on his stomach on the hatch cover, because his head was upside down, hanging into the cabin, grinning. “Whale off the starboard bow,” he said. “Come look.”

The head disappeared. Ike was silent. He stood watching Michelle at the sink.

“We should go up and see,” she said.

He stepped away from her, waiting, when he noticed something lying on the seat near the galley table. It was the cardboard box he’d seen Hound take from the trunk. He went to it and pulled a bit of the cardboard where it was starting to come undone. Film cartridges. The box was full of them. He pointed this out to Michelle.

She looked at the box. “So what?”

“I don’t know. I mean, I’ve always wondered what he did with these things.”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t know anything about it.”

There was something in the way she said it that annoyed him. “Like you never made any yourself.”

“That’s right,” she said, going by him, stopping to look at him with those eyes that still made him want to flinch. “And you want to know something else? I’ve never even gotten it on with Hound Adams. He’s just been really nice to me, nothing else.”

She left him standing in the galley, watching her legs disappear into the sky above the hatchway. He looked once more at the box of films on the seat, then followed her into the light to see Milo’s whale.

It was near sunset when they returned to the harbor. The sky was red and gold above the huge bay-front homes. It was hard to believe they were only a few miles from downtown Huntington Beach, from the cliffs and oil wells, the graffiti-covered fire rings and the parties of the inland gangs.

After they had hosed down the boat and coiled the lines, they stood above the docks, looking back toward the bay and the lights of the homes. “I own some land north of here,” Milo said, looking at Ike. “Some good surf up there. I’m planning a party in another week or so, kind of an end-of-the-summer ritual that I practice with a few friends. I could use some help getting the place ready. How would you and Michelle like to come up and help? You can bring your stick and get some waves.”

Ike nodded. He looked at Michelle. “Sure,” he said. “Sounds okay.” He tried to force the correct amount of enthusiasm into his voice.

“Good,” Milo said. “You can all come up together.” The idea of that seemed to amuse him for some reason and he clapped his hands together as he laughed.

35

Ike’s skin felt hot and tight after a day in the sun and wind. Michelle’s shoulder pressed against his once more as the black stretches of beach slipped past them. They rode in silence and soon they were at the west end of Main Street, waiting in traffic, cruising past beer bars and pizza houses, the dark windows of the surf shops.

When they had parked in front of the Sea View, Hound got out to open the trunk. Ike opened his door and put one foot in the street but continued to sit close to Michelle. “I still want to talk,” he told her.

She shrugged. “We can talk.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. Are you coming to Milo’s party?”

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“But I want to talk soon.”

“It’s only a couple of days.” Ike eased a little more of himself out of the car. Hound was waiting by the open trunk. Suddenly Michelle covered his hand with her own. “Come to the party,” she whispered. “I want you to, okay?”

He watched her, holding her eyes with his own, trying to say more. She looked at him for a moment, then back across the hood.

“Okay,” Ike said. “I’ll come. So we can talk.” He left her in the car and walked back to the trunk. Ike’s canvas bag with his extra clothes, the bathing suit he had not needed, was already sitting on the curb. Hound was standing beside it. “Milo doesn’t know you’ve already seen his ranch,” Hound said. “I think we should keep it that way.”

Ike nodded, somewhat surprised that Hound had felt it necessary to tell him that. He felt very tired all of a sudden. He was in the act of picking up his bag when Hound Adams seemed to stiffen at his side. It was something he felt more than saw. When he looked up, however, he saw that Hound’s face had changed, that he was looking past Ike, staring toward the old building that loomed out of the blackness behind them. Ike turned too, following Hound’s gaze, and it was then that he saw the dark figure standing on the steps that led into the building.

The figure was little more than a black shape silhouetted against the yellow background formed by the open door. But it was immediately recognizable as Preston. No one else was quite that big, or stood in just that way. He seemed to be dressed in the same bulky army jacket that Ike had seen him in on the street, and there looked to be the same cap on his head. The elevation of the yard, the height of the step, the way in which he was silhouetted in the light of the hall, all conspired to make him look somehow even bigger than he was, a dark shadow rising above them out of the shadow of the building. It was a strange moment, a moment frozen in time, in which the two men did not speak but stared at each other across the ragged lawn. It was Hound Adams who at last broke the spell. He turned to close the trunk lid, then walked to his door. He looked once more at Preston across the roof of the car, then got in and drove away.

Ike did not know what to expect as he walked across the lawn. He stopped short of the step. Preston was leaning on a doorjamb now, hands pushed down into the deep pockets of the coat. It was too dark to make out the expression on Preston’s face. “Stash your gear,” Preston told him. His voice sounded steady and sober. “I’ve got something I want you to see.”

It was late and the streets of the residential section were quiet. Preston did not speak again. He walked quickly, his heavy boots ringing on the pavement, and Ike had to work to keep up. They cut across Main Street and into an alley and Ike did not have to ask where they were headed. He could see a light burning in front of the shop and then he spotted the dark shape of Morris propped against a telephone pole near the gravel entrance.

Morris said nothing, but fell in behind them as they walked toward the shed, and the night was full of the sound that boots make sinking into gravel. Preston pushed the door open with his foot and they stepped inside, Preston first, then Ike and Morris.

The shed was small. There was a dirt floor and in the middle of the floor there was a bike. It was not a chopper, not even a Harley, but a BSA Lightning Rocket. It was nearly a stock machine, but not quite. Some lettering had been removed, the tanks lacquered and rubbed out until they sparkled like dark jewels, a kind of gunmetal gray, in the light of the small shed.

“I wanted you to see it,” Preston told him. “What do you think?”

“It’s all right. He did a good job.”

“All right, my ass,” Morris said from behind them. “That’s a bad motherfucker.” And it was—a bike capable of a hundred and twenty plus off the showroom floor. Ike shook his head, walking around the machine for a better look, and getting a better look at Preston now, too. He looked better than the last time Ike had seen him. At least he was relatively sober, and he was on his feet. But there was still a certain wildness about the way those pale eyes had retreated into the dark face. And there was also an abruptness of manner, a hyper quality in the way Preston carried himself, that Ike had not seen before. He did not stand in one place but paced back and forth, from one end of the shop to the other. “I want you to listen to it,” he said. “Check it out.”

“Shit, man, I checked it out,” Morris said. “What do you want?”

“I want him to hear it. I want it right.”

Morris had been standing by the door. He now took a couple of steps toward Ike. “Man, you’re crazy. I should waste the little fucker right now.”

Preston stopped pacing and looked at Morris across the machine. “Forget it. I want him to hear it.”

“But he’s with them. He was with Hound and the Samoan on the lot. I want his skinny ass, Prez.”

Morris was looking at Ike as he spoke, a sort of glazed, hungry look creeping over his features—almost as if he was working himself into some trance, and Ike had to wonder if Preston would be able to stop him even if he wanted to, in his weakened condition. Ike took his hands out of his pockets and let them fall against his sides, a gesture that was not lost on Morris. “Oh, look at this,” Morris said, his voice coming out of a sneer. “He’s ready for it this time. Look at him, the little scumbag. I bet he’s pissin’ his pants right now.” He chuckled. “Come on, queer bait, let’s see your moves.” Morris took a quick step forward and swung, a kind of openhanded roundhouse designed to rupture Ike’s eardrum. But Ike was ready for it this time, after a fashion. He’d never been in a real fistfight in his life, but Gordon had once bought him a pair of gloves and had spent some time knocking him around in back of the market, trying to show him a few things. One of the things Gordon had taught him was that a lot of guys carry their right too low when they throw a left, and that if you come up under it, hooking, you can often land a good punch. And that was what Ike did. He wasn’t exactly sure why. He knew he hadn’t a prayer of winning a fight with Morris, that he would be smarter to let it end quickly, but there was just something about that fat, greasy face, the half sneer, the memory of lying on the sidewalk in front of that beer joint swallowing his own blood. He stepped under the blow and hooked for all he was worth, throwing it off his hip the way Gordon had taught him, what Gordon would have called hooking from the ankles, and he felt the punch land with a sharp pain and jolt that ran clear up his arm and into his shoulder.

Morris just grinned at him. But he stopped coming forward and looked at him for a moment. “How do you like that?” he asked. “The little pussy’s gone and got himself some balls.” Then he reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a set of pliers. “Let’s see how he likes it when I pinch them off.” His laughter rang in the shed, but Preston was around the bike now and his voice was a low snarl.

“I said drop it. You’re not gonna bust him again.”

“Fuck that, man. I want him. You can see he’s beggin’ for it. I want his ass so bad I can fuckin’ taste it.”

Ike stood his ground. He still had his hands up the way Gordon had taught him and he was staring over them into Morris’s hungry grin.

It looked as if Morris were set to come after him once more when Preston suddenly shot out a hand, thumping Morris square in the chest and knocking him backward so he had to backpedal quickly to retain his balance, and Ike was once again surprised at Preston’s strength, in spite of what he had been through.

“I’m warning you, Morris. You fuck with me right now and I’ll tear your goddamn throat out.”

For a moment the two men stood facing each other, Preston’s gloved hand still pressed against Morris’s chest. Suddenly, though, Morris spun away and threw the pliers. He threw them more or less in Ike’s direction, but the throw was high and they crashed into the sheet-metal wall. Morris went to the door and stood looking into the blackness outside. “All right,” he said. “But get that little cocksucker outta my sight.”

Preston laughed. He threw back his head and his laughter had a crazy sound to it. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket and walked to the bike, swung himself on and looked at Ike. “Come on,” he said. “Get on.”

Ike stood staring into the six hundred and fifty cubic inches of death and destruction. It was not the kind of bike you wanted to climb on behind just anybody. But with a half-crazy alcoholic with crippled hands… Morris turned from the door and smiled and Ike could see that he picked up perfectly on what Ike was thinking. There were two choices: a ride with Preston. Further conversation with Morris. Ike got on the bike. He found a certain sense of satisfaction, however, in noticing the mouse that had risen beneath Morris’s eye. Gordon would have been proud.

Preston kicked the bike to life and the roar of that power-jumped engine threatened to blow the tin walls of the shed into the sea. Ike put his arms around Preston’s waist. He stared into a set of broad shoulders covered in green army cloth and he noticed the same slightly medicinal scent he’d first detected in Preston’s apartment. Preston pulled the beret down tighter on his head and walked the bike to the door where Morris stood waiting. “ ‘Behold a pale horse,’” Preston croaked above the roar of the engine. “ ‘And his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.’” Then he laughed and hooted into the blackness and they were off into the night, ripping the backside of surf city, carving turns out of empty streets, finding the Coast Highway, where they blew past a string of low riders like they were standing still.

They must have been halfway through the oil fields before Preston, taking it all the way out in every gear, jammed it into high. There was nothing for Ike to do but hang on, to think about sand and curves, and he figured that at least at this speed death would come quickly. They found it somewhere on the north side of the oil fields, that place bikers called the edge, and it was black and hollow and silent because the roar of the engine was lost behind them, a memory on the wind.

Then they stopped. They found the edge and left it, stopped at the side of the highway, where the air was warm and the night smelled faintly of tar and machinery and the sea. It was very dark here. The only lights in sight were the distant yellow dots of the offshore rigs, caught between a black ocean and a starless sky. The sound of waves they could not see echoed from the beaches somewhere below them.

They stood on a hard-packed dirt shoulder and Ike tried to adjust to the sensation of stillness. Preston seemed filled with a jumpy enthusiasm, as if the speed of the ride had blown some spark of life back into him. “Hey, what about it, ace?” Preston wanted to know. “Runs like a champ. Right? I shit you not.” Preston seemed to find that phrase amusing and repeated it again, cackling to himself as he paced the dirt. He stopped long enough to pull a bottle from his jacket, and took a long drink. He passed the bottle to Ike and Ike drank too. Tequila, burning all the way down, heating up the night, and somehow, though he had not been glad to see the bottle, he was no longer scared. It was as if his fear had been blown away, lost somewhere with the roar of the engine. He even felt a rather bizarre sense of elation of his own that he supposed only a trip to the very edge could bring. So he stood there, passing the bottle, talking engines and speed, letting the tequila burn away any residue of fear that might have lingered in his guts.

It was too late for questions. He knew that now, at the side of a dark road; he knew he would not ask Preston again about the trip to the ranch, or about Terry Jacobs, or Hound Adams. It was past, and Preston, this Preston, was not the same one who had taken him to the ranch, who had wanted to show him what it could be like. Ike suspected that Preston had been fading for a long time, that the beating in the shop, the operation, the steel plate, were final nails in the coffin, and that whomever Ike had once sat talking to by a campfire at the end of one perfect day had passed away and now there was only this stranger, and the ride back to town.

Preston left him at the curb in front of the Sea View apartments. It was hard to believe that only a couple of hours had passed since he stood here last, with Michelle and Hound Adams.

“I want to tell you one thing,” Preston said as Ike stood waiting. “That time Morris dumped you. I was wrong to let that happen. You were my partner, man. And I never stood back and let a partner get dumped on like that before. I was kind of hoping it would scare your skinny ass out of town. But I was wrong to let it happen.”

“You were right,” Ike said, his voice sounding too loud and hurried. “I should’ve gone. But it’s Michelle, now.” He suddenly felt that perhaps he had been wrong out on the road, that he could talk, tell Preston everything. He wanted to tell someone, but it was hard to know where to begin. “Michelle’s my girl,” he said. “Was my girl. Now she wants to go to Mexico with Hound Adams and Milo Trax…” But something made him stop short. He saw that Preston was not really listening, that he was only nodding, and that there was this very distant look on his face, as if what Ike had to say was all beside the point somehow.

When Ike stopped talking, Preston looked at him. “I was wrong,” he said again. “I owe you one, Jack. And you’re looking at a dude who pays his debts.” And then he was gone, the big engine spitting fire into the night, and Ike wondered if there had ever been a time, even in the emptiness of the desert, when he had felt so alone.

He saw Preston once more that week. It was the night before he was supposed to go to the ranch. He could not sleep and he was walking, down along the Coast Highway, past the old tattoo parlor, and that was where he saw Preston. It was very late and all the other stores along the highway were closed, but Ike saw this yellow light coming out of the shop, spreading across the sidewalk, and he stopped to look through the greasy glass as those punk chicks had once stopped to look at him. And he saw with a start the heavy black boots and ragged, fingerless hands hanging from the sides of the chair. Preston was tilted back and staring at the ceiling. The old man was bent over him, his thick back bowed as he concentrated on his work. And he seemed to work very slowly, and it was different somehow from the way he had worked on Ike. He was not sure exactly what the difference was, or what it meant, only that he was not supposed to see it, and he stepped back into the shadows. He thought about waiting for Preston to come out, doubting once again the conclusions he had reached at the side of the highway. But he did not wait. For some crazy reason his teeth had begun to chatter and he hurried back to his room through the streets of Huntington Beach, which he could no longer quite see as part of some smoothly running machine, but which instead had become a labyrinth, a dark maze from which he feared there was no escape.