The Ultimate Good Luck

9

ON THE AIRPORT ROAD the rain was already past, dissipating into the mountains above the bungalow, the airport obscured out in dampness like a city eclipsed in a dream. The rented Dodge had a radio and Quinn let himself ease into the jabber of furniture sales and flights to Europe, good living south of the border. There had been police in the streets when he had left the palacio, too many for one afternoon. It had made the city feel tense, as if the rain had left a film of dread behind it. Ugliness went on at all hours, but you saw it by accident or not at all. Something had made waves in the public sector, and Bernhardt had mentioned the shooting the night before. Everything was ripples on ripples.

He had stopped at a tourist jeweler on the way and bought a silver lavaliere with a green inlay of a man dancing. The saleswoman was English and claimed the piece was jade and antigüedad and protective, but the inlay had been machined. It was one lie or another, and for that instant all that mattered was whether the woman had been convincing.

What had pushed it out of shape in L.A. had been the work. He had thought if he could manage a union card somewhere between San Diego and Santa Barbara and get on any place at scale, he could last a year, and something would get obvious in a year. They rented a house in the redneck suburbs back of Seal Beach a block from the navy station, and he had gone on weekends re-poing cars while he made the oil company offices all week and got his name on the master lists at Rockwell and McDonnell’s and little feeder plants in Ventura.

Rae read magazines for a month, then went to work out of boredom ushering in a Jerry Lewis cinema. She started waitressing in a Redondo bar, then quit and spent a month answering the phone at a crisis center in Point Fermin until the crises started coming home, making her lose sleep. At the end she quit and stayed home watching quiz shows and reading National Geographics stoned, until she decided the moral climate in California was oppressing. She told him she didn’t like the weather being the same and the air changing colors, and that when she was with Frank Oliver they had gone north of Seattle two winters and stayed, and he worked the local rodeos, hung out, and moved cars into B.C., and she applied at the Swinomish reservation and taught prenatal care to give herself a life, and that she had liked that a lot better than L.A. She said she had read in the L.A. Times that people with factory skills were getting hired in Washington and the unions were opening up and she had an idea about Alaska. She said they could both work on the pipe and live in a house free and save twenty thousand dollars in six months and do whatever appealed to Quinn after that. She said she wanted to do whatever he wanted to do and stay together, and if he wanted to leave that was all right.

L.A. had begun to feel flatted out and unlocatable. He started hitting the fights on Thursdays when Rae was ushering, and going to the little social club arenas in the East End where the pure Mexicans fought, and sometimes to the Lakers with Rae when Sonny could get tickets. The fights had a discipline to them and a palpable life behind them, a coherence that was correct and apparent. Though he seemed to spend all day waiting for the night, and that seemed backward from how he wanted it. He didn’t like re-po except it was the only weekend work, round the clock, where he could make enough to get by while he cruised Highway 1 with the phone book open, looking for job plants with a sign up for fitters, and waited up for calls. He began to spend every Friday afternoon on the bus to Lancaster or Mojave or Victorville, and every Friday night shadowing trailer courts and phone booths down the road from little four-room desert cracker boxes, wearing black jeans and a turtleneck, waiting for a sailor or a marine from Seal Beach to show up in his Firebird or his Formula Two and disappear inside. It was the wrong thing, but that was all there was he could stand. He could solve the routine and he needed the money. When the door closed, he would wait ten minutes watching, then walk to the car, check the back for kids or dogs, match the number off the windshield strip, slim-jimmy the door, cut the ignition, plug in the universal, and drive the car back across the desert to a big floodlit fenced compound in Downey where he could catch a ride to the Greyhound station on Main Street then start for another car.

On the last night he had walked up to a red Firebird — it had been a weekend of Firebirds — outside a one-row apartment motel in Oro Grande and slid inside without checking the back. When he started on the ignition a sailor with a chain dog leash grabbed him from the back seat and strangled him against the headrest until he lost consciousness. Two men drove him in handcuffs out to the desert between Yermo and Daggett, helped him out into the middle of the highway and started kicking him until he fell on his face, then kicked him in the ribs with tennis shoes until he went out again. The sailor had been waiting the whole time and the other one had been watching out the motel window. The last thing he remembered was the sailor asking, “What in the world do you want to do a thing like this for, man? It’s a hard one. What do you want to rip us off for, man, we’re Vets. Don’t you know that? We’re Vets.” And they started kicking again.

He had lain on the warm asphalt watching the Firebird’s red taillights being sucked up in the dark tunnel below the dazzle of L.A. sixty miles west, and he thought that the sailor had been on the money, and that if he’d been stupid enough to put in for it, the sailor had every reason to kick the shit out of him and leave him in the desert to freeze without any shoes. When he had gotten down off the plane from Guam, the very first thing he’d asked himself, standing on the tarmac at Pendleton, feeling lucky to be alive, was what had he won or how was he better. And at that moment he couldn’t think of anything, though he figured an answer should’ve come to mind, a wrong answer at least, but not nothing — which was what he got. But in the middle of the night in the Mojave, he knew he’d at least won one thing, the right not ever to have to look up again and see taillights out in the cold channel darkness, the right not to be alone and busted up in no place he knew, with no place close to go.

When he got back it was Sunday morning, and Rae was asleep in the bedroom with the shades drawn. He sat on the edge of the bed and taped his ribs, turned on the radio, and made a call to Ronny Bliss in Michigan, somebody he’d known in high school and the service, and that he didn’t care anything about, but who had told him once lying in the sun on China Beach that his old man worked for the state and could get him a job doing something at Natural Resources that wouldn’t be hard to take and that would pay enough to live. It felt stupid at that moment to be going where he knew things instead of where you could find something you didn’t know, as if unfamiliarity had a magic familiarity didn’t. But his ribs hurt, blood was dry in his ear, and it seemed like the only thing that pulled the world together into an efficient place and had sense in it, and something that had clear sense was what he needed. It wasn’t even the place as much as the sense the place made that mattered.

Late in the afternoon, Rae said Michigan wasn’t a place she ever thought about going. She walked through the rooms in the house in her underwear and a purple T-shirt, smoking a joint, with sleep in her face. She said it was the wrong direction. She asked him why he didn’t want to go to Seattle since it was closer and the weather was nicer and she could get a good job with the Swinomish or the Tulalips or anybody up the coast. He sat on the bed counting money. She had gotten him into this and he had made a commitment without knowing it, and she was something he thought he ought to try to do without. He hadn’t told her about his Morgan money and didn’t see any reason to. She hadn’t said if she was going, and if the money wasn’t in it, the break could just be clean. Otherwise he might find himself in a ditch some morning in the cold, without his shoes and his head singing the way it had this morning, and just figure the only thing for him to do was to crawl back out and go home and let somebody take care of him and tell him it’s all right. In a while his ribs would quit hurting and his head stop singing, and he’d forget it. And that scared him. Wanting consolation was in you all the time, and you could get sucked up like those red lights in the night, and disappear altogether.

Rae was in the kitchen with the light on where he couldn’t see her. He had $180 in cash and some checks.

“Don’t you know progress runs the other way?” she said irritably. “You’re just backing off.”

“Let’s just don’t do that,” he said. “I’ve been west enough.” He wanted to get out of the basin by six o’clock. She could make up her mind by herself. She was just riding again anyway.

“What are you going to do if I don’t go? she said. She had walked into the dark living room, her long hair around her face. He stuck the folded bills in his shirt pocket. He had his bags in the car already. “You just going to fuck whores like you like to?”

“And do dope,” he said. He could hear her breathing.

“You wouldn’t want to ride with Sonny down to T. J.?” she said.

“I’d rather re-po Plymouths and get my face kicked again,” he said.

“I don’t understand what’s the matter with you,” Rae said. She stood in the door. “You act like everything turned against you. You want to get rid of me? ’Cause I can just disappear, if you do. You know that?” Her eyes were wide. “I’ll just disappear. You don’t have to go to Michigan or wherever in the hell it is out there.”

“You can go or stay,” he said. “I thought you liked that. I’m sorry I don’t have a big living room for you to ride in.” The room was dark, but the light from the bed lamp made her features severe.

“I’m afraid I’ll get off somewhere and you’ll make a place to live, and I won’t be able to, and it’ll make me miserable,” Rae said.

He walked in the kitchen, stood at the drainboard counting out cash on the rubber mat. “I’ll give you a hundred and twenty,” he said. “I need the rest of it.”

She stood in the bedroom door. “You shithead,” she said. “You don’t care what I’m afraid of. You just care what you’re afraid of, isn’t that right? That’s what conduct means, isn’t it?” She wasn’t crying yet.

“What do you want to do?” he said.

The dark behind her made her seem taller and frailer than she was. “Nothing’s permanent, right?” she said.

“Nothing yet,” he said. Light outside was the gun-metal color of first dark. He thought he could hear the ocean, but the ocean was too far away, though something always made him think he heard it.

“Do you love me?” she said. She had begun to cry. “You don’t like to say it, do you?” she said. “It scares you. You don’t want to need it.”

“I can take care of me,” he said.

“Then I don’t want to marry you,” she said angrily. “I don’t want to be tied to you if everything turns to shit out there. You understand?”

“That’s fine,” he said. “But if you want to go, you better come on.”

She left things in the house where they were.

Ahead of him a Pepsi truck had driven off the airport road and blundered onto its side. All the Pepsi bottles had spilled on the ground and two Mexicans without shirts were standing in the field drinking Pepsis, other bottles already stuck in their pockets and down their pants. They were drinking fast, turning the bottles straight up in the air, though the truck was on fire and there was a chance it might explode. In the rearview he saw back toward town the red flasher on a police bus. Both Mexicans seemed to see the flasher at the same time and started running suddenly out into the muddy field that ended on the dry Atoyac riverbed. They ran like children, their arms thrown out wildly, disappearing abruptly into the chase of the river. He made a wide turnout to avoid the truck, a brand new cab-over Mercedes with PEPSI stenciled backward in red script across the blunt nose. When he got beyond the cab he could see in the mirror the driver inside, his face sprouting blood and jammed up into the windshield as if he had been trying to escape through the front of the truck when something came from behind full force and smacked him. Rae didn’t need to see that. It would make her think the wrong thing, like the American girls gone out of the van in the morning. Everything got harder.

The airport terminal was cheap tinted glass and concrete, and enclosed too little space. It gave you the feeling of having been half built, then abandoned, so that one end had needed to be blocked off.

Rae stood in the middle of the lobby, watching the soldiers. The other passengers had maneuvered themselves close to the baggage gate and were keeping their eyes on their business. The soldiers were holdovers from the interception, and were left around as cautions for new arrivals. They were combat-readies, and had done some shooting and looked serene.

“Does the army meet all the flights?” Rae said. The soldiers had begun leering at her.

“They think you’re hot stuff,” Quinn said, keeping his eye on the steel baggage doors. “Forty of them would be happy to show you a good time.”

She took his arm and hugged it, ignoring him. She had on a green leotard, black jeans, and tinted glasses. She looked like a low-budget tourist. “Are you still protecting the deer, Harry?” She smiled at him.

“I gave it up,” he said.

“You still let the marines cut your hair, though, don’t you?” She intended to be friendly now.

“I wanted you to recognize me,” he said.

“I’d always know you, Harry,” she said and looked back at the soldiers, holding his arm tighter. “Big smile. Ecstasy on your face.”

“Where’ve you got the money?” he said.

She pulled a strand of red hair away from her cheek. “In my Varig bag. I didn’t think to tape it to my thighs.”

A lot of money meant dope, and he wanted it brought in inconspicuous. No one checked luggage coming in. Coming in was easy. Getting out was the bitch.

He kept watching the gate. “My father died,” Rae said matter-of-factly.

“Did he know about this?” Quinn said.

She had stared at the soldiers a long time. “He thought it was droll. He thought the maladroit ought to be punished.” She looked up at him and smiled. “I’m a little stoned,” she said, “but I’m glad you quit wardening. It didn’t really suit you.”

Soldiers could smell dope in a shit house, and no one could stop them if they decided to search you, like the college girls out on the highway. It wasn’t smart. But she was freaked. “Are you holding?” he said, and took a look at the soldiers lining the exits.

She kept smiling. “I smoked a number on the plane,” she said. “My last. I’m quitting in your honor. It just didn’t seem right. Why don’t you tell me how Sonny is?”

He didn’t want to think about Sonny now. Sonny seemed a long way away. “He’s alive,” he said.

“What’s that mean?”

“It means he’s in el slammer. It’s not a hotel.”

“Is he getting out?” she asked calmly and looked at him. Her eyes were afraid.

“That’s why I’m here,” he said.

“I see,” she said and looked away.

Taxi drivers had begun combing the passengers for fares back to town. “Downtown” was all they could say, and it was making the passengers nervous. Anxiety was your usual accompaniment. You flowed down it or you flowed against it, but you didn’t float out of it. It was like the war, and you acclimated the same way, by never being out of it long enough to expect anything better. He felt like he’d made a good adjustment.

A jeep growled behind the accordion gate, and the steel doors suddenly banged up and the crowd moved in. Two fat Mexican boys began hurling bags through the opening. Across the plain of the Atoyac, the wrecked Pepsi truck was clearly visible in the distance. A long blanket of grey smoke had been persuaded back toward the city on the breeze that trailed the rain. Police flashers were swirling on the road.

“What’s that?” Rae said curiously. She stepped forward and started out through the open gate toward the truck. She took his arm and kept him from moving up into the crowd for the Varig bag.

“I don’t see anything,” he said.

“Sure you do,” she said and smiled. “That’s exactly what you see. Nothing’s innocent to you.”

“I’m trying to lose that knack,” he said. “It’s in your honor.”

She gripped his arm tighter. The soldiers were pointing out toward the smoke. “It’s out of your control,” she said, staring transfixed. “It’s your instinct.”

The other passengers were yelling in a confused English-Spanish and pushing bags back through the crowd. The taxi drivers had formed a line preventing anyone from getting to the exits. They stood holding white cards that said TAXI, and were smiling. The Pepsi truck exploded suddenly, a dark smoke puff followed by a bright orange swell. The noise took a second to arrive, and arrived diminished. “What’s the matter with this place?” Rae said.

“It’s full of Mexicans,” he said, easing her into the crowd toward the gate. “Don’t let it bother you.”

“I don’t like it,” she said. “I’m sorry I made you bankroll this. I didn’t know what else to do.” She glanced at the soldiers uncertainly. “I don’t know why I thought I had to do this.”

“Because you love me,” Quinn said, and put his arm around her.

“I guess that’s it,” she said. Her mouth was constricted. A short, fat Texas woman began giving her a deferential look. Rae pulled loose and let herself be pushed back through the pressing crowd, while Quinn moved toward the money.

Where the Pepsi truck was burning there were a lot of police. Three blue minibuses blocked one lane with flashers popping, and several plainclothesmen with machine guns were marshaling cars onto the muddy shoulder. Stray officers were stopping vehicles and making drivers show papers. There was no reason for it, but there was nothing else for them to do. The driver was lying on his side on the pavement away from his truck, his face frozen and messed with blood. Some of the police were guarding him as if they thought he might be of some use later on. One of them was taking the driver’s picture with a Polaroid. Quinn had his tourist card out, but when he passed by the policeman directing traffic, the policeman called “quickly, quickly,” and waved him on.

“What’s that about?” Rae said. She had the blue Varig bag on the seat under her arm. He had made her count the money in the parking lot, where he could see it. She turned and looked back at the Pepsi truck.

“An accident.” He kept his eyes on the road.

“The man was dead there,” she said. “His eyes were open.” She didn’t seem surprised. He glanced in the rearview. Some of the police had started drinking Pepsis. “All I’ve seen now are soldiers and police and dead people,” Rae said. “Do you like it here?” She wasn’t going to make an issue of the driver. It was a gift.

“It wasn’t my first choice,” he said.

She turned back and faced front. “Where’m I staying?”

“In the Centro. I’ve got you a room.” It was a lie that didn’t matter.

“Where are you?” she said, precisely.

He pointed up the Reforma Hill above the brown low profile of town. The white soffits of the bungalows shone above the palms of the nicer district nearer down the hill. Where the rain had cleaned the air, the bungalows seemed not far away. Behind them the rain glowered in the hills. A trace of the truck’s smoke had begun stringing out into the green atmosphere. “Straight up,” he said.

She took off her glasses, closed her eyes, then opened them widely at the mountains. “Is it pricey?”

“Nothing’s pricey,” he said.

“Then I’ll stay there,” she said.

“That might be weird,” he said. He wanted her to stay as hard as he could imagine wanting, but he didn’t want it taken for granted, and he didn’t want her left there if Deats showed.

“Have you got company?” she said.

“Not just now.”

“But you did have, though, right?” She looked over at him smiling.

“They think we’re married,” he said. “It makes better sense.”

“Isn’t that rich,” she said. “Why would they care?”

“Maybe they don’t,” Quinn said. “Maybe I made it up.”

“Fine,” she said, and looked away. “Then I’ll stay with you. I don’t like to see failure in your face. I’m sure the Mexicans don’t either. It’s such an unusual expression.”