Blood Money (17 page)

Jessica took another glance at their
surroundings and snorted through her nose. “Well, it certainly
looks like you’ve picked a good place then.”

They climbed out of the car and started
walking across the dirt parking lot towards the front lobby.

“Holy crap,” Jessica said. “It feels like a
blast furnace out here. How hot do you think it is?”

“It’s got to be close to ninety
degrees.”

“Already? But it’s still early morning.”

“Not for long,” Kelton said. “Out here, they
consider eight o’clock the afternoon.”

Jessica sighed and shook her head. “No
wonder this place is so empty.”

They entered the modest lobby and rang the
service bell. A wizened, older man with skin the texture of
well-worn leather arrived a few seconds later.

“How are ya’ll doing on this fine day?”

“Not bad,” Kelton said. “And you?”

“Hanging in by the skin of my dentures,” the
old man said. “What can I do you for?”

“We need a room,” Kelton said.

“Do you have a reservation?”

Kelton stifled a smile and shook his
head.

“Well, that shouldn’t be a problem,
considering you’re the only ones here.”

“Pretty slow this time of year, huh?”
Jessica said.

“Honey, even the flies are smart enough to
avoid Furnace Creek in the summer. Hell, yesterday was mild. It
only reached 117.”

Jessica laughed softly.

“How many nights?” the man asked, turning
his attention back to Kelton.

“Just one.”

“A queen bed or two twins?”

“A queen will be fine,” Jessica said before
Kelton could answer.

The old man pressed on without pause. “Forty
bucks ought to do it.”

“Is cash all right?” Kelton said.

“Only if its green,” the old man said.

“Do you mind if we pay you now?”

“Course not.”

Kelton reached into his pocket, pulled out
two 20’s, and set them on the counter. The old man picked up the
money, popped his cash register open, and stuck the bills in. He
reached back, grabbed the keys for room 13 and handed them to
Kelton.

“Do you need anything else?” Kelton said.
“ID? Credit Card?”

The old man swatted the comment aside with a
flick of his wrist. “We don’t worry about that sort of stuff this
time of year. We’re just happy to have some business. Now you two
go relax. If you need anything just give me a holler.”

The room was small but clean, the bed
surprisingly comfortable.

Kelton was relaxing on top of the covers
with his clothes on, back to the mattress and eyes closed, when he
felt a sudden pressure on his hips. He opened his eyes to see
Jessica straddling him. The corners of her lips were curled up in a
playful grin and her eyes were gleaming with mischief.

“Have long until we hear from Willis?” she
asked.

“I’m not sure,” Kelton replied, straining in
vain to keep from getting aroused. “Thirty minutes, maybe an
hour.”

“Plenty of time,” Jessica said, leaning back
slightly, adjusting the pressure.

Kelton narrowed his eyes, feigning
confusion. “For what?”

Jessica’s grin grew wider. “You know.”

He could feel his erection pushing against
the crotch of his jeans and he knew Jessica could feel it too. “Do
I now?”

“Well, your body does, even if your brain
doesn’t.”

Kelton smiled, forced out a tremulous laugh.
“Yeah, I guess that’s true. But unfortunately, my brain usually
ends up trumping my body.”

“Maybe that’s your problem.”

“Maybe it is,” Kelton said. “Maybe it is
indeed.” He took a deep breath and tried to relax.

Sensing his shift in tone and the intent
behind it, Jessica immediately leaned forward and brought her face
down towards his. She stopped a couple inches away, and they stared
at each other for a few seconds before bringing their lips
together.

They kissed, shifted their lips, kissed
again, more urgently this time, and then Jessica was sliding down
Kelton’s body, undoing the buttons on his shirt and kissing his
chest as she made her way down. She unzipped his pants and began
pulling down on the waistband, boxers and all.

Kelton closed his eyes, his breath coming
more rapidly now. His mind raced, bringing up memories long
suppressed, and along with them emotions painful enough to rip him
out of the moment. Grimacing, he squeezed his eyes shut more
tightly in an attempt to push these relics back into the recesses
of his brain, but he was failing miserably.

Unable to stop the torrent of memories, he
lifted his body up onto his elbows and shimmied backwards. The back
of his head slammed the headboard of the bed, banging it against
the wall with a loud crack.

Jessica was staring at him with a mixture of
confusion and anger. “What the hell was that all about?” she said.
“I was under the impression that you wanted this.”

“I do,” Kelton said, his eyes now open but
looking down at the covers. “But not like this. Not right now.”

Jessica stared at him. “You’re kidding me,
right?”

Kelton shook his head.

Jessica sat up and swung her legs over the
side of the bed, giving Kelton her back. She buried her head in her
hands and gripped her hair as though she was going to tear it out,
then relaxed her fists and let her hands fall into her lap.

Kelton waited patiently, figuring that
anything he said now would just fuel the problem further.

A few seconds later, her back still to him,
Jessica said, “I’ve never been rejected like that before,
especially so late in the proceedings. Did I do something
wrong?”

“No,” Kelton said. “It’s not you.”

“Then what is it?”

“I’m just not ready yet.”

“What’s there to be ready for?” she said,
turning towards him, her voice rising. “It’s a blowjob, not a
goddamn marriage proposal.”

“I know,” Kelton said. “But I told you
before--”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember,” Jessica said. “You
said you’re old fashioned, or some crap like that. But lately
you’ve been talking shit right back to me like you want me to make
a move. Like that quip back at Disneyland about the leash, when we
were on that God-forsaken ride. Before that, I was all prepared to
leave this whole thing alone, let you chase whatever demons are
running around inside that screwed up head of yours. But after you
made that comment, I’m thinking to myself, maybe this guy does want
me. And I know I sure as hell want him.”

Kelton opened his mouth but Jessica raised
her hand and shook her head. “Don’t say anything. Not right now.
Just sit there with your mouth shut and listen.”

He nodded and did as he was told.

Jessica took a deep breath, looked up at the
ceiling, started massaging her temples. When she resumed talking,
her tone was lighter, more measured.

“First you act like you want to get me in
the bed, and then, out of nowhere, you’re literally pushing me out
of it. And you still stubbornly refuse to tell me why, refuse to
even admit there’s a reason why you’re such a schizo. But there has
to be a reason. People don’t act like this unless they’re forced
to. So you have to make up your mind, right here, right now. Either
come clean and tell me what the hell has screwed you up so bad that
you can’t function around women, or let me know that it isn’t going
to happen, and we’ll just spend the rest of our time together mired
in a strictly platonic relationship until you can unload me like
chattel.”

Kelton just sat there and stared at the
faded blanket beneath him, unable to meet her gaze.

He wanted to tell her everything, longed to
open up to her, but as he turned his mind inward to recall the
memories that had been buried for so long, he found that they were
locked down tight, as though some part of his brain knew that to
release them would cause him to revert back to the person he’d been
immediately after the day that had changed his life forever, when
every waking moment was a struggle to keep himself from eating the
barrel of his gun.

“Come on,” Jessica said, her voice soft.
“Talk to me, Kelton. I want to know the real you, not this
projection of what you want yourself to be.”

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s been buried for too long,” Kelton
said. “I don’t know what will happen if I let it out.”

“It’s far more destructive if you keep it
in,” Jessica said. “Trust me on this one.”

Kelton opened his mouth intending to argue
with her, to tell her that no, it didn’t hurt more to keep it in,
because when you kept it in, you could control it, you could mute
it, you could pretend like it never happened, but instead, what
came out was, “I was married once.”

“Really?” Jessica said.

He took a deep breath and nodded. Now that
the cat was out of the bag, the words came easily, like they’d been
forming beneath his conscious mind for years.

“Her name was Melissa Crouch. We met a
couple weeks into our freshmen year of college, at some random
party, and we immediately hit if off. We dated all four years of
college, and I ended up proposing to her at our graduation. We got
married six months later, moved out to Colorado, immediately
started working on having kids. Two months after that, she was
pregnant. A boy. Scott. A year and a half after that, we had
another kid. A girl this time. Kelly. We were a nice, happy little
family, living in a 1800 square-foot house we’d bought after Kelly
was born. Everything was going great, our kids were wonderful, all
was right with the world. And then Scott was diagnosed with brain
cancer.”

Jessica waited silently while Kelton took a
moment to quell a sudden wave of excruciating pain.

Eventually, he said, “It was inoperable,
pretty much impossible to treat in any significant way. The doctors
said he had eighteen months to live. He only made it to three.”

“It spread that quickly?”

“Oh, it wasn’t the cancer that took his
life,” Kelton said, his voice flat, emotionless. “It was his
mother. Along with her own. And our daughter’s.”

A sharp intake of breath from Jessica but
thankfully she didn’t try to console him. She seemed to know how
little use words were in this type of situation.

The images came unbidden, individual
snapshots flashing through Kelton’s mind like a slideshow: The note
on the door with the words I’M SORRY printed sloppily in red
marker. The three bodies, two of them impossibly tiny, lying on the
bed, their skin pale and shiny, more wax figures than human beings.
On his knees, head in his hands, moaning wordlessly. The house
crowded with policeman, paramedics, investigators. Neighbors coming
to the door, offering hollow condolences. And then the unbearable
silence as he was left alone with his newly minted ghosts.

“For the longest time, I blamed myself,”
Kelton said. His tone was hushed, as though by speaking softly he
could keep from re-awakening the demons. “I couldn’t stop thinking
about how I should have seen the signs, how I should have known
something like this was coming, how I should have been able to keep
my wife from murdering herself and our two children. For months I
couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even function. I just sat around the
house, watching whatever channel happened to be on the television,
and drank until I passed out. Then I’d wake up the next day and
start the process over again. Until finally I ended up sitting on
the toilet with the barrel of a shotgun in my mouth and my big toe
wrapped around the trigger.”

Kelton shuddered slightly with the memory of
that night. He remembered being able to see his body from high up
in the room, as though looking through the lens of a camera
capturing the event. It was not until then, from that third-person
view of himself, that he realized just how pathetic he had become,
and how much he hated himself for allowing his grief to take him to
the edge of the abyss.

He looked up to see Jessica staring at him,
her eyes glistening with moisture, and he felt bad for having
dragged her through his graveyard.

“Don’t worry,” Kelton said, forcing his
mouth to form a loose smile. “I didn’t kill myself.”

Jessica barked out a humorless laugh, which
seemed to quell her tears. “Are you sure about that?”

“I don’t think I could have actually gone
through with it,” Kelton said, his smile fading away. “Looking
back, I think I just needed to play things out to their inevitable
conclusion before I could allow myself to get on with my life. It’s
like I needed to stare death in the face before I could honestly
say whether or not I wanted to live.”

“I guess you got your answer,” Jessica
said.

“I sure did.”

“How did you turn things around?”

“Believe it or not, once I made the decision
to get on with my life, it wasn’t all that hard,” Kelton said. “I’d
used up all of my grief and self-pity during my six-month descent,
so all I had to do was lock all the memories away in a little
corner of my brain and pretend like my life up until that point had
never happened. I moved away, changed my name, broke off contact
with everyone I’d ever known, and started a new life. I literally
became another person.”

Jessica had dropped her gaze and was shaking
her head.

“It was the only way I could cope,” Kelton
said, feeling the sudden urge to defend his actions. “I figured it
was either start over completely, or stumble through life
chronically depressed, always worried about whether or not I was
going to have a relapse, like some damn alcoholic. I couldn’t live
like that. No way. It would have driven me crazy. I knew I had to
either move on completely, or give up. There was no middle ground.
And just to make sure I didn’t accidentally trigger a relapse, I
swore off letting myself get involved with someone ever again.”

“That’s one hell of a difficult way to
live,” Jessica said.