Budding Prospects (15 page)

“I’ll take the Super Chili Beef Burger, too,” Phil said. “On the side. And another glass of milk, please.”

I ordered tuna on rye and a bowl of soup. Violins, converging on the maudlin strains of yet another country hit, whined from hidden speakers. Clouds expanded and contracted along the backbone of the sky. A fly batted at the window.

Then the door swung open behind me, footsteps scuffed across the floor, and the grid of seats heaved as a pair of oversized hominids settled into the booth at my back. I stole a glance out the window and saw that the cruiser was empty. “I’m telling you, you just can’t operate that fast,” a voice snapped in my ear before descending to an urgent rasping whisper. A second voice, also whispering, interrupted to hiss a reply. The back of my neck began to itch.

I reached for my coffee cup, found that it was empty, and signaled for the waitress. She looked up alertly, slid the Pyrex pot from the stove and started down the aisle—only to continue
past as if she hadn’t seen me. She halted opposite the newly occupied booth at my back. “Can I get you boys some coffee?” she said. There was a pause in the disputation as both voices broke off to breathe “Please,” and then the rasping continued, covered momentarily by the splash and trickle of hot liquid. Phil reached across the table to nudge me, then indicated a point over my right shoulder and broke into a grin. “You see who just joined us?” he whispered.

I scanned the front page of the local paper, trying to ignore him.
FUNDS
CUT
FOR
RODENT
CONTROL
,
I
READ.
HARRIET
SEARS
HONORED
BY
FATIMAS
OF
THE
FEZ
.
DROUGHT
IN
NAMIBIA
. And then, with a shock that built in my chest like the thump of a boxer’s speed bag, I came across the following:

My fingers were trembling. We were thirty-five miles from the ocean, and yet the surf was roaring in my ears. Phil leaned
across the table and gestured toward the young mother: “You know, she’s not half bad.” I didn’t answer, couldn’t answer. I scanned the room like an impala checking the high grass for movement, the presence at my back swelling to nightmare proportions, and then turned the page.

There he was. Jerpbak. Clipped hair, cleft chin, eyes like arrows in flight. The story went on for two columns. I read about Jerpbak’s intrepidity in identifying and apprehending the suspects, I read about Jerpbak’s father, who’d sold insurance in Willits for thirty years, about his sister, his mother, his wife (the former Jeannie Jordan). And finally, the conclusion of the piece, familiar, congratulatory, an editorial backslap: “Welcome home, John.”

I ate tuna fish, but I didn’t taste it—I could have been chewing cardboard smeared with mayonnaise. My stomach contracted, acid rose in my throat. I looked up to see the waitress flirting with one of the old men at the counter—leaning into him like a dance instructor—while his counterpart stared dolefully into his coffee cup. Phil waved a monstrous, chili-dribbling burger in one hand, and a fork in the other. He was relating the plot of the science-fiction trilogy he’d begun two nights ago. I wanted to leave. Split, vanish, dissolve. Toss my money on the table, hunch down in my jacket and slink out the door.

“So Bors Borka, he’s the hero, finds himself on this planet where instead of only two sexes, they have five, all of which are necessary—all together—for an orgasm.” Phil took a bite of his burger, delicately lapping the extruded chili from between his fingers in the process. “There’s this penislike thing, the
omphallus
, that sticks out of this lake made of protoplasm, and it branches into three stalks. Then there’s this viridian creature sort of like a female, only instead of a vagina—”

“Phil,” I said, pressing both hands to my temples. “Let’s get out of here.”

“What’s the matter?”

I tucked the newspaper under my arm. Strings and oboes tugged at the chords of “Jailhouse Rock,” rain began to natter at the window, the old man at the counter slipped his hand up the waitress’s dress. “I’ve got a headache.”

Phil gave me a look of shock and dismay, as if I’d just suggested
he share his food with everyone in the restaurant and then mail the leftovers to the Underfed Orphans Society. He took a quick bite of his Super Chili Beef Burger and a forkful of stuffed cabbage. “Christ,” he muttered, digging for another hurried mouthful. “You sure?”

The booth trembled as one of the patrolmen shifted in his seat. I nodded at Phil, then glanced up nervously and found myself staring into the young mother’s eyes. They were black, those eyes, soft and ripe as pitted olives. But I didn’t want olives, I wanted escape, seclusion, anonymity. I looked away in confusion, focusing on the Campbell’s Soup display and making a show of moving my lips as I read the labels: Chunky Mediterranean Vegetable, Turkey with Avocado, Plantain Broth. “All right,” Phil said, frowning. “All right—just let me finish what’s on my plate. I can take the burger with me.”

I pushed away my half-eaten sandwich and motioned for the waitress. She was poised over the second old man now, refilling his cup while he stared morosely into the knot of his hands. “The check,” I pantomimed. She ignored me. Jerpbak, I thought, the name howling in my ears. This was bad karma, malicious fate, the beginning and the end. I waved my arm. “Check, please,” I mouthed, fighting for restraint. Behind me, the rasping continued unabated, officers of the law engaged in private business, their flesh and mine wedded by a thin slab of plywood and Naugahyde. Someone coughed. And then, as if a hot wire had been applied to my temple, a nasty certainty leapt through my brain: Jerpbak was sitting behind me. Jerpbak himself. Of course. Who else?

Suddenly I was on my feet. Jerpbak, Jerpbak, Jerpbak: the name beat with my pulse. It all became clear in that instant—he’d tracked me down, spider and fly. He was a Heat, a Holmes, a Javert. He’d seen the guilt on me like a dye, like the thief’s tattoo, and he’d known in that moment what I was doing in Tahoe. Yes, and now he was waiting, that’s all, waiting till the plants were grown and the buds mature, biding his time till he could swoop down on us when it would hurt most. Phil looked up at me, a smear of chili at the corner of his mouth. “I’m, I’m …”I stammered, digging a five from my pocket and flinging it down on the table. Then I took a deep breath, steeling
myself. At the count of three I was going to swing round, lower my head and stride out the door.

One Jerpbak, two Jerpbak, three: I pivoted and found myself locking eyes with a scowling cop in his late forties who looked as if he’d devoted his life to the invention of instruments of torture. There was no trace of sympathy or decency in his face, but I felt like embracing him, buying him a cigar, stuffing twenties in his pocket—he might have been an inveterate suspect-beater and civil-rights abuser for all I knew, but he wasn’t Jerpbak. The realization so elated me that I lurched forward and tripped over his slick black-booted foot. As I tumbled past him, fighting for balance and yelping an apology over my shoulder, I caught a glimpse of the second cop, the one whose back had for the last ten minutes been so alarmingly contiguous to mine. A glimpse of reflecting shades, cleft chin, clipped and parted hair. That was enough. I slammed into the cigarette machine, tore open the door and flung myself at the cleansing, quickening rain.

A moment later the door eased open and Phil joined me on the front steps. He asked if I was all right. I told him I just needed a little air, that’s all. We started for the pickup in silence, raindrops slanting down like so many straight pins. I hardly noticed. All that mattered was that they were watching us (I knew they were, as certainly as I knew that forests are immovable and men born of women), observing the way we lifted our feet and hunched our shoulders, noting the make of the truck and the license plate number, idly fingering their handcuffs. Police surveillance, I thought. Undercover operations. Tapes, photographs, body hairs. Suddenly I saw myself at the window of the cabin, opening up on them with the shotgun, stopping bullets with my teeth, vanishing in a puff of smoke. I slipped the keys into Phil’s hand. “What’s this?” he said. “You don’t want to drive?”

“No, I don’t feel up to it,” I said, climbing into the passenger’s seat. The pickup was loaded with plastic pipe in twenty-foot lengths, with four fifty-five-gallon drums and a gasoline-powered water pump. I was trying my best to look like a tourist or hitchhiker, but I knew it was hopeless. We might as well have painted the truck Day-Glo orange with vermilion pinstriping
and the legend
DR
.
FEELGOOD
’
S
FARMS
. We were dope farmers—that was as readily apparent to any fool on the street as our species identification—dope farmers stockpiling equipment for their irrigation system. I hunched down in the seat.

“So,” Phil said, grinding the ignition, “I didn’t tell you the best part yet.” I was mute, cataleptic. He went on anyway. “Well, Borka ducks into this cave to escape a column of Termagants from the planet Terma, when he miraculously comes upon four of the sexes trying to get it on—but of course they’re missing the fifth link, which just happens to be this armless man-sized thing with a little penis and a prehensile tail. So here comes the space hero, fascinated, watching these four weird creatures go at it, heaving and rocking in frustration …”

The truck jerked back, drawing away from the cafée A like a missile from the launching pad. I fought the impulse to look up. Fought it, and lost. As Phil swung around and shifted gears, I snatched a glance out of the corner of my eye. I saw the cruiser with its gold badge of justice, the cracked cinder blocks of the front porch, the little box of the cafée A with its picture windows and advertisements for corn dogs and thick shakes. Light fell from the windows in slabs. I could see nothing. And then, just a flash: dark forms, bereft of animation, as shadowy and insubstantial as the figures in a dream.

That night, after we’d unloaded the truck and put dinner on, I spread the Jerpbak article out on the kitchen table and motioned for Gesh to have a look. Gesh had spent the afternoon digging holes, and he was stretched out on the couch like a corpse, a hot toddy in one hand and Book One of
The Ravishers of Pentagord
—Phil’s trilogy—in the other. From the front bedroom I could hear Phil strumming his guitar and moaning softly. “What is it?” Gesh said. “What have you got—drugs?”

My throat thickened. I didn’t think I could get the words out. “It’s an article. In the paper. Come take a look.”

Gesh sighed, pushed himself up and started across the room. I was poised over the gray newsprint, scanning the article for the twentieth time, each insidious phrase poking at me like a hot scalpel. Gesh was in no hurry. He paused to refresh his toddy and slip a tape into his cracked-plastic battery-powered tape player (he’d unearthed two cassettes in the glove compartment of the Jeep Vogelsang had left us—something unidentifiable that sounded like a diva gargling in the shower, and an ancient Grateful Dead tape that repeatedly stuck on “Truckin’.” He opted for the latter).

I watched Gesh’s face as he read the article. When he’d finished he took a sip of his toddy, looked up at me and said “So?”

“So?” I could feel the floodgates opening wide. “What’s with you? Don’t you know who this joker is?” I was shouting, rapping Jerpbak’s photograph with the back of my hand as if I could tear him in the flesh.

Gesh looked less certain of himself. He shrugged.

“This is the maniac that threw me up against the wall in the Eldorado County Jail when I bailed you guys out. Now he’s here, dedicating his life to busting dope farmers—I mean, doesn’t that strike you as a little strange?”

Gesh just stared at the paper, his jaw locked. The tape player slammed away at “Truckin’ “ over and over again:
Truckin’ … Truckin’ … Truckin’
… I stalked over and hit the eject button. “Doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” he murmured. And then more forcefully: “It’s a pisser. A real weird coincidence and a bad break. But nothing to go crazy over.”

Phil appeared in the doorway of his room, the guitar strung round his neck like an umpire’s chest protector. “What’s all the commotion?”

I showed him the article. He held the paper close to his face, licking his lips and sucking in his breath in quick little puffs as he read.

“We just have to be extra careful, that’s all,” Gesh said.

Phil folded the newspaper neatly and set it down on the counter. Then he looked me in the eye, poker-faced, and hit the refrain of “I Fought the Law and the Law Won.”

“Very funny,” I said.