Collection (14 page)

Jacob pulls into the parking lot of the Circle K and gets out.
 
There’s a girl at the payphone next to the ice machine.
 
She’s crying.
 
As he walks by she slams the phone on the cradle and shouts, “Fuck.”

Jacob looks away, pretending not to notice.
 
He opens the front door; the cold air from inside feels good against his skin.
 
He pauses and looks back at the girl.
 
There’s something familiar about her—he’s seen her before.
 
“You okay?” Jacob asks.

 
          
The girl takes a deep breath.
 
“No, I’m not fucking okay,” she says.
 
“I’m in really deep shit.”

Inside the store the clerk shouts at him to close the door.
 
Jacob ignores him.
 
“You want something to drink?
 
Some water?”

The girl looks up.
 
Mascara snakes down her cheeks and tiny black tears drip on her t-shirt.
 
“Can you give me a ride to Indian School and Fifteenth?”

Jacob frowns.
 
Buying her a bottle of water when it’s a hundred and eighteen degrees is one thing, but giving her a ride, especially when he’s stoned, is something completely different.
 
Indian School and Fifteenth might only be a mile or two away, but it’ll seem like a million in his mind.
 
He had a hard enough time driving the eight blocks from his apartment.
 
“Sorry,” he says.
 
“But if you want some water?
 
A Coke?”

The girl shoulders her purse and turns away.
 
Jacob stares at her legs as she moves.
 
After a moment he goes inside.

“The A/C’s not free around here, you know,” the clerk says.

Jacob waves over his shoulder and heads to the frozen section.
 
Other people must’ve had the same idea because the shelves are almost empty.
 
All that’s left is Blue Bunny Vanilla or Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia.
 
He settles on a quart of Cherry Garcia and walks back to the counter, grabbing a bag of Funyons along the way.
 

“That girl still out there?” the clerk asks, thumbing toward the door.
 
“Little brunette?
 
Red shorts?”

“Yeah,” Jacob says.
 
He takes a bag of peanut M&M’s from the rack by the register and sets them on the counter.
 
“What’s up with her?”

“No idea,” the clerk says.
 
“Somebody dropped her off, just about threw her out of the car.
 
She came in looking for a ride, but I can’t leave.”
 
He scans the M&M’s and sets them in a bag.
 
“She ask you?”

Jacob nods.
 
“You see the car?”

“Blue Firebird,” the clerk says.
 
“No license plate, but the car was nice.
 
One of those suped up jobs.
 
Real cherry.”
 

Jacob feels a small tickle at the back of his neck.
 
He watches the clerk bag the ice cream, and for a minute he’s quiet.
 
Then he asks, “Tinted windows?”

The clerk nods.
 
“Yeah.”

“Bulls-eye painted on the back?”

“You know the car?”

The tickle grows, feeling more like an ice pick.
 
Jacob reaches for his wallet.
 
“What do I owe you?”

The clerk hits the total key.
 
“Nine ninety eight.”
 

He drops a ten-dollar bill on the counter, grabs the bag, and heads for the door.
 
Behind him, he hears the clerk say: “You better get that ice cream inside.
 
It’ll melt damn quick out there today.”

~

The heat off the black top is heavy and the air burns his lungs.
 
The girl is gone.
 
He scans the parking lot, cursing himself under his breath.
 
Of all the people to let slip away.
 
He sets the bag in the front seat of his car and walks to the payphones.
 
He picks up the receiver, drops in a couple coins, and dials.

The phone rings.
 
Once…
 
Twice…
 

Jacob shifts his weight between his feet.
 
“Come on,” he says, chewing his lower lip.
 
He looks back toward the street, hoping to see her, but there is only the desperate line of wilted palm trees along the road, weary under the constant sun.

Three… Four…

Finally, Marcus picks up.
 
His voice is tired.
 
“Yeah?”
 

Jacob talks fast. “You’re not going to believe who I just saw.”

“Jacob,” Marcus says.
 
“You know what time it is?”

Jacob looks at his watch.
 
It’s almost two o’clock.
   

“You know Decker has me on nights at the club, right?”

“Yeah, but—”

“So don’t fucking call me during the day, Jacob.
 
You know this.”

Jacob hears Marcus shuffle the phone back to the cradle, and he shouts into the receiver.
 
“Claire Reese.
 
I saw Claire Reese.”
 
He waits for the dial tone.
 
It doesn’t come.
 
He hears more shuffling and the unmistakable scrape of a lighter.
 

“Where?”

“The Circle K on Camelback.
 
Right down from my place.”
 
He relays the clerk’s story about the Blue Firebird, leaving out that he didn’t recognize her and let her wander off.
 
He gets enough shit from Marcus as it is.

“He say where she wanted to go?” Marcus asks.

Jacob closes his eyes and tries to remember.
 
“Somewhere close,” he says.
 
“I can’t—”

“Are you stoned?”

“I’m cool,” Jacob says, but he knows he’s not.
 
All he’d wanted that afternoon was to get as high as possible and watch Blade Runner on his VCR.
 
Eventually the plan grew to include ice cream, but by then he’d already smoked a Rastafarian amount of weed.
 
Still, once the idea was there, his mind wouldn’t let it go.
 
“Don’t worry about me.”

“Are you sure it was her?” Marcus asks.
 
“Seriously, Jacob, if I call Decker and you end up being wrong—.”

“Indian School,” Jacob says.
 
It comes back to him all at once.
 
“Fifteenth and Indian School.”

Marcus exhales into the phone.
 
“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m fucking sure,” Jacob says.
 
He’d only met the girl once, but she wasn’t easy to forget.
 
Claire Reese was stunning—dark hair cut short, green eyes, and a light complexion that made Jacob think of everything he’d never have in life.
 
The girl he saw on the phone had longer hair, but everything else was the same.
 
“Trust me on this.”

“All right, I’ll get someone over there.”
 
He laughs.
 
“I can’t believe Cooper was stupid enough to come back in the same car.”

Jacob can.
 
This was, after all, the same guy who skipped town with almost thirty grand of Decker’s money.
 
Coming back in the same car, as far as Jacob was concerned, was par for the course.
 
“What do you want me to do?”

“Head home, I don’t care.”
 
He pauses.
 
“No wait, drive around and see if you can find her.
 
If you do, take her to your place.
 
I’ll meet you there.
 
We might need her.”

“For what?”
 
Jacob says.
 
He thinks about the ice cream melting in the car, Blade Runner back in his apartment, his entire afternoon dissolving in front of him.
 
“I thought you only wanted Cooper.”

“If we can’t find him we’ll get his wife.
 
He’ll want her back.”

“I don’t know, man.
 
The clerk said he barely slowed down when he dropped her off.
 
Maybe he ditched her for good.”

“Either way, she’ll know where the son of a bitch is.”

Jacob makes a doubtful noise.
 
He hates the idea of driving around, looking for this girl.
 
He’s too stoned for that kind of activity.
 
“Aw, man, I don’t think—”

“Don’t fucking whine at me, Jacob,” Marcus says.
 
“Just look for her.
 
If you find her, hold her.
 
It’s not tough.”

Jacob waits a moment before responding.
 
“All right,” he says.
 
“I’ll look around, but if I don’t see her I’m going home.”

“Think of it this way,” Marcus says.
 
“If you find her, I bet Decker lets you have your job back.”

Jacob considers the possibility for a moment.
 
It was probably true.
 
Decker might not give him the same shift—maybe not even the same club—but he’d most likely let him tend bar at one of the smaller dives in Tempe, and that was fine by him.
 
He needed to work again.
 
Ever since Decker threw him out, his days had been a long string of rented movies and bong hits.
 
And as much fun as that was, it’d begun to get old. “But I thought Decker said—”

“You bring in Cooper Reese, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Decker lets you manage one of the clubs.”
 
Marcus laughs.
 
“Then you can give away all the God damn drinks you want.”

Marcus is giving him shit, but still, Jacob can’t help but smile.

~

Traffic on Camelback road is light, and Jacob says a quick prayer of thanks to whatever gods handle that type of thing.
 
He’s been in Phoenix almost four years, and he’s gotten used to the heat and the floods and the scorpions, but he’s never gotten used to the drivers.
 
He has a theory that the heat cooks away people’s brains over time, rendering them incapable of driving safely.
 
So far he’s seen nothing that disproves this theory.
 
Stop signs, speed limits, traffic lights—in Phoenix they’re all optional.

Jacob, in contrast, drives slow, especially when he’s high.
 
He’s used to people passing him on both sides, always honking, always screaming.
 
It’s unnerving.
 
It takes something serious to get him to drive when he’s high, like ice cream, or the possibility of getting his job back.

The last time Jacob counted, Carl Decker owned seven nightclubs throughout Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Tempe: two strip clubs, two dance clubs, and three small neighborhood bars.
 
Jacob had bartended at a small strip joint called Whiskey Street, just outside of Scottsdale.
 
Things had gone along great until Decker noticed the inventory not matching up with the sales and, without Jacob knowing, installed cameras and waited.