Cookie Cutter Man (2 page)

Daniel breathed deep, rolled the tension out of his
shoulders and watched a battered little Mazda pull into the parking lot. A
black man in a suit got out and locked it with a remote. The headlights were
off, but the car was still running. Daniel sipped his drink and pretended to
read a newspaper that had been left on his table. Was that the bulge of a
service revolver beneath the man’s jacket?

Mr. Mazda came inside, ordered a soda, took a booth and sat
there staring at Daniel, staring
into
him, with flat brown eyes like
burnt-out bulbs.

The black man lifted the large cup and drank deeply through
the straw. Then he winked.

A cold, acid wave of paranoid delusion crashed down, washing
the carcass of Daniel’s confidence onto some bone-colored beach for the
vultures to pick. He wiped his sweating hands on his pants and walked to the
john.

The cold water he splashed on his face didn’t help nearly as
much as he hoped. He looked around for the paper-towel dispenser and saw there
were only hand driers.

“Fuck,” Daniel muttered, as he lifted his shirt to dry his
face. He swallowed a heavy drip, hands planted on the sink. He could still
taste the coke in his nose.

Here’s the plan, he told himself. You will exit the bathroom
casually, just like any other law-abiding patron would do. Then you will leave
this shithole, get in your car, and proceed home, where you will lock the doors
and stay inside for a week.

“I’m losing my mind,” Daniel said to his reflection with
bloodshot eyes. Big deep breaths.
Go.
He saw Mr. Mazda stand to leave as
the restaurant door closed behind him.

Daniel sunk low in his seat, watching in his side mirror as
the Mazda left the parking lot from the other end.

Was he safe? Had he been in trouble to begin with? He
smoked two cigarettes waiting for something else, anything else, to confirm or
deny his suspicions and fears. Nothing did.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, and started the car.

Daniel reached his one-room apartment uneventfully. He kept
a sharp eye out the entire way, but saw no other signs he was being watched or
followed.

Once inside he locked the door behind him and shot the
deadbolt, thinking idly of getting a chain-lock installed, and standing still
to give his eyes time to adjust to the darkness. Hadn’t he left the lamp on?

Silent assassin’s hands came out of the night and grabbed
him by the shoulders. He was on his way to prison, 20 years, no parole, or he
was dead right here, shot in the—

“Awww, too much booger-sugar, Jumpy?” Echo asked in the
darkness.

The relief Daniel felt at not being handcuffed or murdered
was so great it nearly buckled his knees. “Oh fuck me.”

She may have said “I intend to,” but he couldn’t be sure. He
moved out of her evil, angelic clutches and collapsed on the couch, flipping on
the lamp.

Echo stood by the door in tight cut-offs and a baby-T two
sizes too small, blond hair in pig-tails because she knew he liked it, fully
intent on seducing him until she saw how pale he was.

“You OK?” she asked, crossing the room to him. “You look
like shit, babe.”

“Thank you, dear.”

“What’s wrong?” Echo leaned forward and examined him closer.
“Hey, you’re not OD’ing or anything, are you?”

The genuine concern in her blue-velvet eyes made him feel
better. “Hard day at the office, that’s all.”

She smiled and then straddled him on the couch. He couldn’t
help but check out the window while she kissed his neck.

They lay in the bed amidst the rumpled sheets and moonlight,
smelling each other’s sweat and satisfaction. He was on his back smoking a
cigarette, and she on her stomach, using his chest as a pillow.

“I love you,” she said, her voice a whisper in the darkness.

“I love you too,” Daniel said.

She kissed him good night and rolled onto her side, dozing
off. He finished his smoke, sat up, and leaned forward to the ashtray on the
windowsill. Through the thin gaps of venetian blinds Daniel saw the shabby old
station wagon, parked across the street.

It was quite some time before he fell asleep.

Daniel awoke to her music; she strummed her guitar and
purred the chorus of
Pennyroyal Tea
, the Nirvana song. She played it
every single morning without fail, and never told him why. He’d given up
asking. The lyrics gave him a clue he didn’t care to speculate on, but she knew
she could tell him if she was ever ready. The few times he’d tried to bring it
up she just shrugged it off and got a sad, distant look in her eyes. Now he
just listened.

Police in riot gear burst into the room and the door slammed
into the wall, knocked off the hinges. Echo rolled off the bed screaming as
they converged on Daniel like a pack of wild boars, pinning him to the mattress
and cuffing him, then dragging him out from between the sheets. He hit his head
on the hardwood floor beneath the Oriental rug and lay on his back in a daze as
the sound of the dropped guitar resonated in his ears. Echo was there, her cool
hand on his cheek.

“Get up, baby,” she said. His eyes flickered open and
closed, open and closed, open—

Daniel sat up in bed with a gasp, head-butting Echo as she
tried to wake him.

“
Ow
!” She rubbed her forehead as he collapsed back on
the pillow. “The
fuck’s
your problem?”

He tried to speak. “... dream ...” was the only word
decipherable through the slur that comes with just waking up and getting
cracked in the skull.

“No shit your dreams! You were practically screaming in your
sleep!”

Daniel spared a glance out the window. The station wagon was
gone. He sat up again and leaned against the headboard. “I’m sorry about your
head, angel.”

Her scowl dissolved into a smile. It was a concerned smile,
but better than that other look by a long shot. She sat on the bed next to him,
holding her guitar.

“Are you OK, really? I mean—” she strummed a few chords and
paused, then looked him in the eyes. “I’m worried.”

“I’m fine.” Was he telling
her
that, or himself? “I
will be, anyway. I’m getting out.”

She just stared.

“I’m serious,” Daniel said. “I’m through selling this shit,
and I’m done using, too. I been getting kinda out there ...”

“You’re done selling it? For good?”

“For now, yeah. Next week I may, you know, re-examine the
situation.”

“And you’re not gonna do it any more?”

“Nope.” Not for a while at least, he added to himself.

“Baby, I’m so
proud
of you!” Echo moved again, in
front of him instead of next to him, her hand resting on one of his knees and
then slowly moving upward...

The shower droned in the background. In the living room,
Daniel smoked a joint in a patch of early-afternoon sun, thinking of the night
he’d first met Echo. Until then he’d never felt a real connection with another
human being.

Not with his mother, who killed herself with a .357 Magnum
during a bout of severe postpartum depression two days after he was born. Nor
did he connect with his Bible-thumping aunt in North Dakota, who took him in
and raised him until he was 10, and then died of breast cancer. And certainly
not with his drunken, abusive father, whom Daniel first met the day after his
aunt’s funeral. No, not his father, who resented having to provide for a
10-year-old stranger that bore a passing resemblance to a dead wife he hardly
remembered.

But the night he met Echo, everything changed.

She came now, out of the bathroom, dry but still naked,
getting ready for work. She appeared apparition-like and was gone again; at
first one solid flesh-tone blur, the colors changing as she dressed. Two or
three times a week she played at a bar downtown; other times she was the
bartender. Tonight the guitar stayed home. She came into the living room,
putting in her earrings. “You ready?”

“Yeah. You look good.”

“Thank you.” She kissed him firmly on the mouth. “I love
you.”

“Love you too.”

She handed him his keys, he got his sunglasses and they
left.

Daniel dropped her off and watched her walk into the bar. He
brushed a centipede that wasn’t there off the steering wheel, then drove around
the block and parked, stopping to get a bite to eat from this guy in the paseo
named Raoul. Daniel walked across the crowded square, admiring the color of the
cobblestones on the golden autumn afternoon. He came to a spot where he’d seen
a girl die about two years ago. She had green hair and an embolism and just
dropped dead right in the middle of the street as Daniel walked by her.

Strange days, Daniel thought. He dismissed the memories and
got one of Raoul’s trademark fried-chicken sandwiches. He carried it to the
middle of the square and sat on a bench, people-watching while he ate.

He finished eating, stood, and stretched. He felt good
today. Confident, a little stoned, satiated from the sandwich. Nice and mellow,
his nose a bit raw from the blow last night, but otherwise tip-top. Daniel
thought about his frenzy of paranoia, smiling.

No way, he told himself, shaking his head a little. There
had to be at least a
thousand
station wagons in this city.

He tossed his trash in a nearby can. See? There’s one ...
right ...

Daniel stared across the square, waiting for another break
in the crowd. A group of nattering old women lurched by in front of him, the
car obscured by a rolling cloud of fluorescent polyester and puffs of
blue-tinged hair upon wrinkled peanut heads.

Finally they passed, and he saw it. Not just
a
station wagon, but
the
station wagon. The front seat was empty, so where
was the driver?

Who
was the driver?

Feeling watched, he looked around. Everyone was a suspect,
and they all suspected him. An old man peered at him above his paper as he
dined al fresco. A yuppie was talking into a cell phone, and looked away when
their eyes met. A middle-aged woman dressed like a nurse sat, jotting something
down on a pad of paper, glancing up at him.

The air suddenly seemed much too thin, like the heartless
air of long-abandoned Denver. He turned in a circle, watching people watch him,
and knew he had to leave, just get home and
stay
there, lock the doors,
not even look out the fucking window, and then everything would be fine.

A little boy, about 9, stood 20 feet away, wearing a shiny
plastic cowboy hat and staring at him. The expression on his jelly-stained face
was undeniably that of a cop.

The child drew his Day-Glo plastic revolver, pointed it, and
pulled the trigger. For just a moment, Daniel’s heart stopped in his chest.

What the fuck is
wrong
with me? Daniel turned to go
back to his car and collided with someone. He staggered back, feeling like a
total ass, and on the edge of panic.

“Shit, I’m sorry man.” Daniel looked up at the person he’d
run into. About 5’9”, stocky, probably 34 or so, short black hair that was
thinning at the crown. There was no expression on his face, no sign that he was
upset or had even registered the collision.

“Hey, I–” Daniel started, but was cut off.

“Forget it. But you’re right, you know.” The stranger
absently stroked his thick black goatee that was threaded with gray.

Daniel backed up a step without realizing it. “What?”

“I said you were right. They
are
following you.” The
stranger hit him with a sly Cheshire grin and walked off, Daniel felt like he’d
gotten a good swift kick to the back of the head.

Daniel turned and went after him. “What’d you say?”

The stranger kept walking.

“What did you say?”
Daniel yelled in disbelief at
what he’d clearly heard. A wave of pedestrians parted to let the stranger
through, and swallowed him. The crowd fell upon Daniel, bumping and jostling
him. When he finally purged himself of the walking mass, the stranger was gone.

Daniel looked for the station wagon and saw the stranger
slip behind the wheel.

“Hey!” Daniel ran down the middle of the street after the
station wagon but it accelerated around a corner, and was gone. The strange
harbinger’s voice echoed in his head and in his heart and Daniel felt, right
then, like he’d be hearing that voice in his head for the rest of his life.

You were right. They are following you.

“Oh, fucking-A!” Daniel slowed to a standstill. The
wavering notes of despair hid within his voice. He rubbed his face and walked
back to his car, indifferent to the all-too-real possibility of the police
swooping down on him, or some anonymous Mr. Fixit rolling up with a contract to
die for and a .45 to sign it with.

You were right. They are following you.

Was the harbinger some sick sadist of a smiling cop wanting
to torture him with the knowledge that he was had? Was he was a prophet, sent
as a warning? Maybe he was the devil himself.

Daniel hurried up to his apartment, trying to watch every
direction at once and still look casual. Upstairs he bolted and locked the
door, again wishing for a chain lock. He went through the one-bedroom flat locking
windows, drawing curtains, pulling shades.

On the drive home he’d decided he needed to clean the
apartment, get rid of every vial, every baggie. Daniel went straight to the
bedroom, pulling a hand-crafted wooden box off the top shelf in his closet, an
ornate “4:20” carved into the lid. He unlatched it and opened it, looking at
the glass pipes and little torches and the bag of really good weed. There was a
tiny black baggie that still held about an ounce of blow. He had a bag full of
mushroom stems, a couple hits of X that were probably not even good any more, a
mostly empty bottle of Vicodin ... and this one little box was just the
beginning.