Object of Desire (35 page)

The place reeked of beer and piss. Some drunk had pissed on the floor once, I suspected, and that smell was never going away. The jukebox was playing Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Sweet home Alabama, where the skies are so blue…
I'd been in enough of these places to wonder why these Yankee bikers seemed to have such a love for Southern rock. I had a pretty strong hunch that their counterparts down in Alabama didn't harbor a lot of love and good feeling for Connecticut boys, whether they rode Harleys or not.

“Hey, Peg,” came a voice from the darkness. Some guy was coming out of the bathroom. I squinted my eyes, expecting it to be Warren. But it was his friend Lenny. He recognized me. “Hey, buckaroo.”

“Lenny, where's Warren?” Mom asked. “He told me to meet him here. He said Bruno might be—”

Lenny motioned for her to be silent. Dropping a leathered arm around her, he led us over to a corner where we could speak more privately. “Warren's in the hospital,” Lenny told us. “He got some infection.”

“Oh, dear!” Mom seemed genuinely alarmed. “Is it serious?”

“I dunno. But listen. I know where Bruno's living. I been there. It's not far from here. And he's got a coupla bitches living with him. Maybe one's your daughter.”

“Take me to him!”

Lenny shook his head. “Nope. Bruno's onto the fact that somebody's looking for him. I don't know if he knows why, but I think we can't trust the Rubberman anymore. I think he gave Bruno your name. That's why you've gotten those threats.”

“Then he must know we're looking for Becky!”

“Maybe. All I know is I can't be showing up at his house with some old lady, even if she
is
wearing a leather jacket.”

Mom didn't seem to take offense at being called an old lady. “So how do we find out if Becky's with him?”

“You know, I've never said this before, and I can't quite believe I'm suggesting it now,” Lenny said, giving us a little smile, “but maybe you should just call the cops.”

Mom's face hardened. “They'll never go. They don't even take my calls anymore.”

“Then I don't know what to say,” Lenny told her.

Mom had turned to look at me. “Danny,” she said, “you go with him.”

“
Me?
”

The idea terrified me. I had heard the voice on our answering machine. It was the voice of a killer. A crazed demon who would snap my neck without a second thought. The Rubberman had killed men with his bare hands; I was sure Bruno was just as capable of doing so.

“Yes,” Mom said, turning from me back to Lenny. “Take Danny!”

There was something about her words that cut right through me.
Take Danny
.
Take Danny, and bring me back Becky.
As if she would have been glad to make the exchange if it might actually work.

“I don't know,” Lenny said. “You know, Warren's in charge of this. I shouldn't be stepping in here.”

Mom pulled out an envelope from her jacket pocket. “I brought the money he asked for,” she told Lenny. “Please. We can't delay.”

I had no idea where she'd got more money to give these guys. Dad's hours had been cut back at the church. We had no more savings. But there she was, thrusting a crumpled white envelope filled with cash into Lenny's hands.

He looked down at her and frowned. “I didn't know Warren was asking you for more money,” he said.

“It's okay. It's not for him. It's for the Rubberman, so he can keep feeding us tips.”

“We're cut off from the Rubberman now,” Lenny said, “and Warren knows that.” He pushed the envelope away. “I don't want your money, Peg.”

“Please,” she cried, near tears. “My daughter may be at that house!”

Lenny turned to me. “What about it, buckaroo? Want to go for a ride?”

“Please, Danny,” Mom begged, her eyes wide and moist in the darkness of that bar. “Please, Danny, you must! Go find Becky, and bring her home to me!”

I looked at her. My insides turned to mush.

“What do I have to do?” I asked Lenny, though I kept my eyes on my mother.

“We'll just take a ride up to the house. Bruno knows I got some young friends that I teach how to ride. We'll just ride up there and see who comes out. You keep your helmet on, and if it's your sister, she won't recognize you.”

“Oh yes, Danny, go!” Mom screeched. “Go,
please!
”

I saw the wildness in her eyes. I realized how much she had stopped looking like the mother I remembered from a long time ago. She was skinny and drawn, and she wore a leather jacket. Her voice was different, too. Everything about her was different. My mother, the one who used to make me drink ten glasses of milk a day, the one who worried that I'd catch poison ivy again like that time in seventh grade, would never have asked me to do what this woman was asking me to do now. My mother would never have allowed me to get on a motorcycle and ride away with a guy we hardly knew. It hurt me far more than that slap she had given me across the face.

“Okay,” I said quietly.

She wrapped her arms around me in gratitude. I didn't hug her back.

Outside the bar, Lenny tugged at my shirt. “This will have to go.”

I removed my white collar shirt, standing there in just my undershirt. Lenny reached down and pressed his hands on the street, gathering up grime. Then he wiped them all over my beige school pants. “That's better,” he said. Mom made not a word of protest.

Lenny handed me his helmet, and I slipped it on. It was way too big for me, but he secured it with the strap. I liked the smell inside the helmet, a deep musk that reminded me of the pile of dirty clothes in the corner of Chipper's room. In fact, I kind of felt like Chipper in that moment, since Chipper also wore a helmet, albeit one of a very different kind. I couldn't deny a certain thrill in straddling Lenny's bike again, wrapping my arms around the giant ribs in front of me, my face pressed into the back of Lenny's leather jacket.

But that didn't chase away the feeling that Mom was trading me for Becky, that the chance of finding my sister was worth the risk to my life.

“Hang on, Danny!” Mom shouted as Lenny's motorcycle roared into gear. Troy echoed her, “Hang on, Danny! Hang on!”

In moments I was sucked into a cyclone of sound. With a squeal of rubber, the bike bolted forward onto the road. We didn't go far. After just a few minutes of whizzing along the winding lane, we were slowing down, veering to our left, and rumbling over a cracked pavement road. We stopped in front of a row of dilapidated Victorian houses. “Keep your helmet on,” Lenny whispered as he dismounted the bike. “Stay here and keep an eye out. If you recognize her, don't say anything. We can't tip them off. Just be cool, okay?”

“Okay,” I said in a small voice.

He sauntered up the broken front stairs of one house and rapped on the door.

I got off the bike and leaned against it, trying as best as I could to see through the helmet. Someone had come to the door of the house. I thought I heard a female voice. “Have Bruno come out,” Lenny was saying. “I want to show him my bike.”

I started to panic.
Bruno is going to come out here.
He would see me, and he'd know who I was. He'd slit my throat without asking any questions. I forced myself to calm down. Lenny was still at the front door of the house, talking. Laughing, even.

“What's your name?” he was asking someone.

“Mary Beth,” came the answer.

But it sounded like Becky's voice.

Dear God, it sounded like Becky's voice.

I strained to see. Lenny was in the way, but there were two girls on the steps now. One was a blonde. The other was dark. I couldn't see them clearly.

But the dark girl. She might have been Becky.

She might actually be Becky.

All of a sudden my heart was beating wildly in my chest. It seemed to have come alive like a bird and was attempting to fly its way up my throat.

On the steps of the house, a man had joined them. He was bald, with a big black beard, standing not more than five-five. He barely came to Lenny's chest.
I
was taller than he was, for God's sake.
This
was Bruno?

I steadied myself. The four of them were walking toward the bike now.

Please let it be Becky,
I prayed—even though most of the time I wasn't sure if I believed in God anymore. But in that moment, I did.
Please, God, let it be Becky. Let me go back and tell Mom I've found her. We can call the cops, and I'll tell them I saw her with my own eyes.

I imagined the joy on Mom's face when I brought her back the news. I imagined our lives returning to what they had been. I imagined how grateful to me Mom would be.

But then a crazy, unexpected thought intruded.

If it
was
Becky, and if Becky came home…what would that mean for me and Chipper?

“Yep,” Lenny was saying as the four of them gathered around the bike. “It's a brand new motherfucker. An FLT, with a rubber-isolated drivetrain.” I stepped aside so he could caress the motorcycle's chrome. “The engine and transmission are hard bolted together.”

Bruno was looking it over closely. The girls hung back a bit. Nobody paid any attention to me. Which allowed me to check out the dark-haired girl. She had her shoulder to me, preventing me from getting a full look at her face. From the back, she could definitely be Becky. I took a step forward, trying to get a better glimpse.

“And who's this?” Bruno suddenly asked, and I felt his black eyes on mine. Instinctively, I looked at the ground.

“This is my latest buckaroo,” Lenny said. “Teaching him how to ride.”

Bruno was studying me. “Well, he ain't riding now,” he said, and I recognized the voice from the answering machine. “What's he got his helmet still on for?”

My eyes swung around and latched onto the face of the dark girl. If it was Becky, I was prepared to run. If not—

My eyes found hers. She was looking straight at me.

And she wasn't my sister.

I took off the helmet. “Hey,” I said casually.

Bruno immediately lost interest. He examined the bike a bit more, then exchanged a few words with Lenny on the sidewalk. The girls wandered back inside. Then Lenny told Bruno he'd see him around and nodded for me to hop back on the bike. I replaced the helmet and once again gripped him around the middle. We roared off.

“Not her, huh?” he shouted over the sound of the engine.

“No,” I said.

Waiting for us outside the Blue Dog, standing beside Troy's car, Mom was furious with the news. She acted as if somehow I'd made a mistake.

“It's been a year!” she shrilled. “You might not have recognized her. She could have changed. She could have lost weight, put on weight…”

“It wasn't her,” I said.

“What about
inside?
” Mom demanded. “There could've been another girl inside.”

“The word is that Bruno's living with two girls right now,” Lenny replied. “And we saw both of 'em.”

“
Up close,
” I told her. “It wasn't Becky.”

Mom went on. “But Warren said the Rubberman said—”

“The Rubberman was wrong,” Lenny told her. “And frankly, Peg, I think he's been wrong all along.”

Mom's face was so red, the vein in her forehead pulsing so prominently, that I thought, quite truthfully, that her head was about to explode. Clenching her fists at her side, she leaned back and looked up the darkening gray sky and screamed at the top of her lungs. One long howl. Lenny rushed over and put his hands on her shoulders.

“Listen to me, Peg!” he shouted. “I don't know where your daughter is, but she's not with Bruno! Maybe she was at one time, but she's not anymore! Stop giving money to Warren! You're just pissing it away.”

She yanked herself away from him and threw herself into the car, slamming the door behind her. “I'll talk to Warren myself!” she yelled through the window. “You don't know what the fuck you're talking about! I won't listen to you! Just wait till I call Warren! Warren will know what to do!”

I slipped into the backseat as Troy started up the car. Mom was angry and sputtering all the way home. I kept trying to tell her that I'd done my best, but she just barked at me to shut up. “I can't think,” she said. “I just need to talk to Warren.”

I settled back against the seat and closed my eyes, realizing I'd probably never see Lenny again, and that made me sad for an odd reason. I liked how he'd called me buckaroo.

Back at our apartment, Mom stormed inside, leaving Troy and me to lean against his car and watch the sun drop behind the trees. The sky was stained pink and orange.

“You think she'll ever find her?” Troy asked, pink light on his face.

I just shook my head.

“So what do you think happened to Becky?”

I shrugged. “Guess you were right in the beginning. She's probably dead.”

I felt no emotion speaking the words.

Troy pressed his shoulder against mine. “You know, I was worried about you when you took off on that bike. I didn't know what might happen to you at Bruno's house.”

“Well, nothing did,” I said.

“Still, I was worried.”

At that moment, a car came screeching into our complex, a car I recognized. It was Chipper's Mach 1. My heart quickened. He slammed to a stop on the other side of the parking lot so that Mom wouldn't see him. He saw us and got out of the car, motioning us over. I could tell by his movements that he was pissed.

“Oh, man,” I said and ran toward him, Troy at my heels.

“Where the
fuck
were you?” Chipper was asking, wearing a football jersey with the number eleven on the front and a pair of faded blue jeans. “I waited for you at that fucking nursing home for a fucking hour.”