TAUT (4 page)

“Right. Dallas. I think I almost blew you up on the golf course with an exploding golf ball.” I laugh.

He doesn’t.

“Sorry about that,” I continue. “My antisocial and psychotic tendencies have mellowed over the years.”

He glares at me.

There is no way this guy is taking me any further than the fucking garage five hundred yards away, so I resign myself to getting a room at the Travel Saver. I’m not walking into the Village and I highly doubt a cab is available. This is Vail, not Denver. There are no public safe driver programs to keep the drunks off the road on New Year’s. Besides, almost everywhere you need to go is within walking distance here.

Of course, there’s that little detail about the blizzard. But that’s why hotels have ballrooms. So partygoers can stay the night at the party. I doubt there are any rooms available in the Village anyway.

This whole thought exercise is pointless. I have a fucking house two miles away that I can’t get to. Why the hell would I walk the opposite direction to get a room?

I jump in the cab and scare the shit out of myself when I sit on something that squeaks. I brush the seat off and a little yellow duck toy goes flying onto the floor.

“Oh, shit,” Dallas says as he gets into the cab with me. “I bet that belongs to that chick’s baby. Pick it up, will ya?” He pulls out onto the road as I pick up the toy. It’s all muddy from my wet shoes now, so I stick it in my pocket. We drive down the frontage road, pass the hotel, and then turn into the parking lot. The girl is still in her car, the interior light on as she fumbles around with something. I see the baby now, tucked inside a seat, bundled up with blankets. Dallas backs up the truck and positions it so he can drop the Bronco off in a snow-covered space not quite next to, but near, the girl’s brown Honda.

I jump out and walk over to Dallas as he works the truck’s bed controls. “How much?”

“Two-fifty,” he says with a straight face.

I shrug it off and grab three hundred-dollar bills from my wallet. Who cares. He saved my ass. He deserves it. “Here you are. And Dallas?” I wait for his eyes to find mine. “Thank you. I appreciate it. Maybe I’ll see you tomorrow when Jason opens and we can grab a beer or something.”

This is my new thing, since I met Rook. I’m trying to make amends for any and all weird past behavior. I figure trying to blow him up on the golf course counts as something that requires an effort.

“Jason’s probably not gonna show up tomorrow. And he’s always closed on the weekends, so Monday, huh? If you’re still around.” He takes the money and goes back to his business so I take that as my cue to leave.

I stuff my hands in my pockets and make for the motel office, my head ducking into the wind and snow.

Chapter Four

The bell on the door jingles as I enter the hotel, the faint sound of a TV coming from the back room. An older woman appears and sighs heavily when she sees me, like I’m interrupting her
Jeopardy
game show and walking up front to wait on a customer is the last straw.

“Help you?” she asks curtly as she punches some keys on her computer.

I put on my
I’m not a psycho
smile and remind myself that this place was once my home, but she doesn’t look at me, so it makes no difference. I try for directness instead. “Room?”

“One left,” she mumbles. “But you gotta be out by ten, because there’s a tourist bus coming in tomorrow and all our rooms are booked for the weekend.”

“I can manage that. How much?”

“Two-fifty plus tax.”

“Hmmm, everything tonight seems to cost two-fifty.”

“It’s New Year’s Eve. Prime season for us. You want the room or not?”

“Yes,” I say through my smile. “Thank you.” She passes me a form to fill out and give her all my details. When I hand it back she stares at it for a moment, then looks up at me with the same squinting eyes that Dallas perfected back at the tow truck.

“Rutherford Aston.”

“Mrs. Pearson,” I deadpan back at her. “How’s the library treating you?”

“Retired. We manage this place now. Can’t complain.”

And that’s it. That’s all she has to say to me, even though if you add up all the time I spent at the library when I lived here as a kid, it would total in the years.

It’s my turn to sigh heavily and I turn away as she finishes the job of checking me in. She doesn’t inquire why I’m staying here at the crappiest hotel in Vail when I live down the street. She doesn’t inquire why I left the make and model of my car blank on the registration form. She doesn’t say
here you go, have a nice night
when she slides the key across the counter. The only other thing she says is, “Room 24, last door.”

I nod and smile once more, but it’s futile. She’s already got her back to me, heading into the room where her game show awaits.

I push through the door, the bell jingling my exit, and the snow assaults me as I make my way under the covered breezeway that at least attempts to block out the raging elements. I walk all the way to the end of the building, slip my key into the door and glance over at my Bronco.

It’s not my truck that I’m looking at though. Dallas and the flatbed are gone. Probably more cars to rescue from the storm. It’s the car next to the Bronco that catches my attention. I can still see the girl inside, still fussing around under the dome light.

I twist the key, open the door, find the lights on the wall and flip them on before closing the door behind me.

It’s fucking freezing in here. Like they have no heat at all. I hit up the unit under the window that acts as a heater and air conditioner and turn it to full-blast hot.

Now what?

There’s two queen-sized beds, a table and chairs, a long low dresser with a mirror, and a TV mounted on the wall. I grab the remote and switch it on. The time flashes on the screen for a moment. One-thirty AM. Shit, time has flown by. Last I looked it was eleven-thirty.

Well, happy New Year, Ford. Yet another one spent alone.

I watch a repeat of the ball dropping in Times Square, and then realize the room is not much warmer. I fuck with the controls on the under-window unit for a few minutes, trying to see if the dials are just lined up wrong and another setting will deliver the heat I’m badly craving. But it’s no use. I take out my phone and check the thermometer app. Twelve degrees outside. I calculate the probable temperature in this room and come up with fifty-three.

Fifty-fucking-three degrees. For two hundred and fifty dollars a night.

I can go complain to Mrs. Pearson. Or I can suck it up, go sift through my winter survival bag from the back of the Bronco, and grab the self-heating blizzard blankets.

I opt for the blizzard blankets because Mrs. Pearson is just…
no
.

The snow is still coming down hard, maybe even harder than before. I can barely make out the garage parking lot and it’s only about a hundred yards away. I jog over and open the back of the Bronco, yanking the tub of gear towards me. The blankets are down at the bottom, so I just dump all the shit out on the bed of the truck and take out the flat packages. I slam the door and a baby’s cry almost gives me a heart attack.

I look carefully at the girl’s car and realize it’s steamed up from breath. They’re still inside.

I knock on the back seat window and see some blurry movement inside, but no one answers. “Hey,” I call. “Do you have a ride coming?”

The baby answers with a small complaint, then some gurgled noises. And nothing.

Even though I’m freezing my ass off now, I try again. A softer knock this time. “Hello? It’s too cold to be in a parked car with no heat.”

Nothing.

I get the hint and walk away. Hey, if she wants to stay in the car, it’s none of my business. I get all the way back to my room door before I realize I could at least give her a blanket. I look at the door. Then the car. Then the door.

And walk back over to the car. I’m fully wet now, so I stop by the Bronco again and pull out my gym bag that at least has a pair of running shorts and a dry shirt.

I knock on the window again. “Hello—”

“Go away!” the girl yells. Then the baby starts crying for real and she starts swearing inside. Like she’s reached the end of her coping capability and is about to lose it.

I’m familiar with this feeling. I used to get it often.

I scrub my hand down my face and decide to switch tactics. “If you do not answer me, I will call the police and report you for child abuse.”

There’s a brief pause, then the window cranks down a single inch and the girl inside peers up at me from dark eyes. She is young. No older than twenty if I guess right. The snow swirls in the small opening, chilling the baby out of its temporary acquiescence. It straight-out bawls.

“Report me? Are you serious? I have no money for a room, OK? I didn’t plan on getting stuck here in this blizzard, there’s nothing I can do about it. So go ahead, call whoever you want!” She rolls the window back up and I knock again. It rolls back down, a half an inch this time. “What?” she snaps.

I look down at the blanket, then up at the snow illuminated in the street light. It’s so thick the light comes across as a dull gray. I am fully planning on just handing the blanket over and telling her that it will self-heat once she opens the package and exposes it to oxygen. But instead my mouth says, “I have two beds in the room. You could sleep there. It’s the last room they have or I’d just buy you your own.”

“What?” she says, rolling the window down another half an inch.

“I, ah… I’m offering you a place to sleep for the night.”

She stares up at me, blinking.

And then I can’t stand her attention anymore and I pivot and walk away.

What the fuck am I thinking? Stupid. What the fuck?

I push my key into the door and slam it closed behind me. I throw the gym bag on the bed and rip open one of the blanket packages. It takes about fifteen minutes to fully heat up once the bag is open, so I set it on the bed and go start the shower. The water gets hot immediately and this is the first stroke of luck I’ve had all night.

Luck. We are not on speaking terms, luck and I. Because my name is not Ronin Flynn. Luck loves him. Shit, if Ronin was in this predicament, he’d have broken down across from the Four Seasons, they’d tell him they only had the penthouse available, and he could have it for half price since it was sitting empty anyway. They’d send up complimentary fruit baskets and give him free spa passes to ease his worried brow.

I laugh. The sad thing is that it’s closer to the truth than I’d like to admit. Ronin is like… walking magic when it comes to life. Everything he wants, he gets. People love him immediately. They don’t scowl at him because he conjures up memories of almost blowing people up on the golf course or electrocuting boys in the skate park bathroom, or for being the town freak who read every book in the library, even the dictionary and the encyclopedias.

I have had my share of women, albeit on my own very strict no-touching terms. But Ronin has women throwing themselves at him everywhere he goes.

It’s… it’s infuriating. He’s literally a professional liar, for fuck’s sake, and all they see is sweet perfection. But when they look at me they see freak.

I’m a goddamned movie producer. I know famous people. I have a mountain home in Vail, a luxury condo in Denver, and a five-million-dollar monstrosity on Mulholland Drive in Bel Air. I take care of myself, I’m well educated, I’m not bad-looking. I’m sorta hot, actually. I know this, I have no trouble finding sex when I want it.

And yet I get sluts. I swear. Sluts who don’t even blink when I tell them they can’t touch me.

And Ronin? He gets Rook.

She does not give one fancy fuck what Ronin’s part in our business is. Her exact words. Not one fancy fuck. She loves him, no matter what. Unconditionally. She rode a thousand miles on a motorcycle back to the place where the most horrific things happened to her, stole secret files, and almost got her legs burned off in a house fire to save his professionally lying ass.

And I get no-name pets who want me to bend them over a couch and smack their pussy to make them come.

It’s just… what the fuck? Why? It’s like I have a sign on my fucking head that says I like the weird ones.

I might like to try a nice girl, or at the very least, a semi-nice one with a little freak to her.

I admit, I’m not wholly dissatisfied with the naughty ones. But just once, just fucking once, I’d like the Sandy instead of the Rizzo.

Holy fuck. I just used a
Grease
Rookism to illustrate my point.

That makes me smile. But then I remember that Rook’s not mine and I just walked away for good. That action—walking away from her, slamming that door and driving off—that was the most painful thing I’ve ever done. And it still hurts. Like… in my chest. I’m not sure what it is, really. This feeling. It’s a little bit like when my dad died a couple years ago. But not really. It’s different.

That was just… unreal. Like I was watching a movie of everyone around me going through the motions of mourning.

I did not cry. Not once. But my dad would not take it personally, because as far as I can remember, I’ve never cried. Not for a stubbed toe, not for being called names in elementary school, not when my dog died when I was ten. And not when my dad died when I was twenty-three even though I did out-luck Ronin in the dad department and I miss him this very moment.

I came to the conclusion a long time ago that I don’t have tears. I’m deformed.

This is not logical reasoning and I realize this. If I had no tears I’d need eye drops. I’d have all kinds of eye problems, and my vision is perfect. So of course, I
make
tears. I just don’t cry tears. This gets me through the introspection required to understand why I have never felt the deep sadness that others experience.

I look at myself in the mirror as the steam floats out of the bathroom. People who know me see the imperfect weirdo. They see the anti-social freak. They see nothing about me that’s real. And the people who
don’t
know me are instinctively suspicious. I have a vibe, or something. A vibe that says
stay away
.