Who is Charlie Conti? (16 page)

‘A
W SHIT
C
HARLIE
, what happened?’

It sounded like Stella’s voice. I tried to open my eyes but one of them was kind of glued shut. I felt cold, very cold, but the ground I was lying on was soft. With my good eye I saw I was in the back of the Buick. The door by my feet was open and Stella was leaning in, silhouetted against the sinking desert sun.

‘Special Agent Kramer…’ I said. ‘He’s not a Special Agent at all. He works for Celador.’

Then I felt sick and leaned over to the closed door by my head and just managed to open it before retching, except I hadn’t eaten much so it was mostly stomach acid which stung in my nose and throat. When I’d finished retching Stella said:

‘Charlie, you should go to hospital. Jeez, look at your face.
Come on, I can drive.’

‘I can’t go to hospital, not unless I’m dying.’

Boy did it hurt when I tried to speak. I sat up gingerly and looked into the rear view mirror. I could see that my eye was already black and swollen and there was a red mess on my chin and down my neck.

‘What do you mean you can’t –’

‘I can’t go to hospital because the police are looking for me because they think I’m a drug smuggler because there’s someone else called Charlie Conti, except he was called Ray Celador before…’ I had to stop because I thought I was going to have to retch again, but I just hung my head out the car door for a bit and the feeling passed.

‘So if you don’t go to hospital where are you going to go?’

At that moment the sun dipped below the horizon and I felt more alone than I had ever imagined possible. I didn’t have a place to stay. I didn’t have any money and I couldn’t get any. I didn’t belong anywhere. I had nothing and I had nobody; I was nothing and I was nobody.

I felt a warm pressure on my foot and realized at the same moment that my eyes were wet with tears and that Stella was holding my ankle. ‘Hey Charlie, it’s ok. You can stay at my place. You can stay as long as you like,’ she said.

‘It’s not really that. It’s everything. It’s this whole ugly fucking world.’ And then I started sobbing properly, like a little kid, my saliva going stringy and all. And I couldn’t stop but I was too sad to care and I thought that the world was the ugliest and meanest and cruellest joke that anyone could possibly play. And then I
guess some door in my mind just opened up and I remembered my mother’s broken porcelain doll and I remembered teasing Izzy about the woman with the bullfrog cheeks and not dancing to
Cotton Eyed Joe
and Mikey Katzounnis who I’d never seen since and old Hartfelder with his sad green sports car with the roof down on Park Avenue and everyone growing old and slowly dying all the time except not realizing it and I guess I must have been sobbing pretty bad because Stella came round the other side of the car and started stroking my hair real soft but that just made me cry more because a little bit of kindness in this ugly world is worse than none at all on account of it makes you think how things could be.

‘Let’s go, Charlie. C’mon, give me the keys.’

I wiped my eyes and my bloody nose on my shirt. There was quite a lot of blood already on it which must’ve got there when I was hit in the chin because the stains were brown-coloured, no longer red. With my eye all swollen up I couldn’t see so well so I gave Stella the keys and moved round to the passenger seat which was covered with the napkins I’d been writing on in the diner, the soft ones. They were kind of bloody too. They’d been in Kramer’s pocket before so I guessed he’d used them to clean my blood off his hands once he’d loaded me onto the back seat. I gathered the napkins together and put them in my own pocket while Stella turned the Buick around and drove it out of the parking lot in the direction of the highway. In front of us the lights changed to red and Stella had to brake pretty hard. Instinctively she stuck her arm out sideways in front of my chest, like I was a little kid and she could save me with her puny arm. It was so cute it almost killed me. I smiled at her but that really hurt my jaw, so I stopped
smiling. Stella looked across at me from time to time. Concern made furrows appear on her forehead. I liked that too. Then she asked, ‘Did he rob you?’

‘No. Yes. Not this time, but before. He’s already stolen pretty much everything that’s mine. That
was
mine. This time he just wanted to tell me not to go after him, and he took my laptop which has on it the evidence which proves that the guy who says he’s me isn’t me. Without that I’m not sure anyone will believe me, at least, it’ll take them a lot longer to prove that I’m telling the truth.’

‘So why don’t you just go to the police?’

I leant back against the headrest. ‘It’s a long story. I mean, maybe I will, but not right now. I’ll tell you everything later if you want, but right now I’m just really tired.’ And it was true, I was beat.

We drove for a while in silence. I was wondering why Stella had been so pissed at me that morning, but I didn’t want to ask because it seemed like she’d gotten over it. I didn’t think it was because she was scared I was a psycho who had followed her, because otherwise she probably would not have invited me back to her place now. My guess was that I had disappointed her by being just like all the other guys she knew, and I made up my mind not to disappoint her again. I mean, I knew what it felt like to believe in someone and then to find out that you were wrong; it felt bad.

The red glow had seeped from the sky when we pulled off the highway and parked up in front of Stella’s motel room. The motel was pretty old-looking – the wooden steps were rotten and one or two of the windows were boarded up in the other rooms.

‘This your home?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, I get it pretty cheap. I give the owner free dances at the Palace on weekends.’

‘Huh, I see.’

There were some little kids playing on the red earth next to the motel building. They were shouting to each other in Spanish, then I heard a shrill voice from inside another of the rooms: ‘
Ya estamos, chicos! A comer!
’

The kids went tearing into the room next to Stella’s. Stella unlocked her door and flicked on the light. The room was like any other cheap motel, anywhere else in America – brown papered walls, an old TV, two single beds pushed together to make a double and covered with a claret coloured bedspread. Stella closed the door behind us.

‘Let me have a look at your chin,’ she said, leading me over to the middle of the room until I was standing right underneath the light. She went to the bathroom and reappeared with a wet hand towel and dabbed at my chin with it.

‘Does it hurt?’

‘Not so much. Just feels weird, kinda numb I guess.’

‘The cut’s pretty deep. If you don’t get it stitched it’ll take a long time to heal. You’ll get an ugly scar.’

‘I can’t go to a hospital.’

‘You said. If you want I’ll stitch it for you. I’ve only got cotton thread but it’ll do.’

‘You can do that?’

‘Sure, I trained as a nurse. I worked for two years at the Shriner in Houston.’

‘And then?’

‘I lost my job because I slept with a married doctor. He’s still
there, of course. I wanted to go to LA, look for acting work. I figured I could act a nurse and get paid ten times what I did in Houston. But I ran outa cash so I started stripping, just to save some. Then I got work at the diner and, I dunno, I guess I got scared of having nothing again. Now I’ve been here for a year.’ She dabbed at my chin again.

‘Ouch.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s deep but it’s clean.’

‘You sure you can stitch it?’

‘Yeah, but it’s gonna hurt a bit.’

‘Like how much?’

‘I don’t know, it depends. Some people are more sensitive than others.’

‘Do you have any pain-killers?’

‘Not really. I mean, we can put some ice on it and I’ve got some Jack Daniels.’

‘Ok.’

Stella opened the cupboard and pulled out a brand new bottle of JD. Truth be told, I hate whiskey. I mean, I hate the taste of it. I like the color and the bottles and the fact that the best stuff comes from Scotland or Ireland or someplace misty and old like that, but the taste of it makes me want to puke. But I thought that maybe this time I’d like it. I unscrewed the cap and took a big old swig and at first it was kind of ok, but a couple of seconds later the taste hit me. I didn’t puke this time, but I might have done if I’d had anything left to puke.

Stella opened the fridge and took out an ice tray from the freezer compartment at the top. Then she picked up the sewing case from
the table and started threading the black strand through the eye of the needle. It beats me how women do that, especially old women who have shaky hands and can’t see so well anyhow. Then she lit a lighter and held the needle above the flame.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

‘Sterilizing the needle,’ she said.

Still holding the needle in one hand, Stella turned the ice tray upside down with the other and banged the table with it a few times until most of the cubes had fallen out. The freezer must have been pretty cold because the ice was all rock hard and
sticky-looking
, like it would never slide across skin. Stella picked up a cube and put it in her mouth, moving it around like a kid with a gobstopper. Then she took it back out again and pressed it against my chin. I jerked backwards involuntarily.

‘You better lie down on the bed,’ she said.

I was happy to. Truth be told, I was beginning to feel kind of
light-headed
. When I was flat on my back Stella adjusted the pillow under my head, then she kneeled astride me. She sucked on the ice cube again before sliding it gently over my chin a few times. She stopped to take off the sweater she was wearing. I’ve got to say, even though I was nervous about the stitching, I had to admire the way she took off the sweater, pulling it up over her head with both arms, her breasts lifted and expectant, then peeling the soft fluffy material down from her shoulders, over her pointy elbows and down to her wrists. It was smooth and sexy as hell. I noticed the tight fit of her t-shirt as she leant across to the bedside table and I felt the first stirring of sexual excitement. Then she picked up the needle and thread again and the excitement died pretty fast.

‘Ok Charlie, here goes.’

I closed my open eye and bit my lip so as not to scream, then I grabbed the bed sheets with my hands and held them scrunched up and tight as I could. I guess it hurt a lot because I blacked out for the second time that day.

When I came round it was dark out and the room was lit by the flickering blue light of the TV. They were showing a British nature film about scallops, you know, the seafood. I tried to focus with my good eye, then I noticed to my surprise that Stella was breathing into the crook of my neck, where it meets the collar bone, and that she had her naked arm across my naked chest, and her naked leg entwined with my own. In fact, we were both just wearing our underwear; she must’ve undressed me while I was out cold. I turned my head sideways to look at her. It was difficult, but I managed it without disturbing her. I know it sounds strange but I was struck by the sweetness of her breath. I looked at her lips, slightly parted and as inviting as lips can be. Briefly she scrunched up her nose like she was about to sneeze, but she didn’t. Instead she drew closer to me, until it was harder to avoid meeting her lips than it would have been to meet them. But I didn’t. I didn’t because I felt bad that I’d disappointed her, and I wanted to show her that I was not as predictable as she thought. It may have been pride or it may have been vanity, but whatever it was it meant that I didn’t want Stella to think that I was just like every other guy who wants to screw a stripper. So I turned my head away from her towards the wall, although I’d have really liked to kiss her.

I closed my eyes and tried to go to sleep but I couldn’t keep the voice that was narrating the film out of my head.

The scallop is possibly best known for its beautiful and distinctive sculpted shell.

It was cold in the room. We were lying on top of the blanket, not underneath. I tried to work the edge of it out from underneath me and then fold it over the two of us, but when I moved Stella’s grip on me tightened, like she was afraid I was trying to go someplace. Her lips were now practically touching my ear.

It was Hesiod who wrote that Venus, or Aphrodite as she was known by the Greeks, was born from the foam that was churned up when the testicles of Uranus were cast into the sea. Hesiod tells us that Aphrodite, most beautiful of all the Olympians, was carried ashore in a scallop shell.

I touched my chin and gingerly felt the bits of thread sticking out where Stella had stitched the cut. I suddenly felt very grateful to her. I mean sure, all that Dictaphone stuff was kind of weird, and also she’d overreacted to seeing me in the strip-club, but all the same, I could never have hoped for her to take me home and stitch my chin and hold me like she was doing now, like she cared. I looked at her again and marvelled again at the way her lips curved ever so gently outwards.

Famed in art and mythology, the scallop is also one of the natural world’s oldest species. Fossils have been found dating back to the Cambrian period of the Paleozoic era, about 510 million years ago.

I wondered what Stella thought of me. I mean, so far we’d not talked much, not really. I thought how much I’d like to get to know her. But I also wanted to see Izzy, now more than ever. I didn’t
know where I’d get the money for the journey; maybe I could sell the Buick and go by bus. Izzy knew who I was and that meant a lot to me, but seeing her would not solve any of my financial problems. Eventually I’d have to go to the police and they’d almost certainly arrest me. I didn’t have the money for a lawyer, not right now anyway. But perhaps if I presented them with the true account of what had happened, if I wrote everything down the way it was, then maybe they’d believe me.

Just inside each valve along the edge of the mantle is a row of short sensory tentacles and a row of up to a hundred small blue eyes. The shells are opened and closed by a single, over-sized adductor muscle. Attached to the adductor muscle is the orange egg-sack, edible despite its garish colouring.