?How do I know you?re not??
?If you?re still sucking air after about forty yards, you?ll know.?
Bobby Lee rested his forearm on the truck window and watched T-Bone walk away. He slowly turned his gaze on Pete. ?What are you looking at??
?Not a whole lot.?
?You think this is funny? You think you?re cute??
?What I think is you?re standing up to your bottom lip in your own shit.?
?I?m the best friend you got, boy.?
?Then you?re right. I?m in real trouble. Tell you what. Pop me out of this safety belt, and I?ll accept your surrender.?
Bobby Lee walked around to the other side of the vehicle and opened the door. He pulled a switchblade from his jeans and flicked it open. He sliced the safety strap in half, the nine-millimeter in his right hand, then stepped back. ?Get on your face.?
Pete stepped out on the ground, got to his knees, and lay on his chest, the smell of the grass and the earth warm in his face. He twisted his head around.
?Eyes front,? Bobby Lee said, pressing his foot between Pete?s shoulder blades. ?Put your hands behind you.?
?Where?s Vikki??
Bobby Lee didn?t reply. He stooped over and hooked a handcuff on each of Pete?s wrists, squeezing the teeth of the ratchets as deep as he could into the locking mechanism. ?Get up.?
?At the A.A. meeting, you said you were in Iraq.?
?What about it??
?You don?t have to do this stuff.?
?Here?s a news flash for you. Every flag is the same color. The color is black. No quarter, no mercy, it?s ?burn, motherfucker, burn.? Tell me I?m full of shit.?
?You were kicked out of the army, weren?t you??
?Close your mouth, boy.?
?That guy, T-Bone, you saw yourself in him. That?s why you wanted to tear him apart.?
?Maybe I can work you in as a substitute.?
Bobby Lee opened the back door of the SUV and shoved Pete inside. He slammed the door and lifted the cell phone from the cord that hung around his neck, punching the speed dial with his thumb. ?I got the package,? he said.
22
VIKKI DRIED HERSELF and wrapped the towel around her body and began brushing her teeth. The mirror was heavily fogged, the heat and moisture from her shower escaping through the partially opened door into the bedroom. She thought she heard a movement, perhaps a door closing, a half-spoken sentence trailing into nothingness. She squeezed the handle on the faucet, shutting off the water, her toothbrush stationary in her mouth. She set the toothbrush in a water glass. ?Pete?? she said.
There was no response. She tucked the towel more securely around her. ?Is that you?? she said.
She heard electronic laughter through the wall and realized the people in the next room, a Hispanic couple with two teenage children, had once again turned up the volume on their television to full jet-engine mode.
She opened the door wide and tied a hand towel around her head as she walked into the bedroom. She had left only one light burning, a lamp by the table in the far corner. It created more shadows than it did illumination and softened the neediness of the room?the bedspread that she avoided touching, the sun-faded curtains, the brown water spots on the ceiling, the molding that had cracked away from the window jambs.
She felt his presence before she actually saw him, in the same way one encounters a faceless presence in a dream, a protean figure without origins, from an unknown place, who can walk through walls and locked doors, and in this instance place himself in the cloth-covered chair by the closet, on the far side of the bed, the only telephone in the room two feet from his hand.
He had made himself comfortable, one leg crossed on his knee, his pin-striped suit in need of pressing, his white shirt starched, his shoes buffed, his knit necktie not quite knotted, his shave done without a mirror. Like the dream figure, he was a study in contradiction, his shabby elegance not quite real, his rectangularity that of a grandiose poseur sitting in a soup kitchen.