Snake Face Page 36

“The other arm must be next.” She chuckled. “Just kidding.” She took a street that led into an undeveloped area of dry grass, dirt and dust. They had been driving so long he had no sense of their location any more. “How’d you break both legs?”

  “Same way as my arm. Rock climbing.”

  “And you kept climbing. Pretty impressive for such a fraidy-cat guy. Or was that part of your therapy?”

  It had been. She was starting to trap him again. He didn’t answer.

  Sylvie persisted. “Come on. Did all that help you out or mess you up?”

  “What do you think? I’ve got a rod in my shin and my hip’s put together with screws.”

  “I meant your mind. Didn’t have to have screws put in your head did you?”

  “Jesus. Will you shut—”

  “Easy, Jellybean. I’m only playing with you.” She tickled her fingers over his shoulder, making him cringe. “But seriously, with you and The Savage. Was it really only your financial instability, not your emotional instability that split you up?”

  Of course it was both. They went together like wind and erosion. “Can you stop this bloody fucking interrogation? Let me be. Just get me there and get this over with.”

  “If you’re an ass we’ll never get there. I’m trying to get to know you. You know how much I cared about you back then?”

  “Fuck it, Sylvie, I had a crush on my voice teacher when I was eighteen, too, but I got over it. She cut me down a hell of a lot worse than I did you, and I bloody well got over it.”

  He realized instantly how false this was. The rejection by his teacher had been a trigger, pushing the already shifting fault lines of his inner landscape to slip faster. Who got over it? After the adolescent crush, Sylvie had gone to Austin and pursued her dream. Jamie, on the other hand, had lost his apprenticeship with the Santa Fe Opera and gone into a mental hospital. But he didn’t take his words back. He didn’t owe her that.

  “How could I get over you?” Sylvie choked. “You’re the only good guy on earth. I fell in love with you before you looked good. I fell in love with you before The Savage did, even when I saw all your stupid faults. You’re a snob. You get so wrapped up in yourself, you get all dramatic and mood-swingy. And I still saw this good, good person.” Her voice broke and faded. “While you did not see me at all.”

  “Jeeezus. I’m sorry.” Her emotion stunned him. “I was—fuck—I was wrapped up in myself.”

  “Because you were in love.” She turned sarcastic. “All flowers and dancing.” Her hands tightened on the wheel. “Do you know how much I wanted to dance with you? And after your show you danced with everyone—” The cowgirl dominatrix broke into tears and pounded her fist on the steering wheel. “Except me.”

  It took Jamie a moment to realize she’d switched from high school to Locally Loco. “Fuck. Sorry. Shoot me. It wasn’t personal. I didn’t ask any of the servers to dance.” Did he remember that? He had no idea. He might have ignored her because she looked like a weasel. “Don’t think I did.”

  “You asked the tall girls.” She sniffed loudly. He looked around the car for tissues, saw none, and reached for her purse. “Don’t touch that.” Seizing her bag, she almost the steered off the road.

  “You don’t have to kill us. Jesus. I was looking for tissues so you could blow your nose.”

  Sylvie shoved her purse down against the door beside her. “In the glove box.”

  Jamie handed her a pack of tissues. She blew her nose, wiped her eyes, and tossed the tissues on the floor.

  “Y’know you don’t make sense, right?” he said. “I mean, you say you had this crush on me, but you do all this bullying crap. And then you send Joe Wayne pictures of you sticking to me like a bloody leech, and you steal his hat ... It’s fucked up. Do you love him?”

  “Does the pope shit in the woods?” She seemed unaware of her mixed-cliché metaphor.

  “If the bears are Catholic.”

  A puzzled frown, then a hiccup of laughter interrupted her crying. “Don’t make me like you even more, Jellybean. It steals my heart when you’re funny. Hell yes, I love Joe Wayne. And I hate his cheating ass about equal.” She seemed to almost miss a turn as she veered the car suddenly into a long, unpaved driveway. “We’re here. Now do you get it? Now do you trust me? Now do you even thank me?”

  No. Less than ever. Nothing could be worse than being loved by Sylvie.

  The corrugated metal fence around the property was decorated with hats on the posts—men’s and women’s western hats, including a white lacy cowgirl hat with flowers, a few ball caps with tractor company logos, and a couple of Australian outback hats. The gate was framed in an assemblage of old acoustic guitars, broken taillights and headlights, a mismatched pair of stirrups, and various pieces of hardware from a barn.

  The art reminded Jamie of Niall Kerrigan, the partner of Mae’s father. Niall’s recycled-junk-art genius, reinterpreted here in a cowboy flavor. How bizarre. Joe Wayne Brazos, patron of the arts, or artist. All for his own isolated pleasure, unless he gave a lot of parties. The place was remote. No neighbors would drive by and admire the hat fence or the sculpture.

  Sylvie rolled down her window and pressed a code into a panel hidden in the guitar sculpture. The iron gate slid open, she drove through, and it shut again. She drove around in back of the garage, parking in the yard near a dog pen. Small dogs circled in a silent dance, like a pack of short-haired wolves. “This is Joe Wayne’s place, if you hadn’t guessed.”

  “I guessed.”

  “So, let’s go in and get your things.”

  Sylvie grabbed her purse and sprang out of the car. She was tightly wound, with a cool precision in everything she said and did, and yet she was also out of control in some way. Jamie’s alertness heightened. He felt like a deer scenting a predator in the woods, poised to run, but with nowhere to go.

  His phone began ringing inside Sylvie’s black bag. She caught the direction of his gaze. “Oh, I know what you want. You want to hold it?”

  He got out of the car, staying on his side, away from the dogs. They breathed in excitement as they ran. Phobic trembling took hold of his limbs. He hoped he wouldn’t have to go in the dog pen. Gasser couldn’t be in there, could he? Jamie fought off the image of his cat’s mutilated, dog-bitten corpse. “No, I don’t want your fucking knife. I want to see who’s calling.”

  Sylvie shut her car door, pulled out Jamie’s phone, and read the contact’s name. “Mae. Is that Big Red?”

  Pain and longing swept through him, wrapping the fear in a new layer of distress. Mae. He wanted to hear her voice in the middle of this nightmare. I’m sorry, love, I fucked up bad, I got in Sylvie’s car. I’m sorry. A melodramatic scenario of last words, like a death in an opera sung over a cell phone, flashed across his mind. He nodded, too shaken to talk, and reached his hand out.

  Sylvie flipped his phone over the fence into the dog pen and offered him the handle of the knife. This time she had neatly swiped it out of the sheath as she took it from her purse. He looked at her gloves, and his bare hand. He’d already touched the handle twice.

  As he hesitated, she flipped the knife around with that practiced cowgirl twirl, pointing the blade at him. “You want to get that call? Let’s go in.”

  He craved talking to Mae, but his legs wouldn’t move. He could scarcely breathe. The ringing stopped.

  “Kikuyu? Congo? Sotho?” Sylvie chirped to the dogs without taking her eyes off Jamie, or her knife. “Come to mama.”

  The basenjis ran to the fence, placing their front paws on the chain link. Jamie saw them as canine Sylvies. Small, tough, and disturbingly odd.

  He thought of running, but he was in the middle of nowhere with no phone, no water, and no idea where to go. Bullying him with his phobia was the least of the harms she could do. She could chase him and hit him with the car if she really wanted to hurt him. He closed his eyes and leaned on the BMW. He wasn’t going to get away—or even try. Not when he didn’t have Gasser yet.


  Boots crunched on dirt as Sylvie walked around behind him, and he felt a sharpness under his left shoulder blade. She hadn’t cut through his shirt and sweater, but his skin picked up the shape of the knife’s point. The pressure made him notice how much flesh he had in that spot. Jesus. Is my back fat? Would that protect him at all him if she pushed harder?

  Avoiding the sight of the dogs, he opened his eyes to look at his feet. His blue socks in brown sandals looked huge and nerdy with her little black boots behind them. Black-footed ferret corners a buffalo.

  “Guess we can’t go after your phone. You’d scream like a little girl and ruin your pretty voice again—and we don’t want to wake up Joe. Let’s go get your kitty. Walk ahead of me, and don’t make a sound. Damascus steel is sharp.”

  Keeping the tip of the knife at Jamie’s back, Sylvie steered him to the house, unlocked the back door and walked him through the kitchen. On the counter sat a half-empty fifth of whiskey. The red light of the coffeemaker glowed. A sludge of dried coffee baked in the glass carafe, giving off a stale, heavy smell. Sylvie switched off the burner without losing her contact with Jamie.

  From somewhere above came the faint sound of a television, the juicy voice of a professional narrator.

  “He’s awake,” Jamie said, hope rising. “You hear that?”

  “I seriously doubt it. You know what mister hot stuff Joe Wayne Brazos does at the end of a tour? He gets drunk and watches the History Channel.”

  Jesus. Touring made everyone crazy.

  “The asshole thinks he’s intellectual, until he passes out. And then he wakes up mean. You’d better be quiet. He’d kill you if he saw us together.”

  Jamie’s mind went empty, aware of every detail of the room, not thinking about it but seeing it as if he had never seen a kitchen before. It was the way he’d seen during the bouldering accident, in the seconds between slip and landing when he knew he would miss the crash pad and keep going off the ledge. Every shadow in the rocks had been so crisp. He’d smelled the juniper, seen the bark and the needles in perfect detail as he hurtled past a struggling cliff-side tree, his mind taking a snapshot of what might be a final view of life. Mental clarity possessed him that way now, cold, lucid awareness of his breath, his steps, the sound of Sylvie’s steps behind him, the light pressure of the tip of the knife. Senses alert, emotions shut down, he was like a building with the power off, operating on emergency lights.

  Sylvie unlocked the door from the kitchen into the garage and knife-nudged him through. She flicked the light switch up and down. “Well lookee there. No lights.”

  “Then please watch your step.” Jamie heard his detached voice speaking as Sylvie prompted him down the steps. “Hate to have you trip with a knife in my back.”

  She bumped the kitchen door shut with her bum, gripped his arm, and steered him though a blackness scarcely broken by the crack of light from under the garage door. Strangely, the place was warm, and air was moving. Joe Wayne heated his garage? That was nice for poor Gasser, but it meant the power wasn’t out, even though the lights were.

  Sylvie jerked Jamie away from the side of a white sports car. He hadn’t seen it until they were within inches of it. She said, “Don’t touch the car. Joe would hate to wake up to that alarm.”

  Jamie almost walked into a black Harley, but was going slowly enough that he stopped without getting stabbed more than a pinprick. He heard his weirdly separated observer-self speak. “Maybe he’ll wake up for my death scene. I intend to go out like a tenor.”

  “I’m not going to kill you, for crissakes, so save your high notes. God, you’re cool all of a sudden. You’ve been a train wreck for weeks and now you’re all jokey and clever.”

  It puzzled him as much as it did her. Was this how condemned criminals used to muster all those fine speeches at their hangings? How could he even be having this thought with her knife in his back?

  Sylvie said, “Lift that blue tarp.”

  He lifted its edge, revealing a drum, then another. “Now what?”

  “Take it all the way off. Check out your stuff. Make sure my word is good.”

  He folded the tarp in what felt like slow motion and placed it neatly on a shelf, aware of the tip of the knife as he moved, and counted the shadowy shapes of drums. The long narrow darkness he knew to be the Fishman SA220. The tubular shadow of his didgeridoo lay beside it. As he touched the didg to make sure there were no more tricks, no more substitutions, a small vocalization came from behind the drums. A meow that sounded like mer. Gasser was on the shelf with the instruments.

  A rush of longing shattered Jamie’s clear, icy focus. Though he couldn’t quite see the whole cat, his eyes had adjusted to the dark enough to detect the big white paws though his tears. “There you are, mate.” Gasser rubbed along a drum, purring already. Jamie stooped to reach out for him. “I missed you so much.”

  Just as his fingers touched fur, a monstrous spider scuttled across the drumhead inches from his face. With a jolt of panic Jamie jumped back—into the knife. His breath caught as the blade’s tip pierced his skin, and he made a sound like the creak of a stuck machine.

  “You idiot.” Sylvie jerked him around to face her. “I did not want that to happen. This is what’s supposed to happen.” She yanked him close to her, one arm around his back, the other holding the knife to his throat. “Hold me. Like you mean it.”

  She kicked the car.

  Within minutes, light from the kitchen sliced into the dark garage, but the interval felt like an hour as the alarm kept blasting, echoing in the enclosed space. Sylvie held the knife so close Jamie didn’t dare swallow. Joe Wayne Brazos, barefoot and rumpled, reached for the garage light switch and muttered a curse under his breath when nothing happened.

  His hand went to his waistband as if checking on a gun. “Get your goddam hands off my car.” He took a step and froze. “Shit.”

  Sylvie kept her back to him, hiding her knife hand. She must have had the scene planned right down to the lighting. Joe Wayne’s view would be of dim figures, a man’s hands on Sylvie. Not just any man’s. With his dark skin and fair hair, Jamie would be recognizable with no more light than this.

  Sylvie held still and kept the knife tip at his throat.

  Joe Wayne padded slowly closer, past the wailing car. “Sheeyit, Sylvie. You bitch.” He staggered slightly and caught his balance with a few quick steps like a dancer in spite of his drunkenness. “Jangarrai, get your hands off my woman.”

  Sylvie pressed a little more with the blade, still not cutting. In a flash, Jamie knew, finally, what she meant to do. And it wasn’t just to him. “I would,” he said, “but she’s got a knife.”

  Sylvie jerked her knife hand back and exploded in a spin. She lunged for Joe Wayne but Jamie grabbed her around the ribs and yanked her off her feet. At the same moment Joe Wayne fired a deafening blast. The bullet struck Jamie’s right forearm with a burn and a crack of bone. Pain shrieked through a nerve and wouldn’t stop.

  His right fingers failed, like their strings had been cut, but he didn’t let go of Sylvie. Grasping his right elbow with his left hand, he kept his arms locked around her tiny middle. “Drop the knife.” He didn’t know he’d spoken until he realized she’d obeyed. She collapsed, dangling in his grasp, a sobbing rag doll.

  “Nice roping, cowboy.” Joe Wayne put away his pistol. The knife lay in the slab of light from the open door. He stared at it for a moment and sighed. “Huh. I guess you dared, didn’t you, girl?”

  Joe Wayne tenderly removed the weeping Sylvie from Jamie’s arms and then slung her over his shoulder the way a parent might a tired, cranky child. The country star’s eyes registered shock as he looked at Jamie, telling him he looked as bad as he felt.

  “You gonna live while I take care of this mess for a minute?” Joe Wayne tilted his head toward Sylvie. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Yeah.” Jamie’s voice shook. His arm throbbed and burned. Blood soaked into his clothes and dripped on the floor. It leaked stea
dily, didn’t spurt like a fountain, but the sight of it still frightened him. His whole body began to tremble. Coward. He’d survived worse pain than this. Bloody gashes and broken bones were all too familiar. And he’d been battling the urge to kill himself for days. It would be life’s sickest joke if he could get through that and still die. “I’ll live.”

  Joe Wayne carried Sylvie into the house.

  Jamie sank to the floor and reached for Sylvie’s fallen purse. The car alarm was still blasting and he hoped he’d be heard over it when he made a call. He would finally call the police.

  No, he wouldn’t. His phone wasn’t in the purse. It was in the dog pen. There were no phones at all in her bag, not even hers. Fuck. He’d have to go in and find the landline.

  Weak with pain, he tried to stand, pulling himself up with one hand, grabbing the shelving next to his instruments. The shelves wobbled and dislodged garden tools that just missed his feet. He let go and toppled backwards, barely managing not to crack his head on the cement floor. Sharp objects cut into his already bleeding back. He turned onto his left side and tried to get to his knees, but his good hand slipped in his own blood. Falling face down into the tools, he crushed his damaged right arm under him. The pain was like being shot again. He rolled off his arm and something raked a gash in his cheek. Jesus, I’m hurting myself worse than Sylvie did.

  He crawled to the garage door like a three-legged animal. Locked. The door to the house. Locked. He dragged himself up by the handle and rattled it. Pounded. No answer.

  Jamie staggered back toward the spot where he’d found Gasser, called him, and lay down. The fallen tools seemed to gather around him like gawkers at an accident. He hoped the spider didn’t come back. His entire body vibrated with a kind of tremor he’d never felt before, even in the wildest panic or the worst pain. Sylvie’s slashing spin with the knife and the explosion of the gun echoed in his mind, the same image spiraling again and again. These people just tried to kill each other.

  Gasser dropped from the shelf with a thud and did what he always did: climbed onto his owner’s belly and then lay on his chest with one huge soft paw against Jamie’s cheek, purred like a freight train, and passed wind. Jamie held onto him and wept.