“You fucker,” the girl said.
“Okay,” Scarliotti said, trying to be agreeable.
“Good,” she said.
Then it was over and she no longer looked too white and soft. She was sweaty and red. Some of Scarliotti’s hair had fallen out on her from the good side of his head and he hoped nothing had fallen out of the bad side. The trailer had stopped moving from their exertions. There were ten beers sweating onto a hundred pills beside the bed. The nurse and his father would not be back before the trailer could start ticking in the heat and bending on its own, unless they bent it again themselves with exertions in the bed, but all in all Scarliotti thought it would be a good enough time to have some fun without being bothered by anyone before the trailer found its way down the hole.
Scarliotti woke up and took the sweating beers in his arms and put them in the refrigerator and came back with two cold ones. “They look like a commercial sitting there but they don’t taste like a commercial,” he said, waking and mystifying the girl. “Women,” he said, feeling suddenly very good about things, “know what they want and how to get it. Men are big fucking babies.”
“How do you come to know all that?” the girl asked.
“I know.”
“How many women you had?”
“Counting you?”
“Yeah.”
“Three.”
“That explains how you know so much.”
Scarliotti started laughing. “Heh, heh, heh…heah, heahh, heahhh—” and did not stop until he was coughing and slumped against the wall opposite the bed.
“Quailhead,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You call me quailhead?”
“No. You want to go down to the Green Room and eat free grits?”
“Eat free grits,” she said flatly, with a note of suspicion.
“Yeah.”
“I thought you were going be a millionaire.”
“I am. Pert near. That’s why I don’t pay for grits.”
“Well, I still pay for grits. I ain’t eating no free grits.”
“See? Heh, heh…it proves what I said. Women know what they want.”
“And men are babies.”
Scarliotti started the laugh again and crawled into bed with the girl.
“Be still. Shhh!”
“What?” the girl asked.
“Listen to the trailer.”
“I don’t hear anything—”
“Listen! Hear that?”
“No.”
“It’s ticking. It’s moving. You ever thought of living in a sinkhole?”
“No.”
“You want to go down into a sinkhole with me?”
“No.”
“You want to go to the Hank show?”
“Okay.”
“I mean, us all, whole thing going. Trailer and all.”
“To the Hank show?”
“No, into the sinkhole.”
Scarliotti started the uncontrollable heaving laugh again at this, and the girl reluctantly stroked the shaved side of his head to calm him. At first she barely touched it, but she began to like the moist bristly feel of Scarliotti’s wounded head.
Scarliotti woke up and looked out the window and saw a dog and a turtle. The dog appeared to be licking the turtle.
“Ballhoggey wollock dube city, man. Your dog,” he said to the girl, “is licking that turtle in its face. That turtle can bite, man. You better get your dog away from that turtle, man. That dog is, unnaturally friendly, man. I don’t want to even go into salmonella. That turtle can kill your dog from here to Sunday. It dudn’ have to bite him, man. I don’t want that turtle to bite your dog, man. On the tongue like that. I think I’d start, like, crying. I’d cry like a son of a bitch if we had to get that turtle off your dog’s tongue. Your dog’s tongue would look like a…shoe tongue. It would be blue and red. Your dog would be hollering and tears coming out of its eyes. That turtle would be squinting and biting down hard, man. I don’t want it. I don’t.
“You better get your dog, man. We’d have to kill that turtle to get it off. If it didn’ cut your dog’s tongue off first, man. Shit. Take a bite out of it like cheese. This round scallop space, like. God. Get your dog, man. I have an appointment somewhere. What time is it? I think this damn Fruit of the Loom underwear is for shit. You see this guy walking around in his underwear with his kid, going to pee, and then popping out this fresh pair of miniature BVD’s for the kid just like his, and they walk down the hall real slow in the same stupid tight pants look like panties? Get your dog, man.
“Shit. Fucking turtle. What’s it doing here, man? I mean, your dog’s not even supposed — What time is it? Get the bastard, will you? I can’t move my…legs. I don’t know when it happened. Last twenty minutes after I dogged you. I’d get him myself. That dog is…not trained or what? Did you train him? People shouldn’t let their dogs go anarchy, man. Dogs need government. Dogs are senators in their hearts when they’re trained. They have, like white hair and deep voices. And do right. Your dog is going to get bit, man. Get your dog. Please get your dog. This position I’m in, I don’t know how I got in it. It dudn’ make sense.
“Do you ever think about J.E.B. Stuart? His name wasn’t Jeb, it’s initials of J. E. B. He had a orange feather in a white hat and was, like, good. Won. Fast, smart, all that, took no survivors; well, I don’t know about that. Kind of kind you want on your side, like that. Man. It’s hard to talk, say things right. If you don’t get your dog I’m going to shoot — you. No, myself. Claim your dog out there. The window is dirty as shit. I pay a lot of money for this trailer, you think they’d wash the goddamn window. No, you wouldn’t. You know they wouldn’t wash the goddamn window. I’d shoot the turtle, but the window, they wouldn’t fix it so they wouldn’t wash it, would they? I’d shoot your fucking dog before I’d shoot the turtle. That turtle idn’ doing shit but getting licked in the face and taking it.”
The girl said, “I don’t have a dog.”
“Well, somebody does,” Scarliotti said. “Somebody sure as hell does.”
Wayne
WAYNE THIS MORNING BEGINS unpacking a box of clay tiles for the HoJo roof in Scottsdale, Arizona, he’s supposed to repair. The first seven tiles are broken and that is enough. He is last seen leaving the convenience store across the street with a twelve-pack under his arm, getting nimbly into his car. The carton of tiles is left open, its four top flaps at angles suggesting a funnel.
Wayne’s car leaves a fine invisible trail of rust very near the color of the clay tiles. A bloodhound trained in Detroit could track the car, a 1968 Impala. A crime team could locate hairs matching Wayne’s along the trail of rust, blond and about seven inches long and not clean. Dental records, were Wayne found in demise, would be of little use identifying him owing to the extremely rapid rate of deterioration — equivalent to dentonic meltdown — of Wayne’s mouth. Wayne looks as if he has driven into a swarm of flies as he flies down the highway smiling and drinking and tossing his hair and tossing cans in the desert and forgetting roof tiles and roofs and HoJos, except for renting a room in one with a blonde, but he saw no blondes when he looked around after opening the carton of broken tiles to see if anyone was sympathetic and saw instead the convenience store and that was enough. Wayne is Wayne and Wayne is gone. Stone.