“Anything else?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
Annie sat back and wiped her forehead with her forearm. “What are you getting at here, Frank?”
Frank looked back at the mountains. “Are you here ’cause you like me…or did Sturm set this up?”
“Oh for god’s sake, Frank. I like you. Of course I like you. Thought we’d been through this.”
“But did Sturm tell you to come back here with me? Did he pay you to come back here with me?”
She stopped rubbing his back and flicked the soap off her fingers. “Who cares? I’m here with you. That should tell you everything you need to know.”
“No. That’s not…Did he pay you to be here with me today?”
“Christ, Frank. I’d be here whether he paid me or not.”
“So he paid you.”
“Yeah. Fuck, I wasn’t going to turn down money. It was cash, you understand.”
“Yeah.”
“Listen to yourself. It was a chance for me to be here. And he said he’d pay me, got that? So not only would I be here with you, I was going to get paid for it. Fuck, I wasn’t going to turn it down.”
Frank closed his eyes and sank down to his lips in the water. “Go home.”
“Just relax. I—”
“I said, go home. Get the fuck out.”
“Fine. Fine. Okay tough guy. Enjoy your bath.”
He heard her wipe her hands on her dress, hesitate for just a moment, then heard the cowboy boots striding purposefully through the overgrown lawn and out to the street and just like that, she was gone. He fought the urge to call her back. Fuck her. FUCK her.
He eyed the Jack Daniels bottle bobbing around in the bath and wished it wasn’t so empty. He had a couple of beers in the fridge, but they wouldn’t work. They’d just make things worse. But the pills he took from the trucker, they were just waiting for someone, they were waiting for someone with a need. Someone with a purpose.
* * * * *
Frank stood up in his bath and dropped the underwear. It was the first time he’d been naked outside since the night the quiet gentlemen had made him walk up those stairs to the alligator tank. Today, it felt good. He stepped out of the bath and pissed in the driveway.
Off in the distance, he heard shooting. But it never got closer.
There were two kinds of pills in the baggie. Strikingly vivid pale blue pills, the color of ice in the sun, and green and white capsules. Frank tore off a sheet from the prescription pad and folded the paper into quarters. He cracked one of the green and white capsules open and poured the white powder into the creases. He eyeballed it for a while, holding the folded paper up to the light, as if deciphering the chemical breakdown.
Frank scowled. He set the paper down and tossed one of the brilliant blue pills into his mouth and washed it down with beer. He poured the white powder back into the green capsule as best as he could. That one and the rest of the pills went back into the baggie. He slapped a long piece of duct tape across the baggie, opened the cupboard under the sink and wedged the tape and baggie up into the sink molding, in the narrow space between the edge of the counter and the front of the sink.
He took his beer back to his room and got dressed. On his way out front, he stepped into the small room at the back of the vet hospital. The pound. Although the dogs jumped to their feet, all wide eyes and wider mouths, thinking it was feeding time, they didn’t bark. They were used to him by now. Some even wagged their tails. He’d cleaned the concrete weeks ago, and now hosed it out at the end of each day. He kicked open the back door and emptied the bag of food on the ground. Then, before he could really slow down and think about it, he snapped open the lock and swung the door wide.
The dogs blinked uncertainly in the bright sunlight until the tiniest dog, the one that darted forward through the legs of the bigger dogs to snap at intruders, trotted confidently through the open door, crossed the small room, and bounced over the threshold. The rest of the dogs boiled through the open door and ran into the back parking lot, barking excitedly. A few paused long enough to gobble at the dry food on the ground, but the sheer intensity at being outside seemed to override any hunger in most of the dogs.
He went back up front, grabbed the last beer, and went out to sit with the rhino for a while. He took it slow with the beer, just listening to the crickets, the dogs’ distant barking, and the rhino’s breathing.
The slow-motion rhythmic pulsing of the rhino’s flanks nearly hypnotized him, when all of a sudden, time caught up with him and it seemed to be gaining speed. Lightning bolts started sparking through his limbs. He managed to slow down enough to reach slowly out and gently stroke the rhino’s head, the space between the ears.
The rhino closed its eyes.
DAY TWENTY-FIVE
The next thing Frank knew, he was lying on the couch in the waiting room with an unbelievable headache. It was the first time he’d felt a truly vicious hangover since the accident, but he didn’t think it was from the alcohol. He sat up and a thousand nails pounded into the glass of his mind. Waves of bleach stabbed at his eyes, his nose, his heart. The hospital had been scrubbed raw; he could eat off the floor.
He decided he needed alcohol. Immediately. He fought through the haze of chemicals like he was running through tear gas to the back door. It opened to a blast of heat and he stumbled out into a mess of mosquitoes swirling about in the early evening stillness. He swatted at a couple and felt more land all over his bare back, but at least it was better than breathing bleach. As he caught his bearings, Frank finally realized he’d been awfully busy.
The lawn had been mowed. A handful of dogs watched him from the shade under the tree in the side yard. A large cardboard square, wrapped in several garbage bags stretched tight over it, covered a cracked window. He wandered out to the barn. The monkeys were full of fruit and happy. He had even reinforced several sections of chicken wire. The rhino’s stall had been mucked out, giving the rhino a thick, luxurious bed of fresh hay. The rhino chewed contentedly on a mountain of oats.
* * * * *
He found a half-full bottle of rum under the seat in the long black car and collapsed into the driver’s seat and tried to sort everything out. The situation with Annie was well and truly fucked, but he should have known better. Did he really think that she would quit using sex, or at least the suggestion of it, for cash? It wasn’t like they were going to run off together and live in a cozy little house with a fucking white picket fence.
If nothing else, at least he now knew the effect of the pale blue pills. He finished the bottle and felt a little better, but not much. He decided he would shower, find something to eat, and head out to the ranch.
* * * * *
Driving out there, he got nervous, and pulled into the gas station. The sign had just been turned on, pale against the twilight sky. He needed gas, yes, but this little place was also the only place open in town, the only place to get any alcohol. The clowns had moved whatever was left in the liquor store up near the park into the gas station. The last time he’d been here, he’d been with Sturm, and Myrtle had made a point of ignoring Frank. This would be the first time he’d be alone with her since the night her cat died.
He’d thought about trying to break into a house instead, see if there was alcohol left, but he figured there wouldn’t be anything left behind. Especially alcohol. Facing down Myrtle was quicker.
As he unscrewed the gas tank, he watched her reflection in the driver’s side window. Encased in her reinforced plastic shell, she stared at his back. Frank slammed the gas nozzle into the long black car and waited, making a point of ignoring her.
Gallons and dollars thunked along, and with a prickling of hair on the back of his head, Frank realized he had his back to the Glouck house.