“Like that tree.”
“Yeah, like the tree. My cover shot.”
“Have you taken pictures in here?”
“Why? You want copies?”
We laughed.
“I asked, but they don’t allow cameras in here, but,” he said leaning in close, “that doesn’t mean shit to me. I got all kinds of equipment in my car. I got a camera the size of a typewriter, and I got a spy camera the size of a pen. If I want a picture, I get it. I’ve been doing this a long time. I don’t fuck around. Before this, I always did fashion photography for magazines, and I tell you the God’s truth, the kind of women in that business are all whores, every single one of them. You look at any model in a magazine, and you can pretty much take it to the bank that she fucked her way into that picture, onto that cover. It’s amazing. So you take your pictures, and you get your perfect shot. You take some pictures for fun while she’s naked, you know, because it’s basically a given that you did your thing with her, and you know the pictures are going to look great, and then when she sees them, she doesn’t want you to have them. Meanwhile, she’s fucked half the building, but a couple of pictures drive her up the wall because she’s worried about her reputation. What the hell is that?”
“Who knows?”
“Women,” he said. “You see the girls in here? You give any girl the chance, any girl, even a fucking nun, and she’ll end up like this. Selling it. They’re all the same, and it’s like this everywhere.”
“Whatever.” His rant was starting to get to me. “Maybe you’re just bitter.”
“Bitter? What could I be bitter about?”
“Who gives a shit? You could be bitter about coming off like a queen, or not getting laid, or who knows? You sound like a fucking pig.”
“Oh yeah? As I recall, you more than welcomed that wet kiss from the chick in the thong, Marlowe. You’re right here with me, so don’t play high-and-mighty with me. We’re in this shit together. We’re kindred spirits. It’s just that I’m the one that’s keeping this real. I’m not bitter. I’m a realist. You seem to have some romantic fucking view of sex relations, but you don’t practice what you preach, so don’t give me that shit about bitter. If anything, I prefer the word ‘sardonic.’ It’s much more sophisticated.”
“Whatever.”
“You’re bitter,” he fired childishly.
I laughed. Of course I was bitter.
“There you go. Actually,” he said, “you know what? There’s only been one town in this whole country that I’ve been to that didn’t have one loose woman in it, one brothel, or one strip joint, or even a girl painted up like a fucking whore. Marshall Falls.”
“Huh?”
“Marshall Falls, New Mexico. If there’s one place where women haven’t degraded themselves, it’s there, and believe me, I looked.”
“I’ve never even heard of it.”
“Of course. That’s why I went there. The population is maybe a thousand, or less, even. Right in the middle of nowhere. You want to know how the town got that name?”
“No.”
He laughed. “I’ll tell you anyway. It’s a good story.”
“Don’t.”
“A hundred fucking years ago, this Robin Hood–type bandit named Marshall—they don’t even know his full name—bit the bullet there. He had a band of thieves together that robbed the trains that rolled across the vast lands, and with the goods, well, he basically took care of this little, starving community of religious types. Not Mormons, but something crazy like that. It wasn’t even a town, it was a fucking wasteland. He got shot, and he died, and some other bandits buried him there and put a marker over him. Decades later, a legitimate town started up near the grave, and when they found that grave, the weather had eaten half of it away, and the only words left on the marker that anyone could fucking read were ‘Marshall Falls.’ And that’s what they named the town. Some historian pieced that shit together. Ain’t that great?”
“Yeah, kid, it’s the greatest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Every town has a story. Even a shitty little flyspeck like Marshall Falls. This place seems to have a few. That’s why I’ve stuck around so long.”
“Well, ain’t we the lucky ones.”
“Damn right,” he said.
When the girls started blowing out the candles, we left. Anthony and I were both extremely drunk, but my supernatural metabolism had me in a little better shape than him. I took the keys to his Mach 1 and drove us back to where my truck was parked. When we got there I was ready to get myself home, but he stopped me.
“Let me show you something,” he said, and he led me around to the trunk of his car. There were about a half a dozen cameras back there in the trunk, rolls and rolls of film, and a bunch of wires, batteries, and boxes, all kinds of crap. All kinds of crap were stacked up in the backseat of his car too, but I couldn’t see what any of it was because of the poor lighting. I figured it had to be his clothes.
He started moving shit around, and then opened this one box. It was full of eight-by-ten photographs of places around Evelyn. He started flipping through them, and then pulled a few out. They were the pictures of Pearce and me, the ones he had taken at the restaurant.
“Here,” he said, “you can have them if you like.”
I took them and flipped through them slowly. The shots were taken in rapid succession, and going through them was like going through a small flip-book. Pearce and I slowly giving the finger to the prettyboy cameraman. One of the last times either of us had smiled. “Thank you,” I said, meaning it.
“Don’t worry. I have doubles.”
I switched the pictures to my left hand, took a deep breath, and decked Anthony with my right hook. The shot sent him back into the side of the car, and he fell on his ass. A tear of blood leaked from his lower lip.
He shook his head, then looked up at me with an expression of pure rage. He looked like a different person, but the look was soon pacified, because he knew in that moment that anything he could possibly do would be futile.
I shook out my knuckles, then said, “Thanks for the drinks, but you had that one coming for those pictures no matter what.”
“Fuck you,” he grunted.
I lit a cigarette and walked back to my truck. I put the pictures on the passenger seat.
“We all have a job to do,” he shouted. “It’s nothing personal.”
I took off.
“We all have a job to do, nothing personal,” I said to myself. It sounded true, I thought, plowing into someone’s mailbox.
TWENTY
A loud banging woke me from my deep, drunken sleep. That was another reason I used to love to drink so much—it made the bad dreams go away. I was so out of it, my head went back down to the warm pillow, and I was out again.
Seconds or years later, I wasn’t sure which, the banging came back, and it was anger more than anything that gave me the motivation to get out of bed. Some motherfucker was at the door, and they were going to suffer for it. The skull-and-crossbones sticker wasn’t on my mailbox for nothing.
On the other hand, I thought I recalled leaving a puddle of vomit at the mailbox too, and that didn’t so much have any significance that I could think of, except letting people know I’m an idiot as they walk by.
I slipped on my pair of jeans, grabbed my baseball bat from the hallway closet, and went to the front door. I was barely able to walk straight. The pounding continued. My head felt like it was full of lead pellets. Buckshot.