Drawings
by Andrew Warhol
Maybe you’re reading this in a doctor’s office or maybe it came right to your home and you’re sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of decaf, or hot tea with a half-squeezed wedge of lemon, I don’t know. The point is I’ve got a story for you, a big one, something you have to sit down for. And it’s not one of those secondhand kind where all the details get changed around and it turns out later the guy wasn’t hit by car at all—he was struck by a little girl on a bike, or something like that. No, this story happened to me and it’s all true, the sharks, the gun, Gil. It’s a tall tale from your backyard and I’m telling you all the parts they didn’t report in the newspapers.
It’s always a problem where to start, but maybe you got to know about me, like I was right before I met Gil. I mean right before. So I’m going to tell it like this. It’s autumn in Los Angeles. I’m watching a low, amber sky. There are wildfires in Malibu again and the sun drops through the smoke like an orange marble in dark syrup. These are the sunsets I like best, created by Santa Ana winds and someone with good timing. Sometimes I wonder if pyromaniacs practice.
I’m waiting in my car in the parking lot of the grocery store where I work. I time the start of my shift by the light left in the sky. I’m thinking of quitting. In a month I’ll be married, in two months I’ll be thirty-six. Being the night manager isn’t the job I want for the rest of my life. I thought about joining the LAPD, thought about it so long that now I’m too old. I reach into the back of my car and grab a maroon tie that hasn’t been unknotted for two weeks. I slip the loop over my neck and adjust it beneath my oxford blue collar.
Outside my car, I’m immersed in the woody smell of smoke and yellowed wild fennel that grows in vacant lots. The only way Los Angeles will change, I think, is if it burns.
Halfway across the parking lot someone calls my name. It’s Gil, only I don’t know that yet because we’ve never met. He is walking directly behind me. I stop and turn. Gil is tall. His clothes are wrinkled and dirty. He wears a green cotton army jacket with a “Seattle” patch stitched on the shoulder. His blonde hair is pulled back in a ponytail. Even though I don’t know him, I’m not surprised Gil knows my name. That’s why the store makes me wear it on a tag.
Gil holds a large shoulder bag out to me. The brown-andorange Aztec patterns are distorted by angular contents. “Those fuckers won’t let me take my bag inside,” Gil says. “I told them you’d vouch for me.” Later, I will forget to tell the police about the bag, about its contents and the fact that Gil liked books.
“I don’t even know you,” I say.
“I’ve been in the last two nights on your shift. I buy macaroons to feed the pigeons.” Gil holds out the shoulder bag again, looking a bit surprised I don’t know him. “My name is Gil,” he says.
“So you’re the Macaroon Man they’ve been talking about.” For two weeks now the checkers have been discussing Gil and how he always buys a dozen packages of macaroons. It bothers me, the fact that I’ve missed Gil every time. I don’t miss much, not in this store, not on my shift, not after working here so long. I take the bag from Gil and look inside. All I see are books. I read the spine of the top copy, The Poems and Written Addresses of Mary T. Lathrap. “So, what do you want me to do?”
Gil smiles. His teeth are surprisingly white and straight. “Just tell them I’m cool. They’ll listen. I’m running out of macaroons.”
I hand Gil his shoulder bag. “I don’t even know you. And, to be honest, I’d just as soon the pigeons starved.”
“Look,” Gil says. His voice rattles like there are small beads tumbling in his throat. “The way I see it, you’re the only stand-up manager in there. You have to help me.”
I think about the customers who come in late at night with snakes twined around their necks, of the male rockers in black skirts and women who wear knives in brown leather cases on their hips. And it’s true, I think, I’m the only manager who knows what he’s doing. A bag of books is the least of my worries. “Come in later tonight,” I say, turning and walking toward the store. And that right there is the moment I let Gil into my life, that little decision that flipped everything all around. And I promise I’m getting to the part about the sharks real soon.
Gil comes in a little after midnight. He’s changed his clothes and shaved. He has on a white sweatshirt that says Las Vegas in red letters, and pants half a size too small. He holds up his shoulder bag for me to see, a bit triumphant, walking toward the cookie section.
I’m not thinking about Gil, the Macaroon Man. I’m counting money at the front desk. I’m not thinking about that either, though. I’m thinking about the folded-up list in my back pocket. These are the responsibilities I have for the wedding and a timeline that my fiancée, Kay, has written out for me. If it were a small wedding, everything would be done by now.
The next thing on the list is hiring a band. Kay’s directions are explicit. No hard rock or folk music. They must be able to play dance music, including slower songs for the older guests. It occurs to me that we’ve thought more about the music for the reception than our vows. Sometimes I think I won’t hire anyone at all. Would it be less of a wedding? What if everyone danced to music they imagined in their heads? I think of a dance floor of silent tempos, couples waltzing, line-dancing, swinging, and freestyling. So much easier.
Gil shakes his bagful of macaroon packages to get my attention. “I’m all hooked up, brother.”
I slide the money I’m counting into a drawer and lock it before I turn.
“I knew you’d come through,” Gil says.
“I just let you spend money.”
“It’s more than that. You sized me up. You should’ve been a cop.”
I wince a laugh but say nothing.
Gil smiles, circles of freckles rising on his bony cheeks. He reaches out to shake my hand—a tan, veiny offering that hangs between us in the fluorescent light.
After a moment, I acquiesce. Gil’s hand is warm and firm.
“Let’s talk after you get off,” Gil says. “Maybe get waffles?”
“Can’t. I’ll be here for a while.”
Gil shakes his head. “You’re off at one. Another hour. I asked.”
“I’ve got stuff to do.”
“You’ll go home and eat cold cereal. Turn on the TV.” Gil smiles and shrugs an apology as if he’s hurt my feelings. “That’s what I imagine people like you do.”
I roll a pen between my fingers like a baton. I don’t like customers getting too familiar, especially the strange ones. I don’t like anyone getting too familiar. “Maybe I was wrong about you. You’re starting to sound like a dick.” This isn’t how to treat customers, I know that, but sometimes I have to with the crazy ones, show authority, stake out ground. And the store is definitely my ground.
Gil opens his shoulder bag and stuffs his macaroons on top of a book with a blue-and-red cover and faded gold lettering. “We’re a lot alike. I size people up, too. But we’ll make it another time. I’ve got to find someone to give me a ride to work tonight anyway.”
“I wouldn’t come back,” I say.
“Have to. You guys are the only ones that carry this brand.” He holds up the macaroons proudly as he walks away.
You know how I was feeling, like I was the only normal person alive. Like I was the glue that held the world together. But I knew what that meant right away because I’m the type of person that would say “He seems normal,” when what I really mean is that the guy in question is boring. But I was right about one thing because boring people are the glue for the rest of society, the people that have nothing to do but create rules, follow them, and make sure everyone else follows them, too. And if that was the definition, I did indeed feel like glue, a big sticky glob of it, getting married like I was supposed to, counting other people’s money day after day, making sure there was nothing new in my life.
The next night I warn the security guard about Gil. As my shift progresses, I’m actually disappointed Gil hasn’t tried to come in. I tell the security guard I’d like to kick Gil out myself. Twice, I check the cookie aisle just to make sure. Toward the end of the night, I hear my name over the intercom and run up front. I’m thinking maybe Gil has stolen something, maybe he’s resisting and we can throw his ass in jail. But when I get to the front of the store, all I find is the security guard holding a bent-over old man, one of my regulars. “He’s got vodka and OJ this time,” the security guard says.
“Leo, give us the stuff back,” I say. I know where it’s hidden and don’t really want the recovery job. We’ve been doing this for years. It’s these sideshows I’m famous for handling. Leo undoes his pants, hands shaking, and stands. “I don’t know how many more times we can do this,” I say. I slide the liquor and juice out from underneath the fold of Leo’s wet, distended belly. He leans into me and mumbles something I can’t make out. I put my ear closer to Leo’s mouth so I can hear him. He repeats himself, a day’s worth of alcohol souring his breath. “Not tonight,” I say, and then louder, “Can’t give you a ride tonight.” Normally I would but Kay has told me to stop giving strangers rides home. I look at my employees as the security guard escorts Leo outside. “Super Manager strikes down another freak,” one of them says.
I shake my head. “Careful. Freaks spend money, too.” I turn and watch the security guard put Leo in a cab, the awkwardness of it, Leo trying to bend at the waist to slide into the back seat. How does it come to that, I wonder. When, if ever, do you see who you are becoming? I watch Leo struggle into the taxi and try to imagine who he may have been before he became a lonely old man of few words.
I decide to leave a half-hour early. I walk slowly to my car. Even though it’s late, it’s not dark. The city lights turn the sky the color of scrubbed pewter. The fires in Malibu are not out yet, but the winds have changed direction, so the air is clearing. I find this freshness disturbing. I’ve gotten used to a Los Angeles of hard smells. Somehow, the scent of spent fuel and neglected jasmine feel more indigenous.
Leaving the store is always uncomfortable because it forces a realization which has gotten stronger, that out here I am not a manager. Out here, I am simply Dave. Just Dave. Dave Jackson. Tonight, I stop walking for a moment and weigh the currency of my name. I say it out loud. I stand in the center of the parking lot, occupying a tiny space in a large city. Is this my allotment, I wonder, the width of two size-nine shoes? Dave Jackson, Kay’s fiancée.
Walking toward my car, I notice someone sitting on the trunk. Gil.
“Sorry I didn’t make it in, brother. I sold my wheels to some illegal aliens for a hundred bucks. I had to take the bus all the way from the valley.” Gil lightly works something small between his fingers.
“What the hell are you doing on my car?” I undo my tie and the top button of my collar. I stand right next to Gil, who simply smiles.
“I’m keeping a child alive in Africa.” He holds up a rolled cigarette. “Ginger, cloves, and bone. I learned this in Seattle. I made one for each of us.” He offers me the cigarette.
“No thanks. And get off my car.”
Gil’s features tighten and his eyes close slightly. “You’re too uptight. Take a cigarette. I’m gonna change your life.”
“I don’t smoke bone.”
“You don’t even know what kind it is.”
I unlock my car door and throw my tie inside. The smell of fast-food containers wafts out. “This is why everyone thinks you’re crazy, Gil. You say crap like that.”
Gil slides off the trunk, his shoulder bag clunking on the bumper. “You said my name.” He stares into my eyes as if he were about to say something important. “I need a ride.”
I get in my car without answering, but Gil catches the door.
“Don’t take off on me, brother,” Gil says. His voice sounds vulnerable. He holds the car door firmly. “I’m just asking for a ride. You like sharks?”
Gil’s eyes are like dark stones in the dim light.
“Sharks?”
“Are you scared of me?” Gil asks.
Suddenly the air feels compressed and purple. I’m aware of my own breath and the pulse at the tip of my fingers. What’s the difference between Gil out here and Gil in the store? I see the shoulder bag and remember. This is a man who carries books and buys macaroons for pigeons. “I’m not scared,” I say, and step out of the car. Gil backs up. “But look at all the weird crap you do—out of the blue you’re asking for a ride and talking about sharks.”
“Context,” Gil says as an almost teacherly reminder. “I was normal. I was practically you. But that didn’t get me far.”
“So, exactly where are you now?”
“Moment to moment, brother. Right now I’m working for the government. Top secret. And all I’m saying now is I sold my car and I need a ride to make my shift on time.”
“The government, Gil? Come on.” I roll my ring around my finger, a gift from Kay. I’m still unused to the smoothness of the gold even though I have worn it for two years. She gave it to me when we moved in together.
“Holy shit,” Gil says. “Are you married?”
“Engaged,” I say, recognizing the monotone of my own reply.
“Then I met you just in time. I was married. She died, though. Rough stuff, brother.”
I look into Gil’s face, the new sadness of it. “Sorry to hear that.”
“She was the one. I mean, the one. Yours too?”
I look at my ring and then at Gil. I think of the wedding, of Kay, her active blue eyes and calm lips, her blonde hair and white skin, freckled over the nose. “We’ll see.” I lean back on the car, crossing my arms. Gil joins me.
“You never answered, by the way,” Gil says.
“What?”
“You like sharks or not? I’m training them for the government. You got to swear not to tell anyone. We put these magnetic bombs on their backs and train them to attach themselves to ship hulls. I’m involved in some heavy shit.”
I kind of laugh. Gil is crazy but not crazy “mad,” I decide. “Right, Gil. You train sharks.”
He stands in front of me, his white teeth gleaming, sharp looking in the halogen light of the parking lot. “Okay, Okay,” he says. “I’m not the trainer. I just assist. I’m not an icthyologist or anything. I just lucked into it. If you give me a ride, I’ll show you.” Gil takes a place next to me on the car again, staring off into space. He tells me a lot of things I didn’t know about sharks and corrects some stuff I thought I knew. He talks for a long time, telling me how he won’t eat the meat because sharks urinate through their skin, how not all of them have to keep swimming to stay alive. He shows me a scar on his forearm he says is a shark bite, a “nip” he calls it. He tells me all about how the government isn’t using dolphins anymore because it isn’t PC. “But sharks, nobody cares about sharks,” he says. He tells me about a membrane that covers a shark’s eyes as it bites into its prey and about the seventy-thousand-gallon tanks where they do all their training. When he’s done, we’re quiet for a few minutes. He’s crazy but he knows what he’s talking about.
I’m still fooling with my ring.
“That sounds like a problem,” Gil says, pointing to the ring.
I try to think of something to say, but that’s the truth of it. “Well, you know,” I finally manage.
Gil turns and shakes his head. “Forget the ride. You wouldn’t be much fun,” and then, “You’re just one of the hive,” he says in quiet accusation.
The hive, I understand, is Los Angeles. I think of the white box in my neighbor’s backyard, the bees crawling all over each other at the small slit of an entrance. Once, my neighbor showed me the constant procession of bees flying in and out and the little pile of debris, dead bees, in front of each hive. We watched a group pull and push a dead member over the edge. That’s how it is, I think now, looking at the store, considering Kay. That’s how I’ll end up, on the pile, without ever having broken away.
I look at Gil and the shoulder bag sitting at his feet. “Hand me one of those bone cigarettes,” I say.
I would have given Gil a ride that night but he didn’t ask again. We just finished our cigarettes and he left. And to tell you the truth, I was disappointed. I was never one to do anything out of the ordinary. I wanted to see those sharks, and even if there weren’t any, Gil, at least, was something new. Instead, I went home and kissed Kay on her forehead while she slept, poured a bowl of cereal, and watched a food dehydrator infomercial.
Days pass before I find Gil sitting on the trunk of my car again after work. “Give me a lift?” he says. He wears a dark blue jump suit, like a uniform, and I guess he can tell I’m looking because he says “Work,” tugging on his collar.
In fifteen minutes we’re headed for Riverside County, East on Interstate 10, not out to the ocean where I would’ve assumed. Gil reminds me it’s all top secret. “We got the whole place laid out like catfish ponds,” he says, patting his shoulder bag which is lumped between us.
Actually, this is not unusual. Sometimes, after work, I drive the freeways before I go home. I unroll my window and feel the changes in heat. The way the Hollywood freeway slouches between the hills and sinks into the compressed air of the valley or how the landscape along the 405 freeway changes from the smell of decaying asphalt to salt air. This is the only way I can reassure myself that Los Angeles is not a giant fissure into which all ubiquity has collapsed.
“Now that we’re out on the road, I should warn you,” Gil says after a long silence. “I’m a serial killer.”
I smile and laugh. I laugh until Gil joins in. “Are you going to beat me to death with your books?” I ask. The inside of the car is streaked with white and red light from cars passing and falling back. Me and Gil laugh into another silence that lasts for minutes.
“What kind of bone is in those cigarettes?” I finally ask.
“What?”
“I never asked you what kind of bone.”
“Human.” Gil sounds serious.
“No, really.”
“To do it right, they have to be human.”
“Enough of that creepy shit.”
Gil chuckles. “To tell the truth, I got mine from an herbalist and who knows what’s in it. I’m probably smoking chalk.”
I feel Gil waiting for a response. “So, the sharks,” I say. “You going to show them to me?”
“Sure, brother. You’ll be sick of sharks you’ll see so many. We got this Great White, a baby. They die in captivity. But they raised this one from an egg sac and they’re thinking maybe its gonna make it. Four feet long and growing.”
“Cool,” I say, and it’s about all I can do to hide my excitement, which is funny because as a kid, after the divorce, my father used to take me to Marine Land about once a month and I hated it.
We’ve been driving for a while. “Maybe we should get something to eat,” Gil says. “Pull off at the next offramp.” He fumbles through his bag and retrieves the blue-and-red book from a few days ago.
I look for restaurant signs but all I see are gas stations. It occurs to me I’ve never run out of gas in all the time I’ve lived in Los Angeles. “There’s nothing here,” I say.
“Of course there is. A coffee shop.” Gil thumbs through his book. “You could take every offramp from here to New York. There’s always a coffee shop.” Gil leans over, his finger pointing to a recipe for curried lobster. “I want to order this,” he says.
I realize what the book is. “You can’t walk into a restaurant and order out of your own cookbook.”
“This is Amy Vanderbilt’s Complete Cookbook. It’s a bible.”
I shrug. “I’m not really hungry.”
“I have a few macaroons left, I guess.” Gil puts the book away. He turns the overhead light on, the two of us dim and sudden ghosts in the passenger window.
Kay likes to do this, turn the light on while I’m driving. She reads or sometimes puts on makeup. It’s uncomfortable, not because it’s distracting, but because people in other cars can see in so clearly. Usually I shut off the light, but this time I let Gil go, watch him put on a Colorado Rockies baseball cap, threading his ponytail through the back. He doesn’t come up with any macaroons.
Just before Gil turns off the light, I settle on our vague outlines in the side passenger window. It’s as if the world is passing through us. The lights and concrete, the oleander on the periphery sifting through me and Gil as if we are inconsequential obstacles. The first time I saw Kate was at a film-festival benefit for AIDS research. She walked across the lobby carrying two glasses of wine. Her direction was clear and I was between her and her destination. At the last moment, I stepped out of her way. She didn’t acknowledge me and never missed a step.
“So why are you getting married?” Gil says as he snaps off the light.
“We’ve been together five years,” I say. It’s an easy answer.
“But why?”
I know I should say I love Kay, but something else comes out. “We’re functional.” We are deep into suburban Los Angeles County, the center of its pathology. The hills are black mounds speckled with bright colors. On either side, the avenues glare with moving headlights thick as serum. They inject themselves between homes, tract after tract. It makes me think of broken glass.
“You’re a mess, brother,” Gil says. He unrolls his window and leans back against the door. The car is filled with wind. “I bet you don’t like your job either.”
I crack my window open as well. “Not really.”
“You’re a bus driver.”
“What are you talking about?” I say.
“You’re like a bus driver for an elementary school field trip. Everyone goes inside to the art exhibit or the Archeology Museum and you stay on your bus. Maybe you sit there with a little fan blowing on you. Maybe you lean against the bus while you smoke a cigarette, but you never go inside. You don’t even consider it. You know your yellow bus with black stripes and green vinyl seats and that’s good enough.”
“You don’t know anything about me.” The car rattles over a set of lane reflectors and I correct my steering. The lights on the side of the interstate come farther apart now. Tractor-trailers dominate the slow lane, the sound of their tires a constant and ominous hum. My jaw tightens. “Look at you. No family. No car. Asking me for a two-hour ride home. And you criticize my life?”
Gil sits up straight. He pulls his bag close to him and looks at me, one hand on the dash, the other over the seat back. “We need to take the 15 South,” he says, pointing to a sign. He sharpens his voice. “I have a degree in Library Science. Two years ago I was firing pottery in Blue Falls, Washington. A year ago I was working at a casino in Las Vegas. I had a wife when I was twenty-six. She died. Nothing poetic. I came home from the library one night and she was lying on the floor of our kitchen. Aneurism.” He sits back and takes off his cap. “That’s a life.”
The two of us remain silent. I look straight ahead. It’s nearly three A.M. We’ve been driving a long time. Freeway lines shoot by us like comets. This is the stretch of Interstate 15 between San Diego and San Bernadino—desert, and foothills, and dairies. It’s a nearly black corridor. I drive eighty miles per hour. I want to get Gil to work and I’m ready to see some sharks.
Other cars on the road come fast and in packs. Nothing—then six or seven pairs of headlights advancing, passing, becoming dissipating red dots. A gray lump ahead interrupts the dividing lines. “Dead dog,” I say, veering slightly.
Gil twists around. “It’s alive.”
In the rearview mirror the body is darker. It raises one end. I look ahead, thinking Do not stop.
“Pull over. Pull over,” Gil yells.
I slow and stop on the shoulder. Gil jumps out. We’ve gone too far to see the dog. I click on my hazards, allowing anemic strobes of yellow into the moonless night. The smell of cattle yards falls like incense as I step out of the car and walk the edge of the freeway. Before I can see Gil or the dog, I hear heavy, clipped expellations of air.
I follow the grunts of the dog, looking for it and Gil in the near–pitch dark. And then I am upon them, a bull terrier, on the line, one lane out from where Gil stands at the edge of the freeway. It is up on its forelegs, trying to move, weighted by an immobile lower half. I see round silver tags, blood running from the dog’s mouth and pooled like mercury on the pavement. It’s going to die, I’m sure.
“A vet,” Gil yells. “Give me your keys. I’ll back up the car. It’s too big to carry.”
I say nothing. Gil snatches the keys out of my hand and disappears into the dark between the yellow blinking lights. Maybe it isn’t as bad off as it looks. I’m saying this to myself but I know the dog is going to die.
The car rumbles back and I help Gil spread papers and an old shirt on the back seat. A faint shifting light enters the car, and then I hear them, engines and tires making sounds like swarming insects. Gil rushes out to the dog and crouches down to scoop him up but quickly backs off when the headlights hit him. I watch the oncoming traffic and Gil fidgeting at the edge. It is all out of our hands.
I fix on the dog. First a few cars pass, all of them blue in the night. They stay to the edge of their lanes to miss the dog. The asphalt vibrates beneath me as they pass. The dog strains but does not move. The first sets of cars completely pass and for a moment, the world is still as forgotten freight.
In the seconds-long break of traffic, I realize I’m mad at the dog for not getting hit. It should be over, I think. I run out to Gil, who is surprisingly motionless, arms crossed. The dog begins to move as the second group of headlights approach. There is a jacked-up Toyota truck cutting a hazy aura in the darkness. I expect this or the motor home directly behind it to hit the dog. But it remains untouched as the sawlike sound of tires fades away.
We run out to the dog, bending down to pick it up. It’s quivering and cold. I know that it’s half dead but Gil seems determined. Maybe there’s a vet who could help but I doubt it.
“How should we do this?” Gil asks. It’s the first time he’s ever seemed unsure of anything.
A car horn blares. We’ve forgotten about the freeway. It’s an extended blast from a white Cadillac, backing us into the fourth lane. The bull terrier raises itself as high as it can go. My lips tighten as the Cadillac begins to change lanes to miss the dog. It does not complete the move. The driver flicks on the brights and straddles his car over the same line as the dog. Gil reaches out like he’s going to help but I hold him back.
The Cadillac slams the dog with the point of its grillwork, the white machine hiding the animal beneath it, then spitting it out the back end, flesh sliding fast like something fallen off a luggage rack. It rolls to the shoulder, halted by its softened legs. “Fuck,” Gil screams, running.
When I reach Gil and the dog, the night is nearly silent again. The only sound is the fractional click of the hazard lights. The black sky is heavy with stars. I touch Gil’s shoulder. What do you do with a lifeless thing? What can you do? We walk back to the car. For a moment we sit, staring at the animal, which has reverted to its original image, a gray form in the distance, dead dog.
We pull back onto the freeway. The image of the dog being hit replays itself slower in my mind and somehow I think I need to comfort Gil. “It wouldn’t have lived,” I tell him. “There would’ve been a couple more hours of pain and they would’ve put it to sleep.”
“It was trying.” Gil turns to me. “Just like you deciding to give me a ride. Pathetic, but trying. Do you want me to be your white Cadillac?”
I turn to the road. “What the hell does that mean? You act as if you’re doing me some kind of favor. Who’s giving who a ride, Gil?”
“I work over there,” Gil says, agitated. He points to a distant set of lights, a smudge of brightness vague as an inconclusive x-ray.
I turn on the radio, hoping music will fill the moment. The dial rolls across the FM line. Nothing but scratchy music fading in and out. The AM side is nearly the same and then, finally, garbled voices, a call-in show. I tune them in as closely as possible but I can’t make out a thing.
“There’s a coincidence. They’re talking about me,” Gil says. “They’re always talking about me.” He reaches into his shoulder bag. “That bastard in the car deserves worse than the dog.” He pulls out a gun. “Wish I had this out.”
“What the hell are you doing with that?” I stop the car. “Get out.”
Gil’s jaws clench. “I need to get to work. We’re not far. Keep going.”
“Get out.”
Gil points the gun at me. “No, really,” he says, “keep going.”
We drive a bit before we come to the entrance of Gil’s work, a dirt drive under a dusty billboard that reads “Goddard’s Year-Round Fishing.” It has a picture of a boy saying “I want ’em all.” His tongue is out and he’s pulling a catfish from a lake. Only someone has painted a woman’s body over the fish with flesh-colored paint. I look at the distorted cartoon of a woman, trying to notice everything, the gun still pointed at me. But in a strange way I’m relieved, or vaguely hopeful, because these are the catfish lakes Gil talked about, the whole top-secret cover for the shark program. And I’m thinking at least there will be people around and we can do something about Gil.
“So this is where you work.” I turn the car slowly into the driveway. I’ve taken so many turns I don’t know where I am. We pull up to a long building, a motel. There are no cars or lights. I flick on my brights. The building is pink or orange, I can’t tell. I think about jumping out and running when I stop the car... but the gun. Gil directs me to the second to last door.
“Kind of freaky, huh, brother?” Gil laughs.
As Gil searches his bag for a key, I look for a sign of other people, try to orient myself. I don’t see the slightest hint of shark tanks, which by now I’m not really expecting. I notice the smell of the lake, or the cattails rather, and the scent of wild sage. The mix sours the air. It reminds me of when I was seven and I caught crawdads for a bait and tackle store. Four cents apiece for each one under three inches. There were two methods, bacon tied on one end of a string and dropped into their tiny mudholes or a pencil for the larger ones. Either way, they rarely let go. I look at Gil, the gun still pointed right at me, like a too-big crawdad I can’t shake off.
“Come on.” Gil directs me with the gun.
“Is this more of that crazy shit like the bone-smoking?” I’m suddenly hopeful it’s that simple as we walk toward the room. “I should get back,” I try.
Gil unlocks the door and flips on a light. “It’s all crazy shit.” He looks past me. “A couple families come out here on weekends. Teenagers used to drink beer here at night until I showed up.”
Gil holds the door for me. It’s a large room. There’s a kitchenette with a hot plate and quarter-sized refrigerator. Across from the bed are an orange loveseat and a dresser, the imitation wood veneer separating at the sides.
“Sit down,” Gil says.
“I should get back,” I say again, turning toward Gil, who is not smiling.
“No, really. Sit.” Gil points to the loveseat, holding me with gesture.
I sit straight up, fighting off a nervous shake as I reach for my wallet. “Why don’t you take this and let me go?”
“You don’t get it, brother.” Gil stiffens. “This is not a robbery.”
“Then what do you want?”
Gil sits on the edge of the bed and I stare at the weapon, at the strong hand holding it. “Turn on the radio,” Gil says. He points with his gun. “Find that talk show we had on in the car.”
I search for the station. The reception is slightly better. The voice is heavy with static and still I can’t make out any of the words.
“Murder in Las Vegas. Ballistics and matching bullets,” Gil says as if he’s hearing exactly what’s being said. “I told you they were talking about me. They don’t have a nickname yet. I’m not flashy enough. But Las Vegas was number twelve. Took’em until today to figure out it was me. Three fucking weeks.”
Gil’s words come fast. He talks about all the people he’s killed. He starts pacing. A moth flicks around the inside of the lamp next to the bed. I try to remember what day it is, what month. I decide it’s Tuesday, it is October. It is fall, the time of year when offices decorate their walls with artificial autumn leaves. Suddenly I think of a band to hire for the wedding.
“Why are you smiling?” Gil asks. He sits next to me, still holding the gun. “You should be scared shitless.”
I say nothing but my muscles are tightly drawn. There are clothes heaped in the corner of the room and on the nightstand, a rotary phone with red-and-white service buttons. No sudden movements, I think. Late night nature-shows replay in my head. If a shark attacks, you gouge its eyes with your thumb. You play dead if it’s a bear. What do you do at gunpoint?
“I’m still hungry,” Gil says. “Do you want something?”
I shake my head no. I think about how I got here. I broke my own rules, went off the path. I see Gil standing in the store with his sack of macaroons, then sitting on the back of my car rolling cigarettes. What was I thinking? I remember standing in the parking lot and that small space I stood on and how much larger my allotment seems at this moment. “Why are you doing this?” I ask, finally.
Gil walks to the kitchenette. “You should thank me. This is the ride of your life.” Gil points the gun directly at my head. “Put your hand over your chest.” I feel my heart shaking my body. The room is suddenly bright and singed, like the heat glaring off white sand. “I need a real kitchen,” Gil says, lowering the gun.
“Why did you kill those people?” I say.
Gil leans against the wall. “They were bored.”
I have no reply. I’m frightened that I understand Gil’s logic, how merely existing counts for nothing. Gil walks to the door and opens it. “Stay there,” he orders. The doorway swallows his image until it is simply an empty black rectangle. The darkness could be the edge of a flat world, I think. I could step outside and fall into the universe. Gil returns with his cookbook. He’s left his shoulder bag in the car. “Take a look at this,” he says. He tosses the book on my lap.
“What do you want me to look at?”
“The drawings.”
The pages are stiff and yellowed. They smell like flour and soured oil. The text is broken up by simple illustrations, basic line-drawings of food and kitchen utensils. They are items a stick person might hold in a child’s picture, nothing special. “What about them?” I ask.
“Read who did those. Read it out loud.” Gil looks excited, pleased.
“‘Drawings by Andrew Warhol,’” I read.
“Do you get it, brother?” Gil is nearly frantic. “Andrew Warhol. Andrews are geeks. You make fun of Andrews. They draw stupid pictures in cookbooks. They work night shifts at grocery stores. They get married because they’re next in line.”
I’m thinking to myself if I make it out alive: I hope this will all make sense. I hope I will understand how I came to be in a marginal motel situated on a back road in Riverside County. I will remember the smell of the lake and the moth slamming the sides of the lamp shade. All of this will be clear. But right now I am charged, as if every moment is a crackling static shock, thousands of blue-white sparks snapping all around me.
“You can change your circumstances,” Gil says. “You’re worthless if you don’t. Look at me. I’m a headline. By tomorrow night I’m in the news. I’ll be the news.”
I start to speak but nothing comes out at first. The air is dry. I try again. “Those twelve people didn’t ask for your help.”
“They were practically dead anyway.” Gil walks to the curtained window and parts it with his gun. “Besides, I’m almost done. Thirteen states is good. I wanted a dramatic number. But none of that jail shit for me. I couldn’t take it. We’re doing each other a favor, brother.” Gil looks hard at me. “I’m crazy or evil. Is that what you are thinking?”
“Something like that.” For a second, I consider rushing Gil.
“I’m no worse than a bad storm,” Gil says. “Thirteen Die in Flood. Tornado Kills Thirteen. It’s all the same.” He’s quiet for a few minutes, looking through the curtains and then back at me. “Our lives are going to change,” he says softly, as if talking to himself, as if making plans. “Tomorrow there will be police and microphones and cameras. Nothing will be the same. The world will be listening. What are you going to say? How are you going to change your life?”
Gil lets the curtains close as he leans into the corner of the room. The night is still. There is no longer a moth, no voices. He looks at me and raises his weapon, pausing when it’s pointed directly at me. Gil continues, holding the gun to the center of his own head, and shoots. The room shakes with the gunshot, Gil popping against the wall, falling forward.
I cannot move. I see Gil’s hand and the blood running along his arm, turning maroon on the yellow carpet. I look at the door, waiting for someone to come, someone who heard the gunshot. The wall is a spray of blood and broken plaster. It looks like a garish painting, a red hibiscus with a white center. No one comes. Finally, I stand up. I don’t look at Gil’s body as I open the door. There are still no lights. It occurs to me to simply get in my car and leave. I could go home and pretend I was never here, hire a band, go to work. This does not seem feasible.
Except for this last part, that’s the story. I stepped back inside. Gil’s ponytail rested forward over much of the dark red exit wound. What do you do with a lifeless thing? What is the protocol? Gil was sprawled on the floor, a bad storm, an aberrant season in its own aftermath. I picked up his cookbook and walked outside, throwing it on the seat of my car next to the shoulder bag. The doorway of the motel room was a bright portal, a yellow of clarity.
I stood in front of that doorway knowing what was coming, what this was. I asked myself, what was my story? I was thinking about microphones and television, about police and Andrews transformed into Andys, about the chances handed to us, and those we manufacture on our own. What is the quota? How many can you afford to pass up? If the world comes to your door tonight and asks what happened, if anyone asks you any question, what can you say that will justify your life?
