Okay, so now I’m the fucking stupid one, carrying a mouthful of sore teeth as I follow Milo and Suzanne across the border into Enojada in the vain hope I could keep him out of trouble. Trouble I’d started, somehow. Once he’d started sleeping with her, I knew his eyes would be blinded by her whipcorded body and his ears filled with the angry buzz of her screaming, bloody orgasms, and that he wouldn’t listen to me when I told him who Suzanne really was. Or who she really wasn’t. But by the time I remembered where I had heard that whiplash of a voice she used on poor old Mr. Dunston at the fajita party, it was already too late.
When I saw him the next morning coming out of her motor home, I didn’t know what to say. Then I didn’t have a chance because he wouldn’t talk to me. Right then I decided Milo wouldn’t listen to me unless he thought I’d fucked her. Which I guess I nearly did. I suppose, technically, a blow job counts, even if you don’t come. As I said, I guess I’m the fucking stupid one now.
When Milo shouted at me while I was lying in the dust that he already knew, I was nearly as shocked as I was by Suzanne’s reaction when I told her that I knew what she’d done. She didn’t turn a hair. Just lifted the corner of her mouth and said, “I should have had you killed.”
“They took a pretty good shot at it,” I said.
“That was just an accident,” she said. “Or maybe a problem with the language.”
“Jesus, you’re not just a liar, you’re fucking crazy.”
She just smiled sweetly, watching me in the mirror as she fixed her makeup, saying, “You know what they say. When you’re a schizophrenic you never have to be alone…”
“You’re not a schizophrenic,” I said, “you’re just a bitch.”
“…and when you’re a manic-depressive, you don’t have to be unhappy too long.”
“Jesus wept fucking blood,” I muttered. “You are crazy.”
“What did you say, C.W.?”
“I said you’re a fucking bitch.”
“Comes with the territory,” she said calmly. “But you’re a man. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Right,” I said. “I never killed anybody for money.”
“If you think this is about money,” she said, “you’re dumber than I thought. Besides, I never killed anybody…”
“You didn’t have to, did you?”
“Nope,” she said, “they all lined up. And everybody fell down on cue.”
“Maybe I lined up,” I offered, “and maybe I fell down, but I got back up.”
“Not exactly,” she said quietly. “You got out of the investigation business. Which was all I wanted.”
“But Milo got me back in,” I said, but I’m remembering the sound of the firing pin shattering in my ear. “And he’s still standing up.”
“Not exactly, honey,” she said, her pure West Texas twang returning to hum like a strand of barbed wire in the wind. “Your precious Milo fell the farthest. And landed right on top of my lovely body. You remember that, don’t you?” Then she paused, turned, and continued as if none of this had happened, “And you know, Milo’s the one I might keep around. I think he loves me.” She smiled at me in the mirror and chilled my soul.
“Poor bastard,” I said.
“When Milo comes back with the wranglers, please tell him that I need him to drive me across the border to my uncle’s place when I finish the gunfight reverses.”
“How the hell does somebody end up like you?”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “That’s not my worry. Perhaps I just accepted my station in life. I’m a second-class citizen, dumb-ass, so I learned everything I could learn about how to live in a man’s world.” Her smile sparkled like a frozen river. “I could have made you come, you know. No matter how hard you tried to resist. I could still do it.” Her hand reached for my fly. I jumped back as if touched by a snake. Her laughter sounded like a wall of mirrors breaking. “See,” she said, laughing. “I do know how to live in a man’s world.”
“A man’s world?”
“But then you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?” she said. “Face it, C.W., you’re not a man. You’re just a kid. A mind full of nonsense, a head full of silly macho romantic notions. You’re a child. Wandering around with your dick in your hand. Speaking of which, if I were you, I’d button up my pants before I talked to Milo. I suspect he won’t understand.”
“No more than I did,” I said, remembering how she seemed to enjoy my humiliations when I tried to love her.
“Nor any less,” she said, “I pray,” then she went out the door like a woman in a movie. Leaving me to follow like the fourth stooge…
…all the way to the gate of Don Emilio Kaufmann’s estate up a small river canyon outside of Enojada. A half-mile or so below the gate, I nearly overrun them while Milo stops his rig for something. Maybe a long piss. I don’t know, can’t see anything but the right rear of the Blazer. But finally they drive on to the gate, with me following, and I drive past as they pull through the gate, then park the Blazer.
Unfortunately, the stakes are immediately raised. The gate stays open long enough for a black Suburban with smoked glass to roar out and tail me. But not very far. Maybe two miles, then in my rearview mirror I spot a guy with a mini-Uzi rising through the sunroof. As I see the flashes of automatic fire and feel the rear tires go, I grab the emergency brake, lock up the rear wheels, whip the pickup into a bootlegger’s turn, then slam head-on into the left front fender of the Suburban.
If our bumpers hadn’t caught and locked, the Suburban would have tumbled off the narrow track and into the canyon without me, but as it is, clinched together like love bugs, turning slowly in the afternoon air, I have plenty of time to think about stupidity.