It was strange to feel such unbridled hurt and anger. As a rule, he tried not to indulge in those emotions, knowing how easily they could overwhelm him. Hurt and anger were to be expected by a boy like him, living where he lived, knowing what he knew about himself. But Lasko’s action was beyond the pale. It implied that Andy was completely unworthy of respect, exempt from the ordinary rules of society.
It implied that Andy had no choice but to keep his mouth shut.
He waited in the shadows outside the Martin while the dinner crowd dispersed. He had already decided that confronting Lasko in the restaurant (or worse yet, in the kitchen) would be foolish. Lasko’s father could be there, for one thing, or any number of relatives who didn’t know Andy from Adam and would surely unite against a stranger with an accusation. It was better to talk to Lasko where no one else could hear them. Better to wait until he was walking home.
Ten minutes passed. Twenty. Andy studied the stragglers left on the porch, the kitchen help spilling joylessly out of the back, but Lasko was nowhere to be seen. The only person he recognized was Lasko’s sister Hegazti, the shy, big-armed girl so adept at balancing plates. He considered questioning her about Lasko, but decided instead to tail her, since that would probably yield more information.
She was heading away from the tracks along the alley behind Bridge Street. No one else was going that way, so Andy, wary of looking ominous, waited until Hegazti had turned onto another street before sprinting to catch up with her. When he saw her, she was turning again, this time into a vacant lot bristling with spindly weeds and auto parts. There was a house on the far side, next to which a flaking wall bore the ghostly remains of a word—LOTHING—which marked the back of a haberdashery that had gone bust when Andy was still a youngster. A naked lightbulb on the landing caught Hegazti’s red blouse and made it ignite in the darkness.
She was talking to someone in the shadows. Her voice was gentle, placating. Andy could not make out anything, so he moved closer.
“ . . . I made it specially for you.”
“No! I don’t want it!” His voice was slurred, but it was Lasko.
“It’s cream-filled.”
“No me molestes!”
“Cabron!”
The red blouse extinguished itself. Andy heard a door slam. He walked as casually as possible past the house, implying that he was on the way home himself. Hegazti was inside now, her big arms all but blocking the view into a brightly lit kitchen. She was talking loudly to another woman, Lasko’s mother presumably, but she was speaking Basque now, not Spanish. Andy could not understand a word of it, but her agitation made it clear that she had been the one who slammed the door.
So where had Lasko been?
Andy peered across the weedy lot, where a garage was leaning drunkenly against an amputated cottonwood. Its splintered walls had been patched with a Coca-Cola sign as big as a bushel basket. A corona of light, too faint to be electric, was seeping around the edges of the sign. Someone is in there now, he thought.
He moved closer, already weighing and discarding his words for what lay ahead. He had come here in the name of his self-respect, his honor, and it was too late to back out now. He stopped at the garage door and addressed it quietly.
“Lasko?”
Nothing.
“It’s Andy Ramsey. I’d like my book back, please.”
Still no response, just the sound of clumsy movement inside. Andy commanded himself to breathe.
“I won’t make trouble, Lasko. I just want the book back.”
The door creaked open. Lasko appeared in silhouette against the erratic flicker of a kerosene lamp. He was swaying slightly in a soiled undershirt and baggy trousers, and even from a distance, Andy could smell the basco wine on his breath.
“I haven’t finished reading it,” Lasko said.
“I don’t care. I want it back. I know what happened to the valise.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I saw it, Lasko. I even know how much you got for it.”
Lasko’s eyes darted nervously toward the house. “Pipe down, okay? I’ll get you the book.” He beckoned Andy with a sloppy sweep of his arm.
Andy hesitated, peering into the garage. “Is this where you live?”
“It’s sorta my clubhouse.”
Andy knew that was a lie. He could see a swayback bed against one wall, a table with a washbasin and a toothbrush, a nice shirt for school hanging off a nail on the wall. It looked, unmistakably, like a place to which someone had been banished. This was Lasko’s Elba, and he was ashamed of it, a fact that somehow, to Andy, made him much more sympathetic, if not an ounce more trustworthy.
He entered the lamplit cavern. Lasko tugged the door shut behind them. “Take a load off,” he said. Andy hesitated, wondering if his righteous indignation could survive sitting down. Finally he sank to the edge of the bed, since there was nowhere else to sit. Lasko pulled the Book of Marvels from a shelf above the bed and handed it to Andy. “I’m sorry,” he said soberly, the way drunks do. “I enjoyed it greatly.” He sat on the other end of the bed, head down, hands dangling between his legs, a whipped puppy. His dejection seemed so real that Andy’s ire dwindled.
“It’s not the book, Lasko, and you know it. That valise wasn’t yours to hock. It was a gift to me from someone who was hurt because she thought I was the one who had hocked it. I had to lie to her about where I had lost it. If you needed money for Frisco . . . for the swimming pool or something . . . I would have been happy to . . . well, I might have been able . . . but this way I can’t trust you at all. I’d like to be your friend, but why should I even help you anymore? Tell me that, Lasko. How do I know you won’t stick up a bank before you get on the Rexall Train?”
And that, Andy realized, was a question he had never imagined asking anyone. The sheer novelty of it was exhilarating—not to mention the chance to sound like a spunky dame in a radio play. Lasko, however, was not in the least impressed, showing no sign of penitence whatsoever. His eyes were still fixed on the greasy packed earth beneath his feet. “I didn’t hock that valise,” he said gruffly.
Andy groaned. He was tired of being a lady about this.
“I didn’t,” said Lasko.
“Don’t play me for a fool, Lasko. I went to the pawnshop. I looked at the tag myself. It said ‘Madrigal’ plain as day.”
Lasko shrugged morosely. “There’s more than one Madrigal around here.”
Scowling, Andy raised his voice. “Who? Hegazti?”
“Shhhh.” Lasko pressed a finger to his cushiony lips, then whispered a single word: “Papi.”
“Your father hocked my valise?” Andy pictured the sourpuss in the restaurant kitchen, the coarser, older version of Lasko who had barked orders to Hegazti and never acknowledged Andy’s presence. “What right did he have to do that?”
Lasko started to speak but stopped himself.
“Lasko?”
“He said he didn’t want no puta suitcase in his house.”
Puta. Whore. One Spanish word Andy knew well.
“But how did he know about Margaret?” Andy had never told Lasko where the valise had come from. They’d never talked about the valise at all.
“Who’s Margaret?” asked Lasko.
Oh, thought Andy. He doesn’t know. The old man had simply seen Andy with the valise at the Martin, and that had made it puta by association.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Andy. “Just someone I know at the Blue Moon. Forget it.”
A long, draining silence followed. Then Andy said, “My mother runs a legitimate business, you know.”
Lasko grunted yes. “My old man goes there sometimes.”
No surprise there. Half the town did. “But he doesn’t approve of me.” It wasn’t a question, just a stark statement of fact.
“Nope,” said Lasko with a wicked smile, waiting a m
oment before reaching over to sock Andy’s arm with the utmost gentleness. His drawn-out sparring match had finally made contact. “He thinks you’re a bad influence.”
“So he stole my valise.”
“Yep.”
“And he makes you live out here?”
Lasko nodded. “Till I’ve learned to be a man, he says.”
Another long silence while Andy wondered what exactly that meant.
“Are you scared of him?”
Lasko hesitated, then pulled a Carnation Milk box from under the bed. There was a small pistol inside, swaddled in kitchen rags and dull with dust. To Andy’s relief Lasko didn’t pick it up, just pushed the box back under the bed.
“You wouldn’t use that, would you?”
“Not if I ain’t got to.”
Andy didn’t like the sound of that, so he chose to dodge the subject entirely. “Well . . . soon enough you’ll be getting away from him.”
Lasko shook his head slowly.
“What do you mean?”
“The Rexall Train ain’t coming.”
At first Andy couldn’t take this in. He had already pictured the train so vividly in his mind’s eye, right down to the cosmetics car and the maraschino cherry exhibit, that it seemed almost impossible that he might not see it for real.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I don’t know why not.” Lasko’s anger had flared out of nowhere. “It just ain’t. Mr. Yee got a telegram two days ago. It’s goin’ to every goddamn state in the union ’cept Nevada. They’re circlin’ right around us . . . Utah, Idaho, Oregon. I guess we ain’t worth it. I don’t blame ’em. I wouldn’t come here neither.”
Andy made a murmur of sympathy. Or tried his best to.
So that was it. This explained why Lasko had been hiding out. It explained why Hegazti had been trying to soothe him with pastries. His dream of escape, preposterous as it might have been, had died overnight, so he was mourning it with wine and bile. It had nothing to do with the valise. Nothing to do with Andy either.
Andy slapped his hands on his thighs and rose. “I gotta go, Lasko.”
“Why?”
“I just have to. It’s late. I gotta get the truck back to Mama. I’m really sorry about the train.”
Slack-mouthed, Lasko looked up at him. “You’re leavin’ cuz there ain’t gonna be no train?”
“Don’t be a nincompoop. I was never even going on the train.”
“Why not?”
“You didn’t ask me, Lasko. You just say things and strut around like a rooster. You act like I’m not even here. You don’t even call me by my name.”
Lasko stood up. “I did ask you—”
“No, you didn’t. Never. I would’ve remembered.”
Their faces were even now, inches apart. Andy was awash in the smell of wine and sweat and hair oil. The almost tactile smell of transgression.
“I meant to ask you,” said Lasko.
“That’s it? That’s what you have to say?”
Lasko’s eyelashes dipped like a raven’s wing over a dark lake. “ ‘I meant to ask you, Andy’?”
Andy couldn’t help but smile. “Too late for that now.”
“You woulda gone with me, you mean?”
“I mighta.”
“I thought you didn’t like me.”
“Why would I have agreed to anything if I didn’t like you? You don’t say ‘Abyssinia’ to someone you don’t like.”
Lasko stumbled forward like a bear hit with buckshot, wrapping his arms around Andy’s shoulders. It seemed no more than a drunken display of affection, so Andy received him awkwardly. The truth was, he would have liked a kiss at the moment, a tender, uncomplicated one, the kiss of a prince in a movie musical. But there was no denying how good the hug felt. He wanted it to last longer than it did.
When Lasko pulled away, he looked Andy square in the eyes. “Wanna stay?” he asked huskily. “Wanna mess around?” One of his hands had already moved from Andy’s back to the front of Andy’s trousers, where, in the most perfunctory way, he began to rub Andy’s pecker through the rumpled linen, as if it were a magic lamp from which a genie could be summoned on command.
“Stop,” said Andy. “Don’t.”
“Boys can do this, you know.” Lasko was still rubbing away. “We help each other out. It’s what we do.”
“Lasko, no.”
“I’ll suck you first, if you want. I don’t mind.”
“I’m going now. Let go of me.”
“C’mon. We won’t kiss or nothin’. I promise. We’re buddies, right? We’ll do it like men.”
Andy swerved away from him to make good on his word, but Lasko seized his arm and yanked him back. “You think you’re better’n me?”
Andy winced, shaking his head. “No,” he said softly. “Just different.”
“You ain’t no different,” Lasko snarled. “You’re a godforsaken nance. Everybody knows about you.”
“Nobody knows about me,” said Andy.
He opened the door and went out. He knew Lasko wouldn’t follow him, because their raised voices had already attracted attention from the house. Lasko’s mother, the one who cooked the “World-Famous Lamb” at the Martin, was standing by her back door, watching him in leery silence. Andy passed within yards of her, projecting innocence with calm, letting his dignity ascend from his wisteria toes.
“Good night, Mrs. Madrigal,” he said quietly, heading into the night.
Chapter 17
THE SUDDEN RESIDENCE
Brian had Yelped a place for breakfast in Winnemucca, a diner on the main drag with an old-timey sign that looked promising. They could have eaten back at the Winnie, but they were chasing down their little mystery today, so bacon and eggs seemed about right by way of fortification. Plus he wanted to get Anna out of the barge, help her reconnect spiritually with her long-lost hometown—a fucking challenge on this strip crammed with mini-marts and 1960s motels. At least the diner hinted at a serious lineage, with its shiny pine walls and leatherette booths.
“You know,” he said. “This coulda been here when you were here.”
“ ’Fraid not,” said Wren as she held up the menu for Anna to peruse. “Nineteen forty-eight. Says so here on the back.”
“Well, that’s pretty old,” he offered, somewhat deflated.
“I was in Minneapolis by then,” Anna told him sweetly. “With a wife and a four-year-old daughter.”
“Ah . . . right.”
Anna gave him one of her private nice-try benedictions and turned back to Wren. “Dare we consider the raspberry crepes?”
“So how did that even happen?” asked Wren.
“What? Crepes in Winnemucca?”
Wren chuckled. “The wife and the daughter.”
“Oh . . . at an army dance.”
“No shit?”
“Fort Ord. Do you know where that is?”
“Monterey Bay,” Brian replied, though he himself had not been asked.
“They used to train troops there,” Anna continued. “I typed munitions reports for an alcoholic officer. I had a lot of drunks to deal with back then.”
“So you met your wife at this dance.” Wren was coaxing her back to the love story. Women, Brian had noticed, always want to know where people met. Even tough customers like Wren want to know. “What was it about her that made—”
“—a man like me want to get married?”
“Yeah.”
“She was pretty,” said Anna. “I was lonely. I was looking for normal, and she had more than her share of it.”
“Did you have a sex life?”
“When I put my mind to it.”
Brian made a secret screwy face at his wife. She made one back and handed him the menu with a flourish, as if to say “Leave us to our girl talk.”
They were in love with each other, these two. He had known it since Tahoe. It’s exactly what he had hoped for, of course—Wren’s full grasp of the primal force that was Anna—but he was already feeling a little selfish about having laid such a terrible trap.
Don’t get too attached, he wanted to say. I don’t want you to hurt like I will.
The waitress who took their orders was a willowy blonde with loopy earrings who asked cheerfully if they were “just passing through.” The town did seem geared to people on their way to somewhere else, but Brian found himself touched by her low expectations, so he volunteered that Anna had grown up there.
“Really?” said the waitress, turning to Anna. “Whereabouts?”
“Out on Jungo Road,” Anna replied discreetly.
“Gah. My husband works out there in the gold mines. We moved here from North Dakota last year. He’s an engineer.”
“There are gold mines on Jungo Road?” Anna’s interest was clearly piqued.
“It’s not what you think. Not like big chunks or anything—I wish. They leach little tiny bits out of the ground. With cyanide. In these big pits. Pays pretty good.”
“I would imagine,” Brian deadpanned, glancing at Wren.
The waitress, no dummy, seemed to catch his drift. “It’s not harmful to the environment or anything. They’ve proven it. They’ve done tests.”
Yep, he thought. The best money can buy.
She took their orders and left. When she was out of earshot, Wren leaned across the table on her elbows and let her pewter ponytail flick once for emphasis.
“Do not give her a hard time.”
“Why not?”
“Because she’s nice. And her husband works in a pit full of cyanide.”
He couldn’t help but grin. “You know it’s evil, right? There’s not more gold left to take, so they’re poisoning it out of the earth. And when that shit spills, which it does on a fairly regular basis—”
“On the other hand,” said Anna, “the crepes look a bit iffy.”
Brian recognized this tactic, the sly way Anna had of deflecting his zealotry. He looked at her directly. “But this is out where you grew up, right? The very ground.”