My first coherent thought in what felt like days was a faded memory of my father teaching me to drive. He’d set stakes in the ground marking imaginary curbs, and cars in an overgrown field behind our barn, promised Hell if I hit any of them. When my eyes peeled open I was sixteen again, sweaty palms on the wheel of my father’s old Buick, but only for a moment. I blinked and the memory faded. The car I found myself in was blue, its vinyl interior cracked and sun-baked, but it was not my father’s. Neither was it mine.
Tall dead grass the color of spun gold stretched higher than the windows leaving little to see but weeds and a thin sliver of a sapphire sky. The air was sticky, stale and still, crawling with the buzz of cicadas. Vengeful rays from an angry sun splashed on the dirty windshield, flooded my eyes as they struggled to stay open, fed the throbbing in my skull. Tasteless dust coated my mouth contrasting with the faint tang of copper at the back of my throat.
I’d had another black out. A bad one. How I came in possession of this car, what it was doing buried here in a field, even where ever the Hell here was, were mysteries. Last things I remembered: a truck stop on the Iowa border and an overall wearing fat man named Leroy. At least there weren’t any bodies in the back seat this time. Checking the trunk could wait; I hated surprises.
Three years I’d been blipping out for a few hours or maybe days at a time before coming to my senses in some mess or another. It was almost comical the first time, waking tangled in the sheets of a married woman with her husband banging on the bedroom door. She was a pretty blonde but hardly worth getting all broken up over so I left through the bathroom window wearing nothing but her husband’s boots. After that, it got worse. Last winter I nearly froze solid on a park bench in the middle of a January snow storm clad in boxer shorts and a tee-shirt, a bloody knife frozen to my palm.
A doctor told me this “phenomenon” was caused by brain damage “incurred” by the fragmentation of the bullet that nearly killed me. What that meant was a good chunk of my brain, the part responsible for processing memory, had been Swiss-cheesed. He said things will probably never get better but they just may get worse.
Holding a normal job had proven Herculean. Women, well they tended not to stick around for more than a week even before the big bang -- unless I was paying. Consequently, the whole two point five kids and a golden retriever in the back yard was out the window. The kind of chicks who dig men in my line of work aren’t looking for commitment and my little problem made it impossible to get straight even if I’d wanted to. What did that leave me? Pillaging, pilfering, and murder, yo ho!
I don’t believe in karma. Life would be too depressing if I did, but I do believe that my problem was punishment for getting involved with that tricky little bitch in the first place.
On the seat beside me was a rumpled map and a half eaten granola bar. I munched the nuts, wearing an idiot grin, and studied the map. A jagged trail of red dots ran across the coffee stained paper ending in an angry red circle around a little town called Mechanic‘s Falls. Apparently, I knew where I was going; I’d always known why.
I popped the glove compartment to stuff the map away and a large caliber pistol jumped out into the seat. It startled me at first but the cold, unforgiving steel fit comfortably in my hand, was smooth against my throbbing head. I sat for a moment smelling the oil, the burnt cordite, and tried to remember what life was like before a bullet through the brain. But I couldn’t afford to reminisce, I had business to attend to. The gun and map went into the glove compartment; the granola bar out the window; the car into reverse.
Mechanic’s Falls was a truck stop town clinging to vestiges of life on interstate exit ramp. The first impression I got was from a dumpy little gas station and a flea bag motel. It wasn’t a good one. A bullet-ridden sign promised an historic district further down the road. I found nothing but a cluster of near-deserted brick buildings huddled around a decaying town square and crumbling band stand. Maybe, in years past, the buildings had been five and dimes, soda shops, even a department store. What was left were an All-For-A-Dollar, a druggist, and a greasy spoon diner with a few haggard faces frozen in the windows as if in a grand still life. It could have been quaint but I’d bet money townsfolk didn’t even celebrate Independence Day anymore.
At the diner a frail waitress in pressure hose seated me in a corner booth.
“Ain’t you hot in that get up mister?” she said, eying my crumpled and sweat darkened suit.
“Quite,” I said, and listened patiently as she rattled off a list of specials that sounded none too special and tried desperately to pour me a cup of coffee. I ordered a soda and grilled cheese, would have had a burger but didn’t want to chance food poisoning.
Through the grimy window I watched a withered old man pull a rusty wagon across the square, stopping to toss cans into a green trash bag. I wondered if he remembered town picnics and church suppers and Rotary Club socials. I was tempted to ask but my food materialized and I suddenly remembered being hungry.
When the waitress came by with my check, I flashed a smile and a wrinkled picture. “You seen her around here lately? She’s five-five, maybe a hundred and twenty pounds. Goes by the name of Rose.” She bent at the waist with an audible crack to look at the snapshot. In it Geena was smiling on a beach in Cozumel, wearing a pink bikini, and holding a green glass full of margarita: our first vacation together after the job in Nevada. It was the only photo I’d kept, not for sentimental reasons but because I wasn’t in it and because I needed something to flash to dim-bulb old ladies in Podunk towns.
“She in trouble or something.” Her grey eyes fixated on the scar at my temple. I could feel my life draining away like water being sucked from the soil by a greedy cactus. Her breath smelled of damp ashtrays.
“In trouble? No Ma’am,” I said. “Is trouble.”
“What she do?”
“Shot a man in Reno.”
“He deserve it?”
“No ma’am.”
“I think I seen her over to Bob’s place. Check with him down the street at the grocer. He rents rooms up above.” I paid her and, as she shuffled off to the back, hoped she‘d fall and break a hip.

Bob was a fat man. A tiny red apron stretched over his prodigious gut. He was leaning on the counter behind an antique till as I came in, reading a magazine wrapped in a newspaper. Perhaps reading wasn’t quite the right verb as I gathered the magazine didn‘t have many words.
“I need a room,” I said, thought about showing him the picture but didn’t. Geena didn’t need to be fodder for any of Bob’s dirty fantasies.
“Motel’s down the road, by the on-ramp.” He said without looking up.
“I was told you could set me up right here in town.”
He folded his paper neatly and set it aside none-too-quickly. His eyes were small and black.
“Whatever. Fifty a night, two hundred a week. No loud noises or parties after nine.”
“I look like a partier to you?” I flashed him a smile but he remained unconvinced. I’d have to work on those damned smiles.
Of course a rat hole in a dive like this wasn’t worth half of what Bob wanted. Must have been the suit I was wearing. People see a suit and think you’ve got money, even if it’s as wrinkled as mine. I dropped a C-note in his fat palm and followed his fat ass up a rickety set of wooden stairs, letting him take the first four or five to see if they’d hold his weight.
Upstairs, he hustled me into a dimly lit corridor with four doors, two to the left and two to the right. He showed me to the second on the right and left without offering turn down service. So much for his tip! The room was musty. A lumpy bed, night stand and cracked tiffany lamp were the only furnishings, not even a television. The adjoining bathroom’s fixtures were stained green and brown and red. A single age-warped window looked out over a sagging porch roof and the deserted street below.
I’d seen worse.
Couldn’t picture Geena here though, but I’d give her a couple days to show then I’d have to go have another chat with Harry.
Harry Horner (what a name to be saddled with!) was a man we both used to work for -- well, I worked for him. I’d prefer to forget what G did with him. After she conned that Mexican, Ignatio or some shit, into popping me, she’d run straight into Harry’s arms. He’d had the good sense not to help her then, his single act of salvation. When Harry told me where Geena was headed, what she was up to, what reason would I have to doubt him? None for his sake.
It was five thirty by the clock atop the courthouse tower. Something itched at the back of my brain, something about clock towers, but I couldn’t scratch it. I laid on the bed to wait. It was hard and I wasn’t tired so I figured sleep wouldn’t come. I was wrong.
I woke in darkness, panting and sweating, gobs of snot rolling over my lip, my face wet with tears, sure that someone was standing on the porch roof watching me through the window. I found my makings in the pocket of my jacket, rolled myself a big joint, and smoked myself to sleep. I slept until the sun blasted through the wavy glass panes.

A full day passed. I holed up in my room once again as the sunset and began to plot heinous ways to make Harry regret lying to me. He was saved by the thin walls of Bob’s boarding house. The shower in the next room sputtered to life, interrupting my dirty thoughts. Water splashed and the pipes in the wall rattled with each passing air bubble. I almost didn’t hear her quiet little voice carrying that sad tune to me from across time. Geena always sang in the shower.
I was on my feet, pistol in hand before I knew what I was doing. I should have stuck to my plan, should have followed her on her way out of town and waylaid her on the deserted stretch of road I knew she would be taking north, but I thought my shit-ass luck might have been changing for the better, that maybe I could get this done and move on. For three years all I had wanted to do was move on.
Four seconds with my pen knife and Geena’s door swung inward nice and quietly. Her room was identical to mine except it smelled like her. A small travel bag sat at the foot of the bed and a change of clothes was laid out. Odd, there wasn’t a gun in the bag but I figured she’d taken it into bathroom. I inhaled deeply and sat on the hard bed to wait.
When the bathroom door opened, I was delivered a vision in an open terrycloth robe. Spiky red hair, tight stomach, high, small breasts, graceful hips, just how I remembered her, save for the hair; last time I’d seen her it had been platinum blonde. If she was shocked to see me she didn’t let on.
“Hello G,” I said, tossing a genial wave with the barrel of my revolver.
“Long time Alex. Heard you were dead.” She gave a little wink, went for a pack of smokes on the bed stand.
“Shouldn‘t believe anything you hear, G.”
“I suppose Harry told you I was up here.” It wasn’t a question.
“Don‘t blame Harry, dear. He had other things on his mind.” She lighted a cigarette and puffed gray smoke toward the ceiling.
“I’ll bet. Don‘t suppose you came up here to partner up? No, banks aren’t your style are they?”
“No.”
Even though she’d put a bullet through my head as neatly as if she’d pulled the trigger herself, I couldn’t help but feel like a foolish schoolboy staring at her cool white skin.
“So I guess this is it,” she said finally.
I shrugged.
“I just want you to know --” I held up the pistol to stop her. I didn’t want to know what she wanted me too. My reserve was already weakening and all sorts of crazy thoughts flew through my mind including a vision of me and her together like it used to be. I should have just shot her then. Bang! No more talking, no more thinking, no more dreaming. This should have been the culmination of my three year quest across the map. This should have felt like the end. This should have felt good.
I leveled the big gun somewhere between her breasts and thumbed the hammer back. Her smile faltered. I stepped closer, told myself I wanted to see real well what happened to that pretty little bitch when I pulled the trigger, but I couldn’t see anything but those big, wet eyes.
“Ah, Jesus G.” The gun dropped.
Something changed inside her. Just for an instant the hard bitch was gone and I almost saw the little girl she must have once been.
“Boyd!”
She screamed my name. It was the last thing I remembered before a bullet punched me between the shoulder blades. I fell headlong into Geena’s arms, the echoing crack of a rifle accompanied by the tinkle of shattered glass.

My eyes opened. The sunlight filtered down through a leafy green canopy, dappling the dusty windshield of my stolen blue car. It was in a ditch at the side of a gravel road with nothing but trees in any direction. Over the lip of the soft shoulder I saw the silver sparkle of a stream through slender trunks. A half-smoked cigarette hung from my lips, the cherry burning a hole in the upholstery between my legs. My suit was covered in blood, most of it not mine. The Kevlar vest I’d been wearing lay crumpled on the floor in the back, the pistol casually atop it. Through a tiny ragged hole in the back I could see the steel trauma plate. It wasn’t designed to stop rifle bullets but it had. Lucky me; I had a bruise on my shoulder that should have been a hole.
In the trunk I found Harry, the dumb bastard, and the rifle he’d tried to kill me with. That’s what had been eating me about clock towers, snipers. A crimson ringed hole in his shirt and an ugly purple pucker just left of center in his forehead plus three spent rounds in the cylinder of my gun added up to murder. Three rounds, two holes, no Geena.
I hadn’t shot her, had I? I couldn’t remember. Three years I had been out for blood to avenge my betrayal and now that I may have done just that, I wanted nothing more than to have her back and hear her say that she loved me. Despite everything she had done, she might have been the last person who could have accepted for the man who I had become. I started to cry.
“Are you going to stand there staring at him all day or what?” I spun, saw Geena coming out of the bushes by the stream buttoning her jeans. “Alex? Are you okay?”
“Not really, G. No.” I thought I saw fear in her eyes but it was gone in an instant. Whether it was real or just for show I’d never know. She was tricky, my G. The question I had to answer was: could I live with that?
Three bullets spent, two left.
“C’mon,” I said, Grabbing Harry by the belt. “Let’s get this over with.”

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...