41- Domino effect

 


"I love you, Michael," Chris whispered in his ear, sounding distant despite the closed space, her voice made raspy by weariness and running.

 "What?" Mike mumbled, stirred awake by its sound, his legs and arms cramped and achy from too long sitting in one position. They had wedged themselves into a crevice of stone never meant for human occupation, part of the planetarium's decoration-- a space just side enough for them to crawl into. He'd half expected a bear or raccoon, though neither was native to this part of the country.

 "I love you."

 He twisted his head around to look at her face. It had the same terrible expression he remembered from every previous time they'd been together. "Are you going to start that again?"

 "I don't mean to," she said, her eyes so watery that he expected a flood of tears to start at any moment. "It's just the way I feel-- the way I've always felt, even after all those bad things you said about me."

 He wanted to shake her, but couldn't lift his arms to where she sat. "What bad things?" he asked through gritted teeth.

 "About-- well, you know."

 The urge to murder her roared up inside him. Why did it always have to come back to this?

 "Look, Chris," he said with great patience. "We've talked too much about that already and we both know it can't work."

 "Why not?"

 "Because we're different people now."

 "I'm not."

 He wrenched his neck around another inch to look at her face more closely, at the wrinkles that had begun to etch themselves around her nostrils, mouth and eyes, like rings to a tree trunk, signifying lean, bitter years. Her mouth had twisted cruelly, a new feature of the girl he had married.

 "We could try again," she said, hopefully.

 "It wouldn't work," he said, letting his head fall forward to a more comfortable position.

 "Sure it would. We could have another baby and..."

 "Shut up!" he barked. "I don't want to hear anything from you about babies."

 She fell silent the way she always did. And the images of their last child roared up into his head-- only altered and strange, a walking-talking-two-year-old version who called someone else Daddy now.

 But the vision didn't sicken him half as much as the ritual did, another circular pattern in his life-- like some worn long playing record stuck in the same groove. He kept coming back to the same place. He needed a new start, a different, happier pattern in which he could come out a winner.

 "Besides," he said in a softer voice. "I have Marie in my life now."

 "That bitch!" Chris spat. "She doesn't care about anybody but herself."

 "Keep your voice down," Mike warned.

 While he hadn't heard sounds of pursuit in some time, they cops wouldn't give up so easily. Nor would it end here regardless of their escape. Word would spread down into the city like a disease. Cop killing was bad business. Relatively innocent street people would suffer out of frustration and rage.

 Everything would tighten up; informal agreements would vanish into a domino effect. Mike worried about the eventual consequences-- like Buckingham being scared off. And with so many more official eyes looking, someone could even recognize Mike in the fray.

 "What time do you think it is?" he asked.

 "After two, maybe later."

 "The bars close at three here, don't they?"

 "What does that have to do with anything?"

 "Everything," Mike mumbled. "We stay up here too long we might as well stay the night. But if we can get down into Hollywood before the bars close, we might not look so obvious."

 Not that Hollywood ever emptied completely. Speed freaks and others wandered the streets like vampires, vanishing only with the rising sun. Though a large number would see the inside of the Wilcox station house tonight.

 "Why not wait until daylight?"

 "Because in the morning the pigs'll be up here in force for a serious search of these hills."

 But Mike felt the urge to keep moving, to make his connections and get out of town before everything snapped shut-- if it wasn't already too late.

 "Oh, all right," Chris said-- a mingling of regret and exasperation in her voice.

 Mike eased forward, hands feeling their way along the cold stone until the passage widened. He stood slowly, knees cracking as he stopped at the front door. The steps descended down from it into the parking area where banks of unlit lights gave it the eerie sensation of a martian landscape. But if the police had come up this far, they had long gone back down into the city.

 "Come on," Mike mumbled and led the way.


 Hip Cities main menu


email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

19 – Reluctant friends

Image
    The van bucked slightly as it climbed up out of the ravine, the dirt road turning into gravel, then asphalt. The jeep in front of the little caravan blinked out each turn like a command. Behind the van, a half dozen other jeeps followed, soldier green, nearly invisible in the darkness.   "A lot of help you were back there," Chris said, seated beside Dan in the front. Mike and Marie sat on the bed in back, like buffers to the battle of silence between Lance and Sarah. "I expected the pacifist to stand by and watch, but you?"   Dan glanced sidewards at the cruel twist of Chris' mouth. She reminded him of his ex-wife, making his ache worse. He hadn't been laid since the road to Denver, and then only a quickly with a hitch-hiking hippie chick. He missed the regularity of L.A. and the parade of mid-west girls from which to pick. But his ex-wife had always been able to turn him on, in the mood or not.   "You expected me to charge out into the midd...
Read more

4 – A million dollar debt

Image
  They were back there somewhere-- though the rear-view mirror showed only the passing glitter of Denver suburb street lights, like stars glowing from a bowl of water. Dan Newhaul gripped the wheel as the van followed the winding road up and out of it, circling the belly of the mountain like a lopsided belt.   Back there riding the curve behind him with their headlights off. He tried to picture their grim faces and grey suits, wondering if they would break his legs or toss him off a cliff. He glanced forward in time to swerve away from the guard rail.   Calm down, boy! Don't do their job for them.   The grade increased sharply, and Dan downshifted. The weak Volkswagen engine struggling to keep up speed. It hadn't been built for mountains like these. And the thin air effected its fuel mixture. It coughed and grunted. The additions he and Lance had built into the thing weighing it down. Like the wood bed frame and the boxes of clothing. They swayed with each ...
Read more

26 – The Old Man

Image
    They drove northwest. Reservations infested the region like amusement parks, encircling Phoenix as if around a circle of wagons. Mike remembered the details of the road though he had come there only once. Over and over he had travelled it in his head, each time imagining himself begging the Old man's forgiveness. Now the wheels of the silver Pinto kicked up the dust, bounding over the dirt road like a real steed.   "Are you all right?" Marie asked, touching Mike's hand on the wheel, polished nails shimmering in the light like tiny knives.   "No."   "What's wrong? You never said."   What wasn't, he thought, but mumbled: "Nothing."   He had no way to explain the feeling, the ache inside his head when he sensed something wrong. The whole affair with Gil had left him more confused than when he'd come-- and slightly empty. He lacked Chris' loyalty to clan upon which to lean during hard times. The rituals of his ...
Read more