Ace Atkins - Infamous

“He’s right behind us.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“That’s some kind of faith, sister.”

“It’s not faith, Louise.” Kathryn glanced into the rearview and saw Chingy sleeping on a feather pillow she’d stolen from the Hotel Fort Des Moines.

“You know, you can train a man just like you train a dog. Only instead of biscuits, you use your snatch. It’s true.”

“I hear marriage neuters ’em.”

“It’s a reward system. All men are pussy-crazy. You know that. They can’t help it. It’s in their damn ape brain. Everything a man does-a real man, anyway-he does it for pussy. Think about George. Why does he take so much time dressing, shining those shoes, and fussing over his hair? You know he has his eyebrows thinned to look like Ricardo Cortez? I shit you not.”

“I don’t think my pussy has ever trained a man. The only thing my pussy does is get me into trouble. Sometimes my pussy just doesn’t think. Bad kitty.”

“Listen, we go through Dallas, I’m dropping you at the train station. I’ll give you some dough to get home, and then I don’t want you saying a word about any of this. You hear me? I want you to amscray from all this mess.”

“Sure had a good time,” Louise said. “I can’t believe that hick told George to suck his peter.”

“He told Joan Crawford to suck his peter.”

“It was still George.”

“It’s all mixed up.”

“You still never told me about your big plan.”

“What big plan?” Kathryn asked.

“What you’re gonna do with all that dough.”

“I’ll tell you one thing that I’ve promised myself for a long time. The first time I saw it mentioned in Redbook magazine. I’m going to that goddamn World’s Fair. Everyone on God’s green earth is going to be there, and I’m not going to be left out. And we’re going to stay at the very top hotels, eat at the very best restaurants, and go to every single exhibit there is even if it’s all scientific and boring. Did you know they have chariot races like in olden times?”

“That’s fine and all, Kit. But what about after? The World’s Fair ain’t forever.”

“Don’t get pushy. You sound like George. I’m sick of that worried mind. It’ll kill you.”

“I’m just saying…”

“It’s my road, sister,” Kathryn said, pressing down the accelerator and passing a truck loaded down, all crooked and crazy, with chicken coops, feathers crossing over the windshield like it was snowing in August. They scattered and blew away in the hot night air.

“Sorry to hear about Albert, too.”

“That’s his road,” Kathryn said. “He got pinched. His own fault.”

“He was a swell guy.”

“You screw ’im?”

“Sure,” Louise said. “Didn’t do much for me. But he sure enjoyed it. I felt sorry for the fella. He’d gotten all sloppy and started to cry. Said he missed his wife.”

“You’re bugs.”

“ You’re bugs.”

And they laughed. Kathryn flipping her silver cigarette case over to Louise, Louise taking a cigarette and snapping the case shut, and Kathryn telling her she was thick. She said she wanted Louise to have it.

“Come on.”

“Come on, nothin’,” Kathryn said. “You’re my pal. We got to stick together.”

“George is A-OK, Kit.”

“I suppose.”

“If he meets you in Texas, you better know you got yourself a good egg.”

“You really think they’ll write songs about us?”

“Sure.”

Kathryn mashed the accelerator onto the floor.

“What kind?”

“Who knows?” Louise said, smiling. “Say, you hungry?”

“I’d like that nigger Cab Calloway to sing about me. He sounds better than any ole white man I ever heard. You ever listened to that song ‘Minnie the Moocher’?”

“Watch out,” Louise yelled, pointing at a pair of gleaming eyes coming up fast, and Kathryn swerved, barely missing a mangy dog with sagging old tits. Knocked up and left on the roadside to starve.

“What about magazines?”

“Of course,” Louise said. “This is big. Movies, too. What you and George did is better than being famous.”

“What’s better than being famous?” Kathryn asked, tossing the spent cigarette into the night air, leaving her hand outside to trail and feel the wind between her fingers, nothing but Mr. Moon to keep ’em company while they headed south on 69, some kind of purpose giving her kick.

“Jean Harlow is famous,” Louise said, studying the etching on her new silver cigarette case and rubbing her fingers into the initials KK. “Kit Kelly is infamous.”

Kathryn didn’t stop smiling until dawn broke over the city of Dallas.

HARVEY BAILEY COULD SLEEP ANYWHERE. HE’D TRAINED HIS mind to let all the worry and strife go, and doze off in a bed, in a car, on the ground-didn’t matter much. He could be on the run, maybe an hour from a job, heart racing a bit, and still he could shut his eyes and take in a nap. You never knew when you needed your wits about you, and it was the suckers and fools who kept themselves plied with coffee or cocaine till the paranoia made them screw up, coppers seeing them trip from a mile away. He was dreaming in jail, as often he did, floating somewhere between memory and fantasy, feeling he was back with his wife and two boys, even the one who died before he could crawl. They were in Iowa on the third farm that he’d bought from his fat bootlegger’s roll, where the fields were blanketed in yellow wildflowers and spindly wild onions that made the cows’ milk sour but tasty. And he sat at the head of the table, covered in red-and-white oilcloth, that stretched on for miles, and he felt a lot of pride in them all being together like that, saying prayers and all, while he mashed some apple pie with the sour milk, chilled from that creek that cut straight across the land like a vein of good health.

The boy-his namesake-was cuddled into his wife’s breast, and he could feel himself smile at the child, a warmth spreading into his chest, and the child turned from the wet nipple to his father, his eyes nothing but empty sockets and limitless space. A great shame flooding from his heart to his toes, knowing that he had killed the boy, backing over him in that goddamn Packard. His heart seized in his chest, and he shot up from the bunk, unable to breathe, tangled in wet sheets and holding tight on to the rails.

“Mr. Bailey.”

It took a few moments for Harvey to realize he was on the sixth floor of the Dallas County Jail.

He was locked down solid and fucked ten ways to Sunday, and the thought of it gave him so much relief that he caught his breath and found his feet on concrete warmed by yesterday’s sun. As he turned, he faced the negro guitar player from Mississippi, R.L., who outstretched his skinny arm with the longest fingers he’d ever seen, handing him a simple metal cup filled with water.

Harvey took it, wondering how the boy knew his mouth was so parched.

“You was dreaming.”

He looked at him.

“You was running from something,” R.L. said. “Your legs and arms were pumping something fierce.”

“What time is it?”

“Four o’clock.”

“When?”

“In the morning.”

“Why’d you wake me?”

“I didn’t wake you, sir,” the boy said. “I was mopping the floor and seen you had some troubles.”

“I don’t have troubles.”

“You spoke the way a grown man talks to a baby. Does that make sense?”

Harvey finished off the cold water and handed the cup back to R.L., who held on to a filthy mop matted with dirt and hair. Light spilled from the metal door down the hall, cracked enough for Bailey to see Manion sitting on his fat ass, smoking a cigar, snorting and laughing it up with a trusty.