Chuck Logan - Absolute Zero

“I have feelings,” Jolene said circumspectly, “but I keep them to myself.”

They stood on the back deck, collars turned up as the evening chill syphoned off the baked-bread warmth of the bedroom. Broker smoked a cigar and watched the running lights of a solitary boat on the slowly freezing St. Croix River. When he turned, he could see into Hank’s studio sickroom through the patio doors. Hank was illuminated in his bed by a lamp-still life with coma.

Like when he was working and trampled on people, he rationalized the twinge of guilt, telling himself he was out to get a bad guy.

“Earl and I did things, too,” Jolene said. “But we never got caught. I guess we were social criminals,” she reflected. “Sort of like social drinkers, you know; they quit when it starts interfering with their lives.”

“What things?” Broker grinned as he mimicked her voice and tone.

“Remember that movie The Color of Money ? Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and Tom Cruise, you remember them?”

Broker nodded. “I remember, they were two punks and Paul Newman taught them to be hustlers.”

“Two talented punks, thank you. Well, that was us completely. Especially Earl. He was this brash, talented jerk. And I guess he still is. And I even look a little like Mastrantonio, don’t you think? There’s some Italian on my mother’s side.”

Broker studied her. “She has more hair, you’re taller. What things?”

She squirmed away, evading in a wheedling voice. “You know , stealing things, selling dope. Dumb kid’s stuff. Then we moved to Seattle and Earl got real heavy into computer code on the ground floor at Microsoft. For a while it seemed like we’d straightened out, but his temper got him in trouble. We split up for a while when he joined the army. He was in Desert Storm, all dressed up with nowhere to go. He felt cheated. Then he came home and we disappeared into Seattle during our Kurt Cobain-Courtney Love period. Earl meddled in coke and cyber crime and I got very heavy into drinking.”

Broker shook his head. “Kurt who?”

She smiled and patted his cheek. “That’s what I like about you. Anyway, we woke up one morning and I decided I had to get clean, so we came back to Minnesota.”

“And that’s when you met Hank?”

“My hero.” Jolene smiled fondly. “The thing about heroes is first they save you, then they try and change you. He tried to explain to me that you don’t have to settle for the life they give you. He said that’s what this country is all about. It’s why people left Europe and came here in the first place. They were criminals and were persecuted, but they came here because it was this new thing in the world, in history. .”

Jolene stretched her hands and attempted to grasp something in the air.

“I didn’t really hear what he was saying until after his accident. Now I’m beginning to understand. Being sober is my New World. People can change. Look at you, you changed, didn’t you?”

Broker, blindsided by her earnest language, didn’t trust his voice and remained silent. She continued talking.

“Except I made one big mistake. I panicked when Hank left me in this money bind. Now Earl thinks. .”

Broker shrugged. “Can you blame him? Any man you take up with right now is going to have one eye on a huge malpractice settlement.”

“Including you?”

“I just said it.” Broker nodded his head toward the house. “But this isn’t me.”

She regarded him from the corners of her eyes. “So you don’t want the money and you don’t really want me. .”

“Hey, I don’t want to put my suitcase in your closet. But I wouldn’t mind seeing you again,” he said.

Jolene laughed and unburdened the thought that was on her mind. “The problem with you is you’re too good to be true.”

Broker shivered at her words, the way they sailed into the dark on her silken breath. He shied away when she poked a finger into his ribs. “Just another hero, huh? Like Hank. He never expected us to go the distance. He said it’s one of the big stories in life. People grow at different speeds. He figured I’d outgrow him the way I outgrew Earl.” She squared her shoulders and the cold night air was all the makeup she needed. “I’m just getting started,” she said.

Broker asked, “So you figure out where you’re headed?”

She inhaled, exhaled. “Just so we understand each other, I like you and I want to see you again, but I don’t see us, like, together long-term. The next guy I get involved with seriously will be somebody with fewer rough edges. Somebody safe .”

“Somebody you can control?”

“I didn’t say that.” She came up on tiptoes and kissed him, a frank, direct kiss midway between friendship and everlasting damnation.

When the kiss ended she was practical. “About Earl-sometimes when he’s upset he can get, well, violent. And he knows some pretty thuggy guys.”

“What I have in mind doesn’t involve rough stuff,” Broker said. “But I need to get at his computer for a couple of hours. Are you sure he won’t be back tonight?”

“Pretty sure.”

“I had a peek at his computer screen and it looked like he was collecting credit card numbers.”

“Credit unions. He hacks into credit unions and cleans out all the credit cards and sells them on the web.” Jolene smiled. “He swears he only drains off money from very wealthy people, like Robin Hood. What are you going to do?”

“I have a set of disks for his Zip Drive in the car. If you’ll play lookout, I’ll copy his hard drive. Then, if he agrees to move off from you an appropriate distance, say after a few years, he can have the copies back. He doesn’t agree, we go to plan two and the disks wind up with the computer-crimes investigator at Washington County, and your basement will be full of cops and Earl goes away.”

“Not bad,” Jolene said.

Jesus, it was a dump. A dump on Arcade on the east side of St. Paul where the mooks went to watch women get naked and rub up against them. And the air was poisonous with cigarette smoke, and he could see some very questionable substance fouled in the nap of the cheap orange carpet next to his shoe which wasn’t even dry yet. There was a bar and tables, and these alcoves with overstuffed chairs where the dancers did their thing.

And that’s where Earl found Rodney, sunk in one of the chairs under a lap dancer who was chewing gum and working her hips to the beat of the Righteous Brothers, “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling.” Earl looked away. He was off human intimacy for the time being. He preferred to jack into high-shock plastic and a thick glass screen where the action was kept crisp, internal, and sanitary. People were just too messy. Even perfect-looking people like Jolene could be messy. Even Jolene leaked once a month.

Fluids. Sweat. Tears. He thought briefly of Cliff Stovall in the woods.

Blood.

Pissed and shit himself, too. Disgusting.

His fault. Not mine.

Earl went back to watching Rodney and thought, I should throw him a fish. This should be a cow humping a big seal. Rodney should be going arf, arf.

“C’mon, Rodney, we got to talk, man.”

Rodney was stretched out on the divan chair, arms alternately bracing on the fat cushions or twitching at his sides. There was a sign on the wall: patrons aren’t allowed to touch the girls with their hands. But he could squirm his hips as much as he wanted. So his legs were spread and an ample G-string-and-pasty-clad transplant from West Virginia named Mavis was lashing him with her long, braided blond tresses as she straddled his hips and pumped him in sync with the music.

Earl knew who Mavis was because this wasn’t the first time he’d met Rodney here and had to sit though one of her dry humps. She had bruises on her thighs and they looked about to pucker. All right for now, but headed for the cottage cheese shelf.