Elmore Leonard: Freaky Deaky

"By the way, have you ever experienced impotence?"

Chris took his time. He didn't see a trap, so he said, "No, as a matter of fact, I haven't. Not once in my life."

"Really?"

"I've got witnesses."

"Well, it's not important."

Chris stared at the doctor's lowered head, the thin, carefully combed hair.

"You don't believe me, do you?"

The doctor tapped his pen without looking up.

"I suppose you could be one of the rare exceptions."

"To what?"

"Well, in a study made at the University of Munsterthat's in West Germany," the doctor said, looking up "tests showed that assertive, self-confident, macho-type males, if you will, were found almost invariably to have a low sperm count."

"That's interesting," Chris said.

"We finished here?"

He got up, not waiting for an answer, said, "I have to get back, clean out my desk…" and saw the guy's innocent young-doctor face raise with a pleasant expression.

"Yes, you're leaving Bombs and Explosives. What we haven't yet discussed is where you're going. How did you put it, "Up to the seventh floor and down at the other end of the hall'?"

The doctor waited as Chris sat down again.

"You seem somewhat agitated."

"I'm fine."

"You're sure?"

"I'm supposed to meet Phyllis at Galligan's." Chris looked at his watch: it was four twenty.

"At five."

The young doctor said, "We shouldn't be too much longer," and smiled.

He did, he smiled for the first time, looked right at Chris and said,

"What I'm curious about, and perhaps you can explain, why you've requested a transfer to Sex Crimes."

Skip swallowed the tiny square of blotter acid, smaller than the nail of his little finger, dropped it with a sip of beer and got comfortable to wait for the cleansing head show to begin. The seams of the plastic chair were coming apart but it was fine, deep and cushy. The only thing that bothered him was the light, il vas so bright in here facing that bare white wall and no shade on the lamp. It smelled like Robin had been painting, trying to make the dump presentable.

Here she was back in their old neighborhood, a low rent apartment on Canfield near Wayne State, where they'd hung out years ago in their elephant bells, got stoned and laid and would slip off on dark nights to mess with the straight world. Back when this was the inner-city place to be.

That naked lamp was Bashing now, pretending it was lightning, streaking across the bare white wall. Sometimes when he dropped acid everything would become suspended and float in space. Or things would come at him, like a person's nose, clear across a room. Robin came out of the kitchen with two cans of Stroh's and sure as hell her arm extended about ten feet to hand him one. It was pretty good blotter. She was speaking now.

"I've missed you. You know how long it's been?"

Only she finished before all the words got to him. This was something new. Skip raised his hand, waved it in front of him and felt water.

That's why the sound of her voice was slowed up. She asked him what he was doing. He said, "Nothing." It was like being in a swimming pool lined with bookshelves full of books and a ton of old underground newspapers she'd saved; Robin now sitting against the desk piled with folders and notebooks and shit, the bare white wall behind her. Her lips moved. Now he heard:

"When was the last time we were together?"

Skip said, "You kidding?" Saw dates flash in his mind and had to pick the right one.

"April of 'seventy-nine in federal court."

Robin shook her head and the water became sparkly, fizzed up like club soda.

"I don't count that. I mean the last time we were alone together."

"Well, that was in L.A.," Skip said.

"Sure, that motel on La Cienega where Jim Morrison and the Doors used to stay."

"That's how you remember it?"

"Right off of Sunset. You walked in I didn't know if it was you or some light-skinned colored chick, your hair was all frizzed up in a natural. I go, Who is this, Angela Davis?

Once I saw it was you underneath all that hair I couldn't get my clothes off fast enough." Skip grinned at the motel scenes popping in his head until he heard Robin say:

"You were Scott Wolf then and I was Betsy Bender.

And five days later we were picked up."

"I'd gone to Venice," Skip said, "to get some dope… I don't know how anybody could've recognized us, you especially, with that afro." And heard her say:

"I didn't either, at the time. I thought, Well, maybe it's just as well. You think it's going to be fun living underground, thrills and chills. I was never so bored in my life."

"I wasn't," Skip said.

"I got into different gigs, some a little hairier'n others. I robbed a bank one time."

He heard Robin say something he believed was "Far out." Impressed, but calm about it. Not too surprised.

"Just the one, I didn't like those cameras they had looking at you. I held up some other places, grocery stores, Seven-Elevens. I liked Seven-Elevens except they don't pay much."

He watched her fooling with her braid. As she stroked it the end curled up and came toward him from across the room. Skip reached up to touch it.

"What're you doing?"

"Nothing."

He dropped his hand to the back of his head and felt his ponytail hanging there, behaving itself. He watched Robin take a sip of beer.

Saw her eyes raise from the can; not wearing her glasses now. Saw her tongue touch her lips and waited for it to come at him, flick out like a snake's tongue. There was a little snake in her. She could hit you quick with a word or throw something when you least expected. She looked fine, not another one like her. The tongue slipped back in her mouth and Skip said, "You ever get laid underwater?"

"Not lately."

She looked like she was waiting to see if he remembered a time. The same as at the restaurant yesterday, it was like she was giving him a memory quiz, going back to things that happened during the past almost twenty years. She was asking him now:

"Were you zonked when you pulled the robberies?"

"You think I'm crazy?

"Course I was."

"Did you use a gun?"

"Not in the bank, it was spur of the moment. But after that one I did." He watched her take another sip of beer.

"Did you ever kill anyone?"

The sparkling water settled and he could see her waiting for him to answer, then smiling a little, holding the smile on him before she said:

"You have, haven't you?"

"I almost killed a guy with a sword one time. I had it in mind."

"Working in the movies?"

"Over in Spain. But the one you want to hear about how I rigged a guy's car with a bomb, huh? Blew when he opened the door. I never met the guy or even saw him, outside of his picture in the L.A. papers, after. It was a dope business thing, this guy pissing on somebody else's territory."

Robin kept watching him. Interested but not the least bit excited.

"It was when I was using that safe house in Venice. I'd take a trip some place, come back, and there'd be a new bunch of freaks crashing there. I didn't think anybody knew me, except one time I'm there this geek keeps staring at me like for a couple of days. Finally he goes,

"You aren't Scott Wolf, are you? You're Skip Gibbs. You blew up the army recruiting office in the Detroit Federal Building, September whatever-the-date-was, 1971."

"September twenty-ninth," Robin said, "my birthday."

"The geek says he was in the Weathermen at Ann Arbor, but I didn't remember him. He'd fix me up with weed, all I wanted for nothing-see, he was dealing-and then he put me in touch with this Mexican dude that worked for the guy that paid me to do the job. Only I never saw the guy. Only the Weather geek and the Mexican dude."

"What'd you get for it?"