Adrian McKinty - Hidden River

“There’s nothing else you can do?” Dad asked, sounding disappointed.

“No. Will you tell Mr. Patawasti? I’ll be home in a couple of days, see him myself, but I’d like you to fill him in, if you can.”

“I’m very busy, but I’ll make a point of going to see him. Actually, I want to talk to him, I think he might want to come on the campaign trail with me, take his mind off things,” Dad said.

“Dad, for God’s sake, don’t ask him to campaign with you, give the man some peace, just tell him I found the guy who sent the note and it was unimportant, ok?”

“I will.”

“Ok, look, this is someone else’s phone, I better hang—” I began.

“Oh, Alex, wait a minute, your friend Ivan called three times yesterday, he was looking for you. I got him on the third call.”

“Facey called you up?”

“Yes.”

“What did he want?”

“He said that it was urgent that he speak to you. I told him you were still in America and he said that it was good that you were away. I thought that was a bit odd.”

“That is odd.”

“He said, wherever you are, you should call him, reverse the charges, if necessary, he said it was very, very important.”

“Shit.”

“I know, he didn’t sound like himself at all.”

“What did he sound like?”

“He sounded, I don’t know, worried, frightened. You’re not in any trouble, are you?”

“No. Did he leave a number?”

“He did, let me see, six-seven-oh-nine-three, got that?”

“Yeah.”

“Ok, Alex.”

“Ok, Dad, tell Mr. Patawasti, ok?”

“Ok.”

I hung up, called Facey, he wasn’t home.

Pat brought me some milk.

“Alex, do you want milk in your coffee? I take mine black, but I always forget how other people like theirs.”

“No, thanks. Look, uh, can I use your phone later? I’ve an important call to make.”

Pat looked at John and myself wistfully. He cleared his throat, wiped his skinny hand over his forehead. He had something to say:

“Of course, use the phone anytime, and listen, um, the building gets quite lonely, no one wants to visit me, they’re prejudiced against coming out here, even though we’re only a few blocks from East High School, which is a lovely building, uh, anyway. Look, so I was thinking, you boys can stay as long as you like. Rent-free until you get jobs. How does that sound? You don’t get an offer like that every day.”

“Uh, no. Thanks for the offer but, sorry, we, we have to go back home. I’ve already changed our flight to Sunday,” I said.

Pat’s face fell.

“Ok. Well, it’s nice to have you even for a few days,” he said cheerfully, “and if you want to reconsider, there’s no bugs anymore and no rent.”

I thanked him and went back to the apartment. I took a shower, and when I came out, John was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. He was going out.

“Where the hell you think you’re going?” I asked.

“I’ve got to get out of here, I’m going nuts, just a walk up and down the street.”

“John, are you fucking out of your mind? Half the cops in Denver are looking for us, you think a haircut and a beard cut are going to fool them forever?”

“Listen, I can’t be cooped up in here, it’s too damn hot, I want out, I want to go to the cinema or something. I’ll wear my baseball cap, change my shirt, you said yourself they’re searching for Spanish guys.”

I looked at John, he did seem a bit jittery, but I was insistent.

“First of all, that baseball cap goes in the garbage. Second of all, not today, not today at least, maybe tomorrow when the heat’s cooled down, but for today, we are staying put, ok?”

“Ok,” John said reluctantly.

About an hour later, Pat saw that we weren’t leaving and came by with martinis. For someone in the throes of a major life-threatening health crisis, after a few drinks, Pat became quite the chatterbox. When he got a wind, he became an entertaining, angry son of a bitch, and we both found ourselves liking him. He particularly had it in for Colorado’s white Christian population, whom he blamed for the infamous antigay referendum that had changed the state’s constitution, allowing organizations such as the Denver Fire Department to fire gay people because of their lifestyle, never mind their HIV status. Odd, though, for with Pat’s red hair and ghostly complexion, he was the whitest person I’d ever seen and, technically, he was a Christian.

“Yeah, boys, they fucked the constitution. It’s going to the Supreme Court next year. Hope I live to see it overturned. Wipe the smile off their fat white faces. This is the only state in the country that did that. Colorado. The hate state. White, bourgeois scum,” Pat said bitterly while we sipped his martinis on the fire escape.

“And no blacks voted for it?” John asked mischievously, sucking on his olive and giving me a wink. I was glad to see that he was making himself forget about yesterday in a haze of alcohol.

“I’m sure some did, but it’s the goddamn Anglos. They’re all Fundamentalist Christian out here. Hate gays, hate non-Christians. They hate Catholics, Latins. Don’t believe me? Drive out on Federal sometime, ask those Mexican guys how they’re treated. While you’re at it, look at the cars, Jesus fish all over them or, occasionally, a Jesus fish eating a fish that says ‘Darwin,’ I saw a bumper sticker the other day that said ‘Warning. This car will become driverless in the event of the Rapture.’”

Neither John nor I got what he was talking about, so Pat explained that Fundamentalist Christians believe they will all be spirited up to heaven during the Rapture, an event that will precede the Apocalypse and the Second Coming.

Pat told us about the corruption of the Denver Fire and Police Departments, for which he blamed the white Masonic lodges. He then went off on John Elway and his series of car dealerships. He blamed the drought on the Coors people, and he even had it in for the Denver Zoo for reasons neither John nor I could fully understand. Paranoid and mad, but entertaining for a while. But we could see Pat wilt before us, he had limited energy, good enough for a few serious rants, but not a whole afternoon of it. Soon he had to lie down.

“What do you make of that Pat guy?” John asked later in the apartment.

“He’s all right,” I said.

“What do you think his deal is?”

“The they’re-out-to-get-me thing?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know, they are out to get him. They bloody fired him. He feels betrayed, and I think he’s gone a bit stir out here in a black neighborhood.”

John nodded. The paper got delivered and the later edition of The Denver Post had the dismaying news that the Denver Police Department was watching bus terminals, the train station, and DIA in the hope of capturing the two assailants in yesterday’s apartment murder. Jack Wegener, a congressman from Colorado’s eighth congressional district, was quoted in the paper as saying that maybe now people would take seriously Pat Buchanan’s idea of building an electric fence on the Mexican border.

We tried to nap for a bit, and later, when we heard Pat singing to himself, we went down the hall to pay him another visit and maybe use his phone.

Pat made us two additional martinis and told us more about his favorite subjects; he hated the suburbs, SUVs, and Starbucks coffee. He said if he ever got money, he was going to open a chain of tea shops called Queequegs.

“Pat, uh, about the phone …” I said.

“Oh, yes, go ahead, take it in my bedroom for privacy.”

Pat’s bedroom. Spartan, to say the least. A futon on the floor, one sheet, one pillow.

The sun setting behind Lookout Mountain.