Johnny Temple - USA Noir - Best of the Akashic Noir Series

“What about you?” I asked into his neck, rubbing him down there.

“There’s time for that,” he said, gently removing my hand and kissing it.

When I got home, Levi wanted to know where we went and what we did. He wasn’t so laid-back about it anymore. I didn’t tell him everything, and I distracted him with sex. It always worked. I had to keep my OC Republican a secret for now.

But things had changed and Levi knew it. Now when we arrived at work in the morning, there was no mistaking the glimmer in Shepard’s eyes. He’d hang around the house to have coffee with me before taking off. On occasion, when everyone was out of the house, we’d fool around.

“The dude fucking likes you,” Levi said a week later, his eyes flashing. We were in his truck, at a stop light.

“What are you talking about?”

“He’s been asking me all about you. He’s in love with you.”

“He can’t be,” I said, secretly wishing it were so.

“Hey, it could be good for us,” he scowled.

“What do you mean?”

“Shit, what could be better for us than if he wanted to marry you?”

“Excuse me?”

“It wouldn’t have to change things between us. No one’s as great for you as I am. You’d never go for someone that old. And if you did, I’d kill you.” He laughed, then added, “You’d just have to live with him for a time. It would help us pull off our plan.”

“You’re talking too crazy for me,” I said, as we crossed over Newport Boulevard and Piece of Heaven turned back into Costa Misery, with its pawnshops, its dive bars. But that night, after Levi went back out to do who knows what—he wouldn’t say—I stood on the balcony and smoked a hand-rolled. As the lit murky water below pulled my focus, the sounds of the compound drew close—TV, a neighbor singing off-key, kids screaming—and my own version of an old Animals song spun an endless loop in my brain: I gotta get outa this place, if it’s the last thing I ever do.

The next day, after Shepard’s sister picked up his kids for an overnight, he said, “Let me take you to the fair. You’ve been to the Orange County Fair, right?”

“Um, no,” I answered. I’d left Bumfuck where “hooptedoodle” was a favorite expression, and I had no desire to return.

“Then you got to let me take you.”

“Fairs are a Republican thing.”

“Pshaw!” he said, tucking in his turquoise polo shirt with a tiny alligator over the left breast.

“Shouldn’t you take your kids?”

“They’ve been, and I’ll take them again before it ends. Tonight it will be just you and me. How about it?”

I said yes. I said yes to everything—to Levi and his schemes, now to Shepard.

I went to freshen up.

Levi called from another job while I was in the bathroom; Shepard had run out of work for him. I told him I had to work late. I’d been spending more and more time at Shepard’s and less and less time at our sorry excuse for a home. It was getting to Levi. I knew because when he talked about Shepard, he no longer used his name.

“The motherfucker tell you anything interesting?” or “What’s up with the motherfucker?” I found a bindle with white powder in Levi’s things. His skin was becoming all mottled and he was losing weight. He denied using crank, said he had gotten it for a friend, but he was short-tempered and negative. Now I just wanted to escape with Shepard, go someplace where Levi couldn’t find me.

Shepard and I walked hand in hand to his dusty blue Jag and moments later were gliding down Broadway to Newport and up to Del Mar, his hand on my knee, my hand on his thigh, to where the dark sky was lit up all red from the lights on the rides and the midway. The Ferris wheel spun lazily around, its colorful, happy life temporary—like mine, I feared. This happiness wouldn’t last—it couldn’t; it hadn’t been a part of the plan for me to fall for an Orange County Republican. Levi would never let me have Shepard. I wanted to confess and tell him what Levi was planning, but I didn’t know how I could put it where he wouldn’t just fire me and tell me to be on my way.

We parked and walked toward the lights, toward the Tilt-a-Whirl and the rollercoaster with purple neon cutting the black sky, teenagers on all sides of us running amok, clutching cheap stuffed animals and stalks of cotton candy. Shepard bought us caramel apples, fried Twinkies, and roasted corn on the cob. We got wristbands and drank draft beer.

It was going on eleven and the fairgoers were pouring through the gates, probably to get a jump on the freeways. Shepard and I moved against the flow, heading toward the livestock area, past Hercules, the giant horse, llama stalls, and a corral where the pig races took place. He said he’d been coming here since he was a kid. Fair diehards moseyed about. My phone rang—Levi’s ringtone—but I ignored it, and I feared it. Levi said he could always find me. Something about the GPS positioning on my phone and how he’d rigged it. Cell phones didn’t make you freer—they made your whereabouts known, and I didn’t like it one bit, this hold Levi had on me.

Couples lingered in the shadows. Shadows scared me. I worried Levi might be hiding in them. Lately everything got on his nerves and he suspected everyone. He’d screamed at the next-door neighbor to quit his fool singing. He’d even pierced the pink inner tube in the pool because he no longer liked seeing it floating there.

Shepard directed me to the metal bleachers around the cattle arena. He picked me up, set me on one so our faces were level, and kissed me. “You make me so happy,” he said.

This tall bulky man had grown on me. He pulled a little robin’s egg­–blue box from his pocket and flipped it open. A diamond solitaire.

He took the ring from the box and slid it on my finger. “You will, won’t you?” he said. “Marry me?”

Levi was leaning over the railing of the balcony, smoking with one of his lowlife loser buddies, when I arrived home at midnight. I’d taken off the ring and sequestered it at the bottom of my tampon holder.

The light from the water bounced off Levi and his buddy whose name I forgot. I gave them a half-hearted wave. Levi nodded and smiled his lizard-cold smile.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked, flicking his cigarette butt down into the pool as his buddy took off.

“Had to stay with the kids until Shepard got home.” I took a cigarette from Levi’s pack on the cement floor.

“Fuck you did,” he said.

I gave him a long look. It was always better to say less than more.

“Where’s the ring?” he said.

“What ring?”

“Mimi, this’ll only work if you’re straight with me about the motherfucker.”

I went to go into the apartment, but he grabbed my arm. “I’m gonna tell him all about you, Mimi. You weren’t supposed to fall in love with the asshole. You love me , remember?”

I wrenched my arm away and hurried inside. I poured a glass of water, trying to think.

Levi hurried in behind me. “Don’t fucking walk away from me, Mimi.”

“I’ll do what I want.”

“Fuck you will.” He pulled me to him, pressed his mouth against mine, hiked his hand up my top. “C’mon, baby, what happened to us?”

I pulled free. “Leave me alone, you asshole.”

“I own you,” he said. “I came all the way out here to find you and claim you and now you’re mine.”

“Whatever drug you’re doing, it’s making you crazy.”

“Crazy for you,” he said, grabbing me with one hand and undoing his belt buckle with the other.

I’d never given in to a man forcing me and I wasn’t about to now. I tried pushing him away, but his grip on my arm only grew tighter.