Don Winslow - While Drowning in the Desert

So I sat down and started to play. I did “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “I’ve Never Been In Love Before” and “What’ll I Do” and they applauded and demanded an encore so I did “Adelaide’s Lament,” which they thought was very funny.

Diary, I must have sung two dozen songs and Schaeffer made tea and we all sang and had tea and chatted and then I said, “Natty must have some booze somewhere in this place.” We found a fifth of Stoli and Schaeffer, made a pitcher of vodka martinis and we all sat out on the patio and had a nice cocktail.

After a while, the girl Pamela sat at the piano and sang “Fairest Lord Jesus” and she and I had a good cry. Guess what, Diary! She’s a Methodist, too! From Nebraska, as it turns out. An old farm girl just like me!

Anyway, they finally had to go-a little tipsy, I think; young people these days just can’t seem to hold their booze-and I was just about to see what was on television when the doorbell rang again.

This was a big fellow, even taller than Schaeffer and with muscles like a weight lifter. Short blond hair, blue eyes, chiseled jaw. Very handsome, if you go for that type.

And the accent, Diary! He talked like one of those Germans in the old movies.

“Izz Natan at hoom?” he asked.

“No, he’s not,” I said. “May I ask who is calling on him?”

He gave me what I’m sure he thought was a very charming smile.

“Yaah,” he said. “I’m a frient of Natan’s. I was driving by and saw lights and chust taught I’t tropp in to zee how Natan is.”

“Well, I’m sure he’ll be back soon,” I said.

Then he smiled kind of funny, Diary. As if he knew something that I didn’t.

“Zen I koom pack latuh,” he said. And left, just like that!

After he left I sat down and tried to think of what Nathan could have seen that a lawyer would want to talk to him about.

And where is Nathan, anyway? He certainly should be home by now.

Anyway, Diary, as soon as I find out the answers to these questions you can be assured that you’ll be the first to know.

Your confidante, Hope

It was a stupid move.

All the more so because I knew better. Even if I hadn’t known that this sort of maneuver only works in the movies, I should have realized that a 1965 Mustang doing 80 mph on a dirt road does not respond well to life-and-death struggles between the driver and a passenger.

Anyway, I lunged between the seats and grabbed the pistol between Sami’s legs. Sami grabbed my wrist, squeezed his legs and pulled back. His eyes were bugging out because the gun barrel was now pointed right at his balls and he was trying to control the car-and doing a pretty good job of it until Nathan took his cigarette and poked him in the eye.

“Ayyyiiiaaaaaa!” Sami screamed, and Nathan apparently admired the effect so much that he did it again.

“Ayyyyiiaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

So the next thing I knew the little car was doing 360s, Sami was screaming, Nathan was yelling, “How do you like that, you little Arab bastard?” and I was holding on to the gun handle in Sami’s crotch and praying that the car wouldn’t flip over and kill us all.

Which would have defeated the purpose of going for the gun in the first place.

I was pulling, Sami was screaming, Nathan was hollering, the car was spinning around, and then the gun went off.

Now Sami really screamed, because he thought his balls had been shot off. I screamed, too, because I thought the same thing. Then the gun went off again and we all screamed some more because the car plunged off the road. By the time it came to a landing, the gun ended up on the floor by Sami’s feet, Sami was trying to get his pants off, I was clutching the back of the driver’s seat, and Nathan was clutching his chest, gasping and coughing.

I lunged for the gun again but Sami had it in his hand and pointed it at my head. His hands were shaking like crazy but I figured that even he couldn’t miss at this range so I sat back and tried to catch my breath.

Sami got out of the car and looked down at his pants.

“They’re still there,” he said. But he was hopping up and down because he had some truly wicked powder burns.

“What, were you trying to kill me?!” Nathan yelled at me.

“You tried to kill me!” Sami screeched at me.

So it was all my fault, of course. Then I saw two big holes in the floor of the car and realized that I had just shot not Sami but a 1965 Mustang. Then I smelled the gasoline.

“Get out!” I yelled at Nathan.

But he was struggling with the seat belt.

I jumped out the driver’s side, ran around the back of the car and jerked the door open. These seat belts are perfectly simple when you’re getting out at the grocery store or something, but they’re another thing altogether when your hands are shaking, your legs are quivering, an old man is fumbling around with the latch, and the car is about to blow.

And the old man is smoking a cigarette.

I snatched the cigarette out of his mouth and tossed it. Then I got the latch unhooked, got my arms under Nathan’s shoulders and knees and carried him away from the car. Sami realized what was going on and stopped hopping up and down long enough to start running.

Just as the stupid thing blew up.

Sami was hopping up and down again like Rumpelstiltskin, not because of the powder burns on his balls apparently, because now he was screeching, “My car! My car!”

I laid Nathan down, checked him for injuries and then felt around my own back to see if there were any stray pieces of a 1965 Mustang embedded in it. There weren’t any, so it was with some relief that I sat down beside Nathan.

“My car, my car,” Sami whimpered.

“Stop whining,” I said. “You have insurance, don’t you?”

For some reason that made Sami really moan. But by this time I was more pissed off than I was scared so I said, “Your precious car, my ass. You know something, you dumb little jerk? I’m glad I shot your car.”

Sami pointed the gun at me. “I shoot you now!”

“You’re not going to shoot us now,” I said.

I looked around. On the other side of the road there was a smaller dirt road that led up behind a small knoll. It looked as if there were some deserted shacks up there. Maybe it was a deserted old mine. It would at least be some shelter for the night and some shade for the next day. If there was one.

I helped Nathan up and asked him if he was okay to walk. He said he was, so we started up the little road toward the shacks.

“I shoot you now!” Sami said as we headed out.

“No, you’re not,” I said. “Think for a second, Sami. If you shoot us now, you can’t get away from the scene of the crime. If you shoot us now, you’ll be a married man in San Quentin this time next year.”

Sami had a wonderfully blank expression on his face that I would have thought was funny if we hadn’t been marooned in the middle of the Mojave Desert with a not-overly-bright, incompetent criminal who still had the gun.

“Oh,” Sami said.

“Oh,” I answered.

“You’re right,” Sami said.

“This is probably a first for you,” Nathan said, so I figured he was basically intact.

We reached the old shack, which was in fact the remnants of a played-out mine of some sort. It was a one-room cabin with two busted-out windows with no glass, flanking a doorway with no door. Not only was there no glass and no door, there was no water, no food, no blankets, no nothing of anything that we could use.

But there was nowhere else to go and Nathan looked like he was out of gas.

“I’m staying here,” I said.

“Me too,” said Nathan.

Sami didn’t know what to do, so the next step was fairly predictable-he called Heinz.