T Parker - L. A. Outlaws

But miracle is in the air tonight. The GTO beckons from the other side of the hedge like a burning bush.

Four hundred horses.

And the lot is empty of pedestrians, just a minivan looking for a place to park.

I’m almost to the door when Mr. Geezer coughs and sputters. Red looks at me with pugnacious wonder. Mrs. Geezer throws tears as she silently kneels over her husband with her hands folded under her chin like for a prayer.

Too bad nobody has a camera to show me saving the old man’s life on TV-fame to go with my infamy.

I walk out, palm the gun and shorten my stride. I take a deep breath. Mask off. Head high, back straight, eyes alert.

I know I look right.

I’m a just a hungry consumer with a hard-earned bag of burgers and fries. Maybe even a family to feed. Nobody can stop me.

I can’t even stop myself.

I have just enough time to secure my tools in the adjoining room, shower and change before Hood arrives. Short dress. Of course I brush my teeth.

When he comes through the door I swarm him.

A thick bunch of roses and a bagged bottle of something drop to the floor and I pull him through them toward the bed. I hear the crunch of the stems on carpet and the rattle of the paper bag. Hey, I can drink wine or smell a flower anytime but right now I got Charlie Hood where I want him and no conventional weapon can keep me off him.

It doesn’t last long but after it I’m starved so I take him to dinner in the GTO.

“Nice car.”

“I have nice friends,” I say. “I choose them on the basis of the cars they can lend me.”

“This have the three-fifty horse?”

“It’s the six-liter, Charles-a full four hundred. Sick torque, and I love that it looks like something my grandmother would drive. No wonder they quit making it.”

“Where’s the Corvette?”

“In for service.”

He’s looking at me with an expression I’ve never seen on him before. Like he’s discovered something and locked it up for safekeeping. Up until now I made Hood nervous or least uncertain but now I wonder if my mother might have got him thinking about my unorthodox girlhood and or that I shot Bradley’s father or that I’ve had more boyfriends than Hood has had dates.

Or maybe he changed his mind about me and the diamonds.

Or… Allison?

I pick a Persian restaurant on Sunset with private rooms where we can sit on beautiful pillows and eat spicy food and I can touch him. Hood seems gently befuddled by his surroundings and I wonder if it has to do with his time in Iraq. Or, again, if it has to do with me.

“You’re quiet,” I say. “Remind you of the war?”

“Just the way the people look.”

“I want you to tell me about it someday.”

“I will.”

“Tonight?”

“Not tonight,” says Hood. “Have a glass of wine.”

“I told you I don’t drink, Deputy.”

“Maybe you should.”

“Like having a cigarette before they shoot you?”

He looks at me then with genuine amusement. I like a guy who can enjoy your joke without having to make a better one. I like a guy whose ears turn red once in a while. Most of all I like a guy who’s got the kind of Man Thing that you can’t fight or ruin or dissolve or avoid-this big blocky clunky Man Thing right in the middle of him. The Man Thing is a nuisance, I’ll admit, and early on I learned every trick in the book for eliminating it. Mom taught me some of them. Grandma some. Girls just learn most of them on their own. The deal is, some men will let you take the Man Thing and dispose of it. They actually think that’s what women want. I’ve got no time for men like that anymore. Because the Man Thing is half of what makes the time shared by a man and a woman interesting. It’s like this dirt track we had out in the Bakersfield desert when I was a kid. It was a little oval and we’d race our bikes around it as fast as we could. It was flat and smooth and level and you could haul ass. But there was one hairy thing about it-a big sharp rock lodged right in the middle of the far turn. It stuck up, pointing back, like a big dull fishhook looking to stab you. We had some bad wipeouts trying to miss that rock. We didn’t always miss. There were stitches and broken bones. Terry Lilley knocked out his front teeth on it. I picked them out of the dirt but they couldn’t fasten them back on. So one day we got together like intelligent human beings and dug the thing out and rolled it off the course. We filled the hole and packed the dirt down hard and rode around that track for a few hours. We made some good time. Very fast. Very smooth. And very boring. So we dug the hole and rolled the rock back into place and buried it just like it was. That’s what the Man Thing does-it makes the race dangerous and difficult and worth running.

And Hood’s got it loud and clear, even in his smile.

“You don’t have to get shot to enjoy a cigarette once in a while,” he says. “The wine makes you peaceful and the smoke makes you calm.”

“But I don’t want peace or calm.”

“What do you want?”

“I can explain by conducting a Socratic dialogue, as I sometimes do with my brighter students.”

“I’ll try.”

“Rather drive a Rolls Silver Shadow or turbocharged Porsche nine-eleven Carrera?”

“Carrera, for sure.”

“El Do or GTO?”

“I’d go Goat.”

“Escalade or Mustang GT?”

“Well, the ’Stang, no contest.”

“Me too. See, Hood, it’s just human nature to want to go fast. And feel it. Feel it. That’s what I want.”

I get up real close to his ear with my mouth, just like that first Sunday he came to my house. I like it here. Now I just have to whisper: “I mean, Charlie, what if a doctor could give you a pill that would give you ten back-to-back o’s but you couldn’t feel each one of them separate and distinct?”

Hood actually thinks about this one. Just the trace of a frown passes over his brow. Even if he’s just acting dumb I still love it.

“What’s an orgasm if you don’t feel it?” he finally says.

“That’s what I’m trying to explain, you Bakersfield hick.”

“You value your hot spots, Suzanne.”

“I know I do. And I know this, too, Hood-I won’t be young very long. I’ll use ’em while they’re usable.”

Mr. and Mrs. Geezer come to mind right then. I see Hood and me fifty years from now as Mr. and Mrs. Geezer and I know that’s supposed to warm my heart but it just plain doesn’t.

“You’re pretty much everything my mom told me to stay away from,” says Hood.

“That’s nice to hear. The old bag ever let you have any fun?”

Hood smiles again, nodding, eyes bright and not quite reckless. I kiss him with feeling and when the waiter comes through the ornate curtain into our little nest I tell him to beat it. He smiles and bows and pulls the curtain tight.

Then it’s just a small underwear adjustment and a pull of zipper and I’m riding Hood right there in the pillows. He looks straight into my face. Soon comes a point when my heart is pounding so loud I can’t hear much else and Hood’s usually sharp brown eyes glaze over, and I’m welded to this guy.

When he finally manages to stand and put himself back together, he turns away so I won’t see. Imagine. His hair sticks up on one side. He excuses himself to the men’s room. His wallet has fallen out and is half-hidden under a lush satin pillow so I look it over, finger the bills-eighty-two bucks. I take out two of the twenties, rub them together, then stuff them back. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I set the wallet at his place on the low table.

A few minutes later Charlie is back with his hair wetted down like Jordan does his before school. Charlie looks proud of himself, like he just got away with something, which he did.