Victor Gischler - Suicide Squeeze

Conner thought about Tyranny again. “What did she want?”

“She wanted to see you.”

“I know that,” Conner said. “What about? Did she say?”

“She didn’t say. Not exactly. I don’t think she’s happy with you.”

“What makes you say that?”

“You know that wooden cricket bat hanging next to the door?” Sid asked.

“Yeah.”

“Well, she just took it off the wall, and she’s coming at you fast.”

Conner spun on the stool, saw Tyranny’s blazing eyes a split second before the bat came down hard, cracked Conner on the forehead with a sharp thok. Conner’s eyes crossed, his head swam. He fell back in Sam Peckinpah slow motion, scattered three other stools, and landed flat on his back among the cigarette butts. He tried to sit up, but it took a second, bells ringing in his ears.

He blinked the dancing colors from his eyes, climbed to his knees, reached for the bar, and pulled himself up. He looked side to side, thinking maybe another whack was coming.

“She left,” Sid said.

Dammit.

Conner found his legs, stumbled for the door. He ran out to Salty’s parking lot, jumped in front of Tyranny’s BMW. It was a calculated risk. She wouldn’t run over him. Probably not.

She screeched the brakes, bumped Conner’s leg, but he held his ground.

She rolled down the window, stuck her head out. “Dan has a black eye, you shit.”

“I can explain.”

“Explain in hell.” She revved the engine.

Conner yelped, leapt on the hood. “Tyranny, please! Let’s talk.”

She sat there a moment glaring at him. He looked back, projected puppy-dog sadness through the windshield. She stuck her head out again, still mad but not hysterical. “Get in.”

He slid off the hood, froze a moment watching her. Maybe it was a trick. Maybe she’d plow over him when his guard was down. No, she was cool. He got in the passenger side, and she peeled out of the lot. Conner death-gripped the door handles, fumbled for the seat belt.

She drove fast, pushing her luck with yellow stoplights. They didn’t talk.

Conner didn’t know how to start, didn’t know how they related to each other anymore. He thought, now suddenly in the speeding BMW, the streetlights and restaurant neon smearing the windshield, that she was a foreign thing to him, that there’d always been more to her, dark complex secrets he couldn’t know or wouldn’t understand if he did. The simple fantasy that they’d love each other and be together and cue the sunset seemed ridiculous now.

She’d been playing chess the entire time he’d been playing checkers.

“You’d better slow down,” he said. “Cops.”

She slowed down. Glowered and fumed.

“I’ve spent a long time trying to get my life to make sense,” she said at last. “I can’t be how you want me to be. Dan lets me be myself, and that might include something ugly or perverted or something you can’t understand, but that’s how it is. That’s how it’s going to stay. It’s how I stay sane. I never asked you to do anything or change or be anything but what you are. I need the same from you or we’ll never see each other again. And, man, I mean fucking never, because I can’t have Dan come home with a black eye every night. You get me? I don’t need this bullshit.”

“How did I rate such special attention from Dan?” Conner asked. “Or does he chase down all the other guys you fuck and threaten them too?”

Conner hoped that she’d deny it. If she denied it, he’d believe her. He was desperate to believe in her, to reinvest his faith in the portrait of her he’d painted in his head. And he also realized, had to admit, that what he mostly wanted was for her to hurt, to feel guilt, feel the same pinch in her gut that he felt whenever he thought about her with somebody else.

But she wasn’t hurt or shocked. She didn’t deny anything. “Do you know why I’m always so reluctant to see you? It’s because I do love you. I love you more than the rest, maybe more than I love Dan even.”

Conner almost said something, but he was learning. Shut up, man. Let her talk. Maybe this is going your way.

“I know you, Conner,” she said. “And I know me. You’d never be happy unless you possessed me totally. I just don’t have the capacity for what you need. I’d end up making you miserable. I’d make myself miserable. We’re doomed as a couple, baby. We don’t fit. Dan tried to warn you off because I like you. I’ve always had deep feelings for you. That’s why you’re dangerous. The others don’t mean anything. They just help me push funny little buttons in my brain. Dan knows you’re different.”

“Buttons?”

“This is pointless.”

Conner said, “Take this.” He snatched a scrap of paper from the car’s ashtray, an ATM receipt. He scribbled a phone number on the back. “I have a cell phone now. Call me, please. When you’re not so pissed. Let’s figure this-”

“I’m not going to call you.”

Conner couldn’t think of a damn thing to say. He folded the scrap of paper, slipped it into the ashtray where she could see it. She’d come to her senses. She’d call. Wouldn’t she? He shrank in the passenger seat, feeling small and lost and that maybe the universe was running him over. All Conner Samson could do was sit there in Tyranny’s Beemer and get taken for a ride.

Tyranny dropped Conner back at his Plymouth, then sped away into the night. Conner stood, watched her taillights shrink to nothing. He wasn’t a crier. He’d never been outwardly emotional, but he wished he could just curl into a ball in Salty’s parking lot and blubber and blubber, great, snotty wracking sobs until he’d cried himself right out of existence.

He went into Salty’s and made himself drunk.

Sid warned him not to drive. The bartender would call him a cab. When Sid turned his back, Conner headed for the parking lot, climbed behind the Plymouth ’s wheel, and took off. He headed for his secret parking spot along the river, turning onto the dirt access road, the swamp trees a green blur in his headlights, making for the copse of elephant ears where he kept the dinghy hidden.

I’m not too drunk. I’m driving fine.

Then the rapid-fire slap of foliage on his windshield. The bump. His axles slammed the ground as he bottomed out, bounced in his seat, and bashed his head against the roof. The Plymouth dove forward, angled down sharply. The mud-brown splash against the windshield.

Conner sat, took his keys out of the ignition. He looked around. The front of the Plymouth was in the river, the trunk and back wheels still on the bank. He opened the door, and the river spilled in around his ankles. He climbed out, shut the door again. He hiked up the bank, back down the short trail carved by his rogue Plymouth.

He saw what had happened. The road curved, but he hadn’t.

He hiked back down to the Plymouth, judged he could open the back door without too much more water getting in. He retrieved the backpack of meager belongings he’d salvaged from his apartment. At the top of the bank, Conner found a clear spot, took inventory. He pulled out the Webley revolver.

Anger surged drunkenly in his veins. He stood abruptly, jerked the trigger at the Plymouth. “Piece of shit!”

Click. Click. Click.

Unloaded. He sighed, sat down again, and loaded the revolver with the metal rings that held the bullets in tight. The next time he was angry he’d want to hear some noise.

He swung the backpack over his shoulder, held the pistol loosely as he walked five minutes to the dinghy. He shoved off, jerked the cord on the putt-putt motor. He headed upriver toward the Electric Jenny.

Bad luck still had a few surprises for him. A half mile from the Jenny’s hiding place, the putt-putt motor shuddered and conked out. Conner jerked the cord twenty times before realizing he was out of gas. He was almost mad enough to blast the engine to smithereens with the Webley but restrained himself.