David Gates - Jernigan

By then the sky had darkened except for a fissure in the west where the sun was going down. Couple flakes of snow. On the GW again, pretty adequately fuzzed by this time, driving into that sunset, the golden glare ahead inviting me just to close my eyes and be absorbed. Thinking about Judith again. There must have been a nanosecond there when she went Oh my God and then Oh all right, fuck it . I had another headache. Or more of the same headache. From squinting. From that God damn hand hurting. From worrying about how bad I was being, disappearing for hours on Christmas Day, drunk, the presents still unopened.

Parked in front of the house was a red Suzuki Samurai. Shiny. Probably some snot-nosed little friend of Danny and Clarissa’s. Well, fuck ’em, maybe they’d all go off drunk driving, or whatever kind of driving, and leave me in peace. This was, in effect, wishing your son dead.

In the kitchen, a black leather shoulderbag hung from one of the chairs. It stunk: that new-leather stink. I looked through the doorway into the living room. Danny and Clarissa were on the couch, at least a foot of cushion between them. Clarissa staring, as usual, at her black Reeboks. Danny smoking. Nobody talking. The visitor was in the Morris chair. From the doorway you could see an acute angle of leg: a cowboy boot, heel worn down, sticking up into acid-washed denim. Danny looked up at me and gave his head a little side-to-side shake. I gave him back a jaunty salute, meaning Fuck you too , and went to the dish drainer for a jelly glass. You don’t just put the bottle to your mouth in front of company.

When I turned around, a man in the kitchen was saying, “You Jernigan?”

Taller than me by the worn boot heel. Thick hair like some politician trying to look Kennedyesque. One of those mask faces, skin way too tight. The face might have passed for younger than mine if not for those breastlike bags under the eyes. Smiling, or at least showing teeth. Black cable-knit sweater. Jeans tight on him. Daylight between his thighs.

“Rusty Ronson,” he said.

Rusty sort of gave me a taste for that .

“Ronson?” I said.

“Hey, change my luck,” he said, “you know what I’m saying? Let her have Peretsky, she’s such a victim anyway. Fuck a lot of good it did me . Pah-RET-sky.” He began to sing his name to the tune of “The Bowery”:

Pah-ret-sky, Pah-RET-sky

He says such things and he does such things oh Pah

RET-sky, Pah-RET-sky

I’ll never be him anymore .

I held up the bottle and the jelly glass level with his eyes. “Drink?” I said, figuring it would either smooth him out or not.

“I think we need to get to know each other first,” he said. He worked his wallet out of his hip pocket and handed me a business card: on it, a Rolls Royce radiator with the RR emblem, and beneath it, in gothic typeface, RUSTY RONSON ENTERPRISES.

“You in the car business now?” I said, being oh so casual. Not scared.

“Car business?” he said. “That’s what she told you? Shit.” He shook his head. “Promotion business,” he said. “Independent promoter. So tell me one thing. What kind of freak show you got going in my house here? We know you’re fucking my wife. That’s been established. You touch my daughter?”

Behind him, in the doorway, I saw Danny.

“Hey Dan?” I said. “Why don’t you take Clarissa out for a walk, okay?”

“I asked you something.”

“What is this about?” I said. Pulling sweatshirt over head . “Of course I didn’t touch your daughter.” White breasts .

“She says different.”

I looked at Clarissa. She looked at me.

“I didn’t,” she said. “Mr. Jernigan, honest. Daddy’s playing one of his weird-shit games.”

“Kayokayokay,” he said, waving his hand back and forth as if erasing a blackboard. “I’m allowed to test you, right? My responsibility, right? As a parent. As a motherfucking parent , man. I am now fully satisfied that Danny Boy here and Danny Boy alone is putting the boots to my daughter. And I believe I will have that drink.”

“I think we’re out of tonic,” I said. “Water do you okay?”

“Out of tonic,” he said, shaking his head. “Old place has fallen to shit. Half a mind to come back and get things straightened out a little around here. Kick a little ass.”

I filled the jelly glass a third of the way with gin. “How much water?” I said.

“Whatever you think,” he said. “You’re the man of the house now.” I went to the sink, topped off the glass with water and stirred with a knife out of the dish drainer.

“You’re a gentleman and a scholar,” he said. “And a pussy,” he stage-whispered. I got another jelly glass out of the dish drainer and filled it with gin. About all I could think of by way of rebuttal.

“So Danny Boy,” he said. “How is she, hot and tight?”

“Danny,” I said, looking at Rusty Ronson, “will you please take Clarissa the hell out of here now? And yourself?” My eyes still on Rusty Ronson, I saw their blurry shapes flit and vanish from the doorway. The gin bottle was in easy reach. Another point in favor of quart bottles: they had a neck you could grab and smash to make a jagged weapon, though I could picture a lot of things going wrong if this was the first time you tried it. Maybe just take and bonk the fucker with it.

Rusty Ronson looked over his shoulder at the empty doorway. “Good,” he said. “Now we can talk.” He drank the gin-and-water down in a single swallow and set the glass on the counter.

“Let’s talk about what you’re doing here,” I said.

“Hey, holiday visit,” he said, putting up both hands. “When I come, I bring good cheer. Face it.”

“You know,” I said, “I’m sure Clarissa wants to see her father and everything. It’s just that it doesn’t seem to be very, sort of, favorable circumstances, you know?”

“Is that smoke I feel,” he said, “being blown ever so gently up my ass? You’re a fucking cartoon . Little cartoon man. Where the fuck do you get off telling me I can’t come in my own house? Who the fuck are you?”

I shook my head. “I really don’t think this is your house anymore.”

“Bull shit . You show me on a piece of paper , babe, where it’s not my house. I sell this place tomorrow, man. Out from under your ass, her ass, everybody’s ass in the fuckin’ place , man. Which I don’t do because I am a nice person . I’m doing the best I can,” he said in whiny-voice, “for my family. Listen, man to man: you want to get high?”

“On what?” I said. Thinking this might give me a clue.

“On what,” he said. “I love it.” He shook his head. “If you have to ask,” he said, raising a forefinger, “you don’t want to get high. That’s what you teach the kids? Just Say On What? Ah, listen, don’t pay any attention to my bullshit. You’re doing a really really first-class job with them, man. Really. I was fuckin’ impressed. Now me, I don’t give a shit on what.”

He fished around in the leather shoulderbag and brought out a small white canister. “Heads up,” he said, and flipped it to me. Somehow I didn’t fumble it. It was a plastic screwtop jar: Dr. Daniels’ Summit Brand catnip. Picture on it of a crazed cat perched on a rocky summit with Andean-looking peaks all around. The cat had an outsized bow around its neck, perhaps suggesting it was still a harmless pet even though it was high on catnip. I unscrewed the lid. A delicate spoon half-buried in white powder. “Ronson’s Own Blend,” he said.