Joe Lansdale - Leather Maiden

“The clock,” Jimmy said. “All that money for it, and it doesn’t keep good time…What exactly do you want to talk about?”

“There might be a better place to discuss it than here.”

13

Jimmy’s last class for the day was over, so we walked out to my car together. I drove us out of there, on out Highway 7, and then off of it and down a long winding road that had once, many moons ago, been a major highway. The sun was falling into the trees and it looked like a peeled red plum coming apart. A flock of black birds was moving from one tree to the other as my car startled them. They moved so well in tight formation they appeared to be a wind blown cloud of crude oil. Finally they had had enough and broke over the trees and flew into the face of the dying sun, black freckles on a bright red face. Jimmy sat silent, his head turned a little toward me. I could tell he was nervous, and I wanted to relieve him of it, but I hadn’t found a way to say what I needed to say, and a part of me, pissed, wanted to make him squirm. “Jimmy,” I finally said, “what about Caroline Allison?”

“What?”

“I can tell by the expression on your face that you know damn well what I’m talking about.”

“No. No, I don’t. What is wrong with you, Cason?”

I found myself pushing on the gas a little heavy. I let off.

“I got something in the mail today,” I said. “It was curious. It was a DVD.”

“Oh.”

I glanced at Jimmy. His face had fallen and gone white, and in that one moment, he looked sixty, not thirty.

“You know then?” I said.

There was a slight hesitation. “I got one yesterday.”

“And you’ve seen it?”

Jimmy nodded.

I came to a rest stop, and without really thinking about it, pulled in there and parked the car under the shade of some trees, rolled down the windows with the electric switches and killed the engine.

“Can we cut the crap now?” I said.

Jimmy nodded. “Yeah.”

“Why?” I said.

“Why what?”

“Why you and her?”

He sucked in some air and let it out heavily. “You saw her. She was a goddess.”

“That’s it? She was good-looking? You’d throw away everything you’ve accomplished, your marriage, your wife, for someone who was good-looking? It’s not like Trixie is a fishwife. And there’s always someone better-looking somewhere. I mean, for Christ sakes, that’s your reasoning? Trixie is smart as a whip and loyal and everything a woman ought to be.”

“You think?”

“Fuck you, Jimmy. You know she is.”

“Don’t be so sanctimonious. You had some business with a married woman. Not to mention her daughter. That’s pretty goddamn weird, don’t you think?”

“I’m the idiot in the family. You aren’t. I’m the one that screws things up, and you’re the one that does things right, and that’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it still ought to be. You’re messing up my view of the universe, and I don’t like it one goddamn bit.”

Jimmy nodded. “I seem to be vying for the title of screw-up now.”

“Oh, you’ve taken the belt, brother. You definitely have the championship now.”

Jimmy sat there for a while, blowing out his breath, shaking his head, trying to collect himself.

“Does Trixie know?” I asked.

“Of course not. She did, you’d be talking to a mound of dirt and a gravestone.”

“Anyone else know?”

“Obviously. But I don’t know who.”

“Does anyone you know have any idea that you and Caroline had a thing?”

“I don’t think so. Of course, whoever sent the DVD may have told others. You got this stirred up, you know. You and that column. If you had just left it alone—”

“Jimmy. Are you nuts? Someone has known this for a long time. The column may have stirred them, but I get the impression they’ve been waiting on purpose.”

“This long?”

“All right. Maybe they haven’t been waiting. Maybe he, she, they, whoever, came across the DVD by accident? I don’t know. Maybe it was the column that stirred the blackmailer, or blackmailers, up. But in time, something would have got them on this track. Something like that has a pretty damn good shelf life, Jimmy. Shit, for all we know it’s on the Internet.”

“Christ,” Jimmy said.

“Did you know you were being filmed?”

“No.”

“How does that happen?”

“Hidden camera, I guess. We made love at her apartment many times, so it didn’t occur to me she was filming it. Or maybe someone else set up a camera. I don’t know. It seemed innocent enough then. I was just…enjoying. When I was with Caroline I felt special. It was nice. She had a kind of power over me.”

“Don’t give me that. Power? She had a power over you? What kind of bull is that?”

“It’s true. I’d do anything she wanted. She was experimental and I liked that.”

“Don’t tell me she did things you couldn’t get Trixie to do.”

Jimmy reddened. “It was the way she did it…I guess she really had me going.”

“I think you had a little to do with it, brother.”

“Sure I did. Back then, few weeks before Caroline went missing, I was thinking about leaving Trixie. We were having a few problems. Nothing big. Just that part where the relationship is moving from romance to something more solid. I missed the romance. I wasn’t mature enough to understand what was going on.”

“You’ve gotten more mature in a few months?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I just had the hots for Caroline and that’s the long and the short of it. I got the romance with her.”

“What you got was some humping, so don’t insult Trixie by pretending you were getting romance. Jesus, Jimmy.”

“When I was home with Trixie, well, it really wasn’t so bad, but it wasn’t…exciting. Still, I couldn’t imagine being without her.”

“But you couldn’t let go of Caroline?”

“I couldn’t. And you know what? I’m going to backtrack. It wasn’t just the hots. It wasn’t purely sexual. I was in love with two women. They gave me different things.”

“That’s pretty clichéd, Jimmy. That’s nothing more than the old bullshit about having your cake and eating it too.”

“I know. But it’s true.”

I leaned forward and put my forearms on the steering wheel. It seemed as if I were in a dream.

“Jesus, Jimmy.”

“I didn’t mean for me and her to happen. Everyone in the department, all the guys, probably half the women, had a crush on Caroline, even the women who were jealous of her. She was in a couple of my classes. Used to stop by the office, we had talks about history, then the talks went to other things. I couldn’t help myself. That skin of hers, it just needed touching. Cason, she had the softest, warmest, smoothest skin I have ever touched. I was a train going down a steep grade. I could see the tracks were out and the bridge was gone, but I couldn’t stop.”

“Did you get a note with the DVD?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Did it say something like, ‘You will want to see this’?”

“No. It said, ‘If you don’t want anyone to see this, await instructions.’”

“Blackmail,” I said.

“Why would you get a note too?”

“Wanted you to know there were more copies than one. That you had to watch yourself. Figured your brother would most likely help you out, help you come up with the money, otherwise it gets posted on the Internet. All done with the tap of a finger.”

“You got to help me, Cason.”

“I’m not sure what to do. Aren’t you the smart one?”

“You’ve got connections. You’re a reporter. You can talk to people I can’t. I start talking, pretty quick it’s going to get back I was having an affair with Caroline. That happens, the job is over, and so is the marriage. I might deserve it, but I don’t want it to happen.”