I’ll call.”
She nodded. He leaned over and kissed her again.
“We’re going to beat this, all right? We’re not gonna pay for what that son of a bitch did to you.”
She smiled. Not much of a smile but the first, she realized, since he’d walked through the door. For a moment it was almost possible to believe him.
The red ‘93 Volvo was his prize possession. He’d bought it outright, with cash, as a present to himself after his mother was gone. Wayne sat behind the wheel gazing at the big house on the hill and thought that the Volvo fit right in with the neighborhood. Screw BMWs.
He was taking a risk but it was worth it.
The risk was that he’d been arrested just a month ago Saturday night driving home from a bar out on Stagecoach Road in Morrisville. They got him out of the car and had him walk straight ahead heel-to-toe and then close his eyes and stretch out his arms and touch his nose and then recite the alphabet and he was so damn furious and upset at being pulled over in the first place that he forgot the fucking alphabet! He did! He forgot it! He got to the letter P and skipped over Q-R-S-T-U and went directly to V-W-X-Y-Z.
He did it twice !
So they handcuffed him and shoved him in the squad car and he rode there silently, burning. At the station he blew .165 on the Intoxilyzer. Which was kind of high. They took his watch, his license, his cigarettes, his wallet and his belt and put him in a cinderblock holding cell painted white, the underpaint showing through like veins in a bloodshot eye.
There were six other guys in there, two of them real hardcases, you could see that right away. They were already dressed in jailhouse orange. They’d come up from the cells below. They were in for skipping bail on charges of armed robbery and they were big guys, pacing around,right in there with him ! and four other guys who, like him, had done nothing but get themselves arrested on a lousy DWI.
They kept him there all night, sick, cold, and hungry, with not even a clock or a wristwatch so you could know how long it was till daylight, most of that time in the same little cell with nothing but two rows of wooden benches and a shiny metal toilet sitting right in the middle of the goddamn room. He was glad he didn’t have to take a leak or a shit, not with all those other guys looking on, not with those hardcases.
One of the drunks was crazy. He kept rocking back and forth on the bench saying, “Cell! You’re in it now!” and laughing, and all Wayne wanted to do was kick him to death and curl up against the hard cold wall and disappear.
And later, get even.
There were notes in his book on arresting officer Gustafson, the crazy drunk, the two thugs in the cell, the judge—who was fat and female no less—the prosecutor named Barker, and his own lawyer, who cost him nearly a grand, who joked with the prosecutor like they were old golfing buddies which probably they were, while Wayne listened to himself sentenced to six months’ probation, maintenance fee forty bucks per month and conditional on a seven-week drinking-and-driving program which met every Saturday for chrissake, his fucking day off, and which cost him another two hundred dollars, plus the fine of four hundred sixty-eight dollars. It was going to be easily two thousand dollars and a lot of wasted time before he was through.
So he had a lot of notes.
He was taking a risk but he couldn’t imagine beingunlucky enough to get caught driving without his license just this once. And there was simply no way he could resist coming up here for a look.
How could he?
Besides, he had to know the place, see how many people were living here, whether they had kids or dogs or anything. That kind of thing.
He saw no evidence of children. Just two cars in the wide circular driveway.
And no dogs.
It was just the two of them.
They were all alone.
He lit a cigarette and sat back to watch a while. The sun would be setting soon and he’d want to get out of
She nodded. He leaned over and kissed her again.
“We’re going to beat this, all right? We’re not gonna pay for what that son of a bitch did to you.”
She smiled. Not much of a smile but the first, she realized, since he’d walked through the door. For a moment it was almost possible to believe him.
The red ‘93 Volvo was his prize possession. He’d bought it outright, with cash, as a present to himself after his mother was gone. Wayne sat behind the wheel gazing at the big house on the hill and thought that the Volvo fit right in with the neighborhood. Screw BMWs.
He was taking a risk but it was worth it.
The risk was that he’d been arrested just a month ago Saturday night driving home from a bar out on Stagecoach Road in Morrisville. They got him out of the car and had him walk straight ahead heel-to-toe and then close his eyes and stretch out his arms and touch his nose and then recite the alphabet and he was so damn furious and upset at being pulled over in the first place that he forgot the fucking alphabet! He did! He forgot it! He got to the letter P and skipped over Q-R-S-T-U and went directly to V-W-X-Y-Z.
He did it twice !
So they handcuffed him and shoved him in the squad car and he rode there silently, burning. At the station he blew .165 on the Intoxilyzer. Which was kind of high. They took his watch, his license, his cigarettes, his wallet and his belt and put him in a cinderblock holding cell painted white, the underpaint showing through like veins in a bloodshot eye.
There were six other guys in there, two of them real hardcases, you could see that right away. They were already dressed in jailhouse orange. They’d come up from the cells below. They were in for skipping bail on charges of armed robbery and they were big guys, pacing around,right in there with him ! and four other guys who, like him, had done nothing but get themselves arrested on a lousy DWI.
They kept him there all night, sick, cold, and hungry, with not even a clock or a wristwatch so you could know how long it was till daylight, most of that time in the same little cell with nothing but two rows of wooden benches and a shiny metal toilet sitting right in the middle of the goddamn room. He was glad he didn’t have to take a leak or a shit, not with all those other guys looking on, not with those hardcases.
One of the drunks was crazy. He kept rocking back and forth on the bench saying, “Cell! You’re in it now!” and laughing, and all Wayne wanted to do was kick him to death and curl up against the hard cold wall and disappear.
And later, get even.
There were notes in his book on arresting officer Gustafson, the crazy drunk, the two thugs in the cell, the judge—who was fat and female no less—the prosecutor named Barker, and his own lawyer, who cost him nearly a grand, who joked with the prosecutor like they were old golfing buddies which probably they were, while Wayne listened to himself sentenced to six months’ probation, maintenance fee forty bucks per month and conditional on a seven-week drinking-and-driving program which met every Saturday for chrissake, his fucking day off, and which cost him another two hundred dollars, plus the fine of four hundred sixty-eight dollars. It was going to be easily two thousand dollars and a lot of wasted time before he was through.
So he had a lot of notes.
He was taking a risk but he couldn’t imagine beingunlucky enough to get caught driving without his license just this once. And there was simply no way he could resist coming up here for a look.
How could he?
Besides, he had to know the place, see how many people were living here, whether they had kids or dogs or anything. That kind of thing.
He saw no evidence of children. Just two cars in the wide circular driveway.
And no dogs.
It was just the two of them.
They were all alone.
He lit a cigarette and sat back to watch a while. The sun would be setting soon and he’d want to get out of
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