didn’t want to be noticed, and he didn’t want to be laughed at. Not even behind his
back.
Also, he was tired. More tired than he’d ever been in his life.
He lay down on the discount-store sofa and put one of the pillows behind his head. He had left the trailer door open and a little breeze frisked through, stroking his dirty skin with delicious fingers. He was wearing nothing but the overalls now. He had stripped
off his filthy undershorts and the remaining sock before putting them on.
I don’t smell myself at all, he thought. Isn’t that amazing?
Then he fell asleep, deeply and completely. He dreamed of Betsy bringing him the
idiot stick, the tags on her collar jingling. He took the controller from her, and when he pointed it at the TV, he saw The Motherfucker peering in the window.
Curtis woke four hours later, sweating and stiff and stinging all over. Outside, thunder was rumbling as that afternoon’s storm approached, right on schedule. He made his
way down the makeshift trailer steps sidesaddle, like an old man with arthritis. He felt like an old man with arthritis. Then he sat down, looking alternately at the darkening sky and at the portable toilet from which he had escaped.
When the rain began, he stepped out of the overalls, threw them back into the trailer
to keep them dry, and then stood there naked in the downpour, his face turned upward,
smiling. That smile didn’t falter even when a stroke of lightning forked down on the
far side of Durkin Grove Village, close enough to fill the air with the tang of ozone.
He felt perfectly, deliciously safe.
The cold rain sluiced him relatively clean, and when it began to let up, he slowly
climbed the trailer steps again. When he was dry, he put the overalls back on. And
when late-day sun began to spoke through the unraveling clouds, he walked slowly up
the hill to where his Vespa was parked. The key was clutched in his right hand,
Betsy’s now-battered ID tag pressed between the first two fingers.
The Vespa wasn’t used to being left out in the rain, but it was a good pony and started after only two cranks of the engine, settling at once into its usual good-natured purr.
Curtis mounted up, barefooted and helmetless, a blithe spirit. He rode back to Turtle
Island that way, with the wind blowing his filthy hair and belling the overalls out
around his legs. He saw few cars, and got across the main road with no problems at all.
He thought he could use a couple of aspirins before going to see Grunwald, but
otherwise he had never felt better in his life.
By seven o’clock that evening, the afternoon shower was just a memory. The Turtle
Island sunsetters would gather on the beach in another hour or so for the usual end-of-day show, and Grunwald expected to be among them. For now, however, he lay in his
patio hot tub with his eyes closed, a weak gin and tonic near to hand. He had taken a
Percocet prior to climbing into the tub, knowing it would be a help when it came to
the short walk down to the beach, but his sense of almost dreamy satisfaction
persisted. He hardly needed the painkillers. That might change, but for the time being, he hadn’t felt so well in years. Yes, he was facing financial ruin, but he had enough
cash socked away to keep him comfortable for the time he had left. More important,
he had taken care of the queer who had been the author of all his misery. Ding-dong,
the wicked witch was d—
“Hello, Grunwald. Hello, you motherfucker.”
Grunwald’s eyes flew open. A dark shape was standing between him and the
westering sun, looking cut from black paper. Or funeral crepe. It looked like Johnson, but surely it could not be; Johnson was locked in the overturned toilet, Johnson was a shithouse mouse either dying or dead. Also, a smarmy little bandbox dresser like
Johnson would never have been caught dead looking like an extra from that old Hee-
Haw show. It was a dream, it had to be. But—