Solomon Bull: When the Friction Has Its Machine Read online

  My first thought is the ninja in the black Suburban.

  I open my eyes and they burn. Douse my head. The curtain loops tinkle across the aluminum pole and cold air washes inside. There’s a hand on my stone sack and—this is critically important—it is a woman’s.

  Katrina.

  “I thought we ended this yesterday,” I say, twisting and breaking contact. My elbow brushes a breast a little more determined than the pair I recall mounted on Katrina’s ribs. I wipe water from my eyes and open them.

  “Whoa!”

  She smiles. She’s a bombshell—some alchemist mixed an anime girl with oxygen and lightning.

  “Who are you?” I say.

  “Rachel.” She reaches for the soap.

  “Uh—pleased to meet you?”

  “I just always wanted to do an Indian.”

  “Nothing against profiling,” I say. “But you’re out of luck.”

  “You’re not an Indian?”

  “Oh, I’m Indian.”

  “You don’t find me attractive?”

  “Take a look at Big Murtha.”

  She takes Big Murtha in her hand. Soaps him. He becomes Bigger Murtha. “Then what is it?” she says.

  “This doesn’t happen, and so this isn’t happening. I’ll step aside and let you do some other Indian.” I take her shoulders, ease her away, rinse the soap from my rocks and think of that Ninja again. I spin. She’s still there, smiling.

  I blink. Still there.

  I slip out while the shower’s still on and soak the floor.

  “I live in building C,” she says, now behind the curtain. “I was at the pool when you came home from your workout.”

  I think Rachel is soaping herself. A neon green bikini is on the floor. I peek out the door and though I can’t hear over the shower, the apartment is quiet like Keith isn’t around.

  Katrina sent her here. She’s psychotic enough to need this kind of proof. Me telling her the relationship is over isn’t enough. She needs me to make it with one of her friends.

  “Tell Katrina it’s over.”

  “Is Katrina your crazy girlfriend?”

  “She’s not my girlfriend.”

  “Well, you know what I mean. The three of you. It’s kinky-cool.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Toweled off, I lean on the sink. “Which apartment are you in?”

  “Uh— D’.”

  “But what number?”

  “Seventeen.”

  There is no seventeen. “Oh, great. Well, the towels are in the closet, here.”

  “Thanks,” she says.

  I’m already in the hall. I slip Keith’s door open. Katrina’s bras litter his dresser. Underwear on the lamp. Jeans discarded across the bed. His bureau drawers are open. I look in the living room and kitchen, empty. Check my room. The computer monitor is on. My desk drawer is ajar.

  Rachel isn’t just the neighborhood slut.

  I slip back to the bathroom, cautious as I near the door. I don’t know where she might have hidden a weapon—well, I do, but—

  The shower’s still going and I halt at the jamb. Glance at the mirror, then the shower. A trail of water leads to the open window. No way. This is a second story apartment. Unless Rachel truly is a ninja, she’s behind the shower curtain.

  And where the hell did she come from? I haven’t seen her around the pool—and I watch the pool. Who sent her? Cyman’s crew can’t be that sharp, even presuming some photo of the billboard showed my face. I haven’t angered Barrett, yet, I don’t think.

  “Come on out, babe,” I say. “Gig’s up. Who you work for?”

  Silence.

  “Come on. You’ve got nowhere to run.” Brandishing fists at head level, I step inside the bathroom. Reach for the curtain and snap it open. The shower is empty. I look at the ceiling. Spin. Jump to the window.

  A very naked Rachel sprints across the lawn clutching her bikini, strings trailing like kite tails. She jumps into a black Lexus and I’m twisting now, knowing the futility, but giving chase anyway.

  I reach the lawn. Still in a towel. A pair of guys stand by parked cars, grins about to break open their heads.

  “Which way did she go?” I call.

  “Left,” one says.

  In the future, I’ll know where to look her up.

  Left.

  NINE DAYS to RACE DAY

  “Yes, this is an age of moral crisis. Yes, you are bearing punishment for your evil. But it is not man who is now on trial and it is not human nature that will take the blame. It is your moral code that’s through, this time. Your moral code has reached its climax, the blind alley at the end of its course. And if you wish to go on living, what you now need is not to return to morality--you who have never know any--but to discover it.”

  John Galt in “Atlas Shrugged”

  This morning’s run was a bruiser. Before leaving the apartment, I checked Real Clear Politics. Thinking about the results of my billboard experiment, I slipped on a stone. Twisted my ankle, scuffed my palms, pulled Cholla needles with my teeth.

  Cyman has expanded his lead by a point. Not much, of course. But the polls include five days of data. A one-point move overnight implies a five-point move five days after the billboard hit the news—minus the “forget effect,” and barring, of course, the bone jarringly stupid Hock doing something else to speed the destruction of his ratings in the interim.

  I’m going to focus on Cyman. Two reasons. Negative advertising works, and if I try to make Hock look good, I have every faith he’ll wind up looking dumber. I need to remove him from his campaign while eliminating Cyman as a viable candidate. Even as emasculated as Hock becomes, voters will hold their noses and pull the lever for him.

  I have a feeling about that.

  My next project will require help. While attending ASU, I met a few crazy rock climbers in Sedona who hailed from Northern Arizona University. We climbed and stayed in touch. Years after graduation, they’re still bumbling around Flagstaff, Sedona, Prescott, Williams.

  I fire an email to Paolo, the center of the storm.

  Paolo; My new house will require eight sheets of plywood. Two pallets of cement blocks, and enough cement to stick them together. S.B.

  I’ll bet an iconoclast like Barrett could arrive at a few original ways to destroy a politician’s ratings.

  Then there’s the naked Rachel to think about. A man likes to think he’s prepared at an instant to do his duty for the propagation of the species. Part of me feels guilty for not pounding her to the shower wall, and sorting out her alphabet soup agency entanglements while drowsing on the sheets, afterward. Priorities.

  You see movies where the woman pulls a dagger from between the mattresses…

  I kick away. My chair rolls to the bed. The sheets are loose; I flip them back. Lift the mattress.

  There’s a knife the size it would take to gut an elk.

  Haft about four inches, blade six. Sharpened to a razor’s edge; the point and two inches on the spine are also sharp, and curved like one of those Arabic blades made famous on Disney’s Aladdin. And on those videos where Islamists don’t behead people.

  If I touch it, I destroy fingerprints.

  Here’s a mind bender: She’s an assassin and I lucked out of getting killed. But what if she was legitimate? Above-board? What if I’d caught, disarmed and quarantined her until the police arrived, and they said, kindly step over here so we can kill you.

  How do you know? Especially since I just tried to take down a senator?

  Blood rushes in my head. You train in the way of the starry-eyed novice to be a bad ass. Pushups on your knuckles. Sit-ups ‘til you puke. Punch a tape-wrapped board until the callus is like shoe leather. But seeing the blade that was intended for your back, coitus interruptus, shoots a shiver that starts like a big bang somewhere in your core and ripples like seventy-thousand football fans doing the wave. They chuck popcorn and spill be
er. They punch each other in excitement. Your ribs slap each other on the ass.

  The blade reflects the striped mattress. I see a smudge.

  I drop the mattress. Corny, but I check the closet and under my bed. Draw the curtain. Then go to the kitchen for a plastic baggie. They’re all used, dirty on the counter. Do I risk the peanut butter smudge? I turn the bag inside out. Soap and scrub. Dry with a hand towel. Place on the sill to bake in sunlight.

  Cal Barrett is the kind of man who would have a useful contact.

  Rachel was clever. How many witnesses, you think, got a glimpse of her license? Zero. They were all wishing they were seat leather.

  Inspiration: I’ll go to a hobby shop. Buy a junior detective fingerprint kit. At least I’ll preserve the evidence. Then—who knows?

  If she had time to rifle Keith’s room, snoop in mine and cache a weapon, did she plant a listening device? Video? Would it make sense to record killing me?

  I sit at my computer but can’t work knowing the blade intended for my back is... behind me.

  After logging out of my trading account I lock the computer. Get in the Jeep. In twenty minutes I’m at the Metrocenter, a mall that covers more acres than God originally zoned, but they get away with it because God threw up his hands and said, I guess if I’m not doing anything about the pedophiles, what’s a zoning infraction?

  I park beside a chick magnet, a Geo Tracker that’s dying of radiation poisoning. Paint flaking, discolored. Inside, the dashboard is like a giant broken blister.

  Stride to the hobby shop. Balsa planes. Trains. Remote control Hummers.

  There, alone on a shelf beside rocket engines. LATENT FINGERPRINT KIT.

  The plastic case looks like the ones the FBI guy carries to the crime scene on TV. The sticker shows the contents: tape, dust, a compact disc with the initials, FBI. Enough cards to lift twenty prints for a mere thirty bucks. I race home, ignoring skanky mall chicks, bad Phoenix drivers, the scorching heat. My legs are jittery. I need a good eight-mile run to settle them. Metabolism is running a little hot.

  I slow, swing tight to avoid a black sedan leaving the lot.

  Passing the pool it hits me. Black Lexus! Stomp the brake. Reverse, three points, and I’m motoring on Happy Valley.

  Left...

  The Lexus is a quarter mile ahead, sweeping the bend toward interstate seventeen. Times like this I’m glad I opted for the fourteen mile per gallon 5.8-liter v-8. I flood her veins and she roars.

  The Lexus makes an erratic lane change. Rachel saw me pull in, out; knows I’m on her. She takes the onramp to Seventeen south, races past a sign that says the construction speed limit is twenty-five. She’s going eighty. I’m touching ninety. My bottom line is simple. She wanted to kill me. I want to kill her. But in society, we make concessions. I’ll settle for running her into a concrete barrier and then tying her to my luggage rack.

  She merges, swerves into the left lane. A semi slams his brakes. Squeals tires. Other cars weave and swerve. They’re going fifty-five and I tap the brakes down to seventy to avoid an old orange Chevy Luv farting eggy white smoke. I swerve to the passing lane, zip ahead around a tractor trailer. The Lexus swings back to the right lane and exits on Pinnacle Peak. I slam the breaks. The Chevy Luv has been tailgating me. He bumps my bumper.

  Rachel’s gone, and I never saw her license plate.

  I’m pissed sixteen shades of red. I’m going to get her fingerprints. Knock on Cal Barrett’s door and appeal to his desire for Armageddon. His hatred for the State. The universal desire of all men to stand on the mountain and full-throated roar, I’ll take no more!

  The Deer Valley exit comes and I loop back to the apartment complex. Race up the stairs and find my door hanging open. A two-thousand-dollar stereo sits within eyeshot of anyone walking by. A collection of four thousand antique CDs. A curved flat screen television the size of some kids’ bedrooms.

  I enter with caution. Promise myself that by sundown, I will own a firearm and it will never leave my presence. I circle slowly, taking everything in. Nothing appears to be missing, but the kitchen smells like the garbage needs taken out.

  I creep to Keith’s door. Listen. Slip by, pause outside my room. The door is open. I slide around the corner, low, in case someone is waiting with a fist or a gun. My room is empty. Computer is still locked. But the mattress is upended and the knife is gone.

  ***

  Paolo calls me while I’m researching Cyman on the Internet. “Two pallets of blocks? What kind of cryptic crap was that?”

  “Let’s drink a beer.”

  “I’ll be at O’Fallon’s ‘til they close.”

  “See you in two hours.” I swipe the phone off.

  Keith and Katrina are on the couch watching television. She holds a bowl of spaghetti and he makes wonder bread sammiches out of his.

  “Make sure you lock up, tonight,” I say.

  “We always lock up.”

  “Well, don’t forget.”

  “Right.”

  “Going to Flag. Be back tomorrow.”

  Keith’s eyebrows go wild. “Oh, wait. I’ll walk you out.”

  We shuffle down the stairs and he lingers at the Jeep. I’m still thinking about Cyman’s past, but Keith has an I-need-a-friend look.

  “What’s on your mind?”

  “I don’t think the baby is mine.”

  “Why?”

  “She talks in her sleep about you. She saw everything slipping away and set a trap.”

  “Trap me?”

  “No. Your money. I’m going to get a DNA test when the baby’s born. If she has it.”

  “Totally within your rights.”

  “You’re not worried?” he says.

  “Not at all.”

  “It could be yours.”

  “I doubt it. But finding out I can have kids would be like a paraplegic finding out he can walk. It isn’t going to break my heart.”

  He nods, dazed. “I’m not ready to be a father. The world’s too unjust.”

  “Ahh. Life is hard and then you die. Don’t be a candy ass. Every other human being in history has lived in squalor and mortal fear of the local strongman. You live where you get to choose between varieties of fake sugar.”

  He nods, thinking, not ready to accede.

  “You and Katrina would do that baby a favor if you didn’t kill it.”

  I close the door and leave him standing at the curb with his head down.

  The road to Flagstaff flies out my rearview. I don’t listen to radio, and though my iPod is plugged into the Jeep’s stereo, it is off. The wheels thrum. The engine drones. I climb the hill at Bumble Bee thinking about babies. On my left the sun sets at a lookout aptly called Sunset Point. I descend the other side toward the Prescott exit thinking about my people. Assimilation. Humiliation.

  Light rain spatters my windshield as I crest the plateau leading into Flagstaff.

  Of course, I have almost forfeited the right to think of them as “my people.” I am like Jack London’s White Fang; I belong to a dispossessed class who begin as one thing and evolve into something else, and endure most of their lives unable to be either. I turn the comparison over in my mind, and wonder if I am not more like London’s other dog, Buck? The domestic dog who heard the implacable call of the wild?

  What is the Indian, anyway? A gene pool? A tomahawk? A defeated nation? A culture that struggles to adapt, without losing its soul?

  A resurgent people?

  A fascinating pedigree at a social event? Oh you’re indigenous. So cool.

  Edmund Burke said example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other. Ed could have been Blackfoot. We were a conservative people. Tradition. We learned from ourselves, history, earth. Our ancestors live not in some quasi-religious glitchy sch1itcky, cross your knees and hum sense. Our ancestors are here.

  But me? At ASU I wrote papers about the evils of assimilation on a Macintosh computer. There’s o
nly one thing I want. Desert Dog. When I win, I’ll be a Blackfoot version of Nietzsche’s Overman.

  I’ll walk between raindrops.

  Water trickles across my windshield. I coast into Flagstaff and ease by Northern Arizona University. In town, the rain lets up but the smell lingers—that living, reassuring smell of fresh rain. After swinging below the railroad tracks I count three streets, turn left, and because my ancestors love me, a parking space waits in front of O’Fallon’s. Backing in parallel I see Paolo inside the bar, supping on a pitcher of Guinness.

  At the entrance I absorb the noise after the neutral sizzle of rain. The smells. Tobacco and deep fried chicken wings. The floor sticks to my sneakers.

  Paolo hefts the pitcher and salutes me. He drinks. I drop into the opposite seat. Lean conspiratorially across the table. He belches. Smiles.

  “Firewater?” he says, and offers the pitcher.

  “Ha! Wow. Just brilliant. Any of the crew around tonight?”

  “Marz lined up a sweet gig cooking breakfast at the Holiday Inn off the Williams exit. He starts tomorrow and wants to go in sober.” He rolls his eyes. “Yeah; I know.”

  “Where’s Layne?”

  “Sedona. Probably grilling a frankfurter about now. He’s backpacking the McKenzie trail since those clowns on the news spotted the mountain lion. He took a little fold-up crossbow and tipped the bolts with rattlesnake venom.”

  “Cliff?”

  “L.A. Hand-delivering a karaoke CD to some recording contact he found on the Internet.”

  “Yeah?”

  “So. You need cement blocks and ply? Building a house?”

  “You still with Morton Construction?” Paolo does construction, but his heart is in video graphics. Layne too, but more with still life. Trees.

  “A miracle. They laid off half the company.”

  “Von Mises said there’s nothing that can stop the collapse that follows a credit expansion.”

  “You ever notice you quote a lot of white people?”