sticky. He went into her and she said, “Have you now, you sonofabitch!”
And have him she did. Up one side and down the other. When it was over they lay together, she in the crook of his arm and he breathing heavy, feeling satiated.
“It didn’t work out,” she said. “It happens.”
“It was terrible.”
“I know. You lost a friend. We got the wrong one. We tried too hard. We got to know he’s the one to get it, not hope he’s the one.”
“You won’t give it up, will you?”
“It’s bottom line, Billy. You either want me or you want Frost. Look here. We do this, we got the exhibit. You like the exhibit, don’t you?”
“Sure. I like Frost too.”
“Which do you like better?”
“Why have I got to choose?”
“You keep Frost, he’s got the exhibit. Not us. Not you. You could be the man. You’re dark at the middle, baby, but you do this, we get the thing, the dingus, then you and me, we’re it, and you’re the man. You’re the driving force. Bad stuff is over. For good. I promise. This is for us. It’s the best and easiest way to jump ahead in life. It’s our jump, baby.”
“He told me it’s really the body of Christ.”
“He tells people whatever they want to think about that thing, baby. He thinks he’s some kind of do-gooder. He thinks he can rouse something good in you, and he’ll do it with talk or he’ll do it with that dead body. He’s telling you it’s Christ. Some other person he might tell it’s the body of some rock singer. He feels you out, then tells you what he thinks will work. I’ll tell you what I think it is. Something made of rubber.”
“Well, I guess he didn’t really say it was Christ. He said that was the true story he had gotten.”
“He’s got lots of true stories. I tell you it’s just something rubber is all. He makes himself important with that thing.”
“Hell, that’s what I want. To be important.”
“And you can have it. Listen, honey. Even if that was Jesus and he was here to help you personal, wouldn’t work. You’re rotten, just like I been sayin’, but you want to pretend you aren’t. You want to think maybe you can get religion or something to make you better, but once an apple is rotten, hon, it stays rotten. My advice is learn to be rotten and like it. There ain’t nothing in that freezer’s gonna change who you are, who anyone is.”
They lay silent for a while. Eventually Bill spoke. “We did this. .. I don’t want to start something. You know, a trend… Just this one time.”
“What’s that?”
“Something like this. Rotten or not. Just this one time. Right? I mean, there ain’t no one else we want killed, is there?”
“When it’s done, we’ll just let it go. Believe me, it can be done. I just got to think about it awhile. We won’t get in a hurry.”
“Maybe if it was someone I didn’t like.”
“Listen here. He likes you, Billy. Really, he does. But he pities you. You want to be the source of pity? That’s not true respect, friendship, or love. It’s just what it is. I love you, Billy. I know how you and me are. I face the facts. But still, I love you. Do you really want me to keep lying down with a man with a hand on his chest? You really want me to give birth to a baby might have a hand on its chest, or coming out its ass or on top of its head? You really want that? You think about it. You think about how you’ve had me, baby. Ain’t no one done the things to me you’ve done, ain’t no one likes it the way we like it. I don’t want to be shared. I want you.”
“I still don’t have anything against him.”
“Who says you have to?”
Thirty-one
Gidget left him early, while it was still dark. She had gone out of there holding her shorts and shirt together with her hands, leaving him naked in bed. The bedclothes were torn, bloody in spots. He lay amongst their ruin thinking and seeing himself once again as the man on the stool, looking down on the Ice Man, giving the talk.
He had some random thoughts: Jesus. There ain’t no Jesus. And if there was, this ain’t it. He wouldn’t end up in no freezer. And if he did, and this is him, what’s that got to do with me? Frost pities me, like I’m another freak. He’s the fuckin’ freak. Telling me that bullshit about the Ice Man. Conrad, he was all right. I liked him. It shouldn’t have happened, but it did, even if I didn’t mean it. I didn’t set out to hurt Conrad. It’s not my fault. It’s me and Gidget and that’s all. Fuck Frost for telling me that story. Fuck me for ever thinking there was anything about that thing in the freezer. It ain’t nothing but an exhibit I want.
Bill showered, cleaned up the bed, and dressed. There really wasn’t anything to do that day, in spite of what Frost had said. They were locked in until word came from Frost. Gidget was supposed to keep things in order, but there was already an established order and she wasn’t part of it, and he had no need to be part of it. Not until he had the Ice Man. Then he would for the first time in his life be important. Someone to reckon with. It might not be president of the United States, but it beat living off the leavings of your mother’s checks. When she was alive to cash them anyway.
Around noon there was a knock on the trailer door and Bill answered it, hoping it was Gidget, but it wasn’t. It was a dark-haired woman in blue jeans and a loose shirt. She was an attractive, somewhat large woman. She had a plastic trash bag in her hand.
“Conrad would have wanted you to have these,” she said.
“U.S. Grant?”
“Formerly. I’ve lost the beard. I’m through with carnival life. I’m bringing all of Conrad’s goods to you. This bag, that’s the whole of it. Mostly cowboy books. He loved to read cowboy books.”
“Where will you go?”
“Anywhere. I’m driving my rig out of here within the hour. I’m through. No beard. No work.”
“It’ll grow back.”
“For now I’ll shave it. Soon I’ll get something done to it. I’ll find work somewhere, even if it’s banging oil field workers. I’ve had it up to here with this shit. I was thinking of leaving anyway. Now I’ve got nothing to keep me here. The whole thing’s falling apart. Frost, he’s losing control and I think it’s that blond bitch’s fault.”
Bill took the bag.
“Well, good luck, Bill.”
Synora, U.S. Grant, drove her cab and trailer out of there a half hour later and Bill never saw her again.
Thirty-two
A week went by and Gidget got a call on her cell phone that Frost had stopped in Oklahoma and had scoped out some new routes for the carnival and wouldn’t be back for another week. It was a pleasant surprise. It gave Bill and Gidget more time together. They used it well. After that extra week, Frost came home.
The carnival packed up and things went back to the way they were, except they lost the half and half to a transvestite lover from Denton, and the midgets had grown surly in the extreme. Gidget did not knock on Bill’s door, and at night Bill sat on his trailer stoop and watched the motor home, and some nights when the moon hit right, he almost thought he saw Conrad up there, lying down, riding out the rhythm of the couple below. But when he squinted, it was only shadows.
As for the rhythm, the rocking, there was plenty of that, and Bill hated to know what was going on in there, Frost touching her with that dead leather hand in a black silk glove. He hated it, but he came out each night and watched for the rocking, and more often than not he saw it. He began to grit his teeth a lot and smoke cigarettes. He quit reading the books Synora had left, and on one fateful day when they were parked outside of Tyler, Texas, he took them all out and stacked them and set them on fire. From that point on, he no longer thought he saw Conrad on top of the motor home.
Some days he saw Gidget, but she never really looked at him. They had agreed on this. Agreed they had to not show any more than common courtesy between them. They were waiting for a moment. The exact right
