Absolute Zero

So Earl backed up the drive and went up the dead-end access road and waited in a small park where the road intersected the highway. Where he’d have a good view of passing cars. He put on his Walkman and ran some Eminem.

Three times through the tape, more than an hour later, Earl was shuffling his shoes in the compost of Burger King wrappers clogged around Rodney’s accelerator when a pair of high beams cut the gloom: the beat-up red Jeep. Okay.

“Got in the cookie jar, didn’t you, you fuckin’ hick,” Earl said grudgingly as he eased onto the road and followed the Jeep, still keeping his lights off, seeing by the faint light of a sickle moon. “So you’re feeling pretty good.”

He and Jolene weren’t that way anymore and hadn’t been for years. More like weird siblings. Whatever. Think of something more pleasant. Like what a boost it was going to be swinging the bat into Broker’s knee. He visualized the patella and tibia powdering. He would see Broker crawl. See him cry.

The fantasy brought an agreeable flush.

This was what he wanted. Screw Microsoft and all the time he spent in that fucking desert over there, never once firing his weapon. Sometimes he figured the only real thing he’d done in his life was finishing off that gut-shot store clerk in North Dakota after Jolene messed it up. He didn’t count Stovall as a kill. That was an accident. Either way, it was Jolene who got him into both of those scenes.

Just like she was getting him into Broker, who, he hoped, would take a cue and go away with just a broken leg.

Well, he’d know pretty soon.

By now the ride was getting tricky, and Earl had to let his fantasies go and pay more attention to following the Jeep through a back-road grid until it finally turned into a darkened farm. Earl drove on by and parked behind the first tree line past the house. Just a hundred yards away, he watched the lights come on in the house, probably the kitchen, then the bathroom, then they switched off.

He waited another ten minutes, then he walked back toward the house, past the tall shadow of the barn where some kind of animals were moving around behind a fence. Earl shivered, nervous now, worried about dogs. But there were no dogs and he used a pencil flashlight to copy the number off the mailbox. Then he stepped onto the lawn and wrote down the fire number. He’d driven UPS delivery in the sticks and knew that fire numbers were the most reliable way to quick reference a residence. Just call up the local sheriff’s office and tell them you’re a lost UPS driver and give them the fire number; the rural cops’ dispatcher would talk you right in. And that’s what he’d do tomorrow.

Sleep tight, sucker.

Half an hour later he quietly let himself into Hank’s house and tiptoed down to the basement. Immediately, he hit the rewind on the long-playing videotape in the VCR that recorded from the hidden camera in Jolene’s bedroom.

He tapped on the monitor and punched play, got an empty bed illuminated by just enough night-light to make it interesting, even arty. He ran rewind, hit play, more bed; so he went back and forth until on his tenth or eleventh try. .

“Oh, wow.”

Chapter Thirty-two

Something shook him and he opened his eyes.

Oh-oh.

Right in front of him, a man and a woman grappled in the dark. His eyes rolled past the flickering carnal image, then lurched back. Really worried now-not sure if he was dreaming or awake, or even alive.

Worry ran into panic.

It was a sign. Get ready, it’s time.

Stay calm. Stay calm. The only part of his life he had any control over was the moment he left it. He understood he must stay alert and focused.

But it was hard to concentrate because his eyes were fixed on clutching knees and a sweaty, plunging back. He could almost smell the hormones popping in their armpits.

The watching made him dizzy and dizzy was sensual. Almost like moving. His thoughts strained for sensation, to rise up and swarm, like fruit bats he’d seen once, leaving a jungle cave at sunset. He yearned to touch the sweaty skin.

With the whole goddamn black void to aim at, he was drawn to one hot spot of jerky flesh.

Distractions.

He’d tried to prepare for this moment. He had meditated on the mechanics. And now it was unfolding just like the Buddhists said it would. Leaving the physical body, he was distracted from his journey to a higher plane by scenes of intense intercourse.

These were the diversions.

Hadda be. So this was IT.

The big night jump.

Don’t mess up your death with distractions, Hank. Stay focused one hundred percent in the moment.

. .

The last blinders of shock crumbled and Hank recognized Jolene out there tugging on Phil Broker’s business, with one elegantly muscled leg crooked in the air, like a snob’s little finger as she held a dinner fork. Except that wasn’t no fork she was holding.

Broker. Comforting Jolene the widow not widow to Hank’s dead not dead. And, like back in the canoe during the storm, Broker paddling hard, trying his best to keep up. Hank could sympathize.

Then-

“I could kill you now and these pictures would be the last thing your brain would ever see. God, I wish you could see them.”

Pictures.

Earl’s voice established perspective and Hank realized the screwing was confined. Screwing in a box.

Earl had recorded it, like he said he would, and now Hank was watching the video on television.

“Okay, Lebowski,” Earl said. “Sit back and enjoy the show. Just for you, I’m going to run the part again where she blows him.”

So Hank treaded in his ebbing life and watched Jolene’s deathless youth flicker on the screen. He could almost hear her voice again.

Shit! He did hear her voice.

“What’s going on in here?”

Jolene stood in the doorway; her bare shoulders licked by the silent, shimmering video in which she wore nothing at all.

Earl grinned, getting off on seeing her, split-screen; doing Broker on the video and, in the flesh, in the doorway a few feet away. She couldn’t see the front of the set and had no idea. Then Earl stopped the tape. Blip. Hit the reject on the VCR. Took it out.

“Ah, nothing; just checking him. I thought I heard something but he’s all right.” Earl polite, smiling. “I, ah, see you’re sleeping in your own room tonight.”

Jolene waved vaguely and went back to bed.

Earl, as usual, switched on the Fox Channel, muted the sound, and left Hank with the TV remote stuffed in