Chapter 4 Regular Human Things #2
Statements.
Eric grimaced as Brady made eye contact from over the shooter’s prone form.
Brady gaped at him, and Eric gave him a shrug and a wink before ghosting away, leaving Officer Brady Carnegie to talk to the hysterical Sandy, her friends Ken and Mary, and the other witnesses, none of whom had seen where those olive cans came from.
He found his cart, since it was mostly full, and took a circuitous route around the enormous store, arriving at checkout with a few extra boxes of pastries and cases of soda and beer than he’d planned, but from such a different direction that not one person asked him if he’d seen the ruckus as he bagged his new clothes and his groceries and quietly exited the building.
It wasn’t until he’d started Jai’s stupidly luxurious old Cadillac, with a bench seat that actually accommodated Jai’s impressive physique as well as Eric’s long legs, that he remembered Ernie’s other admonition, the one that came after “Olives. Get olives!”
Don’t shoot!
If Eric had obeyed his first impulse and simply shot the unfortunate Bruce, he would have been wanted by the police by now. He’d be in questioning. He’d be forced to leave when he’d just decided to stay.
And, if he’d used his trusty Beretta at that range, with his specially chosen ammo, the two headshots would have gone straight through Bruce’s cranium.
And right into Officer Brady’s chest.
The thought was… horrifying. Eric hadn’t killed an innocent yet, and he didn’t intend to start with the delightfully earnest Officer Brady Carnegie.
And the horror was extra spicy when he considered that if Brady had shot, he would have plugged Eric in the same place.
Neither of them (Eric hoped) would have wanted that result, so the advice had been well-founded.
And he ignored the part of him that whispered that he’d be disappointed, very disappointed, not to get to know the officer better.
ACE CALLED him between Palm Springs and Victoriana, as he munched happily on an In-N-Out Double-Double, having demolished his Animal Style fries in the parking lot.
He clicked Speaker on his phone and set it in what might have once been an ashtray, but was now cluttered with coins and receipts, and obviously used as a catchall.
“Eric Christiansen,” he said, trying to be crisp with a mouthful of cheeseburger.
“In-N-Out?” Ace guessed.
“It’s so good,” he moaned pathetically. “I’m glad it’s forty miles away.”
Ace laughed a little. “Next time, I’ll have you bring back some for Sonny—he’s partial. But that’s not why I’m calling.”
Eric scanned the vast stretch of the horizon, and though there were some high clouds—it was still winter, even in the desert—that blocked the sun, he was hoping this wasn’t the precursor of a storm.
“What’s up?” he asked carefully.
“Well, apparently you were at Walmart when there was a dustup―”
“Oh God,” Eric said, his heart sinking. “You want me to leave.”
Ace sounded legitimately surprised. “No, moron. Nothing that drastic. Officer Carnegie just asked that you stay put at the garage for a bit so he could ask you some questions, that’s all.
Told me to tell you not to get your panties in a bunch, he wasn’t going to mention you in any reports.
He only wanted to know where you got the idea for beaning a gun-toting maniac in the head with cans of olives. ”
Oh. “Ernie,” Eric said, feeling a little relieved. “He told me not to forget them. He also told both of us not to shoot. I… it was a judgment call,” he finished with dignity.
He was rewarded with Ace’s dry chuckle. “I’ll take your word for it,” he said.
“And by the way, Officer Carnegie wanted you to know, the maniac was not dead, merely unconscious. He’s got a cracked skull, and he may be in physical rehab for a few months before he goes to prison.
Also, the fella that got shot is fine, and super excited about pressing charges.
So you don’t have to—in his words—worry about dodging him again, and can feel okay about not running away from my place because he doesn’t do good Samaritans like that. ”
Eric grunted and tried not to feel like a giant coward for doing a fade out of Walmart.
“That is a relief,” he said, meaning it.
“And I wanted to add that it was quick thinking. You kept folks from getting hurt, and you didn’t kill anybody.
So good for you. In case you were wondering if you could do that, you did it fine, and now we’ve got a police officer on our side, and me and Sonny been here three years and that ain’t happened, so nicely done. ”
Eric dared to smile. “Thank you,” he said, staring out over the desolate flatness of the cactus- and boulder-strewn desert. “I’m rather pleased myself.”
“How’d you learn to throw a can of olives like that?” Ace asked, sounding as excited as Officer Carnegie had sounded about that bright yellow car.
“It used to be a baseball when I was in high school,” he said modestly and then rotated his shoulder a little, wincing. “My speed’s the same, but my resilience….”
“Not so much,” Ace said, understanding. “Don’t worry. Ernie’s been prepping ice packs for you since you left.”
Wow. “That psychic thing….” Eric didn’t even know how to finish it.
“Yeah. Never wrong. Never. So good on you for listening. Don’t worry, Mr. Christiansen—I had my doubts when you first got here, but you’re settling in fine.”
Ace hung up, and Eric found an alt-rock station on the car radio. It had been tuned to something that sounded like Russian NPR before that, and Eric wondered if the antennae was enhanced somehow and then decided he didn’t want to know.
He’d barely exchanged three words with Jai, the man who owned this impressive vehicle, and Jai’s mate, George, the slight, seemingly good-natured nurse who lived with him in the house across the street.
There was another nurse there—but not a lover, just a friend, Eric guessed, and he wondered again at this nest of people.
Two auto mechanics, two military assassins, two nurses, a psychic, and an ex-Russian mobster.
And a porn model.
Dear God, he’d forgotten about Cotton, the beautiful boy he’d first met on his way into Victoriana.
Who would have thought he would have taken a back seat to everybody else here.
And Eric had been looking for them too—it wasn’t like he hadn’t had an inkling that there was an “outfit down south” that might take him in when he decided he wanted to leave the life and simply retire.
He just hadn’t been prepared for… he mentally flailed.
This.
But then, he hadn’t been prepared to take out a drunken fuckhead with two small cans of sliced olives, either, and he’d managed that.
Okay then. Day one doing regular people things, and he was going to be okay.
HE HADN’T brought In-N-Out for everybody when he’d stopped—frankly it hadn’t occurred to him, because he wasn’t used to thinking of other people.
But he had stopped by the cookie aisle when he’d been doing his forced casual tour of the outer perimeter of the store, and he vaguely remembered his mother saying something about neighbors should always have food with them.
What the hell. He was planning to make something mostly healthy that evening, with olives and tomatoes and balsamic vinegar and French bread, but he was going to call today a complete loss on the diet scale and break out cookies for a snack.
And so he could talk to his new community again.
This time as he pulled up, he noticed the munched Subaru that Officer Carnegie had been dropping off. Ace, Sonny, and Jai were ranged around it, staring at it like hackers stared at code—like it held all the secrets of the universe.
“We got the diagnostics for it?” Ace asked.
“Yeah, Ace—you keep buying me toys, I keep using them.”
“We order the panels today,” Jai said. “They get here in a two days.”
“We should have the hammering on the frame done by then,” Ace said. “What color you want it?”
There was a silence then, and Eric, who had neared them on tiptoes, not wanting to disturb their druidic car ritual, realized Ace was talking to him.
“What color’s easiest?” he asked. He knew that was sometimes a consideration; cars would arrive from the manufacturer as an army of silver fish or white swans.
“The parts and the rest of the vehicle will not match,” Jai said. “You may as well pick a color that you enjoy.”
“If you’re worried about being noticed,” Ace said, “lime green is less noticeable than primer spots. That’s a guarantee.”
“Red still means stop,” Jai said, and Sonny nodded his head.
“And green still means go,” he said. He glanced at Eric. “I’d say dark green, but….” He grimaced.
“Desert,” Ace said glumly, and they all nodded.
“What about the desert?” Eric asked, still alarmed by the scorpion thing.
“It’s fuckin’ hot!” Sonny said on a disbelieving laugh. “White cars are cooler, and so are silver. White or silver, with a pale interior, makes your car ten degrees cooler, which is ten degrees easier to cool down when it’s trying to cook you dead.”
Eric grunted. “And here I was, fantasizing about forest green.”
“How about pale metallic green?” Sonny asked. “Split the difference. Still hotter than white or silver, but it’s not gonna suck the heat outta the sky. That and you put some sun blocks in the windows when it’s parked—”
“Tint on the back windows period,” Jai intoned.
“And shades,” Ace added.
“And light gray interior,” Sonny said decisively. “It’s settled. We’ll do the ordering, and I can specialize the engine.”
Eric’s eyes widened. “Why…?”
Sonny gave him a disgusted look. “Now see, I woulda asked that myself, but then you almost wasted a guy with canned goods today, so I’m thinkin’ you know why you might need to go super fast in a car that means go, amiright?”
They were all gazing at him with admiration now, and he gave them his most “don’t mind me, I’ll just disappear here” smile. “I may, sometimes, have reason to not be easily found,” he admitted.