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“How much for a room? We’ve been driving all night.”
The owner’s a big man, pure West Texas, no-nonsense. If he smells danger, it doesn’t show on his face. While the two of them talk daytime rates and cable TV packages, Jim searches the owner’s face for some sign of recognition. Doesn’t this seem weird to him? Shouldn’t this guy’s hackles be going up? This menacing stranger with a college kid in tow -- maybe John Ryder is in his element here, making bright and genial small talk with some small town mom-and-pop manager; maybe this shitty little roadside motel-cafe is his natural environment. But Jim’s not. Can’t this guy see that Jim doesn’t belong here?
Jim didn’t have any roadside stops like these on his itinerary -- too cheap, maybe, trying to maximize the payoff when the drive-away company doesn’t cover expenses. He’d planned on sleeping in the car if he had to, pulling over on the side of the road and pushing the driver’s seat all the way back. Anything could have happened to him then. Anyone could have found him.
Maybe this guy just thinks they’re a couple of queers.
Under the table, Jim fills the chambers of the gun, one at a time. His hands are shaking so bad it’s a miracle he doesn’t dump out all the bullets on the linoleum floor and get them both blown away by some trigger-happy Texan in the next booth. Jim counts silently: one - two - three - four - five - six. Why give them back?
But Jim made him an offer — just the two of us, just you and me, I’ll do whatever you want — and this is what the man wants. The two of them get their room.
The number on the hotel key matches a door at the far end of the motor court; Jim is pathetically grateful for this, grateful for the empty blacktop like somebody might see them and know what they’re here to do. No more collateral damage. Nobody gets hurt but him.
Ahead of him, John Ryder’s long loping stride — his broken-down boots crunching on the asphalt like newly fallen snow.
*
“It can be just us,” the hitchhiker'd said. “Nobody else. If that’s how you want it.” Cutting off fingers and slashing tires and slitting throats. And making deals.
Jim thinks of the girl back at the Longhorn, the busted-up VW by the side of the road, the station wagon full of kids, the dead cop with the sad face. They didn’t do a damn thing wrong, they were just trying to help. The girl didn’t have anything more to do with this shit than Jim did, before he went and dragged her into it. They must be grilling her about it now, asking her what the hell she was thinking, letting some maniac in, didn’t she see the kid was dangerous. She probably believes them by now.
Jim’s jaw is tight and jutting. “Why should I believe you? Why should I trust you?”
“Who else is there?”
Jim gestures at him with the shining barrel of the gun, until John makes a big show of patting himself down — no pistol tucked under his waistband, no shape of a switchblade in his hip pocket
“Am I supposed to buy that? How do I know you don’t have another knife on you?”
“Not even a toothpick. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Want me to strip?”
There’s no telephone in the room, only the naked socket for one. Maybe somebody stole it. How many people come in here by broad daylight, and pay by the hour?
Jim crosses the room until they’re standing there, face to face. Everything inside him is burned-over, everything that used to be scared and small has been burned up and what’s left is cauterized.
This guy’s not so big. He’s not the Terminator, he’s not the devil. He’s just some guy with lines on his face and the smell of gasoline on his clothes, gasoline and copper.
Jim reaches up and takes him by the shoulder. “And what do you get out of it, if I don’t blow you away right here?”
“I want you to say the words: I’ll do whatever you want.”
“I will. I’ll do whatever you want.”
“Tell me you want this.”
Jim’s throat is horribly tight. “I want you.”
And then the distance between them is gone, and the heavy breadth of John’s body is close against his own, his hand finds Jim’s waist. John’s mouth joins against Jim’s, the taste of metal on his own tongue and the soft warm cleanness of John’s inner lip — the trace of his tongue against Jim’s teeth. He isn’t rough, he doesn’t force it, but then he doesn’t have to. Jim’s known this man for less than twelve hours and it feels like he’s been running from him his whole life. How many people are dead? How many people did he kiss and then kill?
The blood is rushing in his ears; John’s fingertips rake down his chest, tracing down to his ribs. Jim staggers.
“So this is what you want, huh? This is what all this has been about? That’s some way to get your kicks.” He throws his jacket down, scrabbles one-handed with the buckle of his belt until the cold metal tongue slips loose.
He’s about to yank his jeans down when John says, “Stop there.”
John guides him down against the edge of the bed, until he’s kneeling there on the dark gray carpet,
“Have you done this before?” John asks. His eyebrows are faintly raised. Jesus, he really does look good -- is this what happens when someone sticks a knife in your face, douses you in gasoline and sets it on fire, runs you down like a stray dog? He starts to look handsome?
Jim looks away from his face, down at the bedspread, hurried. “No.”
“Wanted to?”
There’s no reason to lie about it any more. “Yeah. Just not like this.”
Not like this. Lucky they found each other.
John slinks down between his legs, and he must feel the muscles of Jim’s legs go tight because he holds up both hands as if to say once more, look, I’ve got nothing.
Jim resists the urge to slam his legs together. The phantom throb of the knife blade against the inside of his thigh feels like the bruise from a kiss.
He takes him in his mouth, before he’s even hard, and for a while Jim forgets about everything else. Dark blots at the edges of his vision, like the night flooding back in.
Afterward, all unspooled and wrung-out, Jim chokes on the words.
“You want—“ You want me to do you?, he nearly asks, but his mouth is dry and his throat is constricted.
John pulls himself up onto the bed, like something terrible coming up from the ocean floor, dark and slow. He could grab him by the throat — gouge his eyes out with his thumbs, all the stuff bad guys do in movies.
But he only wants to kiss him again. Their bodies chip together against the mattress like flint and steel, hard planes jostling in contact — denim against denim, bones beneath the skin. When he kisses him back he tastes himself in John’s mouth, on the pad of his tongue.
They grind together; they grapple like teenagers. Jim gets him off with his hands. The whole time John braces the heel of his hand against Jim’s throat — not squeezing, just pressing, like a reminder of what he can do. He wants Jim scared and he’s not going to give that to him any more. The last 48 hours have burned all that out of him.
“Where did you come from?” Jim asks, afterward.
Drowsy, the answer comes: “Nowhere.”
“What’s wrong with you?”
“I already told you. I want you to stop me.”
“What’s the matter with you? If you were suicidal or something there’s got to be a better way of getting the job done. You picked on me ‘cause I fought back, and now you want me to—“
“That’s not why.” Voice flat and lusterless, drained of everything, like the voice from a ghost.
“Then what? What?” His own voice is thin and brittle in his throat, rising like a girl’s.
“Maybe I just think you’re cute.”
If he hasn’t been sleeping, then John hasn’t either. He’s not a machine. He’s just a man. Jim just has to wait him out.
He listens to the sound of the other man’s breathing, listening for some clue in it like the ping and rattle that warns of engine trouble. There’s something wrong in him, some germ or brain lesion or tumor, that makes him what he is. Beyond the point of retrieval, a maniac, a mad dog. There has to be a root somewhere, sunk deep below the surface, or else none of this means anything at all. Somebody who does this because he wants to.
I cut her legs off, and her arms, and her head. He couldn’t have done that, not with a skinny little knife, no matter how sharp — so what did he do? What did he do that made for all that blood?
John’s body next to his is warm and heavy, denting the mattress — Jim settles in uneasily on his elbow, breathing sweat and gasoline, letting his body curl despite him into a soft parenthesis. He’s too fucking tired, too wrung out; there’s nothing left inside him, and sleep is starting to look pretty good. He can’t keep his eyes open.
Wasn’t this how this all started? Letting himself doze off, letting the yellow painted lines massage his brain into complacence, until his grip on the steering wheel starts to slip and his eyelids start to drop and screech, here comes a big fucking eighteen-wheeler ready to turn him into chunky marinara. Maybe he didn’t swerve in time. Maybe Jim’s been dead since before he even met him.
They lie together in the dark. This is a truce.
*
It’d be hard to say if he manages to get any sleep, lying there waiting to die. But John is out cold in the bed next to him, or he’s dead already. He’s too still. Lying in the dark, Jim waits and waits.
The gun is heavy in his hand. Jim slings a leg over and straddles him, but his hands are shaking —six bullets, and it’s not going to be enough.
The gun jams.
John is laughing at him, dry barking laughter with his white teeth showing. Jim knocks him across the face with the barrel of the gun, the way they do in the movies, and knocks the breath out of him for just a moment.
John cracks an eyelid, surveying him — his eyes have no right to be that blue, looking back at him through a bright slit. He covers Jim’s hand with his own and guides the barrel of the gun into his own grinning mouth, between the front teeth like a parlor trick.
His eyes say, Do it again.
Again, Jim pulls the trigger and again the hammer goes click on an empty chamber. He can feel the percussion in his own dry throat. The edge of hysteria has gone from him and left him blunted.
“What are you?”
He withdraws the gun, but he knows before he looks what he’ll find — the weight of the bullets has vanished from his grip, all six, gone again when the revolver hasn’t left his hands. What kind of magic trick do you call that?
From beneath, John smiles up at him with absolute placidity. “Give me your best guess.”
Jim sucks in a breath, and bites his lip. “I’m not going to be the one to say it.”
“Guess.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
John laughs, and the sound of his voice is like thunder in the distance. “It gets lonely on the road. A lot of people’ll pick you up just to have somebody to talk to.”
Jim lets the gun drop from his hand, feeling it dent the cheap mattress.
This man, this thing, like a stray dog. Did Jim bring him into existence, or did the open road do it? Is this his punishment for living a life of safety? For wanting an adventure? Go around looking for trouble and you can be pretty sure you’ll find it. The dark shadow, the cool wet place underneath the rock when you turn it over. He only wishes he’d dreamed him up.