Journeyman Read online

  —They were cooking drugs.

  —Why?

  —Because they chose to.

  On the streets and avenues below where Nolan’s parked, headlamps course along the undersides of the insulated power lines. Lamp standards flicker on, leaning out over the concrete sidewalks like drooping heliotropes, and living-room windows turn television blue. A dozen beams of white light roam the sky in programmed arcs, centered around a single column of light that emanates from the apex of a substantial black pyramid.

  —We didn’t shoot the window, Dad.

  —I know.

  —I swear we didn’t.

  —I believe you.

  —But a pellet could have gone through one of the walls?

  —We don’t know that for certain.

  —But it could have?

  —Go to sleep, bud. It’s not your fault.

  In the time Nolan has been sitting at the station, a vast illuminated grid has surfaced below, the combined light enough to obscure entire galaxies from the night sky.

  Down on the Strip, the balmy night air smells of chlorinated water and car exhaust. He parks his truck on the top floor of a massive concrete parking structure and walks down a stairwell that stinks of urine to street level. When he emerges from the stairwell, the artificial light is intense and briefly overwhelming. Immediately caught in the stream of tourists, he happens upon a stumblebum of inebriated bridesmaids. The women tote tall, skinny plastic containers filled with slushy margarita mix.

  —Oh, my god, one woman says.

  —I know, right? says another.

  The women stop ahead of him and assemble to take a group picture. Drunk himself, Nolan weaves purposefully through the crowd into the background of their photograph, touching the brim of his hat as he does and wondering once he’s passed if he was captured there with them, to be noticed sometime in their future, that coy cowboy in the brightly lit thoroughfare.

  —Sodom and Gomorrah, a street preacher intones, startling Nolan. Cities of the plain.

  A few steps on, he overhears one man say to another:

  —Way you were squirming in your seat, I figured you either for the flush or a nasty case of worms.

  —Should’ve paid to see which.

  —Maybe next time.

  He enters the casino where Linda works by a side-entrance corridor lined with tiny storefronts that vend luxury goods from six of the seven continents. The faux-cobblestone flooring is waxed to a high sheen and the ceiling bears a mural of pink and white clouds, shapes too similar to be mere apophenia.

  A commotion of slot-machine sounds comes from the far end of the corridor, and cheering erupts from a crowded craps table. Nolan walks carefully from the corridor onto the casino floor, doing his best impression of sober.

  —Five point, the stick man monotones at the craps table. Two and three makes five and point.

  When Nolan finds her, she’s crossing the floor holding a tray laden with glasses and beer bottles. He sits at an empty slot machine and feeds it the occasional quarter while watching her distribute drinks to the gamblers. He likes how she accepts their tips with two taps of the chips on the plastic edge of her cork-lined tray. The pleated black mini-skirt she wears complements her long, toned legs. Her long hair is tied up neatly in a ponytail.

  Nolan smiles at her when she notices him, and she winks back, mindful of the cameras. When her tray is full of empties, she walks over to where he sits. The blinking lights of the slot machine color the white of his Western hat. They glow on the toes of his freshly oiled chukkas.

  —I was hoping I might see you tonight, she says.

  —You got plans later?

  Writing nonsense on her pad, she says:

  —I do now.

  They meet in a sports bar in a treeless strip mall several blocks from the condominium Linda owns outright, bought with money she inherited when she turned twenty-one, her parents having died of pancreatic and breast cancer within three months of each other when she was ten. A little girl left to be raised by a loving grandmother. Nolan sits watching a car race on the television mounted above the bar. Tinted camera dome above the TV screen. The cars race on a banked asphalt speedway until they’re slowed by a minor wreck. The driver of the wrecked car pulls himself through the window of the spun-out car and strides down the bank as the other racers swerve to miss him. He wears a helmet with a visor and a fireproof suit and he walks directly toward the car of the driver who put him there and shakes his gloved fist at him as the fire crew arrives, yellow-orange lights swiveling.

  —Idiot, the bartender says, and Nolan nods.

  Out the front window of the bar, stark white parking lines glow against the recently sealed asphalt. The lines like a bright white framework that hovers and tilts on an unseen axis in that black void. Nolan watches Linda cross the parking lot on her approach. Long, slow strides over asphalt still warm from the day. She wears her hair down and she’s changed into a pair of fitted blue jeans and a soft-pink cashmere sweater. Stylish and practical shoes. When she enters the bar, Nolan stands and offers her his stool while steadying himself against the bar.

  —You look nice, he says.

  She hangs her leather wallet on a hook beneath the bar.

  —Wait until you see what I’ve got on underneath.

  Later, she lies naked with her head on his shoulder and his leg cradled between her thighs. The louvered blinds of her bedroom window are partially turned against the light of the community swimming pool two stories below, and shadows and light ripple across the skip-troweled ceiling, swaths of blue light stacking into black.

  —There was this old lady at the slots tonight, Linda says. I brought her a Screwdriver and told her the cherry was the same color as her lipstick, and she said, “That’s great, sweetie,” and tipped me a quarter.

  —You ask for three more?

  —Of course not.

  —I would’ve.

  —No, you wouldn’t.

  —You don’t know that.

  —Yes, I do.

  Nolan pulls her closer, and she makes herself more comfortable against him. Her hair smells of shampoo and cigarette smoke.

  —She must’ve sat there for three hours, just pulling the handle and nursing that Screwdriver. When I picked up her empty, you could see all the lines in her lips at the spot where she’d sipped from. But the crazy thing is, later, when I was taking this one jackass a Seabreeze, I saw it again. It was faint, you know, from the washer, but her lips were still there. Dirtbag patted me on the tush when I took his order and then didn’t even move to tip when I went to set it down. And I wanted to, I did, but instead I just said, “Oh, this one’s dirty. I’ll bring you a freshy.”

  Headlights, pulling into the complex of condominiums, wash over the back sides of the blinds and push long, skinny shadows across the bedroom walls in a slow collapse.

  —That’s a tough one, Nolan says, tracing the contours of her bare hip with his fingertips.

  —I saw it at the bar, but I debated it the entire tray.

  —You did the right thing.

  —I didn’t want his bad karma.

  Nolan moves his fingers down and then up the curve of her spine.

  —How’s work? she says.

  —Work’s work.

  Imitating Nolan’s voice, she says:

  —Work’s work.

  —What do you want me to say?

  —Nothing you don’t want to.

  —I don’t.

  He brings his hand back to the hard protrusion of her hip and lets his fingers stand there before collapsing down to the heel of his palm. After a few seconds of quiet, he says:

  —We’re putting the finishing touches on that place I told you about.

  —The McMansion?

  —Yeah.

  —How’d it turn out?

  —Like a gold-plated turd.

  She laughs.

  —What’s next?

&nb
sp; —Move down the block three lots.

  —Same floor plan?

  —Bottom to top, but reversed.

  —You looking for anything else?

  —I don’t know. Not yet.

  Nolan stares at the ceiling, at bars of shadow, bars of light.

  —Guy set himself on fire yesterday.

  —What?

  —A house painter.

  —How’d he do that?

  —Lit a cigarette when he shouldn’t have.

  —My God. Is he OK?

  —He got burned pretty bad, and his back’s busted from the fall, but he’s alive.

  —Were you there?

  —I was.

  —How awful.

  —I didn’t know him all that well. He usually comes on when we’re finishing up.

  —Still.

  —Yeah.

  —Is he married?

  —He is.

  —Kids?

  —None that I know of.

  —I didn’t mean you, jerk.

  —I didn’t mean me—

  —I’m joking.

  —Oh.

  —You’re slow tonight.

  —Sleepy.

  —I stole all your chi.

  —Is that what it is?

  —More like too much beer. And whiskey, by the taste of it.

  —Yeah, well, quit working nights.

  —Are you going to make an honest woman out of me?

  —I wouldn’t put you through that.

  —I wouldn’t let you.

  Then:

  —She must be a wreck.

  —She’s holding up. I went and saw them at the hospital this morning.

  —Can you imagine?

  Nolan doesn’t respond. He takes her hand in his own and he tries to feel the softness of her palm through his calluses. After a moment, Linda says:

  —You’re a good person. To visit her.

  —Well, that goes without saying.

  She swats Nolan’s chest.

  —You’re awful.

  To avoid confessing to the lie he’s just told her, Nolan pulls her tightly against him and they remain like that for a few minutes without speaking until she says:

  —You sleepy?

  —Nope. You?

  —Uh unh, she says, bringing herself up on him while biting her lower lip.

  —Music to my ears.

  He awakes in the dark just before dawn and walks lightly down the stairs to her kitchen where their clothes lie strewn across the linoleum. His pressed blue jeans and pearl-buttoned plaid lie in heaps on the floor, but his hat is crown down on the table where she’d placed it on her cashmere. He likes how she always makes something of them slowly undressing one another on the way to her bedroom. How they stop to kiss against Navajo-white walls. Cupping her naked ass pressed against the oil-based cool of the door jamb’s trim.

  He drinks directly from the sink faucet and the cool water collects on the side of his cheek before funneling down to the brushed stainless basin. The clock on the oven casts the room in a soft blue-green hue. Nolan shuts off the faucet, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, and sits at a pine breakfast table with his elbow against a stack of dental hygiene textbooks. A receipt from the College of Southern Nevada bookmarks one of the texts. Nolan stretches his long legs out toward the sliding glass door that leads to her concrete patio slab. Above the fence boards on the patio, red and green airplane lights flash on their climb from McCarran. The plane disappears abruptly beyond the wall where the glass door ends.

  As a boy, he wondered regularly for the better part of a year how the fire got down into the cooks’ lungs, and when he finally got up the nerve to ask his father, he’d said that the chemicals they were using had gotten down in there, too, and that the fire had followed.

  That something would behave so persistently troubled Nolan into his early adolescence, until he mentioned this to his mother one weekend morning on their drive home from the school library. She settled the matter firmly for him:

  —It’s not like the fire knew what it was doing, buddy. That’s just how fire works.

  Nolan turns his eyes from the kitchen wall to a hibachi squatting at the center of the otherwise empty patio. One night, not too long back, he grilled spicy, marinated shrimp for Linda after she passed a test on the way to earning her Associates Degree in Dental Hygiene. They drank a bottle of rosé and made love on the kitchen counter, on the carpeted stairs leading up to her bedroom, at the foot of her bed. He woke up on the floor next to her, tangled in cotton sheets. He watched her snore, mouth open and head thrown back, the deep guttural snores of deep sleep. She’d never been dearer to him than in that moment, but why? When he shifted his weight, she closed her mouth and turned into him and he closed his eyes and fell back to sleep.

  A street lamp shines on the hibachi. He can see finger marks on the lid, marks left in the grease, pollen, and dust residue, those made by his own hand, perhaps. Or made by some other man. No, he knows, no other man’s hands but his own.

  He sits there, just thinking about the painter and his wife, about the lie he told Linda, about the joke he made afterwards to disguise it. He can feel a part of himself becoming again the cad he’s been before, the one who picks up and leaves a place to avoid that self, only to take it with him wherever he goes. It’s easier for him to lie or to slip away from confrontations of this sort. He’s come to be OK with being that kind of coward.

  The refrigerator compressor switches on, electricity flowing through its copper veins. Soon, Nolan hears her footsteps on the stairs. Her ankle joint cracks when she hits the tiled landing. She comes to stand behind him and she wraps her arms around his shoulders and places her hands against his chest. She lays her cheek on the top of his head. He can feel the collar of her plush terrycloth robe against his shoulders. The robe she wears mornings when they have coffee together, sitting on her leather couch, her feet tucked up beneath her, listening to music on her laptop. She teases him for having never been on the Internet.

  —What’s wrong? she asks.

  —Nothing. I just needed a sip of water.

  —What were you thinking about?

  —About how nice your jeans look on the floor like that.

  —I’m serious.

  —Me, too.

  —I don’t believe you.

  —That’s too bad, I mean it.

  —I mean it, too.

  Nolan reaches down and cups the slope of her calf, smooth in the palm of his callused hand.

  —You’re cold, he says.

  —It’s cold down here.

  —Let’s get you back to bed.

  —No, tell me.

  —I wasn’t thinking anything important. Honest.

  —You swear?

  —I do.

  —OK. I’ll trust you.

  The aluminum stairs that lead to the foreman’s single-wide office clang under Nolan’s boot steps. He raps on the hollow core door.

  —It’s open.

  Inside, the foreman sits at his desk, hunched over the newspaper. He holds a small mixing bowl in one hand and a soup spoon in the other. He wears his reading glasses perched just below the bridge of his nose. The room smells of drip coffee and cigarette smoke, smells Nolan has come to associate with the foreman. Nolan removes his work hat as he enters the office.

  —Coffee? the foreman offers.

  —I’m all right, thanks.

  The foreman holds up the bowl.

  —Rabbit pellets?

  —I’ll pass.

  Lifting the empty bowl toward Nolan, he says:

  —Bran cereal and banana slices, Jackson. This is what becomes of married men. Remember that.

  —Yes, sir.

  The foreman sets the bowl on the newspaper and drops in the spoon. He leans back in his chair and reaches into the pocket of his work shirt for the soft pack of generic menthols he keeps there.

  —What can I d
o you for?

  Nolan looks at the scarred linoleum and scratches an itch at his temple with a hooked right forefinger.

  —I was hoping I might draw early, for the past week.

  The foreman lights his cigarette, sets the lighter on the desk, and sits back comfortably.

  —You need me to advance you for the whole two?

  —No, sir, just what I’m owed.

  Nolan meets the foreman’s eyes through the smoke and something in them makes him look down at where his hands finger his hat brim.

  —Moving on down the line? the foreman asks.

  —Yes, sir.

  The foreman sighs smoke. His desk is cluttered with blueprints and carpenter pencil stubs, cheap ball points bearing advertisements for real-estate agencies and tool makers. An array of business cards have been taped or tacked to the cork board hanging against the particle-board paneling over his shoulder. In an upper corner of the rectangular board, the 23rd Infantry Division shoulder-sleeve insignia, four white stars on a shield of blue felt. He looks Nolan over judiciously.

  —How about a raise?

  —That’s awfully kind, but—

  —How about a raise, a twelver of watery domestic, and a lap dance over at the Gulch every other Friday night?

  —Like a gift certificate sort of thing?

  —Hell, no. Cash money. I’ll even chaperone and spend most of it on myself.

  Nolan looks down at his hat and smiles.

  —That’s a generous offer, but—

  —Bet your ass it is. Twelver alone would keep me on this detail. Gulch is just icing on the cake.

  —Yes, sir.

  —But you’re antsy to move on.

  —Yes, sir.

  —Any chance you’ll be back?

  —I doubt that.

  —Well, I hate to lose you, lost as you get in that head of yours.

  —Thank you, sir.

  —That wasn’t a compliment. He smiles.

  —No, sir, Nolan grins.

  —I’ll talk with the girl when she gets in. She’ll get things squared away.

  —I appreciate it.

  Nolan steps forward and extends his hand across the foreman’s desk. The foreman stands and they shake.

  —I figured I’d work out the day.

  —Don’t be doing us any favors, now.

  —No, I’d planned on it.

  —All right, then.

  Nolan turns, and the foreman lowers himself into his seat, but just as Nolan reaches the door, the foreman says: