18

At four-thirty Pellam remembered Janine. "Oh, hell."

Sam looked up. Probably thinking that he'd pointed the muzzle of the single-shot, break-action shotgun the wrong way or hadn't remembered one of the firearm safety rules Pellam had told him.

For the past couple hours they'd been plinking away with shotguns. Occasionally Pellam would throw a can or two into the air and Sam, sweating with the effort, would calculate the lead. Pellam noticed the determination on the boy's face. Once he overheard Sam mutter something as he fired.

"Ned" was what it sounded like. Pellam had asked him what he'd said but he just shook his head and said, "Can you throw another one please?"

"Got to call it quits, son," Pellam now said. "I've got an errand back in town."

Inside the kitchen Sam said, "Mom, you should've seen me."

"I did. I was watching out the window."

"How'd I do, Mr Pellam?"

"Did good, really good," Pellam said. "You've got to clean your weapon, Sam. But I've got to run to town. We'll do it when I get back." He looked at Meg and there must have been something in his words or-goddamn it, was he blushing? He looked at her coy smile and said, "You mind dropping me in town and I'll bring the camper back?"

"Hey," Sam said, his high voice cracking into an even higher register. "Can I come?"

Meg smiled sweetly, "Oh, and can I come too?"

"Probably better if you didn't."

She let him swing for a minute then said, "Maybe you've got some other friends in town. Some people I don't know."

"Shouldn't take more than fifteen minutes."

Meg smiled innocently. "Fifteen? That's pretty fast."

He gave her an exasperated glance.

The phone rang.

Meg kept her eyes on Pellam as she made a slow turn and walked to it.

"Hi, hon… Aw, no. Come on. What? Problems?"

"Hi, Daddy!" Sam shrieked, jumping for the phone. "I shot a hundred cans…"

Meg winced and waved him down. "I'm making a roast. You can't make it?" She sighed. "Okay. All right. We'll save some for you. Love you."

"Bye, Daddy!"

To Pellam she said, "He's in a bind at the plant. He's got to work most of the night. Sunday, can you believe it? He said he'll be back at eleven… So we eat a trois." Sam said, "What's that, Mom? Sounds yucky."

"It means there'll be three of us for dinner."

"Oh, I thought it was this weird food you were going to make." To Pellam he said, "Mom makes this totally strange stuff sometimes. All slippery-"

"Sam."

"… and these gross colors."

"Young man, that's enough."

"And her apple butter…" He headed for the porch. "It starts out brownish. Then it gets kind of green."

"Sam-" Meg began good-naturedly.

Pellam asked Meg, "So, how 'bout that ride?"

"Let's go."

Pellam called to Sam, "Don't clean that gun till I get back, young man."

"Yessir. And then it goes all grayish. Yuck…"

Meg dropped him a block away from the camper.

She turned to him but before she could say anything he preempted her. "You don't talk about flower children, I won't talk about apple butter."

She laughed hard. "See you soon." This was a moment when he might've kissed her. But instead he just climbed stiffly out of the tiny car-his wounds still hurt-and walked quickly to the camper.

Inside a light was on. He opened the door. Inside, Janine sat motionless, looking down.

She turned to him. "Bastard."

"I'm sorry I ran into some trouble last night and-"

"Bastard." What she was talking about, though, wasn't his being late but the screenplay of To Sleep in a Shallow Grave. The binder was open and she'd read most of it.

He closed the door.

"This character you've added. That's me, isn't it?"

He sat down slowly.

"Some of it's based on you. Some. It isn't what I feel about you, it's not the way I see you. It's fiction. A story, nothing more than that. Mostly my imagination."

She lowered her head and read, " 'You're living a dream that the past can't justify…' 'It's the remoteness of the past that makes it such a safe place for you to live…' The Age of Aquarius was a long, long time ago…' Janice. Christ, Pellam, you could at least have done a better job changing my name."

"I didn't-"

"You!" She threw the notebook against the wall. The binding snapped. The pages cascaded to the floor. "You're the one living in a dream, not me. You come into people's lives-nobody invited you to Cleary-you come into town with the big fantasy, promising to put people into a movie, promising to take people away from here-"

"I never said that."

She was crying again. Her hair was pasted to her cheeks, she pulled it angrily away. "You didn't have to say it. What the hell did you expect people to think? Here you come, with your van and your camera, studying the town, talking to people, getting to know everyone… Getting to know some of them very well. You don't understand the power you've got. You don't understand how desperate people are. Desperate to get out of places like Cleary. And what do they do? They spill their guts to you and you betray them. Why? In the name of what? What word is sacred to you, Pellam? Art? In the name of Art? Film? Money? How do you justify taking people's lives and making a movie out of them?"

He stood up and reached out for her. She shook his arms away. "You just can't drop into someone's life, take what you want, then leave."

"I'm sorry."

She stood up. Walked to the door then stopped. Waiting for something. Neither of them knew what should come next.

"I thought…" Janine's voice faded and she stepped outside, closing the metal door softly behind her.

Pellam sighed. He picked up the screenplay binder then bent to the floor and gathered the pages, one by one.

Driving down Main Street, Pellam passed a grocery store and parked, bought a bottle of chardonnay and walked back outside. He looked up and down the street for Janine. No sign of her. And what would he tell her if he saw her? There was no answer for that.

He looked up the street at an approaching car, an American GT of some kind, maybe ten years old, its rear end jacked high. It came bubbling down the street. The driver parked in front of the Cedar Tap and gunned the engine into a sexy growl before he shut it off. He got out and walked into the bar. Pellam walked over to the car, looked inside.

He returned to the Winnebago, fired it up and drove slowly out of town. He rolled both windows down and felt the cool air fill the cockpit.

He is driving fast in a fast car. A Porsche. A Hun car, because in L.A. you must have a German car. It's not as easy as that, though. You also have to ignore the fact that a German car is the kind to have and it must seem as if you're the first person on the West Coast to think about owning one. Pellam's is black. He drives it hard, with the passion of someone who loves speed though not necessarily the machinery that allows the car to drive fast. Whenever anybody says, "Shit, the Germans make good cars," he always looks surprised, as if they'd just caught on to his secret.

They are going into the desert, Tommy Bernstein and him.

"Thomaso," Pellam shouts over the huge slipstream. "You're going to lose your hat."

And the man does, reaching up too late to keep the stiff, three-hundred-dollar, curly brimmed cowboy hat from sailing into the hundred-mile-an-hour slip-stream.

"Shit, Pellam, turn around."

Pellam only whoops loudly and speeds up.

Tommy doesn't seem to mind. Somehow, it would be wrong to stop the little black car. There is an urgency, a sense of mission. Tommy shouts something about the hat and illegal aliens. Pellam nods.

The sun is a plate of hot pressure above them. The wind, which makes their ears ache, is hot.