The Last Projector Page 8

  This was particularly risky in a new relationship. But luckily, they got so used to the noise that they stopped hearing the horn completely. Or at least he did. He was used to horns.

  Billy was still convinced they were meant for each other, mostly because it only took her about an hour and a half to successfully ignore this horrible sound coming from under his hood. In fact, neither seemed to be noticing the horns on other cars either. Billy hoped that books would be written someday to theorize how much this sound may have affected their reasoning, especially when things got real bad down the road. He wasn’t entirely convinced that the sounds of horns hadn’t just become more feeble out on the highway.

  It may have worked out if it wasn’t for the fact that talking just that little bit louder didn’t really suit Billy’s voice at all. Never mind that she was ignoring him, as well as the horn. Billy’s voice was kinda high already, even without any obstacles. And just like that, she was done.

  A sweaty, young couple is having sex as they drive, having finally found a stretch of Bardstown Road without any streetlights, far outside the usual weekender mayhem. The girl, small, olive-skinned, is on top of the driver, arching back to grip the steering wheel behind her. She’s seen this in the movies and knows it’s what she’s supposed to do, hopes it’s what he’s always wanted her to do. The boy, smaller, homemade tattoo lashes and scratches on his arms, is navigating the roads well in spite of the obstacles. Until he starts messing with the stereo, and this turns out to be one thing too many for his brain and body to process simultaneously. His foot draws pressure off the accelerator as they slow, slow, slow, then quickly speed back up. Over and over. Slow, slow, slow, before he catches his breath and stomps the gas again.

  Even though the song hasn’t been released yet, somehow they’re listening to “Pounding” by The Doves (lately the boy’s favorite summer, windows-rolled-down song) but the music is fading completely now, along with the car’s momentum.

  She sighs, knowing they wouldn’t be having this problem if he’d just left Animals playing instead. It was a typical Pink Floyd concept album, basically just three songs, but none less than ten minutes, plenty of time for a kid his age to hold his concentration and finish.

  But he got sick of the dog song, and they’d gotten into an argument over the album before she’d even begun wrestling with his blue jeans, him shouting something about the “irrational bile towards disco was directly proportional to the inexplicable reverence for ‘80s music,” her wearily explaining that Animals came out in ’73 and was “conceived a decade before she was conceived.”

  The difference between this boy and her fiancé was clear to her in this moment. Unlike her betrothed, they always smiled when they argued.

  Eventually, he’d admitted to her he just wanted to fuck to the drums in one particular song. He said he’d been saving it for about a week ago, back when that tornado was threatening.

  Actually, there was no tornado. Just the idea of a tornado that would never come.

  Just like the boy behind the wheel.

  Eric met Jacki Ramirez during a thunderstorm, which wasn’t quite as impressive as a tornado, but it was good enough for him. The night they met, there was an argument about tornados that went on so long, everyone thought there had actually been one.

  Jacki and her friend were on the deck of a bar-and-grill near campus called Café 180, waiting for some ribs to finally come out of the smoker when the rain started stinging their faces sideways, turning the smoker into more of a steamer, and everyone had to pile inside. On the TV screen was the frozen image of a Doppler radar, a big red blob over the entire city of Louisville.

  “That’s not a good sign,” Eric laughed, alone at the end of the brass counter, his arm circling his cole slaw like he was back in a prison cafeteria.

  Jacki’s friend smiled politely, but kept lingering near the door, waiting for a chance to run and get her car. They both taught at the nearby University of Louisville, and their lunch hour was two hours old. But Jacki took his bait.

  “What’s not a good sign?” she asked him. “The Doppelgänger Radar? I’ve seen bigger weather amoebas than that on maps before.”

  “Not the radar. The television. It’s set to the wrong aspect ratio. Why am I trusting these assholes with my food if they don’t understand people’s heads shouldn’t be stretched out to look like footballs?”

  Jacki laughed and looked up at the weatherman’s elongated, Cro-Magnon skull.

  “I like his head stretched out like that,” she shrugged. “Makes him look smarter than he did anyway.”

  Eric scoffed, then took a big bite of slaw, chewing way longer than he needed to.

  “Look at you savoring that food,” Jacki said. “Who are you kidding? You love this place.”

  “Ha. Yeah, right. Duct tape on the seats, busted hookah rentals for dumb-ass kids, breakfast burritos as big as sleeping bags? The whole joint smaller than a railway car, meth-addict waitress sleeping against a wall, cranberries in the coleslaw, the only dry-rub ribs anywhere in ten blocks, what’s not to love?”

  “You seemed conflicted with that list,” Jacki smirked, then leaned out the door again. The rain had let up. “Let’s make a run for it!”

  Her friend’s eyes widened at the tornado siren revving up in the distance. She wasn’t running anywhere soon. She looked at Eric, then back at Jacki. She wasn’t having it. The new friends, impulsive plans, none of it.

  “Come on,” Jacki gave her a playful shove. “I doubt tornados even exist.”

  “What?!” Three other patrons turned to chime in.

  “It’s always just wind and rain,” Jacki said. “No one ever sees the damn things.”

  “Naw, you just don’t see them in the city, or on streets named after a city. Hollywood Boulevard in Kentucky, for example? No tornados. Pennsylvania Avenue, California? Made of tornadoes.”

  The scrawny waitress got involved at this point, face twitching around a speech she was dying to give.

  “Well, my grandpa got killed by one, so I’m pretty sure they exist. So maybe you should…”

  “Maybe it was just a storm,” Jacki bravely went on, and Eric put down his plastic fork.

  “Excuse me?” the waitress was livid.

  “She’s just messing with you, baby,” Eric offered. “How about those ribs?”

  “We put all the meat away,” the waitress said, still staring at Jacki. “We hadn’t had a paying customer for an hour, so the owner told us to start closing.”

  “Bullshit!” a sleeveless guy near the door shouted. “You took my order!”

  “Yeah!” a shirtless guy agreed with him. “I earned my ribs! I helped you set the tables, didn’t I?”

  The tornado siren got louder, and now there was a mob near the door, watching the sky. Eric stood up.

  “Fuck it, I’m going to Crazy Mark’s Feed Store.”

  “Nah, fuck that. It ain’t as good as the L.A.P.D. Smokehouse, ain’t as good as here even, and it’s weird.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Like people at other tables think it’s okay to talk to everybody? Every time I go, some asshole five tables away starts debating where I should go for ice cream afterwards. If I wanted to talk to strangers… uh, I’d do it.”

  “I ain’t good with sirens. I aint’ good with sirens!” A large woman was repeating.

  “L.A.P.D. Smokehouse, huh?” someone mused. “I’ll have to try that some day.”

  “How come Kentucky Road isn’t used to tornadoes yet?” Jacki scoffed. “I thought around here they were just another form of public transportation.”

  Jacki’s friend stared at her like she’d never met her before. In fact, even though they shared on office on campus, their friendship would end that weekend.

  “No such thing,” Jacki said again, grabbing a stool.

  “Are you kidding me?!” someone else was angry now, too. “Can’t you hear the sirens, Miss?”

  “Yes, yes, I hear them. But I’m just say
ing no one ever sees tornados. How come they don’t cruise down the street in the big cities? Huh? Okay, be honest, who here has ever seen a tornado with their own two eyes?”

  About five people raised their hands. The waitress put up both of hers. Eric was already in love.

  “Besides you,” he said to himself.

  “Forget it,” she said.

  “I ain’t good with sirens!” the woman yelled.

  “Whoa, you know what I wish?” Eric offered, trying to calm everyone down, actually spinning the waitress’ shoulders, who was about two steps from making a grab for Jacki. “I wish these were Toronado sirens instead. You know, to alert us that a sweet, big-ass car was gonna come cruising by any second.”

  He got half a laugh from someone near the jukebox, but he still felt like a hero because everyone was back to looking at the sky instead of Jacki. He clinked his plate down next to hers, and now she was close enough to him to look down at his half-eaten food like it was her own. She liked this intimacy and counted the cracked pepper and cranberries still in his slaw until she finally spoke again.

  “Sorry about that. It’s just all those ‘people stuck in a diner’ apocalypse movies you always see. You know, all the dumber ones near the door, hootin’ and hollerin’ about sirens and crap? Strangers are always waaaay too excited about storms. I’ve heard about five sirens since I started at U of L, but I haven’t seen a tornado yet. Like ghost skunks on the highway.”

  “Ha!”

  “I think that siren is a signal for something else no one knows about…”

  “I ain’t good with sirens,” Eric whispered, giggling, but the large woman heard him. Luckily, she just agreed.

  “Me neither!”

  “You know what else they always do in those movies?” he asked. “When they only got a few minutes to live?”

  Jacki and Eric talked awhile, taking advantage of some alone time while Jacki’s friend was cornered by a man with a sombrero trying to explain key scenes from a “little-known cult film called Ghostbusters.” He seemed surprised anyone else had heard of it, even more surprised they insisted it was called Ghost Skunk Busters. But when the man was brave enough to pull down the sides of his hat and run for his car, Jacki’s friend was helicoptering again and eventually succeeded in pulling Jacki out the door.

  “You should wait,” Eric said. “Rain’s gonna stop any second.” Then came the challenge. “But you probably won’t.”

  “Let’s go,” the friend said, annoyed with all the games, and they ran, hitting a wall of water about as thick and heavy as the octopus strips in a car wash. They made it about ten feet and had to run back inside. But the sun broke through before the water stopped dripping off their noses, and everybody laughed.

  “Told ya.”

  “Why didn’t you try harder to stop us!” Jacki said, playfully punching him in the shoulder, really looking at him for the first time. He was a good-looking kid. Average in every way, but this was kind of reassuring. That’s when Eric said some words that didn’t make her fall in love or anything, but got her interested enough to cheat on her future husband:

  “I’m so good at predicting human nature that I should be made an honorary human being!”

  Her friend left without her.

  When she saw what kind of car he drove, the sirens were still climbing in the distance. He didn’t get her door, but she made up her mind right there on the spot she’d do it, even before they made their plans.

  Fast forward a week, and Eric’s right about the song. It does have the drums that are perfect for an end-of-the-world moment like this. But the song is too short, and he’s already started it over twice. He reaches out to hit the rewind arrow again, hoping to remember more about how they met, stretching around her long, dark torso with some effort, getting ready to tell her all excited that he can smell a ghost skunk out there somewhere, too, and that’s when he takes his eyes off the road.

  Suddenly the tires are squealing, and Jacki’s screaming, and two sticky, sweat-covered hands grab the dashboard for balance, accidentally turning the music up so loud the speakers crackle.

  Then the ass end of the car gets loose of the road. And when Jacki comes down off the steering wheel and headfirst into the passenger’s seat, her body steers the car so hard off the pavement that it starts to roll.

  And it keeps rolling. And now Jacki is sitting behind the steering wheel and Eric is flying, over that wheel and leaving the car forever, limp and flailing like a broken rubber band over a child’s thumb. His jeans, still bunched around his ankles and trailing behind him, flutter in the wind like an outboard motor, stuck on the bottom row of safety-glass canines he’s left behind.

  Then the car stops rolling, upended in a ditch, and Jacki, bloody and dazed, pinned to the driver’s seat by the crumbled dashboard, stares out past Eric’s clothes and the gaping hole in the windshield, straining to reach his bare feet high above the car. She blinks at his body, confused, wondering how long he’ll be flying. Then her vision starts to fade, and she focuses on his toes, still visible in the dark, wiggling fifty feet in mid-air, as she listens to his song one more time before she passes out.

  He never comes down.

  Later. The hissing wreck glows red from the tail lights, one cracked headlamp flickering a rescue beacon up into the trees. Enough time has passed for the song to change from “12” back to “1” again, even play the hidden track, but the music is strangled, popping out of the blown speakers like cooking oil chasing sausage around a pan.

  The sizzle of the music makes this crash seem like an inferno from a distance, so the long shadow of a man and his dog approaches cautiously along the side of the road. The dog, a large blue Doberman, pulls on its leash to pick up the pace, but the man holds tight. His face is hidden under a baseball cap, and he reaches up to scratch the back of his head, the mesh of the cap revealing a rat’s nest of unwashed gray.

  Seeing no flames, the man ties his dog to a nearby tree, and the Dobie immediately starts scratching the bark to climb it. The man squints up into the dark to see what his dog wants so bad, then the animal is distracted by a nearby strip of bloody blue jeans and works on subduing that instead.

  The man walks to the front of the car and cradles the headlamp in two hands, careful with the trailing optic nerve, and aims the beam of light up over his dog’s muscular shoulders into the tree, spotlight on the bloody, naked boy twisting in the lower limbs.

  The body is bent into impossible shapes, back arched, head looking way too far behind him, one eye open, mouthful of leaves, arms and legs higher than the rest, seemingly swimming for the sky with every gust of wind.

  The man watches his dog rip a chunk of blue jeans from the jagged windshield and shake it into submission, and the man scratches the bobbed ears affectionately. Then he looks back to the car and finally notices the girl.

  She’s slumped over the steering wheel, unconscious but still breathing. The man looks up and down the road again, then takes the steering wheel in both hands and begins to pull. Already damaged, it breaks free in his hands, and the girl sags forward into his arms. He turns his ball cap around, all business now, and he carries her as carefully as a bride, away from the wreckage and down into the ditch, cattails parting for them like a beaded curtain. He gently lays her in the high grass and weeds, then wipes the black hair from her face. Seeing her so close, illuminated in red, he freezes, and his movements change, his curiosity about the crash transforming into something else.

  Then the blue Doberman starts barking, noticing the dead boy above them all over again, and there is a hiss of anger from the shadow in the ditch as he tries to quiet everything.

  “Shhhhh...”

  At this, the pointed ears spring up like antennas, and the dog stares at the dark shapes until its master bends down so far he disappears into the ground completely. The dog whimpers, then cocks its head, ears practically spinning now as the shrieking ambulance siren approaches too late to help anyone.

  When t
he horn finally stopped, or when they just stopped hearing it, Bully was still around, but things were different. So Billy stepped up the planning, desperate to keep her interested.

  For reconnaissance, Billy and Bully rented every movie they could find with a collar bomb in it. They hoped this would be the quickest way to learn how to build one. Or, at the very least, build something that might look like one.

  The first videotape they brought home was Wedlock a.k.a. Deadlock, starring that melancholy, bleach-blonde bad guy Bully loved so much in Blade Runner, a film that had been ripped on by critics for its clichéd, monotone voiceover narration, something Bully was completely unaffected by while watching it from a bedroom window from a mile away.

  But fast-forwarding through this flick, they quickly realized its collar bombs just looked like typical, plastic sci-fi props. Sure it would be easy to build one, but such a device would convince no one outside of the universe of shitty science-fiction films it was dangerous.

  Next, they checked out Battle Royale 9: Royale with Cheese, which popped a neck bomb early on. But all the kids screaming their heads off (figuratively) drove Bully nuts. She couldn’t stand that much mayhem while trying to read subtitles, so they ended up skipping to the end. If there were more neck bombs in the middle, they missed them.

  Then came Wild Wild Wild Wild Wild West, the show from the movie from the show, which, in addition to them deciding it was “real fuckin’ dumb,” turned out to be false advertising by the clerk. It had actors running around corn fields with devious devices that were more like neck magnets than neck bombs, and Bully couldn’t help but talk shit on Will Smith the whole time anyway. To harass her, Billy constantly grabbed the remote control, her shoe, a stray potato chip, even his own testicles, going through a future Fresh Prince’s best catchphrase possibilities, like his endorsement deal for the T-Qualizer, “I have got to get me one of these tees!” Then maybe squeezing his balls until they turned blue with a resounding, “Welcome to Smurf!” A secret fan of the Smith clan and all their timeless progeny, he’d done this dance before, and it worked better after a shower.