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He tips her well and drives on, getting to the campground around 10 AM.
Now he realizes that he forgot to put the bodies in the garbage bags earlier, so he has to do that inside the Ihaul before putting them in the back of his Jeep.
Already the bodies are cold and stiff. Of course he's never touched a corpse before, and it's repulsive, but he forces himself to work fast, telling himself that a dead body is no different than any other mass.
Minutes later the bodies are in the back of his Jeep and he's on his way up a 4WD trail. He's got his map from two years ago in the passenger seat beside him, his route highlighted in yellow.
About halfway up he realizes he's forgotten to bring a shovel.
That's not good. The serial killer idea is definitely out. All his planning and he forgot the damn shovel.
Well, so he'll just cover the bodies in brush and leave them there. They'll be so far out, they should decay before anyone finds them.
Eventually he reaches really deep snow, meaning he's gone too far. He can't tell where the road is. He'd been here in the summer before; he didn't think how much different it would be in January. He's got to find a place a bit lower, but ideally even deeper in the forest, further from the road.
He turns around and pulls off at the first place that the trail seems wide enough for someone to pass.
Surely no one will come up here today, he thinks.
But there is no point in taking any unnecessary risks. Seems like the safest way to do it is to take each body just far enough from the road so it wouldn't be seen by someone passing by, and then come back for the others. Once he has the bodies hidden just that well, he can take each of them a lot further from the road, so that vultures or the smell won't attract any attention. They could be up here for months.
All that seems easy enough, and at first it is. Before too long he's carried all three bodies down into a valley. He finds a little stream there, about four feet wide, and he decides to leave the bodies next to it, where the ground is nice and moist, likely to decay the bodies quickly.
The noise of the stream turns out to be a nuisance, since he constantly imagines that he's heard someone, but of course no one comes. Thinking that clothing would make them more noticeable, he strips the bodies, which are now even more disgusting than before, not only cold and stiff but discolored and starting to bloat.
Seeing them, feeling them, holding them as he loosens and unties the ropes, rips the duct tape off, cuts off their clothing, there is no denying what he has done. The awful reality of it is right there, along with the fear that someone unheard will appear at any moment and see what he is doing.
Finally, though, their clothing is in one of the garbage bags and the bodies are covered in snow and brush. He's pleased to see many little bugs around — hopefully they'll burrow right into those bodies and make quick work of them.
After confirming that the bodies won't be seen unless the brush is disturbed, he all but sprints back up the hill to his Jeep, carrying their clothing and shoes in the remains of the garbage bags.
———————
Contrary to his expectations, everything is more difficult on the way down the mountain.
What happened to their bodies is what happened to Amy, to his parents, to his grandfathers, to the six men he'd killed before, to everyone else who has ever died. Their bodies too cooled, stiffened, discolored, bloated, decayed, returned to ashes and dust.
And it will happen to him too, to everyone he loves, all his sisters and cousins, aunts and grandmothers. It could come any time: a stray bullet through a window, a bit of food stuck in their throat, a ferry accident, or some stupid fucking disease like leukemia.
The tears begin to flow even before he gets back to the paved road, and he has to pull off.
He's not only sad, guilty, overwhelmed — he's grateful. He can feel he's getting away with it. He's almost done.
Not wanting to sit there weeping, he gets out to take a walk. He can hear a stream, perhaps even downstream from the one where he left the bodies, but it's further away than it seemed, surprisingly large and loud, rushing powerfully over boulders.
Some strange impulse compels him to strip all the way down and get in the water. It's shockingly cold, as snowmelt streams are, but he's in a strange mood, and he just picks a place where the water is coming hard over a boulder, and sits down in it, letting it flow over his shoulders.
It's so cold, his body quickly numbs so that he only feels the sting of it. He looks at the wound, on its way to becoming a scar, that he got that night at the strip club. He'd practically forgotten that little J. B. gave that to him with a knife — hadn't thought about that almost since the moment it happened. He'd killed the little motherfucker to protect his family, and had forgotten that he'd stabbed him with a knife — had, actually, apparently been trying to stab Sophia, for some crazy reason.
That makes him think. What happened next? He knocked the knife out of J. B.'s hand, beat the hell out of him, then a guy threw a bottle at him.
Was that the fat one, the one he killed in the fight? Maybe it was.
He just can't remember the fight that well. It's just a blur.
He looks up to visualize it against the sky, but he sees the brightness of the sun up there surrounded by all that perfect infinite blue.
The sun in heaven, him in this cold water.
The cold water, he just tries to be present with the cold water. Life will happen. Here he is now, naked in this powerful cold water.
If the Khans told him the truth, if he really killed six guys that night, then now he's killed nine. Six accidents, basically, and three in cold blood. As cold and ruthless as this water.
But he didn't kill the woman, he thinks. Hopefully not. He had to knock her out, but she'll probably wake up soon with a headache and be okay. She has bigger problems.
He could've killed her. If he'd been scared, if he hadn't been thinking clearly, he would've killed her.
There is an old Raoul, the child, that is flowing away in this water, and a new one, a man, is being born here. He has killed with his bare hands, watching the life leave Todd's eyes. He has felt the bone of Phil's face give way under the force of his hand. He has discarded the cold bodies of his victims. He has executed a complex plot with near perfect efficiency and success.
On the other hand, he is not merely a killer. He has, perhaps, conceived children with Emma and Sophia, and if he hasn't he will soon. He has supported his family, and now defended them, risking his life. He has brought joy and ecstatic pleasure to dozens of women and girls. He's a womanizer, having deflowered three girls only hours ago, though it seems like a previous life. He's even an adulterer, he laughs, thinking of Mrs. X's ebullient breasts and ecstatic cries.
How is all this — Easy Riders, the X family's absurd mansion, the Sierra Nevada mountains, Kappy, the double-wide in Little Saigon, the Essex football and basketball teams — how is all this in the same little world?
The old Raoul and the new Raoul. The scar on his arm will represent the old Raoul, the innocent boy who underestimated the violence lurking in the darkness of the city, the loneliness and desperation of its inhabitants, as if everyone were living in Beverly Hills and working in Hollywood. The child who thought of himself as an observer in the cycle of life rather than a participant in it.
But the new Raoul, the man, is going to be much more careful. No more silly fights. No more acting without regard to potential consequences. No, if he ever kills again, he'll do it legitimately, publicly, in a way that everyone can exonerate him, so he won't have anything to hide.
That's his plan.
As for hiding, he will have to keep this all stored carefully inside him. He will have to be very careful to act as normal as possible for the next few weeks, just in case anyone realizes the boys are gone, or anyone finds their bodies, or for any other reason any kind suspicion somehow falls on him.
Discretion is the better part of valour. He thought that'd been a joke.
Okay, well, this is enough spirituality for the moment, he thinks.
This damn water is too fucking cold.
———————
It's so easy.
He just keeps thinking, it's so easy.
Especially once he finally gets back into the sunshine and begins to dry off and warm up.
He gets back to the campground, the Ihaul and his bike are there. Nothing's been touched. He throws the clothes in a dumpster, leaves the Jeep there, tows the bike into town. Puts the small supplies — the duct tape, the remaining rope, the garbage bags — in a saddlebag of his bike.
No use throwing it away. Nothing wrong with it.
Washes the Ihaul out at a carwash (just to be on the safe side) and returns it in Fresno, a little out of his way but he wants to be rid of it. He explains that a cooler of fish had got turned over and spilled, and no one noticed for a day, so he had to wash it to get the stink out.
No problem, they say. He settles the bill. No problem.
Back to the campground. Hooks the bike to the Jeep, and back to his family.
He takes 65 home, through the fields. The sun sets to his right, grey in the orange sky, and the full moon rises beautiful and bright to his left.
First, around ten PM he gets to Little Saigon.
"Let's make babies," he says as the girls rush up to untie his boots.
"Raoul," Sophia giggles, "she's already late."
Raoul looks at Emma, who nods, blushing happily.
"Good," he smiles, touching her cheek softly. "That's one down, one to go. But we might as well be extra sure about the first one too. That'll be two pussies, doggy-style, lots of mayo."
He's back at his own home a little after midnight. His whole family and half a dozen girls are there waiting for him.
"You didn't go camping?" they ask.
He hugs them all and weeps.
He tells them that he's just too sick. He could barely make it home, he tells them, but he'll stay home now.
And he'll eat anything they can cook for him.
And — he looks around — Ah! Shona! I need to see you alone in my room if you can spare a moment.
———————
The next morning, a Friday, he stays home from school again, just for kicks. He'll go back on Monday. He just needs a couple more days off. Shona's free too, so he'll enjoy the afternoon with her.
But that doesn't work out.
After fucking Shona early in the morning — and God that perfect little body of hers is so nice, with her beautiful dark eyes and eyelashes and her long sexy legs, her endless eagerness to please, her patient blow jobs, treating his cock like a precious treasure, her comfort with any position men and women can bend themselves into, her delightfully feminine exclamations, the scent of her soft black hair, the pleasantness of talking with her beforehand and afterwards, the gentleness of her voice and the reassuring sincerity of her admiration for him: if he ever had to settle for just one woman, it would be Shona, but thank God and Shona, he'll never have to settle for just one — and then enjoying a relatively light breakfast prepared by his sisters, cousins, and aunts, he goes swimming, as usual on a Friday.
But when he gets back home, expecting to spend the rest of the day just laying around fucking Shona as many times as he can, and maybe two or three other girls who happen to drop by, his sister Sam meets him at the front door with a strange message
"Mrs. X called," Sam tells him, handing him a piece of paper, "and asked you to call her at this number immediately. She sounded really upset."
"Okay," he says, looking at the paper.
"She emphasized 'immediately,'" Reza insists.
He looks at them. Do they know something more than they're saying. Are they discreetly keeping something from the other members of the family?
He goes to his room, to a phone line supposedly reserved for him and the twins (so that the others can get calls through), and calls the number.
"Hello?" her voice says. The sound is tinny, not like her home phone or Chateau Marmont.
"Mrs X?"
"Raoul?"
"Yes."
"Oh, thank god. Have you talked to my husband?"
"Not lately."
"He knows, Raoul," she sobs suddenly. "He had us followed. He had a PI. He has photos of us at Chateau Marmont."
"Oh, shit."
He tries to think while she cries. Through this awful connection, it sounds almost like coughing.
Jesus, if only he could just stop having problems like this. How much trouble is pussy worth? Why can't he just have the easy kind?
"Are you okay?" he finally asks. He can't think of anything better.
"He beat the hell out of me, Raoul."
"Oh, shit. Are you badly hurt?"
"No, I don't think so. Bruised. I'll be sore. Two black eyes though. Humiliating."
"Where are you?"
"At my mom's house. Near Visalia. That's where I grew up."
He almost says he was just there yesterday, stopping himself when he realizes how stupid that would be. He's got to watch himself better than that.
Then he realizes, no, he said he was going camping. Jesus, he has to figure all this shit out and keep his story straight.
"I wish he were dead," she says.
Raoul exhales. Does she realize what she's saying? Does she understand the coldness, the stiffness, the discoloration, the bloating, the stink? Or does she just think, childlike, that it would solve a problem?
"Don't say that," Raoul eventually says. "It's so terrible."
"No, I really wish he would just die right now."
Raoul sighs. "Shirley, I'm so sorry things have gotten this bad."
"Me too, Raoul. Me too. It's the end of my life."
"It's not the end. What do you mean, the end?"
"I have nothing now. Nothing. He'll take it all. He'll call his lawyer Monday morning. Start divorce proceedings immediately. It's over."
"Where's Scarlett?"
"She's here with me of course. He would've hurt her too, he was so crazy. He's angry at you too, of course. He might invite you over, but you shouldn't go. That's what I called to say. Don't go."
"Well, if he calls, I'll go."
"No, don't. He's crazy, Raoul. Just make something up. Give him some excuse."
"Alright, Shirley, I won't go."
He tries to think. Is any of this important? Is any of this his problem?
"Raoul?"
"Yeah?"
"This is not the end for us is it? I can't lose you too. I need you now. Please. I know, I mean, of course you have other girls, young ones, your age, but please. Don't leave me now."
"Shirley, it's definitely not the end for us. I'll do everything I can for you."
"Can you kill my husband?"
He almost laughs.
"No, I definitely can't do that. But I'll do everything I can."
"I know, I'm just talking crazy. I'm so.... God, I hate him. I really do wish he were dead."
"What about Scarlett?"
"What about her?"
"I mean, am I to go on seeing her?"
"Whatever. She'll go back to her daddy anyway. Gotta have that money. Just like her momma."
"So it's just us."
"Yeah. She's got nothing on us now."
"Ah, Shirley," Raoul sighs. "Thank god. Stop taking the pills. I'm gonna make a baby with you."
"Oh, god, Raoul, I wish, but...."
"Shhhhh. We'll find a way. I'm putting a baby in you next time I see you."
His sister Reza comes into his room then. "Raoul?" she says, loudly.
"Yeah?"
"It's Mr. X," she mouths silently, extending her pink and thumb to indicate that he's on one of the other lines.
Raoul snorts at the irony of the timing.
"It's my husband, isn't it?" Shirley drawls through the phone.
"Yes," Raoul says.
"Don't tell him we talked."
"I definitely won't."
"When can I see you again?"
"I can go up next weekend, maybe."
"No, I'll come back to LA. We'll figure out a time and place."
"Okay."
"I... Raoul, I...."
"Go ahead. It's okay."
"I need to see you as soon as possible."
"Come down tonight. Why not? I need to put a baby in you."
"I'll think about it. I'll let you know."
"Okay, Shirley, I'll talk to your hubby now."
"Oh, Jesus. Good bye, Raoul. Good luck. Thank you."
"You're welcome, Shirley. Everything's going to be okay. Just stay calm and see what happens. And lay off the pill for me."
"Okay, okay, maybe I will. Goodbye."
———————
"Mister Cock," Mister X's voice almost announces through the phone line. "Big Cock. Big fucking Cock. Just the man I want to talk to."
"Hello Mister X."
"Yeah, hey, do you remember that fifty grand I put into your little business venture? I'm going to need that back, cowboy. Unexpected expenses on the horizon. Legal trouble, I'm afraid."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Me too. When do you suppose you can get that back to me?"
"I guess I could go to the bank today."
"Today, huh? That's good. Go to the bank today and bring it on over. I think you can put it in a couple of little white envelopes. Just cash. Withdrawn in secret, maybe."
"Okay," Raoul laughs, "I'll see what I can do."
"Good, good, very good. See what you can do. I'll be waiting anxiously."
———————
Mister X, not even six feet tall, answers the door, looking up at Raoul with bloodshot eyes.
"Ah, the man of the hour," he drawls, clearly drunk. He's wearing green silk pajamas, and his white hair is slicked back with grease. The wrinkles on his face appear deep and long.
It's hard to believe a man that old is married to Shirley.
"Hello, Mister X."
"Come on in, my friend, my very good friend."
"Thank you. You've been drinking."
"Not finished yet either. Come into my library, have one with me. Or two." He walks through the foyer and down the hall without looking back, assuming Raoul will follow him. "You've been in my library before, I understand. Used it for your, ah, purposes. Drank my whiskey, I believe, at my invitation."
"I shouldn't drink much today. I've been sick for a week."
"Have you? That's too bad. Nothing serious, I hope."
"I don't know."
"Well, at least have a scotch with me. For old time's. For all we've been through together, you and me."
"That'd be my pleasure."
"I bet it would, I bet it would. Speaking of which, have you talked to my darling wife lately?"
Now they're in the library. The desk is a mess of papers, manila envvelopes. Raoul glances at them as Mr. X pours whiskey, but doesn't see any photos. They sit on sofas across a coffee table.
"We've bumped into each other around town," Raoul replies.
"Bumped into each other?"
"Yes, sir. Will she be joining us tonight?"
"Afraid not. Nor will Scarlett, incidentally. Afraid it's just you and me tonight. All weekend actually, if you care to stay. I guess the next time anyone will join us would be Tuesday, when the housekeeper comes."
Mr. X hands him a glass of scotch.
"Here's to a lucky motherfucker who has it all."
Raoul nods and throws it back.
It burns like hell. One thing he's got to get better at is appreciating liquor.
"You know who I mean, don't you?" Mr. X asks, looking into his glass.
"Who?"
"A lucky motherfucker who has it all. Movies, TV, modeling. Star quarterback. Tall, good looking. Smart. Going to Hedera, I heard. Starting a business with lots of celebrity investment. And more pussy than you can shake your junk at."
"Junk?"
"Junk. That's what we call it."
"Who?"
Instead of answering, Mr. X pours and throws back another shot.
"Let me ask you something," he says, when his throat is clear.
"Anything," Raoul agrees.
"Are you or are you not fucking my wife?"
At that moment, short little Mr. X in his green silk pajamas reminds Raoul of a leprechaun. "Here we are at the end of the rainbow," he thinks, snorting at the absurdity of this pathetic little man being so rich, so powerful.
