NUMBER NINE: THE ADVENTURES OF JAKE JONES AND RUBY DAULTON
BY JACK RANDOM
Copyright Ray Miller 2007 All Rights Reserved
Chapter 1: HELTER SKELTER
FADE IN:
EXT. SAN FERNANDO VALLEY – ARIEL VIEW – DAY
Smog and traffic patterns.
The Beatles’ REVOLUTION 9 (White Album) is heard.
INSERT MONTAGE – SOCIAL INSANITY
Charles Manson, Rwanda, OJ Simpson, CNN war footage, demonstrations, traffic jams, crime scenes, sporting events, Enron, Martha Stewart, Bernie Madoff, animal cruelty, mad cow disease, southern California fires.
BACK TO SCENE
ZOOM to a woman in a red convertible speeding down a suburban street. This is RUBY DAULTON, 36, a wild woman, exotic dancer, edgy and sexy.
Fade REVOLUTION 9 to HELTER SKELTER (White Album).
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride…
Ruby is intense, worried, with one eye on the rearview mirror. She turns suddenly as she glimpses a blue BMW rounding a corner in the mirror.
Ruby kept busy – picking up, wiping down, stacking dishes, emptying ashtrays, rearranging books, anything – to keep from sitting with the men in her living room. They were uninvited guests, a couple of boys from the office. The office was what they called Ruby’s place of employment. Customers called it Shotgun Slim’s – a stripper bar in the great San Fernando Valley, where the sun always shines, majestic palms sway in the wind and the air is a toxic mix of internal combustion soup.
It was Ruby’s birthday but the boys brought nothing but trouble. They sat side by side on the sofa in the living room of her small bungalow, laughing, ball adjusting and back slapping over a televised boxing match between an Italian and a black man. She was reminded of the one question that settled in her mind years ago and, like an unwanted relative, never left: What the fuck am I doing here?
It was a long way from the Land of Oz where Ruby first learned to dream. She knew how she had gotten here. What she did not know and could not have understood if she did was why she had chosen to stay. The old cliché: Habits die hard.
The boys were getting too high, too coked up, and too ass kicking buzzed on the combination of televised violence with gin and tonic. A fourth round technical knockout brought them to frenzy and let them down hard. They had little else to do but turn their rabid attentions to the birthday gal. They won their boxing bets but Ruby was the real loser. It gave them a sense of invincibility they had not earned and did not deserve.
As it happened, Ruby had a man. He was the owner of Shotgun Slim’s and these boys were supposed to be his friends and partners – brothers in the vocabulary of their sordid business. She knew what they were about. They would use their highs as an excuse for what they fully intended to do. No excuse would be good enough for Ruby: That she was a woman? That she was not physically strong enough to hold them off? Should she take a beating only to suffer the same consequences – only worse?
The truth is she did not like her boyfriend any more than she liked his friends. They were all scumbags – little piggy punks with drugs, money and guns. Unfortunately, Ruby had a need for what they offered and until now a high tolerance for bullshit.
“What the fuck am I doing here?” she asked aloud as they implored her with outstretched paws and sad sack grins to come to them.
“Get your ass in here, you sexy fucking bitch!”
They were both pawing their groins, laughing and clapping like wild boars circling a wounded ground hog.
Ruby took account and decided to stay cool. She left herself behind in the kitchen, along with the memories of who she once was: a dumb kid from Kansas, pretty and popular enough to finish third in the race for Homecoming Queen. Sexy Sadie. Protected from all harm, she hid herself in the closet of her mind, safe behind walls of mental concrete and layers of darkness. She walked out of herself and, like Norma Jean becoming Marilyn, she became Ruby Daulton, queen of the dance floor, star of the stage where the silver phallus is always front and center. She struck a pose that never failed to pique a man’s interest.
“Tony wouldn’t like this,” she purred. Tony was Antonio Menendez, her sometime man and their sometime boss.
“Tony ain’t gonna hear about it,” replied Little Billy. He was a large man with short hair, ruddy complexion, and bulging biceps. He was known at the office as “the muscle.” Ruby sensed that he hated the boss as much as she did but Tony was as clueless as a turkey in November.
“Alright then,” she said. “What do you boys want?”
Little Billy grabbed his balls. “Hey, babe, you know what I want!”
He used a remote to pick up some music on the television. They had prepared something special: a mix from The Beatles’ White Album, beginning with Birthday.
They say it’s your birthday …
Ruby waited as long as she could before beginning the slow, lingering movements known as the tease. She had decided to play along and as long as she played the boys would be content. They liked to watch. They liked the anticipation almost as much as what followed. Maybe more.
Yes we’re going to a party party …
She removed her shoes and was beginning to remove her shirt when the music shifted to Sexy Sadie. Ruby loved Sexy Sadie. It meant more to her than they could ever imagine. She began to move to the rhythm inside. She closed her eyes and began to dance – not the cheap, over-rehearsed dance of the stripper but the dance of the muses in ancient mythology. She danced and the muses wept. She closed her eyes and thought of Dorothy and Kansas and the wizard who was not a wizard and ruby-red shoes on a yellow brick road. She spun and danced and she imagined fields of golden grass, waves of amber grace, green hills covered with wild flowers and poppies – glistening white poppies from here to the end of time. She closed her eyes, tapped her heels, and flew away on the wings of angelic beings.
Sexy Sadie, how did you know?
The world was waiting just for you …
When she awakened with a jolt, everything had changed. Sexy Sadie had given way to a blaring Happiness is A Warm Gun. The transition was sudden and disturbing. It was an omen as surely as a crow in the morning or crossing the path of a black cat under a full moon.
“This is wrong,” she said.
The boys were not convinced. To them it was written in the stars. It was manifest. It was destiny. As far as they were concerned, happiness was a warm gun and a sexy woman to help it along.
“Dance, baby! Take it off!”
Ruby turned to the windows at the front of her little bungalow and thought she saw the glimpse of a shadow.
“Antonio’s here,” she said.
“Bullshit, baby, he’s tied up.”
I need a fix ‘cause I’m going down …
Ruby danced on but it was not the dance of the swans. It was back to the old routine. It was the familiar dance of a stripper on a long and lonely night when men too tired, too drunk, too high and too excited to think pawed the stage and clamored for more. The smell of sweat and spent ejaculations stifled the air and choked away any beauty and grace in the dancer’s performance. It was nasty and dirty and as phony as the smile on a real estate broker’s face.
The boys were not quite content with the pace of Ruby’s tease. They rushed the improvised stage of her living room, ripped the clothes from her body, and forced her to her knees as Ruby kicked, scratched and fought but refused to scream. She would not give them that satisfaction. She would face the demons as she always had. She would be strong – quietly defiant.
A crash at the door, felt more than heard, interrupted them at the height of their excitement. It was Antonio. He was the picture of a jealous man who was tipped off by someone with a personal interest.
Happiness is a warm gun. Bang-bang, shoot-shoot …
Ruby somehow managed to grab her clothes and move to the back of the room. The boys, holding their pants, were trying to explain how it was all Ruby’s fault. She was a tease. He knew that. She had the power and she used it. She seduced them. They were men like any other men. What could they do?
Little Billy saw the rage in Tony’s eyes and knew their words were a waste. It was the rage of a man betrayed by those he had considered his friends, his partners and his brothers. They rambled on if only to buy time and to let the rage gradually disperse. Maybe they could get out with their lives.
“She’ll get hers,” mumbled Antonio. It was all Ruby needed to hear.
Little Billy went for his gun first. It was a futile gesture and he knew it, the desperate last act of a dead man. Antonio brought the wrath of jealousy and betrayal, the hammer of vengeance down upon their heads. He emptied two handguns, reloaded, and made a point of blowing their faces off.
Ruby escaped. She dashed out the back, ran around the corner, past Antonio’s blue BMW, jumped in her convertible and drove away just as Tony emerged, splattered in blood and looking for his ultimate revenge.
The television survived and played on.
Helter skelter helter skelter …
Will you won’t you want me to make you
I’m coming down fast but don’t let me break you …
Helter skelter helter skelter …
Tell me tell me tell me the answer
You may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer …
Look out, helter skelter helter skelter …
Look out!
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Number Nine: Chapter 2
JAKE JONES
FADE IN:
EXT. AGRONOMICAL NOWHERE – ARIEL VIEW – NEARING SUNSET
ZOOM to Ruby in a red convertible, hair died seven shades of green, flying in the wind.
The Beatles’ REVOLUTION 9 fades to WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD? (White Album).
ZOOM out to ARIEL VIEW and back in to a man in khakis and plaid work shirt, reclining on a log under a lonely oak alongside the road, face covered by a straw hat and an open book on his chest.
This is JAKE JONES, early thirties, a mixed breed (Navaho-Irish) with distinctive native features, long hair tied in a single braid. He is reading Leonard Peltier’s Prison Writings.
The Beatles’ YER BLUES (White Album) is heard (“Yes, I’m lonely…”) as flies and gnats buzz around his head.
Yes I’m lonely wanna die
Yes I’m lonely wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Girl you know the reason why…
Jake stirs, swiping the bugs away with his book, stands, stretches and strikes the hitchhikers pose.
YER BLUES fades as DON’T PASS ME BY (White Album) begins playing.
Don’t pass me by don’t make me cry don’t make me blue
‘Cause you know darling I love only you…
In the distance, a red convertible kicks up dust, speeding toward Jake’s hitching post.
Ruby in a red convertible waves as she passes him by but fishtails to a stop well down the road. Jake remains where he is as Ruby slowly backs up to meet him.
Back on the Rez he was known as Grey Hawk but the rest of the world knew him as Jake Jones. Like many Indians, he had two names: one for the native community and another for the world at large. He considered Grey Hawk his true name, the name that would welcome him to the Overworld, while Jake Jones was a concession to the white European society that killed, tortured and enslaved his people in the name of destiny. It made it easier to walk among them. Not that he held a grudge but he never for a moment forgot who he was and the world was teeming with reminders. The world was changing. As he traveled he met more and more white people who claimed Indian bloodlines – mostly Cherokee. He would endeavor gently to remind these people that if you had not walked the red road you could not claim its heritage.
He left Third Mesa, where he had studied the ways of the ancestors with a gifted medicine man, nine months prior. He was a pilgrim, a seeker in search of destiny and adventure. Like so many of his people – and, as he would learn, so many of all Americans – he was lost in a world dominated by mass media imagery and technology. He felt isolated and disillusioned in the modern world but he was determined not to return to the safe refuge of the Rez, the relative comfort of the ancient rituals, until he had discovered some secret knowledge or wisdom that would illuminate a new path for himself if not for his people.
His journey had taken him on a circular route, beginning at the site of the Sand Creek Massacre in southeastern Colorado, where the spirits of the dead still cried out for justice. He moved on to the sacred Chiricahua Mountains of the Apache, where the face of Cochise, gazing at the heavens, marks his unknown grave. He traveled on to Indian Territory, where he paid tribute at the grave of the Apache spirit guide, warrior and healer, Geronimo. He visited the National Indian Museum in Anadarko and witnessed the success of the modern Cherokee Nation. From Oklahoma, he had gone north to smoke and sweat with the political prisoner of the modern day siege at Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier. Peltier was strong, steady and hopeful but Jake sensed that he understood: He would remain in prison is a testament to the white man’s unending spirit of revenge even against those he victimized. He laid eyes on the White Buffalo in northern Minnesota, original land of the Lakota nation, and felt the closeness of the spirit world. From Minnesota, he went west to the Little Big Horn, where he felt the spirits of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, as well as the glorified butcher of the Indian peoples: General George Armstrong Custer.
The final destination of his pilgrimage completing a great circle on the North American continent was the Wounded Knee Memorial. Against a backdrop of corruption, infighting and extreme poverty at Pine Ridge and Rosebud, the memorial itself all but broke his spirit. Only fifty paces from Wounded Knee Hill, where the remains of Big Foot and the Ghost Dancers lay, stood the eternal symbol of the white man’s conquest of native lands: The Sacred Heart Church. He learned that the Holy Rosary Catholic Church was the owner of the most sacred land in Native American history. It stirred a rage in him that was not easily conquered or forgotten but it eventually gave way to a profound sorrow.
He went into the Black Hills as Crazy Horse had to cry for a vision in the Lakota way. He fasted seven days for an understanding of how it had come to be and what could be done to restore the balance of forces. Amidst visions of darkness, massacre and betrayal, the answer came to him in the form of the crow and the coyote, who would become his spirit animals: They told him nothing could be done to correct the great wrongs of the past. It fell to him to seek his own path, to find peace with the many as well as the one that dwelled within his self. He understood their message but it brought him no solace. It rather fed his restless spirit, his since of homelessness and alienation.
Since then, he had wandered through the land as a beggar would with no greater needs or thoughts than his hunger and thirst, his need to survive in a land that was neither caring nor indifferent. He took odd jobs – fixing cars, washing dishes, menial labor – while working his way from town to town, down the coast from the Great Northwest to Southern California, where now he sat by the side of the road, waiting for destiny to play its hand.
He was somewhere near Weed Patch outside of Bakersfield, where he had finished his day’s labor gathering grapes from a corporate vineyard. Having already sold his car for traveling money (a good deal at $250), he was down to his last fifty bucks, hot, tired and hungry. He passed on a ride to town. It somehow felt better being out in the middle of agronomical nowhere where he could breathe. At least, he could eat some grapes and bathe in a nearby irrigation canal. If he had to sleep outdoors, he preferred the open skies to the concrete wasteland of Bakersfield. If ever there was a land the gods forgot the city of Bakersfield was at its center.
Jake looked around and laughed. Was this what the Great Spirit had in mind for Grey Hawk? Was this where he needed to be in order to find the answers he sought? He glared into a bright unforgiving sky and felt his stomach churn. Grapes as a source of sustenance were getting old and his bowels were experiencing an uprising. He needed a cheeseburger so bad he was daydreaming of Dairy Queens with waitresses on roller skates, serving imitation ice cream, root beer floats, banana splits and sundaes thick with fudge, nuts and sprinkles, with a ruby red cherry on top.
He lifted his nose to the air and breathed deeply, sifting through dust and dry heat for a taste of fresh air beyond the sweat that clung to his skin like a coat of dry wax. He had no idea where he was going. All roads seemed to run in the wrong directions. He sat on a log, opened his book and waited, waited, waited.
“It’s time,” he said aloud to no one but the wisp of white clouds drifting high above, “for the world to take a turn.”
A crow cawed in the blue highways of his mind. A dog with the eyes of a coyote stared at him from the back of a pickup. The microcosmic world of gnats and subatomic creatures began to take on third and fourth dimensions. A face emerged from the oak tree under which he sat. The hot, dry air came to life: Patterns and fields of energy and particles of light leaving visible traces in the ectoplasm.
Suddenly, he sensed what Einstein must have seen. Suddenly, he saw what Crazy Horse called the real life beyond this life. Drifting in and out of conscious mind, stolen glimpses of the gods’ eye view, he saw the possibility of a modern day Prometheus bringing fire to the land of darkness.
When he came out of it, it was approaching sunset. He scanned the horizon, ate some grapes and laid back down for a nap. Brushing away some gnats and wiping the layers of greasy sweat from his eyes, a car suddenly appeared in the distance, kicking up dust, blaring music and traveling twice the speed of sound.
He stood to assume the hitchhiker’s pose. It was a classic red convertible driven by a mad woman with wild green hair flowing in the wind. She smiled and waved as she blew past him like a shooting star or a desert mirage.
Jake took it well, shaking his head and sitting back down to his book, as the car abruptly skidded and grinded to a halt well down the road. He watched it edge backward to where he sat, half expecting her to dust him again.
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
He pulled out a pocket watch.
“Nine hours,” he answered.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“Leonard Peltier’s Prison Writings,” he replied.
“What page?”
He glanced down at the book, open in his hand. “Page 27.”
“Damn,” she replied with an expression between a smile and resigned. “Get the fuck in.”
He did not have to be asked twice.
Number nine, number nine…
FADE IN:
EXT. AGRONOMICAL NOWHERE – ARIEL VIEW – NEARING SUNSET
ZOOM to Ruby in a red convertible, hair died seven shades of green, flying in the wind.
The Beatles’ REVOLUTION 9 fades to WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD? (White Album).
ZOOM out to ARIEL VIEW and back in to a man in khakis and plaid work shirt, reclining on a log under a lonely oak alongside the road, face covered by a straw hat and an open book on his chest.
This is JAKE JONES, early thirties, a mixed breed (Navaho-Irish) with distinctive native features, long hair tied in a single braid. He is reading Leonard Peltier’s Prison Writings.
The Beatles’ YER BLUES (White Album) is heard (“Yes, I’m lonely…”) as flies and gnats buzz around his head.
Yes I’m lonely wanna die
Yes I’m lonely wanna die
If I ain’t dead already
Girl you know the reason why…
Jake stirs, swiping the bugs away with his book, stands, stretches and strikes the hitchhikers pose.
YER BLUES fades as DON’T PASS ME BY (White Album) begins playing.
Don’t pass me by don’t make me cry don’t make me blue
‘Cause you know darling I love only you…
In the distance, a red convertible kicks up dust, speeding toward Jake’s hitching post.
Ruby in a red convertible waves as she passes him by but fishtails to a stop well down the road. Jake remains where he is as Ruby slowly backs up to meet him.
Back on the Rez he was known as Grey Hawk but the rest of the world knew him as Jake Jones. Like many Indians, he had two names: one for the native community and another for the world at large. He considered Grey Hawk his true name, the name that would welcome him to the Overworld, while Jake Jones was a concession to the white European society that killed, tortured and enslaved his people in the name of destiny. It made it easier to walk among them. Not that he held a grudge but he never for a moment forgot who he was and the world was teeming with reminders. The world was changing. As he traveled he met more and more white people who claimed Indian bloodlines – mostly Cherokee. He would endeavor gently to remind these people that if you had not walked the red road you could not claim its heritage.
He left Third Mesa, where he had studied the ways of the ancestors with a gifted medicine man, nine months prior. He was a pilgrim, a seeker in search of destiny and adventure. Like so many of his people – and, as he would learn, so many of all Americans – he was lost in a world dominated by mass media imagery and technology. He felt isolated and disillusioned in the modern world but he was determined not to return to the safe refuge of the Rez, the relative comfort of the ancient rituals, until he had discovered some secret knowledge or wisdom that would illuminate a new path for himself if not for his people.
His journey had taken him on a circular route, beginning at the site of the Sand Creek Massacre in southeastern Colorado, where the spirits of the dead still cried out for justice. He moved on to the sacred Chiricahua Mountains of the Apache, where the face of Cochise, gazing at the heavens, marks his unknown grave. He traveled on to Indian Territory, where he paid tribute at the grave of the Apache spirit guide, warrior and healer, Geronimo. He visited the National Indian Museum in Anadarko and witnessed the success of the modern Cherokee Nation. From Oklahoma, he had gone north to smoke and sweat with the political prisoner of the modern day siege at Wounded Knee, Leonard Peltier. Peltier was strong, steady and hopeful but Jake sensed that he understood: He would remain in prison is a testament to the white man’s unending spirit of revenge even against those he victimized. He laid eyes on the White Buffalo in northern Minnesota, original land of the Lakota nation, and felt the closeness of the spirit world. From Minnesota, he went west to the Little Big Horn, where he felt the spirits of Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse, as well as the glorified butcher of the Indian peoples: General George Armstrong Custer.
The final destination of his pilgrimage completing a great circle on the North American continent was the Wounded Knee Memorial. Against a backdrop of corruption, infighting and extreme poverty at Pine Ridge and Rosebud, the memorial itself all but broke his spirit. Only fifty paces from Wounded Knee Hill, where the remains of Big Foot and the Ghost Dancers lay, stood the eternal symbol of the white man’s conquest of native lands: The Sacred Heart Church. He learned that the Holy Rosary Catholic Church was the owner of the most sacred land in Native American history. It stirred a rage in him that was not easily conquered or forgotten but it eventually gave way to a profound sorrow.
He went into the Black Hills as Crazy Horse had to cry for a vision in the Lakota way. He fasted seven days for an understanding of how it had come to be and what could be done to restore the balance of forces. Amidst visions of darkness, massacre and betrayal, the answer came to him in the form of the crow and the coyote, who would become his spirit animals: They told him nothing could be done to correct the great wrongs of the past. It fell to him to seek his own path, to find peace with the many as well as the one that dwelled within his self. He understood their message but it brought him no solace. It rather fed his restless spirit, his since of homelessness and alienation.
Since then, he had wandered through the land as a beggar would with no greater needs or thoughts than his hunger and thirst, his need to survive in a land that was neither caring nor indifferent. He took odd jobs – fixing cars, washing dishes, menial labor – while working his way from town to town, down the coast from the Great Northwest to Southern California, where now he sat by the side of the road, waiting for destiny to play its hand.
He was somewhere near Weed Patch outside of Bakersfield, where he had finished his day’s labor gathering grapes from a corporate vineyard. Having already sold his car for traveling money (a good deal at $250), he was down to his last fifty bucks, hot, tired and hungry. He passed on a ride to town. It somehow felt better being out in the middle of agronomical nowhere where he could breathe. At least, he could eat some grapes and bathe in a nearby irrigation canal. If he had to sleep outdoors, he preferred the open skies to the concrete wasteland of Bakersfield. If ever there was a land the gods forgot the city of Bakersfield was at its center.
Jake looked around and laughed. Was this what the Great Spirit had in mind for Grey Hawk? Was this where he needed to be in order to find the answers he sought? He glared into a bright unforgiving sky and felt his stomach churn. Grapes as a source of sustenance were getting old and his bowels were experiencing an uprising. He needed a cheeseburger so bad he was daydreaming of Dairy Queens with waitresses on roller skates, serving imitation ice cream, root beer floats, banana splits and sundaes thick with fudge, nuts and sprinkles, with a ruby red cherry on top.
He lifted his nose to the air and breathed deeply, sifting through dust and dry heat for a taste of fresh air beyond the sweat that clung to his skin like a coat of dry wax. He had no idea where he was going. All roads seemed to run in the wrong directions. He sat on a log, opened his book and waited, waited, waited.
“It’s time,” he said aloud to no one but the wisp of white clouds drifting high above, “for the world to take a turn.”
A crow cawed in the blue highways of his mind. A dog with the eyes of a coyote stared at him from the back of a pickup. The microcosmic world of gnats and subatomic creatures began to take on third and fourth dimensions. A face emerged from the oak tree under which he sat. The hot, dry air came to life: Patterns and fields of energy and particles of light leaving visible traces in the ectoplasm.
Suddenly, he sensed what Einstein must have seen. Suddenly, he saw what Crazy Horse called the real life beyond this life. Drifting in and out of conscious mind, stolen glimpses of the gods’ eye view, he saw the possibility of a modern day Prometheus bringing fire to the land of darkness.
When he came out of it, it was approaching sunset. He scanned the horizon, ate some grapes and laid back down for a nap. Brushing away some gnats and wiping the layers of greasy sweat from his eyes, a car suddenly appeared in the distance, kicking up dust, blaring music and traveling twice the speed of sound.
He stood to assume the hitchhiker’s pose. It was a classic red convertible driven by a mad woman with wild green hair flowing in the wind. She smiled and waved as she blew past him like a shooting star or a desert mirage.
Jake took it well, shaking his head and sitting back down to his book, as the car abruptly skidded and grinded to a halt well down the road. He watched it edge backward to where he sat, half expecting her to dust him again.
“How long have you been here?” she asked.
He pulled out a pocket watch.
“Nine hours,” he answered.
“What are you reading?” she asked.
“Leonard Peltier’s Prison Writings,” he replied.
“What page?”
He glanced down at the book, open in his hand. “Page 27.”
“Damn,” she replied with an expression between a smile and resigned. “Get the fuck in.”
He did not have to be asked twice.
Number nine, number nine…
Number Nine: Chapter 3
DESTINY
FADE IN:
EXT. SLEEPY TIME MOTEL – NIGHT
The Beatles’ I’M SO TIRED (White Album) plays as a neon sign, featuring a blinking bear with a silly nightcap, flashes on and off.
I’m so tired, I haven’t slept a wink
I’m so tired, my mind is on the blink
I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink
No, no, no…
REVOLUTION 9 (White Album) plays briefly.
The door of a motel room: number nine.
INT. SMALL MOTEL ROOM – NIGHT
I’M SO TIRED resumes as Jake sleeps in boxer shorts atop the single queen size bed. A bag with a Dairy Queen logo and a soda are on a side table. Candles are lit and light seeps in from the adjoining bathroom along with the sound of a SHOWER.
The shower stops and Jake struggles to awaken from deep sleep. Ruby emerges wrapped in a towel. Her hair is black. I’M SO TIRED fades into I WILL (White Album).
Who knows how long I’ve loved you
You know I love you still
Will I wait a lonely lifetime…
Seen through Jake’s eyes, slowly coming into focus, Ruby speaks as if from a distance.
RUBY
Do you believe in destiny?
Jake nods and the song answers for him.
If you want me to, I will …
Ruby lets the towel drop to the floor.
Somewhere around these parts (maybe on this same desolate road), James Dean took his final drive, sacrificing what remained of a promising career for a place amongst the legends of Hollywood lore. Ruby felt his anguish, his hunger for raw experience, his eagerness to take it to the edge (even if it meant diving into the abyss) and she pressed the pedal to the floor.
It felt good to get out of the city. It felt good to be going nowhere and getting there fast. For the moment, she had no worries except rounding the next corner and negotiating the next curve. She wanted to test the fates. She wanted to walk on the edge and not look back, like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, like Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, like Jimi Hendrix and Tupac Shakur, like River Phoenix and Kurt Kobain. After everything that had happened, after the sum total of her miserable life ended up in head on collision, she wanted to fly. She wanted to take the final step off the ledge of Grand Canyon. She wanted to test the fates.
Ruby believed in destiny as an anarchist believes in freedom, as a preacher believes in prayer or as a writer believes in words. She believed that James Dean was meant to die young and free on some desolate road, that a man was meant to set on the moon on July 20, 1969, that the Japanese were preordained to attack Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and that two planes were destined to crash into the twin towers on September 11, 2001. Ruby believed that it was possible to tap the source of future events. She believed that it was possible to prevent tragedies or to secure greatness by attending to signs and omens. She believed the gods were not unkind; that they provided signs and omens to those who paid attention. She was a student of the oracles: tarot, astrology, tealeaves and the I Ching. Her latest fixation was the study of numbers and to that end she carried the book Numerology for Idiots everywhere. Her working theory was that everything of importance – historically or personally, for good or for evil – was somehow connected to the number nine.
Ruby also believed in free will and found it no philosophical dilemma. What was the purpose of divining the future if you were powerless to alter it? She believed that those who possessed the knowledge and talent to foresee future events had the power to alter those events.
Rounding a curve, she skidded off the side of the road, kicking up dust, reminding herself of her own mortality. She lightened her foot on the pedal and smiled at the sight of a lone hitchhiker alongside the road. It was an enigmatic picture, like a desert coyote in midtown Manhattan. Was it a sign or an omen? She waved as she swept by but continued to watch him in the rearview mirror. When he did not look after her, she slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop. Throwing her into reverse, she eased back for a closer look, careful to maintain enough distance that she could dust him if she decided he was not worth the risk.
The universe had changed in the world of the hitchhiker. They once represented the spirit of freedom and adventure. Now they were mostly outlaws and desperados. Ruby was sympathetic but she was also mindful of the risk. The modern world gave birth to too many deranged individuals bent on sharing their pain. This was a different sort of hitchhiker. His features were distinctly Native American and he looked like the hull of a fishing trawler, coated with dirt and layers of sweat. She noticed that he was holding a book in his left hand and she took it as a positive sign.
“What are you reading?” she asked in a high pitched voice that was considered by some as sweet as cotton candy, by others as charming as a squeaky hinge.
“Peltier’s Prison Writings,” he replied.
She mulled it over. A reference to prison gave her pause but she had heard of Peltier, a Lakota Indian wrong imprisoned – or so they said.
“What page?”
He glanced down at the book, still open in his hand. “Page 27.”
Ruby smiled. She glanced at the dashboard clock. It read 8:01.
“Get in.”
In the world of numerology, the numbers 801 and twenty-seven converted to the number nine. In Ruby’s newfound creed, it was an undeniable sign of destiny. She was meant to be on this road at this particular moment in time and so was he. They were destined to come together in the mystical hour of twilight, at a pivotal time in each of their lives, to share the road ahead – for better or for worse.
“What’s your name, stranger?”
“Jake,” he replied.
“Just get out of prison?”
He laughed. “Sort of.”
Jake was suddenly aware of his appearance. He was dead tired, hungry, and his skin was crawling with microscopic multitudes. He was in no mood for idle conversation yet he recognized the obligation of his good fortune. Here was a strikingly attractive woman – even if she did have green hair – and he for all appearances was a bum.
“Got a last name, pilgrim?”
“Jones.”
Ruby was working the numbers in her mind. In numerology, each letter has an assigned number:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
A B C D E F G H I
J K L M N O P Q R
S T U V W X Y Z
“Jake is nine,” she said. “Oh, my God, Jones is nine! Jesus,” she said, staring into Jake’s tired eyes, “you’re a triple nine!” She checked the math, scribbling in her book to confirm what she already knew. His first name totaled nine, his last name nine, and all multiples of nine break down to nine. It is one of great mysteries of theoretical-phenomenological mathematics. In numerology, of course, while multiples of eleven are power numbers, multiples of nine are destiny: completion, climax, culmination, epiphany, and rebirth.
Ruby Daulton was also nine and, since all multiples of nine are nine, Jake Jones and Ruby Daulton combined were nine. Nines were everywhere! Nines were wild!
Jake had encountered numerology before but not so much as a religion as a curiosity. There were many ways to see the future and he had had a hand at many of them: crying for a vision, sun dance, sweat lodge, tossing stones, and gazing into the eyes of a crow. He had the gift of prophetic dreams. He had seen much of the future and much of the past but he had never seen what he wanted to see. He had not found the answer to the proverbial question: How do I get back home?
Ruby examined him with new eyes, seeing beyond the filth and grime that disguised his true being. She liked what she saw. Everything was good. Everything was right. Here in the middle of absolute nowhere, the sun setting in a western sky, she may have finally found the first genuinely good man in her life. In the oracle of Ruby’s creed, destiny had cast its stone, the fates had planted their magic seeds, all was right on heaven and earth, and theirs was a meeting of celestial divination.
“Let’s get you a shower,” she said, throwing her in gear and burning down the highway, headed for the next town and the first motel they came across. Her car’s name was Sadie Mae: Sadie = eleven, Mae = eleven, Sadie Mae = 22: pure power.
Jake was speechless. Never had he made such an impression on a woman and never had a woman made such an impression on him. He had an acute need for solid food, sleep and cleansing but, for a while, she was all that occupied his mind. Even at the speed of sound, Ruby was all he could see. All he could hear was: Number nine, number nine, number nine... She went on and on about probability, random chance and the oracles of divination, but all he could hear was: Number nine, number nine, number nine...
“It doesn’t matter what you believe,” she said. “You could chart the stars, have your palms read, consult Tarot, or toss the I Ching sticks, it all leads to the same conclusion: It’s destiny.”
Jake was suddenly overcome with undeniable fatigue and allowed himself to drift until he arrived in that grey area where dream and reality are one. He thought of something a spirit guide once told him:
“In a world soft as butterflies, as violent as the raging sea, there’s no such thing as random chance.”
Sacred spiral, helter-skelter, forces of the ancients, flight through the windows of perception to the world within and beyond, held by slender threads of time and space, at one with the Great Spirit, past and future, all and the void, weightless, senseless and breathless in the infinite chain of matter and mystery. The world was turning at last.
Ruby saw the neon light of a Sleepy Time Motel and knew she had arrived. She checked in under the names Jake and Ruby Jones, insisted on cabin #9 and paid cash. The desk clerk gave her a wink. She shook Jake awake, handed him the key, and explained that she was off to grab some burgers.
“Don’t forget to shower,” she said over her shoulder.
Jake stared after her until he found his bearings and remembered where he was and how he came to be there. The key in his hand read: number nine. He became aware of a foul odor that was emanating from his own body. Entering the motel room, he stumbled into the shower and let the cool water cleanse him, washing away the numerous gritty layers of sweat-solidified waste.
Who was this wild woman who spoke of destiny and challenged his imagination? Where was she headed and what was she running from? Was it destiny or random chance? In a world as soft as butterflies, as violent as a raging sea, was there any difference?
He collapsed on the bed and fell through the vortex back into the world of dreams. He saw Ruby in a red dress on a stage of amber light. Men with eyes wide open gaped as she let the dress slip from her shoulders. Who was she and what was she running from? He heard music and the sound of running water. He saw light from above and struggled to reach it. He saw her face like a diamond in a sea of common stones. He heard music, sweet and soft.
For if I ever saw you
I didn’t catch your name
But it never really mattered
I will always feel the same …
Ruby emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel. Through the haze of his awakening, he could see that she had dyed her hair black. Who was she? What was she running from? It no longer mattered. In a life of hardship, in a universe full of darkness, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever encountered. She was an enchantress and a saint.
“Do you believe in destiny?” she asked.
He nodded and let the music answer.
If you want me to, I will …
Ruby let the towel drop to the floor.
Love you forever and forever
Love you with all my heart
Love you whenever we’re together
Love you when we’re apart …
FADE IN:
EXT. SLEEPY TIME MOTEL – NIGHT
The Beatles’ I’M SO TIRED (White Album) plays as a neon sign, featuring a blinking bear with a silly nightcap, flashes on and off.
I’m so tired, I haven’t slept a wink
I’m so tired, my mind is on the blink
I wonder should I get up and fix myself a drink
No, no, no…
REVOLUTION 9 (White Album) plays briefly.
The door of a motel room: number nine.
INT. SMALL MOTEL ROOM – NIGHT
I’M SO TIRED resumes as Jake sleeps in boxer shorts atop the single queen size bed. A bag with a Dairy Queen logo and a soda are on a side table. Candles are lit and light seeps in from the adjoining bathroom along with the sound of a SHOWER.
The shower stops and Jake struggles to awaken from deep sleep. Ruby emerges wrapped in a towel. Her hair is black. I’M SO TIRED fades into I WILL (White Album).
Who knows how long I’ve loved you
You know I love you still
Will I wait a lonely lifetime…
Seen through Jake’s eyes, slowly coming into focus, Ruby speaks as if from a distance.
RUBY
Do you believe in destiny?
Jake nods and the song answers for him.
If you want me to, I will …
Ruby lets the towel drop to the floor.
Somewhere around these parts (maybe on this same desolate road), James Dean took his final drive, sacrificing what remained of a promising career for a place amongst the legends of Hollywood lore. Ruby felt his anguish, his hunger for raw experience, his eagerness to take it to the edge (even if it meant diving into the abyss) and she pressed the pedal to the floor.
It felt good to get out of the city. It felt good to be going nowhere and getting there fast. For the moment, she had no worries except rounding the next corner and negotiating the next curve. She wanted to test the fates. She wanted to walk on the edge and not look back, like James Dean and Marilyn Monroe, like Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, like Jimi Hendrix and Tupac Shakur, like River Phoenix and Kurt Kobain. After everything that had happened, after the sum total of her miserable life ended up in head on collision, she wanted to fly. She wanted to take the final step off the ledge of Grand Canyon. She wanted to test the fates.
Ruby believed in destiny as an anarchist believes in freedom, as a preacher believes in prayer or as a writer believes in words. She believed that James Dean was meant to die young and free on some desolate road, that a man was meant to set on the moon on July 20, 1969, that the Japanese were preordained to attack Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and that two planes were destined to crash into the twin towers on September 11, 2001. Ruby believed that it was possible to tap the source of future events. She believed that it was possible to prevent tragedies or to secure greatness by attending to signs and omens. She believed the gods were not unkind; that they provided signs and omens to those who paid attention. She was a student of the oracles: tarot, astrology, tealeaves and the I Ching. Her latest fixation was the study of numbers and to that end she carried the book Numerology for Idiots everywhere. Her working theory was that everything of importance – historically or personally, for good or for evil – was somehow connected to the number nine.
Ruby also believed in free will and found it no philosophical dilemma. What was the purpose of divining the future if you were powerless to alter it? She believed that those who possessed the knowledge and talent to foresee future events had the power to alter those events.
Rounding a curve, she skidded off the side of the road, kicking up dust, reminding herself of her own mortality. She lightened her foot on the pedal and smiled at the sight of a lone hitchhiker alongside the road. It was an enigmatic picture, like a desert coyote in midtown Manhattan. Was it a sign or an omen? She waved as she swept by but continued to watch him in the rearview mirror. When he did not look after her, she slammed on the brakes and skidded to a stop. Throwing her into reverse, she eased back for a closer look, careful to maintain enough distance that she could dust him if she decided he was not worth the risk.
The universe had changed in the world of the hitchhiker. They once represented the spirit of freedom and adventure. Now they were mostly outlaws and desperados. Ruby was sympathetic but she was also mindful of the risk. The modern world gave birth to too many deranged individuals bent on sharing their pain. This was a different sort of hitchhiker. His features were distinctly Native American and he looked like the hull of a fishing trawler, coated with dirt and layers of sweat. She noticed that he was holding a book in his left hand and she took it as a positive sign.
“What are you reading?” she asked in a high pitched voice that was considered by some as sweet as cotton candy, by others as charming as a squeaky hinge.
“Peltier’s Prison Writings,” he replied.
She mulled it over. A reference to prison gave her pause but she had heard of Peltier, a Lakota Indian wrong imprisoned – or so they said.
“What page?”
He glanced down at the book, still open in his hand. “Page 27.”
Ruby smiled. She glanced at the dashboard clock. It read 8:01.
“Get in.”
In the world of numerology, the numbers 801 and twenty-seven converted to the number nine. In Ruby’s newfound creed, it was an undeniable sign of destiny. She was meant to be on this road at this particular moment in time and so was he. They were destined to come together in the mystical hour of twilight, at a pivotal time in each of their lives, to share the road ahead – for better or for worse.
“What’s your name, stranger?”
“Jake,” he replied.
“Just get out of prison?”
He laughed. “Sort of.”
Jake was suddenly aware of his appearance. He was dead tired, hungry, and his skin was crawling with microscopic multitudes. He was in no mood for idle conversation yet he recognized the obligation of his good fortune. Here was a strikingly attractive woman – even if she did have green hair – and he for all appearances was a bum.
“Got a last name, pilgrim?”
“Jones.”
Ruby was working the numbers in her mind. In numerology, each letter has an assigned number:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
A B C D E F G H I
J K L M N O P Q R
S T U V W X Y Z
“Jake is nine,” she said. “Oh, my God, Jones is nine! Jesus,” she said, staring into Jake’s tired eyes, “you’re a triple nine!” She checked the math, scribbling in her book to confirm what she already knew. His first name totaled nine, his last name nine, and all multiples of nine break down to nine. It is one of great mysteries of theoretical-phenomenological mathematics. In numerology, of course, while multiples of eleven are power numbers, multiples of nine are destiny: completion, climax, culmination, epiphany, and rebirth.
Ruby Daulton was also nine and, since all multiples of nine are nine, Jake Jones and Ruby Daulton combined were nine. Nines were everywhere! Nines were wild!
Jake had encountered numerology before but not so much as a religion as a curiosity. There were many ways to see the future and he had had a hand at many of them: crying for a vision, sun dance, sweat lodge, tossing stones, and gazing into the eyes of a crow. He had the gift of prophetic dreams. He had seen much of the future and much of the past but he had never seen what he wanted to see. He had not found the answer to the proverbial question: How do I get back home?
Ruby examined him with new eyes, seeing beyond the filth and grime that disguised his true being. She liked what she saw. Everything was good. Everything was right. Here in the middle of absolute nowhere, the sun setting in a western sky, she may have finally found the first genuinely good man in her life. In the oracle of Ruby’s creed, destiny had cast its stone, the fates had planted their magic seeds, all was right on heaven and earth, and theirs was a meeting of celestial divination.
“Let’s get you a shower,” she said, throwing her in gear and burning down the highway, headed for the next town and the first motel they came across. Her car’s name was Sadie Mae: Sadie = eleven, Mae = eleven, Sadie Mae = 22: pure power.
Jake was speechless. Never had he made such an impression on a woman and never had a woman made such an impression on him. He had an acute need for solid food, sleep and cleansing but, for a while, she was all that occupied his mind. Even at the speed of sound, Ruby was all he could see. All he could hear was: Number nine, number nine, number nine... She went on and on about probability, random chance and the oracles of divination, but all he could hear was: Number nine, number nine, number nine...
“It doesn’t matter what you believe,” she said. “You could chart the stars, have your palms read, consult Tarot, or toss the I Ching sticks, it all leads to the same conclusion: It’s destiny.”
Jake was suddenly overcome with undeniable fatigue and allowed himself to drift until he arrived in that grey area where dream and reality are one. He thought of something a spirit guide once told him:
“In a world soft as butterflies, as violent as the raging sea, there’s no such thing as random chance.”
Sacred spiral, helter-skelter, forces of the ancients, flight through the windows of perception to the world within and beyond, held by slender threads of time and space, at one with the Great Spirit, past and future, all and the void, weightless, senseless and breathless in the infinite chain of matter and mystery. The world was turning at last.
Ruby saw the neon light of a Sleepy Time Motel and knew she had arrived. She checked in under the names Jake and Ruby Jones, insisted on cabin #9 and paid cash. The desk clerk gave her a wink. She shook Jake awake, handed him the key, and explained that she was off to grab some burgers.
“Don’t forget to shower,” she said over her shoulder.
Jake stared after her until he found his bearings and remembered where he was and how he came to be there. The key in his hand read: number nine. He became aware of a foul odor that was emanating from his own body. Entering the motel room, he stumbled into the shower and let the cool water cleanse him, washing away the numerous gritty layers of sweat-solidified waste.
Who was this wild woman who spoke of destiny and challenged his imagination? Where was she headed and what was she running from? Was it destiny or random chance? In a world as soft as butterflies, as violent as a raging sea, was there any difference?
He collapsed on the bed and fell through the vortex back into the world of dreams. He saw Ruby in a red dress on a stage of amber light. Men with eyes wide open gaped as she let the dress slip from her shoulders. Who was she and what was she running from? He heard music and the sound of running water. He saw light from above and struggled to reach it. He saw her face like a diamond in a sea of common stones. He heard music, sweet and soft.
For if I ever saw you
I didn’t catch your name
But it never really mattered
I will always feel the same …
Ruby emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel. Through the haze of his awakening, he could see that she had dyed her hair black. Who was she? What was she running from? It no longer mattered. In a life of hardship, in a universe full of darkness, she was the most beautiful woman he had ever encountered. She was an enchantress and a saint.
“Do you believe in destiny?” she asked.
He nodded and let the music answer.
If you want me to, I will …
Ruby let the towel drop to the floor.
Love you forever and forever
Love you with all my heart
Love you whenever we’re together
Love you when we’re apart …
Number Nine: Chapter 4
RANDOM CHANCE
FADE IN:
INT. TELEVISION SCREEN – NIGHT
The Beatles’ EVERYBODY’S GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE EXCEPT ME AND MY MONKEY (White Album) plays as we see a boxed photograph of Ruby Daulton displayed alongside a talking head with the CNN logo and scroll bar below. The caption reads: “Person of Interest.”
The deeper you go the higher you fly
The higher you fly the deeper you go
So come on…
EXT. DAIRY QUEEN PAY PHONE – NIGHT
Fade MONKEY as Ruby talks on the phone. We hear bits of her conversation.
RUBY
I can’t do that … Listen, I need some help …
EXT. MOUNTAIN ROAD, RUBY – NIGHT
Jake in the passenger seat, top down beneath a bright moon, Ruby drives up a winding road as the radio blares WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD? (White Album).
INT. CABIN OF AN 18 WHEELER
A trucker, barreling down the same mountain road, steps on the brakes with no effect. We hear REVOLUTION 9 (“Number 9, number 9, number 9…”) as the truck picks up speed and the trucker sounds his HORN.
EXT. MOUNTAIN ROAD, ABOVE
A runaway truck veers into the middle of the road as Ruby’s convertible approaches the same curve ahead. They appear destined to meet.
Ruby sees a white post reading: Mile 9. She pulls off the road at a lookout just as the truck barrels by and smashes into a sandy runaway truck ramp down the road.
In the microcosmic world, entities swim about in a gelatinous muck, moved by their liquid or gaseous surroundings, guided by unseen electrical impulses and unknown encoded tendencies. The patterns are beyond our earthbound grasp, like the courting dance of jellyfish, seemingly random and without intent, but when an entity nears its perfect mate, the two are drawn together like yin and yang, Orion and Sirius, Anthony and Cleopatra, or Tristram and Isolde. Two become one, forever interwoven, joined at the hip in a perpetual dance of destiny.
If not for the cerebral cortex, as it is in the microcosmic world so would it be for human nature. We would all find our perfect mates, dance in flowing harmony and claim eternal bliss.
So it seemed for Jake Jones and Ruby Daulton: If ever a match in heaven was made, at this moment in the cosmos, they were it. Her perfect breasts, nipples erect from leather thoughts, were soft and white. He caressed them in his mind though his thoughts were pure with wonder. He caressed them in the flesh and his spirit left his body, soaring through the ectoplasm of electromagnetic dreams.
She moved to him until their bodies locked like the socket and the plug, an electromagnetic coupling, matter and antimatter, like a Chopin duet or the final chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses.
Jake lived in the moment almost completely. It was not the result of a conscious decision but a birthright and one of many eccentricities that served to accentuate sensual-sexual pleasure. Their bodies tingled with an excitation of a kind Ruby had never before experienced. From the caverns of her mind reemerged the song that spurred the lust of Tony’s boys, sealed their gruesome fate, and turned the wheel of destiny.
When I hold you in my arms
And I feel my finger on your trigger
I know no one can do me no harm
Because happiness is a warm gun …
“Forever!” she cried out from the summit of delight. They were swimming the seven seas, soaring over Grand Canyon, diving into the infinite abyss.
“You and I will live … forever!”
Was it true love? It is a question neither Jake nor Ruby could ever answer but it was a moment of pure bliss and it would pass for love as long as they let it be so. For all they knew – for all any of us know – that is what love is: a willingness to suspend logical belief in favor of the eternal heart.
Exhausted, they lay side by side, basking in the scent of their liquid love, when Ruby turned to him and smiled. She had an epiphany.
“Ruby,” she said. “Ruby Daulton.”
It was only then that Jake realized he did not know her name. He could not recall having heard or seen it written but it was as if he already knew.
“And it’s my birthday.”
Without a second thought, he pulled a turquoise stone on a leather thong from around his neck and handed it to her. It was a gift from a wise woman in Santa Fe. They had helped each understand and accept the mystery of their separate journeys.
“Happy birthday, Ruby Daulton.”
Holding the stone in her hands, it brought tears to her eyes for reasons she could never understand. For the first time since she was a child, she cried without apology or remorse. It was the most precious gift she had ever received.
“Baby,” she said finally, “I’ve got to level with you and after I do, if you want to turn your back and walk away, I swear I won’t say a word.”
Leaving nothing to the imagination, Ruby explained what had happened and why she was on the run. Her boyfriend was a mafia psychopath and she was a common stripper. The boys were scumbags who decided to take advantage. By the grace of god she was still alive. Raped, bruised and wanted by the law but she was still alive. Jake listened quietly before offering the obvious advice.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “Turn yourself in.”
“I’ve got history, baby. They know me at the LAPD. Tony knows that. He was counting on it. He has connections and I’m just a two-bit whore. He’ll set me up.”
Jake fell back on the hitchhiker’s code. It did not matter that they had entered a new and yet to be defined relationship, he was still a hitchhiker, a visitor, a mere guest on a random highway. He could get off the ride any time he wanted and, as long as that was true, he was bound by the code not to interfere. He wanted to know everything but he was bound by the code not to ask any questions beyond: Where are you headed?
Ruby knew the code as well as anyone. All her life she felt as though she had lived in other people’s homes, depending on the generosity of men. Her most recent vocation gave her a sense of freedom but, as it turned out, even that was an illusion. So she was acutely aware of Jake’s dilemma. She believed they were bound together by forces that could not be denied but she wanted him to have free choice. She needed him to make that choice. She wanted him to sign on with his eyes wide open. She was a woman on the run, hunted by criminals and cops alike. The road ahead was uncertain and dangerous. He would have to balance the risks against the rewards – however sweet those rewards might be.
“Have you got a plan?” he asked.
Ruby smiled. It was as close to a commitment as she could reasonably expect.
“I’m working on it,” she replied. “I made some calls. I know some people in Vegas who can fix me up: Fake ID, paint job, license plates, even a credit card. After that, I’ve got to put some miles between me and LA.”
“That’s a pretty good plan,” said Jake.
Ruby wrapped her legs around him. “Thanks,” she replied. “Are you in?”
Jake nodded and welcomed her embrace, dissolving at the scent of a woman in full bloom. It had been far too long since he had felt such divine pleasures.
“You should get some sleep,” she said with a kiss. “We have to leave in a few hours.”
His heart broke and his desire melted like wax in a Mississippi sun but he was an honorable man and he yielded to the need for sleep and the awakening that promised rebirth in a world of promise.
Under a bright, golden moon, they headed out over the southern branch of the Sierras. The path would take them through Death Valley to the city of neon lights where the gods of chance reign supreme. Ruby loved driving by moonlight and it seemed a good idea, under the circumstances, to take the road less traveled. It was a rough road but everything depended on reaching Vegas undetected.
Climbing a mountain road by the silver, moonlit waters of Lake Isabella, she thought of Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits and felt her passions rise. Her dark skinned hero by her side, she flipped on the radio and found an independent station on the FM band transitioning from jazz to nostalgic rock. Jake was moonstruck until she cranked it up as a Beatles medley came on, beginning with I Want You from Abbey Road. Ascending a steep grade near Walker Pass, she nearly lost control when the first chords of Why don’t we do it in the road? from the White Album came roaring out of her speakers. She looked sideways at Jake and sensed that he was as aroused as she was.
She pulled off at the next lookout but before they could climb into the back seat an 18-wheeler came barreling by with its tires screeching and horns blaring. They watched in dumfounded awe and then listened as it crashed into a runaway truck ramp down the road.
A tall, thin Latino came jogging up the road, looking dazed and confused but otherwise unharmed.
“Are you kids alright?” he stammered.
“We’re fine,” replied Ruby.
“Wow!” he said. “Another second and you’d have been splattered. It’s a miracle there was a turnout here.”
They shared various expressions of relief and acknowledged that what had happened was indeed miraculous. In fact, with the music and the rising passion of the moment, neither Jake nor Ruby had seen or heard the approaching disaster. They didn’t ask why he was driving an 18-wheeler down a narrow mountain road. They assumed it was the same reason Ruby had chosen this route: to avoid contact with the law.
Assured that everything was under control, they made their departure but not before Jake pointed out a marker by the side of the road. The white paint was yellowed and peeling, leading them to believe it was remnant of a former time. It read:
Mile 9.
Number nine, number nine, number nine…
FADE IN:
INT. TELEVISION SCREEN – NIGHT
The Beatles’ EVERYBODY’S GOT SOMETHING TO HIDE EXCEPT ME AND MY MONKEY (White Album) plays as we see a boxed photograph of Ruby Daulton displayed alongside a talking head with the CNN logo and scroll bar below. The caption reads: “Person of Interest.”
The deeper you go the higher you fly
The higher you fly the deeper you go
So come on…
EXT. DAIRY QUEEN PAY PHONE – NIGHT
Fade MONKEY as Ruby talks on the phone. We hear bits of her conversation.
RUBY
I can’t do that … Listen, I need some help …
EXT. MOUNTAIN ROAD, RUBY – NIGHT
Jake in the passenger seat, top down beneath a bright moon, Ruby drives up a winding road as the radio blares WHY DON’T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD? (White Album).
INT. CABIN OF AN 18 WHEELER
A trucker, barreling down the same mountain road, steps on the brakes with no effect. We hear REVOLUTION 9 (“Number 9, number 9, number 9…”) as the truck picks up speed and the trucker sounds his HORN.
EXT. MOUNTAIN ROAD, ABOVE
A runaway truck veers into the middle of the road as Ruby’s convertible approaches the same curve ahead. They appear destined to meet.
Ruby sees a white post reading: Mile 9. She pulls off the road at a lookout just as the truck barrels by and smashes into a sandy runaway truck ramp down the road.
In the microcosmic world, entities swim about in a gelatinous muck, moved by their liquid or gaseous surroundings, guided by unseen electrical impulses and unknown encoded tendencies. The patterns are beyond our earthbound grasp, like the courting dance of jellyfish, seemingly random and without intent, but when an entity nears its perfect mate, the two are drawn together like yin and yang, Orion and Sirius, Anthony and Cleopatra, or Tristram and Isolde. Two become one, forever interwoven, joined at the hip in a perpetual dance of destiny.
If not for the cerebral cortex, as it is in the microcosmic world so would it be for human nature. We would all find our perfect mates, dance in flowing harmony and claim eternal bliss.
So it seemed for Jake Jones and Ruby Daulton: If ever a match in heaven was made, at this moment in the cosmos, they were it. Her perfect breasts, nipples erect from leather thoughts, were soft and white. He caressed them in his mind though his thoughts were pure with wonder. He caressed them in the flesh and his spirit left his body, soaring through the ectoplasm of electromagnetic dreams.
She moved to him until their bodies locked like the socket and the plug, an electromagnetic coupling, matter and antimatter, like a Chopin duet or the final chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses.
Jake lived in the moment almost completely. It was not the result of a conscious decision but a birthright and one of many eccentricities that served to accentuate sensual-sexual pleasure. Their bodies tingled with an excitation of a kind Ruby had never before experienced. From the caverns of her mind reemerged the song that spurred the lust of Tony’s boys, sealed their gruesome fate, and turned the wheel of destiny.
When I hold you in my arms
And I feel my finger on your trigger
I know no one can do me no harm
Because happiness is a warm gun …
“Forever!” she cried out from the summit of delight. They were swimming the seven seas, soaring over Grand Canyon, diving into the infinite abyss.
“You and I will live … forever!”
Was it true love? It is a question neither Jake nor Ruby could ever answer but it was a moment of pure bliss and it would pass for love as long as they let it be so. For all they knew – for all any of us know – that is what love is: a willingness to suspend logical belief in favor of the eternal heart.
Exhausted, they lay side by side, basking in the scent of their liquid love, when Ruby turned to him and smiled. She had an epiphany.
“Ruby,” she said. “Ruby Daulton.”
It was only then that Jake realized he did not know her name. He could not recall having heard or seen it written but it was as if he already knew.
“And it’s my birthday.”
Without a second thought, he pulled a turquoise stone on a leather thong from around his neck and handed it to her. It was a gift from a wise woman in Santa Fe. They had helped each understand and accept the mystery of their separate journeys.
“Happy birthday, Ruby Daulton.”
Holding the stone in her hands, it brought tears to her eyes for reasons she could never understand. For the first time since she was a child, she cried without apology or remorse. It was the most precious gift she had ever received.
“Baby,” she said finally, “I’ve got to level with you and after I do, if you want to turn your back and walk away, I swear I won’t say a word.”
Leaving nothing to the imagination, Ruby explained what had happened and why she was on the run. Her boyfriend was a mafia psychopath and she was a common stripper. The boys were scumbags who decided to take advantage. By the grace of god she was still alive. Raped, bruised and wanted by the law but she was still alive. Jake listened quietly before offering the obvious advice.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said. “Turn yourself in.”
“I’ve got history, baby. They know me at the LAPD. Tony knows that. He was counting on it. He has connections and I’m just a two-bit whore. He’ll set me up.”
Jake fell back on the hitchhiker’s code. It did not matter that they had entered a new and yet to be defined relationship, he was still a hitchhiker, a visitor, a mere guest on a random highway. He could get off the ride any time he wanted and, as long as that was true, he was bound by the code not to interfere. He wanted to know everything but he was bound by the code not to ask any questions beyond: Where are you headed?
Ruby knew the code as well as anyone. All her life she felt as though she had lived in other people’s homes, depending on the generosity of men. Her most recent vocation gave her a sense of freedom but, as it turned out, even that was an illusion. So she was acutely aware of Jake’s dilemma. She believed they were bound together by forces that could not be denied but she wanted him to have free choice. She needed him to make that choice. She wanted him to sign on with his eyes wide open. She was a woman on the run, hunted by criminals and cops alike. The road ahead was uncertain and dangerous. He would have to balance the risks against the rewards – however sweet those rewards might be.
“Have you got a plan?” he asked.
Ruby smiled. It was as close to a commitment as she could reasonably expect.
“I’m working on it,” she replied. “I made some calls. I know some people in Vegas who can fix me up: Fake ID, paint job, license plates, even a credit card. After that, I’ve got to put some miles between me and LA.”
“That’s a pretty good plan,” said Jake.
Ruby wrapped her legs around him. “Thanks,” she replied. “Are you in?”
Jake nodded and welcomed her embrace, dissolving at the scent of a woman in full bloom. It had been far too long since he had felt such divine pleasures.
“You should get some sleep,” she said with a kiss. “We have to leave in a few hours.”
His heart broke and his desire melted like wax in a Mississippi sun but he was an honorable man and he yielded to the need for sleep and the awakening that promised rebirth in a world of promise.
Under a bright, golden moon, they headed out over the southern branch of the Sierras. The path would take them through Death Valley to the city of neon lights where the gods of chance reign supreme. Ruby loved driving by moonlight and it seemed a good idea, under the circumstances, to take the road less traveled. It was a rough road but everything depended on reaching Vegas undetected.
Climbing a mountain road by the silver, moonlit waters of Lake Isabella, she thought of Isabel Allende’s House of the Spirits and felt her passions rise. Her dark skinned hero by her side, she flipped on the radio and found an independent station on the FM band transitioning from jazz to nostalgic rock. Jake was moonstruck until she cranked it up as a Beatles medley came on, beginning with I Want You from Abbey Road. Ascending a steep grade near Walker Pass, she nearly lost control when the first chords of Why don’t we do it in the road? from the White Album came roaring out of her speakers. She looked sideways at Jake and sensed that he was as aroused as she was.
She pulled off at the next lookout but before they could climb into the back seat an 18-wheeler came barreling by with its tires screeching and horns blaring. They watched in dumfounded awe and then listened as it crashed into a runaway truck ramp down the road.
A tall, thin Latino came jogging up the road, looking dazed and confused but otherwise unharmed.
“Are you kids alright?” he stammered.
“We’re fine,” replied Ruby.
“Wow!” he said. “Another second and you’d have been splattered. It’s a miracle there was a turnout here.”
They shared various expressions of relief and acknowledged that what had happened was indeed miraculous. In fact, with the music and the rising passion of the moment, neither Jake nor Ruby had seen or heard the approaching disaster. They didn’t ask why he was driving an 18-wheeler down a narrow mountain road. They assumed it was the same reason Ruby had chosen this route: to avoid contact with the law.
Assured that everything was under control, they made their departure but not before Jake pointed out a marker by the side of the road. The white paint was yellowed and peeling, leading them to believe it was remnant of a former time. It read:
Mile 9.
Number nine, number nine, number nine…
Number Nine: Chapter 5
A LONG AND WINDING ROAD
FADE IN:
EXT. DESERT HIGHWAY – SUNRISE
With Jake sleeping in the passenger seat, Ruby drives through Death Valley as the dark cloud of a sandstorm approaches.
The Beatles’ GLASS ONION from the White Album plays in the foreground.
I told you about Strawberry Fields
You know the place where nothing is real
Well here’s another place you can go
Where everything flows.
Looking through the bent backed tulips
To see how the other half live
Looking through a glass onion…
EXT. SUBURBAN LAS VEGAS – DAY
A detective flashes his badge at the door of SISTER WOMAN, a friend of Ruby. She is small, dark skinned, with green eyes and flowing, Medusa-like hair.
EXT. DEATH VALLEY – DAY
Jake and Ruby struggle against a powerful wind to secure the convertible top.
INT. SISTER WOMAN’S HOUSE – DAY
The detective displays photographs, as he talks unheard: Ruby, Antonio, the boys. Sister Woman shakes her head and, then, shakes her head again.
INT. RUBY’S CAR
As the sandstorm rages all around them, we see images from the tornado scene in The Wizard of Oz. A young girl runs into the arms of her father. Soldiers in a sandstorm fire at random as a chopper flounders above and crashes. A medicine man sits on a desert mountain, gazing at a sunset.
INT. SISTER WOMAN’S HOUSE
Sister Woman follows the detective to the door. He lingers, handing her a card.
EXT. SISTER WOMAN’S HOUSE FROM ABOVE
Ruby’s Dodge pulls in the back of the house as the detective walks to his car.
INT. SISTER WOMAN’S HOUSE
As Sister Woman closes the front door, Ruby knocks on the back. Sister Woman rushes through the house, opens the door, and sees Ruby striking a pose a la Vogue.
Las Vegas is a timeless city born of desperate dreams and raised from a barren wasteland. It is a city that holds forth a promise of wealth and glory and delivers it to one in a million. To 999,999 others it delivers heartbreak. It is a city that calls out in neon: Give me your tired, your poor, your broken spirits yearning to break free. Above all, it is a city of delusions.
Ruby loved Las Vegas. In the diverse experience of her life, it was one of the few places that welcomed her without reservations. Ruby understood Las Vegas like she understood the silver phallus or the spotlight at a piano bar before karaoke. She understood the need and desire to hide dark secrets behind facades of splendor. For every nugget of gold in Vegas, there are a million of fools gold. For every genuine silver dollar, there are a billion wooden nickels. For every fine cut diamond, there are a trillion zirconium fakes. Just as the art of illusions transformed Vegas from a desert dream to a plaster and glitz paradise, Ruby hid her sorrow behind an inviting smile.
The sight and sounds of Las Vegas never failed to remind her of the county fair when she was a child of eight or nine. It was a time when her family maintained an illusion of happiness. It was not real. It was never real. For a time, however, it pleased them to believe that they could be happy. Ruby reflected that her mother had always believed in the miraculous power of a smile. If you pretended you were happy and you believed in the power, you could transform the reality of your miserable life. Ruby’s father – her stepfather really but the only father Ruby had known – never believed in the power but, for a time, he was willing to pretend.
She remembered cotton candy, corn on the cob slathered with creamy butter, and cows so big they seemed like dinosaurs to a little girl with wide eyes. She remembered the smell of barnyards, stale beer and greasy foods. She remembered carnies barking incomprehensible come-ons. She remembered coin tosses, balloons and stuffed pandas, unicorns and clapping monkeys. She remembered feeling proud and special when her father won the Wiley Coyote just for her.
They emerged from the desolate mountains, floated through the hills and were now cruising down a desert highway through Death Valley at sunrise. Jake sensed her deepening mood and felt the weight of her silence but he had no sense of cause or remedy. Despite the emerging sunlight, darkness was pervasive. He was haunted by his own memories of youth when the future was a promise and hope was his companion. He remembered his grandfather taking him on horseback to a high bluff overlooking the desert.
“Nothing in nature happens by accident,” his grandfather said. “Everything has a place and a purpose. When brother hawk flies overhead, pay attention. He has something to tell you. When the snake crosses your path, turn around and walk back the way you came. He is warning you that you are not on the right path.”
Ruby wiped away her silent tears and laughed when she saw that Jake noticed. “It’s nothing, baby. Just memories.”
They drove on in silence until they saw a billowing, dark cloud ahead, winding its way through a desert canyon like a mammoth serpent from ancient and harrowing tale.
“What is that?” asked Ruby.
“Shit,” said Jake. He had seen such sights before but never one so ominous. “Stop the car.” Ruby slowed until they came to a stop. A massive sandstorm was rapidly approaching like the curse of a demon.
“We have two choices,” said Jake. “We can go back the way we came or we can stay put and wait it out.”
“Shit!” said Ruby. Her life was governed by a small set of golden rules, one of which was: Don’t turn back. “Let’s wait it out,” she replied.
“Alright,” said Jake. “Let’s put up the top.”
The wind was howling and the sand stung their skin and eyes as they struggled to secure the top of the convertible. By the time they were safely inside with the windows rolled up they could not see six inches in any direction. Ruby could have sworn she saw the Wicked Witch of the West riding her bicycle in the swirling, writhing storm, little Toto tucked in her wicker basket. She felt them being lifted off the earth and thought they might be swept away to the Land of Oz but feared there would be no Wizard or playful Munchkins. There would only be darkness and gloom. She felt a rush of anxiety, panicked and started to put Sadie in gear. If she was going down, she wanted to go down in motion, blazing a trail like James Dean or Sarah Bernhardt.
Whatever she did, wherever she went, she did not want to die like Billie Holliday or Marilyn, lying in her bed, pumped full of poisons, sinking into the black hole of memories.
Jake gripped her arm and it was only then that she remembered he was there. It was one thing to go out in flames. It was another to take someone else with you. For all the world she would never bring harm to Jake. She moved to him and felt his strength, his quiet courage, and his impregnable calm. He held her until the storm subsided and her sense of balance returned.
“Have you got a Plan B?” asked Jake.
“What do you mean, baby?”
Jake shook his head and looked her dead in the eyes. He was still the hitchhiker and mindful of his limitations but this was a powerful sign and he had to make her understand. It was not a game. It was real. It was happening. Why look to the signs if you are not willing to abide them?
“We’re not supposed to go to Vegas,” he said.
Ruby was stunned. She felt the life force drain from her body. She was suddenly exhausted. She closed her eyes, leaned her head on the steering wheel and waited. When her energy returned it flooded her head with rage. She flew out the door and cursed the storm. She cursed the desert and the blinding sand. She cursed the sun, the sky and the wisp of clouds hovering above. She cursed nine times, kicking up sand and pacing like a mad woman in a fit of rage. Then she came down and climbed back in the car.
“You’re right,” she said. “The trouble is I don’t have another plan. Everything depends on Vegas.”
“Alright,” said Jake. His mind was already racing ahead. He had the makings of a Plan B.
“I have no money,” said Ruby. “I’m driving a car with a red neon sign that says: Arrest me! And I’m the most wanted woman in America! Hey, I’m a star! They’ll make movies about me. Fuck! If I don’t get to Vegas, baby, I don’t have a chance.”
“Alright,” said Jake.
“Look,” Ruby continued, “if you want to go back, I’ll take you back. If you want to get off at the next town, fine. I understand. But I’m going to Vegas. I have no choice.”
“It’s alright,” said Jake. “Just be careful.”
“You’re sticking with me?”
Jake nodded. Ruby gave a rebel yell, grabbed her man and painted his lips with gratitude. Then she popped her in gear and rolled down the road like a woman on a mission, like Sailor and Lula in Wild at Heart, like Jake and Elwood in The Blues Brothers. She burned through Death Valley, streaked over the mountains to the Nevada side and pulled up on a bluff overlooking the neon city.
“There she is,” said Ruby. “Viva Las Vegas!”
She gave Jake a wet kiss and proceeded with caution down the back roads to the home of her best friend in the suburbs. She parked in the alley, popped out of the car, knocked on the back door and struck a pose like the Material Girl in Vogue.
“Sister Woman!” she cried, as her friend grabbed her by the arm, yanked her inside and rushed to the front of her modest home, where she peaked out the window to make sure an unwanted visitor was gone. Only moments before she had been questioned by a Vegas detective who wanted to know where Ruby was and if she had been in contact. Meantime, Jake followed Ruby inside with the silence of a coyote on the prowl.
“Who the fuck is this?” cried Sister Woman. She drew her blinds and closed the back door before settling into her own prowl, a suburban prowl, a distinctly catlike prowl, back and forth in her living room. She was putting the voodoo telescope on him, cat against dog.
“You bring a man to my house?” she demanded.
“Relax,” said Ruby. “This is Jake. I trust him like a brother.”
“Yeah? Since when do you trust brothers?”
“Relax,” Ruby repeated. “I trust him more than I do you.”
Sister Woman had to laugh at that and she let out her air.
“I’m Sister Woman,” she said, extending her hand, which Jake took firmly.
“I’m Jake.”
Everyone in Vegas had two or three names: one for the act, one for the second act, and one they kept to themselves for the family back home. Sister Woman was act two of Shirley Mann from Tupelo, Mississippi. She linked up with Ruby at a Vegas strip club and took refuge from an abusive boyfriend. She owed Ruby more than she knew and more than she wanted to owe anyone.
They sat down to cold beers and Sister Woman explained the layout like the point of an elaborate heist.
“Damn, girl, you’re hotter than Madonna! I hang up the phone, talking to Tony’s boys, and a cop’s at the front door, shooting the breeze and wanting to know what everybody wants to know: Where’s Ruby?”
“You want to know what went down?” asked Ruby.
“I knew what happened when I first heard the news. The boys got frisky, Tony blew them away and pinned the rap on you.”
Sister Woman lit up a cigarette and offered Ruby one.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” said Ruby, springing to her feet. “I need a credit card and twenty four hours.”
“Got you covered,” said Sister Woman.
She went into the bedroom and emerged with a shiny new credit card, bearing the name of Rhonda Whitney, and a fresh tag for her license plates.
“I would have got you the plates,” she said, “but there wasn’t enough time.”
Ruby had tears in her eyes as she gave Sister Woman a warm embrace. It was more than she expected. They were sisters but in the life they were accustomed to living, sisters were one step removed from strangers or worse. Betrayal and payback were the lifeblood of their kind. They held on to each other a little longer than usual, knowing it was probably the last time they would come together.
“We’re even now, girl,” said Sister Woman.
“Twenty four hours,” said Ruby. “Then we’ll be even.”
They left the way they came but Ruby lingered at the back door to look Sister Woman square in the eyes until she saw what she needed to see. Like so many hardened outlaws and criminals, more abused than abusing, there was tenderness beneath a cold exterior. There was true affection, even love, and Ruby was counting on it.
“Twenty four hours, baby.”
“You got it, Ruby,” said Sister Woman, her eyes welling with tears.
“I swear.”
FADE IN:
EXT. DESERT HIGHWAY – SUNRISE
With Jake sleeping in the passenger seat, Ruby drives through Death Valley as the dark cloud of a sandstorm approaches.
The Beatles’ GLASS ONION from the White Album plays in the foreground.
I told you about Strawberry Fields
You know the place where nothing is real
Well here’s another place you can go
Where everything flows.
Looking through the bent backed tulips
To see how the other half live
Looking through a glass onion…
EXT. SUBURBAN LAS VEGAS – DAY
A detective flashes his badge at the door of SISTER WOMAN, a friend of Ruby. She is small, dark skinned, with green eyes and flowing, Medusa-like hair.
EXT. DEATH VALLEY – DAY
Jake and Ruby struggle against a powerful wind to secure the convertible top.
INT. SISTER WOMAN’S HOUSE – DAY
The detective displays photographs, as he talks unheard: Ruby, Antonio, the boys. Sister Woman shakes her head and, then, shakes her head again.
INT. RUBY’S CAR
As the sandstorm rages all around them, we see images from the tornado scene in The Wizard of Oz. A young girl runs into the arms of her father. Soldiers in a sandstorm fire at random as a chopper flounders above and crashes. A medicine man sits on a desert mountain, gazing at a sunset.
INT. SISTER WOMAN’S HOUSE
Sister Woman follows the detective to the door. He lingers, handing her a card.
EXT. SISTER WOMAN’S HOUSE FROM ABOVE
Ruby’s Dodge pulls in the back of the house as the detective walks to his car.
INT. SISTER WOMAN’S HOUSE
As Sister Woman closes the front door, Ruby knocks on the back. Sister Woman rushes through the house, opens the door, and sees Ruby striking a pose a la Vogue.
Las Vegas is a timeless city born of desperate dreams and raised from a barren wasteland. It is a city that holds forth a promise of wealth and glory and delivers it to one in a million. To 999,999 others it delivers heartbreak. It is a city that calls out in neon: Give me your tired, your poor, your broken spirits yearning to break free. Above all, it is a city of delusions.
Ruby loved Las Vegas. In the diverse experience of her life, it was one of the few places that welcomed her without reservations. Ruby understood Las Vegas like she understood the silver phallus or the spotlight at a piano bar before karaoke. She understood the need and desire to hide dark secrets behind facades of splendor. For every nugget of gold in Vegas, there are a million of fools gold. For every genuine silver dollar, there are a billion wooden nickels. For every fine cut diamond, there are a trillion zirconium fakes. Just as the art of illusions transformed Vegas from a desert dream to a plaster and glitz paradise, Ruby hid her sorrow behind an inviting smile.
The sight and sounds of Las Vegas never failed to remind her of the county fair when she was a child of eight or nine. It was a time when her family maintained an illusion of happiness. It was not real. It was never real. For a time, however, it pleased them to believe that they could be happy. Ruby reflected that her mother had always believed in the miraculous power of a smile. If you pretended you were happy and you believed in the power, you could transform the reality of your miserable life. Ruby’s father – her stepfather really but the only father Ruby had known – never believed in the power but, for a time, he was willing to pretend.
She remembered cotton candy, corn on the cob slathered with creamy butter, and cows so big they seemed like dinosaurs to a little girl with wide eyes. She remembered the smell of barnyards, stale beer and greasy foods. She remembered carnies barking incomprehensible come-ons. She remembered coin tosses, balloons and stuffed pandas, unicorns and clapping monkeys. She remembered feeling proud and special when her father won the Wiley Coyote just for her.
They emerged from the desolate mountains, floated through the hills and were now cruising down a desert highway through Death Valley at sunrise. Jake sensed her deepening mood and felt the weight of her silence but he had no sense of cause or remedy. Despite the emerging sunlight, darkness was pervasive. He was haunted by his own memories of youth when the future was a promise and hope was his companion. He remembered his grandfather taking him on horseback to a high bluff overlooking the desert.
“Nothing in nature happens by accident,” his grandfather said. “Everything has a place and a purpose. When brother hawk flies overhead, pay attention. He has something to tell you. When the snake crosses your path, turn around and walk back the way you came. He is warning you that you are not on the right path.”
Ruby wiped away her silent tears and laughed when she saw that Jake noticed. “It’s nothing, baby. Just memories.”
They drove on in silence until they saw a billowing, dark cloud ahead, winding its way through a desert canyon like a mammoth serpent from ancient and harrowing tale.
“What is that?” asked Ruby.
“Shit,” said Jake. He had seen such sights before but never one so ominous. “Stop the car.” Ruby slowed until they came to a stop. A massive sandstorm was rapidly approaching like the curse of a demon.
“We have two choices,” said Jake. “We can go back the way we came or we can stay put and wait it out.”
“Shit!” said Ruby. Her life was governed by a small set of golden rules, one of which was: Don’t turn back. “Let’s wait it out,” she replied.
“Alright,” said Jake. “Let’s put up the top.”
The wind was howling and the sand stung their skin and eyes as they struggled to secure the top of the convertible. By the time they were safely inside with the windows rolled up they could not see six inches in any direction. Ruby could have sworn she saw the Wicked Witch of the West riding her bicycle in the swirling, writhing storm, little Toto tucked in her wicker basket. She felt them being lifted off the earth and thought they might be swept away to the Land of Oz but feared there would be no Wizard or playful Munchkins. There would only be darkness and gloom. She felt a rush of anxiety, panicked and started to put Sadie in gear. If she was going down, she wanted to go down in motion, blazing a trail like James Dean or Sarah Bernhardt.
Whatever she did, wherever she went, she did not want to die like Billie Holliday or Marilyn, lying in her bed, pumped full of poisons, sinking into the black hole of memories.
Jake gripped her arm and it was only then that she remembered he was there. It was one thing to go out in flames. It was another to take someone else with you. For all the world she would never bring harm to Jake. She moved to him and felt his strength, his quiet courage, and his impregnable calm. He held her until the storm subsided and her sense of balance returned.
“Have you got a Plan B?” asked Jake.
“What do you mean, baby?”
Jake shook his head and looked her dead in the eyes. He was still the hitchhiker and mindful of his limitations but this was a powerful sign and he had to make her understand. It was not a game. It was real. It was happening. Why look to the signs if you are not willing to abide them?
“We’re not supposed to go to Vegas,” he said.
Ruby was stunned. She felt the life force drain from her body. She was suddenly exhausted. She closed her eyes, leaned her head on the steering wheel and waited. When her energy returned it flooded her head with rage. She flew out the door and cursed the storm. She cursed the desert and the blinding sand. She cursed the sun, the sky and the wisp of clouds hovering above. She cursed nine times, kicking up sand and pacing like a mad woman in a fit of rage. Then she came down and climbed back in the car.
“You’re right,” she said. “The trouble is I don’t have another plan. Everything depends on Vegas.”
“Alright,” said Jake. His mind was already racing ahead. He had the makings of a Plan B.
“I have no money,” said Ruby. “I’m driving a car with a red neon sign that says: Arrest me! And I’m the most wanted woman in America! Hey, I’m a star! They’ll make movies about me. Fuck! If I don’t get to Vegas, baby, I don’t have a chance.”
“Alright,” said Jake.
“Look,” Ruby continued, “if you want to go back, I’ll take you back. If you want to get off at the next town, fine. I understand. But I’m going to Vegas. I have no choice.”
“It’s alright,” said Jake. “Just be careful.”
“You’re sticking with me?”
Jake nodded. Ruby gave a rebel yell, grabbed her man and painted his lips with gratitude. Then she popped her in gear and rolled down the road like a woman on a mission, like Sailor and Lula in Wild at Heart, like Jake and Elwood in The Blues Brothers. She burned through Death Valley, streaked over the mountains to the Nevada side and pulled up on a bluff overlooking the neon city.
“There she is,” said Ruby. “Viva Las Vegas!”
She gave Jake a wet kiss and proceeded with caution down the back roads to the home of her best friend in the suburbs. She parked in the alley, popped out of the car, knocked on the back door and struck a pose like the Material Girl in Vogue.
“Sister Woman!” she cried, as her friend grabbed her by the arm, yanked her inside and rushed to the front of her modest home, where she peaked out the window to make sure an unwanted visitor was gone. Only moments before she had been questioned by a Vegas detective who wanted to know where Ruby was and if she had been in contact. Meantime, Jake followed Ruby inside with the silence of a coyote on the prowl.
“Who the fuck is this?” cried Sister Woman. She drew her blinds and closed the back door before settling into her own prowl, a suburban prowl, a distinctly catlike prowl, back and forth in her living room. She was putting the voodoo telescope on him, cat against dog.
“You bring a man to my house?” she demanded.
“Relax,” said Ruby. “This is Jake. I trust him like a brother.”
“Yeah? Since when do you trust brothers?”
“Relax,” Ruby repeated. “I trust him more than I do you.”
Sister Woman had to laugh at that and she let out her air.
“I’m Sister Woman,” she said, extending her hand, which Jake took firmly.
“I’m Jake.”
Everyone in Vegas had two or three names: one for the act, one for the second act, and one they kept to themselves for the family back home. Sister Woman was act two of Shirley Mann from Tupelo, Mississippi. She linked up with Ruby at a Vegas strip club and took refuge from an abusive boyfriend. She owed Ruby more than she knew and more than she wanted to owe anyone.
They sat down to cold beers and Sister Woman explained the layout like the point of an elaborate heist.
“Damn, girl, you’re hotter than Madonna! I hang up the phone, talking to Tony’s boys, and a cop’s at the front door, shooting the breeze and wanting to know what everybody wants to know: Where’s Ruby?”
“You want to know what went down?” asked Ruby.
“I knew what happened when I first heard the news. The boys got frisky, Tony blew them away and pinned the rap on you.”
Sister Woman lit up a cigarette and offered Ruby one.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” said Ruby, springing to her feet. “I need a credit card and twenty four hours.”
“Got you covered,” said Sister Woman.
She went into the bedroom and emerged with a shiny new credit card, bearing the name of Rhonda Whitney, and a fresh tag for her license plates.
“I would have got you the plates,” she said, “but there wasn’t enough time.”
Ruby had tears in her eyes as she gave Sister Woman a warm embrace. It was more than she expected. They were sisters but in the life they were accustomed to living, sisters were one step removed from strangers or worse. Betrayal and payback were the lifeblood of their kind. They held on to each other a little longer than usual, knowing it was probably the last time they would come together.
“We’re even now, girl,” said Sister Woman.
“Twenty four hours,” said Ruby. “Then we’ll be even.”
They left the way they came but Ruby lingered at the back door to look Sister Woman square in the eyes until she saw what she needed to see. Like so many hardened outlaws and criminals, more abused than abusing, there was tenderness beneath a cold exterior. There was true affection, even love, and Ruby was counting on it.
“Twenty four hours, baby.”
“You got it, Ruby,” said Sister Woman, her eyes welling with tears.
“I swear.”
Number Nine: Chapter 6
ORPHEUS
FADE IN:
EXT. SUBURBAN LAS VEGAS – ARIEL VIEW – DAY
Ruby’s baby blue Rambler convertible heading out of town, Ruby driving and Jake in the passenger seat.
The Beatles’ MARTHA, MY DEAR (White Album) plays in the foreground.
Hold your head up you silly girl look what you’ve done
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you…
EXT. DESERT HIGHWAY – DAY
Abandoned vehicles alongside the road. Close up of license plate “7FXY721” being removed. Close up of license on Baby Blue. Zoom out as Jake and Ruby kick up dust heading back to town.
EXT. LAS VEGAS – DAY
Close up of ATM cash withdrawal.
EXT. LAS VEGAS – ARIEL VIEW – DAY
Ruby drives.
EXT. CHOP SHOP OUTSKIRTS OF TOWN – DAY
Ruby exchanges cash with tattoo man.
EXT. CHOP SHOP – DAY
Ruby, Jake and tattoo man play poker around a spool for chump change.
EXT. CHOP SHOP – SUNSET
Ruby’s Rambler freshly painted ruby red. CLOSE UP of a tear rolling down Ruby’s face.
INT. CASINO – NIGHT
Slow pan reveals Ruby at a poker table with a good stack of chips, Jake at the bar with a beer, and a couple of goons in cheap suits. They are MINNIE and SLIM, employees of Guido Lazerri.
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you…
Ten years ago, a man named Giovanni Minolla, AKA Minnie, as much in reference to the legendary pool player, Minnesota Fats, as to his family surname, was a street vender selling sausages on the streets of Little Italy in Chicago.
Owing to a family recipe, Minnie’s sausages were reputed to be the best in a city that prided itself on old style cuisine. It was his misfortune to be stationed at a street corner just across from Guido’s Pizzeria.
As word spread, Minnie’s sausages began to cut deeply into the pizzeria’s business. Customers took to the habit of buying a sausage on the street and entering the pizzeria for its air conditioning and a cold brew.
The owner of the pizzeria was Guido Lazerri, a made man in a powerful crime syndicate. When Lazerri demanded an explanation for the decline in revenue, his manager, a beer bellied, self-promoting buffoon of a man, stammered and stuttered, afraid to inform the boss that the Lazerri recipe was second rate to that of a street vender. Guido had a reputation for volatility and not without reason.
A short, wiry busboy-dishwasher and general gopher, who went by the name of “Slim” for obvious reasons, whom everyone thought was mentally deficient because of his quiet nature and a spasmodic laugh that seemed to erupt without reason, stepped forward and told the truth.
Everyone in the restaurant froze in a slack-jawed, silent stare until a grim chuckle emerged from Guido’s throat. He fired his manager on the spot and instructed Slim to invite Minnie in for a glass of Chianti and a couple of sausages.
Minnie became the new manager of Guido’s Pizzeria and Slim became his assistant. As Guido moved up the ranks in the organization, he brought Minnie and Slim with him.
They were profoundly grateful. In a business where loyalty is as rare as it is valued, loyalty was their primary asset. Whatever their shortcomings (and they had more than their share, one of which was not being able to recognize them), they could be counted on. They would give up their lives for Guido Lazerri. They would stare down the eyes of a dragon for the honor of their boss. They were groomed from the cradle the perfect lackeys and they were proud of it.
When Guido made the move west to take over a floundering gambling operation in Vegas, Minnie and Slim went with him.
Their current assignment was to track down a murderous, double-crossing bitch by the name of Ruby Daulton and they were hot on her trail. It was not a bad place to be.
Sitting on a barstool, sipping a beer, Jake was a little bored when he heard a sound, a low-pitched humming, that summoned his attention. He looked around at the symphony of flashing lights, clanging and jingling, and tired faces.
Ruby was doing well. She sat down at the poker table less than an hour ago and already she had a sizable stack of multicolored chips, whose meaning escaped him. She was in her element, a radiant jewel in a sea of common stone. He realized that the world would always be divided between life before Ruby and after Ruby. He would have been content to watch her play, to observe her inner joy, for as long as the moment endured but the humming entered his brain and beckoned like the siren song of ancient lore.
He looked around until he zeroed in on a poker machine across the room that seemed to emit an aura in red neon. He rose from the barstool and let the force of destiny pull him in. It was once in a lifetime and he savored the moment, like a mad scientist on the precipice of a universe-altering discovery.
Standing before a red neon machine, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a single silver dollar – the kind you get only at a Vegas casino. He plugged it in, punched the deal button and watched the adventure unfold in cinematic slow motion: Jack of Hearts, King of Hearts, Ace of Hearts, Ten of Hearts, Queen of Hearts.
A ruby red sea of hearts, the colors that turn seasoned gamblers green with envy and make believers of the most devout cynics. It was the ultimate high, an affirmation of all that was good and true, the homecoming of Ulysses, and proof of a divine being.
He smiled and stood in awe at the wonders of random chance. He believed neither in chance nor in the possibility of divine intervention and so his universe was torn asunder. Gravity was deconstructed and the earth beneath his feet became a sea of constant motion. He was no longer Jake Jones. He was above and beyond the man in his moccasins. He was someone else watching Jake Jones from a distance.
He was a little surprised that the machine did not spew a fountain of coins at his feet. Instead, a flashing red light and an alarm alerted all that a miracle had occurred on the casino floor. Another lucky winner. Another confirmation of the existence of god. Elvis lives and Jim Morrison would have had it no other way. Here in the same casino where Tupac Shakur was shot down like a common thug, prayers were answered and dreams really did come true.
He felt a twinge of regret that Ruby was not there to share the moment. This was her turf, her kind of glory, and the dream that centered her existence. He looked in the direction of Ruby’s poker table but his view was blocked, a crowd was pushing in on him, and a casino doll had just arrived speaking too rapidly for comprehension.
She counted out five big ones and chump change as a collective groan emerged from the onlookers. Jake smiled. It did not occur to him that the beauty of the experience could be mediated by the size of the wager. To him it was like a Hopper painting, a good wine, a ball player on a torrid hitting streak or the red rock towers of Monument Valley, but to the dispersing crowd it was a betrayal of the gambling gods, a cruel joke, and a testament to the folly of man.
He accepted their condolences and caught a glimpse of Ruby being hustled off the casino floor by a couple of greasy suits. She looked back and he saw panic etched on her tear-streaked face. Fate took its turn and something was horribly wrong.
Ruby was a good poker player in that she recognized the players and the marks at a glance. A mark could win a hand or two but only the players won in the long haul. It was rare to find a table without at least one player but two could easily share the winnings with a handful of marks.
Ruby was nobody’s fool. She knew that the bogus credit card she got from Sister Woman would not be good for long. She needed hard currency and what better way to get it than at the Orpheus – a casino-hotel with connections to the mobster who placed her in jeopardy.
Having played less than an hour, she had collected over five grand in chips and was looking for a graceful withdrawal. She glanced over to the bar and saw a stranger where Jake should have been. She looked around and her heart stopped, the earth tilted, and the force of gravity pulled her down. The familiar face of a grotesque fat man was staring at her with a crooked smile. An alarm and flashing lights signaled another lucky winner over at the poker machines as Ruby exchanged her chips for larger denominations, left the dealer a generous tip, and calmly rose from the table. If she could only make it to where the mindless swarm was gathering to witness the thrill of victory, maybe she could lose him.
It might have worked but the fat man’s equally disgusting weasel of a partner was immediately at her side, grabbing her waist, pressing a gun to her side and guiding her to where the fat man waited.
“Sweet Ruby!” said the fat man.
“Hiya, boys,” replied Ruby, not bothering to look them in the eyes.
It was not her first encounter with the Minnie and Slim act. She knew them from her drug running days, transferring contraband from LA and San Diego to party town Vegas. There was no point in starting up a conversation. The boys did what they were told. If they had orders to kill her, she was dead. If they had orders to turn her in, she was busted. If the boss wanted a word with her, she was headed up to the penthouse suite. They were moving toward the elevators in the hotel lobby so it looked like a personal interview with the big man.
She looked back once and caught a fleeting glimpse of a Royal Flush in Hearts. She wondered if it was the last hand she would ever see.
FADE IN:
EXT. SUBURBAN LAS VEGAS – ARIEL VIEW – DAY
Ruby’s baby blue Rambler convertible heading out of town, Ruby driving and Jake in the passenger seat.
The Beatles’ MARTHA, MY DEAR (White Album) plays in the foreground.
Hold your head up you silly girl look what you’ve done
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you…
EXT. DESERT HIGHWAY – DAY
Abandoned vehicles alongside the road. Close up of license plate “7FXY721” being removed. Close up of license on Baby Blue. Zoom out as Jake and Ruby kick up dust heading back to town.
EXT. LAS VEGAS – DAY
Close up of ATM cash withdrawal.
EXT. LAS VEGAS – ARIEL VIEW – DAY
Ruby drives.
EXT. CHOP SHOP OUTSKIRTS OF TOWN – DAY
Ruby exchanges cash with tattoo man.
EXT. CHOP SHOP – DAY
Ruby, Jake and tattoo man play poker around a spool for chump change.
EXT. CHOP SHOP – SUNSET
Ruby’s Rambler freshly painted ruby red. CLOSE UP of a tear rolling down Ruby’s face.
INT. CASINO – NIGHT
Slow pan reveals Ruby at a poker table with a good stack of chips, Jake at the bar with a beer, and a couple of goons in cheap suits. They are MINNIE and SLIM, employees of Guido Lazerri.
When you find yourself in the thick of it
Help yourself to a bit of what is all around you…
Ten years ago, a man named Giovanni Minolla, AKA Minnie, as much in reference to the legendary pool player, Minnesota Fats, as to his family surname, was a street vender selling sausages on the streets of Little Italy in Chicago.
Owing to a family recipe, Minnie’s sausages were reputed to be the best in a city that prided itself on old style cuisine. It was his misfortune to be stationed at a street corner just across from Guido’s Pizzeria.
As word spread, Minnie’s sausages began to cut deeply into the pizzeria’s business. Customers took to the habit of buying a sausage on the street and entering the pizzeria for its air conditioning and a cold brew.
The owner of the pizzeria was Guido Lazerri, a made man in a powerful crime syndicate. When Lazerri demanded an explanation for the decline in revenue, his manager, a beer bellied, self-promoting buffoon of a man, stammered and stuttered, afraid to inform the boss that the Lazerri recipe was second rate to that of a street vender. Guido had a reputation for volatility and not without reason.
A short, wiry busboy-dishwasher and general gopher, who went by the name of “Slim” for obvious reasons, whom everyone thought was mentally deficient because of his quiet nature and a spasmodic laugh that seemed to erupt without reason, stepped forward and told the truth.
Everyone in the restaurant froze in a slack-jawed, silent stare until a grim chuckle emerged from Guido’s throat. He fired his manager on the spot and instructed Slim to invite Minnie in for a glass of Chianti and a couple of sausages.
Minnie became the new manager of Guido’s Pizzeria and Slim became his assistant. As Guido moved up the ranks in the organization, he brought Minnie and Slim with him.
They were profoundly grateful. In a business where loyalty is as rare as it is valued, loyalty was their primary asset. Whatever their shortcomings (and they had more than their share, one of which was not being able to recognize them), they could be counted on. They would give up their lives for Guido Lazerri. They would stare down the eyes of a dragon for the honor of their boss. They were groomed from the cradle the perfect lackeys and they were proud of it.
When Guido made the move west to take over a floundering gambling operation in Vegas, Minnie and Slim went with him.
Their current assignment was to track down a murderous, double-crossing bitch by the name of Ruby Daulton and they were hot on her trail. It was not a bad place to be.
Sitting on a barstool, sipping a beer, Jake was a little bored when he heard a sound, a low-pitched humming, that summoned his attention. He looked around at the symphony of flashing lights, clanging and jingling, and tired faces.
Ruby was doing well. She sat down at the poker table less than an hour ago and already she had a sizable stack of multicolored chips, whose meaning escaped him. She was in her element, a radiant jewel in a sea of common stone. He realized that the world would always be divided between life before Ruby and after Ruby. He would have been content to watch her play, to observe her inner joy, for as long as the moment endured but the humming entered his brain and beckoned like the siren song of ancient lore.
He looked around until he zeroed in on a poker machine across the room that seemed to emit an aura in red neon. He rose from the barstool and let the force of destiny pull him in. It was once in a lifetime and he savored the moment, like a mad scientist on the precipice of a universe-altering discovery.
Standing before a red neon machine, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a single silver dollar – the kind you get only at a Vegas casino. He plugged it in, punched the deal button and watched the adventure unfold in cinematic slow motion: Jack of Hearts, King of Hearts, Ace of Hearts, Ten of Hearts, Queen of Hearts.
A ruby red sea of hearts, the colors that turn seasoned gamblers green with envy and make believers of the most devout cynics. It was the ultimate high, an affirmation of all that was good and true, the homecoming of Ulysses, and proof of a divine being.
He smiled and stood in awe at the wonders of random chance. He believed neither in chance nor in the possibility of divine intervention and so his universe was torn asunder. Gravity was deconstructed and the earth beneath his feet became a sea of constant motion. He was no longer Jake Jones. He was above and beyond the man in his moccasins. He was someone else watching Jake Jones from a distance.
He was a little surprised that the machine did not spew a fountain of coins at his feet. Instead, a flashing red light and an alarm alerted all that a miracle had occurred on the casino floor. Another lucky winner. Another confirmation of the existence of god. Elvis lives and Jim Morrison would have had it no other way. Here in the same casino where Tupac Shakur was shot down like a common thug, prayers were answered and dreams really did come true.
He felt a twinge of regret that Ruby was not there to share the moment. This was her turf, her kind of glory, and the dream that centered her existence. He looked in the direction of Ruby’s poker table but his view was blocked, a crowd was pushing in on him, and a casino doll had just arrived speaking too rapidly for comprehension.
She counted out five big ones and chump change as a collective groan emerged from the onlookers. Jake smiled. It did not occur to him that the beauty of the experience could be mediated by the size of the wager. To him it was like a Hopper painting, a good wine, a ball player on a torrid hitting streak or the red rock towers of Monument Valley, but to the dispersing crowd it was a betrayal of the gambling gods, a cruel joke, and a testament to the folly of man.
He accepted their condolences and caught a glimpse of Ruby being hustled off the casino floor by a couple of greasy suits. She looked back and he saw panic etched on her tear-streaked face. Fate took its turn and something was horribly wrong.
Ruby was a good poker player in that she recognized the players and the marks at a glance. A mark could win a hand or two but only the players won in the long haul. It was rare to find a table without at least one player but two could easily share the winnings with a handful of marks.
Ruby was nobody’s fool. She knew that the bogus credit card she got from Sister Woman would not be good for long. She needed hard currency and what better way to get it than at the Orpheus – a casino-hotel with connections to the mobster who placed her in jeopardy.
Having played less than an hour, she had collected over five grand in chips and was looking for a graceful withdrawal. She glanced over to the bar and saw a stranger where Jake should have been. She looked around and her heart stopped, the earth tilted, and the force of gravity pulled her down. The familiar face of a grotesque fat man was staring at her with a crooked smile. An alarm and flashing lights signaled another lucky winner over at the poker machines as Ruby exchanged her chips for larger denominations, left the dealer a generous tip, and calmly rose from the table. If she could only make it to where the mindless swarm was gathering to witness the thrill of victory, maybe she could lose him.
It might have worked but the fat man’s equally disgusting weasel of a partner was immediately at her side, grabbing her waist, pressing a gun to her side and guiding her to where the fat man waited.
“Sweet Ruby!” said the fat man.
“Hiya, boys,” replied Ruby, not bothering to look them in the eyes.
It was not her first encounter with the Minnie and Slim act. She knew them from her drug running days, transferring contraband from LA and San Diego to party town Vegas. There was no point in starting up a conversation. The boys did what they were told. If they had orders to kill her, she was dead. If they had orders to turn her in, she was busted. If the boss wanted a word with her, she was headed up to the penthouse suite. They were moving toward the elevators in the hotel lobby so it looked like a personal interview with the big man.
She looked back once and caught a fleeting glimpse of a Royal Flush in Hearts. She wondered if it was the last hand she would ever see.
Number Nine: Chapter 7
PENTHOUSE PERVERSIONS
FADE IN:
INT. HOTEL ELEVATOR – NIGHT
The Beatles’ BLACKBIRD (White Album) plays in the foreground.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arrive…
CLOSE UP of Ruby, flanked by Minnie and Slim. An elevator operator speaks into an intercom.
INT. HOTEL LOBBY ELEVATOR ENCLAVE – NIGHT
Jake watches the elevator monitor rise to the 54th floor – the penthouse suite.
INT. PENTHOUSE SUITE – NIGHT
A man in a stylish suit looks out over the neon Vegas strip. This is GUIDO LAZERRI, mob boss. The doors open and Ruby is escorted in, Minnie and Slim following.
Fade out BLACKBIRD: “You were only waiting for this moment to arrive…”
Fade in HELTER SKELTER: “When I get to the bottom I go back to the top…”
INSERT MONTAGE – HELTER SKELTER
A whirlwind storm, overturned cars and boats, flying objects, naked dancers on a phallic pole, targeted missiles, explosions, charred bodies, Chernobyl, Exxon-Valdez, Bhopal, dead crows, quarantine bubbles and people in chemical suits. Dark images of masked, leathered bodies and faces intermixed with butchered meat and the pummeled faces of pugilists.
Fade out HELTER SKELTER.
Fade in WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS.
I don’t know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don’t know how you were inverted
No one alerted you…
Despite the name, Guido Lazerri was no cliché. He was definitely not Al Pacino in Scarface, Marlon Brando in The Godfather or James Gandolfini in The Sopranos. He more resembled a European businessman with charm, grace and impeccable taste. He was a smooth talker whose powers of persuasion transcended business and pleasure. He was accustomed to getting his way.
As an illegitimate son of a prominent crime family patron, Guido was ideally positioned to advance in the ranks. It was a time of great turmoil when the government, consumed in a war on terror, left criminal enterprise to its own policing. When the wheels of power turned one way, Guido was protected by his bloodline. When they turned the other way, he was shielded by his status as a bastard son.
He was a master strategist, a sound businessman, a smooth operator and a perverted prick. Before the advent of a pharmaceutical solution to the limp dick syndrome, Guido had a problem with his manhood. His Italian wife had a problem with the back of his hand. She never told anyone (and perhaps she considered it her failing as a woman) but when relatives from the old country came to visit, catching a glimpse of her bruises, it was made clear that if he ever laid hand on her again, he would not live to realize his ambitions.
Guido never laid hand on her again.
Thanks to the wonders of modern pharmacology, Guido became the man he always imagined himself to be. He inhabited strip clubs and hired a harem of prostitutes specializing in the dark arts of erotic perversion.
One of his favorite clubs was Shotgun Slim’s and its owner, Antonio Menendez, became like a son to him – the son he could never produce, even with pharmacological assistance. Like nearly everyone who ever set foot in the place, Ruby Daulton was his favorite dancer but, out of respect for Tony, he never pushed it and Tony never offered.
The girls at the club talked about Guido Lazerri: He paid well but it took a week to wash the stench off the skin. No matter how kinky or masochistic a woman was Lazerri found a way to make her squirm.
Ruby knew enough about Guido to be petrified but she had a well-earned reputation in the biz as a tough girl and she would not give it up now. She would hold out for any chance, however slim, that she would survive the night.
When the boys escorted her through the door of his penthouse suite, she broke free and struck a pose like at third-rate actress at a third-rate theatre.
“Guido!” she intoned as she strutted across the room and planted a wet kiss and full body embrace on the man who held her life in his slimy hands.
Guido smiled and slapped her hard with the back of his hand. When she recovered, he slapped her again in the opposite direction. Ruby refused to fall. She took a couple of staggered steps back, wiped the blood from her lip and smiled back in defiance.
“So that’s how you want to play, hey, baby?”
Guido loved everything about her: the way she talked, the way she walked, the way she smiled, the way she took a blow and came back for more. He had never seen her cry and suddenly that is what he desired more than anything else. He wanted to break her defiant spirit. He turned to the boys, dumbfounded, and growled, “Get out!”
“Boss,” said Slim, “she’s got five grand in her pocket.”
“That’s my money,” said Ruby.
“Where you’re headed,” said Lazerri, “you won’t need it.”
Ruby felt the odds slipping as she reached into her pocket, extended her hand and dropped five grand in poker chips to the carpet. The boys scooped them up and headed out, Slim cackling under his labored breath, closing the door behind them.
“You want to know what happened?” asked Ruby.
“I already know what happened.”
“Tony’s little boys decided to give me a birthday party. They had it all planned.”
“I already know…”
“Tony had an appointment. The party was supposed to end with me bending over my own couch, their loads up my...”
“Shut up, bitch!”
“Instead, Tony dropped by for a surprise visit.”
“You liked it, baby!”
“Yeah, I liked it when he blasted their fucking heads off but I got out before he turned the gun on me.”
“All women like it!”
“Fuck you, Guido!”
Guido was coming on to his pharmaceutical hard on. He was panting like a hungry dog at the gate of a bitch in heat. He wanted her so bad he was drooling on his tailored suit.
“You ran. Why didn’t you call the police?”
“You know why.”
“You’re a liar. All women are liars!”
Hope was waning. Ruby could no longer imagine a happy ending. She had been in kinky situations before. She could smell them. Some she walked into, others walked into her. Guido was kinkier than a homeless man’s undershirt.
“Take your clothes off, baby.”
“What?”
“You want something from me? You want me to make it all go away? You’ve got to give me a reason. You’ve got to give me what I need.”
She was out of options. Time was the only one left. Guido loosened his belt and reached into his pants as Ruby began the slow dance of removing her clothing. She was a singer at heart and her heart was singing the blues as if it was the last song she would ever sing. The guitar inside her soul gently wept.
“Turn around, bitch!”
He did not want to see her face just yet, her eyes, the tears running down her cheeks. He did not want to see her passion, her hatred, her pity or the depth of her humanity. He wanted a plaything, a doll, a warm, bleeding piece of flesh into which he could insert his proof of manhood.
Ruby let the last piece of clothing, her black silk panties, drop to the floor and tried not to gag as she felt Guido’s breath on her neck, his hand on her ass, his sweaty fingers sliding up and down. She tried to imagine cotton candy at the County Fair.
There was a loud crash outside the door. Ruby spun and caught Guido off guard. She kicked as hard as she could, as if the life of her child depended on it, connecting square between his legs, and watched him crumble to the plush white carpet.
Jake came crashing through the door, gun in hand, and delivered a blow to Guido’s head that sent him to another universe where pain and suffering would be his loyal attendants, where the abuser became the abused.
Ruby embraced her hero and painted his face with a thousand kisses, tears streaming from her eyes and visions of horror worse than death fading from her mind.
Life was a strange and brutal place and yet there were men like Jake Jones, women like Ruby Dalton, who proved that it was not all bad. There was kindness, courage, dignity and beauty. And there was hope. There was still hope.
Ruby pulled on her clothing as quickly as she could and the two of them rushed out into the hall, past a cursing Minnie and Slim, hogtied on their slimy bellies, past an unconscious and tied elevator attendant, his body obstructing the elevator door.
They exited on the second floor and continued their escape by the stairwell. It was Helter Skelter and they were on the move. As long as they could keep moving, never stopping, never looking back, Ruby felt they would be all right.
They sprang into a warm and glorious Las Vegas night. It was still a magical city, a city where dreams could still come true, a city where hope was alive until the last bet was wagered, and a city where a single silver dollar could reveal the most precious and rare treasure: a royal flush in ruby red hearts. They were alive and kicking and on this particular night, with the neon lights warming the air around them, hustling through swarms of wide-eyed tourists, it was all that mattered.
FADE IN:
INT. HOTEL ELEVATOR – NIGHT
The Beatles’ BLACKBIRD (White Album) plays in the foreground.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arrive…
CLOSE UP of Ruby, flanked by Minnie and Slim. An elevator operator speaks into an intercom.
INT. HOTEL LOBBY ELEVATOR ENCLAVE – NIGHT
Jake watches the elevator monitor rise to the 54th floor – the penthouse suite.
INT. PENTHOUSE SUITE – NIGHT
A man in a stylish suit looks out over the neon Vegas strip. This is GUIDO LAZERRI, mob boss. The doors open and Ruby is escorted in, Minnie and Slim following.
Fade out BLACKBIRD: “You were only waiting for this moment to arrive…”
Fade in HELTER SKELTER: “When I get to the bottom I go back to the top…”
INSERT MONTAGE – HELTER SKELTER
A whirlwind storm, overturned cars and boats, flying objects, naked dancers on a phallic pole, targeted missiles, explosions, charred bodies, Chernobyl, Exxon-Valdez, Bhopal, dead crows, quarantine bubbles and people in chemical suits. Dark images of masked, leathered bodies and faces intermixed with butchered meat and the pummeled faces of pugilists.
Fade out HELTER SKELTER.
Fade in WHILE MY GUITAR GENTLY WEEPS.
I don’t know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don’t know how you were inverted
No one alerted you…
Despite the name, Guido Lazerri was no cliché. He was definitely not Al Pacino in Scarface, Marlon Brando in The Godfather or James Gandolfini in The Sopranos. He more resembled a European businessman with charm, grace and impeccable taste. He was a smooth talker whose powers of persuasion transcended business and pleasure. He was accustomed to getting his way.
As an illegitimate son of a prominent crime family patron, Guido was ideally positioned to advance in the ranks. It was a time of great turmoil when the government, consumed in a war on terror, left criminal enterprise to its own policing. When the wheels of power turned one way, Guido was protected by his bloodline. When they turned the other way, he was shielded by his status as a bastard son.
He was a master strategist, a sound businessman, a smooth operator and a perverted prick. Before the advent of a pharmaceutical solution to the limp dick syndrome, Guido had a problem with his manhood. His Italian wife had a problem with the back of his hand. She never told anyone (and perhaps she considered it her failing as a woman) but when relatives from the old country came to visit, catching a glimpse of her bruises, it was made clear that if he ever laid hand on her again, he would not live to realize his ambitions.
Guido never laid hand on her again.
Thanks to the wonders of modern pharmacology, Guido became the man he always imagined himself to be. He inhabited strip clubs and hired a harem of prostitutes specializing in the dark arts of erotic perversion.
One of his favorite clubs was Shotgun Slim’s and its owner, Antonio Menendez, became like a son to him – the son he could never produce, even with pharmacological assistance. Like nearly everyone who ever set foot in the place, Ruby Daulton was his favorite dancer but, out of respect for Tony, he never pushed it and Tony never offered.
The girls at the club talked about Guido Lazerri: He paid well but it took a week to wash the stench off the skin. No matter how kinky or masochistic a woman was Lazerri found a way to make her squirm.
Ruby knew enough about Guido to be petrified but she had a well-earned reputation in the biz as a tough girl and she would not give it up now. She would hold out for any chance, however slim, that she would survive the night.
When the boys escorted her through the door of his penthouse suite, she broke free and struck a pose like at third-rate actress at a third-rate theatre.
“Guido!” she intoned as she strutted across the room and planted a wet kiss and full body embrace on the man who held her life in his slimy hands.
Guido smiled and slapped her hard with the back of his hand. When she recovered, he slapped her again in the opposite direction. Ruby refused to fall. She took a couple of staggered steps back, wiped the blood from her lip and smiled back in defiance.
“So that’s how you want to play, hey, baby?”
Guido loved everything about her: the way she talked, the way she walked, the way she smiled, the way she took a blow and came back for more. He had never seen her cry and suddenly that is what he desired more than anything else. He wanted to break her defiant spirit. He turned to the boys, dumbfounded, and growled, “Get out!”
“Boss,” said Slim, “she’s got five grand in her pocket.”
“That’s my money,” said Ruby.
“Where you’re headed,” said Lazerri, “you won’t need it.”
Ruby felt the odds slipping as she reached into her pocket, extended her hand and dropped five grand in poker chips to the carpet. The boys scooped them up and headed out, Slim cackling under his labored breath, closing the door behind them.
“You want to know what happened?” asked Ruby.
“I already know what happened.”
“Tony’s little boys decided to give me a birthday party. They had it all planned.”
“I already know…”
“Tony had an appointment. The party was supposed to end with me bending over my own couch, their loads up my...”
“Shut up, bitch!”
“Instead, Tony dropped by for a surprise visit.”
“You liked it, baby!”
“Yeah, I liked it when he blasted their fucking heads off but I got out before he turned the gun on me.”
“All women like it!”
“Fuck you, Guido!”
Guido was coming on to his pharmaceutical hard on. He was panting like a hungry dog at the gate of a bitch in heat. He wanted her so bad he was drooling on his tailored suit.
“You ran. Why didn’t you call the police?”
“You know why.”
“You’re a liar. All women are liars!”
Hope was waning. Ruby could no longer imagine a happy ending. She had been in kinky situations before. She could smell them. Some she walked into, others walked into her. Guido was kinkier than a homeless man’s undershirt.
“Take your clothes off, baby.”
“What?”
“You want something from me? You want me to make it all go away? You’ve got to give me a reason. You’ve got to give me what I need.”
She was out of options. Time was the only one left. Guido loosened his belt and reached into his pants as Ruby began the slow dance of removing her clothing. She was a singer at heart and her heart was singing the blues as if it was the last song she would ever sing. The guitar inside her soul gently wept.
“Turn around, bitch!”
He did not want to see her face just yet, her eyes, the tears running down her cheeks. He did not want to see her passion, her hatred, her pity or the depth of her humanity. He wanted a plaything, a doll, a warm, bleeding piece of flesh into which he could insert his proof of manhood.
Ruby let the last piece of clothing, her black silk panties, drop to the floor and tried not to gag as she felt Guido’s breath on her neck, his hand on her ass, his sweaty fingers sliding up and down. She tried to imagine cotton candy at the County Fair.
There was a loud crash outside the door. Ruby spun and caught Guido off guard. She kicked as hard as she could, as if the life of her child depended on it, connecting square between his legs, and watched him crumble to the plush white carpet.
Jake came crashing through the door, gun in hand, and delivered a blow to Guido’s head that sent him to another universe where pain and suffering would be his loyal attendants, where the abuser became the abused.
Ruby embraced her hero and painted his face with a thousand kisses, tears streaming from her eyes and visions of horror worse than death fading from her mind.
Life was a strange and brutal place and yet there were men like Jake Jones, women like Ruby Dalton, who proved that it was not all bad. There was kindness, courage, dignity and beauty. And there was hope. There was still hope.
Ruby pulled on her clothing as quickly as she could and the two of them rushed out into the hall, past a cursing Minnie and Slim, hogtied on their slimy bellies, past an unconscious and tied elevator attendant, his body obstructing the elevator door.
They exited on the second floor and continued their escape by the stairwell. It was Helter Skelter and they were on the move. As long as they could keep moving, never stopping, never looking back, Ruby felt they would be all right.
They sprang into a warm and glorious Las Vegas night. It was still a magical city, a city where dreams could still come true, a city where hope was alive until the last bet was wagered, and a city where a single silver dollar could reveal the most precious and rare treasure: a royal flush in ruby red hearts. They were alive and kicking and on this particular night, with the neon lights warming the air around them, hustling through swarms of wide-eyed tourists, it was all that mattered.
Number Nine: Chapter 8
NIGHT OF THE WORM
FADE IN:
EXT. DESERT HIGHWAY – NIGHT
Ruby and Jake drive beneath a starlit sky. Pools of car light shine on a two-lane highway, heading east in a sea of sand, tumbleweed and mountains of naked stone.
The Beatles’ BLACKBIRD plays in the foreground.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free…
Fade out BLACKBIRD.
Fade in HELTER SKELTER.
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top…
INT. LAZERRI’S PENTHOUSE SUITE – NIGHT
Minnie, Slim and a security guard stand facing an enraged Guido Lazerri, his shirt undone and his fly open.
Do you don’t you want me to love you…
Guido holds a gun to Minnie’s head and holds it as Minnie breaks down and cries.
Well you may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer…
Guido places the gun on his desk and makes a phone call.
Now Helter Skelter, Helter Skelter…
Their minds flew across the barren wasteland, forgotten lands of no tomorrows, where Mother Nature’s daughter remains unspoiled, unused, untapped, naked in her thirst and virgin in desire. Particles of light danced before their eyes, painting pictures in the heart, transforming all it graces into images of living art.
In another part of the world, men and women, children and newborn babies were living with the constant, pounding drumbeat of war. Bombings, night raids, torture, rape, suffocating gas, electro-shock, burying the dead, nursing the wounded, and the ever present wailing of mothers in mourning.
Here in America, we were only beginning to awaken to the nightmare. Our money wasted, our freedom shackled, our lives of quiet desperation, sifting through the sands of time for something lost or something found to renew the dream.
“How did you do that?” asked Ruby.
Jake had disarmed three grown men without killing or being killed, without harming or being harmed, without even firing a shot. Like a native superman, he answered her hour of need when he could have easily put out his thumb and taken the next ride.
“I’m a ghost,” said Jake. His mind was still soaring on desert winds high above them, breathing in the land of his forbearers. “Kachina magic,” he added.
Ruby laughed but the pain of her swollen face choked her spirit. She was a broken girl on a road to nowhere. She had no future and her past was cut off like a severed limb. Vegas was fading in the rearview mirror, a neon dream turned night horror. Vegas was her town, the only place on earth that breathed life into her tired, broken soul. Now she realized she could never go back. Vegas used to be her town. Now she was homeless.
“Asshole,” she muttered through her tears.
Jake came to attention and Ruby smiled. “Not you, baby. I was just thinking of Tony and that worm Guido. The people we learn to trust because we’re on the same side, we go to the same joints, know the same friends, speak the same lingo. People with power. The rest of us are just peons, chumps, idiots.”
“People with dreams,” replied Jake. “People with stars in their eyes.”
Ruby ran through it a few times before deciding she liked it.
“Thanks, baby,” she said. “People with stars in their eyes.”
She drove on into the endless night, thinking about how strange life could be, how difficult it was to keep believing that everything had a purpose, that somehow everything would turn out for the best. She desperately needed to hold on to that dream no matter how unlikely it seemed, no matter how often life’s twists and turns beat her down like an ill-mannered dog. She needed to believe or she would fade away. Now more than ever she needed to be strong.
She linked up with the asshole because he offered her a life that was just a little better than the one she had – or so she thought at the time. It was a way of life, inching along, clawing and scratching, climbing up the endless stairway one step at a time. A fool’s game never delivered what it promised. She thought she could handle it and she had until fate played its hand.
The life she had lived before Tony was not all that bad: a stripper/dancer/singer, sleeping by day, working by night, consuming drugs for food, trying like hell to find the door to Hollywood success just like a hundred thousand other pretty girls just like her. Well, they were not exactly like her. Ruby could sing like Billie Holliday. She could act like a young and fearless Norma Jean, she could dance like Gwen Verdon in a Bob Fosse dream, but all they saw and all they wanted to see was flesh.
Ruby gave them what they wanted but they always wanted more. All that crap about casting couches: Ruby wished it was that easy. Sleeping with a director or producer was the surest way to put you outside the Hollywood circle. It might work if you were already inside but if you were outside looking in it kept you there. The scumbags didn’t want to be reminded of the scumbags they really were.
She sighed and imagined translucent blue light surrounding her, emanating from the core of her being. She breathed in the cool dry air and found herself floating on a sea of green waves to a paradise of tropical ease. She glanced at the golden bronze face of the man beside her and wondered how long it would be before he asked who was who and what was what. As he floated in his own wonderland of flight, she realized he never would. He was a different kind of man, a kind she had never encountered, the kind that would always be a mystery.
Ruby loved mysteries.
She felt the attraction of a Sleepy Time Motel before it came into view. She pulled off the highway onto the gravel lot and took note of a run down bar across the street.
“I need a drink,” she said.
Jake smiled, stealing a moment of reorientation as she parked in the back. They booked cabin number nine and crossed the street, walking past an old Desoto and a couple of Harley Davidson’s. When their eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, they made out two bikers at the bar, half watching a baseball game on TV, a cowboy bartender, and a couple of Navaho men at a corner table.
All eyes zeroed in on Ruby’s sensual grace. They hardly seemed to notice her bruised and battered face as she excused herself to the restroom with a wink and smile.
“What are we drinking?” she said in parting.
Jake took a quick account of the situation, the circumstance, the alignment of planets and the pull of gravity.
“Dos Gusanos,” he said.
Ruby smiled again and blew a kiss over her shoulder. It was the night of the worm. The last time she ate the worm she woke up on an unmarked grave in a pauper cemetery somewhere outside of Hornitos in the California foothills. She vaguely remembered a couple of Chicanos who went by the names of Joaquin and Three Fingered Jack. That was the last recollection she had. The worm was always good for erasing memories. What could be more perfect?
The first time Jake ate the worm he was riding a peyote vision, trading tales with Don Juan on a private tour of Ixtlan, sharing laughter and an appreciation of the lucidity of life. It was when Jake learned to fly. The last time he ate the worm he almost jumped off the edge of Grand Canyon.
The bartender poured a couple of shots with a couple of beer chasers and Jake made two trips to a table at the front of the bar, next to the door. Worm or no worm, it was the kind of place that called for a quick exit. He returned to the bar, dropped a large denomination and the bartender handed over the bottle – con gusanos.
It was half full or half empty and the evening was filled with possibilities.
When Ruby made a stunning re-entrance, the bikers swiveled on their bar stools and openly drooled as she strutted to their table, grabbed a shot and toasted, “The Worm!”
Jake took note of the bigger of the two bikers, the kind who went by “Tiny” in high school, never graduated from the football field, and later was christened “Bear” or “Moose” in a supreme insult to the animal kingdom. Trouble was brewing in the space behind his yellowed eyes and he made no effort to hide it.
One eye on Ruby and one on Jake, he hitched his jeans and walked to the old jukebox, plopped in a few quarters and pecked out a three-digit number he knew by rote. Everyone in the house had heard this tune before.
I’ve been a fool for every fallen angel…
He stood before them, leather and blue jeans, hands behind the back, like a teen at his first social, shuffling his boots and rattling his chains.
“Wanna dance?”
Ruby examined the back of his skull and went for the bottle.
“Sorry, Cowboy, I’m all danced out. Let’s go, Jake.”
Cowboy shuffled to let Ruby by and planted himself in Jake’s path.
“That’s fine, little lady. Some women like half-breeds who slap them around.”
Jake went for the balls with his knee, followed by a stiff left and pushed him back with a kick to the chest. He motioned Ruby to stand back, placed himself by a solid brick wall, lowered his center of gravity and braced. Cowboy charged him like a rabid bull, snorting and heaving as he pounded across the wooden floor.
Jake grabbed Cowboy’s clenched fists, absorbed the blow against the wall and let his body serve as conduit, channeling his aggressive force into a well-placed knee at the center of the beast’s personality disorder. The monster was dead and all that remained was a groaning mass of flesh on the floor, holding his hands like they were useless appendages.
It happened so fast the biker’s partner was still on his stool.
“Kachina magic!” announced Ruby. “Don’t mess with it.”
The Navahos at the corner table smiled and glared at the cowboys still standing.
Jake and Ruby walked out, arm in arm, like Frankie and Johnny at the height of their madness, an undeniable force, a bullet train to the heart of darkness, invincible and true. Their legend would follow wherever they went and stories would be told to grandchildren.
As they walked across the street to cabin number nine, Ruby took a swig and passed the bottle. It felt like a beginning, a bond consummated in blood, tears and the liquid language of eternal love. Ruby felt alive and Jake had no desire to be anywhere but at Ruby’s side. It did not matter that they came from different worlds. Nothing mattered but the moment and the understanding that all of life on earth was encapsulated in a single particle of time. Divinity or chance, a hand reached out of the great mystery to push two particles together and together they would remain until they broke apart.
Tonight they would drink the worm!
They sat on their king sized double bed, feasting on vending cuisine, smoking and drinking until the worm settled and their souls began to dance.
Sweet serenade of sensual rapture, wet reptilian curls, a dance of moonlight on crystalline waterfalls, the magnetic pull of black hole gravity and the salted sea of earthly desire. Paralytic enchantment, suspension of time, abdication of the laws of physics, giving without will, receiving without wonder, Jake and Ruby danced to the music of life in the swirling, twisting, writhing center of all creation.
If this was not love, then it had no name and love was filled with envy.
Captured by Ruby’s glistening white body, her movement the poetry of truth, admiring Jake’s golden grace, his heaving strength, swimming in each other’s ponds of devotion, Jake believed in love and Ruby believed in destiny.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise…
FADE IN:
EXT. DESERT HIGHWAY – NIGHT
Ruby and Jake drive beneath a starlit sky. Pools of car light shine on a two-lane highway, heading east in a sea of sand, tumbleweed and mountains of naked stone.
The Beatles’ BLACKBIRD plays in the foreground.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free…
Fade out BLACKBIRD.
Fade in HELTER SKELTER.
When I get to the bottom I go back to the top…
INT. LAZERRI’S PENTHOUSE SUITE – NIGHT
Minnie, Slim and a security guard stand facing an enraged Guido Lazerri, his shirt undone and his fly open.
Do you don’t you want me to love you…
Guido holds a gun to Minnie’s head and holds it as Minnie breaks down and cries.
Well you may be a lover but you ain’t no dancer…
Guido places the gun on his desk and makes a phone call.
Now Helter Skelter, Helter Skelter…
Their minds flew across the barren wasteland, forgotten lands of no tomorrows, where Mother Nature’s daughter remains unspoiled, unused, untapped, naked in her thirst and virgin in desire. Particles of light danced before their eyes, painting pictures in the heart, transforming all it graces into images of living art.
In another part of the world, men and women, children and newborn babies were living with the constant, pounding drumbeat of war. Bombings, night raids, torture, rape, suffocating gas, electro-shock, burying the dead, nursing the wounded, and the ever present wailing of mothers in mourning.
Here in America, we were only beginning to awaken to the nightmare. Our money wasted, our freedom shackled, our lives of quiet desperation, sifting through the sands of time for something lost or something found to renew the dream.
“How did you do that?” asked Ruby.
Jake had disarmed three grown men without killing or being killed, without harming or being harmed, without even firing a shot. Like a native superman, he answered her hour of need when he could have easily put out his thumb and taken the next ride.
“I’m a ghost,” said Jake. His mind was still soaring on desert winds high above them, breathing in the land of his forbearers. “Kachina magic,” he added.
Ruby laughed but the pain of her swollen face choked her spirit. She was a broken girl on a road to nowhere. She had no future and her past was cut off like a severed limb. Vegas was fading in the rearview mirror, a neon dream turned night horror. Vegas was her town, the only place on earth that breathed life into her tired, broken soul. Now she realized she could never go back. Vegas used to be her town. Now she was homeless.
“Asshole,” she muttered through her tears.
Jake came to attention and Ruby smiled. “Not you, baby. I was just thinking of Tony and that worm Guido. The people we learn to trust because we’re on the same side, we go to the same joints, know the same friends, speak the same lingo. People with power. The rest of us are just peons, chumps, idiots.”
“People with dreams,” replied Jake. “People with stars in their eyes.”
Ruby ran through it a few times before deciding she liked it.
“Thanks, baby,” she said. “People with stars in their eyes.”
She drove on into the endless night, thinking about how strange life could be, how difficult it was to keep believing that everything had a purpose, that somehow everything would turn out for the best. She desperately needed to hold on to that dream no matter how unlikely it seemed, no matter how often life’s twists and turns beat her down like an ill-mannered dog. She needed to believe or she would fade away. Now more than ever she needed to be strong.
She linked up with the asshole because he offered her a life that was just a little better than the one she had – or so she thought at the time. It was a way of life, inching along, clawing and scratching, climbing up the endless stairway one step at a time. A fool’s game never delivered what it promised. She thought she could handle it and she had until fate played its hand.
The life she had lived before Tony was not all that bad: a stripper/dancer/singer, sleeping by day, working by night, consuming drugs for food, trying like hell to find the door to Hollywood success just like a hundred thousand other pretty girls just like her. Well, they were not exactly like her. Ruby could sing like Billie Holliday. She could act like a young and fearless Norma Jean, she could dance like Gwen Verdon in a Bob Fosse dream, but all they saw and all they wanted to see was flesh.
Ruby gave them what they wanted but they always wanted more. All that crap about casting couches: Ruby wished it was that easy. Sleeping with a director or producer was the surest way to put you outside the Hollywood circle. It might work if you were already inside but if you were outside looking in it kept you there. The scumbags didn’t want to be reminded of the scumbags they really were.
She sighed and imagined translucent blue light surrounding her, emanating from the core of her being. She breathed in the cool dry air and found herself floating on a sea of green waves to a paradise of tropical ease. She glanced at the golden bronze face of the man beside her and wondered how long it would be before he asked who was who and what was what. As he floated in his own wonderland of flight, she realized he never would. He was a different kind of man, a kind she had never encountered, the kind that would always be a mystery.
Ruby loved mysteries.
She felt the attraction of a Sleepy Time Motel before it came into view. She pulled off the highway onto the gravel lot and took note of a run down bar across the street.
“I need a drink,” she said.
Jake smiled, stealing a moment of reorientation as she parked in the back. They booked cabin number nine and crossed the street, walking past an old Desoto and a couple of Harley Davidson’s. When their eyes adjusted to the dim lighting, they made out two bikers at the bar, half watching a baseball game on TV, a cowboy bartender, and a couple of Navaho men at a corner table.
All eyes zeroed in on Ruby’s sensual grace. They hardly seemed to notice her bruised and battered face as she excused herself to the restroom with a wink and smile.
“What are we drinking?” she said in parting.
Jake took a quick account of the situation, the circumstance, the alignment of planets and the pull of gravity.
“Dos Gusanos,” he said.
Ruby smiled again and blew a kiss over her shoulder. It was the night of the worm. The last time she ate the worm she woke up on an unmarked grave in a pauper cemetery somewhere outside of Hornitos in the California foothills. She vaguely remembered a couple of Chicanos who went by the names of Joaquin and Three Fingered Jack. That was the last recollection she had. The worm was always good for erasing memories. What could be more perfect?
The first time Jake ate the worm he was riding a peyote vision, trading tales with Don Juan on a private tour of Ixtlan, sharing laughter and an appreciation of the lucidity of life. It was when Jake learned to fly. The last time he ate the worm he almost jumped off the edge of Grand Canyon.
The bartender poured a couple of shots with a couple of beer chasers and Jake made two trips to a table at the front of the bar, next to the door. Worm or no worm, it was the kind of place that called for a quick exit. He returned to the bar, dropped a large denomination and the bartender handed over the bottle – con gusanos.
It was half full or half empty and the evening was filled with possibilities.
When Ruby made a stunning re-entrance, the bikers swiveled on their bar stools and openly drooled as she strutted to their table, grabbed a shot and toasted, “The Worm!”
Jake took note of the bigger of the two bikers, the kind who went by “Tiny” in high school, never graduated from the football field, and later was christened “Bear” or “Moose” in a supreme insult to the animal kingdom. Trouble was brewing in the space behind his yellowed eyes and he made no effort to hide it.
One eye on Ruby and one on Jake, he hitched his jeans and walked to the old jukebox, plopped in a few quarters and pecked out a three-digit number he knew by rote. Everyone in the house had heard this tune before.
I’ve been a fool for every fallen angel…
He stood before them, leather and blue jeans, hands behind the back, like a teen at his first social, shuffling his boots and rattling his chains.
“Wanna dance?”
Ruby examined the back of his skull and went for the bottle.
“Sorry, Cowboy, I’m all danced out. Let’s go, Jake.”
Cowboy shuffled to let Ruby by and planted himself in Jake’s path.
“That’s fine, little lady. Some women like half-breeds who slap them around.”
Jake went for the balls with his knee, followed by a stiff left and pushed him back with a kick to the chest. He motioned Ruby to stand back, placed himself by a solid brick wall, lowered his center of gravity and braced. Cowboy charged him like a rabid bull, snorting and heaving as he pounded across the wooden floor.
Jake grabbed Cowboy’s clenched fists, absorbed the blow against the wall and let his body serve as conduit, channeling his aggressive force into a well-placed knee at the center of the beast’s personality disorder. The monster was dead and all that remained was a groaning mass of flesh on the floor, holding his hands like they were useless appendages.
It happened so fast the biker’s partner was still on his stool.
“Kachina magic!” announced Ruby. “Don’t mess with it.”
The Navahos at the corner table smiled and glared at the cowboys still standing.
Jake and Ruby walked out, arm in arm, like Frankie and Johnny at the height of their madness, an undeniable force, a bullet train to the heart of darkness, invincible and true. Their legend would follow wherever they went and stories would be told to grandchildren.
As they walked across the street to cabin number nine, Ruby took a swig and passed the bottle. It felt like a beginning, a bond consummated in blood, tears and the liquid language of eternal love. Ruby felt alive and Jake had no desire to be anywhere but at Ruby’s side. It did not matter that they came from different worlds. Nothing mattered but the moment and the understanding that all of life on earth was encapsulated in a single particle of time. Divinity or chance, a hand reached out of the great mystery to push two particles together and together they would remain until they broke apart.
Tonight they would drink the worm!
They sat on their king sized double bed, feasting on vending cuisine, smoking and drinking until the worm settled and their souls began to dance.
Sweet serenade of sensual rapture, wet reptilian curls, a dance of moonlight on crystalline waterfalls, the magnetic pull of black hole gravity and the salted sea of earthly desire. Paralytic enchantment, suspension of time, abdication of the laws of physics, giving without will, receiving without wonder, Jake and Ruby danced to the music of life in the swirling, twisting, writhing center of all creation.
If this was not love, then it had no name and love was filled with envy.
Captured by Ruby’s glistening white body, her movement the poetry of truth, admiring Jake’s golden grace, his heaving strength, swimming in each other’s ponds of devotion, Jake believed in love and Ruby believed in destiny.
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise…
Number Nine: Chapter 9
CASH ON THE LAMB
FADE IN:
EXT. DESERT – SUNRISE
The Beatles’ I’M SO TIRED plays in the foreground.
I’m so tired I don’t know what to do
I’m so tired my mind is set on you
I wonder should I call you but I know what you’d do…
EXT. MOTEL ROOM – DAY
The curtains open, revealing a naked Ruby greeting the morning.
INT. SEEDY BAR – NIGHT
Close up of customer watching naked dancer, one hand rubbing his crotch.
Fade out I’M SO TIRED. Fade in HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN.
She’s well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand
Like a lizard on a window pane.
The man in the crowd with the multicoloured mirrors
On his hobnail boots
Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working overtime…
INT. MOTEL ROOM – NIGHT
A sleeping JAKE.
Fade out HAPPINESS. Fade in I’M SO TIRED.
You know I can’t sleep, I can’t stop my brain
You know it’s three weeks, I’m going insane
You know I’d give you everything I’ve got
for a little peace of mind…
JAKE awakens with a start.
Fade out I’M SO TIRED. Resume HAPPINESS.
I need a fix ‘cause I’m going down
Down to the bits that I left uptown
I need a fix ‘cause I’m going down…
It was hot that summer. Relentlessly hot. A rising temperature was already creeping into the early morning hours, slipping through the cracks and crevices, warning all inhabitants to take shelter before the midday sun pounded them into submission. Normal people heeded the warning, waiting out the days in shaded, air-conditioned rooms or seeking refuge in chlorine filled pools of liquid relief. Others had pressing business that could not wait for a change in the weather.
Ruby was awakened by the adventure in her heart. She was alive! Kick up your heels, pedal to the metal, keep on rockin’ in the free world alive!
Naked as a cloudless day, she pulled opened the curtains and breathed in the spirit of mystery, the unspeakable joy of living, the randomness of life on the run, cheap motels, gravel parking lots, the smell of asphalt, gas and oil, greasy roadside diners and highway rest stops where hustlers and low lifers always gathered.
Damn, it doesn’t get any better than this!
Ever since she was a small child, she loved the view from a car seat. She loved the sensation of motion, the liquidity of time, the flow of transport, the excitement of a new place, new faces, new conversations, new rules of engagement, new accents and new expectations. Ruby loved the rhythm of the road, itself, the staccato dotted line, the rolling wires and telephone lines, the sudden eruption of city lights and the gradual resumption of barren wastelands and the great expanse.
She loved looking at life framed in a windshield, history in a rearview mirror.
She was jazzed by the adrenalin rush of not knowing what the day would bring: another crisis, another mind numbing brush with death or worse, another Kachina rescue bringing her back from the brink of another disaster.
It was time to get a move on. Lay down some miles between them and their pursuers but a glance at her still sleeping lover left her sighing. He was so beautiful in his dream state, so peaceful and open. She could not wake him. She could not bring him back from where he was just now.
She had a plan. Head south, cross the border at Nogales and kiss the stars and stripes forever goodbye. A weekend in Tampico, sipping Margaritas, whispering sweet temptations beneath the sound of mariachi bands until the worm settled and the trail cooled to a tepid lull. Then they would amble up the Gulf Coast to New Orleans, the Big Easy, the Crescent City, the soul of American jazz and the heartbeat of a continent, where Ruby could begin life anew. It was a place she had dreamed of where they welcomed and appreciated a woman of her special talents.
It was a decent plan and, better yet, it just might work but it all depended on a little cash. The credit cards from Vegas were a dead end, a ticket straight to jail or worse, another round with Guido and Tony and the boys. She shredded them and scattered the remains across a hundred miles of desert.
Ruby knew how to raise cash but she didn’t know if Jake could hang with it. Overcome by her enthusiasm, she rolled to the bed and kissed his eyes and lips awake as gently as she knew how.
His eyes rolled and struggled for the light that would lead to the bridge that would cross the divide between his dream and the world where Ruby was queen. He looked like the lone survivor of an airline crash, hair tangled in an Einstein maze, eyes bulging and streaked with red, blue highways on a crumpled map.
“Ruby,” he said through layers of fog, “I have to sleep.”
His eyes rolled back and Ruby sensed panic slipping up her spine. He looked like death. He seemed apart from the world, alien to planetary life. Was he sick? She laid her hand on his forehead: a little warm, a little clammy, nothing alarming.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled beneath the veil. “I need…sleep.”
He wanted to say she should go on without him but he was already far away, a stranger in a distant land, removed in both time and space. Where he was headed he did not know and Ruby could not follow.
“It’s alright, baby,” she said, placing a gentle kiss on his forehead. “Sleep.”
He wanted to tell her it was not the first time. It began when he was a child, a water born sickness his mother had said. Others said it was a curse born of an evil white man’s presence on the night of his birth. Still others, spirit guides and prophets, said it was a gift like that of Crazy Horse and Wavoka. It was bridge to the Overworld where the mysteries of the universe unfolded and pearls of wisdom could be gathered. As he grew into a man, the occurrence was sporadic and infrequent but it arrived without warning and hit like a hammer between the temples. He would sleep for at least eighteen hours. There were times when he was unconscious for three days.
Down. Ruby was crashing. She gazed at Jake’s fluttering eyeballs beneath closed lids and she felt herself spiraling down. All the gods and goddesses that looked over her shoulder in times of trouble were gone. Sleeping at the bottom of a dark lagoon.
She paced the room, pulled at her hair, and cried when the only word to emerge from Jake’s lower depths was: Dance.
She went to him, placed her tears upon his lips, and pleaded: “What was that, baby? You want me to dance?”
He was gone. Not even a glimmer. She felt a surge of anger immediately choked back by a torrent of tears. It was not time to leave her man. Fate could be a cruel master but at this time and place it was insufferable. She had to think.
She recovered as quickly as she crumbled. There was no reason why she couldn’t make this work. Dance. She would let him sleep as long as it took. She would drive to Phoenix, find a club and raise enough cash for the journey ahead. Dance.
She went through Jake’s pockets, pulled out his wallet and was surprised to find over three hundred cash. She took a hundred as a loan, fixed herself up in the bathroom mirror and kissed her sleeping lover goodbye.
On her way out, she paid the clerk for another night and hit the road.
“Terrible,” said the Asian Indian behind a Plexiglas barrier.
“What’s that?” said Ruby.
“The war,” he replied. “There will be no end.”
“Yeah,” said Ruby. “Terrible.”
She hadn’t thought about the war in days and she felt a little guilty. No matter how bad things were and no matter how bad they would get, it could be worse. She could be the mother of a child in Fallujah or some forsaken city under siege by foreign soldiers. She shook it off and went her way. With all that was happening there was only so much she could take in and endure. She cleared her mind and drove down the highway in a haze, letting the heat wash over her like a blast of molten lava.
Phoenix was a strange town, a rightwing fundamentalist town. Like all fundamentalist towns, there was money to be made on the dark side. The uptight, Bible quoting, church-going throng always managed to populate the gin joints and strip clubs on the outskirts and in the underbelly of town.
Ruby bought a wispy blue chiffon outfit at a Salvation Army outlet and staked out a two-story brick club with a red neon “Bimbo’s” sign on its veneer. After a few hours, she was reasonably sure they were not connected to the Lazerri clan. She went in to apply for a slot in the evening rotation.
One look and the bald fat man who ran the joint knew she was a winner. She used the name Sadie Mae, flashed her fake ID and offered to work under the table, tips only, cash on the line. He welcomed her to “the family” with a fat man belly laugh and a handshake, the other hand rubbing his crotch.
When Ruby took the stage, she was the prized creation of another world, a world where movement was slow and sensual, where dance was second nature. She floated over the floor, painting circles with her grace, coiling around the metal phallus like a snake. The easy elegance with which she bared her private beauty released all sense of shame and left them rich with envy, comfortable in their collective depravity, shaking with raw desire, and alive with pounding sweat. She gave them sweet dreams of divine pleasure and accepted their generosity with a smile.
Four hundred in the first set and she was only getting started. The city that rose from a barren wasteland never saw a bird like Ruby and no one who witnessed her exquisite dance would ever forget. Every man, from pastor to fire chief, would see Ruby in his dreams and in the eyes of his wife or lover ever after.
Another set and Ruby left with over a grand and an invitation from the fat man to return whenever she pleased. She brushed off a half dozen sweaty propositions and drove home to her still sleeping prince.
Jake came to only long enough for a drink of water and half an explanation of his disease. It was enough for Ruby. He told her she could go on without him and maybe she should but Ruby had no intention of leaving this place without him. She had a plan and she was sticking to it.
Another night, another performance, another grand and Ruby was feeling good, top of the world and ready to celebrate.
Jake awakened with a start, sat up on the motel bed, and waited for his eyes to find vision in the waking world. He found a note on the table: “Gone to work. Be home late. Love, Ruby.” There was an envelope with nine hundred dollars in it and a matchbook from a club called “Bimbo’s” in Phoenix. He threw some water on his face, got dressed, walked out to the highway and stuck out his thumb.
When a cute blonde with cropped hair, blue eyes and a sleek body reminiscent of Lula in Wild at Heart invited Ruby for a couple of drinks at an after-hours club, she thought “no” but said “Sure.” When Laura’s boyfriend met them outside, she thought “trouble” but she went along. When Laura suggested that they ride together, she thought “bad idea” but she found herself in the shotgun position in the cab of an old Ford pickup.
“It could be worse,” she thought. She could be trapped between them. “Nothing’s going to happen,” she told herself.
Ruby believed in the phenomenon known as a self-fulfilling prophecy and fear, in her philosophy, was an invitation to danger but she could not ignore the knot that was tightening in the pit of her gut.
She let it go when, to her relief, they arrived at a secluded joint called The Salty Dog in a dark, run-down city landscape of two-story brick buildings. She relaxed when they started knocking down margaritas over Roy Orbison ballads in a red leather booth.
On the third margarita, Laura placed her hand delicately on Ruby’s thigh and met no resistance. Ruby’s head was spinning, her spirit swimming in swirling waves of hot liquid. She was beyond control, hearing something about three-way sex as her escorts held her arms and guided her out into the street.
“Jake!” she said, propped between Laura and her leather lover. “How did you find me?”
“A friend of yours overheard a conversation at Bimbo’s,” he replied. “Time to go home.”
“Hey,” said Laura with a seductive smile, “we were thinking of taking it to our place. You’re welcome to join us.”
“I don’t think so,” said Jake, pulling Ruby from their reluctant grip and leaning her against a parked car.
Leather made a move for a gun parked in the small of his back but Jake flashed his hunting knife in the glimmering moonlight.
“You move that hand another quarter inch, you’re as dead as Custer at the Greasy Grass,” said Jake.
Leather raised his hands as Laura said, “Hey, nothing personal. It’s just business.”
Jake took the gun, emptied it, and tossed it down the road.
On the ride back to the motel, Ruby muttered “Kachina magic” before she slipped into the nether land of drug-infested dreams.
EXT. ARIEL VIEW – NIGHT
A car riding down a lonesome highway.
The Beatles’ HAPPINESS plays on in the foreground.
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Happiness is a warm gun
Bang Bang Shoot Shoot…
Fade HAPPINESS and resume I’M SO TIRED.
I’m so tired I haven’t slept a wink
I’m so tired my mind is on the blink…
FADE OUT.
FADE IN:
EXT. DESERT – SUNRISE
The Beatles’ I’M SO TIRED plays in the foreground.
I’m so tired I don’t know what to do
I’m so tired my mind is set on you
I wonder should I call you but I know what you’d do…
EXT. MOTEL ROOM – DAY
The curtains open, revealing a naked Ruby greeting the morning.
INT. SEEDY BAR – NIGHT
Close up of customer watching naked dancer, one hand rubbing his crotch.
Fade out I’M SO TIRED. Fade in HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN.
She’s well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand
Like a lizard on a window pane.
The man in the crowd with the multicoloured mirrors
On his hobnail boots
Lying with his eyes while his hands are busy working overtime…
INT. MOTEL ROOM – NIGHT
A sleeping JAKE.
Fade out HAPPINESS. Fade in I’M SO TIRED.
You know I can’t sleep, I can’t stop my brain
You know it’s three weeks, I’m going insane
You know I’d give you everything I’ve got
for a little peace of mind…
JAKE awakens with a start.
Fade out I’M SO TIRED. Resume HAPPINESS.
I need a fix ‘cause I’m going down
Down to the bits that I left uptown
I need a fix ‘cause I’m going down…
It was hot that summer. Relentlessly hot. A rising temperature was already creeping into the early morning hours, slipping through the cracks and crevices, warning all inhabitants to take shelter before the midday sun pounded them into submission. Normal people heeded the warning, waiting out the days in shaded, air-conditioned rooms or seeking refuge in chlorine filled pools of liquid relief. Others had pressing business that could not wait for a change in the weather.
Ruby was awakened by the adventure in her heart. She was alive! Kick up your heels, pedal to the metal, keep on rockin’ in the free world alive!
Naked as a cloudless day, she pulled opened the curtains and breathed in the spirit of mystery, the unspeakable joy of living, the randomness of life on the run, cheap motels, gravel parking lots, the smell of asphalt, gas and oil, greasy roadside diners and highway rest stops where hustlers and low lifers always gathered.
Damn, it doesn’t get any better than this!
Ever since she was a small child, she loved the view from a car seat. She loved the sensation of motion, the liquidity of time, the flow of transport, the excitement of a new place, new faces, new conversations, new rules of engagement, new accents and new expectations. Ruby loved the rhythm of the road, itself, the staccato dotted line, the rolling wires and telephone lines, the sudden eruption of city lights and the gradual resumption of barren wastelands and the great expanse.
She loved looking at life framed in a windshield, history in a rearview mirror.
She was jazzed by the adrenalin rush of not knowing what the day would bring: another crisis, another mind numbing brush with death or worse, another Kachina rescue bringing her back from the brink of another disaster.
It was time to get a move on. Lay down some miles between them and their pursuers but a glance at her still sleeping lover left her sighing. He was so beautiful in his dream state, so peaceful and open. She could not wake him. She could not bring him back from where he was just now.
She had a plan. Head south, cross the border at Nogales and kiss the stars and stripes forever goodbye. A weekend in Tampico, sipping Margaritas, whispering sweet temptations beneath the sound of mariachi bands until the worm settled and the trail cooled to a tepid lull. Then they would amble up the Gulf Coast to New Orleans, the Big Easy, the Crescent City, the soul of American jazz and the heartbeat of a continent, where Ruby could begin life anew. It was a place she had dreamed of where they welcomed and appreciated a woman of her special talents.
It was a decent plan and, better yet, it just might work but it all depended on a little cash. The credit cards from Vegas were a dead end, a ticket straight to jail or worse, another round with Guido and Tony and the boys. She shredded them and scattered the remains across a hundred miles of desert.
Ruby knew how to raise cash but she didn’t know if Jake could hang with it. Overcome by her enthusiasm, she rolled to the bed and kissed his eyes and lips awake as gently as she knew how.
His eyes rolled and struggled for the light that would lead to the bridge that would cross the divide between his dream and the world where Ruby was queen. He looked like the lone survivor of an airline crash, hair tangled in an Einstein maze, eyes bulging and streaked with red, blue highways on a crumpled map.
“Ruby,” he said through layers of fog, “I have to sleep.”
His eyes rolled back and Ruby sensed panic slipping up her spine. He looked like death. He seemed apart from the world, alien to planetary life. Was he sick? She laid her hand on his forehead: a little warm, a little clammy, nothing alarming.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled beneath the veil. “I need…sleep.”
He wanted to say she should go on without him but he was already far away, a stranger in a distant land, removed in both time and space. Where he was headed he did not know and Ruby could not follow.
“It’s alright, baby,” she said, placing a gentle kiss on his forehead. “Sleep.”
He wanted to tell her it was not the first time. It began when he was a child, a water born sickness his mother had said. Others said it was a curse born of an evil white man’s presence on the night of his birth. Still others, spirit guides and prophets, said it was a gift like that of Crazy Horse and Wavoka. It was bridge to the Overworld where the mysteries of the universe unfolded and pearls of wisdom could be gathered. As he grew into a man, the occurrence was sporadic and infrequent but it arrived without warning and hit like a hammer between the temples. He would sleep for at least eighteen hours. There were times when he was unconscious for three days.
Down. Ruby was crashing. She gazed at Jake’s fluttering eyeballs beneath closed lids and she felt herself spiraling down. All the gods and goddesses that looked over her shoulder in times of trouble were gone. Sleeping at the bottom of a dark lagoon.
She paced the room, pulled at her hair, and cried when the only word to emerge from Jake’s lower depths was: Dance.
She went to him, placed her tears upon his lips, and pleaded: “What was that, baby? You want me to dance?”
He was gone. Not even a glimmer. She felt a surge of anger immediately choked back by a torrent of tears. It was not time to leave her man. Fate could be a cruel master but at this time and place it was insufferable. She had to think.
She recovered as quickly as she crumbled. There was no reason why she couldn’t make this work. Dance. She would let him sleep as long as it took. She would drive to Phoenix, find a club and raise enough cash for the journey ahead. Dance.
She went through Jake’s pockets, pulled out his wallet and was surprised to find over three hundred cash. She took a hundred as a loan, fixed herself up in the bathroom mirror and kissed her sleeping lover goodbye.
On her way out, she paid the clerk for another night and hit the road.
“Terrible,” said the Asian Indian behind a Plexiglas barrier.
“What’s that?” said Ruby.
“The war,” he replied. “There will be no end.”
“Yeah,” said Ruby. “Terrible.”
She hadn’t thought about the war in days and she felt a little guilty. No matter how bad things were and no matter how bad they would get, it could be worse. She could be the mother of a child in Fallujah or some forsaken city under siege by foreign soldiers. She shook it off and went her way. With all that was happening there was only so much she could take in and endure. She cleared her mind and drove down the highway in a haze, letting the heat wash over her like a blast of molten lava.
Phoenix was a strange town, a rightwing fundamentalist town. Like all fundamentalist towns, there was money to be made on the dark side. The uptight, Bible quoting, church-going throng always managed to populate the gin joints and strip clubs on the outskirts and in the underbelly of town.
Ruby bought a wispy blue chiffon outfit at a Salvation Army outlet and staked out a two-story brick club with a red neon “Bimbo’s” sign on its veneer. After a few hours, she was reasonably sure they were not connected to the Lazerri clan. She went in to apply for a slot in the evening rotation.
One look and the bald fat man who ran the joint knew she was a winner. She used the name Sadie Mae, flashed her fake ID and offered to work under the table, tips only, cash on the line. He welcomed her to “the family” with a fat man belly laugh and a handshake, the other hand rubbing his crotch.
When Ruby took the stage, she was the prized creation of another world, a world where movement was slow and sensual, where dance was second nature. She floated over the floor, painting circles with her grace, coiling around the metal phallus like a snake. The easy elegance with which she bared her private beauty released all sense of shame and left them rich with envy, comfortable in their collective depravity, shaking with raw desire, and alive with pounding sweat. She gave them sweet dreams of divine pleasure and accepted their generosity with a smile.
Four hundred in the first set and she was only getting started. The city that rose from a barren wasteland never saw a bird like Ruby and no one who witnessed her exquisite dance would ever forget. Every man, from pastor to fire chief, would see Ruby in his dreams and in the eyes of his wife or lover ever after.
Another set and Ruby left with over a grand and an invitation from the fat man to return whenever she pleased. She brushed off a half dozen sweaty propositions and drove home to her still sleeping prince.
Jake came to only long enough for a drink of water and half an explanation of his disease. It was enough for Ruby. He told her she could go on without him and maybe she should but Ruby had no intention of leaving this place without him. She had a plan and she was sticking to it.
Another night, another performance, another grand and Ruby was feeling good, top of the world and ready to celebrate.
Jake awakened with a start, sat up on the motel bed, and waited for his eyes to find vision in the waking world. He found a note on the table: “Gone to work. Be home late. Love, Ruby.” There was an envelope with nine hundred dollars in it and a matchbook from a club called “Bimbo’s” in Phoenix. He threw some water on his face, got dressed, walked out to the highway and stuck out his thumb.
When a cute blonde with cropped hair, blue eyes and a sleek body reminiscent of Lula in Wild at Heart invited Ruby for a couple of drinks at an after-hours club, she thought “no” but said “Sure.” When Laura’s boyfriend met them outside, she thought “trouble” but she went along. When Laura suggested that they ride together, she thought “bad idea” but she found herself in the shotgun position in the cab of an old Ford pickup.
“It could be worse,” she thought. She could be trapped between them. “Nothing’s going to happen,” she told herself.
Ruby believed in the phenomenon known as a self-fulfilling prophecy and fear, in her philosophy, was an invitation to danger but she could not ignore the knot that was tightening in the pit of her gut.
She let it go when, to her relief, they arrived at a secluded joint called The Salty Dog in a dark, run-down city landscape of two-story brick buildings. She relaxed when they started knocking down margaritas over Roy Orbison ballads in a red leather booth.
On the third margarita, Laura placed her hand delicately on Ruby’s thigh and met no resistance. Ruby’s head was spinning, her spirit swimming in swirling waves of hot liquid. She was beyond control, hearing something about three-way sex as her escorts held her arms and guided her out into the street.
“Jake!” she said, propped between Laura and her leather lover. “How did you find me?”
“A friend of yours overheard a conversation at Bimbo’s,” he replied. “Time to go home.”
“Hey,” said Laura with a seductive smile, “we were thinking of taking it to our place. You’re welcome to join us.”
“I don’t think so,” said Jake, pulling Ruby from their reluctant grip and leaning her against a parked car.
Leather made a move for a gun parked in the small of his back but Jake flashed his hunting knife in the glimmering moonlight.
“You move that hand another quarter inch, you’re as dead as Custer at the Greasy Grass,” said Jake.
Leather raised his hands as Laura said, “Hey, nothing personal. It’s just business.”
Jake took the gun, emptied it, and tossed it down the road.
On the ride back to the motel, Ruby muttered “Kachina magic” before she slipped into the nether land of drug-infested dreams.
EXT. ARIEL VIEW – NIGHT
A car riding down a lonesome highway.
The Beatles’ HAPPINESS plays on in the foreground.
Mother Superior jump the gun
Mother Superior jump the gun
Happiness is a warm gun
Bang Bang Shoot Shoot…
Fade HAPPINESS and resume I’M SO TIRED.
I’m so tired I haven’t slept a wink
I’m so tired my mind is on the blink…
FADE OUT.
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