NUMBER NINE: Cash on The Lamb

FADE IN:

EXT. DESERT – SUNRISE

The Beatles’ I’M SO TIRED plays in the foreground.

I’m so tired, I haven’t slept a wink
I’m so tired, my mind is on the blink…

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.

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 to submission. Most 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.

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 the spirit of mystery, the joy of living, the randomness of life on the run, cheap motels, parking lots, the smell of asphalt, gas and oil, greasy roadside diners and highway rest stops.

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 barren wastelands.

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.

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.

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 decent plan and, better yet, it 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. 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. She rolled to the bed and kissed his eyes and lips awake.

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 time and space.

"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 a white man’s presence on the night of his birth. 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 twelve 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.

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 shook it off and went her way.

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 took it with a fat man belly laugh, one 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 forever.

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.

Another night, another performance, another grand and Ruby was 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 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 love 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’ I’M SO TIRED plays on in the foreground.

I’m so tired I don’t know what to do
I’m so tired my mind is set on you…

FADE OUT.

JACK RANDOM IS THE AUTHOR OF GHOST DANCE INSURRECTION AND THE JAZZMAN CHRONICLES.

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