Chapter 6

Ed found himself with a lot of free time on his hands. He'd picked up a few skills in the Air Force, enough to give him some confidence in his ability to figure out how to make basic repairs around his Aunt's house. Mostly, they were cosmetic improvements, like painting the fence in the front yard and reattaching the storm drains where they'd become separated from the accumulated weight of the leaves and other detritus that had accumulated in the gutters from the roof. These things kept him occupied during his stay in Illinois.

Ed also spent a lot of his free time thinking about his situation with Maria. Naturally, he was confused by the conflicting emotions he was experiencing. On the one hand, he realized that he really was missing having her around. She definitely made his life more exciting. She added so much color and vitality to what he easily admitted had been a rather drab and gray existence. On the other hand, Ed wasn't to the point where he could bring himself to believe that Maria added more good to his life once you took into consideration all the negatives that being around her entailed.

He was mostly concerned about her drug use, and secondarily, about the dangers that being associated with her might bring. She had certainly given no indication that she was in any way open to the idea of making any definitive changes in her lifestyle. He had to face up to some hard realities. Maria carried a lot of negative baggage around with her. Being with her might end up getting him killed, or even worse, arrested and put into jail for being her accomplice. How much was he willing to risk by trying to continue their relationship?

Hell, he wondered, was it even a relationship in the first place? They'd been thrown together, mostly through her instigation, not his. She'd gotten what she wanted and needed, a way to escape from the area where she was in danger. He'd gotten a lot more than he'd expected from her. More than he'd had any right to even hope for, given their differing backgrounds, ages, and common interests.

He kept coming back to the sex she'd given him. Not just with her either. That last night they'd been together, all three of them. That had been something he never would have even dreamed of doing before. Maria didn't seem to have any limits that he could see. Not when it came to sex or taking drugs. She hadn't tried to get him to take drugs with her. That was something in her favor at least.

The more he thought about her and worried about all the bad possibilities being with her could open up for him, the more sure he was that he should give her back her bag, and then put as much distance between them as he possibly could. The only problem he was having with that was doing that wouldn't allow him to experience any more of the overpowering experiences that she'd opened up to him.

Jim recognized the fact that whichever way he finally decided to go with Maria, the truth was he was making a choice about how he was going to live his future life. He couldn't see himself going back to the life he'd been leading before. Maria had already changed his expectations. Before, he could live with his chosen lifestyle. It had been all he'd ever known. He couldn't just go back and pretend he didn't know any other way to live. He certainly didn't want that.

Another thing he recognized was that he, by himself, didn't have what it would take to lead this much different lifestyle. He needed Maria, or someone else with her life energy, to push him out of the safe cocoon he'd always wrapped himself in. It was a real dilemma.

As the time passed and his departure date loomed ever closer, Ed started to panic, because of his inability to arrive at a decision.

On the morning of his departure from Illinois, Ed finally made a tentative choice. He'd drive back to Las Vegas and be waiting at the bus station with Maria's bag. If she came by to pick it up, he'd give it to her. If not, he'd get rid of all the drugs and the needles out in the desert, then head back to the air base. He had a vague hope that Maria would ask him for a ride back to San Jose. If she did ask, he'd already decided to tell her she was welcome to come with him.

He got back to Las Vegas a day earlier than he'd told Angie to tell Maria to meet him. He got himself a cheap room in a motel close to the downtown bus station. He left the green bag in his trunk. It had remained there ever since he'd left Baker several weeks before.

The next day he checked out of his room and drove over to the Las Vegas Club. He passed the time playing nickel slots and eating fifty cent hot dogs, and seventy five cent shrimp cocktails. By two o'clock, feeling stuffed and bloated, he left the casino and walked the short distance to the bus station.

Three o'clock came and went, without any sign of Maria. Ed bought himself three new rolls of nickels and settled down at one of the slot machines that left him with a good view of most to the bus terminal. He had made a deal with himself. The deal was that he'd play off the three rolls of coins. As soon as he had lost the six dollars, he'd get up and leave if he hadn't seen Maria by that time.

He played slowly, but methodically, putting in each coin and pulling the handle. He was almost done with the third roll when he hit a small jackpot of one hundred coins. He was relieved that he'd won, because he'd been arguing with himself about whether he should buy another roll of nickels to give Maria more time to get to the bus station.

Ed hadn't really considered the possibility that Maria might not come to retrieve the green bag. He knew she would, if she could.

It was a little after seven when Ed looked up from his machine and saw Maria looking at him from across the terminal. She looked very frightened as he noticed her. In fact, when she saw Ed notice her, the first thing she did was turn her head away from him. Ed looked around at the people standing near her. He noticed a large black man with an angry red scar on his right cheek. Right beside him was an Hispanic man who seemed to be with the black man.

Two or three minutes passed from when Ed had first noticed Maria. He had continued pouring in more nickels and pulling the handle on his machine. Ed kept his gaze away from Maria, but he still kept her somewhat in view, using his peripheral vision.

He saw the black man close over to Maria and grab her roughly by the arm. He leaned down to whisper something in her ear, and, at the same time, started pulling her over towards one of the side entrances. Just past the bus terminal was another casino, the Union Plaza. Maria and the black man were heading towards the open parking lot between the bus station and the casino. The Hispanic man followed directly behind those two, his eyes moving back and forth, obviously trying to spot anyone paying any attention to the couple walking in front of him.

Ed got up and started moving towards the door that Maria had just gone through. Nervously, his hand went to the right hand pocket of the windbreaker he was wearing. Once his hand found the reassuring weight of the pistol in the pocket, Ed started to regain some of his previously lost composure.

He'd decided earlier that he might need the pistol in case Maria brought along some of her friends to try to coerce him into giving her back the bag and all its contents. Ed hadn't wanted to risk getting himself slapped around before he even had a chance to hand the bag over to Maria.

The situation looked different than that to him now. The black guy certainly wasn't acting like Maria was a friend of his. Maria didn't act like she wanted anyone else but her to recognize Ed.

Ed made a big mistake when he started hurrying after Maria. He saw the smaller Hispanic man yell out a warning to the big black guy. When he did that, the black guy wheeled around with Maria's arm still held tightly at her bicep. Ed watched as the Hispanic guy moved over to be on Maria's other side. Together, the two men had her trapped between them. Maria's expression let Ed know that she was disgusted with him for giving himself away like he had. He didn't care. For whatever reason, watching her being dragged away like she'd been had made him act impulsively. He continued walking closer to Maria and her two captors.

"You got somethin' belongs to me, Motherfucker!" Ed watched the black mans face set in an angry snarl as he spoke. Ed could feel the tension rise in him. Confrontations weren't something he welcomed.

"Let her go." Ed's voice seemed to him to sound much calmer than he was actually feeling right then.

When Ed spoke, the man pushed Maria around so that she was in front of him, putting his other arm around her neck as an obvious threat to do Maria some harm. The man was still snarling, trying his best to appear as menacing as he could manage.

"I'll break her fucking neck, you don't hurry up and give me what I axed you for."

His other hand left Maria's bicep and grabbed onto Maria's hair. Ed could see that it would be easy for the man to snap Maria's neck. He glanced over at the Hispanic man to see what he was doing. He was smiling and watching to see how everything would play out.

Ed's body felt vibrant and alive. It was the sudden jolt of adrenaline flowing that caused this. Ed felt his face beginning to tingle, and felt something contracting deep down in the pit of his stomach. He would have sworn that his balls were trying to pull themselves up there too.

He pulled the pistol out of the windbreaker's pocket and fired a shot aimed at the black man's hip. The loud report from the pistol froze every one within fifty feet or so. Ed watched as blood began flowing from the hole he'd made in the black man's upper thigh. He turned his hand and pointed the pistol at the other man who was already back pedaling away from Maria as quickly as he could manage, his hands raised up in front of him, as though he were hoping to ward off any possible attack.

"I said let her go!" Ed repeated. This time, he pointed the gun right at the black man's face. By then he'd closed the distance between them to no more than four feet. He knew he was ever so close to pulling the trigger again. He hoped that the man could see how serious he was about doing whatever it took to secure Maria's release.

Ed watched as the man's hands released Maria and grabbed at his injured thigh. Ed stepped one more step closer and grabbed Maria's hand, pulling her towards himself. Trying to appear calm, Ed placed the pistol back in his jacket pocket and turned to walk quickly away from the scene. He heard a combination of screamed threats and anguished complaints of pain coming from the man he'd just shot as he and Maria hurried away. They turned a corner, ran across a street, and went in through a side door of another casino. Without stopping to talk at all, Ed led Maria out through a different door and across another street to yet another downtown casino.

It took about four minutes to get to where Ed's car was parked in the lot at the Las Vegas Club. He and Maria got in the car and left the parking structure as soon as Ed was able to get his car moving.

Maria was talking excitedly to him as soon as they got to Ed's car. She was babbling more than talking, excited to be free from her captor, and seemingly impressed that Ed had freed her without having been made to give up the green bag. She was also trying to find out whether Ed still had all the bag's contents.

"Let me concentrate on driving, okay? Let's get out of here first, then we can have our little talk."

"You should have killed him, Ed. Caesar saw what you did, and now they both know what you look like. Lewis will look like the worst kind of fool if he doesn't come after you and get what we have. Lewis can't afford to be made to look foolish. He won't quit until he finds us again."

"Are they from here, or from San Jose?" Ed was driving carefully, but Maria's words had sounded ominous enough to have him seeking immediate information from her.

"Here, but that don't matter. Lewis needs my money, and he really wants the other shit in that bag. He knows me, and more than that, he knows where Mama and my brother live. He'll fuck them up until he finds out where I am."

Ed drove for twenty minutes in silence. He was on Interstate 15, heading back to California. He was halfway to Stateline before he decided to get off the interstate and find a motel for the two of them. He didn't want Maria to get more hysterical than she already was. He needed to think, plus he was already somewhat tired now that the adrenaline was leaving his system. It didn't take long to find themselves a room.

"Lewis is probably going to be more interested in getting his leg looked at tonight. You better call your mother and let her know she needs to move again."

"She works as a maid in one of the casinos. It's a good job she says. I don't think she'll move just because I call her."

"Tell her about what's his name, the guy I shot."

"Lewis. She won't care about that. She won't believe anybody will bother her to get at me."

"Call her anyway. She needs to be warned at least. Think about your brother too."

"You got all my money and stuff, right?"

"We need to talk about that, Maria. Those drugs are going to kill you if you keep messing with them."

"Whatever. You do got them though, right?"

"I'm tired. I'm going to bed. Go call your mother and warn her."

"Get me my bag first. I'll call her after you let me check all my stuff."

Ed got up from the bed where he'd been sitting. He re tied his shoe laces and stood up. It took him only a moment to go out to his car and retrieve Maria's bag. He watched the excitement on her face as he handed it to her. It didn't surprise him at all when she went to the bathroom and closed and locked the door behind her. What did surprise him was that she came out only a few minutes later, still carrying her bag.

"I'm a little surprised that everything's still here. I was sure you'd end up throwing everything but my money away. How come you kept the dope too?"

Ed shrugged his shoulders, waiting for her to decide what she wanted.

"I'm going to call her from the pay phone. You got any change?"

Ed reached in his pocket and pulled out three rolls of nickels he'd gotten from the attendant after hitting his small jackpot. It was all the change he had on him. He watched as Maria left the room, noticing that she kept her bag close to her side, protectively. He didn't bother locking the door to the room. She'd come back when she was done, or else she wouldn't. Ed got undressed and climbed under the bed covers. It took him almost no time to fall asleep.