The Naked Face
by Jeffrey Greene
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Table of Contents parts 1, 2, 3, 4, |
part 2
In a no-light town called Pegleg, population 723, regular unleaded was only fifteen dollars a gallon. After filling up, he went to Buck’s Barbecue and inhaled a slathered, gristly pork sandwich, lank fries, and an oozing scoop of slaw, washing it down with sugared-up tea barely below room temperature. Generously tipped the teased and frosted-haired waitress in her apple-cheeked Smiling Server mask and, with his stomach already churning, visited the town’s single mask shop, recoiling from the dirty aquarium stink of unchanged vitreous baths. An obese woman in a Princess Di mask stretched to weird effect over her wide face whipped off a rhinestone tiara as he approached the counter.
“Sorry about the smell,” she said, shooing a bloated cat off the counter. “Tomorrow’s cleaning day.”
“Won’t be here tomorrow. Got anything that won’t give me a staph infection?”
“All Health-Department certified and virus-ready,” she said, waving her cigarette around. “Anything special in mind?”
“Something that won’t rot off in two days.”
“Well, we just got in some of those new extended-wear masks, but they’re pricey.”
“Let’s see.”
She led the way down an aisle stacked with animal and bird masks, some of the more expensive of which emitted faint, lungless barks, whinnies, growls, and caws, past a display of licensed celebrity masks, all dating from the Naked Time, to a selection of five masks in a locked glass case.
“These can live up to a month,” she said. “But to do that, they don’t just sip moisture out of your skin, they tap into your capillaries and suck blood. Tiny amounts, but it creeps some folks out. People are calling them vampire masks, which doesn’t help sales one little bit.”
“Leave any scars?”
“Not supposed to. But who’d see ’em, anyway?”
“I would,” he said, pointing to a Green Mantis.
“Well, it’s your legal right to see your own face,” she said with unconcealed disgust, unlocking the case and handing him the fluid-filled box in which the mask floated like a splayed frog, its mandibles twitching reflexively. “Not to get in your business, but the Green Mantis can send the wrong message in some places, especially up there in the Mormon Kingdom. Like maybe you’re looking to snag yourself a local butterfly. They’d frown on that, to put it mildly.”
He pointed to an ethnically indeterminate human male face with a prominent hawk nose and high cheekbones.
“The Lonesome Cowboy,” she said. “Good all-occasion mask. Also more expensive.”
“I’ll take it.”
“You must be from Santa Fe or L.A.”
“You want to sell this, or not?”
“Three hundred. Cash only.”
“I’ll wear it out of the store,” he said, counting out the money.
Turning around to give him privacy, she said, “These babies hurt a little taking hold.”
It hurt a lot, like a mask of deer flies, but it mirrored his facial expressions better than anything he’d worn: a lean, sun-weathered, Mex-Indian-Irish face, with his own black hair and gray eyes. He looked at his new face in the store mirror, feeling that dream-like melding of self with appearance.
He showed Princess Di a fifty-dollar bill. “Looking for a tall, rangy woman, might have been through here recently. About thirty, pale skin, long, straight black hair. Could be wearing a predator mask. Wide-set blue eyes, a voice you’d remember.”
She eyed the fifty. “What would I remember about it?”
“You tell me.”
“Rough, like a three pack-a-day smoker, and deep for a woman, but whispery, too, you know? Had a listen-up-or-else tone to it that I didn’t like at all. She was wearing a .357 long-barrel magnum on her hip, and a sawed-off twelve-gauge pump in a holster on her back, and the whole time we talked, her fingers kept brushing the pistol grip. Big hands, long fingers. Too damn long for my taste.”
“When was this?”
“Ten, twelve days ago.”
“Which is it?”
“Twelve.”
“She buy a mask?”
“Three. The Golden Eagle, Black Jaguar, and the most expensive mask I sell, the Chameleon, which is cultured from cuttlefish DNA. The surface changes colors and textures to match the pattern of whatever’s behind the wearer. She put it on in the store, and her face blended so well with the surroundings that everything but her eyes disappeared. Serious eyes, if you know what I mean. Not friendly at all. She kept staring at me, like she was trying to hypnotize me.”
“Anyone with her?”
“Nope.”
“Remember the make of the car?”
“I think it was an Oldsmobile.”
“A Cutlass Supreme? Black?”
“Yep. An antique.”
“Happen to see where she was headed?”
“Probably east, where we’ll all be going one of these days. Even the deep wells are drying up.”
“But you didn’t see her driving east?”
“No, and I didn’t care, as long as she kept going.”
“Thanks.” He held out the fifty, and she made it disappear.
Guessing that she’d keep traveling west, he stayed on I-70, dodging potholes and deep fissures in the road, then southwest on I-15, which was so run-down it might as well have been dirt. The land got bigger and emptier, until there was nothing before and behind him but red mesas, distant blue mountains, sagebrush, cactus and creosote.
A hundred miles later, a shotgun-blasted sign said, Last Water and Gas 150 Miles, then, Clifford, pop. 1200. He slowed down to thirty, the meager cluster of stunted buildings showing their paint-chipped faces as he rolled through the main drag, a single traffic light swinging in the hot, dry wind. Filled his tank at a station on the edge of town and bought a pricey gallon of water. The attendant was a chunky, balding Horned Toad in gray coveralls, his mask patchy, mottled, clearly dying. Small, close-set eyes looked him up and down.
“Got yourself a problem,” the Toad said, nodding at a bright-green trickle of antifreeze flowing past the left front tire.
Rickard stared at it, cursing, already feeling trapped.
“Let’s crack the hood and see what we’ve got,” the Toad said gleefully. As soon as he took his hands out of his pockets, it was clear why he’d kept them hidden. With their thick, peasant shape and callused, black-nailed fingers, they could have been any mechanic’s hands, anyone but this man’s, that is, so outsized in relation to his wrists that they looked freakish, as if he’d lost his own hands in an accident and had them surgically replaced with the hands of a giant.
“Your water pump’s bit the big one,” he said, pulling down a paper towel and wiping his nightmare hands.
“How long to fix it?”
“Nothing in stock for a Chevy this old. Gotta order the part from Hanksville. If they got it, have you on your way by tomorrow noon. If they have to order it, might be the day after.”
“Did I see a motel back there on the main drag?” Rikard asked, handing him the keys.
He nodded. “The Drifter. It ain’t the Holiday Inn, but it’s clean.”
Got out his overnight bag, comforted by the weight of the Glock 9 inside, and started walking.
“Call me around ten tomorrow,” the mechanic called. “I’ll know one way or the other by then.”
“Lucky spot for a breakdown,” he said, reluctant for some reason to end the exchange.
“Call yourself lucky when you’re back on the road.” A warning if he ever heard one. He was being told to forget the car and grab the first bus out of town.
Copyright © 2024 by Jeffrey Greene
