Morning caught Billy with his pants down.
The desert sun spilled its rays onto the land, burning the dew off scrub and sand. Along a road still hot and pliant leaned the remains of a service station. The skeletal relic received the light, reflecting it onto a figure sprawled on its stomach.
Billy felt the warmth through his back. He knew the sunlight was already too bright to bear. He tasted tequila tainted vomit clinging to his tongue. He tried to close his mouth, but his teeth ground into the earth. Gravel poured under his tongue. He hissed and spat, wrenching himself onto his back.
He breathed as the warmth soaked through his limbs. The air in his lungs cleared the thoughts in his head. Sensation fought with memory. Each vague ache was tagged with flashing images that clashed in a toilet-bowl spin. Waves of nausea filtered through him. He concentrated on the pain and it flared, clearing his mind like a supernova.
Now Billy attempted to crack an eyelid. A sliver of morning blue sky broke through and slashed deep into his hangover. He closed the eye against the assault and focused, pulling each memory out for examination.
A smile, money, red dress, the images bounced through his brain like a pachinko ball. Lights, strobes, sweat, alcohol, lips...the woman. Of course. His memories burst through the haze. Gallons of tequila hadn't washed her from his synapses. Then Billy remembered his purpose.
Chiding himself, Billy returned to there and then. The sun already felt sharp against his skin. He arched his back and pulled his jeans up.
He worked his stinging, swollen hands under him. After some grunting, Billy found himself mostly vertical. His heart raced, blood crashed into his neck, thudding through his brain. Billy waited for a vessel to burst and fill his head with blood.
The drumming subsided and Billy strained onto his feet. He opened his eyes on a parched world. In front of him stretched the road, disappearing over a not too distant rise. Billy started walking.
*
At the crest of the rise Billy could see the Oldsmobile only 500 yards away.
The car looked like any abandoned vehicle at the side of the road. Billy heard the radio before the sour smell reached him.
The woman had died leaving a rooster tail of vomit across the front seat. Flecks of pink foam clung to her lips. She was half naked. Billy didn't remember the woman taking her top off.
Billy opened the door and pushed the body from behind the wheel. He ducked in, turned the radio off, and tried the ignition. The car only clicked and groaned. The battery was dead. That wouldn't have mattered. The gas gauge read "empty".
Billy sat on the edge of the driver's seat and rested his forehead against his fingertips.
The body farted and Billy couldn't keep from chuckling.
When Dave asked him to kill his wife, he had told Billy about Linda's favorite drink (tequila shooters), her favorite casino game (21), and her favorite type of man (skinny, tan, blonde, just like Billy, not at all like Dave). Dave hadn't mention how damned attractive she was. In all his years of working for Dave, Billy had never met the woman.
Billy won Linda's attention at the blackjack table and then loosened things up with shooters. Soon he found himself turning on the charm not because he needed to get his boss's wife alone to kill her, but because he really wanted to make her laugh.
Billy decided that Linda should live. He liked her.
Billy let his guard down that night. He drank too much. He and Linda piled into her Oldsmobile and drove off into the desert to find lust.
By the time Linda pulled over, the last five shooters caught up with Billy. Consciousness slipped out from under his attention like a stubborn pea under a stabbing fork.
Linda pulled at his pants. Billy felt Linda's cool finger against his thighs and her warm breath against his crotch.
Linda tugged Billy's jeans to his knees and paused, patting at his back pocket.
The last thing Billy remembered was Linda's slurred voice: "Well lookee here."
He fought to say something, anything, but blackness closed over his head.
*
The hip flask glinted on the passenger's seat. The contents had soaked into the upholstery. Billy considered torching the car to hide the poison and then thought better of it. Any fire would be like a beacon in the desert. Cops would be on him like stink on shit.
Idiot. She must've turned off his brain the first time he'd seen her. He should've just put a bullet in the back of her head, Billy thought. Quiet, clean, anonymous. Now an entire casino had seen him with her. Now he was in the middle of nowhere with a pounding hangover and a rapidly putrefying corpse.
Love is strange, Billy thought.
Pakeha