"Riverbend" novel sample #1

Writing Samples - Novels
"Riverbend"
Prologue - The Rain

© 2002 Glenn Arden Bruce

Prologue—The Rain

      Dusk on the Boulevard, Sea-Tac strip. Usual soft rain doesn’t keep the hookers in. Nor does the Times
headline:
      RIVERBEND KILLER GONE?
      Streetwalkers Safe for Past Six Months
      Encouraged, they’re out in numbers. Waving cars down from under brightly colored umbrellas, sequined
purses full of cash and condoms, newspapers with the same headline: whatever keeps thick makeup from
clotting.
      A late Seventies Monte Carlo—dirt brown metallic, tan vinyl lifting up, rusted rocker panels—slows down.
Steamy windows obscure the john’s face.
      But he’s looking.
      Lots of choices tonight and each spandexed player knows her role well: a wave, a whistle, a smile or a pucker.
Pouting seems to be working well this week.
      A black girl in an orange wig licks her teeth; but this john doesn’t like darker cuts. He passes the asians too,
stopping at the built blonde with the blunt cut staying dry under the bus stop. Her Frederick’s of Hollywood high
hemline is classy for latex, he thinks; sunglasses at night just adds to the mystery.
      She sees his blond hair in the smeary light and moves quickly, trumping the other girls; his window already
coming down in hand-cranked spurts. “Lookin’ for a date, honey?” she says low and breathy, thick with promise.
      It’s all well-rehearsed.
      He leans into the yellow crime glow, dull grey eyes set deep in a hard face that’s seen more miles this week than
a pencil-pusher does in a lifetime. Maybe he’s a convict, maybe he’s just a trucker; likely, he’s not a kind man.
Either way, it’s a face no sensible hooker would ask for a smoke, much less a date.
      “I’m lookin’ for a lot more than that, honey,” he says, a hint of The South in it.
      “You’re looking at a lot more than that, too,” she tells him, eyeing his rolling rust bucket. “Sure you can afford
it?”
      “Not my car,” he says, looking away. It might be the truth.
      They both watch a ‘76 Eldorado prowling low and shark-like in the night wet. This one’s red as new blood with
a white top and seats to contrast. For him, it speaks to opportunities unseized, achievements unrealized; for her,
simple nostalgia—good times gone forever, memories lying dormant in a past as dead as night.
      This night.
      Tall streetlamps backlight her high tease, obscuring the face, the bones. Makes him wonder if she’s a he—out
loud.
      “Cost you to find out,” is what he hears back over the constant shouting in his head. Okay, but:
      “What if I don’t like what I see?” he wants to know.
      “Double your money back if you’re not completely satisfied,” she says. The practiced smile: “I cum...with a
warranty.”
      A sense of humor is good, he thinks; it’ll make the night’s work go easier. And hell, lip service from a trannie
isn’t so bad. There was that one in Tuscaloosa: Gave better head than most women he’s had. Besides, he doesn’t
have to fuck it; tonight is more about The Statement.
      Still, something doesn’t seem right. Maybe it’s something else: “You a cop?” he asks, attempting to protect his
civil rights.
      “The question is, are you?” Never make it too easy; that’s a dead giveaway.
      “If I was a cop,” he says, prepared, “would I show you this?” And the thriftstore peacoat comes off his lap.
      If she’s shocked, she doesn’t show it. “No, you’d show me something like this.” Black-laced thumb and finger
come up an inch apart.
      He laughs, stroking her—and himself—making sure to make a big impression.
      It’s working. “What kinda plans you got for that telephone pole, tonight, sweetie?” Better to get it out in the
open, up front.
      “I’ll take what I can get.” He’s been turned down before.
      This gets a thoughtful nod and the quick menu: “Straight for fifty; oral for...seventy five.”
      “There’s a new twist,” he snorts.
      “Small mouth,” she shrugs.
      “Big down where it counts, huh?” He grins knowingly.
      “Kids,” the hooker lies, sensing where he’s headed. Why not? It’s not about truth; it’s about seduction.
      Capture.
      It turns him on, thinking how she’s got kids at home to miss her. He wants to plow ahead; so, he nods behind.
“I’ll bet you’re still tight back there.” He has the gall to wink.
      She sighs, reads him her Hooker’s Litany: “I don’t do greek, okay. No greek, no golden showers, no shitting on
people, no freaky stuff. I’ll spank you if you want for an extra ten, but you don’t spank me unless I ask for it. No
ropes, no belts, no buckles. You mark me up, I lose business with the ones who just like to look.”
      “Hmmm,” he says, looking—and still stroking.
      “You keep that up, you’re not gonna need me,” she points out.
      He throws his best smile—something between Elvis and the President, he thinks—and tells her he’s “just keepin’
the motor runnin’, sweetheart.”
      It’s her move now, and they both know it.
      She looks up at the endless traffic pulling opaque domes of silvery spray two stories high and twice as long
through the tired night, a rhythm to it as monotonous as it is disheartening, past the endless flat canyons of
stripmalls and car dealerships where once stood grand palisades of old growth redwoods; where entire families
once ate easy picnics in pillowy meadows; where Man once met Wild, and vice versa. Where Life once actually
had some meaning.
      It’s all gone, now.
      All of it.
      She stares down at the missing doorlocks, rotted vinyl cracked and scurfing, and thinks: This is what it’s
become, what it’s all been reduced to; but there’s nothing this whore can do about it except go along for the ride
and hope for some small piece of salvation, some scrap of saving grace at The End.
      God knows he doesn’t deserve it.
      Her time is up, so: “You gonna open the door, or are you gonna let me drown out here?”
      He smiles like Elvis again and toggles the power locks.
      She’s in the car, now.
      He knocks the locks down and goes for an early handful. Fishnet knees slap shut, Pop! like a small calibre
report. “Sea-Tac Inn,” she says. “First you pay, then we play.”
      “I gotta get the room, too?” He sounds more amused than angry rumbling the old Monte into traffic that never
seems to stop or even diminish out here, even late. Must be the airport, or the strip clubs, he thinks; though he’s
never been to either.
      “I don’t do parking lots, honey,” is all the more she has to say about it.

      He takes the first curvy road off to the right by Wal-Mart, its lot still packed at ten forty-five. America can’t
get enough. She looks over to see what he’s seeing, but he’s looking at her.
      “So, tell me about yourself,” he says, playing The Friend—as if he cares—still playing with his Own Best Friend;
still with The Look. Still:
      She’s got her doubts, now.
      “Look, I don’t need this, okay?” she says, putting on being put-out. Just to see. “You give me seventy-five
bucks, I do the deed, I’m on my way. I don’t do talk. You want a girl that talks, call 9-7-6. If you want the real live
me, here I am. No talk, no kink, no rough stuff. Just a good time.”
      “Now, how can a guy have a good time without any’a that?”
      Okay, no. “All right, let me out.” Making it clear: She’s had enough.
      “Whoa-whoa-whoa, calm down, sweetheart,” he wheedles. Assuring her: “It’s just a joke.” Turning on what
charm he has.
      Slowing the car to a crawl.
      Both of them looking out at the flat-plane outlines of derelict warehouses dark and crowding, under a
bottomless sky of ceaseless grey drizzle. No signs of Life, might as well be:
      Nowhere.
      She keeps an eye on him. She has to.
      “Now,” he tells her, a bit too matter-of-factly, but he tells her: “I coulda had any one’a those niggers back there
for a twenty in the backseat. But I picked you.”
      Turns out it’s a compliment.
      She looks him over, one last time to be sure. He can’t be the one she’s looking for tonight—not with a line like
that. “I think I’m done for the night,” she tells him. But suddenly:
      —He’s braking hard
      —Reaching under the seat
      —And he’s saying
      —Maybe you need convincing.”

      Will it be an automatic or a revolver? Maybe just a long nasty blade, one with a serrated edge—the kind these
redneck hunters and fucked-up vets like to flash for effect. Don’t turn your back on him. Be ready for the flash,
the slash, the report, the...
      Wallet. And there must be three-thousand in hundreds in there! Who’d he rob? She sighs inside, but his face
has gone flush with ultimatum:
      “Now, I can let you off right here,” he says, and he’s got that sloe tone now, dark and calm, the one to watch out
for; the giveaway. “You walk back in the rain, don’t make a dime and you look like shit; nobody’ll even slow down
for you, rest’a the night. By the time you go back to your dump, get fixed up and come back again, all the dull
hubbies have gone home to their happy little families; the only ones still out that time’a night don’t make you feel
too safe. You blew the night, instead’a blowin’ me an’ maybe one or two more, makin’ your nut.” He makes it
sound so easy; so easy to choose:
      “On the other hand, you stay and act nice, it’ll all go easy.” The old car idling, stale and sweet with age and
mildew.
      She’s thinking it over.
      He thumps his swollen pride and joy on the bottom of the steering wheel for punctuation. It should hurt and
probably does; but then he probably likes it. He must, he’s still doing it. Thump-thump-thump.
      Sounds like a piledriver down the street; a big Hughey coming in over the treetops; a flat on the freeway.
Thump-thump-thump-thump.
      “So, we have a deal?” He wants to know, and he wants to know now: Thump-thump-thump-thump-THUMP.
      There’s no choice really. Not now. Not here. Not for a hooker.
      This hooker.
      One hand goes around his shoulder, the other on his leg, red nails teasingly close. “Okay,” he hears, watching.
“Let’s go for a ride.”
      The face that comes up is no longer the john.
      Now, he’s The Killer.

     The old brown Monte takes the first left sideways; she’s thrown hard, held fast to her door as balding tires hop
old pavement, bite potholes, then launch for The Highway.
      It was only a block away the whole time.
      The stopsign’s coming fast and the engine’s going faster as the slipping old automatic drops second, hard, at
seventy-five hundred.
      He’s not stopping.
      She lets out a low growl of dread, leaning back, one hand on the rotting dash, one on the door, as the piece-of-
shit Chevy flies up Warehouse Hill, front bumper gouging the last six feet of incline, mining asphalt then, released,
kicking up near-vertical; hitch-plate throwing a fiery roostertail back into the black left behind.
      They’re in the light, now.
      He’s tossed forward then back; she goes down then up. Heavy metal takes wing in the wet and—
      —they’re airborne.
      Traffic rushes sidelong and fast as the old Monte crashdives Lane One. Dead shocks pound a weakened frame
made creaky with time and rust; tires, cocked sharp and smashed nearly flat, scrape black in crusted wheelwells,
flip the back end around and send the whole show straight into oncoming, everyone hurrying home for the Late
News.
      It’s here.
      Panic, electric and sticky, spreads instantly—a simultaneous psychic hotflash: Your whole life! in front of
your eyes! in the next second!—tthe cold adrenaline rush of sleepy-warm innocence meeting some unnameable,
unthinkable evil head-on in the rain on a dark night; horns ridden long and hard to let the others know.
      The Killer cranks hard—his killer crank harder and centrifugally flung—right then left, hands gripping over,
pulling down, spinning back. No more time to blow.
      They could both die here.
      His hooker directing: “Back! You’re over...compen...sating.” Another bump like the last one and she might be
a backseat driver.
      Diving cars duck on rainslick. Narrow misses. Except for the woman in the green soccer-mom wagon headed
for milk. Whump! Sheet metal folds; headlights are extinguished; insurance rates climb.
      No one stops.
      Miraculously, the brown shitpile emerges unscathed, looping the last coupe in the undeclared convoy, finding
the right lanes. They made it! She can relax.
      He speeds up.
      The Sea-Tac Inn’s just ahead, diagonally across at the corner of The Highway and State Road One-Something.
He throws a hard left, back across the onrushing automotive tide—and directly into the path of a late lumber
truck, loaded and in a hurry.
      Air-horns shatter what’s left of the hooker’s calm. Eyes close behind dark glasses; wigged head pulls back; red
nails dig into the rotting arm rest: bracing for It, but not Ready.
      By the grace of a God neither knows, the truck blows by—another dip of chrome-coat and it would have ended
here—its powerful slipstream smacking the back window of the old Monte like an angry squall as it sails off the
sharpest incline on The Strip. Can’t see the road ‘til you’re on it! is what they say.
      The brown barge hits hard, fifty feet out, then porpoises like a short trawler in a high sea for two long city
blocks before puddle-slapping a sign that reads only: Riverbend - 8.
      There’s already nothing but what’s waiting in the night.
      Drives like a maniac comes to mind—wipers slapping fast but doing little—a sarcastic, “What’re you tryin’ to
do, kill me?” slipping out.
      He swings and misses, swerving, screaming to: “Shut up!” His hand going in his jacket. This won’t be a wallet
and...
      Out it comes: a nickel-plated .45 with pearl grips. Nice.
      Warm muzzle at her temple, reached over, stretched across, driving with his free hand—badly, it’s noted—he’s
beginning to moan.
      His hooker recognizes the inflection and sneaks a sideways glance as the first of his release catches the bottom
of the steering wheel; the second drapes his shoulder; number three hits the roof; four through nine go random—
all hands-free, unassisted.
      He flashes a half-baked full-blown psycho smile in the green dash light, red face dripping white. He knows the
end is near and thinks it’s funny. But the Last Laugh never is.
      Not really.

      Dark waters flow deep and uneasy under the narrow bridge, its solitary light casting pointless hard angles
through rusted girders.
      Shadows wasted on darkness.
      The sign says Riverbend, Population 144, but everyone’s long gone. It’s a dead town now, and everyone
knows: Like attracts Like.
      A dirt brown 1978 Monte Carlo with peeling tan vinyl roof and rusted rocker panels sits half-on half-off the
road under the grip of a perpetual damp which hungers for it. Bald tires will spin two lengths before finding
traction.
      So quiet out here, so egregiously forsaken; even the night feels sorry for itself, alone but for the rain.
      Always the rain.
      Pop! A flash in the woods; a single shot, its echo killed instantly by the thick night air. Then another, to finish
the job.
       Black water falls in on itself.

Riverbend

Novel by
Glenn A. Bruce

“O that thou hadst hearkened to my commandments!
then had thy peace been as a river,
and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.”
Isaiah 49:18