Dead Boys (26 page)

W
E’LL STOP IN
Barstow for booze and cigarettes. Back in L.A., Christina’s sister will crash at my apartment for a few days, and it will be fun and all, but we’ll finally come to our senses. I’ll tell her to leave, and she’ll try to stab me with a broken tequila bottle. After that I’ll be lonely for a good long while, but then things will get better. I’ll find a job, lose it, find another. A few years from now I’ll come into enough money to take a trip to Hawaii. I will not enjoy it. There will be birds there, flowers red as candy, and waves just like in the brochure, but they’ll all remind me of Mercedes. I’ll stand on the shore and scream descriptions of everything into the night, descriptions that will tremble and falter and fall, and be gobbled up by a black, buzzing sea.

Everything Beautiful Is Far Away

I
’M NOT SUPPOSED TO BE WITHIN FIVE HUNDRED YARDS
of the house, but rumor has it she’s hired a gang of Vietnamese hard cases to get rid of me, so order of protection or no order of protection, I’m going in. The back door is unlocked, and her mom and dad are just sitting down to dinner. They look like a couple of ghosts; I could put my fist right through them.

We had Christmas together at that table, Valentine’s Day. Her dad once complimented me on how clean I kept my car. I tell them not to mind, go ahead and eat. I lean against the kitchen counter to wait for them to finish. The sun pushes red through the window, and the refrigerator and Crock-Pot and microwave are hot to the touch.

“What’s this about?” her dad asks.

“Does a gang of Vietnamese hard cases ring a bell?”

“Lana moved to Chicago six months ago,” her mom says.

“Nice try.”

Her dad wipes his mouth with a napkin, then stands and walks out of the room.

“It’s true,” her mom continues. “You remember all the phone calls you made here afterward.”

“My finger slipped,” I explain.

Her dad reappears, carrying a shotgun. I try to grab something out of the dish rack to defend myself, but my knees give way, and I end up scrambling out the back door on all fours.

I’ve always thought their yard was special, the fruit trees and the fishpond. Concrete deer graze in the bushes and something is always blooming. I hop over the fence just as her dad appears on the patio. He points the gun at me, the same man who admired the shine on my chrome that time.

“That isn’t necessary,” I yell.

A couple of cop cars howl past as I drive out of the neighborhood. It’s not even dark yet, but already the gas stations and grocery stores are all lit up. There’s no such thing as a hiding place. Through a window I can see people waiting in line at McDonald’s. They comb their hair and smile at their own reflections.

In order to shake any tails I go home via a new route, cutting corners, doubling back, and running a few reds. After a while even I don’t know where I am. It seems impossible that I could get so lost in the city I grew up in.

M
ARTY BLAMES HIS
worthlessness on one awful season of Little League. When he starts in on it sometimes, the whole bar yells at him to have another drink. You have to wonder about a guy who can trace thirty years of failure back to a grounder he bobbled when he was eight. You also have to wonder about the people who call themselves his friends but won’t let him get it off his chest.

In crowded places I sometimes have trouble with conversations. Here at the bar, for example, a dude can be talking right to me, but I can just as clearly hear the person sitting next to him, and the person sitting next to that person, which leads to confusion. It’s a filtering problem, I guess. Like drowning in words.

Marty’s sitting near the TV with three packs of Camels stacked in front of him. He smiles and points hopefully at his glass.

“Jennifer, honey,” I say, “get Marty another on me, okay?”

I help when I can.

Marty inherited a chimp named John Wayne from an uncle who had something to do with the rodeo. Marty thought he might put the chimp in the movies, but all John Wayne did was drink beer and smoke cigars. He got loaded one night and set Marty’s apartment on fire, and then a few days later he bit off the tip of Marty’s nose. When the cops showed up, John Wayne charged them. They had no choice but to shoot. Marty still carries the newspaper clipping in his wallet.

I’
M CAREFUL COMING
up the stairs into my building. One of the kids who lives here is riding his tricycle in the hall. I ask him if he’s seen anyone strange snooping around, and he stares at me with the blankest face.

My place is what they call a bachelor. It doesn’t have a kitchen, just a room to sleep in and a bathroom. It’s against the rules, but I snuck in a hot plate so when I get tired of fast food I can heat a can of soup or spaghetti. As soon as I find one cheap, I’m buying a little refrigerator. Then I’ll be able to cook bacon and eggs some mornings.

I sit in my recliner, which faces the only window in the room. The window looks out onto the brick wall of the apartment building next door. I don’t have a regular TV schedule other than the eleven o’clock news. A man who comes by the newsstand gets the listings out of the Sunday paper and underlines everything he’s going to watch for the entire week. That’s a little much.

At times like these I wish I still smoked.

They’ve got us on some kind of flight path here. All night long helicopters clatter back and forth, rattling the windows and the loose change on the coffee table. I tried to organize the tenants in the building to make a complaint to the city. I typed up a letter at the library, xeroxed it at my own expense, and slipped it under every door. The only response came from a squirrely guy on the first floor who calls himself an actor but who I know sells office supplies over the phone. He stopped me in the lobby and asked to borrow twenty dollars.

J
AMES TELLS ME
some people from a magazine are coming by to take pictures. They have his permission. They show up before noon, while I’m straightening the out-of-state papers. A bee has been hovering around the stand all morning, making me nervous. I try to swat it a few times, but it reads my mind.

The photographer thinks he’s a badass. He’s got muscles and tattoos and calls his assistant dickweed. A closet case, for sure. He drops a can of Red Bull on the sidewalk, and it spills all over everywhere. He doesn’t say a word.

“Hey,” I yell. “Do something with that.”

The models arrive later, after the camera and lights are set up. I figure out ways to stare without anybody catching on. The blonde looks like she’d break if you spooked her. Her face when she’s not posing is wiped clean of expression; she doesn’t give anything away for free. I used to drive myself crazy dreaming about banging girls like her.

The photographer wants me in some of the shots. I pretend to sell the girls a magazine. I stand between them with my back to the camera. In one I am looking over their shoulders as they read a newspaper. That pesky bee lands on the blonde’s throat, and I swear I see its stinger pierce her skin. She screams and crumples to the sidewalk.

“What is it?” the photographer shouts. “What the fuck’s wrong?”

She lies there bawling like someone died. The photographer, the assistant, the makeup girl — everyone gathers round.

“Are you allergic, Tina? Tina, listen.”

Tina’s face is bright red. She gurgles and wails, and snot drips off her chin. I watch from the register, not realizing I’m smiling until the photographer notices.

“This is funny?” he shouts. “This is funny?”

I
CAN’T SLEEP
, the helicopters and all, so I gather my dirty clothes and drive to the twenty-four-hour Laundromat on La Brea. Tricky shit goes on late at night. He-shes and burglar alarms. Moonlight. Elaborate detours pop up out of nowhere and disappear by morning. Men with long poles change the names of movies and the price of gas.

An old Armenian is asleep on the bench in the Laundromat. He snores loudly, and it looks like he’s pissed himself — there’s a puddle, anyway. Over by the sink a Mexican woman folds towels while her kid plays with a toy car on the floor.

Half of the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling fixtures are burned out, which makes for some dark corners and jagged shadows. The change machine is on the fritz, too. I ask the Mexican lady to break a dollar, but she pulls the no-speakee-English bit, so I have to go next door to the liquor store. It all makes sense when I see that Ho Chi Minh himself is behind the counter. I get the feeling he’s been waiting for me.

NO CHANGE warns a sign on the register. I give him a dollar for a twenty-five-cent pack of gum, scoop up the three quarters he slaps on the counter, then lay down another pack of gum and another dollar.

“Got you,” I say as he slides over three more quarters. “They sure didn’t teach you much about customer service in Saigon.”

He goes back to the newspaper spread out in front of him. It’s written in his language, I guess. The letters look like bugs.

“You and your boys better watch yourselves,” I continue. “I don’t like being followed. My dad fought over there, get it? My Lai, motherfucker.”

“I’m Korean,” Uncle Ho says.

“What?”

“I’m Korean.”

I see myself on the security monitor hanging from the ceiling. Lana’s got me so wound up, I can’t tell if I’m coming or going.

All my clothes fit in one machine. I don’t worry about separating whites and colors. I wash everything in cold. The Armenian is quiet now, and it is piss; I can smell it. When I close my eyes, I see bombs going off. The Mexican kid won’t listen to me. I just want to tell him a joke.

A
FTER THE MORNING
rush I sketch my idea on the back of an old invoice. The bar has a ladder they let me borrow, so my only expense is paint.

The narrow passageway that runs between my building and the one next to it is filled with garbage. When everything finally quiets down at night, you can hear the rats down there, hustling and bustling and doing business. High fences topped with razor wire seal off both ends of the passage, but that doesn’t stop me; I go out my window.

The sky is first. I draw the brush back and forth, laying down a patch of palest blue on the bricks I’ve grown to hate over the past few months. While that bit dries, I swing the ladder around and climb back into my apartment. From my recliner, I admire the beginning of my new view.

A splash of ocean dotted with whitecaps, a crescent beach, a bright yellow sun. Piece by piece it comes together. My only screwup is the hula girl. I can’t get her face right, so I turn her into a palm tree instead.

I gaze at the scene for an hour after I finish. If I squint, it looks almost real. Everybody has the right to something nice. It’s not against the rules to prime the pump now and then. A stray sunbeam hits the paint, and the colors glow. I open a beer and put my feet up on the windowsill. If it weren’t for my recliner’s funny smell, I could be somewhere else.

T
HE PARKING LOT
attendant from the pizza place comes over on his breaks. I never bug him about browsing in the adult section, because once my horn started honking and wouldn’t stop, and he showed me what wire to pull. He has a baby daughter who was born with her heart outside her body. Down in Mexico, where he’s from, the cops and dope dealers get away with murder. He’s funny the way he opens the centerfolds then shakes his head and whistles.

“Have you seen anybody strange hanging around?” I ask him.

“No, boss. Nobody. Who do you mean?”

“Like some Vietnamese dudes. Gangster types.”

A car pulls up to the curb, and the driver yells at me to bring him a
New York Times
. I hate guys like that, I don’t care if they do let me keep the change.

When my shift is done, I count out the till. It balances for the ninety-eighth straight time. The night clerk takes over, but I linger for a while. He’s new on the job, so I warn him about the kids from the high school always trying to swipe cigarettes. His shoulder-length black hair is parted in the middle, and he’s reading a book about vampires. He hems and haws when I ask if he believes in that shit. I don’t know what James was thinking, hiring this one. The little old ladies will be scared to death.

A
S A PRECAUTION
, I park two streets from the one I live on and hoof it the rest of the way. The shadows of a flock of birds passing overhead swarm across the sidewalk like vermin. I hear things breaking behind me, but you couldn’t pay me enough to turn around.

The actor, the office supply salesman who says he’s an actor, is eating grapes on the steps of the building. He’s not wearing a shirt, and I catch a glimpse of a gold ring in one of his nipples.

“Hey,” he says as I pass by, then gets up and follows me inside. “I saw you painting the other day.”

“It’s personal,” I reply. My mailbox is packed with sweepstakes applications. I think someone is giving out my address.

“Not to get all woo woo, but what sign are you?” the salesman asks.

His lips, his hands — something about him makes my skin crawl. Can’t he understand my situation? I don’t have time for his silliness. Pushing past him, I hurry up the stairs.

T
HERE’S NO LISTING
for Lana in Chicago. I try ten different times with ten different operators to make sure. Then I check other cities: New York, Miami, Dallas. The operator in Paris, France, barely speaks English.

“Bonjour,” I say. “What time is it there?”

“Six in zee morning,” she replies.

“Dawn, huh. And the weather?”

“Zee numbair you want?”

“It must be gorgeous. Tell me about it.”

“Zee numbair, sir?”

I met Lana at the mall. I saw her shoplifting mascara, and she saw me see her. Later she approached me at the food court to find out why I hadn’t turned her in. “Because you’re hot,” I said. I was doing great then, processing work orders for the phone company. We went out to dinner all the time. I bought her a diamond tennis bracelet I’m still making payments on. She never told me she loved me, but she’d never told anyone else that, either. We were easing toward something special. I was allowed to tongue-kiss her and put my hands on her tits, and she once rubbed my cock through my sweats.