Lucky Bastard (18 page)

“What?”

“Good vegan desserts?”

He gives me an irritated look in the rearview mirror. “Have you ever eaten vegan food?”

“Sure. I eat Lucky Charms every day.”

“Lucky Charms isn’t vegan. It has marshmallows, which contain gelatin, which is made from collagen in cow or pig bones.”

“Well, that explains why they taste so yummy.”

He continues to stare at me in the rearview mirror. “Maybe it’s best if we don’t talk about lifestyle preferences.”

“Good idea. That’ll help us avoid any awkward discussion about the fact that I work at a meatpacking plant.” I never was good at letting things go.

“You know that animals raised in factory farms for consumption are pumped full of antibiotics, hormones, and other chemicals to increase production,” he says.

“What happened to not talking about lifestyle preferences?”

“And they have vitamins added to their feed so they can be raised and kept indoors year-round, which increases the spread of disease, so they just pump them full of antibiotics to keep them from getting sick.”

“That’s very thoughtful of them, don’t you think?” I say. “I mean, at least the cows don’t have to pay for health insurance.”

“And dairy cows,” he says, blathering on. “The ones who provide the milk for your doughnuts? They’re injected with growth hormones to double their rate of production. And they’re raised in confinement and suffer emotionally from social deprivation.”

“That’s not so bad. At least they don’t have to sit captive in the backseat of a Lincoln town car and listen to you.”

“Plus they’re impregnated continuously in order to keep up the flow of milk.”

“Kind of makes you want to be a bull on a dairy farm,” I say.

We stop at the red light at the top of Nob Hill, between the Fairmont and the Mark Hopkins hotels, and Alex turns around in his seat to look at me. “Don’t you care about what happens to these animals? Don’t you care about what you put into your body? Don’t you care that all of these hormones and steroids pumped into milk and beef are causing girls to reach puberty in the third grade?”

“Don’t you care that your parents raised such a douche bag?”

He turns back around and gives me a long, hard stare in the rearview mirror as the signal turns green. I really wish he’d keep his eyes on the road.

“There’s a Starbucks and an All Star Donuts right across from each other on Chestnut,” I say. “They probably get their milk from factory farming, but it’s one-stop shopping before we swing by my apartment.”

“Fine. Whatever you say.”

I doubt that. But at least I’ll get to eat my non-vegan, animal by-product apple fritter.

We ride in silence for several minutes along California through Nob Hill, past Huntington Park, coming full circle
back to my first encounter with Tommy. I have a hard time believing that I was sitting on a bench in that same park barely more than four hours ago. It seems more like four days.

As we pass Grace Cathedral, I think about the trip I took in the sedan this morning with Barry Manilow, which gets me to thinking about my botched deal with the Feds about delivering the bad luck to Tommy Wong, which gets me to thinking about Mandy. And I’m wondering if I should fill her in on what’s happening.

Part of the lifestyle I’ve grown accustomed to is only having to look out for myself. Once Mandy decided to eschew her abilities and pretend to be a normal person with a normal life, I figured that was for the best. I didn’t need the headache of worrying about someone else or dealing with another person’s problems getting in the way of my own happiness. Let Mandy’s husband, Bill or Ted or whatever his name is, deal with her problems. Not me.

In the words of Paul Simon:

I am a rock. I am an island.

Except I can’t ignore this problem. This is one I created. Or at least was involved in making. And if I’m being honest with myself, after the fiasco in Tucson, after I’d been foolish and lost everything, after I’d run away with the road wide-open in front of me, I could have gone anywhere. I could have started over in Utah or New Mexico.
I could have settled in Tampa or Charleston. I could have made my way up to Portland or Seattle.

Instead, I chose San Francisco, knowing Mandy had started her own life here nearly ten years ago, and that she had a husband and two daughters whom she didn’t want exposed to the life she’d left behind.

As we turn north on Franklin and head toward the Marina, I find myself thinking about what I’m doing here. Not in the backseat of a Lincoln town car, though I suppose that’s relevant to the situation, but in this particular city. When things went wrong, I found myself drawn to California.

Maybe I need my sister more than I’m willing to admit. Maybe I want to reconcile but I don’t know how. Maybe I’ve been too consumed with my own path to realize that I’ve lost something important along the way.

In general, poachers aren’t predisposed to a lot of self-reflection. It’s bad for business. When you take the time to stop and think about the impacts you’re having on the lives of those you poach from, about the path you’ve chosen for yourself, you start to realize what it is you’re doing. The choices you’ve made and the questionable ethics behind them. And despite that I was born with this ability, I have a choice. Like Mom and Mandy, it’s a matter of self-restraint.

Just because you have the power to do something doesn’t mean you have to use it.

As we drive down Franklin Street toward the San Francisco Bay reflecting the warmth of the midafternoon sun, the sky opening up above us, clear and blue, I think about Mandy and I wonder if my moving here was about finding my way back to the life I’d built for myself, or if it was about trying to find my way back to something else.

A
fter grabbing my cappuccino and apple fritter on Chestnut and changing into my charcoal-gray suit with a white shirt and a black tie, I decide to work the list by hitting up the two low-grade marks first, since you don’t really want to go backward when you’re serial poaching. Start with the lowest grades of luck and then work your way to the top. Otherwise, you end up with a bad taste in your mouth. Like drinking Guinness all night and then finishing off with a Pabst Blue Ribbon.

But before I start poaching, I tell Alex to take me to another address. One that’s not on the list and one that I’ve only been to once before.

I ring the doorbell and stand on the front porch, hoping this time turns out better than the last. Then the front door opens.

“What are you doing here?” asks Mandy. No smile. No warmth. No enthusiasm. Just a suspicious look and a cold stare.

So much for the happy reunion.

“Is that any way to greet your little brother?”

She stands there in the doorway arms folded, lips pursed, not inviting me inside. It’s about what I expected.

“Can I come in for a second?”

Mandy stares at me long enough that I wonder if she heard me. Or if she’s thinking it over. Or if she’s gone catatonic. Then she shrugs her shoulders and shakes her head and turns and walks away without a word.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” I say, stepping inside and closing the door behind me before walking down the hallway, the walls of which are lined with framed photos of Mandy and Ted and their daughters—smiling and happy and on vacation. Living normal lives. Doing normal things. There aren’t any photos on the walls of my apartment. If there were, they’d be of me, alone, poaching luck or selling luck or with a catheter in my penis.

Not exactly Kodak moments.

I stop in front of one family photo at Disneyland where they’re all wearing smiles so big they look like a paid advertisement, and I get a twinge of regret at the memories I’ve missed out on, then I follow Mandy into the kitchen, where I find her leaning back against the kitchen counter by the sink with her arms once again folded, giving me a stare so severe that I’m beginning to chafe.

“What are you doing here?” She doesn’t even say anything about how good I look in my suit.

“Can’t a little brother swing by to check in on his big sister without being accused of having an ulterior motive?”

“I didn’t mention any ulterior motive.”

“No. But it’s implied in the tone of your voice.”

“That’s probably just your guilty conscience filling in the blanks.”

“Or maybe it’s just you jumping to conclusions.”

“If I’m jumping to conclusions,” she says, “it’s only because I know where this is headed and I don’t feel like wasting my time trying to get there.”

My dad used to say that to me all the time.

“You know,” I say, “I think this is probably the longest conversation we’ve had in the past ten years.”

“Maybe that’s because we haven’t had anything to discuss.”

“So let’s discuss.” I pull out a chair at the kitchen table and sit down, waiting for her to join me. I even nudge another chair out with my foot, but Mandy stays standing by the sink.

“So what do you want to talk to me about?”

“Where are the girls? Stephanie and . . .” And I can’t remember.

“Stella,” she says. “Stella and Stacy. Wow.”

Well, at least I was close on the first one.

“They’re at the movies with some friends,” she says. “What do you care?”

“Have you always been this hostile? Or do you just reserve it for me?”

“What do you want, Aaron?”

My real name. Or at least the one I was born with. I haven’t used it since I dropped out of college. As far as I’m concerned, Aaron died more than ten years ago. Which, I guess, is why I’m here. To see if there might be any chance of resurrecting him.

“I just wanted to see how my nieces are. Make sure they’re okay.”

“They’re fine, considering you don’t even remember their names. You asked about them earlier this morning. Or don’t you remember that, either?”

“I remember. I was just—”

“Get to the point, Aaron.”

This is the tricky part. Letting Mandy know what’s going on without having her throw something at me. Like a cast-iron skillet. Or a hive of Africanized honeybees.

“Well, there’s this little problem . . .”

“What a surprise,” she says with a short laugh. “There’s always a little problem with you. Only it’s never so little.”

“I know. But this time it’s different.”

“How is it different? Ever since high school it’s been the same story, over and over and over. It’s all about the money. All the time. Nothing else. The thrill of the score. The freedom. But where has that led you? What do you have to show for it? When are you ever going to grow up and learn that poaching isn’t going to make you happy?”

“I know. That’s why I’m going to quit.”

“You’re
going to quit?” she says, sarcasm dripping and pooling on the floor at her feet.

“Yes. As soon as I take care of a few things.”

“Oh, bullshit. I’ve heard that before.”

“When?” I ask.

“Oh, I don’t know. After every important event in my life that you missed because you were poaching. My college graduation. My wedding. The birth of my daughters . . .”

“I’m sorry, Mandy.”

“You’re sorry?”

I nod vigorously.

“For what?”

I realize I’m sorry for so many things that I don’t know where to start.

“For not being there for you,” I say. “For not being part of your life. For everything I didn’t do that I should have done.”

She continues to stare at me, only with less exasperation. “Well, that’s a new one,” she says, her arms unfolding, her palms dropping to rest on the edge of the counter. “You’re never sorry.”

We just look at each other, neither of us saying anything, but at least when I try on a smile to see if it works, she smiles back. It’s just a little one, not much more than a twitch of the lips, but it’s a start.

“Are you really going to quit?”

I nod. “Just as soon as I clear up a little problem.”

She rolls her eyes. “What now?”

“Well, that’s what I came here to talk to you about.”

“And why did you come to talk to me?” She folds her arms again, the twitch of a smile waving good-bye.

“Because the little problem involves you.”

“Me? How, exactly, does it involve me?”

Alex is outside waiting and my poaching clock is ticking, so I give Mandy the abridged version of Barry Manilow and Tommy Wong and the cylinder of bad luck. I don’t tell her about Tuesday Knight, either of them, because, I figure, why upset her?

“Shit,” she says, running her hands through her hair, her voice choked. She holds on to her head, staring at the floor, then she looks up and turns her frustration and glare toward me. “How could you do this to me?”

“It’s not my fault.”

“No, it’s never your fault.”

“I didn’t do anything to bring you into this. Not on purpose.”

“It doesn’t matter if you did it on purpose,” she says, her voice rising. “The fact that I’m involved, that
my family
is involved, is because you’re here.”

“But I’m trying to help.”

“You can help by leaving.”

“Mandy, listen—”

“Leave. Get out.”

“But I—”

“Go.
Now!
” She raises her right hand and points past me to the front door. “And I’m not just talking about my house.”