Redhanded (11 page)

“I was there,” said Chad.

“You were there, but maybe you don't have that much—” Raymond stopped himself before he said
knowledge about boxing
.

Chad let Raymond know he could hear the words that were said, and the ones Raymond kept to himself. “I don't think I have a high opinion of the sport,” said Chad. “But I understand someone who can knock out a rent-a-cop.”

Chad offered me a sly look of sympathy—almost pity—and Raymond held a tortilla chip in his fingers, not eating. The painkiller was wearing off and I could move my mouth. It hurt, but not very much.

“Loquesto maybe did one thing right in his life,” Chad continued, “teaching Steven how to box. It's a shame about Loquesto, maybe the man had some ability. He turned out to be one of these guys running away from his past.”

There was, in fact, a touch of the fugitive in the way Loquesto kept stacks of fresh dress shirts, starched and waiting, next to his collection of sports magazines in the office, as though he might have to don a new disguise any minute. Maybe feinting and dodging in the ring makes you believe in a fluid sneakiness you can't shake off when you retire. But I didn't want to hear any criticism of the coach, and maybe Raymond didn't either.

Raymond said, “Loquesto's not such a jerk.”

Chad let this affront pass like it hadn't been uttered. “I used to shoot baskets, play one-on-one with my brother until it was too dark to see.”

For a moment I could see the boy Chad sitting there, although I wondered if he might suggest a game between the three of us, a chance to use his height and experience.

“Did you play basketball in school?” I asked, expecting him to make some dismissive remark about education.

“I wasn't good enough at the game,” he said.

“It takes practice,” I said, a little surprised.

He happily admitted that this was so. “But even with practice I was only going to be pretty good, not serious-good.”

Chad talked about how he had gone fishing with his brother once, and how his brother caught a perch right out of the bay. I was very hungry, eagerly awaiting the arrival of my
flautas con guacamole
. When an unshaven, convict-type customer looked my way, I gave him a stare until he found something else to do with his eyes.

I felt the stitches with the tip of my tongue, like a huge sailor's knot. Our food arrived, gigantic Syracuse china platters, with food baked onto the surface so thoroughly I had to imagine the hydraulic power in the dishwashing arena, real pros gunning frijoles off the dishware.

“This is a wonderful sight,” said Chad, and he delivered up a smile aimed right at the waitress, beaming up at her like a man who had never seen such a beauty in his life. She was good-looking, pretty eyes and plenty of chest. Her arrival broke Chad's mood.

“Hot plates,” said the waitress. “Don't burn your fingers.”

Chad waited for her to leave, and rolled his eyes at us, letting us imagine what slurs he was silently casting in the waitress's direction,
pussy, slut
.

There was no way I could borrow money from Chad.

I tested my mouth with a tortilla chip. The salt scalded my cut lip, but I maneuvered the food around so it didn't sting much.

Raymond stirred his chili sauce with his fork, not eating.

I listened, and as I did I thought: If I don't go along with these two, they will get themselves shot. Or worse yet, maybe they wouldn't do anything at all, maybe just talk about it.

There was no way I could ask my cash-strapped dad for the money, and I wasn't about to call my mom that night and steer the conversation around to how much it costs to make it in amateur sports.

I was going to have to take a risk.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Outside our apartment you can sometimes hear conversation, even when you can't make out the words, a rise and fall of sounds, unmistakably human, but obscure.

I thought my mother had come back.

I took a moment before I opened the door, listening to my father's voice and a woman's. The key slipped almost soundlessly into the slot.

A woman who looked nothing like my mother, a petite, well-coiffed woman, was perched on the sofa. She looked at me with wide eyes, like someone startled. Dad often invited his women friends here, but I had expected him to take a vacation from this habit for a few days, out of respect for Mom's visit.

This woman certainly didn't dress like my mother, wearing a puffy-sleeved concoction, dark, creased pants, and the kind of shoes that look dressy, except they have Vibram soles with serrated treads—you can walk nine miles to the office.

Dad was sitting beside her, a folder open on his lap, receipts and business forms all over the coffee table. He glanced up and smiled, a brighter, happier man than the shell I had left this morning.

The woman ran her hands up her arms to keep the overlarge sleeves from slipping down, younger than Mom, and someone who paid more attention to her looks.

Dad stirred himself out of whatever airy mood he was in and said, “Steven, this is Emily Shore.”

She was a voice I recognized from the phone, the husky, slow-speaking financial advisor. She had quite a grip, and plainly put some effort into it, letting me know she was used to shaking hands with big bucks.

“I'm so glad we could meet at last,” she said, low and careful, someone who had trained herself out of a hometown accent. She had more of a figure than my mom, and maybe the stylish parachute-blouse was a way of disguising this, keeping the male mind on the bottom line.

“I'm going to give piano lessons,” said Dad.

I said I was glad to hear it. Actually, Emily Shore seemed nice enough, but I knew it was pointless to get friendly with the women Dad brought home. A few turns of the calendar and Dad would have a replacement.

“Emily says we can write off the rent we pay on fifty percent of the unit,” Dad was saying. You could see what women saw in him, his enthusiasm for the subject at hand, whatever it was.

A single plate with crumbs gleamed in the breakfast nook. Two cups of chamomile tea, three-quarters gone, the tea bags sitting soggy in the sink. The tea was cold. The carpet is so new you can see the footprints, ghosting here and there down the hall, toward the bedroom.

“We can write off cookies and coffee for the piano students, and a percentage of the rent on the furniture,” Dad was saying, picking up sheet music company invoices like they were long-lost family letters. “We're taking a proactive tax strategy.”

“A tax strategy,” I said, trying out one of Mom's dry echoes.

Couldn't you work things out better with Mom? I wanted to say. You had to call up this living ad for eye shadow and ask her to drop by to discuss how to avoid paying taxes on a gaunt income?

The way I stood there got Dad's attention—he isn't stupid—and when he swings into full focus you know it.

He said, “Where have you been?”

“Stacy Martell,” I said, being truthful but not elaborating. I gave a hint, making a fist.

Emily made a self-conscious stretching movement, maybe embarrassed and letting off a little tension, Dad and son about to have a set-to right in front of her.

Dad's features softened. “Steven boxes.”

A very un-Momlike dimple appeared in Emily's cheek. “You told me,” she said.

“But I mean he
boxes
. You ought to see him move the big bag around.”

Dad had never come to see me in one of my bouts, explaining that he was 100 percent behind me but couldn't bear to look.

“Really?” said Ms. Shore, one of those exclamations that mean either
how fascinating
, or I
have no idea what you mean
.

“The ‘big bag' is that huge leather sausage you see boxers pounding in movies,” Dad explained. “Boxing is full of droll terminology. A guy who gets cut a lot is called a tomato can. When you hear that a fighter has fought a string of easy opponents you say he's been fed a diet of dead bodies.”

“Good heavens,” said Emily, sounding sultry and polite in a way that made it easy to see why Dad might want to tell her all kinds of things.

“Dad has read a couple of books about it,” I said.

“How'd the match go?” Dad asked, not getting it quite right. Soccer teams and chess players have matches.

“He extended me,” I said. I was being deliberately technical, using a boxing term for “he gave me a challenging workout.”

I really wanted to ask my father what had gone wrong. He spent the night with my mother and got up the next day with nothing to say for himself. I wondered if maybe all women were the same for Dad, no matter the differences in their faces or their views on life.

“I'm designing a poster,” said Dad, proud, like this was a rare talent for an intelligent adult.

Ms. Shore handed me a blue sheet of paper. My dad looks good in all his photos, carefree, lively.
Beginners welcome. Piano study with a master. Hourly rates
.

I said, “Maybe it should go ‘Study piano,' instead of the other way.”

“That's what I thought,” said Ms. Shore, giving me a ninety-dollar smile.

My bedroom is not a place to spend a long evening alone.

I have a TV and a video player, and some paperbacks I keep around, but it's been years since that morning I saw an African lion sitting in the sun. I kept my ancient comic book collection in a Ballantine scotch box, and I had shelves of rocks and curiosities I had once found interesting, a penny that had been run over by a switch engine in the Oakland rail yard, a .45 shell I had found in a creek bed, a rattlesnake rattle my mother's father had sent me in a Jiffy bag.

I called up Danielle and got her mother, the mega-nurse. Binnie is very cheerful on the phone, the way people are when they talk to five hundred voices a day. She said could she take a message, and, no, Danielle hadn't mentioned me. Binnie wished me a good day even though it was night.

Raymond had told Chad, point-blank, that nobody would get hurt, and Chad had put his hands up in easy surrender.

He said it was the last thing he wanted.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I still had a couple of hours before I was supposed to meet Chad and Raymond, and I looked out at the hills going Easter pink with sunset, the sun out of sight on the other side of the building.

I wondered what I was supposed to wear on a night like this. Chad had said “something dark,” but I wondered: Sweatpants? Jeans? I had trouble picking out a shirt, too, every color too bright.

I could hear my father out in the living room, demonstrating to Ms. Shore how even a tax strategist can learn the triplets in “Moonlight Sonata.”

The clock was not moving.

I called my grandparents and the phone rang and rang. My grandparents were the first people in North America, probably, to have an answering machine, decades ago, so I wondered what the problem was. Or maybe they were out under the desert twilight, drinking iced tea and letting the barbecue coals get that nice, even char.

A male voice answered on about the eleventh ring, my grandfather.

“Girlie and Gram are off looking at the yucca trees,” he said.

That's what he calls my mom,
Girlie
. There had been a son, my uncle, who died of meningitis before his first birthday. My grandfather likes to sneak up and grab you from behind and then laugh. He really used to scare me when I was little.

I wanted to ask if the yucca trees had been doing something unusual, vanishing only to reappear in strange places. I offered some general remark, about how stunning the landscape was. “But hot,” I added, feeling ridiculous, making the most vapid small talk in history.

“She's doing just great,” said my grandfather, meaning: Mom looks fine without your dad in her life. “But we're all set to see you,” he added.

Maybe I had hidden a hope from myself—that I might blurt out that I needed money, that I would love to come down and drive a rusted-out pickup truck up and down the desert acres.

A part of me would have loved double-pumping the clutch on an old Dodge four-wheel drive, but at the same time I heard the challenge in my grandfather's voice, the macho drill bit as he went on to say he'd let off both barrels of his twelve gauge right at a coyote the week before, and blew a hole this big.

“How big?” I asked, playing along the way my dad does, sounding boyishly amazed but actually waiting for the conversation to be over.

“About as big as a grapefruit,” he said. And then I sensed the age in him, the uncertainty, questioning himself. “Or maybe a little smaller, about like an orange. I don't know. I missed with the other barrel,” he said, his voice trailing off.

I said that I didn't realize you could hunt coyotes, chiding myself silently for challenging him even in this oblique way.

“Oh, hell, Steve,” he chuckled. “The fence was what I blew out. I missed the coyote by about a half a mile.”

He laughed and laughed, enjoying my confusion, or maybe amused at his own failed bravado, blasting a gap in some old redwood planks.

My mom sounded years younger. “Oh, it's so wonderful to drink water right out of a well,” she said.

Then, “When are you coming down?”

In old-time boxing matches, if you got cut or woozy the referee didn't stop the fight like they do now. The boxers fought on, ribbons of black streaming down their faces in the old silver-and-gray films, the fighters not seeming to mind, like they were already legends, or ghosts.

I stalled as long as I could with my videos.

At last it was time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The Blockbuster Video parking lot was cold.

Chad was walking in a loop, like a pitcher circling the mound. Raymond stayed within himself, hands in the pockets of his dark pants, his long shirtsleeves fluttering in the wind. I was wearing forest green pants, with a loose-fitting, long-sleeved sweatshirt against the chill.