The Tragic Age (17 page)

“What kind of leads?” I say.

“It doesn't give any details,” says Ephraim.

“Ah, then it's all bullshit,” Twom says. “If they knew anything, they'd do something about it. Besides, what are they gonna do, throw us in jail for drinking their beer?” He raises the can of Tecate and drains it.

“You tell'm, baby,” says Deliza. She throws the dice, scores doubles, and counts the last of her pieces off the board. Twom stares down at the board as if uncertain as to what just happened. Rising, Deliza stretches like a cat. And now, out of nowhere, probably because nowhere is
probably
where her mind lives and works most of the time, she begins to undress.

“What are you doing?” says Twom. But he's smiling as if he knows exactly what she's doing.

“Getting naked. Billy doesn't care and Ephraim would rather you take off
your
pants.” Deliza looks at Ephraim.
“¿Verdad?”
She says it in this sweet, high-pitched voice that makes her sound like she's a blameless little girl.

“Shut up,” says Ephraim.

“Ooh, you so tough,” says Deliza. She drops her bra on Ephraim's head.

“Come on, huh!” Ephraim tosses the bra aside. His face looks scalded.

Stripping off her thong panties, Deliza lies down on a lounge chair directly across from me. I'm staring. I don't want to, it feels disloyal to Gretchen, but I can't help it. Pictures and porno clips don't prepare you for flesh and blood. Deliza's skin is mocha colored. Her breasts are larger than Gretchen's, the nipples are dark and erect. She wears a small gold ring in her navel. She has no tan lines. She has shaved all her pubic hair and her sex seems puffy and engorged.

You suddenly know it wasn't just a face that launched a thousand ships.

I look away. I pretend to read about George Washington, but out of the corner of my eye, I can't help but continue to look.

And she knows it.

 

45

It's the sound of a car door slamming and it makes me stop breathing.

I have left George Washington and Deliza's labia, have gone into the house, crossed the empty living room, gone up the stairs, moved down the hall, and turned into a bedroom where, lying down on a sheetless, coverless, pillowless mattress, I have tried to sleep. Even though my brain is aching and I'm running on fumes, it's impossible.

This house has its own personal nightmares.

I quickly jump up and off the mattress. As I come out of the bedroom I hear the sound of a metal gate opening. When I move to the window at the top of the stairs to peek out, I see that a home security car is parked out on the street and that a uniformed, armed guard is crossing the courtyard toward the front door. I see that a second guard is out on the street. It hits me all at once that we left the gate swinging open.

Doomsday rolling in my gut, I run down the hall. I race down the stairs and through the foyer. I run into and across the living room. I run out the open doors into the back, toward the pool. The image of a howler monkey, mouth agape, screaming a warning, flashes across my brain. I throw a cupped hand over the monkey's open mouth.

No one is there.

No Ephraim, no Twom, no naked Deliza. There are no beer cans, no backgammon set, no clothes, no towels. The sun shines. The sea is white and shimmering. Or is it a desert I'm looking at? Maybe I
am
asleep. It's come to this. I'm so snooze deprived, I can no longer distinguish sleep from awake, dream state from reality.

The sound of the doorbell is all the wake-up I need. It sends me racing back into the house. In the living room, I detour into the adjoining dining room where the abandoned table lives. I move through the far doorway and enter into a hallway. Moving down the hallway I pass a rear stairway that climbs to the second floor. I keep going. Moving past the pantry with its endless empty shelves, I hear voices.

In the industrial-sized kitchen, Twom and Deliza are just putting the frozen pizza into the microwave oven. I'm hyperventilating so badly, I can hardly speak. They look at me, alarmed.

I start breathing again. Barely.

“Guards … security…”

“We're out of here,” Twom says, and he grabs Deliza by the arm and turns for the door. I start to follow. I stop.

“Where's Ephraim?”

Twom looks back in surprise. “He went with you.”

“Does it look like he went with me!” I say.

“Leave him,” says Deliza. “He can take care of himself.”

“Are you off the edge?” I say.

“Are
you
?” says Deliza.

“He'll tell them everything,” I say.

“Aw, shit,” says Twom. What else is there to say? All of us know that it's true. Maybe he's already confessing. I ask myself, other than the legal fees, the court appearances, the notoriety and the shame, what's the worst that can happen? I'm a clean-cut, well-spoken white kid whose parents have money. I've never been in trouble before and my future is bright. I promise myself that after I get out of prison, where I'll no doubt be serially sodomized into oblivion by large, angry men, I will never do stupid things again.

“Go,” I say. “I'll find him.”

To his credit, Twom hesitates for a brief moment. “We'll meet you at the car.” And then he and Deliza are out the door and gone.

I turn and run out of the kitchen. I run through the pantry and back down the hall past the stairs. I run into the dining room. I'm just about to run into the living room when something stops me. I stop and I peek around the door frame and across toward the foyer like some dumb kid playing kick the can.

Olly-olly-oxen-free! All come home!

I wish.

I hear the key turn in the front door lock. I see the door open a crack, then open all the way. The security guard is about fifty years old, with a belly that hangs over his wide black belt. He moves to the alarm system which, of course, is off.

I retreat. I tiptoe back across the dining room and down the hallway. I get to the back stairs leading to the second floor. I want to get out of here, I want to join Twom and Deliza at the car. I want to go home. Instead, I go up the stairs two at a time. I'm at the second-floor landing when Ephraim crashes bodily into me. We bang into the wall and fall in a heap.

“There are people!” gasps Ephraim. He's lost his glasses in the fall and is bug-eyed with fear.

“No kidding, shut up!” I'm ready to hit him in his stupid, pale, moron face, I really am. “They're security guards,” I say.

“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” says Ephraim. “What do we do?”

I want to tell him that God has better things to do than come to the rescue of a pimple-faced, junk-food-eating reformatter of hard drives but I don't. “We be quiet and we hide,” I say. Fat chance. Ephraim is already beginning to burble like a baby. And now, wouldn't you know it, his asthma kicks in.

Fact.

Asthma is a chronic disease, its chief characteristic being inflammation in the airways. The throat muscles tighten and the lining of the air passages swells. The amount of air taken in is dramatically reduced. Asthma can be triggered by anxiety or panic.

Translation.

Since anxiety and panic are Ephraim's two middle names, in a matter of micromoments he is a wheezing, choking lump of worthless protoplasm. I have no choice. I pull Ephraim up. I kick, pull, punch, and half carry and half drag him down the hall. I push Ephraim into a bedroom.

“Get under the bed,” I say, “and stay there.”

Ephraim nods. He's blinking tears. Snot is coming from his nose. He's wheezing like an old man getting ready to die. As he crawls under the bed, I can hear someone coming up the front staircase.

“Hello? Anybody up there?”

Ephraim sobs and coughs and farts and covers his stupid mouth and nose and sobs and coughs again. No way I'm getting under a bed with him.

“Anybody here?” calls the voice again. I hear the creak of footsteps at the top of the stairs.

It goes like this.

Ephraim is babbling incoherently as the two of us, hands cuffed behind us, are led out of the house by the home security guards.

“They made me I didn't want to it wasn't my idea at all it was all his Billy Kinsey Billy his father is Gordon Kinsey and his mother is Linda and the others are Willard Twomey and Deliza Baraza who made me they're to blame not me I didn't reformat any hard drives!”

Of course, this doesn't happen. There is only one way it can really go.

I pull Ephraim out from under the bed and up off the floor. “Get up!” I say. “Move, move!” Turning, I run Ephraim across the bedroom toward the paned glass window. He screams as we go crashing through.

In a rain of glass and wood, we fall. Ephraim is still screaming but I can't hear him. I feel mildly surprised and resigned at what I've done. It's twenty feet down and we land badly on the cement. My legs twist one way, my body another. Ephraim's head strikes the ground and bounces, then hits again. We tumble and roll and come to rest. We don't get up.

A seagull caws.

I'm on my back. There is blood in my mouth. The angle of my spine tells me my back is broken. I turn my head. Ephraim's face is inches away. His eyes are open and blankly staring. I turn my head and look up into the pistol of the second guard.

“Am I gone 'rest you?” he says with a redneck Southern accent. “Or you gonna die 'n' save me the trouble?”

Fortunately an option other than these presented itself.

The guard is about halfway down the hall, when I come out of the bedroom, pulling my T-shirt over my head. I cough slightly. When I see the guard, see the gun in his hand, I cry out and pull back in fear. I hope I'm not dealing with an amateur, some custodian trying to pick up a few bucks in his spare time.

“Don't hurt me!” I say. “Please!”

“Don't move,” the guard says. He looks nervous. He lowers the pistol only slightly as he takes the walkie-talkie off his utility belt. “I have somebody upstairs,” the guard says. He stares at me again. “Kid, you want to tell me what you're doing here?”

“I'm staying here?” I say, making it a question.

“Here?” says the guard. He sounds skeptical.

“For the weekend?” I say. “I'm on break? From USC? I mean, it was supposed to be okay.”

The guard speaks into his walkie-talkie again. “Hold on,” he says. He looks at me again. “Do the Esperanzas know you're here?”

“Well, yeah,” I say. “I mean, like, my mom set it up. She and Mrs. Esperanza are really good friends. And the groundskeeper left the side door open for me and they gave me the code for the alarm. I can give it to you if you want.” I try to look worried. “Or if you want you can call my mom?”

The guard looks uncertain.

“Brigham?” he says into his walkie-talkie. “Come on up.”

Ten minutes later, I'm at the front door bidding both of them a fond farewell. As security personnel go, they're downright friendly.

“Sorry for the scare,
Mr. Montebello,
” the older guard says.

“No, it's okay. Really,” I say. “It's really good that you were doing your job. Really.” I wonder if I should tip them.

“If you go out, make sure to reset the alarm, sir,” the younger guard says. The fact that I know the code has made a huge difference. As has the fact that the Esperanzas are in Mexico, probably in hiding from other drug cartels, and can't be reached for verification.

“I will,” I say. “Thanks! Have a great day!”

The older guard actually waves as they drive out the gate. It really sort of sucks that if I was a black, punk homeboy I'd be in the back of the car with him. Or even dead. But I'm a clean-cut, well-spoken, white kid in cargo shorts and a polo shirt. And he wasn't a custodian trying to make a few bucks on the side.

He was a moonlighting schoolteacher.

 

46

Deliza's Mercedes is on the street where we left it. I'm almost surprised. Twom would want to wait but after twenty minutes Deliza would no doubt want to get the hell out of Dodge, leaving us to fend for ourselves. Most of the time lately in an argument like this, she wins.

Ephraim and I approach at a fast walk. Ephraim is still huffing and heaving. Getting him out of the house was like lifting and carrying a long toothpaste tube of blubbering mucus. If anyone had stopped and asked, I'd already decided to tell them I've just saved Ephraim from drowning. And in a way, I have.

“Billy, what the fuck, dude,” says Twom.

“Just get us out of here,” I say. “I am so over this.”

“Yeah, but what happened?” Twom says. “You okay?”

I push Ephraim into the back of the Benz. “Everything's fine. Just get us home, will you?” I'm trying not to yell. I know from having to listen to Dad all the time that when you yell, people don't really listen to you, even if you're right. And so I'm really trying hard not to scream.

“Please,” I say, very quietly. “Let's all go home. We'll talk about it later.”

The whole way, Ephraim never opens his eyes and never stops whimpering. “Never. Never again,” he says. “Never, never, ever again.” It's cringe inducing that he's such a wuss but I'm pretty much thinking the same thing myself.

“Billy.”

Twom is looking at me in the rearview mirror.

“Did they see you? See your face?”

I nod. Maybe it's why they let me off. They felt sorry for the scared-looking kid with the easy-to-describe, one-of-a-kind, deep purple hemangioma on the side of his face.

 

47

“Something's different,” says Dr. Quinn as if he's not sure exactly what it is. Killer Cover Total Blockout is a theatrical makeup, a makeup for
actors
—meaning people pretending to be what they're not. I've pretty much started wearing a light base of it twenty-four-seven. You can hardly see the stain on my cheek unless you look close.