“Yeah, sure,” he said. “But there’s something I think we should do first.”
“What’s that?”
He took a gulp from his Coke before answering. I couldn’t believe he was drinking Coke for breakfast. There should be a law that you can’t drink Coke in the morning. “Go see Anju’s mom,” he said.
“What?”
“Dellinger can’t be that common,” Jake said matter-of-factly, as if he hadn’t noticed the surprise in my voice. “It can’t be hard to find her.”
“How do you know her last name’s Dellinger?”
“Because I saw the nameplate next to the front door, dummy.”
“Oh. But why? You want to give her the you-know-what? Is that what you’re thinking?
“No, no.”
I shook my head. “Then I don’t—”
“I want to try to patch things up between her and Anju. Somebody should do it.”
I couldn’t believe it. We were hundreds of miles away from home, and he wanted to go play psychologist. I kept trying to convince him that we didn’t have time, that his idea would probably only make things worse, but nothing I said changed his mind. After breakfast, he stopped at the phone booth out in the lobby. There were six Dellingers in the book.
Despite my protests that it was way too early to call, he used the change he’d gotten paying for breakfast to start working his way down the list. He struck gold with the third one, listed as an M. Dellinger. He’d been asking all of them if they had a daughter named Anju, and I watched Jake for the usual look of disappointment. But this time he stood up a little straighter.
“No,” he said, “she’s still alive. We were just talking to her yesterday in Boise. I was wondering—”
The woman on the other end said something.
“Yes,” Jake said, “I understand, but . . . ma’am? Ma’am, are you there?” He looked at me. “She hung up.”
“Big shock,” I said.
“She told me that if Anju’s not dead, she might as well be.”
“Ouch.”
“This might be tougher than I thought.”
I shook my head. “I hate to tell you I told you so.”
“No you don’t.”
“Okay,” I said, “I don’t. Ready to give up?”
“Not a chance.”
Then he was back on the phone again, calling one of the local cab companies. Fifteen minutes later, a green cab pulled up to the curb and we hopped inside. Jake now had the gun in his inside jacket pocket, wrapped in some paper towels to hide its general shape. Because I’d whined so much about having it in my backpack, Jake had taken my pack into the restroom while we waited for the cab and made the switch. It made me feel a little better, but not much.
After a short cab ride through the guts of the city, we passed through the slumbering campus of Westminster College and stopped at an apartment complex a few blocks away. It was an older building, two stories and maybe ten units, but nicely maintained. Sprinklers were running on the lawn. Jake paid the cabbie and asked him to wait, saying it was just a quick errand.
“You’re just going to go knock on the door,” I said.
“Sure,” Jake said.
She lived on the bottom floor, the last unit on the end. Jake had to ring the doorbell three times before we finally heard the click of the dead bolt. The door opened a crack and a middle-aged woman with red hair that bordered on purple looked at us over the gold safety chain. There was no doubt we had the right woman: She was obviously Filipino or something similar, and she looked a lot like Anju, just with deeper facial grooves. I saw the top of her white terrycloth robe. I thought it was interesting that she was wearing the same robe as her daughter.
“What you want?” she said. Anju had no accent to speak of, but this woman had one so thick it almost didn’t sound like English.
“I’m the one who called,” Jake said. “About Anju.”
The woman started to close the door, and Jake stopped it with his hand.
“Wait a minute,” Jake said.
“I scream you not let go!” the woman protested.
“Fine, scream,” Jake said. “I just thought you might want to talk to Anju before she kills herself.”
It was enough to cause the woman to thaw, if only a little. “You say this to trick me?”
“No, ma’am,” Jake said. “We’re real worried about her.”
She nodded, looking at the ground. Then she closed the door and Jake didn’t stop her. I thought that might be it, she’d washed her hands of us, but then she opened the door and motioned us inside.
The apartment was at least three times as big as Anju’s, but it seemed much smaller because of all the expensive furniture crammed into it. The woman introduced herself as Malaya and had us sit on a plush white couch that looked like it belonged in the lobby of a Hilton. A giant crucifix, with Jesus on the cross in gory bloody detail, was mounted above the mantle of a white brick fireplace, a mantle covered with dozens of smaller crucifixes.
A fluffy Persian cat that was just as white wandered into the room and hopped up on the arm of the love seat, where Malaya had just taken a seat. There was a strong odor in the room that reminded me of gasoline, a smell that hit me right when we walked inside, and I couldn’t figure out what it was until I realized it was the woman’s perfume.
Without waiting to be asked, Jake launched into what was going on with Anju. He didn’t hold anything back, telling her how John had left and how depressed that had made Anju, how she had gone to Bend looking for him only to find that he had already found another woman, and how we read her journal and discovered that she planned to kill herself. He finished by saying how sad Anju seemed that she and her mother hadn’t been able to patch things up. I thought he laid that part on a little thick, but I could see what he was trying to do.
Up until this point, Malaya stroked her purring cat and looked at the carpet between us, a blank expression on her face, but finally, when Jake spoke about the mother and daughter’s strained relationship, I saw something give in her face, like a dam straining to hold back a rising river. She closed her eyes, seemed to gather herself, then looked up at us defiantly.
“Her fault,” she said. “She left. Her fault.”
Jake didn’t say anything for a while, and we sat there listening to the cat purr. I thought Jake had done all he could, that there were no more cards to play. But Jake continued to sit there, not saying anything, as if he was waiting for something to happen. Then I realized he was trying to wait out Malaya, and finally he succeeded.
“She could call,” she said. “She could come home. Lots she could do. I still here. I never leave.”
Jake nodded slowly. “That’s true,” he said. “And she might. But you know, she might not. And do you really want the last thing your daughter remembers about you to be how you tore up the Christmas card she sent you?”
I cringed, expecting an explosion. There was a flash of anger on Malaya’s face, but it was only there for a moment, and then the dam finally broke. She didn’t move, and she didn’t sob, but tears rolled down her face. She blinked furiously. She made me think of a porcelain doll that had miraculously shed tears.
“I make crazy sometimes,” she said. “I know. I wish I didn’t.”
“We all make crazy sometimes,” Jake said. “But you get a second chance. You can call her.”
Mayala shook her head.
“She sent you the card,” Jake said. “That was her attempt. Now it’s your turn.”
“She no talk to me.”
“How do you know unless you try?”
Mayala was silent for a while. “You know her papa kill himself?”
This was news to both Jake and me, and we exchanged looks.
“No,” Jake said, “we didn’t.”
“He was in war. Vietnam. Lots of bad memories. He got very depressed. Sometimes happy, but most of the time depressed. Sometimes very, very depressed, never get out of bed some days. Lots of times he try kill hi
mself. Finally, he use gun.”
“I’m sorry,” Jake said. “But now you have a chance to stop Anju from making the same mistake. You can call her.”
“When?”
“Now,” Jake said.
Mayala was shaking her head, but Jake rose and went to the antique rotary phone on the end table and held up the receiver. Mayala bowed her head, and for a long time I thought she was going to just sit there, but finally she rose and made her way over to it. He handed her the phone and she stared at it as if it was an alien thing. Finally, with great care, she dialed, and I could hear the clicks of the rotary across the room.
It was hard to hear the person on the other end clearly, but I heard a woman say hello. Mayala said nothing. The woman said hello again. Malaya looked at Jake, who nodded at her.
Mayala swallowed and closed her eyes. When she spoke, it was with a tiny voice. “Anju,” she said.
There was a lot of crying on both ends of the line, but things seemed to go reasonably well. We sneaked out before they’d finished. The morning dew had burned off while we were inside, the sun much higher over the Rockies. The cab had abandoned us, so we started walking toward the Westminster campus, thinking we could catch a bus back into town from there. Jake lit up a cigarette. He didn’t say much, but I could sense this warm smugness all around him that got annoying after only a few minutes.
“There’s still no guarantee they’ll work it out,” I said.
“Nope,” he said, blowing out smoke, “there’s no guarantee.”
“It’s not like one phone call is going to make everything right.”
“Probably not, but it’s a start. It’s also a good sign that Anju’s mom didn’t even have to look up the number.”
I hadn’t noticed that, and it made me irritated, Jake noticing something like that when I didn’t. We walked on for a while saying nothing, people mowing their lawns around us, sprinklers gyrating.
“You know,” I said, “she could always go out and buy another gun.”
He stopped dead in his tracks. We were getting close to the campus, where the houses and the upscale condominiums had been replaced by cheaper apartments, bicycles parked on the patios, Westminster College placards in many windows.
“What is it with you?” he said.
“Huh?”
“You want Anju to kill herself or something?”
“No, of course not!”
He dropped his cigarette on the sidewalk and ground it out with his shoe. “Then why are you so negative?”
“I’m not negative.”
“Yes, you are,” Jake insisted. “It’s like you wanted me to fail here.”
“I didn’t—” I began.
“You think it’s better to do nothing? Is that what you think? We should just sit by and let her blow her brains out without even trying?”
“No!” I replied.
“You can’t always do nothing, Charlie. You can’t always just sit on your hands and wait for things to take care of themselves. Sometimes you got to try. At least try. Jesus. I mean, Anju might have died. Don’t you get that?”
“I understand, but—”
“But what? This isn’t high school. This isn’t like sitting in class hoping the teacher doesn’t call on you. This is real life. Things you do matter. I may not get good grades or anything like you, and maybe I’m going to flunk out of high school, but high school’s pretend, Charlie. It’s pretend. This is real. You can’t live in a pretend world forever.”
“I know that!” I shouted.
“Good!”
“Fine!”
We walked the rest of the way to campus, both of us sulking, me lingering a little behind him. I was mad, but I was mostly mad at myself. He was right. For some reason, I had wanted him to fail, and it made me feel very small. I’d always thought of myself as so much better than him in so many ways. Yeah, he may have been cool, and he may have known how to talk to girls, but he was a flunky who was going to end up pumping gas while I raked in the big money as a doctor. But he had made me realize how shallow this thinking was. I’d always thought of myself as above the preppies, that I wasn’t fake like they were, but now I seemed just as fake as them.
Jake had done something real. He had made a difference in somebody’s life. What had I ever done, except hide in my little shell, hoping nobody would pick on me?
It wasn’t until we were riding the bus back into town that we were finally talking again. At first, it was just inane comments about all the Mormons, how everyone we saw on the street was somebody’s cousin, comments that got some harsh glares from the other passengers. There was still something there between us, something unsettled, but it was like we’d called a truce. We transferred buses a couple of times, finally getting off right at the bus and train depot. I started for the door, but stopped when I realized Jake wasn’t with me.
He stood on the sidewalk, grinning like a mad monkey.
“What?” I said.
“Let’s go have some fun,” he said.
“Huh?”
He decided to show me rather than tell me. There was a big store down the road called Price-N-Pride, full of mostly Wal-Mart–type stuff, and toward the back of the sterile air-conditioned aisles, he found a large package of brightly colored latex balloons. He held them up to his smirking face.
“You got to be kidding,” I said.
“I think it’s time for the Water Balloon Boys to ride again,” he said.
“No way.”
“Aw, where’s your sense of adventure?”
“This isn’t even our city!”
He nodded. “All the better. We get them wet, and then we ride for the hills.”
“You’re crazy!”
He laughed like a maniac and headed for the checkout register, picking up a cheap blue duffle bag along the way. Nothing I said could change his mind. Outside, he pointed to the tallest building in the area, a big gray hunk of concrete at least ten stories high. I told him traffic was too busy and that we might cause accidents. He called me a wuss, but didn’t press on with the idea either. Instead he said we should target the nicest-dressed people on the street and give them a little wet surprise. I told him we’d probably get arrested, and he replied with more laughter.
Using the public bathroom at Pioneer Park, we filled up as many water balloons as his blue duffle bag would hold—at least a dozen. The water sloshed inside the bag as Jake carried it. I wore my backpack on my back. He wanted to put balloons in there, too, but I wouldn’t let him. No way I was letting my drawings get soaked. Jake agreed that this was probably not a good idea and even stuck his wad of money down at the bottom of the bag, beneath the American History text. He said if he was caught and I wasn’t, then at least I’d have the cash.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” I said.
“Who should we target first?” he said.
“Nobody.”
“Aww.”
“Jake, this is nuts.”
“Afraid you’re going to get caught?”
“Well yeah! Yeah, I am!”
He took a seat on a park bench. Traffic on West 300th grumbled by, buses spewing out diesel exhaust, brakes squealing. Men in suits, women in nice dresses, mothers holding the hands of children—all of them walked by on the sidewalks, and I felt sorry for all of them. None of them had any idea that they might be soaking wet in a few minutes.
“Look at it this way,” Jake said, “all these people—they want to get wet. They just can’t admit it to themselves. Look at them, Charlie. Just walking along, safe in their little worlds. They have no excitement in their lives. We’re going to give them some excitement. We’re going to shake things up for them. In the end, they’ll thank us.”
“I really have a hard time believing they’re going to thank us for making them soaking wet,” I said.
“Well, maybe not in so many words,” he said, and he pulled out a yellow water balloon. “But inside, deep down, they really will be grateful.”
&n
bsp; A young guy in a pin-striped gray suit, a cell phone up to his ear, walked by our bench. Jake grinned at me. I had a vision of him grinning at me inside a prison cell. I was about to say something along the lines of How do you feel about prison food?, but then the water balloon was in the air. I watched the jiggling latex hurtling toward its unsuspecting victim, hoping that it would miss, hoping that if it did hit, it would hit only the man’s ankles, but Jake’s aim was too good. It hit the man right between the shoulder blades.
The man jerked to a stop. There was now a dark spot in the middle of his jacket, and water and bits of yellow balloon dribbling down his back.
“Gotcha!” Jake cried.
The guy turned. The astonishment on his face changed quickly to rage, a veil of red starting at his neck and extending all the way to his forehead.
“You little bastard!” the guy shouted, and started for Jake.
With a laugh, Jake ran. I had no choice but to follow him. After a block, the guy gave up the chase. We rounded a corner and ducked into an alley, taking refuge behind a Dumpster, both of us breathing hard. It smelled like rotting fish. Jake looked at me and started laughing, and I couldn’t help myself, I started laughing too.
“The look on that guy’s face—” Jake wheezed.
“Priceless—” I gasped.
Jake laughed harder. “Like the commercial—”
“Yeah—”
And just like that, the Water Balloon Boys were back in business. The other end of the alley came out at a stoplight. We waited until a middle-aged guy pulled up in a convertible, a perky blond woman half his age in the passenger seat, and then both of us jumped out and lobbed water balloons right into their laps. We took off before the balloons even reached their targets, and we could still hear the woman screaming four blocks away.
Over the next half hour, we drenched two ladies in spandex jogging side by side, a group of balding old men in polo shirts, some gang-banger types on skateboards, and even a muscle-bound oaf on a motorized scooter who followed us for half a mile before we finally lost him inside a department store. In the store, we continued our act, heading into the men’s restroom and hitting a guy standing at a urinal. He shrieked like a little girl. A beefy security guard tried to nab us on our way out, but we managed to slip by and scurry away.
The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys Page 12