by Edwin Dasso
He sits up. “Hey. You’ve got to finish the story.”
“That’s pretty much it. I’ll see you later.” I turn to go and hear him climbing out of the mini-van. He sounds angry, snorting and stomping around.
“Fuck you,” he says and hurls the empty vodka bottle in my direction. It whizzes past my head, shattering against the side of the Jeep.
I point at the glass shards. “What the hell, man!”
He gives me the finger, and walks back to the Hummer.
10
Violet
Violet brought her teenaged daughter to work. The girl, Eva, was suspended from school. Smoking in the bathroom or something. Violet didn’t want to leave her at home alone, and thought maybe seeing people doing actual work might have an effect on her. It had an effect on me. It made me realize that Violet and I are playing with more people’s lives than our own. Dana, Violet’s husband, her daughter—their happiness was in jeopardy because of us. Because of me.
One day she opened up about the trouble Eva is having at school.
“Honestly Hercule, I don’t know what to do. The girl is hanging out with the slacker kids, the pot smokers and class ditchers, and her grades reflect the change. Punishing her has no effect. I’ve tried giving her incentives to improve her grades. You know, shopping trips and such. She won’t even talk to her father, and when I try to talk to her she sighs and rolls her eyes. We were so close when she was little. It just breaks my heart.”
Violet and I haven’t had sex, but we’ve been pretty close to it. Last week we started taking Violet’s SUV to go to lunch. We weren’t technically going to lunch. Violet found a more secluded spot than the residential street off La Brea, a parking lot behind an abandoned bakery. She drove us straight there. The seats in her SUV are roomier than in my little car. She shimmied across the center console to share my seat. We made out for a while, but then she wanted to talk about her husband.
Violet’s husband, Brett, isn’t physically abusive. The way she describes him he seems like a pretty normal guy. The trouble with Brett is that he’s a guy’s guy. He prefers hanging out with his friends to spending time with Violet. He and the guys get together a couple times a week to play poker or watch a game at a bar. They go on trips to Vegas, leaving their wives at home to take care of the kids. Violet’s lonely. She feels abandoned by both her husband and her daughter.
11
Hades
It’s dark in the Mustang when I open my eyes. My hands are folded across my chest, the flashlight perched on my stomach. I imagine this is what I'll look like lying in a coffin. I pick up the flash and shine the light on the dashboard. The cockroach is sitting in the empty pudding cup, which is lying on its side. He doesn’t seem startled by the sudden light, and I can’t tell if he’s awake or asleep. I lean forward.
“Hello, Gregor.”
He gives me a glance. I click off the light and sit up. My neck is killing me. I must have slept with my head jammed against the door. There’s a glow off in the distance, but the area around my Mustang is pretty dark. I guess the few headlights I left lit finally drained their car's batteries. There’s a strange smell in the air. It takes me a second to identify it, engine exhaust. Jax must be driving around again. I spend a couple of minutes massaging my neck, then get out of the car and stretch. I do a few toe touches and deep knee bends, and even though I'm reluctant to touch the concrete floor, I get down and do some push-ups. Then I hook my toes on either side of the Mustang's front left tire to do sit-ups. Just as I'm struggling to make sit up number fifty, I hear a rumbling noise. It’s louder than Jax’s other excursions, and for one brief moment I imagine it's the sound of digging. I think maybe we're going to be rescued, but as I listen I realize it's just a car, and all the energy is sucked out of my body.
Fuck. C'mon Hercule, use your head. Don't let your circumstance dictate your emotions. Be the boss of you.
I get up, grab my flashlight and tire iron, and make my way toward the noise. When I get closer I can see that Jax has pulled some of the cars into a circle around the Hummer. He finishes backing a Volkswagen into the circle, slamming the car's rear bumper into the front end of a minivan. I wave to him and he climbs out of the VW, his big frame barely squeezing through the door.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“Just marking my territory. Not trying to be a dick or anything, but I think it’s a good idea if we establish some boundaries. You know, just to avoid any confusion, any unnecessary arguments.”
“Sure, but we’re all trapped down here together.”
“Yes we are, and if you two were smart you’d elect me the leader. I’ve got the qualifications. You know, I had the firm’s highest GCI three years in a row.”
“I know. What makes you think we need a leader?”
“Somebody has to keep order down here.”
“Can’t we just cooperate with one another? There are only three of us.”
“That’s exactly the sort of pussy thing I expected you to say. Look, I’m claiming this area as my territory. As long as you recognize that, we won’t have any arguments.”
“What kind of arguments do you think we might have?”
He looks at me like I’ve asked a stupid question. “Turf, property, ownership arguments, that sort of thing. You’ve got the Mustang, and I’m claiming this area as my domain." He gives me a stern look. "So, we’re clear, right?”
“Sure.” I look across the ring of cars to the Hummer in the center. “You want me to knock when I come over to visit?”
“I want you to respect my authority.” Like a shadow boxer, he throws a few punches at the air. “I’ll let you know if it’s okay to come in.”
I decide not to push it. I also decide not to mention the stench of the exhaust fumes. The air in the garage is stale as it is, and the last thing we need is to burn up oxygen and pollute our remaining air with hydrocarbons, but Jax has got a bug up his ass, and I don't want to set him off. Instead I ask, "Seen Sandra today?"
Jax says, "I went over to her car to see how she was doing, but she chased me off."
"Chased you off?"
"Yeah. She wouldn't talk to me. She was sitting in the back seat, so I bent down and stuck my head in to say hello, and she just turned away. Wouldn't say a word. I walked around to the other side of her car, and she threw a bottle at me."
"Sorry, man. She's probably pretty frightened. You know, I guess we all are."
"Yeah, well, fuck her. I'm through trying to be nice to that bitch."
"I'll look in on her later, make sure her leg's okay. I want to do a little more scrounging, first. I'm almost out of pudding cups, and I'm starving." I point to the other side of the garage, past Jax's ring of cars. "Have you gone through the cars by that far wall, yet? Anything edible in them?"
"I haven't looked, but now that you mention it, I'm fuckin' hungry. Let's go take a look.”
Jax picks up a piece of clean rebar to bust windows with, and we walk past his enclave to the far row of cars. A few of them have already been cracked open by falling concrete. We move from car to car, checking the trunks and glove compartments and looking under the seats. We come up with a couple more flashlights and a few cans of energy drink. In the third car, a mini-van, we strike it rich. Jax pops the back open and there are two big boxes of candy bars, Snickers and Almond Joy. Each box contains twelve smaller boxes, and each smaller box contains twelve candy bars.
"This is awesome, man. There are two hundred and eighty-eight bars here. That's— Hang on." I do a little quick math. "Ninety-six candy bars each."
"Ninety-six. How do you figure?"
"Divide two eighty-eight by three."
"Oh yeah, the bitch."
I dump out the contents of a gym bag and load up the energy drinks, flashlights and tools we've found. Then we move down the line and search the rest of the cars, munching candy as we go. It takes us a couple of hours, but when we finish we've got a pretty good stash of supplies. There are even a couple of fir
st aid kits, one with disinfectant wipes.
I get to the last car just before Jax, and when I bust open the back window, I'm glad I do. There's a shopping bag on the seat containing four bottles of red wine, the perfect thing to pair with pudding cups and Snickers bars. I start to turn, looking for Jax to tell him about the wine, when I notice something protruding from under the front seat. I snatch it up and slide it into my gym bag, shoving it under the energy drinks, then look to make sure Jax didn't notice. It's a handgun, a Glock. Seems like every fashion-conscious gun guy has to have a Glock. I zip up the bag and sling it over my shoulder. I decide to give Jax two of the four bottles of wine. I hope it'll distract him so he won't ask to see in the gym bag. I'm nervous enough being around this guy with his volatile temper. Giving him access to a gun would scare the hell out of me. I hold up the wine bottles. "Check this out. We've got us a little more alcohol."
"What is it?"
"Red wine. Two bottles, each."
"Thanks. Hey, I thought you wanted to share all our foraging with the bitch."
"I'll give her some of mine if she wants it."
"Gonna put the moves on her, huh. That is one good-looking piece of ass."
I figure it's easier to go along with his bullshit than start another argument.
Be one of the guys, Hercule. "Damn right,” I say.
We continue moving along the row of cars to the end. When we get to the last car in the line I see it. A nightmare. A body. A man in a business suit lying face down, his arms thrown out to the sides, his head flattened beneath a rectangular concrete slab. He must have fallen or been knocked down just as the ceiling— It's funny, the little details one notices. The man's suit is covered with concrete dust, so much dust that I can't tell if the material is gray or blue, and it looks limp, as though there's no one in it. But his expensive-looking shoes are perfectly clean. The tops, the soles, there's not a speck of dirt on them. I keep my flashlight beam trained on his shoes. I don't want to look at his head. I don't want to, but I have to. I move the light to shine on his shoulders and the area where his head should be, and when I do, I hear Jax gag. He's standing behind me. I don't take my eyes off the dead man, but I hear Jax leaving, walking back the way we came. This could have been me. It still could be. A falling slab could crush one of us at any moment.
There's not as much blood as I would have thought, at least not visible blood. There's probably more under the concrete slab. I start to click off my flashlight when another detail catches my eye. His necktie is lying across his shoulder. It must have flipped up and over when he fell. It's one of those clever novelty neckties, an eye chart with the big capital E on top and subsequent rows of letters below it, each row smaller in size. Maybe the guy was an optometrist. I have a dark thought, "I guess he didn't see this coming," and then I start to laugh. It takes all my will to turn off the flashlight and move away from the dead man, and as I head back to the Mustang my horrible uncontrollable laughing is interspersed with horrible uncontrollable sobbing.
I pull myself together and go looking for Sandra. She’s sitting in the back seat of her car when I approach. I decide not to mention the corpse. I don't want to frighten her any more than she already is. I tap on a back fender, then circle around to a side window, standing well back so she can see me.
"Don't throw anything," I say, "I've got some stuff for you."
She turns to look at me, and I can tell right away she's been crying. Her eyes are red and her face is puffy. She wipes her cheeks with a t-shirt.
"Been talking to Jax?" she asks.
"Yeah. You really hate that guy, don't you?"
"I told you. He hit me. He's a narcissist with no self-control. He wants what he wants when he wants it, and if he doesn't get it—look out. Other women in the office have had trouble with him, too. Some of them call him The Bug. I want nothing to do with him. You need to be careful around him, too. He’ll hurt you if you piss him off."
"Got it. So, how's the leg?"
"Better, I think. I've stopped using the tourniquet. There's still a little seepage, but for the most part the bleeding has stopped."
I dig into my gym bag and pull out one of the first aid kits. "We were scrounging around in some of the cars and came up with this. It's got alcohol wipes in it, so you can clean the wound." I hand her the box through the window. "Actually, you should just clean around the wound. Maybe pat the wound itself but do it gently. You don't want to dislodge the clot."
She takes the kit. "Thanks.”
I dig into the bag again, and come up with a bottle of wine and her third of the candy bars. "Here's some sugar and alcohol. You're not diabetic, are you?"
"No."
I hand her the bottle and the candy. "This'll keep you going, but don't eat too much. It'll spike your blood sugar and give you a headache."
"Does Jax know you're giving me this stuff?"
"Yeah. We're sharing. I split it up into thirds." I turn to go, but she calls me back.
"Stay and talk for a bit. Why don't you sit up front?"
I toss the gym bag into the front seat and slide in after it. I say, "So, you work for a real estate firm in Century City. That must be interesting."
"Multi-million dollar properties, both commercial and residential. International clients. Lots of wheeling and dealing. It's boring as hell."
"That's too bad. What would you rather do?"
"I like kids, especially toddlers. I've thought about teaching, maybe pre-school or kindergarten."
"Why don't you do it?"
"Mostly because of the money. It's shit pay. I'm saving to buy a house. Only jerks pay rent, especially in L.A."
"I pay rent."
She shrugs.
"So, you're going to keep working at a job you don't like? That sounds like a drag."
"Yeah, well, what do you do?"
"Commercial art. Mostly design, but some illustration."
"Do you like it?"
"Touché. What I'd really like to do, of course, is paint."
"And you don't paint because—?"
"My wife is a magazine editor, and the money isn't that great, so I need to have an income. You know, you could go to night school for your teaching certificate while you're working at the real estate company. That way, when you buy your house, you'll be all set to change careers."
"That's not a bad idea, and I've got plenty of time. I've given up on the dating scene. Every guy I've been out with in the last year has been an asshole. Face it, man. Your sex is messed up. I went out with one guy who ended our first date early so he could meet another woman he'd made a date with for the same evening. The next guy spent the whole date complaining that it was the fault of the feminists that he couldn't get laid. When I pointed out that his embrace of victimhood might have something to do with it, he called me a bitch and stormed out of the restaurant. Stuck me with the check, too."
"I'd apologize for my fellow men, but we're not all like that. There are still a few sane men roaming around."
"Yeah, well, I haven't met 'em. My college boyfriend came close, but he hooked up with his French teacher, 'Chantal.' The last I heard they were eating cheese and banging each other’s brains out in the Marais. It took me a long time to get over that guy. I cried myself to sleep every night for six months. I went into therapy. I didn’t think I’d ever get over him. Hell, I'd switch to dating women, but they're even crazier."
"So, you've got time to go to night school. My dad is a really practical guy, not inclined toward sentiment, but chock full of fatherly advice. One of his favorites is, 'All roads lead nowhere, so choose one with heart.' I think what he means is, do something with your life that makes a difference for someone other than yourself."
"And subsequently you'll feel better about yourself. My yaya used to say stuff like that."
She smiles for the first time. It animates her face, giving it a warmth it otherwise lacks. I open the car door to go back to the Mustang, but stop when I hear shouting. Jax is raging at the t
op of his lungs, swearing punctuated with the sound of breaking glass. Sandra stiffens when she hears it.
“That guy scares me,” she says.
12
Violet
I don’t know why, but I expected Violet to agree when I said, “We should stop this.” We were huddled together in the passenger seat of her car again, parked behind the bakery. The only other car was a beater with a handful of tickets on the windshield.
Violet said, “You mean this?” She ran her hand up the inside of my thigh. Kissed my neck.
I picked her hand off my leg and held it. “Seeing each other, I mean. Seeing each other.”
“We can’t stop. I don’t want to stop. You obviously don’t want to stop.” She looked down at my crotch to emphasize her point.
“It’s more than just us. I realized that when I saw your daughter at the office. We’re gambling with our families’ happiness.”
“What about our happiness? Don’t we have a right to be happy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. I like being with you, but I’m constantly worried that we’ll slip up. What would that do to your husband and daughter? What would that do to my wife?”
“Brett wouldn’t even notice. And Eva? It would just confirm her opinion that her mother’s an asshole. I need us. I don’t have anyone else.”
“And Dana?”
“You said it yourself. Your wife won’t even touch you.” She put her hand back on my thigh. “We have the right to be happy.”
“Maybe, but it doesn’t change the fact that I’m worried. I worry about everything, all the time.”
“Well, don’t. It’s that simple. Just don’t.”