Tacoma Stories

by Richard Wiley

  Across the bay, Lars could see the Brown’s Point Lighthouse, a solid pillar in the otherwise wispy haze, with a few boats dotting the chop in between. Fishing was ruined, so only when the weather was good did he see even half as many boats as he had when he was a child. His grandfather had a story about fishing at the mouth of the Puyallup River during a salmon derby back in the 1930s, rowing along by himself and having an eighteen-pound Chinook jump into his boat. His grandfather won third prize in the derby, but those days were gone forever. And nothing had ever jumped in Lars’s boat, even metaphorically.

  He kept his eyes on the beach, stopping occasionally to look at something left by the outgoing tide. The wind blew around the Point with a vengeance, forcing the few boats he did see to hunker down. He decided he would walk as far as the clay banks before turning back. Nothing was happening at the dealership—his salesmen wouldn’t be in yet and Ruth would be putting yesterday’s accounts in order before going to the bank and then meeting him for lunch. Lars’s life was nothing like he expected it would be, though he couldn’t remember having any particular expectations.

  A large swatch of unnatural color came bobbing along the beach toward him, worn by a man walking beside a woman and somehow putting the term red dye number two into Lars’s head. He remembered the other cars in the parking lot, so he hurried to the top of the beach and got down behind a log. He hoped these other walkers would pass without seeing him, but as they got close enough for their voices to cut through the wind, he noticed that one of them was shouting. Lars scrunched down next to a sodden half case of Rainier beer, a few of the bottles broken but one still unopened. A blanket was there, too, stinking and wet, with an actual condom sitting on top of it. God, Lars thought, I might have hopped over this log and sat down on the thing! As it was, he only sat next to it. He watched the other walkers and stayed out of sight.

  The guy was fair-skinned and huge, his jacket one of those Pendleton things, woolen and soaking up the rain like the filthy blanket beside Lars. Two scarred hands came out of the man’s jacket sleeves, and one of them gripped the arm of a woman half his size. She drove the Jeep, Lars guessed, while the T-bird with the oversize tires belonged to this guy. Lars wished he hadn’t hidden, since his presence on this beach might have helped the woman who was getting shouted at, but he couldn’t very well pop up now. He’d thought before that Red Dye was pushing her along the waterline but then realized as they reached him that he was making her walk in the water. “What the hell?” Lars said, but the wind swallowed his words.

  “Now go in up to your cunt or I’ll slam this rock down on your cheating, lying head!” shouted Red Dye.

  His right hand held a stone, about the same pale color as his skin. Lars felt he had to act, to come to the woman’s aid; he couldn’t watch something bad happen to her and do nothing about it, but what? And right then, as if in answer to his question, his cell phone started ringing, making Red Dye and the woman look his way.

  “Lars Larson Motors,” said Lars, standing and nodding at the couple. Lars got stupid when he was nervous. Anyone could tell he wasn’t behind his desk at the office. Still, he expected it would be Ruth, so he was surprised when a strange woman’s voice said, “This is LaVeronica. Did you just call me?”

  “Beechwood four-five seven eight nine?” asked Lars.

  The woman laughed and said, “Is that you, Johnny?”

  “Can we help you?” asked Red Dye from the water’s edge.

  “What do you know, it is you, ain’t it, after all this time!” said LaVeronica. “But who else you talking to, Johnny?”

  “Look,” Lars said, “whatever you do, don’t hang up. I’m in a situation here and might need you to call the cops.”

  Because of the wind, Red Dye couldn’t hear everything Lars said, but “call the cops” came through well enough. “Hold on, mister,” he said. “This has nothing to do with you. This is our own private business.”

  He looked like a pit bull pulling at his leash, so Lars pointed his phone at him. “Come out of the water,” he told the woman. “Step over here by me.”

  He picked up the one full beer bottle and cocked it in his throwing arm.

  “But if you want the cops, Johnny, why you callin’ me?” asked LaVeronica. “I hope you didn’t do it to trifle with me.”

  Lars was surprised to be able to hear her so well, until he realized that he’d pushed his speakerphone button, letting Red Dye and the woman hear her, too.

  “Yeah, Johnny!” said Red Dye. “Why didn’t you call the cops yourself? And don’t trifle with the woman. That’s what went wrong between Cindy and me, too much trifling.”

  “We’re on Owen Beach at Point Defiance Park, where a man is assaulting a woman,” Lars said into the phone. It made him sound like a reporter following a traffic chase. “This is Lars Larson, of Lars Larson Motors, not Johnny.”

  “Lars Larson? You mean the guy from TV?” asked LaVeronica.

  “The guy from TV is my dad,” said Lars. “Now will you please make that call, LaVeronica?”

  “We don’t need the police,” said Red Dye. “Cindy, get out of the water. Lars Larson Motors, huh? That that place out in Federal Way?”

  “Federal Way, South Tacoma Way, and somewhere else, too, right, Lars?” said LaVeronica. “I wouldn’t be messing with Lars Larson if I was you, mister whoever you are.”

  “I’m not messing with him,” said Red Dye.

  Cindy came out of the water and walked over to stand by Lars. “We don’t need the police,” she told his phone. “And do you know what? I went to high school with a girl named LaVeronica.”

  “What?” said LaVeronica. “Who’s that talking now?”

  “Cindy Ronkowski, from Wilson back in 1998. Ron Ronkowski’s sister … Everyone remembers Ron.”

  “You a skinny white girl with big tits?” asked LaVeronica. “Skinny cute, I mean, not skinny skinny. And those tits were real.”

  “That’s me!” said Cindy, “Hi, LaVeronica. We had English together, remember? Man, long time no see!”

  “I’ve got tits like fruit baskets, but they never got me near as far as yours did you, not back then and not now. And it wasn’t English, honey; it was biology. I even remember the teacher checkin’ you out.”

  “God, Mr. Simons,” said Cindy. “I haven’t thought of him in years.”

  “Goddamn everything in life,” said Red Dye.

  “Okay,” said Lars, “I guess we don’t need the police quite yet, but stay on the phone, will you please, LaVeronica? You’re the only weapon I’ve got besides this beer bottle.”

  “Sure I will, Lars. I can’t believe I thought you were Johnny. And what beer bottle? I hope you haven’t been drinking this early in the day.”

  LARS KEPT HIS SPEAKERPHONE ON while they walked back to the parking lot. He knew he wouldn’t last ten seconds in a fight with Red Dye, but he also knew that his stomach would churn for weeks if he didn’t resolve this thing in some honorable way. And to make matters worse, LaVeronica, who had stayed on the phone like he’d asked her to, wouldn’t stop talking. She was actually in her car and headed for Owen Beach by then, so she could meet Lars Larson, the Johnny surrogate, and talk to Cindy about tit sizes. Lars knew that the danger to Cindy, or the immediate danger anyway, had passed, so he wasn’t sure if he could explain why he still insisted on inserting himself.

  “I don’t go to Point Defiance much, but I’m headed down Pearl. That’s right, ain’t it?” asked LaVeronica.

  If she’d said she was coming before she started driving, Lars would have tried to talk her out of it, but she was halfway to them now.

  “That’s right,” said Cindy. “Once inside the park, just follow the signs.”

  Lars had set his cell phone on the hood of Cindy’s Jeep and they were standing around talking to it. The rain hadn’t stopped and another two cars had come down to cruise the beach before Red Dye finally unlocked his T-bird, got his own cell phone out, and called someone. This was all too ridiculo
us, even for Lars.

  “It’s me,” said Red Dye. “I’m still with Cindy and now some fool is messing with us.”

  His tone was as cold as the day.

  “Who’s he callin’ a fool?” asked LaVeronica. “He’s the fool. Was he talking ’bout me just now?”

  “No, he wasn’t, LaVeronica,” said Cindy. “He was talking about Lars, and he’s talking to his twin brother, Fred, the cause of all our grief.”

  “I can’t get over how much Lars sounds like Johnny,” LaVeronica said. “It made my heart do cartwheels when I heard his voice…. Hey, on my left now is the Goldfish Tavern. Maybe we should all meet there, work this out where it’s warm and dry. I ain’t sayin’ nothin’ ’bout you-all’s taste, but this don’t look like beach weather to a normal person.”

  “The Goldfish isn’t open yet,” said Red Dye, still on his phone. “But it’s not a bad idea. Robin Hood here can buy us lunch. You wanta come, too, Fred? Screw things up a little more?”

  “I could at least get out of these wet pants,” said Cindy. “I’ve got dry ones in my car. How about it, Lars? You’re the one who started all this chivalrous stuff.” Lars looked at his watch, shocked to see that is was 11:30.

  “And it is too open,” said LaVeronica. “There are motorcycles parked in front and its sign is lit. I don’t wanta incriminate myself, but I know an open bar when I see one, just not this early in the day. Should I pull in here, or what?”

  BACK WHEN HE WAS MARRIED to his second wife, Lars used to go to the Goldfish to drink and play shuffleboard. In those days, there were actual goldfish swimming under the tabletops, beneath a scratched sky with beer mugs on it. It had been years since he’d been there, though, and he figured the goldfish idea had pretty much dried up.

  LaVeronica’s car surprised Lars, who led the caravan to the tavern in his loaner VW. He didn’t know what he thought she might drive, but a bright red Prius stood next to the motorcycles, with a big black woman leaning against the side of it. She had a scrunched-down face before she saw Lars, but then her face did the same cartwheel her heart apparently did when she thought of Johnny, and it flipped itself around into a fabulous smile. Lars waved, but Cindy, who drove in just behind him and just ahead of Red Dye, stormed out of her Jeep and into LaVeronica’s arms.

  “Now, now,” said LaVeronica. “Things gonna work out fine.”

  Inside the Goldfish, which Red Dye entered first, three bikers sat at the bar discussing housing prices. Otherwise, the place was empty, so Lars and LaVeronica went to the table Red Dye found while Cindy walked into the ladies’ room to change. “I don’t think they serve lunch here,” said Lars.

  “We don’t, but I can order pizza,” called the bartender. “Individual deep-dish pie from up the street. Cook used to work at the Northlake Tavern.”

  He came to take their drink orders. LaVeronica told Cindy she looked great when she came back out of the ladies’ room wearing new designer jeans and some cool green shoes. Her hair was combed out nicely, too, and drier than anyone else’s.

  “I got empathy, honey,” LaVeronica said. “Went through this same unending pain with Johnny. It don’t have to be this way, though. It only feels like it now.”

  Maybe so, but to Lars, Cindy’s look said she’d stuffed her unending pain in the bag with her beach clothes. He was older than these women by a couple of decades, and he should be meeting Ruth so they could talk about their own unending problems. But back when he was fourteen years old, Lars had had trouble with some bullies, scarring his sense of himself for years. That was why he’d felt compelled to come to Cindy’s aid—he had sworn he would never let it happen again, to himself or anyone else. Now, though, it all seemed futile and silly. No one came to anyone else’s aid; in the end everyone just had to help themselves. Still, he waited until they ordered their beer and everyone but him had asked for various pizzas before he looked at Red Dye and said, “I don’t know you, don’t know your situation or even your name, but what possessed you to say such horrible things to Cindy down at the beach?”

  He was pleased, felt he’d struck the right tone.

  “What’d he say to her?” asked LaVeronica. “I mean, if it was only words, Lars, you know that old thing ’bout sticks and stones. Folks say lots of things they don’t mean.”

  “He told me to get into the water up to my cunt,” said Cindy.

  “What?” LaVeronica turned her steely eyes on Red Dye. “You no-good dipshit! I ought to kick your head in right now, you, you … What is your dumb-ass name?”

  “It’s Red,” said Red Dye.

  “Really?” asked Lars. Another old wife, his first, used to tell him he had a fine-tuned intuition, often getting the sense of things before anyone else.

  “You mean their mama named them Red and Fred?” asked LaVeronica. “No wonder they’re so messed up!”

  “Actually, she named them Frederic and Frederico,” Cindy said.

  That made Lars laugh. Frederic and Frederico. He remembered that Red had reminded him of a pit bull down at the beach and thought about getting one himself, or better, he’d get two, name them Frederic and Frederico. Except that if he ever got another dog, it wouldn’t be a pit bull, the dog-breed equivalent of oversize tires.

  Red didn’t like Lars’s laugh, but before he could say anything, the front door opened again. “Oh God, it’s Fred,” said Cindy, closing her eyes.

  Lars kept his eyes open and saw double trouble filling the frame of the Goldfish’s door. Frederic and Frederico. Fred didn’t look exactly like Red because his hair was long and he had a beard. What he did look like was a man wearing a disguise, a devil in a hippie costume, a robber before a heist.

  Fred surveyed the room, then came over to put a hand on Red’s shoulder. Lars now noticed that he wore a single dangling earring with a Buddha at its end, as incongruous as a pirate tattoo on a ballerina.

  “Does this mean one more pizza?” asked the bartender. “I’m just calling your order in now.”

  RUTH HAD WORKED AT TOBEY JONES NURSING HOME before joining Lars Larson Motors. She’d been Lars’s grandfather’s caregiver and sometimes went with Lars to see his grandfather now. Ruth was Eritrean and a trained accountant, so Lars didn’t steal her from Tobey Jones entirely because he fell in love with her. Now that their love was rocky, though, relying solely on Ruth’s accountancy skills wasn’t working out very well. He had called her again on his way to the Goldfish to tell her what was happening and ask her to meet him there, not to eat lunch with this crazy menagerie but so they could go somewhere afterward. So when Fred arrived, haloed in the doorway like an emissary, Lars at first thought Ruth had grown large.

  “How do you do? Fred Kelso,” Fred said, sticking his hand out to Lars.

  “Fred Kelso and Red Kelso,” said Cindy. “The Brothers Grimm of my life.”

  “They do look pretty grim,” said LaVeronica as Fred sat down beside her. Lars had been right about the goldfish. There was only empty space below the thick glass tabletops. If he owned the place, he would put in goldfish cutouts.

  “Red called and told me what happened when he was driving over here,” said Fred. “Maybe you should have stayed behind that log, Lars. It’s embarrassing having our dirty laundry aired in public. Where do you get off sticking your nose into other people’s business?”

  It was a very short distance from “How do you do?” to belligerence.

  Lars tried to stare Fred down while LaVeronica asked him if Red had told him what he’d actually said to Cindy. “Tried to make her go out into the water up to her … Heck, I can’t even say the word,” she said.

  When Fred looked at Red, it was like watching a made-up actor see his un-made-up reflection in a mirror.

  “In the end, we have to look out for each other, Fred,” said Lars.

  This was contrary to what he’d been thinking, but he chalked it up to the difference between speech and thought.

  “Bullshit, Lars,” said Fred. “I have to look out for Red, Red has to look o
ut for me, and Cindy’s in the mix with us, but it doesn’t have a thing to do with you.”

  The Buddha at the end of his earring did a little dance, like it was trying to shake nonviolent beliefs out of its head.

  “It doesn’t have a thing to do with you,” echoed Red.

  “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to find two dipshits in one family,” LaVeronica said, “but what’s up between you and these doofuses, Cindy? They each get to suck one tit?”

  That shocked Lars, but Cindy only said, “Unfortunately, I was engaged to one of them. Back when they were both clean-shaven.”

  “She was engaged to me,” said Red. “Till she started meeting Fred, too, the wicked bitch.”

  “You know I thought he was you!” cried Cindy. “How many times do I have to tell you? He had all the same moves, even made the same noises….”

  “Hold on! Don’t go violatin’ no one’s trust,” said LaVeronica. “If I learned one thing since I last saw you, Cindy, it’s the horrible cost of trust violatin’.”

  “You slept with Johnny’s brother, too, I suppose,” said Red.

  “Nope, he was a drummer I used to know before I knew Johnny, that’s all.”

  “See?” said Cindy. “Anyone can make a mistake. Ask yourself who you really can’t forgive, Red, me or a man who knew he was hurting you by pretending to be you?”

  “Yes, Red, ask yourself that,” said Lars. “You pushed her into Puget Sound, threatened her with a rock, but it’s Buddha Boy here you should be mad at.”

  Cindy smiled at Lars, while Fred gave him the look of a Buddhist martial arts expert.