The Best American Short Stories 2015

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  VICTOR LODATO

  Jack, July

  FROM The New Yorker

  THE SUN WAS a wolf. The fanged light had been trailing him for hours, tricky with clouds. As it emerged again from sheepskin, Jack looked down at the pavement, cursed. He’d been walking around since ten, temperature even then close to ninety. The shadow stubs of the telephone poles and his own midget silhouette now suggested noon. He had no hat, and he’d left his sunglasses somewhere, either at Jamie’s or at The Wheel, or they might have slipped off his head. They did that sometimes, when he leaned down to tie his shoes or empty them of pebbles.

  Pebbles?

  Was that a word? He stopped to consider it, decided in the negative, and then marched on, flicking his thumb ceaselessly against his index like a Zippo. His nerves were shot, but unable to shut down. No off button now. He’d be zooming for hours, the crackle in his head exaggerated by the racket of birds rucked up in towers of palm, tossing the dry fronds. What were they doing? Ransacking sounds. Looking for nuts or dates, probably. Or bird sex. Possibly bird sex. Maybe he should walk to Rhonda’s, ask her to settle him. Or unsettle him. Maybe he wanted more. Share was what she should do, if she had any. He always shared with her. Not always, but it could be argued.

  Rhonda was a crusher, though, a big girl, always climbing on top. Her heft was no joke, and Jack was a reed. Still, he loved her. Ha! That was the tweak coming on. He’d never admit to such a thing when he was flat. Now his immortal brain understood. He wanted to marry Rhonda, haul her up the steps of her double-wide, pump out about fifty kids. In the fly-eye of his mind he saw them, curled up like caterpillars on Rhonda’s bed.

  Jack picked up the pace. The effect of his late-morning tokes was far from finished. Though he’d pulled nothing but dregs (the last of his stash), it was coming on strong, sparking his heart in unexpected ways.

  So much gratitude. Jack made a fist and banged twice on his chest, thinking of Flaco, a school friend, now dead, who’d first turned him on to this stuff—a precious substance whose unadvertised charm was love. It was infuriating that no one ever mentioned this. The posters, the billboards, the PSAs—all they talked about were skin lesions and rotten teeth. Kids, sadly, were not getting well-rounded information. If Jack hadn’t lost his phone, he’d point it at his face right now and make a documentary.

  Traffic, a lot of it. On Speedway now, a strip-mall jungle, which, according to his mother, used to be lined with palm trees and old adobes, tamale peddlers and mom-and-pop shops. Not that Jack’s mother was nostalgic. She loved her Marts—the Dollar and the Quik and the Wal. “Cheaper too,” she said. She liked to buy in bulk, always had extra. Maybe he should go to her place, instead of Rhonda’s, grab some granola bars, a few bottles of water for his pack. Sit on the old yellow couch under the swamp cooler, chew the fat. He hadn’t seen her in weeks.

  Weeks?

  Again, the word proved thin, suspect. “Mama,” he said, testing another—an utterance that stopped him in his tracks and caused his torso to jackknife forward. Laughed to spitting. He could picture her face, if he ever tried to call her that. She preferred Bertie. Only sixteen years his senior, she often reminded him. Bertie of the scorched hair, in her sparkle tops and toggle pants. “What’s it short for?” he once asked of her name. She’d told him that his grandfather was a humongous piece of shit, that’s what it was short for.

  Of course, Jack had never met the famous piece of shit, had only heard stories. Supposedly he and Grandma Shit still lived in Tucson, might be anywhere, two of Jack’s neighbors. He might have passed them on the street, or lent them an egg or a cup of sugar.

  Jack tittered into his fist. What eggs? What sugar? There was fuck-all in the fridge. In fact, depending on his location, there might not even be a fridge.

  Buses roared past, their burning flanks throwing cannonballs of heat at the sidewalk. Jack turned away, moved toward himself, a murkier version trapped in the black glass façade of a large building. Twenty-two—he looked that plus ten. Of course, a witch’s mirror was no way to judge. The dark glass was spooked, not to be trusted. Hadn’t Jamie said, only yesterday, in the lamplit corner of the guest bedroom, that Jack looked all of sixteen? “Beautiful,” Jamie had whispered, touching Jack’s cheek.

  Beautiful. Like something stitched on a pillow, sentimental crap from some other era. The lamplit whisperings had made Jack restless, the dissolved crystal blowing him sideways like a blizzard.

  To hell with Jamie! Last week, after partying all night, Jack had woken up to find Jamie lying beside him, the man’s hand crawling like a snail across the crotch furrows of Jack’s jeans. Half dead, in deep crash, Jack hadn’t even been sure they were his jeans—the legs inside them looked too skinny, like a kid’s. He’d watched the snail-hand for a good five minutes, feeling nothing—and then, with a gush, he’d felt too much. When he leaped from the bed, Jamie screeched, “Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!”—apologizing profusely, claiming he’d flailed in his sleep.

  “Why are you in my bed at all?” Jack had asked, storming into the bathroom with shame-bitten fury. He’d got into the shower, only to find a bar of soap as thin and sharp as a razor blade—scraped himself clean as best he could, until he smelled breakfast coming on hot from the kitchen. It had turned out to be silver-dollar pancakes with whipped cream and chocolate chips. Jack’s favorite. Could the man stoop any lower?

  Jamie just didn’t add up. A bearded Mexican with a voice like a balloon losing air. Wore pleated slacks, but without a belt you could sometimes glimpse thongs. Didn’t smoke, but blew invisible puffs for emphasis. And the name—Jamie—it sat uncomfortably on the fence, neutered, a child’s name, wrong for anyone over thirty, which Jamie clearly was. Plus he was fat, which made his body indecisive, intricately layered with loose slabs of flesh—potbelly and motherflaps. “Stay with me, why don’t you?” he’d said, for no discernible reason, at the Chevron restroom sink, where Jack had been rinsing his clotted pipe.

  That had been a week ago, maybe two. They’d been strangers in that restroom, the obese man appearing out of the gloom of a shit stall. His words, stay with me, had seemed, to the boy, vaguely futuristic, a beam of light from a spaceship.

  Jack should have known better.

  The sun drilled the boy’s head, looking for something. He closed his eyes and let the bit work its way to his belly, where the good stuff lived, where the miracle often happened: the black smoke reverting to pure white crystal. A snowflake, an angel. He smiled at himself in the dark glass. It was so easy to forgive those who betrayed you, effortless—like thinking of winter in the middle of July. It cost you nothing. Reflexively Jack scratched deep inside empty pockets, then licked his fingers. The bitch of it was this: forgiveness dissolved instantly on your tongue, there was no time to spit it out.

  He’d have to remember to speak on this, when he made his documentary.

  “Welcome to Presto’s!”

  The blond girl stood just inside the black door, her face gaily frozen, as if cut from the pages of a yearbook. Jack comprehended none of her words.

  “Welcome,” he replied, attempting a flawless imitation of her birdlike language. Jack was good with foreigners. Most of his school buds had been Chalupas.

  The girl tilted her head; the smile wavered, but only briefly. Her mouth re-expanded with elastic lunacy.

  “Ship or print?”

  Jack was taken aback. Though it was true he needed to use the bathroom, he was disturbed by the girl’s lack of delicacy in regard to bodily functions.

  “Number one,” he admitted quietly.

  “Ship?” she persisted.

  Jack felt dizzy. The girl’s teeth were very large and very white. Jack could only assume they were fake. Keeping his own dental wreckage tucked under blistered lips, he lifted his hands in a gesture of spiritual peace. “I’m just going to make a quick run to the restroom.”

  “I’m sorry, they’re only for customers.”

  “George Washington,” Jack blurted, still
fascinated by the girl’s massive teeth.

  “What’s that?”

  “Cherry tree,” he continued associatively.

  “Oh, like for the Fourth?” asked Blondie.

  “Yes,” Jack replied kindly, even though he knew she was confusing presidents. Fourth of July would be Jefferson or Adams. Jack had always been sweet on History. In school, when he was miniature, he’d got nothing but A’s. Again he sensed the expansiveness of his brain, a maze of rooms, many of which he’d never been in. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t finished high school, there was an Ivy League inside his head, libraries crammed with books. He just needed to pull them from between the folds of gray matter and read them. Close his eyes and get cracking. See, this was the other thing people never told you about meth. It was educational.

  The girl informed him that there were no holiday specials, if that’s what he was asking about.

  Jack nodded and smiled, tapping his head in pretense of understanding her logic. As he moved quickly toward the bathroom, the girl skittered off in another direction, also quickly.

  Perhaps she had to print too. Or take a ship.

  Jack giggled and opened a door leading to a storage closet.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes,” Jack said to the man inside the closet. “I understand what you’re saying.”

  “What am I saying?” asked the man.

  “Perfectly clear,” said Jack. He held up his peace-hands, walked back through the room of humming and spitting machines, and exited the building—behind which he quickly peed, before resuming his trek down Speedway.

  As soon as he knocked at the trailer door, he was aware of the emptiness in his hands. He should have brought flowers. Or a burrito. He knocked again. Sweat dripped from under his arms, making him feel strangely cold.

  “I have flowers,” he said to the door.

  “Go away,” said the door.

  “I’m not talking to a door,” said Jack. “I don’t take orders from doors.”

  “You can’t be here. Why are you here?” The voice was exhausted, cakey. Jack could picture the pipe.

  “Baby,” he said. “Come on. Why are you being stingy?”

  “I’ll call the police, I swear to God.”

  Jack was silent, but stood his ground. He scratched at the door like a cat. After a while, someone said, “Please.” The word sounded funny, like a flute. Jack tried saying it again. Even worse. It almost sounded as if he were going to cry.

  When the door opened, it did so only a few inches—most of Rhonda’s mouth obscured by a chain.

  “You cannot be here, Jack.”

  Jack, who was clearly there, only smiled.

  “I’m OK,” he assured her.

  “You look like shit,” said Rhonda.

  “Sunburn,” theorized Jack. “It’s like a hundred and twenty out here.” He could barely see the girl—or he could see her, just not recognize her. She seemed different, her hair and her clothes fussed up, neat. He smelled no smoke, only perfume. “What’s going on?” he asked, flicking his thumb.

  Rhonda made an irritated snort, half laugh, half fart. It seemed to come from her mouth.

  Jack, confident he was at the peak of his charm, refused to be put off. “Can you just open the door, so that we can talk like humans, without the frickin’ mustache?”

  “The what?”

  “The . . .” Jack gestured swoopily toward the door. “The frickin’ . . .”

  “Chain?” suggested Rhonda.

  “All I want is, like, hello, OK? Like hello, whatever, a glass of water.”

  The girl grimaced dramatically, egging on Jack’s own sense of tragedy.

  “I am literally dying, Rhonda.”

  Jack pressed his face into the door crack, letting the cool air caress his skin. His eyes, blinded from sunlight, barely took in the fact that the girl was gone. After a moment, he heard water running in the sink, the clink of a glass being pulled from a cupboard. He closed his eyes, felt a stirring between his legs. Rhonda had always been so kind.

  “I don’t need ice,” he called out.

  “Good. Here you go.”

  At first Jack wasn’t sure what it was. The water thrown in his face was cold. It dripped down his neck and into his shirt, slow trails across his belly. It lingered, drifted lower, like a kind of kiss. Jack licked his lips: the tap water salty, mixed with his sweat. Something was humming too—the bones under his cheeks, near his eyes, vibrating like a tuning fork or an organ at the back of a church.

  “Don’t cry,” he said to Rhonda, who said she wasn’t.

  “Why would I be crying after a fucking year?”

  Jack said, “What year?”—to which Rhonda replied, “I thought you were dead.”

  She wasn’t making a whole lot of sense. Jack asked if she was going fast.

  “Are you insane?” said Rhonda. “Those were the worst two months of my life.”

  “Why don’t I come in and we’ll take a nap?” suggested Jack.

  “Listen to me,” the girl said. “You have to lose this address—do you hear me?”

  Jack ran a hand over his wet face.

  “Please,” begged Rhonda. “You have to go. Eric will be home soon.”

  Jack wondered if she meant Jack, since the names were so similar. “Do you mean me?” he asked in earnest. He tried to find the girl’s eyes—and when he did he saw that she wasn’t a girl at all. She was old, practically as old as Bertie. What was more astonishing, though, was the look on her face. There was no love in it whatsoever.

  “I don’t know you,” said Jack.

  “Good,” said Rhonda, shutting the door.

  He stood on some gravel, and felt terrible. Even the little plank of shadow beside the cement wall held no appeal. Was he to lie there, he’d only get the jits.

  Walking was what he needed, and to hell with the sun.

  That’s what people in his position did. They walked, they moved, they got things done. Sitting was no good. Talking was fine, if you had someone. Sex was primal. Jack’s body knew the rules. There were any number of ways to keep one’s brain from exploding.

  People going fast rearranged the furniture, or crawled around looking for carpet crumbs. Anything that used your hands, which, compelled by the imaginative fervor of your mind, became tools in a breathless campaign to change the shape of the world. It was art, essentially. Jack wondered why more people going fast didn’t do crafts. He suddenly wished for construction paper and Elmer’s glue; glitter, cotton, clay. Once, when he was little, he’d made a kick-ass giraffe from a walnut and some toilet-paper tubes. The legs, ingeniously, had been chopsticks.

  Bertie used to leave them for hours, on the days she attended her meetings. She’d always made sure there were coloring books and Play-Doh, carrot sticks and DVDs. Little notes saying Love and Be back soon. Jack and his sister had in no way been deprived.

  His sister? Fuck. His sister. She came back to him like sheet lightning. He hadn’t seen Lisa since she’d gone away. He clapped his hands, to banish the thought. It was almost funny how, at certain elevations, it was so easy to pretend you didn’t know things you could never forget. Jack dug for his phone, to see if he had Lisa’s number.

  But, being that there was no phone, he pulled up only lint—which he quickly dismissed, into the air, with a puff. He watched it float for a moment, fluttering with indecision, before it drifted down, in a slow sashay, and landed on his shoe.

  “Fine,” said Jack. “Fine!” He picked up the gray fluff and stuffed it back in his pocket.

  Walked around the block to see if he could trick it. He’d done it before. Pull one over on time. Circle back and confuse it. Like one of those Aborigines. They were big walkers too. Ugly fuckers, but the cool thing was they could walk a thousand miles, no problem—and they weren’t trying to get to China or some shit like that. What they wanted was to get back to their ancestors—way the fuck past Grandma and Grandpa, all the way back to the lizards and the snakes.

>   Jack, of course, would have been satisfied with a smaller victory—finding his way back five, six years, to Bertie’s crumbling adobe. Star Trek and pizza with Lisa. Hell, he’d be fine with getting back to just last year, to the old Rhonda, the Rhonda of the bra-welted back and the cream-cheese thighs, the sad girl he’d met at The Wheel, and whom he’d made happy with snowflakes and black clouds.

  Had it really been a year? Jack felt nervous now, flicked his thumb even faster, sensed his shadow growing longer, trailing him like gum stuck to his shoe. Soon, he knew, the freak would come, the soul-suck, if he didn’t get one of two things: more crystal or a sound sleep—both of which would require money, because sleep, at this point, wouldn’t be free. It would cost a bottle of grain or a six-pack or a pill. Sometimes he wondered why a person couldn’t just hit himself over the head with a rock.

  He climbed on top of the gas meter and opened the window, as he’d done a million times before. A small, high window, facing the alley. Lisa’s window, which Bertie never locked.

  A tight fit, even for a skinny drink like Jack. Halfway through, he found himself stuck, but with a series of wriggling bitch-in-heat motions he managed to make it through, headfirst, onto the dusty shrine of his sister’s neatly made bed. The friction of passing through the small opening, though, had pulled down his pants, as well as given him an erection. When he stood to hoist his jeans, a young woman in yoga tights entered the room, dropped a pear, and screamed.