The Next Right Thing

by Dan Barden

  “A big fucking attitude?”

  Terry laughed. “I was a heart-stopped-on-the-operating-table-three-times dope fiend. Do you know what it took to get clean and sober after four years of shooting dope in the bathrooms of A.A.? What do you think it took to get me through law school after that? As far as whiners and malcontents, you’re minor league. Everyone around here wanted me dead so they wouldn’t have to watch me walk through one more meeting and destroy their fragile sense of hope. I asked you a question, you asshole. What do you think it took?”

  “A miracle?” I asked quietly.

  “All the love and power in the fucking universe,” Terry said. “Do you get that?”

  That was when he wrote out the card. I felt like it had magic powers. When the ink started to fade so badly that you could barely read it, I had it framed.

  It wasn’t smart to be meeting Claire Monaco. It wasn’t smart to be thinking about Claire Monaco. A former—but probably still—porn actress/stripper/prostitute who’d been trying to get sober for a few years, Claire was trouble.

  We met later that morning at Jean Claude’s. Wade came because I felt the need for backup. I knew Claire the way I knew a lot of people in A.A., but I’d certainly never met her for coffee. There were those who’d done less and lived to regret it.

  Claire was a beautiful woman, but booze and drugs had not been kind to her skin, in spite of the self-tanner. If she didn’t stop soon, she was going to start looking like what she was: a thirtysomething drug addict washed up on the shores of A.A.

  The tight-faced ladies around us—Jean Claude’s late-morning clientele—noticed her right off. Terry used to call this time of day “shrink-wrap central” because at any given moment between nine and eleven, you would see at least six hundred thousand dollars in plastic surgery sipping coffee.

  I pushed my chocolate croissant in Wade’s direction; he didn’t hesitate. Jean Claude brought me a second double espresso without asking. I started in on Claire: “Troy Padilla says Terry called you that night.”

  “Terry could have been a really great man.” Claire spoke through the froth of her latté.

  “What?” Wade said.

  “Becoming a big shot in A.A. was the worst thing that could have happened to him,” Claire said. “All these A.A. circuit speakers are hypocrites. All they really care about is telling everyone else what to do. One guy I met, he gave me a lecture about the steps while I was blowing him. I told him he should share it with his wife.”

  “Which guy?” Wade said.

  “Can we talk about the sex lives of hypocrites some other day?” I interjected.

  The shrink-wrapped ladies might have recognized Claire from the papers. A few years ago, she’d been a local celebrity of the Kato Kaelin variety. She’d been rumored to be involved with a judge named Fogarty in the South County courthouse who had been accused by the local papers of trading judicial favors for sex with a variety of women of Claire’s ilk. None of this stuck to him, but sometime afterward, Claire became the victim of a sting operation. She spent three months in jail for prostitution and pandering. Maybe Fogarty figured that he could make himself look good at Claire’s expense, but his plan backfired: The Orange County Register believed that she had been punished for Judge Fogarty’s sins. After a protracted battle in the op-ed pages, the dust settled and Fogarty got to keep his job. That’s how the world often works—what’s shitty just stays shitty.

  “You know, Randy, I met your girlfriend once,” Claire said. “I mean, back in the day, before any of us got sober.”

  “Are you sober?” Wade asked through a mouthful of chocolate. “When did that happen?”

  “Shut up, Wade,” I said. “You, too, Claire. Don’t talk about MP like that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like the two of you were back in the day together.”

  Claire smiled. I should have kept my mouth shut. It was a mistake to let her think this was a sore point for me. MP had supported her first try at college with a stint as a tantric masseuse, which was sort of like hand job from a hippie, and it was still her biggest shame from her drinking days.

  When I was drinking, giving a tantric hand job would have been one of my better days.

  I took a breather and smiled back at Claire. I moved the chocolate away from Wade so he would know not to eat it all.

  “We came on too strongly,” I said. “You retaliated. If I apologize, can we talk nice again?”

  “I get tired of being the most disgusting woman in A.A.,” Claire said. She checked the tables around us. I waited. The other customers avoided her eyes while tracking her movements.

  “You gotta look into that whole nightmare with Alexander.” Again she looked around. “My son? That’s when Terry started to get weird. When he tried to take Alexander away from me, that’s where the bad shit begins.”

  The part of Claire’s story the shrink-wrapped ladies didn’t know: when my friend Terry offered to help Claire appeal her pandering conviction—the one that Judge Fogarty almost certainly brought down on her—he also demanded custody of Claire’s five-year-old son, Alexander, in exchange. She wasn’t the best mother, and Terry loved the kid, but it was extortion, pure and simple. Was that the beginning of Terry’s end? At the time, I was too busy falling in love with MP to notice.

  “I’m leaving, Claire.” I pushed out my chair. “I’ve heard this song before.”

  “I’m trying to help you,” she said. “This is the background. Terry called me that last night, but I wouldn’t see him. He called me more than once.”

  “Was he with anyone?”

  “The first time he called he was with that kid from the Thursday-night beginners’ meeting—”

  “Troy Padilla? Did Troy get him the drugs?”

  “That kid? He’s just a kitten. No, it was the other guy. You remember that lawyer John Sewell who Terry used to work with? This guy—I think he was an electrician or a handyman—he used to work for John Sewell.”

  “John Sewell?” I recognized the name because I read the newspapers. He was as big as a lawyer got in Orange County. I’d taken him and Terry fishing once. He was also dating my ex-wife—that part made the most sense: Claire’s modus operandi was to find the link between her worst instincts and your worst instincts. “John Sewell wasn’t with Terry that day. A guy like John Sewell doesn’t even get off the freeway in Santa Ana unless he’s getting paid a thousand dollars an hour for the privilege.”

  “You’re not listening,” Claire said. “This guy, this electrician, he used to work for Sewell on some buildings that Sewell owns. That’s I guess how Terry met him? He had like a dog’s name or something.”

  “This is what you have?” I said. “An electrician with a name like a dog?”

  Claire straightened up. “Look, I don’t know the guy. When Terry called the second time, he said he was with some guy who used to work for Sewell, and all I can remember is that he was named after a dog.”

  “Was he named after a dog,” Wade asked, “like Lassie or Rover? Or was he named after a dog as in he happens to have the same name as a dog you know?”

  Claire and I took a moment to marvel at Wade.

  “Terry called me that night,” she continued. “It sounded like a booty call, and I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. But he told me he was doing a twelfth step on this guy. The guy with the name of a dog. The guy with the name of a dog was having some trouble with heroin.” A twelfth step was when a sober alcoholic visited a recently drunk alcoholic at his home. A.A.s did this less often now than in the thirties, when the fellowship had begun, but Terry had done more than his share.

  “How stoned were you?” I said.

  “I wasn’t stoned,” Claire said.

  I didn’t say anything. I held her eyes.

  “I was drunk,” Claire said.

  Wade laughed.

  “I didn’t call him,” Claire said. “He called me.”

  I stood up. From behind the counter at the other end o
f the café, my friend Jean Claude caught my eye. He gave me what I’ve come to recognize as a Gallic shrug. I said, “You were drunk, Claire. You can’t even remember this guy’s name. You just want to cause some trouble. You don’t know shit.”

  “I’m on your side,” Claire said. “I want to know what turned that sweet man into an unholy prick. Before that night, I hadn’t talked to Terry in over a year. Since he tried to take my son away. And if an angel hadn’t stepped in to help me, Terry would have pulled it off.”

  Today I couldn’t deal with this. “Because you were willing to trade your son for money. This is a problem that only junkies have, Claire.”

  She looked at me and then down at the table. If she had started to cry, I could have told myself that I was trying to wake her up, help her admit what a mess she’d made of her life. But as Wade and I left the table and Claire sat there, I knew that wasn’t it. I wasn’t trying to help Claire, just like Claire couldn’t help me. I’d hurt her only because I wanted to hurt her.

  AFTER I DROPPED OFF WADE for his shift at Laguna Sea Sports, I drove home. On the way there, the back of my neck told me I was being followed, but my brain wrote that off to post-traumatic cop paranoia. There was a time about eight years ago when lots of people wanted me dead. Sometimes even the eyes in the back of my head have flashbacks.

  Pulling up my driveway, I had an idea that MP would know more about my adventures by now. I could feel it in the way her VW Cabrio sat on the concrete. You’re an asshole, that little silver car seemed to whisper.

  She was sitting cross-legged on the patio drinking green tea. She had changed into a tank top with a picture of the Virgin Mary on it—not a subtle girl, my MP. I closed the glass door behind me and sat down in the Adirondack chair next to her mat. She offered the tea to me. I sniffed it and offered it back.

  “You mad at me?” I asked.

  “That’s not the word,” MP said.

  “Disappointed?”

  “That’s the word.”

  “I’m sure it’s hard to understand.” The chair was easier on my back than any other chair I owned, including the one designed by Mr. and Mrs. Eames. How could there be so many great chairs and so few men worthy to sit in them?

  “I don’t want to live with a cop,” MP said. “I want to live with a guy who designs homes and doesn’t have some fucked-up obsession with righteousness.”

  It had been over a year since I’d heard her swear.

  “Something wrong with cops?” I asked.

  “That’s not where you want to go.” MP smiled tightly. “I won’t have a boyfriend who beats people up.”

  “Who told you?”

  “That’s not where you want to go, either.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I understand.”

  “I don’t think you do.” MP untangled her ankles and turned toward me. “I’m dedicating my life to peace. That’s what yoga is. Getting closer to the source. Relaxing into the loving spirit of the universe. It’s not about beating people up.”

  “I didn’t actually beat anyone up.” It wasn’t a good idea to tell her what I had done. “I’m going to clean that up with the guy.”

  “Which guy?”

  “The guy I didn’t beat up.”

  MP took hold of her big toe and pulled herself down toward the deck. She’d found yet another way to tell me I was full of shit.

  “Terry was my best friend,” I said. “I want to understand what happened.”

  “Wasn’t it Terry who said that understanding was the booby prize?”

  “Terry said a lot of things.”

  “And that’s what this is about. You’re afraid if you don’t know why he slipped, you’ll slip, too.” MP rose from the deck and touched my head. “Can’t you see it’s all in there? Everything was okay until you stopped taking care of yourself. You think your anger means something, but maybe it’s just a bunch of bad transmitters. Maybe it’s just … alcoholism.”

  I followed her inside and started to fix some coffee. “I think it’s the other way around,” I said. “I think my comfortable life was covering this up. It’s my responsibility to Terry. I need to know what happened.”

  My high-tech German coffeemaker didn’t have an opinion, but I heard MP walk away. Then I heard her walk back.

  “This isn’t about how Terry died,” she said. “This is about your feeling that you betrayed him.”

  About a year before, I’d run into Terry at Alpha Beta. We were in the fruit section. When did either of us begin to eat fruit? I had to admit that I hadn’t seen him in a while.

  We did an awkward dance, and then for reasons that seem almost suspicious to me now, we hugged.

  Terry smiled. I never trusted Terry when he smiled.

  “What?” I said.

  “Your ass starting to feel a bit tight?”

  “My ass?”

  “Your sphincter. That ring where all the tension goes?”

  “Because?”

  “Answer the question,” Terry said, “and then I’ll tell you why I’m asking.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think my sphincter is any tighter than usual.”

  “Because that’s what happens sometimes,” Terry said, “when a guy starts slacking off on meetings. His asshole starts to get tight.”

  I hadn’t been going to as many meetings as I used to, and when I did go, I wasn’t hanging out for endless hours in coffee shops afterward. For many years, I’d had no home but A.A. That year I’d discovered that I also had a home with MP. “If you don’t think I’m going to enough meetings, Terry, why don’t you just say so?”

  “Am I your sponsor now?”

  “Yes, in fact, you are my sponsor.”

  “Well, fancy that.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I haven’t been going to enough meetings. What did I miss?”

  “You mean besides a feeling of peace and connection to your fellows?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “besides that.”

  “This whole eco-friendly recovery-home thing seems to be taking off.”

  “The what?”

  “Colin Alvarez has this idea that he can squeeze a few more bucks out of the newcomers if he puts some solar panels on his recovery homes. The man’s a marketing genius.”

  I laughed. I laughed hard. “Since when do you applaud Colin Alvarez?”

  “Where have you been? How come you don’t know what’s been happening in your own community? You think you don’t matter, that you can go off and fall in love with yoga girl, and it won’t leave a vacuum in A.A.? But it does leave a vacuum, and this is what’s filling it: low-carbon-imprint fucking recovery homes.”

  “Look at my face”—I pointed to myself—“this is me being contrite. I’m fucking sorry. I’ll see you at the meeting tonight.”

  I did go that night, but I don’t think I went the next night.

  Despite my desire for answers, I wasn’t quite ready to call everyone I knew and ask about an electrician named after a dog. And, one way or another, I knew I’d be seeing John Sewell, my ex-wife’s new beau and erstwhile employer of the mystery electrician, soon enough. It was midmorning, and I decided I’d better help Yegua clean out my garage. Helping him do anything was my most valued form of procrastination.

  Yegua, my illegal alien assistant, smiled and flashed his teeth. I’d bought him those teeth myself, and he liked to remind me of my investment. My other laborers had given him the name Yegua—Spanish for “mare”—because there was a time between no teeth and new teeth when he had temporaries. Large temporaries.

  We started tying all my electrical cords into neat bundles, which always made me wonder why I had so many electrical cords.

  Yegua didn’t have a green card, though he’d been working for me almost the whole time I’d been working myself. Always casually but impeccably dressed—even his jeans were ironed—he had lately grown his wiry black hair out into a mullet. Sometimes I mimed scissors and threatened to cut it off. I told him that women would like him better with sho
rter hair. Yegua always said he needed only one woman in Guatemala and one woman here. And both of them liked his mullet.

  Yegua had put two sons through college in Guatemala, where he owned a business with a third. He was a better man than any man I knew. I guess I could have asked him whether he thought I was a racist, but I didn’t have the Spanish for the question. And I guess deep down I wasn’t prepared for the answer.

  He finished coiling another cord, then took mine, too. I wasn’t doing a very good job, and he started over. He hung them from hooks under the cabinets.

  “Somebody’s buscándote,” Yegua said. “Tiene mala pinta. He sits in the truck, watches your house. I thought it was one of your camarades, but now I don’t think so.”

  Yegua was amused by the A.A. guys, like Wade, who came by to shoot the shit. He probably thought they were “bad paint jobs,” too. There wasn’t an ounce of bullshit in Yegua—when the couple next door adopted a baby from China, I couldn’t convince him that the child hadn’t been purchased. I thought about the truck parked across the street, and the bad paint job who sat and watched my house, and I had to imagine that my feelings of being followed weren’t mere paranoia. If this asshole had parked in front of my house, it was a good bet that he’d been tailing me, too. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that it somehow had something to do with my friend Terry.

  I held up my cell phone. “If he comes back, will you call me?”

  Yegua smiled. He walked out of the garage toward whatever he would do for me next.

  “My goddamn partner was Mexican,” I once told Terry. “I can’t be a racist.”

  “Sure you can,” he said. “We all are. We all hate Mexicans and we all hate blacks and we all hate whites and we all especially hate women. That’s why the world is such a lovely place.”

  That was when I had less than a year sober. We were on our way to Bare Elegance, a strip club near LAX, although I thought we were going to a Lakers game. Terry often changed his mind about destinations.