“I’ll go. Babe, we need to tell Chez. Tonight.”
Barb retreated as though he’d sneezed a mouthful at her. “Greg, she’s only seven. She doesn’t even know what death means, not really.”
“She found her bunny stiff in the strawberries.”
“I mean people.”
“Grandma Ruth. She knows Grandma Ruth’s in heaven.”
“So?”
“So how did she get to heaven if she didn’t die? Did you tell Chez she flew United?”
Barb plucked the magnetized notepad off the fridge and began jotting a grocery list.
“See, if we tell her now, there’s less chance it’ll knock her silly. I can smile while I’m talking about it, tell her you guys ought to have a party to celebrate me going to the most bitchin’ place.”
“Oh sure, that’ll make up for her daddy leaving her.” With a reproachful frown, she asked, “Have you given up praying for a miracle?”
He shook his head, a half-truth. He hadn’t quit praying, but he’d quit believing when he began to sense that God figured his work on earth was done. Though how God could reach that conclusion was a mystery. For all his good intentions, Greg thought, he hadn’t done much except mess things up.
She gave him the list and two bills, a ten and a five. “Don’t stop and talk with the street people, okay? I’m pretty hungry and Chez said she’s starving.”
“She’ll eat about six bites and say she’s stuffed.”
“I know.” Barb went to the sink and ran hot water to wash the dishes Greg had forgotten about.
Outside the Safeway, he ran into Chad, a homeless amigo who needed five of his dollars. He returned with one bag of groceries. Barb had already called Chez home and was helping her with Sunday school homework about daily life in biblical days.
While passing the couch, Greg kissed the crowns of his girls’ heads. He set the groceries on the sink-board, reached to a top cabinet for corn oil, and grabbed the cast-iron frying pan that hung from the wall behind the stove. Rust had formed along the rim. He hadn’t used the pan for months. He poured the Mazola oil, turned a burner to medium high, and set the pan on the burner.
He was chopping lettuce when Barb came in. “What’s that smell?” She went past him to the counter. “You bought a precooked chicken?”
“Yep, faster.”
“Not much faster than the microwave. What’re you making?”
“Tacos.”
She frowned. “Well, all right, but you can’t fry the tortillas.”
“I already started.”
“Then stop and microwave them. You can’t eat greasy tortillas.” She leaned closer and whispered, “They’ll kill you.”
“Yes, dear.” He winked at her.
He was turning to the stove when she asked, “Did you get the milk and Cheerios?”
“Nope. Ran out of money. I’ll go back later. Say, Chad’s hanging around the Safeway. How about I run back and invite him to share the feast I’m preparing?”
“Darn it, Greg,” she whined. “We have to watch every penny.”
He might’ve argued, if not for the fire. Flames spurted up from the corn oil, orange and blue, two feet high, to the cabinet. “Oh no!” Barb shouted, and pushed him aside. While she jumped to the fridge and opened the door, he grabbed a potholder from its hook. He meant to grip the handle and carry the flaming pan to the sink, pour off the grease, and let the fire burn itself out. But again, Barb pushed him out of the way.
Standing arm’s length from the fire, she poured heaps of baking soda from a box into her hand and slung them at the fire, until it died out.
The stove looked like a winter scene, Greg thought, and stalactites spiked down from the cabinets where the wood-grain plastic veneer had melted. Barb stomped out of the kitchen. Covering his eyes and leaning on the counter, Greg listened to her footsteps drum the wood floor, all the way to the bathroom. He knew she would lock herself in, sit on the edge of the tub, and weep.
As he lifted his hand from his eyes, he saw Chez beside the table, shooting a laser glare at him. Then she turned and marched out, stiff legged as a Nazi on parade.
He fought a chill. Bright flashes blinded him for a minute. Then he returned to preparing dinner. He was going to the fridge for lettuce and tomatoes when he noticed, on the door, a flyer from the Roxy Theater. A blurb for the movie that inspired James to dream up the murder game.
Night before last, when they were goofy, James on liquor and Greg on his prescribed sinsemilla, they rehearsed bumping off Maurice, the creep whose lawyers would steal James’s little sister’s nice home.
As Greg threw open the fridge, he recalled the rush of excitement and purpose he had felt beneath the stairs to Maurice’s apartment.
He finished chopping the lettuce and tomatoes, put out the mild salsa fresca Chez liked, for which he always remembered to make special trips to the People’s Co-op. He zapped tortillas in the microwave, wrapped them in one of the red, orange, and yellow napkins they had bought in Tijuana. He set them on the table alongside the chicken meat he had peeled off, shredded and piled neatly on a serving platter. Before he called them, he poured Barb’s red wine, Chez’s lemonade, and his own juice.
Barb must’ve prayed for patience and coached Chez, reminding her that Daddy was sick and needed their love. Four times, Barb told him what a special dinner this was. Every time he glanced at Chez, she beamed a phony smile. But their acts played out. By the end of the meal, Barb was staring dreamily out the window or sneaking furtive glances. Checking to see if he had died yet, Greg imagined.
He wondered if Chez had, on her own, guessed he was dying. While she dipped her last hunk of chicken in salsa and gobbled her peanut butter cookie, he caught her staring at him as though at a strange and scary creature. Maybe she already saw him as a ghost.
His girls watched Veggie Tales. He washed and dried the dishes, put them away, cleaned the stove and polished it shiny white. Then he fetched his pillbox and picked out two tranquilizers. A Restoril and a Soma. He tried to decide which he should use then laughed and swallowed both without washing them down. Feeling a new pain like steel teeth biting his liver, he opened the box again and debated between one and two Vicodin. Might as well use them up. “Waste not, want not,” he muttered, and made himself chuckle.
In the living room, he flopped on Chez’s beanbag beside the sofa where his girls were snuggling. He pretended to watch the adventures of a cucumber and a tomato. Actually, he peered out the corner of his eye at his pretty family and grieved doubly, feeling sure that his life meant nothing to them anymore except trouble.
Chez complained of a headache. Barb said, “That’s funny, I have one too.”
Yeah. Me, Greg thought.
They gave Greg his goodnight kisses, brushed their teeth, and retired to Chez’s bedroom. He listened to his daughter read a couple pages of Charlotte’s Web before Barb took over for a minute then stopped in midsentence. When he summoned the energy to heave himself out of the beanbag, he went to Chez’s room and found both his girls asleep, tucked under the covers of the skinny bed, where Barb spent half the nights these past few weeks. To escape Greg’s snoring, she claimed, as if he snored worse now than ever before, which he didn’t believe.
The only cure for self-pity Greg knew was to shift from brooding over his problems to thinking of somebody else’s. The effort delivered him to memories of James’s sister.
Since Greg’s ninth grade year, when Olivia was in seventh, he would’ve quit surfing or anything else to please her, if she’d asked. But she never even hinted. After high school, she moved to Vegas, pranced onstage in a feathered costume, and met Maurice, an older guy whose smooth talk and fists full of cash she fell for, Greg supposed.
Every summer, he saw her at the beach with her kids. The last time was two or three Saturdays ago. He sat with her awhile, thinking he might not see her again. But he didn’t tell her about his disease. She didn’t need any problems of his.
A few times, G
reg had invited Olivia to the One Way Inn to watch his favorite Christian musicians. She would pat his hand or arm and say, “Not this time.” He knew what she meant was I’ll go when Jesus shows up at my door and drags me kicking and screaming.
And now, with her and Maurice separated and him awaiting trial for conspiring with his Vegas connections to take over the action of an Indian casino, some Beverly Hills sharks were going to snatch her home in exchange for their fees. Banish Olivia and her kids to a roach-infested welfare apartment next door to the one where his death would send Barb and Chez.
On a sudden impulse, he stood too fast, got woozy, but managed to stagger to the hall cabinet next to Chez’s bedroom door. One of his girls made breathy whistles in her sleep. He tiptoed and pulled the door closed, taking pains to latch it quietly even though he saw double knobs.
He went to the dining nook for a chair and returned to the hallway. Twice he started to mount the chair but wobbled. The third attempt succeeded because he grasped the cabinet handles in time.
When he opened the cabinet, he bonked his forehead with the door’s sharp corner, drawing a little blood but not enough to dribble into his eye. The object of this expedition, his high school annuals, were in the back of the cabinet. He had to move things, a pewter vase and picture frames, and the shoe box sealed with duct tape in which he had stashed his .25-caliber six-shot revolver. The maker, he suspected, was German, something like Plfstk he couldn’t pronounce. He’d bought it at a pawnshop and used to carry it on risky assignments, back when he was a security guard.
He climbed off the chair, balancing with one hand, all of his high school annuals tucked beneath the other arm, though only his senior year would have photos of Olivia. He must’ve left the shoe box teetering on the edge of the cabinet. As he stepped down, it fell, grazed his shoulder, made a bong sound as it hit the chair, and landed on the floor with a sharp thud. Ouch, Greg thought, and waited for Barb to shout, Hey, be quiet!
But if the crash had woken her, she ignored the disruption. He picked up the shoe box, set it on the chair, and went to the dining nook table. He opened his senior yearbook, turned one page, and found the first picture of Olivia, above the caption Most Popular. She wore a pleated skirt, an inch or so above the knees, and a purple short-sleeved sweater Greg remembered he’d always wanted to rub his nose in. She was made up heavy like the Portuguese babes from tuna fishing families. Like Angie Silva.
Olivia’s dark lipstick looked especially exotic haloed by her wavy golden hair. But gorgeous as she was, what set her above the other beauties was her goodness. She wasn’t shy or proud, but natural and gracious. Loyal to her friends, pleasant to everyone. She earned good grades without showing off. Greg remembered a girl saying, Olivia can afford to be sweet, cause she’s got nothing to prove.
“Phooey,” Greg mumbled, and turned the page. “Everybody’s got stuff to prove.” He found six more pictures of Olivia. The booster club, the French club. “French, huh?” Something else he’d forgotten. Maybe French classes had helped prime her to choose a guy with that name.
“Maurice,” he snarled.
Then he found Olivia in candid shots at a football playoff game and at dances. He caught nostalgia dragging his thoughts back toward his incipient death, which he chose to call it ever since Doctor Ramos used that bookish word that made it feel less real. He craved a smoke. He kept his stash of sinsemilla and papers in a top kitchen cabinet beside Mazola oil, Raid, and other items Barb considered dangerous.
He sat at the table and rolled a fat number. Before he lit up, he realized that after smoking he was likely to forget or blow off returning the annuals and his stash to where they belonged. He set the joint on the table, tossed the baggy into its cabinet, stacked the annuals, and carried them through the living room. As he lifted his right foot onto the chair, he noticed the shoe box beside his left foot and felt a mild electric warmth. A power surge.
He managed to replace the annuals without dropping anything, and when he closed the cabinet doors, they didn’t bang.
He fetched a Diet Slice and carried the shoe box out front. In the fog, thick and greenish, Greg sat on the folding beach chair with plastic slats. He smoked a few hits and discovered that tonight the weed’s first effect was to revive the sucking pain in his liver. He popped the tab on the Slice to lube his dry mouth and to wash down another Vicodin.
Green lights the size of fireflies began flitting around him. With each hit, more tiny green lights appeared in the fog. By his last puff they were a legion. Harbingers of death, he imagined. To soften his rising terror, he muttered, “I’ll shoot the bastards,” and reached down to pick up the shoe box, on the porch floor at his feet. But when he leaned, he toppled forward, and only braced his fall by grabbing a post, just short of a nosedive off the porch into Barb’s tulips.
The folding chair had collapsed behind him. He knelt, turned and unfolded the chair, set it upright, and sat in it with the shoe box on his thigh. He ripped off the duct tape, tore off the lid, and tipped the gun onto his lap. It was wrapped in a dish towel, which he unwrapped before he remembered that when he packed away the gun, he’d put a round of six cartridges with it.
Without thinking why, he loaded the gun. But the instant he gripped it with his finger on the trigger, even before he catalogued the reasons or checked the time, he knew why.
Suddenly, as though he’d gotten bewitched, turned from a frog into a prince, he saw everything with different eyes. His chest swelled with tangy air, though he couldn’t remember breathing. His brain dismissed all the dread, gloom, and sorrow for a lifetime of wasted opportunities and lame decisions. He believed the act he was created to perform had presented itself. For once, he felt like a champion.
But the next instant he thought, Murder?
He wasn’t going to kill anybody. The idea was just another of his fantasies, like when he used to imagine playing lead guitar for Bob Dylan even though he only knew six chords and lost the rhythm a few times every song he tried to play.
The guy he ought to shoot was himself, he thought.
He tried to remember the last time he’d gotten this mired in despair. If he could remember, maybe he’d also remember a way to climb out of it.
“David,” he muttered. King David made a habit of sinking in despair and climbing out. David was usually in danger. Because he was always killing people. “Saul killed his thousands but David his tens of thousands,” he quoted. David killed people because God told him to.
Greg lay the gun in his lap, sat motionless though the heat surging through him made him ache to move, and counted the signs he’d been given, maybe by God.
First, the movie flier that reminded him of the murder game. Barb had posted that flier. She never posted fliers. Next, Barb and Chez fell asleep at eight-thirty, when every single other night Chez would throw a fit if they tried to put her down before the SeaWorld fireworks.
And a few minutes later the gun appeared, after so long he’d forgotten he owned the damned thing.
“Man,” he mumbled, “how many signs do you need?”
He jumped up and stuffed the loaded gun into his baggy front pocket.
God wasn’t urging Greg to bomb abortion clinics or risk hurting innocent people. Nobody could call Maurice innocent. Only a few years ago, he was Pete Pinella’s “bodyguard” until the gangster went to Pelican Bay on a murder charge.
Greg rushed inside. He strode to the kitchen and looked at the clock. Ten minutes before ten. Another sign. The SeaWorld fireworks would blast off at ten, just when Maurice was supposed to leave his bartender shift at Rick’s Lounge, and just enough time for Greg to get there. If he hustled.
Greg tiptoed through the living room to Chez’s bedroom door and turned the handle slowly until it stopped. He pushed the door open wide but only leaned his head and shoulders into the room.
Gaping at the beauty of his girls, the soft cheeks, glossy hair, the moons of their eyelids, he wondered how such a loser as himself had won the mother
and helped create the daughter.
He crept out of the house, staggered down the porch steps, then steadied himself. He tried jogging, but the slap of his feet on the pavement spooked him.
Down the hill in thickening fog, he remembered Abraham. God commanded the patriarch to sacrifice his son not to get the deed done, only to test the man’s faith.
Giddy with relief, he thought God wasn’t going to make him kill Maurice, only make sure he was willing.
Between gasps to catch his breath, he told himself, Just go there, get ready. Then God would show up and stay his hand, like he did Abraham’s.
The red light at Sunset Cliffs Boulevard was a dull splotch in the fog. He listened for a moment. Though he knew that in fog he might not hear an approaching car, he jogged across, hoping nobody was crazy enough to drive lights-out tonight.
He tripped over the curb and fell to his knees, heaved himself up using the streetlight pole for balance. He staggered down Newport, allowing a thought he’d suppressed up till now. The signs—the movie, his gun that appeared as though out of nowhere at the right time, the soupiest fog this year, and the others—they didn’t have to be from God. Some demon could’ve rigged them.
His pace slowed for a few steps, and the fog seemed to whirl around him. The world had turned weirder than back before Barb and Jesus, when he now and then shot dope with his biker amigos, earning himself the death sentence. Maybe he was dying right now. He walked faster, then faster, almost a jog.
Halfway down the block, he weaved through a crowd of Friday-night smokers outside The Jail, a pickup bar. He stumbled and bumped into a girl with buzzed hair, a sparkly halter, and tight jeans. She caromed into a large Filipino who was lighting her cigarette. The guy burnt his finger on account of Greg.
“Dude,” the Filipino said, and took a step toward him, but stopped when a muffled boom sounded. He returned to the girl and lit her cigarette while Greg reeled and thought the sound had to be from God. From SeaWorld, sure. But also from God. Satan wasn’t crafty enough to arrange all these signs.
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