by Boston Teran
It’s a stripped-down room. No windows. Black walls. A dance floor and tables squared up around a small stage, where the band practices. They’re a rough-looking foursome.
Bob hears Case take a deep breath, almost like a sigh, or a warning. Her eyes tail toward the bar, guiding his look.
There are a few locals tucked away in one corner. But at the other end Bob sees a man’s face turning toward them as if some instinctual chord-line from the music has pulled him to Bob and Case.
Case starts in his direction. Bob follows.
“Hello, Errol—I can’t believe my luck, running into you.”
Eyes behind a pair of nickel-sized tinted sunglasses take the moment in. Waves of liquid blue electric from the lights behind the bar fall across a face that remains expressionless.
“You’re not giving me the bum rap, are you? That I-don’t-exist shit.”
Bob hears the perfect pitch of begging in Case’s tone.
Errol reaches for a cigarette that has been quietly burning away. “The prodigal daughter returns.”
Errol isn’t more than thirty, and he’s got skull-tight black hair except for a thin patch across the top that’s longer and slicked back. Even sitting, Bob can tell that Errol’s got at least six inches and forty pounds on him. Bob checks him out to see if he’s carrying any metal, but those form-fitting black jeans and gray pullover don’t leave much room for doubt. Errol rests his arms back on the bar, stretching out some, and from the look of those over-defined pecs it’s a good sketch he’s got a taste for steroids.
Errol takes a moment, notices Case’s mark on Bob’s cheek. “I see there’s a new member of the family.”
“Oh, yeah. Errol, this is Bob. Bob …”
“What are you doin’ here, girl?” Errol demands.
Bob sits at a table instead of at the bar, five feet back of Errol, where he can play the mute shitkicker trailing his old lady and watch them both.
“We were driving in from Arizona,” says Case, “and—Bob’s got family there. And, well …” She squirrels down into the seat beside Errol, cutting off his line of sight to the band. “We stopped in Calexico for dinner and I remembered—I thought you had a bar here. I was here, right? When you were dating that porno actress, and me and Cyrus and the others had come down from Brawley.”
Bob watches but on the beat of that name, nothing. Errol boy has perfected the Armani pose. Bob wonders if he could hold that look with a boot up in his chin.
“Anyway, we were just tripping along, and I thought, why don’t we come on up here. If you were here I could say hello and …”
Case starts to meander a bit, talking up trivia that could put comas out of business. She goes on, not even looking Errol in the eye, as if she were just making up a story to round out the emptiness. Bob notices her body language alter. An uneasy feeling starts to fill him up. She’s either putting on some kind of perfect act he can’t quite understand or she’s breaking apart in the face of it.
Errol takes a look down at Case’s arms covered up in the long-sleeved shirt. The band is starting to go into overdrive. Two guitars fight for dominance, point and counterpoint. One voice, hoarse, followed by a stanza of rough-and-tumble backups. Something about genocide and Utopia. It’s black metal and it takes over the black room. Case steals a look at Bob.
He tries to nod supportively. Then he looks away. He notices on the wall by the bar a CHP poster with a bearded face and a pistol aiming right at you and the slogan IS TODAY THE DAY? printed in big white letters. It’s the same poster he’s seen at every CHP office in Antelope Valley.
It makes no fucking sense suddenly. That poster there. Them here. He’s not sure if he should step in, drag this prick outside at gunpoint, and … Is it Case breaking up in the face of it, or is it him?
“Hot band,” she says.
Errol nods.
“I could see them rockin’ at the House of Blues. They yours?”
“I put a little money into them.”
Through that cool electric blue of the lights Bob catches Case’s eye working a spot of floor. “How’s Cyrus doin’?” she asks. She barely mutters the name. Bob sits up a little in his seat.
Say something, you pumped-up bastard, he thinks.
Errol doesn’t say a word. He takes Case by the arm and pulls her toward him like he might kiss her. Then in a slow, almost sexual way, he undoes the button on her shirtsleeve. She sees what is starting to happen, her eyes quickly flash at Bob, and then she tries, without being too obvious, to get loose of Errol’s grip.
Bob isn’t sure if he should get up and stop whatever it is, but there’s something in her look for that one second, as if she has been caught in the act of lying, that causes him to hang back. In the next breath, in the moving burlesque of hand and shirt, a slice of arm is exposed to the ice-blue light. The skin is a bitter white, like the rind inside a rotting slice of lemon, and there he spots a series of festering needle marks up her forearm, tracing a helix of veins. Deep, deep purple, sufflated marks, like leeches who have dug in for the feeding.
Errol’s lips work up a grin. “I’m happy to know you couldn’t make it, Headcase.”
Case pulls her sleeve down and buttons it back up. “Can I quote you?”
“We all have our little secrets don’t we?”
Bob looks away, stares vacantly at the band. For the first time he notices their name on the white circle of drum skin, Santaria Salsa. They’re crashing through a number like faith healers on speed for some weirded-out cause. Driving home every chorus with a scream. Them on one side of the room, and that IS TODAY THE DAY? poster on the other: madness. Nothing matches up. The uncontrollable wizardry of contrary predictions.
It’s a fuckin’ conceit that cast them as accomplices. An unfathomable con. When was the last time he saw her arms? He remembers seeing them the first time he met her, and there weren’t any needle marks then.
She can’t look him in the eye. Not even a glance. He starts to walk out. Case grabs him.
“Let’s go,” he says.
“I need to …”
“We all have our little secrets,” Errol says again.
“Let’s just goddamn go.”
“I can’t go now. You have to understand …”
He pulls loose from her grasp.
28
The day of the ’94 earthquake was our crucifixion. The day this church opens and holds its first service will be our resurrection.
This is what Reverend Greely had burned into a plaque. It was his war chant, so to speak. And he had judiciously placed it above Arthur’s desk at the work site of the First Church of Christ and Christian Community Center Reconstruction project.
Arthur sits alone in the dark, below the sign marking the project site, looking out onto the grounds of the church. The architect’s vision is becoming a building of purpose. Thanks in large part, he likes to believe, to his dedication.
Still no word from Bob. Nothing. Not one call.
Arthur stares at the sign as he stands. The bronze little more than a banded stain. He would easily trade this building for the here and now of his grandchild.
Before he leaves he stops at the granite baptismal pool, where a miniature stream and waterfall will empty into its polished stone channel.
It is here that converts and infants will be initiated into the body of Christ. He runs his fingers across the polished ledge of the font. He stares up at the moon through the steel beams that will reinforce the structure and hold the church steady against the rocking earth of the west Valley.
But none of this relieves him. He feels unusually small and threatened. That somehow the night will have its way with him.
Even here, where all things are born. Even here.
He drives home, pulls into the driveway. He sits almost half an hour without going in. His face has grown heavier since the murders. Another ring around the waist of years. He hopes someone will come, some friend, some concerned neighbor, someone who can sense his desper
ation from a distance. Force him to talk himself away from what he’s feeling.
Arthur finds himself pulling out into the street. He finds himself driving to Maureen and John Lee’s house without calling. He finds himself knocking on their door even though all the lights are out. He finds himself waiting in the silence long after he shouldn’t. He finds himself picking idly at chips of white wood in the wall slats.
The door opens and he finds himself completely turned around. Maureen stands before him in a bathrobe and without makeup. In the touch of amber light Arthur notices two things: her bare feet and the face badly welted with blue-tailed veins.
“Maureen …”
She puts her fingers to her lips, looks out toward the street in case anyone is passing and can possibly see. He follows her into the dark hallway.
“What happened?”
“You have to ask that?”
“Where is he?”
“I don’t know. In some emergency room, hopefully, beyond all reasonable help.”
She crosses the living room. She goes over to the bar. A cup of moonlight fills the room as best it can. The last half of a drink is there waiting for her. She reaches for the Scotch bottle. “Have a drink. I’ll make you one.”
As she pours, she asks, “What brought you over?”
He’s about to speak, but—to come to be consoled and instead walk into this … “Forget it,” he says.
She pushes a glass of Scotch across the bar with just enough ice so he can hear it coming.
“Have you heard from Bob?”
“No.”
She eases him back onto a bar stool. “Sit.”
“I don’t know what happened to him, Maureen.”
“Bob is—”
“Not Bob. John Lee …”
“Nothing’s happened to him. He’s the same as he always was, only more so. Don’t shake your head like that, Arthur. You know I’m right. We overlook things in life. We overlook the obvious because we are selfish for something else. I don’t know if we pay more for our sins or our pleasures. But we seem to pay.”
“You ought to divorce him.”
“And give up half my business. Our business. The hell I will. I’ll pay for his boots and his bread and his booze and his blue movies with little bo—”
“I don’t want to hear this, okay!”
“You can’t swallow that far, Arthur. He’s not just the guy you drink with or shoot clay skeet with or have a pizza with and watch the Super Bowl.”
She takes a drag on her cigarette and in an angry, frustrated, calculated moment she puts it out by stamping it into the wood bar. Arthur watches silently.
“Well, as long as I’m being so viciously honest … and you’re here … I might as well confess something to you …”
He looks up.
“I’ve been wanting to. Needing to, really.”
“What?”
“Just another failure of mine. Another shameful act. Did you ever wonder if death gets rid of all your memories?”
“Jesus, Maureen.”
“The lost part of the tail wags the dog in my life. And living is the downside of death. You know that, don’t you. How do you like that for a phrase? Maybe I’ll have stationery printed up with ‘Living is the …’ ”
“Maureen, I can’t handle it when you talk this way!”
“I had an affair with Sam.”
She says it so slow, so matter-of-fact, it sounds as if she were reciting the last detail off a shopping list to a child. Arthur doesn’t quite piece the name and the man together. His thoughts seem to huddle around some hole.
“Sam. Sam who?”
“Our Sam. Sarah’s Sam, for Christ sake. Sam!”
Arthur sits there mute.
“John Lee knew,” she adds. “I have no idea how. Maybe he picked up a vibe. Maybe he followed me. That’s how I got this … facial. Threatened to kill me if I ever did anything like that again.”
He pushes his drink away. “How long was this going on?”
“Six months.”
He closes his eyes. Swallows. Opens his eyes. “Did Sarah know?”
“I don’t think so.”
“How long did John Lee know?”
“I have no idea.”
“He said nothing to me. Nothing.”
Maureen goes over and sits on the couch, no longer able to look Arthur in the eye. He turns around to face her.
“Why Sarah’s husband? Why my baby’s husband?”
“I didn’t do it because it was your baby’s husband.”
“Why him? With all the—”
“Humps available?”
“Oh, Maureen. Listen to how you talk about something as—”
“He was everything John Lee hated, alright. He was there. He was close. He was young. He was willing. He was able. And able to keep it in perspective. And he was everything John Lee hated. That was the chocolate icing on the cake.”
Arthur gets up. He cannot grapple with this anymore tonight. Not anymore.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know. Not home.”
“You could stay here.”
“I have to be alone.”
“Arthur … Arthur …”
He stops at the steps in the foyer leading up to the door.
“I don’t think John Lee wants to find out who killed Sarah and Sam,” she says. “I don’t think he does. I think down deep he’s happy they got away with it. I think it’s his way of getting back at me. Not that he doesn’t want Gabi back, I know he does. But as for the other …”
29
Bob stalks the lobby, stands off to one side of that rat pack of losers around the television as they listen to pathetic sitcom punch lines. He hangs in there for all of two commercial breaks before he’s had it and bolts.
He’s out and down the four long cement steps of that worn hostelry when he hears a whistle and Case shouting, “Hey!”
He keeps walking. She catches up to him in the middle of the block.
“You’re a fuckin’ piece of work,” he says, “you know that?”
“You bet your ass, Bob Whatever.”
He stops, grabs her by the arm, rips the buttons loose and pulls the sleeve up to see for himself, to see up close. “Clean and sober, huh?”
He throws her arm loose and she lets him. He turns and crosses the street, scooting between cars and almost getting sideswiped by a pumped-up Volkswagen, but she’s right on him. “You fuckin’ lied to me.”
“You got that right.”
“How long?”
“How long, what?” she asks, although she knows what he’s asking.
“Was it the first day out you started shooting up?”
They hump up onto the sidewalk and shortcut the park in a diagonal through some low-hanging trees that rim its border. “Did you cop some of the money I gave you for the Ferryman and score yourself a couple of grams? When did you start?”
“When did I start keeping my shirtsleeves down?”
He pulls some branches aside, stares at her, keeps going.
“You didn’t notice, did you? Friggin’ eighty degrees in that shit-locker restaurant and I’m sitting there with my sleeves tucked down into my hands. You don’t know shit about the junkie cover-ups. You’re a desk boy at the door of the real world. And you’re as easy to see through as a piece of cheesecloth! In that bar back there. Bang! You looked like a cow that just got the electric shock to the brain.”
They start across on the grass, soft and wet under their feet. A few beer cans visible on the ground like fallen stars. A few pale shapes reside at the edge of the darkness. There for stolen moments or a place to sleep.
They cross the park in silence, and upon reaching the Dakota Bob jumps in and turns the engine over. Case’s door is locked and he won’t open it. Before he can pull out of the spot, she charges around and fights her way into the driver’s window. Her hands clench around the keys.
“They call this fuckin’ grand theft auto, b
abe.”
He can feel her breathing into his neck. He lets go by ramming his elbow upward, the bone of it catching her in the jaw and slapping it hard enough to make her lip bleed. She comes around the Dakota. He flips off the headlights as she passes. She waits at the door. He unlocks it. Somewhere a few cars back he hears laughter. She opens the glove box and ransacks past all those accumulated papers to where a small leather kit is packed away.
She unzips the kit in three neat turns without looking his way. She holds up the open kit so a needle, assorted vials, and a small plastic bottle of Visine are center stage.
Bob watches all this with grim resolution.
She opens the needle, clearing the channel for a few squirts of Visine. Then she adds a little blue liquid from a vial. From another she twicks in a little orange ground powder. The potion immediately starts to fever and froth. White layers of foam float up through the glass trough of marked millimeters. She chambers the ass end of the needle back in place like a gunfighter and gives it a little squirt heavenward.
“Listen and learn, desk boy. Visine and a concentration of liquid cleansers from your local supermarket. Any cheap brand will do. The foam and the blue tint that looks like some old broad’s hair is from Ajax. And that orange powder shit is Mother Nature’s own ground-up ascorbic acid. Vitamin C.”
She rolls her shirtsleeve up, holds her arm out. She injects the blue potion under her skin along the benchmark of a vein. It immediately welts, and within seconds there is a festering of grayish bubbles from the hole where the needle releases the flesh. The blood comes fast after that. Case grits in pain. A sound hissing through locked chalky-white teeth.
“It’s a nothing concoction laid in just under the first layer of skin. Looks bad. Scabs up nice. You want to be a junkie, you got to look like a junkie.
“I learned this little gig from a real-estate broker in Long Beach. His boyfriend was a smack head, and when he couldn’t score ’cause they were both dying for cash his lover would shoot this shit into his arm and check himself into a methadone clinic. Then he’d take the methadone and resell it on the street for smack for his boyfriend. Now that’s the capitalist system when it’s working on all cylinders.”