“You mean at your mom’s house?”
“It’s both our house.”
“Sí,” said Tino. “Su casa es la casa de tu madre.”
The others laughed.
“Fuck you, puto,” I said just as Rocindo pulled back onto the pavement and started heading toward town.
“You wanna go to a party in Kingston, vato?” Tino said.
“Nah, man. Just drop me off.”
“C’mon, ese. We have a good time.”
I could tell he was sincere, and I would’ve gone. God knows, I could’ve used a party. Anything to forget the financial bloodletting at the casino, my unemployment, my miserable prospects, and the rest of it. I truly had nothing to lose by going with Tino. But somehow I just couldn’t let him see how bad things had gotten. I guess somewhere in me, I still needed to feel superior to him.
“Sorry, man, I’m wiped. Got a bunch of stuff on my plate tomorrow.”
“No problem, Miguel. We drop you off.”
The whole drive to my house, I tried to talk myself into going with them. How could my night possibly get worse?
“Hey, Holmes,” said Tino. “The old lady misses you. Same with Truman. His boxwood look like shit, ese. It look like a fucking dog pruned it. Lacy was stupid to fire you.”
“Yeah, well.”
“He got to find a better lawn man, too.”
Ramiro promptly punched Tino in the shoulder.
“Shit, is true, mi primo, your edges suck!”
The little guy socked him again, and Tino just laughed.
“Sorry, but you ain’t Miguel, mi primo. Miguel is el mejor. It means, you the best, vato. You a pro.”
I can’t say I didn’t appreciate Tino saying so, just not enough to change my mind about going with them. It wasn’t until Rocindo pulled up in front of the house that I remembered Tino would likely be looking for my truck.
“Shit, ese, whose Bimmer?”
“Uh, yeah, that’s my boss’s car.”
“Nice,” he said. “Where you working, vato?”
“All over. This and that. Production, import, export, that kind of thing. Anyway, thanks for the lift.”
Rocindo tipped his cowboy hat, and Ramiro smiled.
Tino still had questions, though, I could tell.
“Well, gotta go,” I said, climbing out. “You guys have fun.”
“Gimme a call, ese. You still got my number?”
“Sí,” I said.
When You Make Other Plans
When the day arrived to finally take Remy out, I was down to twenty bucks, which equated to two movie tickets—no Milk Duds, no popcorn. I thought about hitting up Freddy for a loan, but desperate as I was, I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. I considered calling Remy and telling her I was down with the flu. But I decided I was done lying to her. If I had any hope of ever being with Remy, she’d have to accept me for what I was—broke.
So I bought a seven-dollar bottle of wine from Albertsons, along with some lunch meat, some bread, some cheese, and a couple of nonorganic Honeycrisp apples. I made sandwiches and cut them up into dainty squares, and sliced up the apples, and brought two mugs and some napkins and a bottle opener from home. I packed it all in the closest thing I could find to a picnic basket: the green tackle box I’d bought at the flea market. I rolled up a blanket, some newspaper, and some kindling and stuffed it in my old backpack from high school.
Remy was already waiting in front of the tribal visitor center when I arrived at five thirty. Her hair was different, but I couldn’t tell you how exactly. It might have been the light, but she seemed to be wearing more makeup than usual. She had a little wart under her eye, which I’d never noticed before, and a skin tag on her arm that looked like a toasted Rice Krispie.
“What a great idea, a picnic,” she said, clutching my arm. “I had no idea you were such a romantic.”
I was terrified almost to the point of nausea as we walked down the steps and crossed under the pier heading north, toward the same spot where, a few weeks earlier, I’d seen Suquamish as never before. I was hoping to recapture some of the romance of that night. The gentle lapping of the surf, the crackle of the fire, the crying of the gulls, riding on the briny air. This is what I imagined for Remy and me as we nibbled our sandwich squares and sipped our wine and made easy conversation.
But conditions were different this time around. To begin with, it was pretty windy, and the tide was way out, and something stank, like maybe a dead sea lion had washed up on the beach somewhere nearby. Also, it was threatening to rain. And not only were the sand fleas infuriating, but I also couldn’t get a decent fire going to save my life.
We ate the sandwiches, anyway, and made quick work of the wine. Remy did most of the talking while I blew on the fledgling fire. She told me about her two weeks in Wenatchee, and seeing her old friends and being glad that she’d moved on instead of getting stuck in Wenatchee, which didn’t sound so bad to me. There was a river and a brewery and mountains that were green in the spring and snow covered in winter.
Lousy fire and sand fleas aside, things were going pretty smoothly until it started to piss rain. We tried to pretend we didn’t notice for a few minutes, but eventually the smoke from the smoldering fire became unbearable.
Now what? Totally broke and no more wine. I definitely didn’t want to invite Remy to my house. What could be more unromantic than watching TV with Freddy and Nate? I scrambled for a solution as we made our way south toward the pier. The shed was beginning to look inevitable until Remy arrived at another prospect, equally as mortifying.
“Let’s duck into that bar,” she said, indicating the Tide’s Inn.
“You don’t want to go there,” I said. “Trust me.”
“It’s a bar,” she said. “It’s dry.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
“But what? Come on, I’m buying.”
I’m not ashamed that my mom is a waitress. It’s just not something I like to watch. For this very reason, I rarely go to the Tide’s Inn, though it’s only five blocks from the house and I could probably score an occasional free beer. Add to that the discomfort of bringing Remy to my mom’s place of employment, where somebody was bound to tease me, and you’ve got a pretty good idea why I was so itchy under the collar.
There were numerous BMX bikes parked out front, which is a hallmark on the res, because DUIs are kind of a thing around here. There was also an old St. Bernard with a giant tumor on his neck, lounging in the doorway. Stepping over the dog, we pushed through the door and made our way across a floor littered with scratch tickets, ending up at a wobbly table in back, where we sat in the glow of the ancient cigarette machine.
“Uh, just so you know,” I said, “my mom is gonna be our waitress.”
“That’s your mom? Wow, she’s pretty.”
Mom was pleasantly surprised to see me, and I imagine even more surprised to see me with a girl.
“Ma, this is Remy.”
“Nice to meet you, sweetie. You have excellent taste in men.”
My scalp tightened.
“Yeah, so far he’s a keeper,” said Remy.
Goddamn, it was hot in there. My mom hovered over our table, small-talking with Remy for what seemed like an eternity. Honestly, I just wanted to get past the pretense and kiss Remy and find out whether or not it would be life changing.
My mom comped us a pitcher, which I knew would later come out of her tips.
“So when’s your novel going to be published?” Remy asked, topping off our glasses with the pitcher. “When can I read it?”
“Actually, uh, there is no novel,” I said. “Not really. I was just trying to impress you.”
“Ah, I see,” she said, visibly unimpressed. “So you lied?”
“It wasn’t a total lie,” I said. “I’m trying to write a novel, but it’s terrible. I wrote a scene where a guy is sitting on the toilet eating a turkey leg, trying to figure out what he’s doing with his life.”
“Is he poopin
g?” she asked.
“I haven’t really figured that out. I guess I assumed he was pooping, since his underwear is around his ankles.”
“He should be pooping,” she said. “Or he should get off the pot.”
It was like she was talking about me.
When our beers were empty, we reached that awkward point where it was time to make a decision. I can’t speak for Remy, but I had a pretty good buzz by then, between the wine and the beer. My instinct was to drink more, because I felt like it would only get us closer to something definitive, but I didn’t have any money.
“Well, I better call it quits while I can still drive,” she said.
I should’ve said something like “You can always take a cab” or “You can crash on my couch” and then ordered another pitcher or a couple of Jägerbombs and had my mom comp it. But then, maybe Remy was trying to preserve something. Maybe she really did think I was a keeper. Maybe she didn’t want to move too fast.
Outside, the rain had let up. We stood in the parking lot for a while, prolonging the opportunity to take some elusive next step. I was compelled to take that step but mostly by voices in my head.
Nick: “Hit that shit.”
Freddy: “What you waitin’ for, boy?”
Mom: “She was awfully nice, Michael.”
What was the big hurry, anyway? If Remy and I were meant to be, it would happen, one way or another.
“We should do this again,” Remy said.
“Totally. I’ll text you.”
“Well . . .” she said.
I leaned into her, then stopped, then she leaned forward and halted. Finally, we leaned in at the same time and managed a kiss. It was clearly more than polite but still a little ambiguous. I should’ve put my hand on the small of her back and pulled her close to me and really locked lips with her, like in an old movie. I should have staked some claim to her immediate future.
“Thanks for the picnic,” she said, climbing into her car.
“You bet,” I said.
And then she drove off.
The Revolution Is Postponed
That night, I dreamed of landscaping, of clean lines and neatly raked beds. Of calloused hands and green boot tops, of steaming mulch and hissing sprinklers and sun-dappled rhodies in full bloom. I dreamed of tidy edges and shady corners and weedless gravel paths meandering between rose beds. I dreamed of a world where I was still getting a paycheck, still coming home each day exhausted but satisfied, ninety-six dollars richer. In my dream, I had a brand-new F-250 named Georgia. And it was divine.
I awoke to the dulcet strains of Dale’s band saw, the rain beating down on the roof of the shed like pea gravel. The entire right side of my jaw was throbbing. The pain hit like a rubber mallet and ran like a shiver up the back of my skull. I reached in and wiggled the tooth with a wince until it was loose, and the pain took my breath away.
Believe me, it would have been easy to eat four Advils and stay in bed all day. But I got dressed and left without eating breakfast or even going in the house. By afternoon, with my loose tooth still throbbing ceaselessly, I put in job applications at KFC, Payless ShoeSource, and Taco del Mar.
On the bus ride back, wincing through my toothache, I read a half chapter of Knut Hamsun’s Hunger, and I’ll be honest, ravenous as I was, I didn’t really buy the conceit of the whole thing. First of all, the hungry people I knew weren’t bandying on about philosophy all the time. They talked about cheeseburgers, if anything. Also, they tended to look for jobs instead of wandering around refusing help. The guy in the book was basically kind of a pretentious bum.
Anyway, the bus broke down at 305 and Hostmark, right where some kind of protest was going on with a dozen or so picketers. So I watched it out the rain-streaked window while waiting for a new bus to arrive. The picketers’ homemade signs were running and bleeding so badly from the rain, you could hardly read them, and they were all wearing those cheap ponchos, the thin kind they give away at sporting events. Nobody, it seemed, was paying attention to the protesters or their cause, which was presumably why they were there in the first place.
After a moment, I recognized the ringleader as Andrew the librarian, he of the big Adam’s apple and the messed-up grill. He was the least miserable looking of the crusaders. In fact, there was something heroic about the way he was waving his sign defiantly, like a challenge, as though the weather were just one more oppressive force thwarting his cause, a cause I was still unable to ascertain, since his picket sign looked like a fucking Rorschach test. But I’d be a liar if I said the protest wasn’t sort of inspiring, whatever it was about. And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish, if only for a moment, that I could be like Andrew, waving that sign as though he believed he could deter the ruinous forces of greed and global warming, as if he believed he could actually save the world with it.
I confess, I’m one of those people who complains about the world and doesn’t do shit about it, aside from a little recycling, and only when it’s convenient. Sometimes it’s pretty hard to see past your immediate struggles, you know? But for a minute there, watching those miserable protesters, I felt the stirrings of a social conscience. How the hell else was anything going to change if people weren’t willing to take to the street and air their grievances?
But just look at me, what could I do, especially in this rain, with this debilitating toothache? And shouldn’t I be saving myself first, anyway? Wasn’t it kind of like the oxygen masks on airplanes? Wouldn’t I be more help to everybody else if I could breathe myself? Still, it got me to thinking that I could probably be doing more to make the world a better place. But first, old Mike Muñoz had to save himself, and that meant making some money—someway, somehow.
Stop-Gap Measure
Selling all my shit amounted to what Chaz would call a “stop-gap measure.” I was “creating a little cash flow,” “liquidating a few assets.”
Freddy and I paid our fifteen bucks, and the organizer pointed us down to the end of the line. I pulled the Tercel around and started setting up shop next to the kid with the pit bull and the tattoos. Leaning against the car, Freddy drank an orange soda and watched me unload my fishing rod, my tackle box, my lawn mower, the Billy Bass, everything I’d bought at the flea market last month. Not to mention my Felcos, my rake, and my post-hole digger.
“Grab my stuff while you’re at it,” said Freddy.
Freddy had two VCRs and three cardboard boxes of porno tapes.
“Freddy, I’m telling you, you can’t sell that shit at the flea market.”
“Says who?”
“There might be kids here.”
“Ain’t no kids at no flea market. ’Sides, your mama say I got to get rid of this shit if I’m gonna live under her roof. Kills me, man, kills me. This shit is classic, dog.”
“You’re gonna get us kicked out.”
“Hell no, boy. Discretion is my middle name. Why you keep grimacing, boy? Shit ain’t that heavy.”
“My fucking tooth.”
“You want me to pull that shit?”
“Yeah, right. Because you’re a dentist.”
“Shit. Dentist ain’t like no doctor. More like a mechanic. All you need is the tools and the basic idea.”
“Thanks, but no thanks, Freddy.”
I displayed the mower, scrubbed to a shine, right out front, with a tag marked fifty bucks and a sign that said LIKE NEW! I stuck the post-hole digger straight into the ground, so that it looked useful—ten bucks. Nine for the old Felcos. Six for the rake. I priced the rod and tackle box, fifteen for the pair. The few records my mom contributed were two for three dollars—Chaz calls that “bundling.” It’s a good way to “dump inventory.”
When I finally finished laying out my wares, Freddy set to work methodically unpacking.
“Nobody gonna buy those VHS tapes, yo,” said the kid with the pit bull, watching Freddy lay them out discreetly behind the Tercel.
“Shit,” said Freddy. “Boy, if you knew anything, you wouldn�
�t be sittin’ your ass on that ratty towel. And you sure as shit wouldn’t have no homemade scorpion tattoo on your neck, either. I want your business advice, I’ll ask next time.”
Well, that shut the kid up. He went right back to organizing his stolen DVDs.
Freddy was a hell of a salesman, as it turns out.
“Sir, I noticed you admiring that post-hole digger. You like movies?” Wink wink, elbow elbow, nudge nudge. “You know, like classics?”
Freddy had it all figured out. Discretion really was his middle name. He’d been collecting brown paper bags for a week.
As for me, my sales got off to a slow start. A kid with skinny jeans bought one of the CCR albums, but he saw right through my bundling scheme. And since I didn’t have proper change, I had to give it to him for a buck. A woman in a visor unlocked my Felcos and inspected the edges for nicks before offering me six bucks. Since I believe in momentum, I took it. That was it, though. Mostly, I sat there next to our Tupperware cash box with the wrong lid, increasingly discouraged.
Freddy, meanwhile, was irrepressible.
“This one here got Christy Canyon,” he’d say. “This here got Little Oral Annie.”
By two o’clock, I’d slashed the mower down to thirty-five dollars OBO. By three, I was down to OBO.
Freddy kept right on selling, his rapport with customers growing more familiar as the afternoon unfolded.
“You can have your shaved lady parts.” Elbow elbow, nudge nudge. “Old Freddy wanna look like a catfish when he come up for air.”
He was out of brown paper bags by three thirty, and up nearly sixty bucks, while I flatlined at eighteen dollars. At four, we packed up the remainder of our wares. I would’ve been a financial wash for the day if Freddy hadn’t kicked me down a fiver for gas and another ten for my trouble.
If there’s a silver lining to this cloud, it’s that we didn’t have to triple-park the Tercel in the driveway when we got home to unload. That’s because as we were swinging a right off of Division, we passed a tow truck. And I’ll bet you can guess what car it was towing.
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