A California Closing

by Robert Wintner

  Five years later the next Peugeot got cranberry spray paint over the chalky white frame and boring decals. Then came a thirty-mile race that a young fellow with a new paint job couldn’t help pushing in high gears for twenty miles—into the wall. Fatigue made him look old, and he wondered why the older guys passing by kept staring. A veteran advised, “You can’t push high gears like that. You slide side to side over your saddle to keep the power over the pedal. Too much pressure. You got DDS.” That would be Dead Dick Syndrome; Mulroney stood by a tree, waiting for his pecker to do something. The veteran told him to tilt the seat down a notch forward to ease pressure on the anus/dingdong nerve. So he did and eased the numbness until grooved seats came along.

  Ten years into the groove, the media interrupted this program for BREAKING NEWS! The tragic consequence of bicycling! DDS causes impotence!

  Mother Mulroney called in a panic. “Do you have numbness in your shillelagh or trouble getting an erection?”

  “Who needs to know?” She needed to know because she was his mother for chrissakes, and a bicycle will bring it on.

  Several decades down the road but only a week into his new ride, Mulroney eases out of town. He is unafraid but aware that road familiarity goes out the window on a bicycle. In a car, two miles is three minutes. On two wheels with a square inch of rubber on the road, it’s different. He rides the brakes. His neck cramps, with his head tilted up to see ahead at high speed.

  Did Lance Armstrong’s testicular cancer come from groin friction daily, just like Bob Marley’s brain tumor stemmed from nonstop ganja? You can’t abuse nature.

  Bicycle machismo has no logic, no sense of self-preservation and is invisible to the untrained eye. What’s made to seem casual, nonchalant, and ho-hum is actually an uphill push so painful that joints grind like failed bearings. Bicycle macho is complex, not obvious. It has no props—no loud pipes or fag dangling from a teeth clench or driving one-handed in tedious self-consciousness with leather, fringe, conchos, and chrome. A bicyclist wears shiny shoes with cleats, spandex, and a plastic shirt with three back pockets stuffed with candy bars. Bicycle machismo has no body fat. It’s a lean and mean pain machine, pushing the heart into the throat as necessary for a move. Lance went wheel to wheel with the pack leaders on steep grades, veins popping on the collective brow. At red line, or maximum give, or the threshold of thrombosis—Lance broke out and pulled ahead decisively—make that crushingly. The Frogs claimed drug enhancement and less friction because Lance only has one nut. The frictional charge never stuck and no need; Lance was so drugged. Yet lost in the media melee was a truth, no matter what drugs or how many balls or what size: tougher than your average toothless tattooed wonder, Lance demonstrated the difference between a macho pose and laying it out.

  Here it is, Lance: change your blood with this space-age blood so you can go faster. Okay?

  Sure. Why not?

  Because it’s cheating! That’s why not! Cheating the whole wide world is not the same as winning! Yet Mulroney demonstrates as he imagines it might have been, for the feeling. Amped up, gearing down, he accelerates, not to be confused with pulling away crushingly. Mulroney’s move may also be invisible to the untrained eye, especially in traffic, except from the Big M point of view. Women might see it too, women down to forty, or forty-eight. Like that one there, in the Volkswagen. She checked him out. There she goes again, with the smile.

  Mulroney rides with a rearview mirror too—came out and asked for it, drawing glances from the bike shop elite like a pedophile at day care. Rearview mirror? What’s the old fucker up to? What’s next, training wheels? Or one of those cute electric motors? The rearview clamps low on the handlebar. Hardly an ounce—make that twenty-eight grams—it shows the big picture at a glance: who’s veering close or fast. Otherwise a look back pulls the bike into harm’s way, or overcompensation takes it to the ditch. Mulroney knew these things years before these twerps were born. They see this rocket rig as an old-guy supplement. When they hone in on the Certitudes, they groan—on a surge of more envy. Fuck ’um. The old guy is out here doing it, is he not? The Certitudes were Frankie’s idea because they keep an old guy going longer. So? No big deal. Old goes well with poise. Mulroney’s been around the block on two wheels. He knows the drill, just as he checks the rearview to see two riders out of their saddles pushing top gears, coming uphill from behind casually as a jog in the park, gaining with embarrassing ease. He sets with aplomb—and indifference, as the younger set passes easily.

  He flips the mirror up to see what she saw, the one in the VW. But an old guy with a puffy face looks back, Poppin’ Fresh nearing apoplexy. He doesn’t feel puffy or old. He feels like the same guy. So what?

  The chinstrap bunches his chin to make his cheeks puff with acorns for starters. The crop-top helmet makes him look like Friar Tuck. But he needs the helmet. Doesn’t he? Fucking helmets.

  The puffy face amused her. That’s all it was. Merely mordantly curious, she smirked, which is not a smile. What a rude kid.

  He coasts to the light. What’s the rush? A fat kid on a so-so mountain bike worth less than half of Mulroney’s front wheel passes casually, breathing more from fat than effort. So what? Factor the potholes, pitfalls, knockdowns, drag outs, upper cuts, hooks, jabs, and body checks of the four decades Michael Mulroney has on the kid, the pace reckons about even. Or five decades—some of the kids won’t even make his age, much less on a bicycle.

  Past the last light in town, traffic thins. So do thoughts and clutter, as the busy thoroughfare becomes a country road, lushly green. Mottled light hides the bumps. Sunbeams jumble in the leafy tint; blinding brilliance breaks the shadows, so he squints to get it right because a steep shoulder spills forty feet to a rocky bottom. Mulroney eases in to speed.

  With speed comes a mental process devoid of recollection. Fuck it; you got your memories, and then you got your modern technology. This is a carbon fiber speed machine for chrissakes. What’s that worth? To be perfectly honest, it’s hard to tell. You still got to pedal the sumbitch. It’ll roll backward if you don’t. Mulroney is breathing hard and sweating. His chest is pounding—but it doesn’t hurt. That would be a kick in the head. So what’s the diff between humping this high-ticket whore to the top of the hill and a department store model? He’ll need to sort that later, at a lower heart rate. At the crest he coasts into the descent and gains speed to the bottom, where he stops to look back up at what he couldn’t see coming down. He flips the mirror again. Still puffed and ruddy, he looks more alive, if not younger. Two boys in a passing pickup yell out the window, “Spandex monkeys!” Mulroney looks back again as another two riders descend in tight pants and gaudy accessories.

  One yells back, “Inbreeds!” Mulroney laughs along, involved and invigorated, mounting up again for Watsonville, a California dream of Mexico with better weather and irrigation. And why not? It’s only another twelve miles out.

  VIII

  A Beautiful Place to Be

  Salinas is forty miles farther south and well known for its iconic place in literature … But it’s grown more distant from Eden than it feels from Lodi. Strip malls, light industry, factory farms, and row mansions to the horizon fill what used to be wide open when John Steinbeck called it a long, golden swale. Like devil spawn—like Versailles mated with Levittown, yielding Doric columns, Roman parapets, swing sets and tricycles under a soft blanket of sound. Fights, farts, fucking, flushes, and forks clattering are a context for the muffled desperation of life passing with intermittent calls:

  “What more do you want from me?”

  “You cunt! You ruined my life!”

  Watsonville, on the other hand, is what it was, yielding produce for sale roadside, like at the Corn Palace.

  Chiles rellenos are made from scratch at El Ateño, where the cook no habla Anglais and builds rellenos with pasilla chiles, no poblanos pero pasillas. Exquisite cucina precedes Four Dollar Tuesdays at the restored Fox Theater across the street. These are the days, my friend,
in blessed relief from the rest of California.

  Allison—Ms. Mulroney—is a country girl at heart who once imagined life in California as a lovely stroll around the block, which it might have been if the build-out wasn’t so rampant and the weather was a tad warmer. But it gets cold and wet, and the scene refracts with every fad, cliché, media trend, and lifestyle, predictable and chronic, spurred by a go-for-it mentality that feels oppressive. But it’s home for the Mulroneys, at least for the time. Oh, Hawaii was her idea; not that he would mind, given a level playing field, but it’s not level. Do twenty car lots count for nothing? Or twenty-two, or four, or whatever it is? At least the problem of location is physical and manageable, while the problem of compatibility is something else. Michael Mulroney often draws on old images to restoreth his soul. The inherent problem is also age-related, as the images get older and older. Only the wedding night still rings clear after so many years: “Oh,” she cooed, with her feet in the air, “I really hope we can, you know, till death do us part.” That was decades ago, when a babbling brook murmured sweetly as a bull trout surged upstream. What a woman, and he marveled that he’d thought as much for so many years.

  Allison is a keeper, a certain sexual object, which women want to be once the sexual objectivity begins to wane. But a woman over fifty with a concise pooper and breasts residing above a reasonably flat stomach may not necessarily be married to a contented man. Sexual thrills fade after a few thousand rounds, but that’s why God invented reefer, liquor, and low light—to compensate and enhance. That’s what most women don’t realize, that a bit of exotic lure makes a man want to come home. Women often resist the idea, until the tables turn, like when that kid with the camera drooled over Allison. Did Mulroney mind? Not a bit. Did she look better, after another man admired her? Let’s just say it puts a gal in fresh perspective. At any rate a man shouldn’t be horny all the time or proud of it, but he does feel blessed with fortitude—maybe that’s why he still rides a bicycle at his age. He’s grateful as well for a practical, easy wife. So? Maybe they’ll move, if the price is right. A car lot can run without him easy as a dozen car lots, at least in the short run till he finds a buyer and opens a lot or two yonder.

  Watsonville on approach is clearly a pleasurable place in a world of diminishing returns. Take the corner of Lakeview and 129, with a single mom, old-school—twenty-eight, give or take, with no tattoos, no body piercing or slovenly appearance—make that thirty-eight but still a package. Okay, showing some difficulties in her face and neck. Forty-eight seems more the mark, which isn’t to say good from afar but far from good. She simply shows some age, which happens to the luckiest among us. Mulroney doesn’t know her age, but can plainly see the regional mix of road wear and classic lines. She’s well preserved, so she could have had a personal trainer and cosmetic surgery if she’s from Mulroney’s neighborhood. But she seems more original, physically fit as a function of work. She looks like the real McCoy, a woman of sustained curvature and facial beauty, despite the sun and dirt and challenges. Like original beauty, she seems seasoned with care and still a classic. She’s got a little hook in her nose, but that too is like a rule successfully broken.

  She sweats under a load of boxes, her print gingham moistened but hardly soiled. Laboring like salt of the earth, she seems soulful as Rose of Sharon and may be a descendent. The place smells like country. She and her young son make a modern fresco of olden times: Rosa y Panchito resigned to simple life. The little dog tags along behind. How cute. Manual labor and hard breathing seem cleaner in Watsonville and not so rare. Panchito works harder than most kids, steady and slow, getting it done.

  It feels like a good place to stop, so Mulroney can blow his nose, reshuffle his nuts, rehydrate, and watch the boy and mom unload the car and U-Haul. The Oldsmobile is dinged and faded but seems good for a few more trips. Yeah, closer to forty-eight. How does a woman get here, single mom in a farm town—a woman past the age of realization, who looks like she always knew better?

  The U-Haul is a set piece with the bungalow, a stone’s throw from California 129. The boy will ponder direction out that window for the next few years, or maybe he’ll go to the other side of the house, to watch the chard go crimson over a hundred acres, or he’ll watch the big machine base-yard across the road. Maybe he’ll develop tumors from pesticide over-spray while he fancies a future. Lakeview Drive runs north to the littorals of the Eureka Canyon Range at the edge of Corralitos. The yard on that side is flowers in hundreds of rows separated by gravel paths for golf carts, so suburban wives can ride and point at what they want and tell the driver how many.

  A FOR RENT sign wobbles in the breeze till Rosa pulls it off the doorframe to claim dominion, just as California was claimed for Spain. Panchito hoists a folding chair under each arm. Rosa gets the other two. They carry the four-top table, the matching end tables, and coffee table, turning each upside down, so the particleboard and staples are facing up. The oak-grain laminate suffers from age, coming unglued. The strips flap with each step. Rosa shakes her head and mumbles.

  Still in the truck are the rickety lamps, the toaster, radio, twenty-five inch TV, the bric-a-brac to make the place homey, and the odds and ends of daily lives that strive for more of the same.

  These are the days the boy may treasure, when his poor, old, hard-working mom was hardly more than a girl, and they made a home in which to grow. You can’t beat Watsonville for natural charm. And leave it to the Mexicans to live as they should, as life was once lived in America, with less of everything but hope.

  Wait a minute. What? A buck-and-a-half, four-slot bagel toaster in designer white from Williams Sonoma? No dings or dents and the tags still on?

  Hey. The fuck you staring at? Fucking second-story guy.

  Mulroney throws a leg over and clicks in. Rosa knows the guy pulling up in the truck, but her greeting seems marginal, a half-nod. Rosa may be younger than she looks, because hard knocks look old at any age. She can obviously still get back up from down in the dirt, and it must be the motherhood thing that keeps her going here.

  Juan Valdez could be Panchito’s father or the latest stand-in. His self-esteem throbs like an artery, especially when he stands near his truck, a chopped and lowered unit with four back wheels and four doors, a very long bed, spotlights across the roof, little amber lights all over, and more chrome than he’s got in his teeth. Why won’t he help with the furniture? At least he brought a new blender—and it matches the toaster. He’s got a load of blenders and toasters. And what? Bread warmers? Pasta machines? Must have knocked off a delivery truck—a big truck parked by a house in the upper burbs, where he got the artwork. It’s a painting of a pregnant devil with a bull’s eye on his stomach.

  What?

  She looks worked over with nothing to show but a kid and some top-drawer appliances from Juan Valdez. She could have a yard sale at fifty cents on the dollar and convert to a month or two of groceries. Take some of the pressure off. She’s built well though. Probably what got her in trouble in the first place. Who knows? Maybe the kid’ll take care of her in her old age.

  Yeah, yeah. You see me. I see you. I’m riding my bicycle. You’re a grit with a truck payment higher than your IQ and a load of stolen merchandise. Yeah, yeah. See you, chump.

  So Mulroney eases out, keeping an eye on the swarthy boyfriend, because a man of experience naturally senses the rearview.

  IX

  View is Everything to Me

  “Hello? Mr. Mulroney?”

  “Yeah. What?”

  “Hi. This is Judith Elizabeth Cranston Layne with Coldwell Banker Clifton Baines.”

  “Who?”

  “I was wondering if I might be able to show your house in, say, ten or twenty minutes?”

  Aw, Christ on a crutch. “Ten minutes? I don’t know. I just walked in. Allison’s not here. She’ll throw a fit if you show the place like this.”

  “My client is very excited to see it. He’s driven by three times. He says he didn’t stop bec
ause he didn’t want to see it, because he was afraid he’d fall in love with it, and he doesn’t want to go over two point two, and your place is way, way over his budget.”

  “Do you honestly think it’s way, way, or just way, or maybe it’s only a few bucks over his target price? Who the hell doesn’t go over budget? Nobody is your correct answer. So, you think he’s a player? Or a dud?”

  “Yes. Most definitely I do believe he’ll play.”

  “Yeah, fine. Bring him by. Give me thirty minutes. I still got my tights on.”

  “Mm. Well. He has a plane to catch.”

  “Fine. Bring him by now.”

  “See you.”

  Mulroney hangs up. Then he dials, rethinking the exchange with Judith Elizabeth Crampton Pain. She said him. What does a single man want with four bedrooms and four baths? Who cares? Maybe his wife is passive, but he’s got live-in in-laws. Or he’s the money partner, and the other half will adapt as necessary.

  “This is Marylyn Moutard.”

  “Michael Mulroney. Hey. We got one coming by in a few minutes. A single guy. Some woman from a Coldwell Banker office with a bunch of names.”

  “That would be Judy Layne.”

  “Yeah. I’ll be here. Any word from the good-time boys?”

  “Of course. They countered. They raised you a dollar. They think you’re playing a game. They think you’re strange. They’re willing to play along.”

  “So where are they now?”

  “Don’t waste my time, Michael.”

  “Did you have a little chat with them, you know, about good faith and wasting your time?”

  “All the appropriate dialogue was exchanged. They’re at two million two hundred thousand and two dollars.”

  “Good. It feels like progress. Let’s counter with two million seven hundred forty-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-seven.” Marylyn sees no humor here. “Marylyn?”