by Brian Hart
He was hurt now, what she was saying hurt him but he didn’t show it. He didn’t think so at least. “I’ve apologized to you for all of this,” he said, “I don’t know how many times, but it’s not the same if I’m aware I’m doing it. It’s called making a decision and right now I think we need to make a decision.”
“I’m done with you and your decisions. It’s all bullshit anyway. You’re just scared.” She walked away. “Don’t even think of following me,” she yelled just before the bathroom door slammed shut.
“I won’t.”
He went and stood in the hallway and tried to organize his thoughts, looked at the Oronski family photos, the pale ovals and rectangles of the removed, like someone was behind him with a small mirror or a watch catching the light from the sun. Fighting in this house was the same as fighting in any other. Imagine that. The old ham-hander: No matter where you go, there you are. No matter where we go, there we fail. He couldn’t see the long view, the history that built to the future. The pale spots where pictures used to be, memory stains.
When he heard the water in the tub, he went to the mudroom and hauled his bag into the bedroom and threw it on the bed. Karen’s underwear was on the floor, black lace, not much to them, a remnant. He picked them up and gave them a sniff, not the white crusty part, but above it, her good smell, then dropped them on the bed and went to the living room and turned on the TV.
[17]
R<35
OR 97203
Springtime mud show. The Pacific Northwest. The specific more-wet. If it were sunny every day, what would he do then? Get a sunburn? Cancer? Tan and fit? Healthy living? Yogurt and yoga? Join the other death-fearing twats jogging at the waterfront or in Forest Park? Fuck that, he thought, more or less daily, hourly. I’m the king of this bog.
Somebody had brought a couple of tropical fish bath towels from the Fred Meyer to use as doormats and they were wadded up near the shallow end coping in the smaller of the three bowls. With spotlessly dry Vans, Roy stood on the deck of the big bowl drinking a tall boy and watching a storm front push closer and closer to the park. When they roll in slow, they last longer. Now he was a weatherman. Now he was the president of the meteorological society.
He wasn’t alone. There was some tubby-bubby spock rocker wearing bitch-ass slipon shoes, acting as if the shallow end of the medium bowl was his own personal miniramp, rolling back and forth: tail stall, fakie rock, tail stall, backside 50-50 for like three inches, fakie rock, tail stall.
Roy tossed his can and rolled in on him full tilt, locked into a frontside smith and took it all the way through the pocket. He pumped through the deep end to give the twerp time to be gone before he entered the shallow, and when he did he went hard into the opposing wall and threw his shoulder into a backside disaster so fierce and smooth and fast and loud it was like a beaver smacking his tail on the water, whack! Then down the wall with a backseat pump into a face-high frontside over the hip and, still holding his grab, he saw the twerp step off his board on the deck, another deep pump into a screaming, hard-carving, backside 50-50, focusing on the drop, choosing the exact coping tile where he would shove off, almost careful, absolutely measured and precise, getting every drop of speed out of his pump for the backside kickflip over the hip—this had been his whole afternoon, his whole day, his whole life—and he knew as soon as he cleared the coping he should kick his board away and run out but that little fucker with the slip-ons was still there with his retro shit, American Apparel faggotry, and fuck it, Roy thought or didn’t think, luck favors the brave, Dennis Hopper all: Is that my leg? Is there any beer in that can?—and Roy was boosting over the hip and engaged the flip just so and, quick as that, he felt his board pressing oh so gently against the soles of his shoes as he launched toward the deep end wall—I should grab, no grab, that’s the point, be brave—be fucking brave—but he’d drifted down the line farther than he’d planned and was almost into the pocket and his board was under him, down now, wheels barking, so he sucked up the transition as best he could and right when he was about to lose all hope and prepare for impact, he was snap-snap over the drain and going up the other wall, all arms a-waggle and hip jut, barely hanging on but stomped, stamped, and fucking delivered. All fucking day he’d been after this shit and now he had it. Then, a backside 5-0 stall—with a moment’s pause for our fallen brothers—front truck clink! on the coping—and he pumped around the deep end and up the waterfall to the shallow end and there was slip-ons waiting for his turn so Roy charged in and went for a balls-deep rock ’n’ roll, back wheels to coping, and tried to smash the fucker’s toes but he jumped back and Roy missed. He was still smiling to himself for scaring the little fella when he went to bring the rock ’n’ roll back in and lazily caught his front wheels on the coping and fell five feet straight to flat in the shallow like he hadn’t done in years. A sack of pain-filled shit, he lay there on his back trying to get his breath. The sky was low and getting lower, great gray tumblers ripe with water, coming at him like a Lawrence of Arabia sandstorm, like death itself. Summertime rain.
His board was rolling around in the deep end. Slip-ons wouldn’t dare drop in with Roy’s carcass blocking his only available run. That fucker’s cowardice—back and forth—not venturing into the strange angles of the rest of the bowl. Probably the story of that asshole’s life. Follow the herd and don’t get hurt, back and forth, repeat.
A raindrop splatted the size of a nickel next to Roy’s left ear, then the sky opened and set up the drencher. Roy reconstructed himself to standing and stiffly retrieved his board and fairly crawled out of the shallow end to the deck.
“That was sick,” Slip-ons said, picking up his sweatshirt. “Just beat the storm, too.”
“It’s a pool,” Roy said, “skate it like one. Like you have a pair, with your bitch-ass shoes.”
Roy left his dead soldiers where they’d fallen—fuck all the family-friendly assholes, gentrifiers and their fucking garden trowels and Home Depot staple-tagged barcode cedar fences—and finished his last beer rolling through the now-torrential Ore Uh Gun wetness to Sasha’s car. He needed new bearings anyway, a new deck, a reward. There was pain, but he’d known victory. Worth it.
His elbow looked like it’d swallowed a grapefruit and his back was going to be fucked for a while. That was sick. That little turd didn’t know sick any more than a guy looking through a telescope knew deep space. But that was the sickest thing he’d done in a while. True commitment, real bravery. He hadn’t thought he had it in him. He felt brand-new and a sweet and wholesome feeling filled his heart. But then the little voice said: Take it to the big bowl then, pussy. Take it to the deep. Work your speed in the full pipe and then try it. Roy responded: But I don’t have insurance. And if there was ever a way to know if you were old and washed all the way up, it was not skating the big bowl because you didn’t have insurance. The elder statesman in Roy’s head advised him that we all have our own bitch-ass shoes, bunch a bitch-asses that we are. I am a man and men are a bunch of bitch-asses.
His apartment was near the bridge, practically under it, and looked out on the trashy city park and the brown river. He had lived closer to downtown, but it cost too much now, if you didn’t want to hassle with roommates, and what did you get anyway? People—functioning, upwardly mobile, mostly white people, some Asians—citizens, just a bunch of outfits walking around, shopping, eating. When’s the last time you got stitches? When’s the last time you got hurt so bad you thought you’d shit yourself? Bitch-asses. I was born to bleed, born to die, not shop.
North Portland was still the real thing. Yesterday, waiting for the 75 bus, he saw somebody knocked out cold in front of Dad’s bar. Little guy walked up to big guy, socked him in the face, and took his bike, middle of the day. These were grown men, not kids. The kids were even worse. Future condoville, sure, everyone knew it was coming, but for now it was a cheap place with something to see out the front window, fistfights, the greatest bridge, the churning river. Gimped as he was
he had to use the wonky handrail to get up the stairs.
Sasha was home so he put his board in the closet and kicked off his shoes over the floor vent so they’d dry. He put her keys on the magnetic plate on the counter as he’d been instructed to do approximately twenty-seven thousand times. Light was coming from under the bathroom door and he could smell the essential oils. He was out of beer so he drank some of Sasha’s wine from the bottle.
“Is that you?” she called from the bathroom.
“No, it’s the rapist. I’m here to violate and dismember you. Not in that order.”
“Can you bring me a glass of wine?”
He held the bottle up to the light and then opened the cupboard and splashed some into a glass. On the way to the bathroom he finished the bottle and left it on the coffee table.
She had her arms curled around her knees so he couldn’t see anything. Portland pixie, brown-eyed blonde, black highlights, curtains would match the drapes if there were drapes. He put the wine on the edge of the sink. “I’m going to need to violate you first, before you get that.” He gave his zipper a tug.
“I don’t think so, pal. Just give me the wine and leave. I’m not that into it right now, it being you and your gross wayward penis.”
“It’s not gross.”
“Ick, is all I can say. Ick.”
“Fine.”
“Derby is in his crate, why don’t you take him for a walk and stay gone until I go to work?” She smiled her Whole Foods checker’s you’re-a-thoughtful-and-morally-superior-customer smile and he wanted to slap her.
“It’s fucking pouring outside,” he said.
“Wear a coat. Take an umbrella. Derby loves the rain.”
He placed her glass of wine well out of reach on the shelf above the toilet and left.
They’d found the dog running loose in the park when they’d first started dating. Sasha reported him to the shelter and kept him at her (soon to be their) apartment. No collar, skittish, unkempt, some sort of Scottish terrier, not the type of dog that usually goes abandoned. Nobody claimed him, so they kept him. Derby, the Derb, the Herb, skateboard chaser, mouse and rat killer, possum fighter, up to date on his shots and a nice little set of cojones and Roy liked to see them because nobody let their dog keep his nuts anymore. Roy fucking did. If it were left up to Roy, Derby would never lose his nuts. Even if he was a shoe-chewing asshole that had to be crated when he was inside or he would drive everyone to skin-picking, lip-twitching insanity. Nope, he’d go into the dirt whole. But he was still a puppy, or at least that’s how Sasha called it, lots of good years to come for Derby. She wanted him clipped, thought his balls were weird. She talked about Derby but Roy heard her talking about their relationship, his future, his balls.
Roy’s swellbow hardly fit in the sleeve of his raincoat and when Derby yanked on the leash to go down the stairs, Roy grunted in pain and switched to his good arm. He hooked the leash to the neighbor’s doorknob and ducked back inside and quietly pilfered the last of Sasha’s Vicodin left over from her wisdom teeth extraction. She thought she’d hidden them in the spice cabinet behind the cumin because Roy hated cumin but, No, sweetheart, I found your pills and I ate your pills and to rub it in your face I’m going to dump the last of the cumin into the empty pill bottle and never say a word about it. See you in a month or however long it takes for you to feel the need to use cumin or painkillers again.
In the park, directly in front of the sign declaring that all dogs must be leashed, he set Derby free and moseyed along behind him trying to muster the saliva to get the pills down his throat. No luck, so he donkey-whistled the dog back and releashed him, Sorry, Derb, and walked up the hill to the Safeway.
He left Derby tied to the bike rack with the junker Huffys and their plastic-bag seat covers and went inside and bought two cans of Steel Reserve and affirmed to the checker that he would prefer that she put them into their own individual paper bags, neat and tidy. Everybody needs a jacket, right?
Roy downed half of the first beer on the sidewalk in front of the store and felt the pills finally slip loose. A perky white woman pushing a too-big toddler in a massive stroller gave him and his open beer a look as she approached the store.
“Live fast, die young,” he said, and held up his brown bag can, cheers, for the toddler and the woman said, “It’s never too late,” and went inside.
Roy unhitched Derby with his free hand and let him run, followed him around the corner and across the back lot. He finished his beer and chucked the can and bag into the blackberry ramble alongside the parking lot and followed the dog down the sopping hill to the waterfront.
They posted up in the covered section of the amphitheater with a couple of other fellas drinking out of bags. Derby sniffed at one of them and earned a fuck off and a half-hearted kick.
“I’ll stuff my shoe down your neck if you kick my dog,” Roy said.
“Keep ’im away from me then,” the man said, picking at a bloody patch on the back of his hand.
“Derb,” Roy said. “Go shit.” Derby trotted toward the waterfront, zigzagging and sniffing at goose turds, taking it easy. He did like the rain.
“I’m leaving, Thomas,” the dog kicker said to the other guy, tugging the collar of his mossy yellow raincoat closed around his neck.
“See ya.” Thomas was busy dismantling a pile of cigarette butts and rolling them into fresh cigarettes with a pack of orange Zig-Zags, and didn’t look up as his friend trudged back into the rain. Roy watched him follow the asphalt path to the west side of the park and disappear into the trees, only to emerge moments later, bent beneath the weight of a massive camouflage backpack slung with garbage bags filled with cans and bottles, clinked and rattled away, reminding Roy of a bipedal dung beetle.
Derby returned and curled into Roy’s side. Roy lifted his jacket and let the stinky little beast have a taste of his warmth. “You want a fresh one?” Roy said, holding out his pack of Drum.
“Sure.” Thomas got stiffly to his feet and waddled over. He was probably in his forties, Native, braids, dressed in army surplus gear with a brand-new pair of high-dollar snowboarding boots on his feet. “Thanks,” he said.
“No problem.” Roy waited patiently for him to finish rolling his cigarette then took the pouch back and rolled his own. He finished his beer before he lit up.
“You need another?” Thomas said.
“Sure, you got one?”
Thomas dug around in his pack until he came up with a can of Hamms. Roy took it and thanked him. Twelve ounces of waterskiing bear piss hardly offered the necessary punctuation of a malt liquor tall boy and Roy had it drained in a few drinks. They smoked and watched the rain shatter the river. Cars thumped over the segmented decking of the towering green bridge.
“Shame about the salmon, huh?” Thomas said.
Roy hesitated. “What?”
“It was in the paper.” Thomas twisted around and grabbed a fistful of loose news pages from the free paper that nobody read and held them up for Roy.
“I’m not reading that,” Roy said. “You can keep it.”
“Water got too hot. They all died going upriver. Cooked ’em.” Thomas shook his head, took his time flattening the pages and folding them, then raised a cheek and slid them under his ass. “Those dams are gonna starve us out.”
“Last I heard, the dams keep the lights on.”
“I don’t eat lightbulbs.”
“It’s not like they all died anyway,” Roy said.
“You’re jumping from ‘what?’ to being a marine biologist?”
“There’s still salmon. They sell it in the store. On sale now.”
“Not for long,” Thomas said. “They were going to spawn and they died before they got there, that means they didn’t reproduce. That means no baby fishes.”
“Looks like it’s lightbulbs for dinner,” Roy said.
The rain came down like someone had paid extra.
“The good news,” Roy said. “Looks like the drought’
s over.”
“Whatever you say, Dr. Science,” Thomas said.
Roy tossed his can in the corner with some others, pointed at Thomas’s footwear. “Nice boots,” he said.
Thomas lifted his foot and squinted at his boot. “They were handing them out, back of a van, down on Burnside, bunch a punk kids.” He looked at Roy. Just like you, his eyes said. “Tossing ’em out like they were Christmas turkeys.”
“Might be able to sell ’em,” Roy said.
“To who?”
“I don’t know. Try eBay.”
“I got eBay. Let me just get my laptop.”
“Yeah, sorry. They warm?”
“They’re OK. Ugly as hell though, and nobody wants to pass you a bill if you’re wearing more expensive kicks than them. Know what I mean?”
“Yeah.” Roy stood up and hooked Derby back on his leash. “Thanks for the beer.”
“No problem.” Thomas was about to ask, so Roy handed him the Drum and let him roll another. “Them butts taste like shit, man,” Thomas declared.
“That’s why they call ’em butts,” Roy said.
Sasha was gone, and there was no note, so they weren’t splitting up, yet. Roy toweled off the dog with Sasha’s still-wet favorite towel and man and dog parked on the couch with the thermostat pegged and watched Judge Judy and settled in to kill the hours until Roy had to go to work at seven. The pills were nice but he’d need more, same went for the beer. He felt lonesome and if it weren’t for the muscle memory of slaughtering that backside hip earlier, he’d be fucking depressed, fucking down, low and low.
When he went to stand, a back spasm bent him in half and he had to hobble all please-ass-fuck-me to the kitchen so he could pull himself up with the counter and the fridge handle. Upright but still in pain, he rummaged in the freezer praying for secret vodka but had no luck. The postcards and photographs on the freezer door held his eye and made him wonder why he was still in this apartment with this woman and not somewhere else with some other.