Californium

by R. Dean Johnson

  Ted and Sergio hang out and ask me a bunch of questions about DikNixon. They promise to show up for the party. Ted says he’ll make bacon quesadillas for everyone and other than Sergio being totally naked, they’re pretty normal guys. I’m having so much fun I don’t realize Carey’s been gone awhile until I head to the kitchen for more ice.

  In the living room, van Doren has Carey around the waist and leaning on his shoulder as they walk real slow toward the front door. “You do this?”

  “He was fine a few minutes ago.”

  “Get the door.”

  I sprint past them and open the front door. As they step through, Carey loses his balance a little and lets go of van Doren, stumbling in slow motion until he crash-lands on the front lawn and splays out like it’s a king-size bed.

  Van Doren pushes me out the door. “I’ll get his arms. You get his feet.”

  Carey’s so limp and oozy he’s hard to control, but we finally get him over to van Doren’s Squareback Volkswagen and stuff him into the backseat. Van Doren says to wait by the car while he runs in the house. A minute later, he tosses kitchen towels to me and says, “If he yaks in my car, you’re cleaning it up. Now, get in.”

  We take off, out of the cul-de-sac and onto Yorba Linda Boulevard. Van Doren is silent and the radio is off. We wind down Imperial Highway, through some hills, then onto a freeway. We go west on the 91 for a few minutes, past the 55, then the 57. The numbers don’t mean anything to me until we merge onto the 5 north and I see Los Angeles on the sign. “Where are we going?”

  “Santa Monica,” van Doren says, barely louder than the rattle of the car.

  The billboards fly by, Camel cigarettes, Continental Airlines, and Colt 45 malt liquor. The night sky is a color you can only get in Southern California, Day-Glo black. Carey sleeps in the back the whole time and van Doren stays silent. You might think he’d say something when the big buildings in downtown LA appear up ahead, but we go right past them and they disappear behind us the same way Manhattan does when you go deeper into New Jersey. If he wants to, van Doren can push me out of the car right now and that’ll be it. I’ll be lost in the middle of who knows where.

  “Why didn’t we just take Carey to your house?”

  Van Doren waits, then without looking at me says, “My parents.”

  “What about his parents?”

  Van Doren looks over his shoulder and changes lanes. He reads a sign, thinks about it, and says, “Not home.”

  .

  It’s really late when we get to Carey’s house, way after two in the morning. Van Doren finds a spare key in a flowerpot, and I hold doors open while he drags Carey in and to his room. Van Doren puts some aspirin and a glass of water on Carey’s dresser and a bucket next to his bed, and then we leave.

  Back in the car, it feels good, like one of the missions me and Keith do. “He’s gonna feel pretty confused when he wakes up in his own bed, huh?”

  Van Doren starts the car and when we get to the end of Carey’s street flips on the radio, loud. At the freeway, I lean back in my seat and rest my head on the window, the way you might go to sleep when your parents are driving and you know you aren’t stopping for pretzels or sodas because all they really want is to get home.

  Sunrise at Sunset

  It’s funny how you learn to sleep in the car when you’re a kid. It’s not like the hum of the wheels is a lullaby and the turnpike rocks you to sleep, but it works out that way. And just like that, exit ramps are your mom laying her hand on your chest real light and making small circles so you wake up soft and slow.

  It seems like we’ve been driving for an hour and my eyes open automatically as we stop for the light at the bottom of the ramp. The thing is, the hills of Yorba Linda aren’t spread out before me. There’s rows of skyscrapers, not exactly New York, but tall enough to make you look out the car window sideways to see them. They’re all skinny skyscrapers except for this wide rectangular one with a big yellow sign about thirty stories up: “Monty’s?”

  “Yeah,” van Doren says. “If UCLA is recruiting you big-time, they take you to Monty’s for a steak.”

  On the left, there are blocks of shorter buildings, two and three stories high, restaurants and record stores lit up even though they’re closed. “Is this UCLA?”

  “Westwood Village. We’re going to Tommy’s.”

  There are no signs around that say Tommy’s. “Is Tommy another cousin?”

  We’re waiting to make the left into Westwood Village so van Doren turns his head to me and holds it there. “You from a different planet or something?”

  “New Jersey.”

  He waits a second and gives me this Mona Lisa grin.

  We turn and there’s more restaurants plus little shops with every kind of clothes you could imagine in the windows: disco, punk, prep, even zoot suits. Van Doren pulls into a parking deck that still has some cars in it. We walk out to the sidewalk, cut through an empty gas station, and cross the street to this little yellow shack with a plain sign: TOMMY’S WORLD FAMOUS HAMBURGERS. It must be three or four in the morning and we’re ten people back in line.

  “You’ve really never had a Tommy burger?” van Doren says.

  “No.”

  He thinks a second. “You ever go surfing at Trestles before school?”

  “I don’t know how to surf. It’s not really a Jersey thing.”

  “All right,” van Doren nods. “You ever see a sunrise at sunset?”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “I’m serious,” he says.

  When we get to the front of the line, van Doren asks if I want onions on my burger. I say I don’t have any money so he tells the guy in the window two Cokes, two fries, and two cheeseburgers with no onions.

  At the next window, drinks and cardboard boxes appear in about a minute. Van Doren hands me mine and walks over to this little cinder-block wall next to a driveway. It’s maybe two feet high and van Doren balances his drink on it, sits down, and starts eating. I do the same thing, and since he isn’t talking, I finally ask if we’re anywhere near Dodger Stadium. In the ’78 World Series, me and my dad watched all three games from LA, including game six even though it was a school night. It was worth it to stay up past midnight and be tired at school the next day, though, because I got to tell all my friends I saw the Yankees win it all. We watched a little of the ’81 World Series too, but it wasn’t as much fun because the Yanks lost and all the stuff with Uncle Ryan had just happened.

  Van Doren shakes his head and finishes off his food. Then he stands up without a word and starts walking up the street, in the opposite direction from where we’ve left the car. “Come on.”

  I’m a couple steps behind, my fries still on the wall, my Coke in one hand and half-eaten burger in the other, chili running down my arm. “Is this the sunrise thing?”

  Van Doren doesn’t answer and I’m already ten yards behind, trying to finish my burger and keep up.

  The street rises into a hill, bends to the right, and gets darker as huge houses replace all the stores. A couple of the houses are crowded with people out on the balconies even though it’s later than late.

  A little farther up, the houses on the left turn into apartment buildings and the buildings on the right disappear into trees. Every once in a while a trail or sidewalk opens up in the trees, but you can’t really see where they go. Van Doren keeps a steady pace before suddenly turning onto one of the trails. The last place in the world I want to go is off into some dark trees, but I follow along to the shuffle of van Doren’s footsteps until the trail opens up onto a wide sidewalk. A bunch of office buildings are lit up in the distance, but van Doren’s crossed over the sidewalk. There’s a huge chain-link fence, twice as high as the ones at school, and van Doren goes up and over it like there’s a prize on the other side. I’m hoping he’ll say Wait here, or Come on, I’ll spot you, or something. He doesn’t
. He just disappears into the dark, so I trash the rest of my food and start climbing.

  You can’t see it from the outside in the dark, but a few feet past the fence there’s a running track. On the left are stands built into the side of the hill, stretching from the start to the finish line and rising to the trees at the top of the hill.

  I catch up to van Doren at the edge of the track, right on the first turn. “This is bitchin’. What is this place?”

  “Drake Stadium.”

  “Sir Francis Drake?” I joke.

  Van Doren doesn’t laugh or look at me. “UCLA,” he says and steps onto the track, crossing over every lane until he stops at number one.

  It’s one of those fake tracks like you see in the Olympics. The lines are painted so perfect and glowing white a race could break out at any second. The track grips my feet at every step, pushing me forward like it wants me to run.

  “This is so punk rock,” I say. “You’re gonna kick butt on this track.”

  He looks at me. “What?”

  “When you go to college here.”

  “I don’t think so.” He shakes his head. “My indoor times are slow this fall.”

  “You win just about every race,” I say. “Carey told me.”

  “That doesn’t matter. I’m racing the clock this year.”

  Van Doren starts walking the turn and I go with him. It’s quiet because the track doesn’t crunch and scrape the way our dirt track at school does. We’re in the middle of LA on a Saturday night, and even if it is something like four thirty in the morning, you’d think there’d be some noise from the parties we walked by or some cars. But there’s nothing. Not even our feet. The track just absorbs everything.

  We go a full lap in the quiet until van Doren stops on the front straightaway and says, “I don’t know your name.” He says it almost sad, like he lost his dog.

  “It’s Reece.”

  He’s staring down at lane two like it’s going to move or something. “That’s not what I meant. You know my name, right?”

  “Van Doren.”

  “What’s my first name?”

  “It’s Marc.”

  He nods and lifts his head to the trees. “How do you know?”

  “Everybody knows. You’re a senior. You’re in Filibuster. You run the Misfit Mile.”

  He’s nodding along like I’m listing off his sins. “And I’ve got the locker above yours.”

  That makes me laugh a little. “Yeah. Hard to miss that.”

  Van Doren sits down on the track, pulls his knees up, and wraps his arms around them. “I had no idea what your name was.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You don’t have to be sorry, you idiot.”

  Van Doren rests his head on his knees and doesn’t talk for a few minutes. It’s weird because I’m staring at him and it’s okay; I know he isn’t going to raise his head all of a sudden and ask me what I’m looking at. We stay there awhile until van Doren slides off his shoes and socks. He stuffs one sock in each shoe, stands up, throws them over into the darkness of the grass infield, and sprints down the straightaway. I walk after him a little ways, thinking he might stop at the finish line; only he runs past and leans into the turn.

  My eyes have adjusted enough to make out his shape on the back straightaway, and the tap-tap-tap of his feet helps me follow along. He comes around the back turn and flies past me on the front straightaway, going on for a second lap. I get to the finish line and wait, and you might think he’d stop after the second lap, but he crosses the line and leans into the turn for a third lap, strong and steady, like he’s Bruce Jenner or something.

  On the fourth lap he’s breathing in short, loud puffs. His feet slap down on the track in a heavy rhythm, and as he comes down the straightaway you can see his teeth in the darkness, then his face, scrunched and tight. It should be over now; that’s sixteen hundred meters, a Misfit Mile. But he runs through the finish line again—fifth lap.

  The short puffs and slaps are louder, and somewhere on the backstretch the rhythm goes erratic and silent for a moment before van Doren lets out a grunt like somebody’s punched him.

  I sprint across the infield to the sound and he’s there in lane three, on his knees. “Are you okay?”

  He stands up, shakes his legs out a bit, and takes off diagonally across the grass, back toward where we came in. “Your shoes!” I yell, but he doesn’t stop. The fence rattles with him climbing over and I’m suddenly squinting in the dark of the infield, trying to find his shoes.

  Van Doren is long gone by the time I get to the fence. I toss his shoes over to free my hands for the climb and a couple of my fingers get wet on the chain link. It isn’t light like water, more slick between my fingers and then sticky, and it doesn’t take a genius to know it’s blood.

  .

  Van Doren’s waiting for me in the car with the engine going, both hands wrapped in napkins and resting on the steering wheel. I get in and hold up his shoes and socks.

  “Toss them in back.”

  “You okay?”

  He stares straight ahead like we’re already on the road. “Never better.”

  As we back out, van Doren cranks the wheel to turn, loosening his grip so it slides as the car straightens out, never once letting go of the napkins. We get to the parking deck exit and with his head turned to check for traffic, he says, “Listen. I made Astrid have the party tonight just to fuck with you.” He makes the turn and keeps staring ahead like driving needs all his attention.

  “You did that? Why?”

  He lets out one of those long, loud sighs and says, “Because I can.”

  It sounds so mean my eyes tingle. Then my face goes heavy and my mouth pulls tight the way it does before everything goes loose and you cry.

  “It’s territorial,” he says and glances at me. “But you came back tonight with that flyer.” He leaves it there for a minute, the road straight, the lights green every block, but I’m not talking. I can’t. “You guys really are for real,” he finally says and glances at me one more time. “I totally respect that now.”

  My throat is tight, and if I say much of anything I’m afraid I’ll sound like a three-year-old who lost his teddy bear. So I sort of whisper, “Can we go home?”

  “No,” van Doren says. “I promised Astrid I’d make this up to you.”

  “Astrid?” Just hearing she said something about me makes everything numb up except for the flutter in my stomach and maybe a tingle or two in other places.

  Van Doren’s shaking his head. “I lied to her too and said ‘okay,’ I’d make it up to you. But now I really do want to make it up to you.” He looks at me sort of a long time, like the car’s on autopilot, and even with the stupid cropped hair and the black T-shirt, his face is Uncle Ryan warm, you know, like he can make everything all right if I let him. “I’m going to show you something I’ve never showed anybody else, not even Carey: a sunrise at sunset.”

  We drive away from the freeway, leave the row of skyscrapers behind us. I get a good look at Monty’s as we pass and ask van Doren if they have those waiters who fold your napkin for you every time you go to the bathroom. We went to a place like that for my mom’s birthday once in Manhattan.

  “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve never been to Monty’s.”

  We drive in quiet after that, switching streets a few times, block after block of two-story buildings with colored lights around doorways and framing windows. You’d think you were passing a hundred tiny discos the way these places are lit up, and then you see it’s just a nail salon or a tailor, and it’s not even open.

  We turn onto Sunset Boulevard: giant billboards for movies and TV shows, lit up so bright the sky is blue right above them. Then it all comes together: It must be getting close to sunrise and we’re on Sunset. A sunrise at Sunset Boulevard. It seems impossible it could b
e that easy. That stupid. Even when van Doren parks the car, puts on his shoes, and we walk up to the corner, I’m wondering if maybe the sunrise shines off a glass building, reflects onto the Hollywood sign, and you see the Virgin Mary, or maybe the MGM lion.

  We stand on the corner, a few cars whishing by even this late, or this early, and it feels cold for the first time. “Where’s the Chinese Theatre?” I say.

  “We’re nowhere near that.”

  “How about the stars in the sidewalks?”

  “Nope.” Van Doren points across the street to an old two-story building hugging the corner. It’s got giant posters, each a full story high, running down its sides. The curved corner has a marquee, like a movie theater sign, with dates and names listed. “That’s the Whisky right there.”

  “Is that place famous?”

  “World famous,” van Doren says. “Everybody’s played there.”

  None of the names on the marquee sound famous to me: the Gun Club, Captain Beefheart, and the Stranglers, though the last one might be on The Nixon Tapes. I’d have to check. “Is it a punk place?”

  “It’s everything. The Doors played there.”

  “My Uncle Ryan used to love those guys.”

  Van Doren nods. “Before everyone goes off to college, we’ll play here too.”

  “Filibuster? They asked you guys to play?”

  “They don’t have to ask you.”

  “But it’s the Whisky,” I say like I’ve known about it my whole life.

  “Doesn’t matter.” Van Doren lets a couple cars go by, then says, “Some nights, anybody can play. You just have to buy a block of tickets and sell them.”

  “You pay them to play?”

  “That’s pretty much how it works everywhere. You can’t wait around hoping to get discovered. You’ve got to put yourself out there.”

  He points to the hills behind the Whisky, has me look above all the dots of light in the hills to the top and over to a spot in the sky where the Day-Glo black is going more charcoal and the charcoal is getting scribbled with purple. It’s so gradual, but it doesn’t stop, and I could watch forever because crayons can’t make colors like this. The purple gets lighter and lighter until reds and oranges slip in, the backdrop goes dark blue, and then, bam, the sun peeks over the hill like a lighthouse flipped on up there. A fraction of an earth turn later, it spreads over the whole ridge, the sky warming to the old familiar blue. The hill wakes up into that washed-out California brown I’ve seen since summer, and the dots of light begin turning into houses and apartment buildings.