Wrack and Ruin

by Don Lee

  “Sorry, dude, that’s cold. I hate when women just want to be friends. It goes against every evolutionary instinct known to man to be just friends with a woman. What’s the point of being friends?”

  They walked over to the shed and stowed their paddles, PFD vests, and Ziploc bags of monkeywrenching ordnances inside their kayaks, then—with JuJu at the bow and Lyndon at the stern—they took a grab loop in each hand and carried the two boats into the fields, toward a path down the bluff where they could put in on the beach. With JuJu’s prosthetic foot and Lyndon’s knee brace, they were both limping on the dirt, but they somehow managed to hobble in time.

  It was a calm night. No wind, little swell, a few scattered clouds, a waning crescent moon, enough for them to see but not enough for them to be seen. They’d have a quiet, easy little paddle, no worries. They were both expert kayakers and weren’t going far, but it was always a little dicey taking the boats out on the ocean at night, particularly when they were a tad high, and, understandably, JuJu still got spooked out there, imagining what was lurking underneath. Last year, he had thought something had bumped his kayak while they were paddling through a kelp bed. He’d become hysterical and, to Lyndon’s bewilderment, had pulled out a revolver from beneath his PFD—some cheap Saturday night special he’d bought on the street in the Tenderloin, expressly for this contingency—and begun firing indiscriminately into the water. He’d let go of his paddle and, swiveling in his cockpit, lost his balance and capsized his kayak. Without his paddle, he couldn’t Eskimo roll, so Lyndon kept waiting for JuJu to pop off his spray skirt and do a wet exit, not a big deal, nothing to panic over, but seconds passed, and he didn’t appear. Lyndon dove down and saw JuJu sitting upside down, immobile. He thought he was unconscious at first, but he wasn’t, seemingly drifting in a current of capitulation, waiting to drown. Lyndon had dragged him to the surface and, hanging on to their kayaks, swum him in. What had bumped JuJu’s kayak? A sea otter. Lyndon had seen it floating on its back, balancing a rock on its belly and whacking a clam against it with its paws, glancing dumbfoundedly at the two men as they laboriously kicked to shore.

  Surely that incident—as well as the humpback carcass that had come ashore and the discussion about a shark feeding frenzy—was on JuJu’s mind as they headed toward the water now, making him more jittery than usual, which must have been why he dropped the kayaks and screamed spasmodically when Woody emerged from the bushes in front of them with Bob.

  “Jesus Christ!” JuJu said. “You scared the shit out of me!”

  “I was almost attacked by a coyote!” Woody said elatedly, his face alight with joy. “But Bob—Bob!—” He knelt down and hugged Bob, who listlessly held a tennis ball in his mouth. “Bob saved me! He barked and growled, and he scared the coyote away!”

  “Bob did that?” Lyndon asked.

  “It was the most incredible thing!”

  “Dude,” JuJu said, “you’re bleeding.”

  Woody touched the blood that was caked on the left side of his face. “Oh, an owl surprised me, and I fell and hit my head on a rock or something. I think I was knocked out for a while. What time is it?”

  “It’s almost two,” Lyndon said.

  “Really? I’m not tired at all. I am wide awake. I’ve had the most wonderful day. You guys are going out on your kayaks? It’s a beautiful night for it.”

  He didn’t seem puzzled by Lyndon and JuJu’s appearance, the jungle fatigues underneath their spray skirts, the loam and light green camouflage paint streaked on their faces, the fake squirrel ears and reindeer antlers affixed to the tops of their heads.

  Instead, with a beatific smile on his face, Woody rhapsodized about walking the fields, the smells and colors of the vegetation, the lovely contours of the land, the sanctity of the dirt, how he’d become one with the earth. “I even took a shit in the woods!” he said. “Can you believe it? Do you know what a breakthrough that is for me? I haven’t taken any meds or supplements since this morning, and I feel great! I used leaves for toilet paper!”

  “Are those my clothes?” Lyndon asked.

  “Have you ever read Edmund Burke?” Woody asked. “The beautiful and the sublime? Beauty has nurtured me, and I know what terror is now, I’ve seen the sublime in it. I’ve encountered the other, and I’ve conquered it. I’ve never been so alive! This is a magical place, Lyndon. This farm is special. There’s this incredible spiritual power here. The last thing you should do is sell it. Tell me you won’t sell it!”

  Befuddled, Lyndon stared at his brother. “I won’t sell it,” he said.

  “Thank you,” Woody said, and he shuffled up to Lyndon and hugged him. “I have something I need to confess to you, Lyndon.”

  A night, apparently, for confessions. “What?”

  “Do you remember Henry Chang?”

  “Henry?” Lyndon asked, still enwrapped in Woody’s arms. “From high school?”

  “I paid him to take the SATs for me.”

  “You did?” During high school, Woody had been obsessed with posting a perfect 1600 score on his SATs. He had taken preparatory classes, buried himself in workbooks, carried around vocabulary flash cards, and run through nightly practice exams, often asking Lyndon to quiz him. He’d always aced everything. He hadn’t needed to cheat. He would have done absolutely fine without Henry Chang.

  “It feels so good to be able to tell you that,” Woody said. He drew back and grasped Lyndon tightly by the shoulders. “You are my brother,” he said weepily. “We are brothers. I have to go to sleep now. I am so tired. Let’s go, Bob.”

  They watched Woody, followed by Bob, amble toward the house.

  “Dude,” JuJu said, “I think your brother is stoned.”

  LYNDON AND JUJU were not, by habit or association, UCLA fans, but they knew about the UCLA-USC rivalry. They knew that before the annual football game at the end of the season, students went to each other’s campuses on search-and-deface missions. They poured soap and dye into fountains and pools, left obscenity-laden tributes, released herds of farm animals, hijacked delivery trucks and substituted school newspapers with parodies, and stole and vandalized emblems, most notably the bronze statue of Tommy Trojan on USC’s campus, on which some UCLA Bruins had once famously dumped five hundred pounds of manure from a helicopter.

  A few months ago, when a facsimile of the statue had been erected in the middle of the circular driveway to The Centurion Group’s new hotel, Lyndon and JuJu took up UCLA’s cause. Every once in a while, they dressed Tommy up in bras, lingerie, makeup, eye patches, jockstraps, various coats of paint, always in Bruin blue and gold. Before Kitchell hired twenty-four-hour security to guard the statue, they kidnapped it one night, took it into Lyndon’s workshop, then returned it safe and sound after a couple of days, save for Tommy’s arm, which had been rewelded so his sword was stuck up his ass.

  As the sod for some of the fairways of the new golf course was laid down, they did some nighttime gardening, spreading rock salt so in due time brown patches appeared, spelling out in huge letters: U$C Sucks. As the concrete for the new hotel’s patio dried, they sprayed a polymer sealant onto the surface so after a rainstorm slick discolorations suddenly became visible, reading in huge letters: FUCK $C.

  Tonight, they landed their kayaks on the beach below the fourteenth fairway of the golf course, removed their supplies from the storage compartments of the boats, loaded their knapsacks, and climbed the sandstone cliff, hunkering down in a bunker to wait. After the security guards had driven past on their scheduled patrol, Lyndon and JuJu snuck across the fairway to Kitchell’s cavernous house, which, like all the McMansions on the golf course, was designed to resemble an Italian villa. The Centurion Group had built this home first as a model, landscaping and fully furnishing it, but soon deemed it too small for the demands of the current market—it was a mere five thousand square feet—and constructed another one next door that was eight thousand square feet.

  JuJu had gone to a spy hobbyist shop in San Francisco and p
urchased a lockpick set in anticipation of breaking into the house, but it wasn’t necessary. The back door was open, the alarm disengaged. Kitchell must have been in a hurry to leave for the home opener in L.A. They took their boots off on the deck outside and entered the kitchen, which was outfitted with the latest high-end appliances: gleaming Thermador oven, stainless-steel double-sided Sub-Zero, black granite center island.

  “Looks just like my place,” Lyndon said.

  He opened the refrigerator, which was stocked with bottles of Gatorade, water, light beer, wheatgrass juice, cod liver oil, and liquid vitamins. On the counter, lined in neat rows, were tubs of whey and egg protein, creatine, glutamine, ground flaxseed, and various other fat burners and muscle builders.

  “Where do you think he hides the steroids?” JuJu asked.

  They worked quickly. In the master bathroom, they put cooking oil in Kitchell’s shampoo and tamped a staple into his deodorant so mysteriously, for days, his hair would be lank and greasy and his armpits would itch and burn. They inserted blue fabric dye in his showerhead and baby powder into his hair dryer. They smeared Vaseline on his toilet seat and poured clear gelatin in his toilet bowl. They shorted his sheets and swapped out the legs on his bed with empty beer bottles. They superglued the handsets for all his phones to their cradles. In the study they rigged his stereo to blast a CD of UCLA’s fight song, “Sons of Westwood,” when the lights were turned on, and they superglued all the papers on his desk to the desktop. In the gym they superglued his barbell to the bench press. In the kitchen they put crushed-up laxatives in his protein mixes and sugar bowl, and smokeless tobacco in his ground coffee. In the laundry room they replaced his detergent with bubble bath and stuck a dead salmon that they’d found on the beach in his dryer. Throughout the house, they hid cute little stuffed bears of UCLA’s mascots, Joe and Josie Bruin, everywhere—in cupboards, cabinets, cans, closets.

  In the garage, they poured baby powder into the front window defroster and air vents of Kitchell’s SUV and superglued the blower lever to high. They put yellow paint in the windshield wiper fluid reservoir and superglued the wiper knob to high. They put a CD of “Sons of Westwood” in the stereo and superglued the volume to high. They superglued a coach’s metal whistle inside the tailpipe and covered the end with an unrolled extra-strength Trojan condom that contained a three-day-old egg yolk. Finally, they superglued his gas cap and swapped out his USC TROJAN license plate frames with ones that read HONK IF YOU’RE GAY TOO.

  SOMEONE WAS IN THE ROOM with him—that was what roused Lyndon, not long after they had returned to the farm and he’d begun to doze off. Sluggishly, he turned over in his bed and saw Sheila looming over him, holding a knife in the air.

  “Jesus!”

  “It’s just me,” she said softly. It wasn’t a knife. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, hooking her hair behind her ear.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “For a misanthrope, you have a lot of people staying in your house.”

  “There’re only three,” Lyndon said. “I think.”

  Sheila stretched her neck, tilting her head back and then rolling it. She exhaled heavily. “God, I am so tired,” she said.

  “Get into bed with me.”

  “I’m not going to have sex with you again.”

  “Come on,” Lyndon said, pushing aside the sheets. “Lie down with me.”

  She stared out the window, thinking about it. “I’m keeping my clothes on,” she said. She slipped off her shoes and lay down beside Lyndon, spooning against him, and he pulled the sheets over them and nestled into her body.

  “You smell good,” he said.

  “You smell awful. What have you been doing? You stink of ocean.”

  “Shhh,” he said. “Let’s just lie here.” He pulled her closer to him, and she entwined her fingers around his, and they lay quietly, getting warm and snug, their breaths calming into a mutual rhythm. “Isn’t this nice?” he whispered. “This is nice.” This was perfect, he thought. Why did people always insist that relationships had to change? Why did they always need to analyze them and discuss them and pick them apart? Why did everything have to be redefined and progress to another level? Why couldn’t people just be together? Why couldn’t it be simple, like this?

  “Are you going to see her again?” Sheila asked.

  It was never, ever, going to be simple. “I’m not planning to,” Lyndon said.

  “That’s not a definitive answer.”

  “No, all right? I’m not going to see her again.”

  “Good.”

  “Did you come over tonight to see if I was alone?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re still in love with me.”

  “I am not.”

  “You are,” Lyndon said.

  “You know, you don’t look anything like your brother,” Sheila told him.

  “Well, thank God for that,” he said.

  “And you say you have no vanity,” she said. “Why is JuJu sleeping here?”

  “He’s sort of made himself at home.”

  “Because you lost his job for him?”

  Naturally she had learned of the collapse at the Oar House. “I had nothing to do with that,” he said. “That wasn’t my fault at all.”

  “It’s always the same song with you, isn’t it? So to speak,” Sheila said. “JuJu’s girlfriend is a little old for him. Not a criticism, just an observation.”

  How far had she gone into everyone’s bedroom? “I don’t think either of them is looking at it long-term.”

  “You never know about these things. Maybe they’ll surprise you. Maybe they’ll stay together until they shrivel up and die.”

  “Somehow, that statement lacks a certain romance,” Lyndon said. “Is Hana leaving making you feel old? Is that what’s going on, all this drama?”

  “It’s about you and Steven,” Sheila said.

  “About making a choice between us?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who’s winning?” Lyndon asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Choose me,” he said.

  “You haven’t been making a good case for yourself.”

  “So you’ve made apparent. I take it you haven’t been putting holes in Steven’s tires.”

  “I don’t think he’d appreciate the joke.”

  “That’s precisely why he should be disqualified. No fucking sense of humor, that man. Though the joke’s getting a little stale now. And expensive. When did you get a hunting knife?”

  “What?”

  “The knife you used tonight.”

  She lifted her head off the pillow and turned to him. “What are you talking about?”

  “What’d you slash my tires with, then?”

  “I didn’t do anything to your tires tonight.”

  “Okay,” he said. If she wanted to play coy, if she wanted to pretend that her actions had not escalated from harmless vandalism to something approaching homicidal rage, so be it, that was fine with him. But then he had a thought. Could Steven have slashed his tires? He had been at the scene of the crime—the parking ticket. He had means, opportunity, and a shitload of motive. Then Lyndon had another thought. “You’re not visiting Steven in the middle of the night like this, are you?” he asked Sheila.

  “No.”

  “So I am winning.”

  “I wouldn’t attach undue significance to this.”

  “Whatever you say,” he told her, and tucked his chin into her collarbone. “As long as you don’t go out with Ed Kitchell.”

  “That’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”

  “You’re not seriously considering it, are you?”

  “There’s more to him than you might think. He’s a volunteer organizer for the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer. He has a sensitive side you’d never expect.”

  “You can’t do it. You won’t do it, will you?”

  “I’m going to torture you a little longer and not answer.”

  �
�That’s an answer.”

  “No, it’s not.”

  “It’s not like I need any more reason to hate the guy.”

  “So you’ve made apparent.”

  “You know he wears Brut cologne? Who wears Brut anymore?”

  “How do you know he wears Brut?”

  After they had gone from the bedrooms to the study, from the gym to the kitchen, from the laundry to the garage, Lyndon had looked around Kitchell’s house and said to JuJu, “I feel like we’re forgetting something.”

  In the master bathroom, they had emptied out half of Kitchell’s spray bottle of Brut and filled it with cod liver oil.

  CHAPTER 8

  STONE UNCONSCIOUS. BLACK BLACK BLACKNESS. NOTHING. NO dreams or gauzy, half-remembered peeps during the night. A complete void. He slept like that until late in the morning, then awoke with a start. Someone was covering his mouth, not allowing him to breathe, shoving him underneath the water, trying to drown him. But, no, Woody’s face was mashed square against the pillow, in a pool of drool from his open mouth, the saliva pink with blood from the scrape on his forehead. He had the most tremendous headache. Searing, pounding, unbelievable pain. He reeled out of bed, still in Lyndon’s clothes. He gulped down water from a bottle he had kept on the dresser and began popping down aspirin and double doses of his meds and supplements. It had been a mistake, a terrible mistake, to miss a day.

  He went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. God, what a horror, blood caked on the side of his head, bags under his eyes, skin alternately sallow and ruddy, peppered with—what were those things? Pimples? Little red bumps in clusters. And dirt. Dirt everywhere. On his face, in his hair, in his ears, in his nostrils. He washed his face, put a bandage on the scrape, and blew his nose. Brown snot, like he’d been in a dust storm. Then, when he unzipped his jeans to take a leak, he met a hideous sight. There was something wrong with his penis. It was red and covered with a line of bumps, as if it had been caught in the zipper. Multiple times. And then Woody began to feel an itching, an unbearable, overwhelming itching, on his penis and, mystifyingly, on his ass, right in the crack between his cheeks, actually on his anus, on second thought it felt like it was up his anal canal, like he had been given a rectal exam during his blackout and a nest of mosquitoes had swarmed up there. No, forget mosquitoes. An army of red fire ants. What in the world?