“Like secret Agent Orange, I’m sure.”
“You’re good with words,” she said. “I like that.”
“Used to be,” I said, snapping the lid of my eye patch.
Meagan pinched my cheek—hard enough to let me know that she wasn’t forgiving me.
“I made dinner,” she said. “The boys said they want to eat with you. They want to pretend that we’re normal.”
Meagan left me to finish up in the baño.
I put on a different shirt, the only one I had with a collar, and I turned it up like Elvis. I didn’t want the boys to see my hickey. They had seen enough unexplainable shit lately.
I think it was the first time more than two people had broken bread in my casa—or, in this case, folded a tortilla. Even though I didn’t have enough forks to go around, it was obvious Meagan would have known exactly which one to use. I could tell by the way she sat in her chair and adjusted the paper towel in her lap that she hadn’t been raised in Appalachia.
The aromas were delicious, but I had no idea what I was smelling.
“I thought we were out of gas,” I said.
“I made a deal with the propano guy while you were in the shower.”
Obsidian laughed, and Jade kicked him.
Meagan smiled.
“What kind of deal?” I asked, a little awkwardly.
“Whatever it takes,” Meagan said.
“Yeah, Mom’s a survivor,” Obsidian said, probably from experience.
And then a phone rang and kind of saved us from the awkwardness. It was one of those old-fashioned rings, the kind from a phone that has a dial. They still use them down here, so at first I thought it was coming from somewhere outside. But then it rang again, and I realized that the ring was too loud. Either the phone was inside my casa, or it was inside my head and I was having an audio hallucination—which was possible.
“Um,” I said, as calmly as possible, “does anyone hear a phone ringing?”
The boys were staring straight at each other. They didn’t say a word. Meagan played dumb.
“Oh, my gosh, I do,” she said. “If it’s for me, I’m not here.”
The old-fashioned ring rang again, and I glared at Jade.
“Answer it,” I said.
Jade pulled a new iPhone out of his pocket and put it up to his ear.
“Hello,” he said.
I had an idea where he had gotten this phone, and I wasn’t happy about it.
“Winsor’s not here,” Jade said. “No. Nobody knows where he is.”
Jade hung up the phone. I looked over at Meagan.
“Did you know about this?”
“I figured Jade deserved it,” she said. “Kind of like the spoils of war.”
“Give it to me,” I said to Jade.
He handed over Winsor’s iPhone. I got up from the table and walked into my bedroom. I put the iPhone in my drawer.
“This is my drawer,” I called out from the bedroom. “It is off-limits. Everything in this drawer is a secret. And it’s mine. So hands off the iPhone.”
I went back to the table and sat down.
“My dad said that exact same thing about his drawer,” I said.
“Your dad had an iPhone?” Obsidian asked, faking that he was impressed. It was the first time I’d heard him sound like a normal wiseass teenager.
“He didn’t need one,” I said. “He was a great shouter.”
Meagan ladled out some kind of stew into a bowl and handed it to me. It was a rich, creamy broth with lumps of what could have been either fish or chicken.
“Do you have any allergies?” Obsidian asked me, wiseassing me again.
“Only to honest work.”
“Work is the curse of the drinking man,” Jade said.
I was pretty shocked at the quote. I had heard it a million times. It was kind of like the car salesmen’s motto. I looked over at Meagan, and she smiled. I could see that she was proud of how smart her kids were.
“I’m not the best homeschooling mom around,” Meagan said. “But we try to learn something we don’t know every day.”
“And that’s Osmar Wilde,” Jade bragged.
“I think it’s Oscar,” I said.
“But what if work is the curse of the surfing man?” Obsidian asked.
“It was for me,” I said.
“And now you don’t work, right?” Jade said. “See, Mom, he can pull it off.”
“But you have to have an extra hole put into your head first,” I said. “Which can be painful.”
I rarely made jokes about getting shot. It undermined my victimhood. But I had to admit, I was enjoying the intimacy. I tasted the stew.
“Excellent.”
“Thank you,” Meagan said. “It’s armadillo.”
“You’re kidding?” I said.
“She’s not,” Jade said, proud as hell—and what kid wouldn’t be. “Mom’s an exotic chef.”
“I’m a chef like I’m a jeweler,” Meagan said. “But I can cook.”
21
There was still a little bit of daylight left, so after dinner I grabbed my board and walked down to the left break. No one was out, and there was a shoulder-high cleaner coming through.
A pescador nicknamed Cabezón was tossing his bait net into the shore break. A half dozen dogs were chasing an old pelican with a damaged wing. I thought that maybe I should step in and give the old bird a hand, but somehow he made it into the water on his own.
The dogs were all gangly and gray and a little wild. They started to sniff and growl around me a little bit, so I paddled out for safety just like the pelican had—and just like I do whenever I need to feel safe. The ocean does that for me.
I was harassing myself with a claustrophobic buzz I’d apparently ordered as a side with the armadillo. I can’t always be sure if it’s the TBI or just me being neurotic that causes these episodes, and I had thought I’d deactivated this one with last week’s binge. But it seemed to be hanging on. Maybe being surrounded by a family is a trigger because it reminds me of the one I used to have—and ran away from.
Either way, I wanted to resist ingesting any preventive medicines, so I figured I should get wet. If I can catch a few good waves, it usually settles me down. Maybe it’s the lithium in ocean saltwater or the simple thrill of gravity, but surfing’s roller coaster is how I get over my rough patches.
I also didn’t want to go see Sarah again so soon—except for sex, maybe. But I certainly didn’t need any more snortables, and my mental health triage would make for an uncomfortable ménage à trois. I didn’t want to hurt her feelings—at least, not more than I’d probably hurt them already.
On my way out the door, I had hinted to her that despite my raves and her surprising flexibility, I was pretty sure our two nights’ worth of a one-night stand was exactly that—a once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. Like when it snowed in Mexico City.
The water I was surfing was barely two feet deep, and the wave, though small, was fast and hollow. My backside surfing is a little weak, and Sabanita’s left only works on the lowest tides. So whenever I surf the left, it’s always with a wall-to-wall carpeting of rocks just below the surface. After I made the drop, I had to reach down and grab my outside rail to help crank a bottom turn. I’m a regular-foot surfer—which means my left foot is forward, and I face the wave when I’m surfing a right break and face the shore when I’m surfing a left. Once I trimmed the Red Fin down the line, I was able to stand up straighter, but any time I’m on a left, I always feel as if I am surfing like a kook.
A guy I paddle out with named English John told me, “The secret that enables regular foots” to surf shallow lefts is to go straighter on takeoff and not try to make the bottom turn so briskly.
“Go straight down the face and wait before you make your bottom turn,” John would say. “Don’t be frightened about it getting shallow—the rocks are your mates!”
The first time I took the Englishman’s advice, I spent the rest of the day sprayin
g Neosporin at the cuts on the bottom of my feet and looking for a new fin box. But he was right about some of it: “If you go straight at the thing you’re afraid of, it gives you the advantage of surprise.”
In English John’s world, everything is alive. Scary waves can be surprised. Shallow shore breaks, thunderstorms, finicky toasters, and ATMs can be tricked and manhandled. Everything has a personality and a plan, and if you pay attention, you can outwit it.
“If I want my motorbike to start on the first try, I have to sneak up on it,” he would say, kick-starting his old Jawa without warning and winding up the throttle.
He must have been from the watched-pot-never-boils school of physics, but there was one thing the Englishman said that I knew in my gut to be true.
Going straight at the stuff that scares you is good advice. I just didn’t have the courage to go there—or even the words to describe it. That’s how big abandoning your kid is. It just makes you less of whatever you used to be.
22
By the time I got home, it was dark. I could see the red dot of a joint pulsate as I walked up the sandy path that connected my casa to the beach. Meagan was sitting on the front steps. I stood my Red Fin up in the crotch of the higuera and sat next to her.
There was a half moon and hardly any clouds. A swarm of lightning bugs blinked out their love signals.
“Pretty clear for this time of year,” I said.
I could barely see Meagan nod in the darkness. She offered me the joint.
“I don’t smoke,” I said.
“Really?” she said.
“Yup.”
I let that hang in the air for a little bit, seeing as how marijuana is Mexico’s number-one cash crop. Maybe I had a particularly precious brand of TBI, but after my head wound, good bud always gave me the heebie-jeebies.
“What kind of deal did you make with the propano guy?” I asked.
“That I’d pay him when you got home.”
“He gave you credit?”
Unheard-of. The gas guys down here, especially the delivery-truck drivers, are as ruthless as the Exxon execs north of the border.
“Sure did,” she said.
“That’s amazing. I once offered him my Red Fin as collateral—he told me to forget it.”
My Red Fin was a certified original and signed by Hynson himself. It was worth two grand. Easy.
“You should have flashed him your tits,” Meagan said.
“I don’t have tits,” I said, more defensively than accurately.
“And then I told him that if I don’t pay him by Saturday—he can touch them.”
“You’re kidding?”
“He didn’t think so. I got the gas,” she said.
Meagan smiled and straightened her loose cotton top. “Pretty resourceful, huh?”
“Down here it’s called something else,” I said.
“You never heard of a pound of flesh?”
“I’ll Google it,” I said.
“Two pounds, actually,” Meagan corrected, and then laughed.
She seemed so comfortable with herself that I wanted to laugh along with her.
“But what if I don’t have the money?” I said.
“Oh, you’ll find the money.”
Meagan spit on what was left of the reefer and tossed the roach into the spice garden.
“Are the boys sleeping?”
Meagan nodded. “And thanks for letting them use your computer.” She took my hand, and I let her hold it.
“No worries. I just don’t want them to get it all bugged up.”
“They won’t. Jade’s a computer nerd, just like his dad. He even hacked your passwords.”
“Passwords are private.” I was a little more pissed off than impressed.
“Supposed to be,” she said. “That shows you how good he is.”
Meagan began tracing little circles with her fingertips along the inside of my forearm. I’d had a high-school girlfriend who did that to me, and it made me crazy—crazy calm, if there could be such a thing.
“I told him not to make it a habit,” she said. “But we needed to download the next level of this homeschooling program.”
“Was it free?”
“I wish. We had to use your iTunes account.”
“You mean, I wish. What makes you think you don’t have to ask?”
“Well, I would have, of course, if you had been here. But you were out banging some dolly for two days, and I have kids to raise.”
“She wasn’t some dolly.”
“We’re never dolly to you guys,” she said. “Once you’re done.”
“Look,” I said, “has it occurred to you that a guy like me, whose entire criminal career can be summed up in shoplifting a KISS CD, might get a little stressed out over having to get rid of a body?”
“Keep your voice down,” Meagan said, and nodded toward the casita.
“Don’t worry about it. Your kids were there, remember?” And then I whispered, “We ended up having to dump Winsor in the ocean.”
“I’m thinking you’re trying to make it sound like it was a bigger deal than it really was.”
“What?” I was incredulous.
“Yeah, so I’ll feel, like, indebted to you. That’s what men do. Usually.”
“It was a very big deal. Trust me.”
“No, it’s not,” Meagan said. “I’ve been there.”
And it felt like the temperature dropped about ten degrees.
“Been where?” I asked, and I stopped her fingertips from making the tiny tingles on my forearm.
“Trying to get rid of bodies.”
I shivered a little bit.
“With Obsidian’s dad,” Meagan whispered.
“His dad?”
“Jesus, take it easy.”
“I’m trying to.”
“Look—he was my drug buddy.” She was whispering again. “Not just my guy. Okay?”
“Not really.”
“And, well, I sorta let him OD.”
“Sorta?”
“I stopped using. He didn’t—couldn’t, or wouldn’t. So he kept spending all our money on dope. Our kids needed to eat. And Social Services was going to take them away if we didn’t stop using.”
“I’m trying to figure out if that’s an alibi or an explanation,” I said.
“It’s both,” she said and shrugged.
Then Meagan took my hand in hers and touched a finger against my eye patch. “We used to cook up our batches for each other. Back before I got clean. And yeah, maybe that last time I did use a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon. I wasn’t used to doing it sober, so maybe I couldn’t remember the recipe. Like I said, I’m not really a chef. People make mistakes.”
Jesus.
Meagan moved to kiss me, but I turned my head.
“You don’t believe me.”
It looked like she was hurt.
“Of course I do,” I said, and kissed her quickly on the cheek.
23
I had decided to sleep on the couch on the porch, but first I tiptoed into my bedroom to check on the boys.
They were sound asleep in my bed, and angled in a way that made me remember this potato-skin game Marshall and I used to play on summer nights. Where we’d take potato peels and throw them over our shoulders. When one landed in the shape of a letter, we’d have to make a word out of it.
Jade was sleeping as straight as an uppercase I, for ingenious, maybe. Obsidian was comfortable in a smaller c.
I moved a dreadlock away from Obsidian’s eyes and untangled Jade’s arm from a pillow.
“It must be hard to miss this so much,” Meagan said.
She startled me a little bit, and I jumped as I turned toward her.
“I thought you were sleeping,” I said.
I was a little embarrassed.
“I thought you were.”
I couldn’t see Meagan well enough to know what she was wearing, but I could certainly smell her. She must have taken a shower after our li
ttle chat outside. She had that homemade-soap smell.
“Come to bed,” she said.
“I thought I’d better just sleep on the couch,” I said.
But Meagan had already left the room. I could hear her turn the fan up a notch and yank back the covers on the guest bed.
I took another look at the boys and walked out of my bedroom.
Meagan lit a candle as I stretched out on the bed. It was the size my parents used to call a double bed. Down here in Mexico, it’s called a matrimonial. Meagan was naked. I have seen a lot of naked women. But I was pretty sure she was the most beautiful naked woman I had ever seen. Too bad I wasn’t feeling very amorous.
“So how did you get rid of him?” I asked Meagan.
“Who?”
“Obsidian’s dad,” I said.
She blew out the match and jumped into bed, scrunching in between a couple of pillows.
“Yeah, that sucked,” she said. “Nobody wanted to help me dump a body for free, and we didn’t have any money.”
“You and the kids?”
“Who else?”
“I’m just asking.”
“So I had to leave him where he overdosed—in this crappy little apartment in New Orleans. The lease was in my name. I thought it would be wise to leave. The country, that is. I had already been arrested once for possession, and with an OD in the house I’d lose the boys for sure.”
“You’re from New Orleans?”
“Virginia,” Meagan said. “Obsidian’s dad was a roadie for the Dave Matthews Band—he was in charge of the guitars.”
“So that’s true,” I said.
“And a very big deal, if you don’t know—Jade and me got to tag along. The kids were the same age, so it worked out.” Meagan stopped and nodded her head slightly, like she was remembering something nice. “But then my guitar tuner got fired after a show in Shreveport.”
“What about Obsidian’s mom?”
Meagan shrugged. “Maybe she didn’t like hanging around backstage as much as I did. But I’ve never asked and Obsidian doesn’t bring her up.”
“That’s considerate,” I said.
“Yeah, sometimes our kids give us a break with the hard stuff.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I said.
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