Hard Rock Improv

by Ava Lore

  So now I was drunk and surrounded by Manny’s cousins, and my phone kept buzzing as Sonya texted me to make sure I was all right.

  Sitting on the railing of the porch, time seemed to be distending and contracting in weird ways. Our plan was every fifteen minutes I would have to answer one of Sonya’s texts, or she would bring the pain down upon the house like, as she put it, a righteous fury. It seemed like she was texting me every five minutes now, and I was nearly done with my third beer and couldn’t feel my face. Also, the unexpected had happened.

  I had started liking Manny’s cousins.

  It was strange. Despite all I’d heard about them, and despite the fact that I sort of hated myself for it, I liked them. Except for Yago, they were all funny and outgoing, just like Manny, though their voices had sharper edges and their humor wasn’t always as good-natured.

  They were definitely related to him, though, there was no doubt about that. I spotted every one of Manny’s sweet, charming qualities lurking in the family that had been taking advantage of him since he had been an orphaned teenager. It was disconcerting; every time one of them made a gesture, or smiled, or laughed or teased or did anything at all that reminded me of Manny I found myself becoming endeared toward them against my will.

  I hadn’t meant for it to happen. I’d meant to stick around and wait for Arturo Reyes to stop resting while getting in good with the rest of them so my drug plan wouldn’t have seemed amiss, but for the past ninety minutes, they’d entertained me like they were getting paid for it. In pussy and blow.

  For instance, Luis had regaled me with stories of the tourist trap outfit he used to work for and the clueless tourists who patronized it. Miguel made me swear that I would come back to Hawaii soon so he could teach me to surf. Nando told me how to illegally camp in the national forest. Alejandro was a short-order cook over in Kapa’a, Juan was a mechanic, and Lalo was a quiet guy who made ukuleles, of all things, and who didn’t seem anything like a guy who would steal someone’s girlfriend. They reminded me so sharply of Manny that it made my chest hurt.

  And, also like Manny, they were terrified of Yago. He was smaller than all of them, and about half the time we all managed to ignore the fact that he was there. He seemed happy to oblige us by sitting quietly in a chair a couple of feet apart from the rest of his cousins, drinking beer and smoking cigarillos while his muddy eyes stayed clamped on my breasts.

  Still, whenever the laughter got too loud or one of the cousins got too chummy with me, Yago would say something, interjecting himself into the conversation. Then they would tense very slightly, and the mood on the porch pulled back, darkening. His remarks were always quiet and cruel, and they all laughed at his ‘jokes’ but the sound was strained, and they had all started drinking more and more.

  Yago was the one who controlled this family. Yago, and Uncle Turo. Who still hadn’t stopped ‘resting,’ despite my not-so-discreet enquiries. I was starting to wonder if he was even in the house.

  Please, he needs to be here, I thought. I don’t know what I’ll do if he isn’t.

  Actually, I actually wasn’t sure what I was going to do now. The situation was not as I had surmised.

  I pulled my phone out of my pocket and texted Sonya without looking at her message. “Still working on it.”

  Okay. Working on it. Working...on...it.

  The plan. Blackmail. I needed to introduce the drugs into the equation somehow. And that meant I needed to move the party inside, since it was probably a bad idea to do heroine and meth within full view of the street. Never mind that I was wondering if blackmailing them was the right thing to do. Since I couldn’t trust the police to arrest anyone for drug possession, blackmail had been my work-around, but at this point I was starting to feel a twinge of doubt concerning who should be the focus of my righteous vengeance.

  Good idea, Rose. Get emotionally attached. That will make things WAY easier.

  Luis was talking to me, but to my dismay I’d managed to lose the thread of the story. I tried to focus.

  “—came up to me,” he was saying, “and told me some lady was screaming in the men’s bathroom and had been for ten minutes, but the door was locked and they couldn’t get in...”

  Yikes. Not sure if I want to hear that story. Back to plotting—how am I going to get them into the house?

  I frowned, rubbing my fuzzy thoughts together, hoping they’d throw a spark, but nothing appeared except the thought: Good fucking god, I have to pee.

  In fact, I really had to pee. Like...really, really badly. So badly that if I didn’t get to a toilet in the next minute, I was probably going to piss myself.

  Pissing myself was not part of the plan. With great care I maneuvered myself off the porch railing and stood there, swaying. Luis was still telling me his story. “...passed out cold wearing a Superman costume and the poor lady is chained to the toilet...”

  Now I was sad that I’d missed the story, but nature called. “Um,” I said. “Anyone want to give me directions to the little girl’s room?”

  Luis grinned at me, cutting his tale short. “I will.” He was a large man with a happy face and black, bloodshot eyes. Of the brothers, he was the one who was drinking the most, and I knew it wouldn’t be hard to get him to take me up on my offer of a chemically-induced good time. I smiled at him and tried not to hate myself too much.

  “I’ll try to remember them,” I said cheerfully. “Fire away.” God, I hoped I’d be able to remember the directions. The problem was becoming...pressing. I endeavored to look bright-eyed and intelligent.

  Luis laughed at the spectacle of an obviously a drunk person trying not to act drunk. “You’re a bit of a lightweight, Rose. You go in the front door, past the entryway, then take a left and go down the hallway, and then the second door on your left is the bathroom.”

  I nodded sagely. “I will keep this secret sacred,” I told him. “I’ll see you all in a minute.”

  And then Yago stood up, stretching.

  The other seven of us tensed, and again I felt a strange camaraderie with Manny’s cousins. Well, the majority of them, anyway.

  A lazy, cruel smile spread across Yago’s face. “I think I’ll go inside, too.”

  No one spoke, but each of them flicked a glance at me, and I saw trepidation and fear in their eyes.

  Even my drunk brain realized something was amiss. He’s following me inside, I realized. The last time we were alone, he...

  The blood left my head, and I swayed on my feet again. Bile curdled in my mouth, and I wondered if I could vomit in self-defense. Don’t touch me! I wanted to scream, but I couldn’t, I had to do something, something about a plan...

  Ah. That was right. I had to act like I might sleep with Yago. That I might give him what he wanted in return for Manny’s freedom, even though the very thought made me nauseous.

  I forced the sour taste of bile back down my throat while I gave Yago a shrug. “Cool,” I said. “You can redirect me when I get lost.”

  But my voice shook with my forced bravado, and I wasn’t fooling anyone.

  Then a chair clattered and I turned to see Miguel standing. “I need to go grab something to eat,” he said. “Didn’t get lunch.”

  Everyone on the porch seemed to hold their breath, and I realized that Miguel had done something brave. Yago’s eyes on him were slits of anger, but Miguel stood there, smiling at me.

  Then Alejandro stood up. “I gotta get a new pack of smokes from inside,” he said.

  Nando stretched. “Need to get a new shirt. Sweated through this one.”

  Yago’s shoulders were tense, his neck stiff, but when he spoke his voice was light and almost disarming. “Not surprising, you fat pig,” he said to his brother.

  Nando just held a hand and tipped it back and forth, as if to say, Eh.

  They’re coming with me, I thought hazily. Then: They are trying to protect me.

  Oh. Oh, I was really having second thoughts now...

  No. The plan. Stick to the pl
an!

  “Let’s make it a field trip, then!” I said brightly, pretending I didn’t sense the coiled tension in the air. “But let’s hurry, because if I stall any longer I’m going to have to borrow someone’s shorts.”

  With that I slipped past Luis and made a beeline for the front door—or at least, I made a beeline as much as I could, what with being drunk off my ass and all. It was more of a three-legged panda bear line rather than a beeline. Luck was with me, however, and I managed to get my body through the door without breaking any major limbs.

  The inside of the house was just as tacky as the outside, and I immediately felt at home there. Sticky linoleum grabbed at my shoes and walls painted a cheap white color stared down at me. Clutter was everywhere—though I’d learned that most of Manny’s cousins didn’t live in the house, per se, they still came over on the weekends and that there were ten of them in all, a fact which boggled my mind. Add in the fact that they were all dudes ranging in age from as young as Manny to almost twenty years older and I could see why the house was such a cluttered mess.

  Well, let’s hope the bathroom isn’t too bad...

  I worked my dry tongue in my mouth and tried to remember the directions. Left and right? Or left and left?

  ...Shit. I decided to wing it. Hauling a left at the first opportunity I found myself drifting down a narrow hallway, the carpet nearly worn down to the threads in the middle, and two flimsy, dark wooden doors in each wall. At the end of the narrow passage was another door leading out into the side yard, its window mostly muted by a yellowing voile curtain and an easterly direction.

  Except for the second door on the right all the doors stood open, and I frowned as I tried to remember which one was the bathroom. Blinking in the dimness, I staggered down the hallway and tried not to bump my shoulders against the walls.

  I passed two rooms so cluttered that I didn’t even know what they were used for, though they each held at least one set of bunk beds and a desk. Then I came to the second door on the left. Peering in I spied pale mint-green tile, a white bathtub and commode, and was hit with the vague scent of mildew.

  Ah. Yup. That was the bathroom. It didn’t look too dirty, so I dashed inside, shut the door and did my business. After I washed my hands and dried them on my cut-offs—as no one seemed to have left guest towels out—I opened the door and took one step into the hallway, heading toward the living room.

  A muffled scream came from the closed door behind me, audible even over the sound of Manny’s boisterous cousins filling up the living room. I froze and turned.

  A regular old door made of scratched and flimsy wood stared back at me. My heart beat out a rapid rhythm in my chest and I stole a quick glance down the hall, but could see no one.

  ...Should I?

  I probably shouldn’t. But then again, I probably shouldn’t be sneaking around behind Manny’s back. I probably shouldn’t have several hundred dollars worth of drugs in my purse. I probably shouldn’t be doing any of this.

  Sneaking into places where I wasn’t supposed to go? That was not part of the plan.

  My eyes were drawn to the tarnished brass knob. Had I really heard a scream? I risked one more look down the hallway to the living room, then quickly pressed my ear against the wood.

  Another scream sounded, but now I recognized it, not as the scream of a person in trouble but as the fake, scripted sound of a television show. I released the breath I had been holding and took a step back, my drunk mind picking over my options.

  Reaching up, I felt for the piece of paper in my bra. A simple document to be signed, it would terminate Arturo’s authority over Manny. The easiest way out of this situation. No courts, no confrontations. No muss, no fuss.

  I was here for Arturo Reyes’ signature. Arturo Reyes was supposed to be...resting. Given how old some of his sons were I was pretty sure Arturo was at least in his mid-sixties, so it made sense for him to be napping in the middle of the afternoon. Or he was watching television, and everyone had been lying to me. Either way, he probably had no idea I was here.

  If I went in there...what? What could I do?

  I let my hand fall from my breast to the strap of my purse and thought of the business cards I still had in one of the inner pockets. The ones that said Rose Alton, Attorney at Law.

  The cards that didn’t say what kind of law I practiced.

  A new plan was forming in my head. People were almost always leery of lawyers, especially if they knew they’d done something wrong. Would the threat of being sued trick Arturo into signing over his control? Could I intimidate an old man into giving up what was probably his major source of income?

  You fucking bet I can.

  This was the sort of thing that could really get me disbarred, but at the moment I was drunk, infatuated with a man who needed my help whether he wanted it or not, and my whole future was in flux anyway—why not just embrace it?

  Are you just going to throw your plan away? my brain whispered to me. Go in without backup? Without any real preparation at all?

  Well? Why the fuck not? What had planning really done for me?

  Fuck. All.

  Reaching out, I turned the doorknob, slipped into the room, and shut the door behind me.

  The room smelled...odd. Not bad, per se, but musty and disused, almost like my grandparents’ house, like old mothballs and Vick’s Vaporub. The television was on some terrible day time talk show, full of screaming women and angry men, each trying to one-up each other on the crazy scale. Slowly, my eyes adjusted to the dim light, and I sucked air in through my teeth.

  The place was a pigsty, even more so than the rest of the house. Clothes were strewn everywhere, bottles and old newspapers covered every flat surface, and there were cardboard boxes full of odds and ends stacked precariously on top of one another. What little light there was came from the television and the windows on two walls. A pair of open double doors led to a darkened bathroom, and in the middle of it all was a bed.

  It too was a mess, a riot of pilled sheets and polyester comforter, no better than what you would find in an off-brand highway-side motel. Worse, actually, because the comforter was so ugly—a mass-produced piece of shit pretending to be a handmade quilt in yellow, green and orange patches. I was so mesmerized by its overwhelming ugliness that I almost overlooked the fact that the bed was occupied.

  Occupied.

  My breath caught in my throat. Was this the fabled Arturo? Only one way to find out. Inching forward, I prayed he really was asleep.

  It seemed like it took forever for me to cross the ratty carpet to the side of the bed. The floor actually felt dirty even through the soles of my flip-flops, as though gritty with crumbs, and I tried not to shudder at the contact. Instead I focused on the figure in the bed, twisted up in the sheets as though a nightmare had gripped the occupant and they had exhausted themselves in trying to escape.

  In my chest, my heart sped up until it thundered in my ears. My drink-numbed brain struggled with what my eyes were telling it, insisting that the figure I was looking at could not be Arturo. There was no way it could be Arturo, because instead of scary, or imposing, or threatening in any way, the person in the bed was just...sad.

  There. Sad. Pathetic. My chest tightened at the sight. There was no mistaking it: it had to be Manny’s uncle. The shriveled old man could be no one else.

  My god, I thought. He looks awful.

  And just as with the rest of the family, my emotions got the better of me. Instead of hating him on sight as I should have, I just felt a terrible, gut-deep pity. When I finally drew up alongside the man, I was fighting back traitorous tears.

  He was just so...old. He couldn’t have been much older than my own parents—his early sixties at the very latest—but he looked as though he had endured a terrible ordeal that had reduced him to a shell of a man. Though his frame was tall enough, there was so little meat on his bones that I actually shuddered thinking about what it would feel like to wrap my hand around his wrist. His up
per arm would have been little more than a stick in my fingers. I could break him if I wanted to.

  Gray hair, stringy and oily, lay plastered to his head as though he had been sweating heavily but had not been washed for many days, and the pungent scent that tickled my nose told me this observation was accurate. His face might have been handsome, might have been strong and imposing just like Manny’s, in his younger days, but now his cheeks were sunken in and even in the dim light I could tell that his skin had taken on a sickly pallor under its dark coloring. Behind papery eyelids, his eyes darted back and forth in restless sleep, and his hands laid against the sheets as limp and lifeless as dead birds.

  He looked as though he were a concentration camp victim, or dying of cancer. He was sick as hell, so sick that even looking at him gave me an uncomfortable twinge in my gut, a stark reminder of mortality, a vicious nudge of my subconscious as I remembered that we were all skeletons underneath our skin.

  Jesus, I thought thickly. Jesus Christ. Poor guy...

  Out in the living room someone roared with laughter, and it traveled through the paper-thin walls so well that whoever it was might have been standing right next to me. The sudden sound made me jump and I remembered where I was and why I was here.

  Manny’s freedom, I thought. I have to get this man to sign over Manny’s freedom.

  Yet even as I thought it I realized what a useless mission I had undertaken. The only way to get this man to sign anything would be to hold his hand and do it for him. He wasn’t signing any documents, now or even possibly for the rest of his life. He didn’t even look capable of lifting his eyebrows, let alone his hands.

  Capable, my lawyer-brain hissed. Not capable. Hey, pay attention to your own damn thoughts!

  My eyes widened.

  That’s right! I realized. This man was dreadfully sick. Perhaps he was so sick that his brain was in the same shape as his body!