Sweet Nothing

by RICHARD LANGE

  Troy’s quiet in the car on the way back to the apartment. I notice he’s limping as we climb the stairs. I’m drinking beer and reading Stephen King when he calls me into the bathroom, where he’s sitting on the toilet in his underwear. A shard of glass is sticking out of his massive calf above a trickle of blood. It’s a piece of one of the jars.

  “Pull this out for me,” he says.

  I kneel beside him and grip the glass with my thumb and forefinger. A quick yank is all it takes. More blood starts to flow. Troy doesn’t want to see a doctor. He asks me to patch him up as best I can. I rinse the cut, spread Neosporin on it, and wrap his leg in gauze.

  A few minutes later he comes into the living room and asks if I want to go for a walk.

  “Maybe you should skip today,” I say.

  “Nah, dude, I’m good,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

  I’m suddenly tired as hell, like I’ve taken a pill.

  “I’m burnt,” I say. “Sorry.”

  I lie on the futon, and I’m dreaming before Troy makes it down the stairs.

  WHAT WENT WRONG? That’s another question I ask myself.

  My parents? They were distant but kind. Both worked at the same insurance company, and when they asked my sister and me how we were doing each evening at dinner, the answer they wanted and got was “Fine.” We held up our end of the bargain; they held up theirs. A little bloodless, but better than the messes I’ve made.

  My wife? Okay, we married too young and hung on too long. We were casually cruel to each other, and torment became a game for us. But that’s nothing unusual. You see it on TV every day. I can’t blame the kids either, although when they came along I had to divide what love I had in me into smaller portions, and it sounds selfish, but you know who got shorted? Me.

  As for work, I’ve only met two people, a dope dealer and a marine, who truly enjoyed what they did for a living and wouldn’t walk away from it if they had the opportunity. A job is what you do to pay the bills. Some are better than others, but they’re all painful in a way. It’s a pain you learn to live with, however, not the kind that breaks you.

  So what, then, spun me out, sent me sliding across the track and into the wall? Maybe I’m not meant to know. Maybe if all of us were suddenly able to peer into our hearts and see all the wildness there, the wanting, the fire and black smoke, we’d forget how to fake it, and the whole rotten world would jerk to a halt. There’s something to be said for the truth, sure, but the truth is, it’s lies that keep us going.

  I STOP AT Goodwill to buy a sport coat and tie on my way to my interview. They cost me fifteen dollars. Best Buy called yesterday and said to come in at one and ask for Harry. The store is on Santa Monica and La Brea, so if I get the job, I can take the same bus I do now.

  The chick at the customer-service desk has blond hair and black eyebrows. She’s a big girl, and her clothes are too tight. She looks me over with a smirk when I say I’m there to see Harry, wondering why a man my age would want a college student’s job.

  Harry’s just a kid too, but he’s already going bald. His handshake is an embarrassment. I will eat him alive.

  He leads me through the store toward his office. A hip-hop song is booming out of the car-stereo department as we pass by. Every other word is motherfucker. Two employees in blue polos are staring at the speakers mounted on the wall and bobbing their heads in time to the music.

  “Hey!” Harry yells at them, his voice a frustrated squeak. “What did I tell you guys?”

  “Sorry, man,” one of the employees says while reaching out to lower the volume. We move on, and I turn back to see the guy and his buddy bumping fists and laughing up their sleeves.

  Harry’s office is a windowless box off the stockroom, barely big enough for a desk and two chairs. We sit so close together, I can see the sweat beading on his greasy forehead.

  “So, uh”—he picks up my application and looks down at my name—“Dennis,” he says. “Why do you want to work at Best Buy?” He barely listens as I give my spiel about how my divorce threw me for a loop, but now I’m back on my feet and eager to use my sales experience at a leading chain like this one.

  When I say, “Put me out on that floor, and I don’t care if it’s batteries, I’ll be the best battery salesman you ever had,” Harry just nods and starts telling me about benefits. I notice that his hands are shaking and he’s breathing funny. The guy is falling apart, and I’m pretty sure I know why.

  When we get to the part where he asks, “Do you have any questions for me?” I say, “How long have you been manager?”

  Harry fiddles with the name tag on his vest, the one that reads Harry Sarkissian, Manager. “Almost two months,” he says.

  “It gets easier,” I say. “I know. I used to be a manager myself.”

  Harry’s eyes fill with tears. “I bought a book from Amazon,” he says. “First, Break All the Rules. But it’s like for offices and stuff, not stores.”

  “You want a tip?” I say. “Something that worked for me?”

  “Okay,” Harry says.

  “Blame everything on your bosses, the people higher up than you. Those guys out there, that music. Tell them the district manager got a complaint and said you had to do something about it. Act like you couldn’t care less, but the boss is on your ass, so you’ve got to get on theirs. Everyone understands shit rolls downhill. They can’t be mad at you, because you’re just following orders.”

  “That might work,” Harry says.

  “I guarantee it will,” I say. “You want another tip?”

  “Sure.”

  “Hire me. You won’t be sorry.”

  I laugh to let him know he can take that as a joke, and he laughs too. We shake hands again, and he walks me to the front of the store and says he’ll call when he makes his decision, either way.

  I’m feeling fine for once, even though it’s hot out on the street and the smog leaves a chemical taste on my tongue. I pulled what could have been a disastrous interview out of the fire and did my good deed for the day all at the same time. Baby steps toward something better.

  I buy a fruit cup from a pushcart parked on the sidewalk in front of the store. The kid selling them sprinkles chili powder over the chunks of pineapple, melon, and mango, and I eat it sitting on a cinder-block wall in the thin strip of shade cast by a palm tree. My bus arrives just as I reach the stop. If I believed in luck, I might think mine had turned.

  THE ONE-EYED COWBOY lingers at the counter after paying for his coffee and jabbers on and on about how he got bitten by a Great Dane when he was eight years old. I pull on plastic gloves and go back to refilling the ham and turkey bins, but he doesn’t get the hint.

  “To this day I get the shakes around a big dog,” he says. “With little ones, I won’t pet ’em, but they don’t scare me.”

  “Huh,” I say. I cut open a bag of Swiss cheese slices. “Wow.”

  The guy’s wearing a black cowboy hat, scuffed snakeskin boots, and a bolo tie with a silver scorpion slide. His empty eye socket is a raw, red hole that made my stomach flip when I first saw it. What he’s doing on Sunset Boulevard at three in the morning, I couldn’t tell you.

  “Now this”—he reaches up to tug the eyelid hanging loosely over the hole—“happened in a fight in Kansas City. Motherfucker got me with a broken bottle.”

  He’s still telling stories fifteen minutes later as the door swings shut behind him and he swaggers off down the sidewalk. I wonder what it’s like when the dam finally breaks and everything comes spilling out. Maybe you feel better or maybe you drown.

  They’re talking about UFOs on After Midnight. Are we being watched? Zalika shows up at four. It’s been a week since I last saw her, and I’m more excited than I should be. My plan is to tell her something about my life in order to break the ice between us, about Troy wanting to lose weight and me trying to help him. The look on her face stops me cold, though. She barely glances at me when she orders her coffee and keeps dabbing at her nose with a Kle
enex.

  “Rough night?” I say.

  She nods, tears glittering in her beautiful eyes. I want to reach out and smooth away the worry lines on her forehead, the creases at the corners of her mouth. Instead, I watch her walk alone to the booth in front of the window, where she slumps over her coffee.

  “What could these extraterrestrials possibly want from us?” the host of After Midnight asks the expert. “We’re like insects compared to them.”

  I continue with the breakfast prep until Zalika suddenly wails and clutches her chest.

  “What’s wrong?” I say as I hurry over and crouch beside her.

  “They’re taking Amisi off the ventilator tomorrow,” she says.

  We’re in each other’s arms then, just like that, just like when you reach out to stop someone from falling. She sobs on my shoulder, and I rub her back gently while murmuring, “I’m sorry,” again and again.

  When she calms down, we sit across from each other in the booth. I hand her a napkin, and she wipes her eyes and fixes her hair.

  “I’m ashamed for you to see me like this,” she says.

  “I’m ashamed for you to see me like this,” I reply. “Is there anyone at the hospital with you? Your husband?”

  Anger slides across her face like a cloud shadow passing over the desert.

  “We divorced three years ago,” she says. “He took our son and moved back to Egypt. I chose to remain here, hoping it would be better for Amisi.”

  “A friend, then? Do you want me to call someone?”

  “Thank you, but no. That’s not my way.”

  I understand. We don’t ask for help, people like us. We do our suffering in private, do our grieving in the dark.

  “Let me get you more coffee,” I say. I go behind the counter and refill her cup, but she’s up and ready to leave by the time I return to the booth.

  “I’m going,” she says.

  To watch her daughter slip away. To say good-bye.

  “Stay strong,” I say.

  She turns and waves, and the morning of another terrible day creeps up on us like a thug with a lead pipe.

  “CHECK ME OUT,” Troy says.

  He stands in the doorway to the bedroom wearing a pair of jeans that’s as big as three pairs of mine. He pulls on the waistband until there’s a gap of about two inches between his stomach and the pants.

  “I couldn’t even fit in these a month ago.”

  I can see it in his face too. The walking and the dieting are paying off. He’s definitely slimming down.

  He wants to celebrate by going to a movie. I’m not in the mood, but he hasn’t been to a theater in years, and I can’t say no after he offers to pay my way.

  There’s almost nobody in the audience at noon on a Wednesday. A gang of fidgety kids on summer vacation and the harried mommy overseeing them. A worn-out old man toting a collection of battered shopping bags who’s just paying for a comfortable seat and air-conditioning, a couple hours off the street.

  The armrests lift up, so Troy has plenty of room. He’s excited, telling me all about the movie before the lights go down. He’s been looking forward to it for months. I don’t know why. It’s a horror film, vampires fighting werewolves. Dumb. One of the actresses looks a lot like Zalika. She’s supposed to be evil, but I root for her anyway. Of course, she dies in the end.

  We stroll down Hollywood Boulevard afterward, check out the stars on the sidewalk, the handprints. Some asshole dressed like Charlie Chaplin follows Troy, imitating his lumbering gait while the tourists laugh. I want to punch him in the mouth.

  EDWARD OFFERS ME a cigar, but I turn him down. It’s two p.m., and most of the pool is in shade. Star is floating in the last sunny patch on a blow-up raft, wailing along to a song only she can hear through her headphones.

  Edward is pissed. His car got towed last night, and he doesn’t have the money to bail it out. He asks if I’ll loan him three hundred dollars. I tell him I’m broke.

  “What about Fatty?” he says.

  Things haven’t been going well for Edward. He was laid off from his job, his new tattoo got infected, and now the car. The dude is furious, all jacked up on resentment and indignation. His bare foot taps out a spastic beat on the cement of the pool deck, and he keeps tightening and releasing the muscles in his neck and jaw.

  A jet slides across the blue rectangle of open sky above us. I finish my beer and wonder if I’ll be able to sleep today. Star pulls herself onto the lip of the pool. She throws back her head and shakes out her hair like there’s a camera on her. Edward exhales a cloud of stinking smoke. He points at Star with the red-hot cherry of his stogie and asks me, “How much do you think someone would pay to fuck that?”

  MONDAY AT EIGHT a.m. I’m making breakfast sandwiches for a couple of cops and trying to figure out what to do on my night off. The big cop is teasing the little cop about something, and the little cop doesn’t want to hear it. He keeps turning away and saying, “Okay, man, okay.” They both have shaved heads and perfect white teeth.

  Zalika walks into the restaurant, and I almost don’t recognize her. That I’ve never seen her in the daytime might be part of it, but she’s also carrying herself differently, back straight, head held high. She has a big smile on her face, and suddenly I’m smiling too. The cops look over their shoulders to see what could make a man light up that way.

  She steps to the counter when they rush off to respond to a call. She reaches out to take my hand, and a thousand volts of something leap from her into me and sizzle up my arm into my chest.

  “You won’t believe it,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Amisi came out of the coma an hour before they were supposed to disconnect her, and she’s breathing on her own now.”

  I’m as excited as if it were one of my own kids. I let out a whoop and slap the counter.

  “The doctors are amazed,” Zalika continues. “There seems to be no permanent damage.”

  A few nurses walk up and stand behind Zalika, waiting to order.

  “You want coffee?” I ask her.

  “No, no, I’ve had too much already.” She moves aside and motions the nurses forward. “Please, go ahead.”

  I make the nurses’ sandwiches, wrap them, bag them. Zalika waits patiently.

  “So what happens next?” I ask when the nurses leave.

  “She’s being transferred to a hospital in Glendale,” Zalika says. “It’s closer to home and has an excellent rehabilitation program. She’ll be in physical therapy for a month or so but should be able to start school with her friends in September.”

  And then it hits me: she’s here to say good-bye. I keep smiling, but my mind races behind it. I picture the two of us sitting down to dinner in a quiet restaurant, me in my Goodwill jacket and tie. She leans across the table and says, “Tell me about yourself,” and where do I start? “Well, I once had to explain a bloody syringe to my nine-year-old.”

  More customers pile in. A cabdriver, a couple of doctors, a Scientologist in his goofy military uniform on leave from the big blue church down the street. Zalika takes a gift-wrapped box from her purse and lays it on the counter.

  “What’s this?” I ask.

  “A present, for being so kind,” Zalika replies.

  “Come on,” I say.

  “You don’t know,” she says. “Having you to talk to was important.”

  She’s a nice person, and this is what nice people do.

  “Well, thanks,” I say. “Should I open it now?”

  “No, no,” she says quickly. “Wait until you get home.”

  She takes my hand again, squeezes it, then turns away.

  “Good luck,” she says as she walks out the door.

  “Good luck to you,” I reply.

  I WALK HOME instead of taking the bus, which is like a crowded coffin at this time of day. The city is wide awake and all a-rumble. The Russian who owns the liquor store is hosing down the sidewalk. He smiles around his cigarette and directs the str
eam of water into the gutter so I can pass. A city maintenance crew is doing roadwork. The sound of the jackhammer makes my heart stutter behind my ribs. A hundred degrees by afternoon, the radio said. The start of a heat wave.

  When I get back to the apartment, I sit at the little dining-room table with Zalika’s gift in front of me. Distant explosions rattle the bedroom door. Troy’s TV. I unwrap the box and open it. It’s a watch, a nice Bulova. Stainless steel, tiny diamonds sparkling around the dial. I once lived in a world where men wore watches like this, but not anymore. The jackals around here would cut my arm off for it. I’ll put it on eBay and bank the couple hundred bucks I get.

  I want to show the watch to Troy, but he doesn’t answer when I knock. Maybe he’s already on his walk, left the History Channel blaring. I open the door a crack and peek in to make sure. He’s lying on his back on the bed. His mouth is wide open, his eyes too.

  “Troy,” I call out. “Buddy.”

  He doesn’t respond. On the TV a kamikaze plane plows into the deck of an aircraft carrier and disintegrates into smoke and flame and white-hot shrapnel.

  A MASSIVE HEART attack. That’s what Troy’s parents tell me. He died in his sleep, they say, never knew what hit him. I hope that’s true.

  “He was doing so great,” I say as I help his mom and dad box up his possessions. “Exercising, eating right, losing weight.”

  His mom is still suffering. She has to sit down every few minutes and fight back tears. I overheard her telling her husband how disgusting this place is. Pomp and Circumstance, Troy called them. His dad once asked him not to come home for Thanksgiving because seeing him so fat would make the other guests uncomfortable.

  “I hope you told him to fuck off,” I said.

  Troy shrugged. “They’re a little confused,” he said.