The Best American Short Stories 2015

by T. C. Boyle

  The End.

  Elida left. I played the movie over and over. How dark was my narrative! Why had Elida killed me off, instead of letting me rescue dogs at the end? This downward trajectory gave me a moral chill. I decided that I had not only wasted my life but had acted ignobly in taking money from Laurene. Although Elida and I had made Valery happy, and I’d thought I was contented with Elida, I knew now, as I’d known before, the nature of her true feelings for me.

  I destroyed the movie. It would be years before anyone noticed that my long-ago birthday gift had disappeared and I was once again dispersed into the confetti of B movies, failed TV sitcoms, and clumsy commercials. No one would ever have the cruel patience to assemble my life glimpse by glimpse again.

  When the holidays came around, I insisted that we stay at the house in Golden Valley. Why not? I had already counted a million holes in a million ceiling tiles.

  The first night at Elida’s parents’ house, we all had a mirthful, loving dinner, then did the dishes together. Elida’s relatives had easily absorbed me back into the family, where my role, though peripheral, was also vital, because I was Valery’s father.

  After we turned in and Elida fell asleep beside me, I lay on my back waiting. It usually took her an hour or so to really get going, but her sisters and her mother had already begun. Valery and a girl cousin had sneaked a bottle of wine into their sleeping bags and were now drifting off next door.

  The real snoring hit with abrupt ferocity. The orderly, mechanical regularity of the metalworking shop had been abandoned. Now it was more like a pack of wolves snarling over a kill. I closed my eyes. On my mental screen I saw lions driving the wolves—or hyenas, maybe—into the veld. On a hill overlooking the bloody feast, a baboon whooped. For many hours, I elaborated on the vivid images that accompanied the soundtrack: a lioness worrying the leg off a carcass, two others fending off a male, raking his ribs with teeth and claws, while their cubs mock-fought nearby. At last, I dropped off.

  In the deepest part of the night, I woke. Although Elida’s snarls had calmed to the loud, gurgling purr of a big cat digesting prey meat, I came to in a sick sweat, shaking. Perhaps my imagined scenario had triggered some terror from my evolutionary past. I had dreamed that I was the hunted animal, thrown to earth, being eaten alive. The tearing of my flesh, the snap of jaws wrestling at my bones, the blissful lapping as my throat opened—all this seemed absolutely real to me. It took some time for me to understand that Elida’s body had not been satiated on mine, that she wasn’t purring because she’d swallowed my heart.

  BEN FOWLKES

  You’ll Apologize If You Have To

  FROM Crazyhorse

  WALLACE WENT ALL the way to Florida to fight a Brazilian middleweight he’d never heard of for ten thousand dollars. That’s what it had come to.

  The Brazilian’s name was Thiago something, but everyone called him Cavalo. From what Wallace had gathered, it had something to do with a movie or a TV show that only Brazilian people knew about. No one cared enough to explain it any more than that and anyway Wallace wasn’t overly interested. Everything he needed to know about the guy’s game he could tell just from looking at him. He had shoulders that looked welded on, a neck that existed mostly in theory. The kind of guy who’d be hell on wheels in a street fight.

  “If you take him down, flatten him out, and feed him some elbows,” Coach Vee said, “my guess is he’ll start thinking of all the other places he’d rather be.”

  Wallace said he got the message.

  “Good,” Coach Vee said. “Because I don’t feel like repeating it all night.”

  Right off Cavalo clipped the top of Wallace’s head with a glancing left hook. It felt like someone had thrown a phone book at his head and just missed. A follow-up right set off flashbulbs behind his eyes. Enough of this, Wallace decided.

  The last thing he remembered was backing Cavalo up against the cage and seeing the Brazilian set his feet. There, Wallace thought. He dropped for the double-leg. The next instant he was looking into Coach Vee’s face. It seemed to hover all alone in a field of light. He was saying something to Wallace, but the sounds didn’t quite match up with the movement of his lips.

  “I said just stay down, relax for a second,” Coach Vee said.

  Wallace asked him what he meant by stay down. They were both standing up.

  Coach Vee winced at him.

  “Oh,” Wallace said, lifting his head up to look around. “Fuck me.”

  One ear felt like it was plugged up with wax. The other rang with a high metallic whine. Somewhere off where he couldn’t see, Cavalo and his coaches were singing in Portuguese. It took him a second to understand that the field of light around Coach Vee’s face was coming from the ceiling.

  “Head kick,” Coach Vee told him later, back at the hotel. “Caught you right as you were changing levels.”

  There were two narrow beds in the hotel room. Wallace sat on one and Coach Vee sat on the other. They were both drinking Miller High Life tallboys. A movie with Denzel Washington was on the TV.

  “Caught you flush too.”

  Wallace thanked him for clarifying that part.

  The left side of his head felt like it had been dug out with a spoon. He pressed the beer can to his temple but it was nowhere near cold enough to do anything. On the TV Denzel was yelling at some guys in a submarine.

  “Timed it really well, is the thing,” Coach Vee said. “Right as you were coming in. Bang.”

  “What are you, his publicist now?” Wallace said. He took a big gulp of his beer. It tasted of aluminum. It was shit.

  “Hey,” Coach Vee said. “You asked how it happened.”

  Had he? Wallace didn’t remember. He tried to trace the conversation back to its beginning but couldn’t. Then he tried to remember where they’d gotten the beers and he couldn’t do that either. It was like trying to reel yourself in on a rope only to get halfway there and realize it’d been cut. He knew this happened to some guys after a knockout, but it had never happened to him. He’d never been knocked all the way out before. Not like that. Not out-out. Now that he had, he couldn’t recommend the experience.

  They flew back to San Diego the next day. Five hours vacuum-packed into coach seats. Wallace pretended to sleep so he didn’t have to watch the stewardesses willing themselves not to stare at the giant bruise on the side of his head. Coach’s wife picked them up at the airport and gave Wallace a ride down to his place in Imperial Beach. She asked once how Florida was and when no one said anything neither did she. They drove most of the way like that.

  Wallace spent the next three days alone in his condo, sitting in the dark and feeling sorry for himself. He let his cell phone ring until it died and then made a point of not plugging it in. He watched whatever was on TV. He made a couple of attempts at getting drunk, but it wouldn’t take. He iced his head until the swelling started going down, leaving behind a darkening triangle of tissue along his temple. It looked like he’d had an accident while ironing.

  After three days he’d had enough. He had to do something, get outside, take a walk. Look, he told himself while standing at the sliding glass door to his deck. It’s a beautiful fucking day.

  He put on his shoes and rolled a joint to keep him company. He didn’t want to risk it on the beach, where there might be people, so instead he headed off into the estuary that started in back of the condos and ran all the way down to Mexico like one long green finger pointing the way out. There was a dirt path that dead-ended in about a dozen places, depending on the water level, before eventually snaking its way to the big houses with ocean views on the other side. People didn’t go back in the estuary often. The people in the condos looked out on it every day and the people in the big houses on the other side probably never did. They hadn’t paid all that money to be close to a saltwater swamp. They paid to look out at the beach. That was fine with Wallace. He lit his joint as he walked.

  He’d seen a heron back there once. That had been something. I
t was back when he first bought the condo, his first year in the Big Show, the same year his daughter was born. He fought three times in Vegas that year. He made a half-million dollars just in purses and bonuses alone. It seemed like only the beginning of the wonderful things that were going to happen for him. Then one day he goes walking in the estuary and rounds a corner right into this enormous bird. He stopped cold, no more than ten feet away. The heron just stood there on long, ridiculous legs, then lifted its wings, big as car doors, and took off. Wallace could hear it chopping at the air as it disappeared toward Mexico.

  He thought about the heron as he smoked and walked and let the sun fall on the bruised part of his face. It felt all right. The joint didn’t hurt either. He took a long pull on it and when he looked up he saw a man in a big green jacket, too heavy for the weather, coming up the path toward him. Wallace let the hand with the joint fall casually to his side and tried to tilt his head so that his bruise wouldn’t be so noticeable. When the man got close, Wallace nodded and moved to pass on one side. The man stepped in front of him and stopped.

  “So you’re the one who’s been smoking weed back here,” the man in the green jacket said. He said it with a smile on his face, but it didn’t look to Wallace like a smile that was meant to convey any form of happiness.

  Wallace still had the joint in his hand. He looked at it stupidly, like it might somehow vanish, then he looked back at the man. The man had thick, dark hair and the cool kind of glasses, the kind people who didn’t need glasses might wear. He stared at Wallace like he really expected an answer. Wallace agreed that he was, in fact, smoking weed back here.

  “But I wouldn’t say I’ve been doing it,” he said.

  “No?” the man said. “What would you say, then?”

  “I’d say I’ve smoked back here once or twice,” Wallace said.

  “Once or twice?” the man said. “That’s an interesting answer, isn’t it?”

  Wallace said nothing.

  “Are you saying this is the second time, right here?” the man said. “Or are you saying this is the once? Because it seems like you’d remember if it was your first time.”

  Wallace didn’t care for his tone. The man couldn’t have been much older than he was. Mid-thirties, maybe. Definitely not past forty. He wasn’t a cop. He seemed too hip, or too something. There was no question of whether Wallace could take him, but the last thing he needed was to get into something physical. This didn’t seem like the kind of dude you got into a scrap with. This seemed like the kind of dude you assaulted.

  Wallace licked his fingertips and pinched the joint out before slipping it in the back pocket of his jeans.

  “There,” he said to the man. “We good?”

  The man looked at him.

  “I live right over there,” the man said, pointing at a big yellow house on the other side of the estuary. “So I smell it when someone smokes weed back here. My kids smell it. There’s no way not to smell it. You get what I’m saying?”

  “You’re saying that you smell it,” Wallace said.

  “Can you not understand how this would be a problem?” the man said.

  Wallace said he understood that the man lived in the yellow house over there and that his kids smelled it when people smoked weed. He said he understood all this perfectly.

  “Where do you live?” the man said. “Those apartments?”

  “They’re condos,” Wallace said.

  “How about if I came over there and blazed up in front of your kids? How would you like that?”

  Wallace chuckled to himself. It was the only way to keep from slapping the man’s cool glasses off his face. He’d been having such a nice day too. His first in a while. His high was slipping away and he could hear his own pulse in his ears. Now, now, now, went his heartbeat. It’d take him hours to calm back down. It’d fuck up his whole afternoon. He could see it, rolling out in front of him like an old rug.

  “Let’s agree that you made your point and I learned my lesson,” Wallace said. “And then let’s get the hell out of each other’s way before one of us does something we’ll both regret.”

  The man stood there. He looked at Wallace and then nodded as if a question had just been answered.

  “So this is what you do, huh?” the man said, still nodding. “A weekday morning, and this is what you do. Just walk around smoking weed in public. It must be nice.”

  “It’s better than nice,” Wallace said.

  “Oh, I bet it is,” the man said again.

  Wallace liked his tone even less now.

  “What happened to your face?” the man said.

  “Work,” Wallace said.

  “Sure,” the man said, and laughed a mean, bitter laugh. “I’ll bet that’s why you’re out here smoking weed in the middle of the day. Because you’re so busy with work, right?”

  That did it. Wallace clapped his hand on the man’s shoulder, grabbing a handful of his green jacket. The man didn’t move except to turn his head and look at Wallace’s hand, his eyes going wide like a giant insect had just landed on him. Wallace grabbed the man’s opposite sleeve with his other hand.

  “Here’s what’s happening now,” Wallace said.

  He used a simple foot sweep to sit the man down just off to the side of the trail. It was like he was watching himself do it. The man landed hard and sunk down to his elbows in mud. His face was all confusion and panic, just perfect. Wallace could tell that it hadn’t even occurred to him that this had been a possible outcome.

  “Oh what the Christ,” the man said. Silty mud washed up over his lap. He tried to sit up and only sank further. “Christ!” he said again.

  Yeah, Wallace thought, that’s going to be trouble. But there it was. He turned on his heels and started back the way he’d come. Behind him he could hear the sucking sound of the man pulling himself out of the mud. The man swore in stupid, broken-off threats at his back. Wallace decided he was going to let the man say whatever he wanted to say. That was a choice he was making.

  Wallace took the joint out of his pocket as he walked out and lit it up again. He slowed down so the man could see as he tilted his head back and exhaled the smoke in one luxurious stream. He was four days out from a knockout loss and I-don’t-give-a-fuck had settled in.

  He spent the next hour standing around in his condo, trying to figure out what to do next. He plugged in his phone and it lit up with all the stuff he’d been avoiding. A voicemail from Coach Vee, asking Wallace to let him know he hadn’t died in his sleep. A voicemail from his ex-girlfriend Kim, telling him he’d missed his day to pick up his daughter. A couple texts from some reporter who wanted to talk about the fight. He put the phone in his pocket and decided not to think about it anymore.

  He went and looked out the sliding glass door to see if there was any commotion in the estuary. He saw the same dull green mass he looked at every day. If this guy is the type to let something like this go, he told himself, you’ll spend the next couple days stressing for nothing. If he’s some other type, he’s probably already on the phone to the cops, his lawyer, whoever.

  Not like it would be hard to find Wallace. Show up to the condos where he’d idiotically admitted to living and ask around for the guy with the cauliflower ear and the giant bruise on the side of his head. It’d take them all of five minutes to zero in on him, and then what? Was that assault? Probably. Everything was these days. Maybe it wasn’t the kind of thing you went to jail for, but it would be expensive and dumb and an utter pain in the ass. Plus you did it to yourself for no good reason. And just wait until one of those blogs gets ahold of it. Pro fighter gets knocked out cold in the cage, then comes home and bullies some local yuppie. What a career move.

  He got sick of hanging around and waiting so he went up to Coronado to see his daughter. The drive took ten minutes and ended in a different world. Coronado was somewhere people lived on purpose. Old people walked the sidewalks like they were keeping an eye on things. Even the dogs had nice haircuts.


  Kim lived with their daughter, Molly, in a big house paid for by Kim’s husband, a lawyer in a downtown firm. He was too old for Kim but he was loving and fair and kind to Wallace’s daughter in a way that made Wallace feel like every decision he’d ever made with his own life had been wrong. They had the Pacific Ocean and 150 feet of sand for a front lawn. They couldn’t complain.

  Kim was on the patio when he pulled up. She had the detached nozzle for a garden hose in one hand and an unopened juice box in the other. Her eyes followed Molly as she stalked through the hedges, a plastic Tupperware container outstretched in her hands. It was not quite noon and the marine layer had just finished burning off. Wallace had to squint through the brightness to read their expressions.

  “What happened to your face?” Kim asked him.

  He smiled at her and then kneeled down to Molly’s level. She held the Tupperware in front of her eyes as if she were trying to hide behind it.

  “Hello, Mol,” he said.

  She looked at him through the Tupperware. She didn’t say anything.

  “We’re hunting for lizards,” Kim explained. “We could kill an entire morning this way. We have, more than once.”

  “I see,” Wallace said. “Can I play?”

  Molly stared straight through him and didn’t answer. This was one of her new things, not talking to him. He felt like it was probably meant to get him to do all the talking, or maybe to punish him. He looked at her big eyes and felt exposed. They stood there that way until Kim touched Molly lightly on the top of the head. Molly took it as a signal that she was free to resume the lizard hunt. Wallace watched her go and all he felt was relief.