Something for Nothing

by David Anthony

  Lying there, watching the fan spin slowly above him, he felt disgusted with himself—especially when he thought about how turned on he’d been, how lecherous. Jesus, he was a pig. And the worst part was that it was a lose-lose proposition. Either he’d failed at the very moment when his desires were within reach—sex with one of those incredible young bodies he lusted after—or, worse, he actually had managed to get it up and have sex with someone who was basically a teenager, a high school girl.

  He stumbled to the bathroom and threw up into the toilet. He retched again and again, until his ribs ached. As he retched and coughed, he saw how the toilet was filthy up under the rim with black streaks that looked moldy, and that spoke of months, maybe years of sick Americans hunched miserably over it, paying the price of indulgence.

  HE WOKE UP IN the bathroom, with Hano kicking him gently in the legs and butt. “Wake up, sleepyhead,” he said to Martin. “Time for school.”

  “Okay,” he said. “All right. I’m up.” But he was embarrassed, especially as his pants were still down around his ankles. He did his best to stand and pull them up. His throat felt raw, and it hurt to talk.

  “Christ, Martin,” Hano said, looking at him and smiling. “You look like shit. And it stinks in here, man. It smells like you puked your guts out. Flush the fucking toilet and brush your teeth, and let’s get out of here.” He handed Martin a toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste, and walked out into the bedroom.

  Hano looked like shit, too. His round face was puffy and his clothes were almost comically wrinkled. But he didn’t look as bad as Martin did. Or at least that’s what Martin thought as he stood, his head spinning, looking at himself in the little cabinet mirror in the bathroom. He looked pale, and he had dark circles under his eyes. He still felt nauseated. There were creases on his face from where he had slept with his cheek on his shirt-sleeve, and his toupee was stiff and matted down on one side—from vomit, he realized. He groaned and pushed his face close to the faucet and splashed water onto his face. He was going to have to pull his toupee off. What would Hano say to that?

  Hano stood in the doorway. He grabbed the top of the door frame with both hands and leaned forward, his arms muscles flexing and a smile on his puffy face.

  “So,” he said. “Senorita Hot Pants. She was a nice little package. I hope you got inside those shorts before you started puking.”

  Martin nodded as he splashed his face with water. “Definitely,” he said, his voice still hoarse. “She was definitely a nice little package.” He struggled through a wave of nausea, putting his hands on the edges of the sink and closing his eyes.

  “Yeah?” Hano said. “And?”

  Martin took a deep breath, feeling the nausea close at hand. “And,” he said, taking a deep breath and opening his eyes and looking over at Hano, “I definitely got inside those shorts before I started puking.”

  Hano smiled again, raising his thick eyebrows. The gesture with the eyebrows reminded Martin of Gary Roberts, back in Walnut Station. But Gary Roberts seemed like a figure from a life he had lived a long time ago.

  Hano nodded. “Excellent,” he said. “Mine was good, too. She knew what she was doing. They were pros. Did you see their pimp? That fucking guy with the teeth? Yikes.” Hano imitated the smile, and Martin felt another wave of nausea.

  Then Hano was quiet for a second. He put his hands back up onto the top of the door frame, and from Martin’s bent-over perspective he looked like he was actually hanging there, straining in silent concentration.

  Martin turned off the water and wiped his face with a towel. He wondered if brushing his teeth was going to make him throw up again.

  “Listen,” Hano said. “Let’s go get some of that hot chocolate shit I told you about. It’ll kill your hangover. Or it’ll help, anyway. And then we’ve gotta meet Ramirez’s guys. The heroin came in last night—or early this morning. It’s already packed into the plane. We need to wait until it’s dark, of course, but we can fly out tonight, at least—if you’re not too sick, that is.” He leaned over and slapped Martin on the back with one of his big Hawaiian hands. “Unless,” he said, moving out of the bathroom now and talking over his shoulder, “you’re thinking about staying down here, and moving in with your new girlfriend. Little Miss Mexican Girl, or whatever her name was.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It took almost three days for Martin to recover. He’d felt okay during the flight from Mexico to Santa Barbara—helped Hano unload his half of the heroin, shook his hand, and all that. But by the time he touched down in Hayward he knew he was really sick. He had to run into his office to use the toilet while Val’s guys put the rest of the dope into their car (he had terrible diarrhea), and even an envelope with five thousand dollars in it didn’t make him feel any better.

  He made it home sometime around dawn Sunday morning, but after that he stayed in bed, with the lights off, moaning softly. He couldn’t hold any food down, and he was on and off the toilet all day and into the night. He could hear the kids pattering around outside his room, but everything sounded far away. Even when Peter was playing basketball—the hoop was on the other side of the bedroom wall—it didn’t really bother him. He just faded in and out of sleep.

  At first Linda was furious, both because he’d stayed away an extra day and because he was so obviously hung over.

  “What the hell, Martin?” she said. “What did you do down there?” She was disgusted—slept in the guest bedroom, left him to suffer alone in bed during the day. Eventually, though, he managed to convince her that it was the water, that he had bacterial poisoning.

  “It’s Montezuma’s revenge,” he said. And after about twenty-four hours of misery he realized that this was actually the case, which in fact made him feel a little better. He didn’t want to think he was quite that hung over.

  When he finally emerged it was Tuesday, about noon. Linda was home because she’d been cut back to three days a week at work. She was glad for the extra time, but Martin was worried about the loss of income.

  “So,” Linda said. “He is risen.”

  “Okay,” he said. “I get it. Very funny.”

  He was hungry, so she opened a can of soup and warmed it up for him on the stove. The kids were at school; it was their last week of the year. Peter was back in class, and so far everything was okay. No notes or anything like that.

  “I waited all day yesterday for the phone to ring,” Linda said. “But I guess it was all right.”

  They talked for a while about Mexico and the things he’d supposedly been doing down there but hadn’t (his lies were so elaborate that he had to really concentrate). Then they talked some more about the kids, her parents, his dad, the dog, and the other things that comprised their life. Eventually, after some coaxing, he managed to convince her to get back into bed with him for some “afternoon action,” as he put it. She resisted, but she was as ready as he was. It had been a while, and he was reminded of why they were a good match—or had been a good match, anyway, and still could be, at least sometimes.

  He was drifting into his usual postsex nap when she said something about someone stopping by the house.

  “So your girlfriend came by here the other day looking for you,” she said.

  “Uh-huh,” he said, thinking she could be referring to anyone—even the dog that their neighbor brought over to play with Arrow. He was one of those furry things that looked like a sawed-off little husky. “And who am I dating now?” he asked.

  “She said they had a break-in. And she needed to borrow some gas.”

  Martin was startled into wakefulness at the mention of a break-in, but he kept himself from looking over at Linda right away. He paused, counted to three, then turned his head toward her.

  “Wait . . . who are you talking about?” he asked.

  She glanced over at him from her sitting-up position in bed. “Who do you think?” she asked. “Miriam.”

  “Miriam?” Martin asked. “Down-the-street Miriam?”

  She
sighed, clearly a little exasperated. The postsex sweetness was quickly fading. “Yes, Martin,” she said. “Down-the-street Miriam. Is there another Miriam out there that I don’t know about?”

  “Miriam’s my girlfriend?” he asked.

  Linda got off the bed and walked into the bathroom. He heard her turn on the water at the sink, fill a glass, then take a sip. She always slurped a little when she drank water. Why was she always so thirsty?

  She came back and stood in the bathroom doorway, naked and leaning against the door frame.

  “Yes, Martin, she’s your girlfriend,” she said. Her tone was flat. “You guys are going steady. You wrote a note to her in class, and she said ‘yes.’ Don’t you remember that?”

  She tilted her head slightly, accentuating her exaggeration, and then took another sip of her water. She looked good standing there in the doorway. The shadows were just right—it was like a photo in a magazine.

  He was negotiating a series of conflicting feelings. On the one hand, he was pleased—thrilled, even—to hear Miriam referred to as his “girlfriend.” It was like in high school, when you just wanted to hear the name of the person you were interested in or had a crush on. “I ran into Miriam Weaver at the market today.” Even this was enough to provide Martin with a brief tingle of pleasure, especially if it gave him an opening for further discussion. “Oh yeah? Was she with her asshole husband?” He could go on like this for a while, extending the conversation and teasing out references to her, carefully indulging in a sort of vicarious access to her.

  But of course for Linda to refer to Miriam as his girlfriend could mean various things. It might mean that she was on to Martin—that she knew he found her attractive, and probably that he found her incredibly sexy. She herself had commented on Miriam’s looks a bunch of times.

  “Wow,” she’d say. “She’s got the skin of a twenty-year-old. And those breasts. What a rack.”

  “Yeah, definitely, she looks good for her age,” he’d say, trying to sound casual—even a little oblivious. “How old is she? I can’t believe she’s been married to that clown Hal Weaver for so long.”

  But—and this was more interesting, a bit exciting, even—if she was calling Miriam his girlfriend, it suggested (possibly) a form of jealousy, one that could (possibly) stem from a sense that Miriam had given Martin a little extra attention, attention that Linda had noticed. Had Linda picked up on something in this regard? This was unlikely, but it was certainly titillating.

  Still, you couldn’t overlook the fact that Miriam had showed up at their house to talk about the break-in. He was surprised she knew something had been stolen. Wouldn’t she just assume that one of the kids had taken it? Or a housekeeper? (Did they have a cleaning lady? Most of the people on Miwok seemed to have cleaning ladies. Linda had hired someone to come in once a week, but she did a lousy job, mostly just pushed the dirt around.)

  Finally, though, there was the horrific possibility that this was a veiled accusation. Jesus, maybe she’d seen him. Not while he was lying on the floor in her room, of course. She’d have screamed and freaked out. No doubt about that. But maybe she’d seen him sneaking out of her yard, maybe as he was squeezing his fat-fuck stomach through the slats in the fence.

  “Okay, okay,” he said, trying to sound impatient. “So come on, what happened? What sort of break-in? And why did she need gas?”

  “Well,” Linda said. She picked her bra up off the floor and started putting it on, leaning forward a little bit and reaching around back to snap it. “She came over and said she was out of gas—or that she didn’t have enough for a trip they were taking up to Donner Lake. They rented a cabin up there, or something. I don’t know. But she needed gas, and she was freaking out because it was Saturday and there weren’t any stations open.”

  She leaned over again, picked up her shirt from the floor, and slipped it on. Then she looked around under the sheets for her underwear, found it, and stepped into it. After that she got back under the covers, sat with her back against the headboard, and looked over at Martin.

  “Huh,” Martin said. “So you gave her some of the gas from the tanks in the garage?”

  He wasn’t all that surprised. People had been stopping by asking about gas for a while now. In the closet in their carport, he had five big twenty-gallon tanks that he’d filled up one day at the airport. He’d only tapped into this supply once, but he liked knowing it was there. He liked the personal security it provided—he wasn’t ever going to run out of gas. But he also liked knowing that he had it, and that he wasn’t letting anyone else have any of it. It was this last component of the equation that made having the gas so pleasurable. He knew it was bad—terrible, in fact—but he couldn’t help it.

  “Yes, I did,” Linda said. “I know you don’t want people to know we have it, but she was really upset. She said she forgot to fill up Friday evening and forgot that she wouldn’t be able to fill up on the weekend. But she said Hal was going to be furious. Plus, she said she just couldn’t stand the thought of how the kids would react if they couldn’t go. She had some gas in the tank still, and she was hoping to drive out to the airport with me . . . or with you, I guess. I don’t know how she knew you have gas out there, but she did. Anyway, then I showed her the gas tanks. She was really relieved. She really appreciated it.”

  Martin nodded, thinking about Hal and what a dick he was. He was pleased to come to Miriam’s rescue, no doubt about that. But he was disappointed at having missed the chance to drive all the way out to Hayward with Miriam—even in separate cars it would have been something they did together. Plus, he would have been able to show her his office. And maybe they could have had coffee or a bite to eat out there. Maybe at Nelda’s, or maybe even over at Jack London Square, where he could show her his boat. She’d have been impressed by that, he was pretty sure.

  “Hal Weaver is a prick,” Martin said.

  Linda gave a little chuckle, and nodded. “Yep,” she said. “He is. And he’s creepy. He’s a drunk and a letch. And he’s ugly. Disgusting, in fact.”

  Now it was Martin’s turn to laugh. “Jeez,” he said. “You don’t have to beat around the bush, you know. Why don’t you tell me how you really feel?”

  They both laughed again, and then they were quiet for a minute. He liked it when Linda was straightforward like that, even a little tough sounding. None of this suburban sweetness all the women out here thought they had to perform. In fact, it was the thing that had attracted him to her in the first place—that and her looks. She wasn’t quite at the level of Miriam Weaver, but still, she looked pretty damned good just the same. He took special pleasure in knowing when younger guys were checking her out—the bag boy at the supermarket, say, or the guys at the local gas stations (when they used to go to the gas stations).

  “So okay,” Martin said, breaking the short silence. He wanted to hear about the other issue, the break-in, but he knew he needed to tread carefully. “She came over and got some gas. What about there being a break-in? Do you mean their car, or their house?”

  Linda yawned, and let her head rest on the wall behind her. “I’m tired,” she said. She gave Martin a soft little backhanded slap on his right shoulder. “It’s all your fault,” she said, and then smiled.

  She was being sweet, Martin knew, trying to connect with him a little bit, so he was careful to bide his time. If he asked again she might sense that something was a bit off—but maybe not. A neighborhood break-in was actually a big deal, when you thought about it. In fact, maybe it was time to call up one of those alarm companies and hook up the house with a system. You never knew who was going to come wandering into your house.

  Linda yawned again. “I don’t really know what happened,” she said. “She told me she wasn’t even sure there was a break-in. She said when she came home one day last week—I forget which day it was—the outside door to their bedroom was wide open. You know those French doors they have that lead out to the patio?”

  Martin nodded. “Yeah,”
he said. “I guess so. I don’t know.”

  “They were open,” Linda said. “And she said that they never, ever leave them like that, especially when they’re going to be gone during the day.”

  The dog came into the room, announcing himself with a leap onto the bed. He wasn’t supposed to be up there, and he knew it, so he lay there looking guiltily at them. Linda reached out and scratched him behind the ear, and he relaxed.

  “And so?” Martin said, unable to not ask. Was it just him, or was she moving too slowly through this story?

  “And so,” Linda said, “she started looking around. And it looked like someone had gone through their stuff. Through their walk-in closet, and their shelves, and drawers, and that kind of thing. And then she realized that she was missing a jewelry box. She said it had some really nice jewelry in it, and it also had some gold coins that were super valuable. Her dad had given them to her on really special occasions, she said. One was for her confirmation, another was for her wedding, and one was for when one of the kids was born. Anyway, she said it’s gone. The jewelry box, I mean. She said she’s upset about the jewelry, but that the coins are worth tons of money. Thousands of dollars. A couple of them are really rare, she said.”

  “Holy shit,” Martin said, less to her than to himself.

  “I know,” Linda said. “I asked her if she thought maybe one of the kids had taken it. You know, just playing around or something.”

  “Yeah,” Martin said. “That’s what I was going to say.”

  Linda shrugged. “She talked to them, and she said there’s no way they did it. Plus, like I said, the room was sort of ransacked. She said it was like someone had been looking for exactly that one thing. Like they knew it was there and couldn’t find it at first.”

  Martin thought about this, about the blind way he’d grabbed the box off the top of Miriam’s dresser. About how he hadn’t even really known it was in his hand until he got out to his car and noticed he was clutching it. Maybe, he thought, he’d known all along what he was looking for in Miriam’s bedroom. But he also knew that this was bullshit, and that the theory of the thief with one item in mind was off the mark.