Malibu Motel

by Chaunceton Bird

  Alex’s face looked sad. Like Alex was pained by what I said.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I know I shouldn’t talk like that. But it’s true. I miss you Alex.” I almost added, “I moved back to Montana for you,” but thought better of it. I didn’t want to lay it on too thick. If things go well I’ll add that in later.

  “Maybe next Tuesday I’ll come over and we can catch up,” Alex said. “But, Caish, I’m married now. I have kids. Ya have to respect that.”

  “Of course, yeah. No of course. I wasn’t suggesting anything else. I just miss you as a friend. Totally platonic. Definitely.”

  “Okay, I’ll try to swing by next week. Are daytimes best for you? Are ya working anywhere yet?”

  “Yeah daytimes are best.” I thought about telling Alex that I was independently wealthy and didn’t need to work, but figured that was a conversation for another time. That was a conversation for next Tuesday.

  I walked Alex out and we parted with a hug. The type of hug where you lean in from the hips and sort of just touch shoulders, not the type of hug where your bodies touch from knee to chest. Alex was taking it slow. Something about a spouse and kids.

  As soon as Alex drove away I scrambled to get myself together and bolted for the address Jenny texted me.

  13

  Jennifer Blanche looked like Miss Trunchbull from Matilda. Not to be trifled with. Her face dared you to test her. “Go ahead,” it said, “see what happens.” She definitely lifted weights. Not low weight, high repetitions—she wasn’t interested in tone. High weight, low rep. She looked like at any given moment she might tie a rope to the front of a semi-truck and pull it across a parking lot. Her dark hair was drawn back in a tight ponytail. She wore a drab button down that was tucked into loose-fitting khaki pants. Her black military-style boots were laced high and tight.

  “Glad you could make it,” Jennifer said when I walked in. Her office was one of the many dreary rooms on the ground floor. The building was near the center of Missoula, right by the courthouse. Like most government buildings, this one was mostly windowless, poorly lit with fluorescent lights, and decorated with plastic plants and Monet prints. Jennifer’s office door had a nameplate that said J. Blanche, Probation Officer. When I knocked, she opened the door and invited me to sit on one of the cheap chairs in front of her desk—which bore all the signs of an obsessive compulsive personality.

  “Here’s a cup, go into that bathroom,” Jennifer was pointing with her thumb to the room next to her office, “and pee into it. When you’re done, place it on the shelf above the toilet and come back in here. Are you going to use your own pee, or did you bring a bag of somebody else’s pee?”

  “What? No. I didn’t bring a bag of pee with me.”

  “Okay, lift your shirt, let me see your waistband. Turn around.”

  I did as told.

  “Good. If you ever bring in any pee, either your own or somebody else’s, we will watch you pee into the cup for the rest of your probation,” Jennifer Trunchbull said. “Any questions?”

  “Nope.” I took the cup from Jennifer and did as I was told. As I was doing my best not to pee on my fingers, it occurred to me that this was the first time I had to follow orders since before I won the lottery. With millions of dollars, nobody could tell me what to do. I had freedom from taking shit. I had freedom from even talking to other people. If I didn’t want to, I didn’t have to talk to anybody for any reason. Let alone take their small-minded orders. Now I was right back to following orders. Jennifer probably got picked on in high school, so she went into law enforcement, and now she thinks she’s the boss. She’s in charge, she tells herself, and she has the full weight of the law behind her, so you better do what she says. Classic inferiority complex.

  As soon as I placed the urine-filled cup on the shelf above the toilet, a latex-gloved hand slid open a slot behind the shelf, reached through, and removed the cup. I washed up and returned to Jennifer’s office.

  “Everything go alright in there?” she asked.

  “Yeah, it was fine.”

  “Good. We do onsite testing, so your results will be back in a few minutes. In the meantime, you need to fill out these forms. Don’t lie. Don’t try to get tricky. You can fill the forms out on the chairs in the hallway. I have a few phone calls to make so I can’t have you in my office. Any questions?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Here’s a clipboard.”

  The forms asked for my name, address, birth date, phone number, social security number, and signature over and over again. Pages and pages of repetitive requests. Why not just have all of this on one form and have me enter my information once at the bottom? Bureaucracy, that’s why. The government paid people to make these pointless forms, and people had jobs processing them. And Jennifer. Another cog in the machine. Treating me like a child. Like a sheep. Crowded into this dimly-lit hallway filling out pointless forms and peeing into a cup as if I were just another heroin addicted thief. A common low-life. As an added point of insult, I had to pay for this whole racket. They forced me to be on probation and to take piss tests, then charged me for it. My indignation about the entire situation was palpable. Is this how Jennifer would treat Bill Gates if he were in her office?

  Having finished filling out the forms, I walked back into Jennifer’s office. She looked up from her computer with a concerned face.

  “Caish. You knock before you come in this office. You do not just barge in. You do not own this place. Do you understand?”

  “Sure, but you told me to come back in when I was done with the forms,” I said, sitting in one of the chairs across from her desk.

  “No, I did not. Do not put words in my mouth. Even if I had, you knock, then wait for me to invite you in before you walk into this office.” She reached across the table with an open hand. I placed the forms into her hand. She jogged the papers on her desk then flipped through them. Satisfied, she placed them in a neat pile next to another pile of evenly jogged papers.

  “Okay, Caish. Here’s how this works. You have been assigned a color. There are ten colors. Your color is green. Each day at 8:00 a.m. we do a random draw and pull out one of the colors. If your color is drawn, we text you (or, if you prefer, we can call you), and you immediately come in and pee into a cup. If you do not come in, we send a sheriff to bring you in. If you test positive for a controlled substance that is not prescribed to you, we take steps toward revoking your probation and invoking your prison sentence. So next time you find yourself sitting in front of a line of cocaine, think about whether it’s worth five years in prison. Do you have questions about anything I just told you?”

  “When my color is drawn, can I come in around noon? I’m not really a morning person.”

  “No. You come in within a half an hour of being told that your color was drawn. You live less than ten minutes away from this building, so you have no excuse for being late.”

  “But today you called in the afternoon.”

  “We were getting you set up in our system. From here on out, plan on eight o’clock.”

  “What if I sleep through the text?” I asked.

  “Let’s make a note here to call you instead of text. Do not sleep with your phone on silent. Any other questions?”

  “No.”

  “Good. One last thing, I am not your counselor. If you would like a counselor, or if you would like to get involved in addiction recovery programs, here is a list of local help groups.” Jennifer handed me a pamphlet with stock photos of happy diverse people walking through a grassy field. “Surprisingly, your probation does not require you be a part of any addiction recovery programs, but I would recommend you join anyway.”

  “I appreciate the offer, but I’m not addicted to drugs or alcohol.”

  “Oh, you’re not?” Jennifer’s tone was as mocking as she could make it.

  “No, as a matter of fact I am not.”

  “Okay, Caish. Take the pamphlet anyway. There is contact information for social work
ers if you need them. Do you have any questions about anything we talked about today?”

  “No.”

  “Good. Wait out in the hall for your urine test to come back. I will report the results. Shut the door on your way out.”

  I walked back out to the hall and sat in the same dingy chair. They wasted twenty more minutes of my day until Jennifer walked out and said, “Caish, you’ve been drinking. That’s a violation of your probation.”

  “What? No, I just can’t do drugs, I can still drink.”

  “No. You cannot. Drinking is a violation of your probation.”

  “No no no, it’s not. Call my probation officer in California, or the judge or something. They said I could drink,” I pleaded.

  Jennifer said, “There’s no probation on earth that would prohibit you from drugging and not prohibit you from drinking. Either you’re lying, you misunderstood the terms of your probation, or the probation officer in California was incompetent.”

  “I swear to God Jennifer, I didn’t know I couldn’t drink. I won’t do it again.”

  Jennifer mulled that over for a couple of seconds, then said, “Caish. As your probation officer I have great discretion over how to deal with a violation of your probation. Since this is your first violation, I will file a report and not take further action. I am not a merciful person, Caish. You need to understand that. I will hold you to the terms of your probation. Wait here.” Jennifer walked back into her office, then reappeared with a sheet of paper in her hand. “Here are the terms of your probation. Read this sheet. There are certain employment restrictions and substance restrictions that you need to be aware of. Do you have any questions?”

  “No. But really, I didn’t know that I couldn’t drink. Do you have to file a report? Can’t this just be a warning?”

  “I am filing a report. Any other questions?”

  “No.”

  “Good. I recommend you do not violate the terms of your probation again. We’ll see you next time your color is drawn.”

  After I escaped that hell hole, I drove around downtown—if you can call it that—looking for Red Bird restaurant. I needed a classic steak dinner with red wine. When I was a kid, Red Bird was too expensive. A group of us went there for our senior prom and it felt like we were royalty. I found the place on the corner of Front Street and Higgins. After finding a pile of snow to park on, I trudged through the Montana elements to get to Red Bird. My Sorels kept my feet toasty and my Canada Goose kept my arms and torso at tropical temperatures. But the cold burrowed into my face. I tucked my mouth behind the top of my coat, but my eyeballs had nowhere to hide. They’d be balls of ice in no time.

  Red Bird was closed. It was 4:27 p.m., and they didn’t open until five.

  I needed food and drink. Especially a drink. But what was I going to do about this new probation restriction? No alcohol? Christ. I can’t smoke weed or drink alcohol. How am I supposed to relax? How am I supposed to socialize?

  I was parked in front of Stockman’s bar, so I figured I might as well eat there. Even though I couldn’t drink.

  Stockman’s hadn’t changed at all in the years I was away. Like most western-style bars, Stockman’s was dim and stuffy. Hardwood floors, wood paneling, wooden bar, and wooden tables. The ceiling looked like a log book at the top of a mountain. Peasants from years past scrawled on the ceiling that they were here on such and such a date. Clever peasants drawing obscene pictures. It all felt quite egalitarian.

  The bar was sparsely populated at this time of day. A bearded old man hunched over his Scotch at the bar watched me walk in and sit at one of the tables, then returned to his drink. A teenager that was probably related to the owner of the bar took my order of a bacon cheeseburger and fries and returned to the kitchen. I also ordered coke. Not that kind of coke, just a regular-carbonated-caffeinated-syrup coke. Nothing white about it. A few gentlemen in the back of the bar were playing poker and kept glancing at me. They recognized me; having become successful in Los Angeles, I am a bit of a hometown hero. I am surprised more people haven’t recognized me. And although a lot of folks have a familiarity about them, I don’t recognize many people either.

  My burger and fries were everything you could ever ask of a burger and fries. Toasted bun, smoky bacon, melted cheddar, and a perfectly-spiced, evenly cooked, beef patty. Oh and the fries. Crisply fried with a soft center. Perfectly salted. Eating cheap may not be so bad after all.

  As I ate, I thought about my situation. My bad luck may be coming to an end. There is a certain serendipity to Alex showing up in my life again, and that may be an omen of good things to come. There was still the problem of money, but that would solve itself with the lower cost of living in Montana and my personal prohibition from cocaine or alcohol. Other than the fact that I’d have to live off only food and soda for the next five years, things were looking up. Montana had a decent lottery, and I could probably get by on those earnings until I was in a position to move back to California. Nothing in my probation forbade me from playing the lottery, and I still had enough in the bank to buy a lot of lottery tickets. Even with my mortgage, judgment debt, legal fees, and now the Suburban payment, I still had enough to make it for a few years even if I didn’t earn another penny in that time. Which was unlikely. I’d keep my ear to the ground for any opportunities and stay in touch with my California contacts for any new investment prospects.

  When I got home that evening I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. I’d usually decline the call, but since it could be Jennifer Trunchbull calling from another number, I figured I better answer it.

  “Hello?”

  “Caish?”

  “Yeah, this is Caish, who’s this?”

  “This is Caleb, what’s up?” Caleb. The brother that took it upon himself to be the family’s patriarch.

  “Oh! Hi, Caleb, what’s goin’ on?” I said.

  “Not much, just gettin’ by, ya know.”

  “Yup. Yeah. I know.”

  “So, anyway, I heard you were back in town,” Caleb said. It was only a matter of time. If Caleb knew, the family knew. If the family knew, the town knew.

  “Yeah, for now. How’d ya hear?”

  “You remember Dino? The guy with the chainsaw collection?”

  “How could I forget the guy with the chainsaw collection?”

  “Haha, yeah, probably right. Anyway, he called me up and said he saw ya at Stockman’s earlier today.” Ah. One of the poker players. Dino the saw collector. I don’t think the guy is a serial killer, but in high school he used an oxy-acetylene torch to cut the roof off of our principal’s car. The principal hadn’t even pissed him off, Dino just liked cutting things apart and decided that the principal needed a convertible. Did it right in the school parking lot. He put the tanks and torch into a wheelbarrow, wheeled them over to the principal’s car, dropped his welding mask over his face and got to work. Had the roof off before anybody noticed he hadn’t come back from the bathroom.

  “Oh, yeah?” I said, “Yeah I didn’t recognize him, but now that you mention it, yeah that was definitely Dino. He hasn’t killed anybody or anything yet, has he?”

  “Haha, not yet. At least not that I know of.” Then there was a brief silence. “So, were ya gonna call and let us know you were back in town or what? We should get together. Get lunch or somethin’.”

  “Yeah definitely,” I lied, “just give me a couple weeks to get settled in. You know how busy a move can be.”

  “Sure, yeah, of course,” Caleb said. “Either way though, you should call Mom. I’m sure she’d be happy to hear you’re back.”

  “I bet she’s already heard.”

  “Well. Yeah. But ya know, I’m sure she’d like to hear from you.”

  “Yeah, good point, I’ll be sure and call her up,” I said without any intention of ever calling that woman.

  “Alrighty, Caish, I’ll let ya go. Welcome back.”

  “Sounds good, thanks for the call, Caleb.”

  “Yup, see
ya later.”

  “Bye.”

  “Bye.”

  I knew what they were thinking. Caleb, Cormac, Catherine, and my mom were probably on a conference call right this moment talking shit. A quartet of spite. Reveling in the fact that I had returned to a city that I had forsaken. The implication was clear, I had lost my millions and couldn’t afford California anymore. In a way, Caleb’s call was a shot across the bow. A way of letting me know that they know. That they have my number. That they will soon have my address. And that they are packing black powder into their drama canons right this moment.

  Without wealth I felt vulnerable. I no longer had wealth to shield me from the vindictive sludge of humanity. Everybody who wished for my failure was mounting their attack. The murmurings had begun. Soon passive aggressive posts would pop up on Facebook. The first volley. Things like: “So happy that Caish finally came back to lil’ ol’ Missoula!” and, “Welcome back Caish, we always knew you’d be back someday!” Monsters. Every one of them. Then the direct messages on Facebook and Instagram, “Hey, Caish, I heard you’re back, everything alright?” “Caish, what’s up?” “Get tired of California?” My non-responses (which would be my only option) would affirm their suspicion; Caish Calloway has fallen from Mount Olympus.

  Tuesday finally arrived. The only thing I could think about all weekend was being with Alex. Alex was my oasis and I was dying of thirst. In an attempt to calm myself down, I watched Netflix whenever I was awake. I ordered Chinese food and hunkered down. I found Alex on Facebook and studied every picture. Alex had a good life, I guess. As good as a life without wealth can be. Alex and Peyton went on a cruise last June and looked like they had a good time. Their bodies showed they could no longer find time for the gym, and their eyes broadcasted they had children. But still, Alex looked young and energetic. Vibrant, even. I couldn’t find Alex on Instagram or Twitter.