Dead Boys

by RICHARD LANGE

  I give her one, and she tries to sit again, but is soon back on her feet, rocking from side to side like a metronome marking loony time.

  “They took’m away in an ambulance. What they do with guys like him, with no family and shit, is they take’m to the hospital and give’m to the students there. They’re learnin’ to be doctors, and it’s a law they c’n do experiments and shit on your body if you’re poor. That’s why I made a will and left it with my mom. If I die, they got to burn me and spread my ashes over Hawaii.”

  A car sidles up to the curb, driven by a kid with a mustache that looks glued on. He rolls down the passenger window and calls out to Linda, “You for sale?”

  “Yeah, she for sale, she for sale,” Eightball says. He pedals to the window and practically climbs inside. “How much you got?”

  The kid speeds away in a panic, tires squealing, and Eightball’s lucky his head doesn’t go with him.

  “You fucker,” Linda wails. “I can’t believe you.”

  “What you mean? I’s just joking.”

  Eightball drops the bike and hurries to put his arms around her. She hugs him back. Don’t ask me why people do what they do. After Simone jumped off the freeway overpass, taking our baby girl with her, the cops brought me to the station and wondered aloud what drove her to it. I was her husband, they reasoned, I should know. I didn’t, and I still don’t, and I think that’s what pissed her off.

  “We gettin’ married,” Eightball says over Linda’s shoulder. He grabs her wrist and forces her hand my way. I glimpse a ring. Linda’s face ripples like the motel pool in a downpour, translucent and impenetrable all at once.

  “My mom signed the paper,” she says.

  “And my daddy comin’ to sign mine tomorrow,” Eightball boasts.

  “You can drive us to the place, can’t you?” Linda asks. “If I give you gas money?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “First thing tomorrow morning.”

  “Whenever.”

  I won’t hold my breath. We’ve been through this before.

  Eightball slides his hand under Linda’s thin white T-shirt, up under the black bra showing through it. He squeezes her tit and stares at me like, What the fuck are you going to do? This kid. This fucking kid. I pretend to doze off and picture him dead in the street.

  “He all fucked up,” Eightball snorts.

  Linda climbs back onto the handlebars, and the two of them wobble their way down Van Nuys Boulevard. When they’re good and gone, I open my eyes. Traffic whips past. There’s a loose manhole in the street that bucks and clatters whenever a car passes over it, and it’s bucking and clattering like crazy right now, as if to remind me that it’s Tuesday, three p.m., and everybody has someplace to be except me.

  Stop it, I say to Simone. Please.

  I wish she’d just get it over with. Hiding in palm trees and broken-down taco trucks and stray cats, she haunts this whole city, lashing out at me, dismantling my life piece by piece. My job, the house — I can’t even keep a decent pair of shoes. Two days after I buy any, they’re gone. They disappear right out of the closet. She wants me to suffer, and I have obliged, but the price of peace remains a mystery. I’ve offered to take the blame for her death and for the death of our child, but that’s not enough. I’m beginning to think she wants me to die, too.

  THE BAR STILL reeks of Pine-Sol or Whatever they swab it out with before opening. The TV’s off, and Cecil is the only other customer, at the far end, intent on the newspaper crossword puzzle.

  “The hell’s Jimmy?” I ask.

  “In the can.”

  I slip behind the bar and draw myself a Bud.

  “What a ruckus at your place today,” Cecil murmurs.

  “Somebody said suicide.”

  “Sounds about right. I smelled it way the hell down the block. Must have been a loner, to get that ripe.”

  “I don’t know. I try to keep to myself with those people. They have problems.”

  Jimmy returns from the bathroom, collects for the beer. Nobody has much to say after that. I sit listening to ice melt somewhere for as long as I can, until I think I might start talking to myself. Then, feeling as brittle as improperly tempered steel, I get up and walk to the pool table.

  The balls drop with a thud, and I arrange them in the rack, stripes, solids, bury the eight. Circling the table, I ignore the easy shots and try for miracles, and I’m on, I can’t miss. The incontrovertible laws of physics have been declared invalid. Balls smack into other balls and assume impossible trajectories that always end in corner pockets. What goes up doesn’t necessarily come down.

  And if Simone had been given a moment like this? I wonder. Why, she’d have flown when she jumped, instead of falling. She and our baby would have sailed off that overpass and glided toward Pasadena, traffic glittering and roaring beneath them like a swift, shallow river in the evening sun. Oh, shit. Here I go again. I’ve also dreamed that I was there to catch them, and other times I’ve been able to talk her down from the guardrail; I’ve convinced her to give me the baby, then to take my hand herself. Next I’ll be Superman or something. That’s how stupid it’s getting. I’ll build a time machine or rub them down with Flubber. Whatever it takes to keep them alive. Whatever it takes to make things different from what they are.

  EIGHT A.M., AND someone’s knocking at the door. I shake myself the rest of the way awake and pull on a pair of pants. Most likely it’s one of the girls from down the hall, wanting to bum a cigarette. If so, she’s out of luck. Those whores never have a kind word for me. It’s always faggot this and chickenhawk that just because I’m not interested in buying what they’re selling. I check the peephole to be sure.

  A black guy wearing a purple suit leans forward to knock again.

  “Wrong room,” I shout through the door.

  “I’m lookin’ for Deshawn. Goes by Little D. He with a white girl, Linda, and they gettin’ married today.”

  Deshawn is Eightball’s real name.

  “So?” I say.

  “I’m Deshawn’s daddy. He give me this number to meet him at.”

  “They aren’t here.”

  “But Deshawn give me this number.”

  Something in his voice makes me want to help him. He sounds civilized. I open the door and step outside, join him on the walkway. The sun is high enough to catch the second floor, where we’re standing, but the first floor and the pool remain in shadow. It’ll be a while before it warms up enough for me to move down there.

  “They said they’d be by, but not when,” I inform Eightball’s dad.

  “You know where they stay?”

  I shake my head. In addition to the purple suit, he’s wearing purple leather shoes and purple socks. By the way he keeps tugging at his clothes, constantly adjusting and straightening, it’s obvious he’s not used to being so dressed up.

  “Well, then, how about where to get some coffee?” he asks.

  “There’s a doughnut place. Hold on and I’ll show you.”

  I have him wait outside while I put on my flip-flops and a T-shirt. It’ll be my good deed for the day, walking him over there. He’s whistling something. I press my ear to the door and catch a bit of “The Wedding March.”

  EIGHTBALL’S DAD DUMPS a packet of sugar into his coffee and stirs it with his finger. The coffee is hot, but he doesn’t flinch. He raises his finger to his lips, licks it clean, and asks if I’ve accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I swear I’ve never heard as much Jesus talk in my life as I’ve heard since I hit bottom. For the sake of my daughter, I’ve held on to heaven, because I like to picture her snug among the clouds when I close my eyes at night. But that’s as far as it goes, that’s all I need of it.

  “What’s it to you?” I ask Eightball’s dad.

  “I just want to share the good news with you about God’s plan for your salvation,” he replies.

  “Forget that, man. That’s all right.”

  Eightball’s dad chuckles and t
aps his tie clasp, a gold crucifix. “Oh, so you that rough and tough, huh? I got you. Just let me reassure you, though, you are loved.”

  I pick up a newspaper someone has dropped on the floor and pretend to read.

  One of the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling has burned out, and the Cambodian who owns the shop stands on the counter to replace it. He slides the cover of the fixture out of its frame and passes it down to his teenage son, but the tube itself is jammed. His son hisses instructions at him while he struggles to remove it.

  “Deshawn’s girl, she saved?” Eightball’s dad asks.

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Deshawn saved. He was raised in the church.”

  The owner finally gives up. His son takes his place on the counter. The kid jiggles the tube and twists it. His baggy pants slip down to his knees, revealing Harley-Davidson boxer shorts. His father tries to pull the pants up, but the boy slaps his hand away. While he’s distracted, the tube comes loose on its own and falls in slow motion, like a bomb dropped from an airplane. It hits the floor and shatters with a glassy pop, but none of this fazes Eightball’s dad. He’s deep into something about the Israelites. Saliva thickens in the corners of his mouth, and he grips the little red table between us like it might try to run away. I interrupt with a question.

  “How long’s it been since you’ve seen Deshawn?”

  “Deshawn? Four, five years. Five years it must be. His momma brought him up to Bakersfield to visit.”

  “And what was the last time before that?”

  The guy’s smile goes mushy at the edges. It’s the kind of reaction I was looking for. I’m fucked that way.

  “All right then,” he says. “Enough of that.”

  The Cambodian brings out a broom and begins to sweep the milky shards of the broken tube into a pile. Eightball’s dad suddenly turns to him and crows, “Jesus loves you, you know that, brother?”

  “Okay, okay, good,” the Cambodian replies. He sounds like he’s had a bellyful of that shit, too.

  “What’s your name?” I ask Eightball’s dad.

  “Reggie.”

  “You drink beer, Reggie?”

  THE SUN IS useless for warmth at this time of year, but I like the feel of the light on my skin. Its gentle pressure keeps me from thinning into nothing like a drop of blood lost to the sea. Reggie thanks me for mixing him another beer and tomato juice, then reclines again on the webbed chaise and goes back to humming complicated tunes under his breath. He seems content to lie here and drink and watch the kids hard at their morning games on the other side of the fence. They don’t make him nervous at all.

  Room 210 has been cordoned off with yellow police tape. Mrs. Cho can’t get in to clean up until the coroner certifies that the death was a suicide, so we live with the stink, which lingers one tiny step behind everything else. You fool yourself that it’s gone, but then the wind shifts and you get a snootful and almost puke.

  A syringe floats in the pool, spinning in slow circles whenever the breeze ruffles the water. After a while, it strikes me how disgusting this is. Someone has stolen the long-handled net Mrs. Cho uses to scoop trash out of the water, so I have to strain and stretch and splash to force the syringe to the side of the pool where I can reach it.

  “What you got?” Reggie asks.

  “Nothing. A bug.”

  There’s blood caked inside the cylinder, and the needle’s bent. I slip it into an empty beer can and toss the can into the Dumpster. Reggie pipes up again while I’m washing my hands in the pool.

  “Deshawn should be here by now. I could of taken a later bus if I’d known. Been up since three a.m.”

  I don’t tell him about the last time Eightball and Linda were supposed to get married, or the time before that. He’s removed his purple jacket, hung it on the back of his chair, and loosened his tie. Now he untucks his shirt and unbuttons it. He has a big old belly, and a dull pink scar puckers the center of his chest from the top of his breastbone to right below his rib cage. None of my business.

  I slide into the chair next to his and pick up my drink. The children screech like wounded rabbits, and the beetle-browed motel that surrounds us declares with a groan and a fresh set of cracks that it can’t take much more of this. A junkie steps out of a room on the second floor. He flings his arms up before his eyes to protect them from the light and staggers along the walkway to the room next to mine, where it seems they’ve been expecting him. The door opens onto blackness, and he’s sucked inside.

  Dear Simone. Dear Simone. Dear Simone.

  Reggie reaches over and shakes my chair. I flinch so hard something in my neck pops.

  “What you need to get for out here is a radio, put on some good gospel for these children. Some of that ‘Love lifted me, love lifted me.’ ”

  Linda and Eightball slink out of the same room the junkie disappeared into. They know we’re here. Linda waves as they walk toward the stairs, but Reggie doesn’t notice. I don’t say anything. Let him be surprised. I light another cigarette and open another beer.

  Eightball rattles the gate and shouts, “Yo, old man, you drunk already?”

  “Little D. Lord, my lord.”

  Reggie pads over to let them in, buttoning his shirt on the way. It looks like the wedding is still on. They’ve even gone so far as to dress for it this time, Eightball wearing a white turtleneck and an old suit coat, Linda a pale green minidress.

  Reggie embraces Eightball. “Look at you,” he says. “My little man.” Then he turns to Linda and holds out his arms. “Come on, girl, we all in this together.” She moves forward and lets him hug her, too.

  He drags more chairs over, arranges everything in a circle, and Eightball and Linda sit reluctantly. It’s too much for them, as high as they are. Eightball fidgets and Linda gnaws her lips. They lie shamelessly in response to Reggie’s questions. At first I’m impressed that they even make the effort, but then it becomes ridiculous. I laugh out loud when Linda claims she’s been offered a job as a nanny to some rich doctor’s kids.

  Reggie wants to say a prayer. Linda bows her head, and I can see right down the front of her dress. The crack and speed have gobbled up most of what was there, but what’s left is right out in the open. Eightball catches me looking and drops his hand to the inside of his thigh to flip me off where his daddy can’t see, and I close my eyes and grin like that peek at his girl’s titties was the biggest thrill I’ve had in ages.

  A flock of gulls descends upon the motel from out of nowhere. Some strut stiff-legged across the parking lot, running to avoid the kids, while others eddy overhead like trash caught in a whirlwind. They say this means a storm is coming, when they travel so far inland. Or maybe it’s the smell that’s drawn them, Room 210. It’s a fact they’ll eat just about anything. I knew a kid once who fed them bread wrapped around fishhooks. The hooks were tied to fifty or so feet of monofilament, which the kid staked into the ground. It was a neat little trick, practically turned those birds inside out. And the sounds they made. My fucking God! It’s like I used to tell Simone: You want nightmares, honey? I’ll give you nightmares.

  I SAID I’D take them to the county clerk’s office, so I do. Reggie rides in front with me, and the happy couple slouches in the backseat. It’s good to be away from the motel. The freeway sweeps up out of the Valley and swings us past Hollywood, and the traffic zipping along in all four lanes makes me feel like I’m actually part of something that works. Reggie fiddles with the radio and tunes in an oldies station. “Rockin’ Robin,” stuff like that.

  Eightball has the window open. He holds his hand out, palm down, fingers together. The hand banks and swerves like a jet fighter in the air rushing past. “Red Team Leader to Red Team One,” Eightball says, “prepare to engage.” He purses his lips and makes machine gun sounds, tapping his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  Linda watches, irritated, then finally says, “You’re trippin’, boy.” She imitates his make-believe plane, exaggerates it into ridiculousness, unti
l Eightball yanks his hand back inside the car and rolls up the window.

  We pass over the four-level interchange where the Hollywood, Harbor, and Pasadena cross, the very one Simone jumped from. It’s the first time I’ve been here since it happened, but, Okay, I think, I can handle this. I keep my foot on the gas and my eyes forward, away from the guardrail. I treat it like any other stretch of road. Simone’s not going to let me off that easy, though. We haven’t gone a hundred yards further when the car begins to shimmy and grind. I manage to pull over to the side of the freeway before it dies completely.

  “I said I’d give you money for gas,” Linda whines.

  “That’s not it, I don’t think,” I reply.

  I pop the hood, and Reggie gets out with me to see what’s wrong. I’m lost looking down at the smoking engine. I was a salesman, for fuck’s sake, stereos, TVs, etc. Cars are not my thing. Reggie pulls out the dipstick, wipes it on his handkerchief. When he reinserts it and removes it again, it comes out clean.

  “When’s the last time you put oil in here?” he asks.

  I admit that I can’t remember, and the way Reggie looks at me, almost wincing, it’s obvious that he’s finally figured me out, and I’m filled with shame. I try to explain in a whisper. “It’s my wife,” I say, but right then Eightball pokes his head out of the window and yells, “So what we gonna do?”

  Reggie turns away from me to reply. “We’re going to get us some lunch.”

  It’s just as well. He wouldn’t have understood anyway. That this was the car she rode in, and my baby, too, and that now she’s ruined it and left me nothing from our time together. But it isn’t over yet, is it? I ask her. No, it isn’t.

  The four of us walk to the next exit and come up off it on the edge of Chinatown. That sounds fine to Reggie, a little chow mein, some egg rolls. To get there we have to cross the freeway on an overpass, and they pause in the middle to watch the cars gurgling by beneath them, but not me. It’s all I can do to keep from running.

  THERE’S A FOUNTAIN in the main square of Chinatown, tucked in among the empty restaurants and the stores crammed full of dusty souvenirs. Dirty water trickles down a rocky hillside studded with small gold bowls labeled LOVE, LUCK, MONEY, and the like. The coins people have thrown at them glimmer so hopefully, I almost have to turn away.