Reggie passes out pennies and dimes, and he and Eightball and Linda line up at the rail and take turns tossing.
“Ooooh, yeah,” Eightball crows when he hits his mark. He raises his hands over his head and does a victory dance.
“You cheated,” Linda insists. “You leaned.”
“Bullshit, woman. Ain’t no leanin’ involved.”
I sit on a bench a short distance away and watch the red paper lanterns strung overhead twist in the stiffening breeze. The gulls were right, a storm is coming. I can feel it in the air.
“Hey,” Linda calls to me. “Thanks for screwing everything up.”
“Come on, now,” Reggie says. He takes Linda by the shoulders and turns her to face him. “We’ll figure something out. Don’t you worry. You’ll have your wedding yet.”
I let my eyes drift to one of the store windows, and I swear I catch a glimpse of Simone reflected in it. It’s the first time she’s revealed herself, and a leathery strap of panic jerks tight around my chest. When I blink and look again, she’s gone, but I know what I saw. The day takes on a dead, gray quality, like someone’s thrown a shovelful of ashes on the sun.
Linda and Eightball and Reggie approach me. They’re talking and laughing, but I can’t understand them anymore, and I don’t feel anything when Reggie lays his hand on me. I’m as numb as a tooth. I gurgle some kind of nonsense and pull away, and the next thing I know, I’m running down an alley and all the signs are in Chinese and the buildings are Chinese and everything smells like rotting meat. The wind in my ears is a woman screaming, and the clouds are boulders rolling in to crush me.
“Why?” I yell. “Why now?”
Dizzy with fear I stumble upon a pagoda with a neon beer can in its window. They’re churches over there, aren’t they? Temples or something. The door swings open before my hand even touches it, and, sure enough, Buddha smiles down from a shelf above a dark and quiet bar. I take a stool and order whiskey. Its heat spreads through me, resoldering all the connections. The bartender lights some incense, and my heart slows to normal. I’ve got fingers now, I’ve got toes, and that makes me okay, I think. I wipe away the tears on my face and take a deep breath. It’s close enough to hallowed ground that she can’t set foot in here, and there’s twenty dollars in my wallet. I’ll just wait her out.
A woman wearing a mail carrier’s uniform goes to the jukebox, and soon the music starts. She motions to the bartender, who picks up her drink and carries it over and places it on a fresh napkin next to mine.
“Is this too weird?” she says.
Ha ha ha!
WE’VE CUT THROUGH the crap by the time Reggie comes in. We’re laughing and telling jokes, and I’m resting my hand on her thigh.
“I need you outside,” Reggie says. “It’s an emergency.”
I have every right to ignore him. Number one, there’s nothing between us — no money has changed hands, no vows of friendship. He merely showed up at my door this morning and by nightfall will be on a bus back to Barstow or Bakersfield or wherever he’s tumbled in from. And number two, I haven’t forgiven him, and won’t, that moment back there on the side of the freeway, when, struck suddenly by the truth of me, his eyes showed nothing but scorn and disappointment. I don’t demand understanding, but I do believe we’re all entitled to a little tact.
So I hesitate. I sip my drink and let him dangle until he sucks in his bottom lip, rubs his open hand over his face from forehead to chin, and squeezes out a “Please.” Only then do I say to my new drinking buddy, “Don’t move a muscle,” and motion him to the door.
The clouds have thickened and swallowed up the sun, and the first fat drops of the storm splat onto the asphalt of the alley. Eightball is sitting on the ground, his back against the pagoda. His eyes are closed, and he clutches his stomach. Reggie kneels beside him, reaches out to touch him, but hesitates as he’s about to make contact.
“The girl stabbed him,” he says.
“Who?” I ask. “Linda?”
“They was fussing in the restaurant, and she up and took a knife off the table and stabbed him.”
The shakes begin in my knees, and I worry that I’m about to lose it again. I need to get back inside where Simone can’t see me. All I can think to say is, “So he’s dead?” and as soon as I do, Eightball scrambles to his feet and rushes me, furious.
“I ain’t dead, you stupid motherfucker, and I ain’t gonna die.”
Reggie tries to hold him back, but he breaks away and gets right in my face.
“And you best tell that little ho she better watch her motherfuckin’ back, ’cause I’m goin’ to fuck her shit up when I catch her. I’m goin’ to cut her a new pussy.”
“Deshawn!” Reggie shouts.
Eightball pushes me and turns to him. Spit flies from his mouth as he shouts, “And you can step off, jack. I still owe you a fucking up for runnin’ off and leavin’ my momma all alone.”
Pain finally gets the best of him. He grits his teeth and bends at the waist, his hand going to the flower of deep black blood on his shirt. A jet screeches somewhere above the clouds, and the rain comes down harder.
Reggie stands slump-shouldered, staring at nothing. Where are the hymns now? I don’t know why I didn’t see from the beginning that he’s just as undone as I am. I head back to the safety of the bar, but he stops me with a hand on my shoulder and a beseeching look. What more can he want? I brought his goddamn son back to life.
“I got to get him to a hospital,” he says.
“Try Union Station over on Alameda. You can find a taxi there. Or call 911.”
“Could you help me?”
It’s cold in the alley, and wet. Greasy puddles have begun to form where the rain splashes off the eaves of the buildings. Very faintly, I can hear the jukebox playing inside the bar, and I’m glad I don’t believe in anything anymore, because that means I won’t go to hell for saying, “No, I can’t.”
“Fuck all y’all,” Eightball hisses. He lurches away like some wronged and wounded hero, and I think how funny it is that he gets to play that part.
“Deshawn,” Reggie cries. “Son.” He hurries after him, but I don’t wait to see what happens. I’ve had it up to here with tragedy.
WHEN I’VE FINISHED off my twenty, Gina takes up the slack. She came right over from the post office to get blasted after a particularly nerve-racking shift.
“Do you think they’d hire me there?” I ask.
“Sure. I’ll tell them you’re a good guy.”
“But am I?”
“Sure you are.”
We drink for hours, through the quitting-time crowd and the before-dinner crowd and the after-dinner stragglers. It’s so nice to be warm and full of beer and whiskey, to watch the people come in out of the rain and shake off their umbrellas. In a little while I’ve forgotten all about Reggie and Eightball and my dead wife’s vengefulness. Buddha smiles down on me, and I smile back.
Gina and I move to a booth, where it’s easier to kiss and cuddle. She keeps making me put my mouth on a certain spot on her neck — her G spot, she calls it — and bite down hard. When I do, she rolls her eyes and moans “Oh, yeaaah.” I get confused a couple of times coming back from the bathroom, because of her uniform. Once I think she’s a cop, and another time a sailor.
“Anchors aweigh!” I shout, and she laughs so hard, she spills her drink, but then the song playing on the jukebox makes me cry, and I lay my head down on the table and bawl like a baby.
“Do you love me?” I ask Gina.
“Sure,” she says.
“Can I live with you?”
“No problem, no problem.”
She gets up to go to the bar for some napkins so I can blow my nose. When I open my eyes again, she’s gone. I sit and wait for her until the bar closes and the bartender tells me to leave.
THINGS HAVE GONE to shit in the last few hours. The buildings that line the alley are crumbling, the mortar between their bricks eaten away by the rain, their nails rus
ted. They lean into each other, forming a dripping black tunnel that is the only way out, and I know what Simone is up to, but what else can I do? I throw my arms over my head and make a run for it. I say, “Okay, fuck it,” and enter her trap. I just want it to be over with.
There’s a grating sound, metal on metal, and the heavy crash of collapsing masonry in the darkness all around me. Louder still is the slap slap of footsteps approaching. Simone, broken-boned and wormy, cracked and oozing like a rotten egg, pursues me with awful puposefulness. Her dirty fingernails clutch at my hair, and her graveyard perfume brings bile to my throat. My screams echo off the concrete that closes in as I rush deeper into the slippery blackness.
The tunnel narrows and the ceiling descends. I hit my head and drop to my hands and knees, and still she jerks and slides toward me. Scrambling over broken glass, I cut myself to ribbons, and the passage squeezes tighter, so that I’m forced to squirm on my belly with my arms pinned to my sides as Simone giggles and licks my heels. Down and down I go, my blood slicking the way, until the rubble finally clenches around me like a fist and forces the last bit of air from my lungs. I gasp once, twice, but it’s no use. Simone’s teeth work at my calf. She tears loose a mouthful of flesh and gobbles it down. Utter darkness descends over me like a condemned man’s hood as I dig my toes in and give one final push, as I wedge myself even further into the tomb.
And then there’s the rain again, cold on my naked body, its drops spreading across my eyeballs like spiderwebs. I lie on my back and run my fingers lovingly over the sidewalk beneath me, ignoring the police cruiser that jabs me with its spotlight.
A cop pulls himself out of the car and steps up onto the curb. He nudges me with his boot and asks, “Do you know where you are?”
“Chinatown,” I reply.
“And your clothes?”
I point to the drainpipe I spurted out of, the one that now dribbles bloody water and the sound of Simone’s frustrated weeping.
“My wife took them,” I say.
He doesn’t get it, and I really didn’t expect him to. Trying not to laugh, he turns to his partner and says, “Pat, better dig that blanket out of the trunk.”
So everything’s okay for now, but I don’t kid myself that I’ve beaten her. I’m not that crazy.
I OPEN THE bottle of pills they gave me upon my release from County General and shake a few of them into my hand. They’re as blue as the sky is sometimes. The psychiatrist I talked to during my stay was a very busy woman. She ran quickly down a list of questions only a lunatic would give the wrong answers to and then asked if there was anything I wanted to discuss. I said no, not really, that I’d been under a lot of stress lately, thinking about my wife’s suicide, and maybe that and the booze had led to what she referred to as my episode. She nodded understandingly and scribbled something in my file, and after seventy-two hours they cut me loose.
I swallow the pills without water. Linda is looking at herself in the mirror. She moans and falls on the bed and starts to cry. Two black eyes, her nose probably broken — Eightball’s revenge. He caught up to her this afternoon over at crackhead park and beat the piss out of her, and not one person stepped in to help her.
“They said they was my friends,” she wails.
I dip my cup into the cooler to fill it with ice and pour whiskey over that. I’m living it up, because this is my last week in the motel. I’ve run out of money, and the welfare checks I’m due to start receiving won’t cover the rent here. Things are finally going to get worse.
Something crawling on the carpet gets my attention. I walk over and step on it. When I bend down, I see that it’s a false eyelash. Where the fuck did that come from?
“Want to watch TV?” I ask Linda.
She rolls over and reaches out her arms, and here it is again, a chance to get it over with once and for all. Kill me, I tell Simone as I move toward the bed. Kill me.
I lie down next to Linda. The pills have turned my brain into a cotton ball. She winces when I hug her and says, “Careful.” My fingers stroke the dead leaves between her legs, and I position myself on top of her. She draws the sheet over her ruined face.
“Could you give me some money when we’re through?” she asks. “I want to go back to my mom’s.”
“Sure,” I reply, but I won’t, because I don’t have any to give, and she knows it. She’s just setting things up so later she can yell at me and call me a liar, and that’s fine. Whatever it takes to make her feel better about this.
Before I can get inside her the bed begins to shake. A low rumble fills the room, and the TV skips off the dresser and crashes to the floor. Every board in the building creaks with the strain of the wave swelling beneath it. Linda rolls away from me. She scurries to the bathroom and crouches there in the doorway as the toilet cracks behind her.
“It’s okay,” I say, and stand up to prove it. The carpet writhes beneath my feet like the back of some great galloping beast. A chunk of plaster falls from the ceiling, and Linda screams.
“It’s okay,” I say again as the window rattles, desperate to be free of its frame.
I’m ready to die. I stand with my arms outstretched, a smile on my face, but we drop back to earth after a final jolt. The rumble fades away, replaced by the wails and chirps of a thousand species of car alarms, and my disappointment almost sends me to my knees. Really, her viciousness is astounding.
“It’s just my wife,” I explain to Linda.
“What the fuck’re you talking about?”
“She gets jealous.”
Linda looks at me like Reggie did on the side of the freeway when my car broke down, like I’m not the same person I was a few seconds ago. While I’m making myself another drink to replace the one Simone spilled, she slips her dress over her head, grabs her shoes, and runs away.
I step out onto the walkway a few minutes later, but she’s nowhere to be seen. There’s a commotion in the courtyard. Someone panicked during the quake and jumped over the second-floor railing. The body is lying in the parking lot, as still as a perfect summer night in the desert, and the blood that’s leaked out of it looks like a big red pillow. My throat tightens and tears come to my eyes, and I almost cry out, “Simone!” until I see that it’s one of the junkies from the room next door, a guy with long, dark hair. Some joke, baby. All of the tenants have gathered around him, the poor families and the whores and pimps and dopers. They’re all standing together, staring down at him, while Mrs. Cho calls for an ambulance on her cell phone.
The sun is hidden behind a thick brown haze, which means that either the whole Valley’s on fire or summer is just around the corner. A thin trickle of blood slithers away from the dead junkie’s head, across the asphalt and under the fence to the cracked white concrete of the pool deck. It picks up speed there and spills over into the water, turning the deep end pink.
So now that’s ruined, too. Are you happy?
No, she’s not. Not yet.
Loss Prevention
EVERY JUNKIE I’VE EVER KNOWN HAS HAD A THING FOR Neil Young. Be he a punk, a metalhead, or just your garden-variety handlebar-mustachioed dirtbag, if he hauls around a monkey, he’s going to have Decade in his collection, and he’s bound to ruin more than a few parties by insisting that you play at least some of it, no matter that the prettiest girl in the room is begging for something she can dance to. Even if he gets off dope, he sticks with Neil, because by then Neil’s become the soundtrack to his outlaw past. Let him hear “Old Man” or “Sugar Mountain” years after the fact, and everything in him will hum like a just-struck tuning fork as mind and body and blood harmonize in mutual longing for a time when desire was an easy itch to scratch.
So this is why, when the deejay announces that a rock block of Neil is coming up next, three classic cuts in a row, I know there’s no hope of Jim budging until the last song ends. We’re sitting in the parking lot of the Busy B market, where Jim’s been working security for the past few months. He’s training me for the night shift,
but it’s already two minutes past the time we were supposed to have punched in. I want to make a good impression on my first night on the job, but Jim just laughs at me and, sure enough, turns up the radio of his mom’s old Lincoln. His latest thing is that I’m too full of myself, and he says it again now. “Does the sun care what kind of impression it makes?” he asks. “Does a bird?” He picked this up in rehab, the idea that all the world’s problems stem from a surfeit of ego. My immediate inclination is to tell him to stuff the Intro to Eastern Thought bullshit, but because he’s convinced the owner of the store to hire me, and because he’s now sort of my boss, I have to humor him.
He pushes the button on the door that reclines the driver’s seat so that he’ll be closer to the rear speakers, the only ones that still work. The seat’s smooth electric descent reminds me of those machines that scan your body and produce color pictures of all the cancer in it, and this is funny to me in a sick way, because Jim actually had cancer when we were in college. He got over it, but only after they removed his testicles and replaced them with plastic ones. Guys who lose their arms or legs, you see them on TV, playing wheelchair basketball and using their hooks to hurl shotputs and shit, but what do you do to prove you’re as much of a man as you ever were if you lose your balls? Big, fucking stupid skinhead that he was, Jim chose heroin. His claim to fame was that he could shoot three times as much as anyone and still beat you at chess. Then he got pulled over in a stolen car and did a year in County, got popped dealing, and drew another year. His dad died during this stretch, and they wouldn’t release him to attend the funeral. Something about the shame of that straightened him right out. He rid himself of his addiction and his ego, had his swastika tattoo covered over with the yin/yang symbol, and metamorphosed into a true-blue, eight-buck-an-hour crime fighter. When anybody asks, he says he’s a loss-prevention specialist, and somewhere on his person is a gun he’s not licensed to carry, bought from a drunken off-duty cop at a barbecue in Simi Valley.
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