Dead Boys

by RICHARD LANGE

  All my clothes fit in one machine. I don’t worry about separating whites and colors. I wash everything in cold. The Armenian is quiet now, and it is piss; I can smell it. When I close my eyes, I see bombs going off. The Mexican kid won’t listen to me. I just want to tell him a joke.

  AFTER THE MORNING rush I sketch my idea on the back of an old invoice. The bar has a ladder they let me borrow, so my only expense is paint.

  The narrow passageway that runs between my building and the one next to it is filled with garbage. When everything finally quiets down at night, you can hear the rats down there, hustling and bustling and doing business. High fences topped with razor wire seal off both ends of the passage, but that doesn’t stop me; I go out my window.

  The sky is first. I draw the brush back and forth, laying down a patch of palest blue on the bricks I’ve grown to hate over the past few months. While that bit dries, I swing the ladder around and climb back into my apartment. From my recliner, I admire the beginning of my new view.

  A splash of ocean dotted with whitecaps, a crescent beach, a bright yellow sun. Piece by piece it comes together. My only screwup is the hula girl. I can’t get her face right, so I turn her into a palm tree instead.

  I gaze at the scene for an hour after I finish. If I squint, it looks almost real. Everybody has the right to something nice. It’s not against the rules to prime the pump now and then. A stray sunbeam hits the paint, and the colors glow. I open a beer and put my feet up on the windowsill. If it weren’t for my recliner’s funny smell, I could be somewhere else.

  THE PARKING LOT attendant from the pizza place comes over on his breaks. I never bug him about browsing in the adult section, because once my horn started honking and wouldn’t stop, and he showed me what wire to pull. He has a baby daughter who was born with her heart outside her body. Down in Mexico, where he’s from, the cops and dope dealers get away with murder. He’s funny the way he opens the centerfolds then shakes his head and whistles.

  “Have you seen anybody strange hanging around?” I ask him.

  “No, boss. Nobody. Who do you mean?”

  “Like some Vietnamese dudes. Gangster types.”

  A car pulls up to the curb, and the driver yells at me to bring him a New York Times. I hate guys like that, I don’t care if they do let me keep the change.

  When my shift is done, I count out the till. It balances for the ninety-eighth straight time. The night clerk takes over, but I linger for a while. He’s new on the job, so I warn him about the kids from the high school always trying to swipe cigarettes. His shoulder-length black hair is parted in the middle, and he’s reading a book about vampires. He hems and haws when I ask if he believes in that shit. I don’t know what James was thinking, hiring this one. The little old ladies will be scared to death.

  AS A PRECAUTION, I park two streets from the one I live on and hoof it the rest of the way. The shadows of a flock of birds passing overhead swarm across the sidewalk like vermin. I hear things breaking behind me, but you couldn’t pay me enough to turn around.

  The actor, the office supply salesman who says he’s an actor, is eating grapes on the steps of the building. He’s not wearing a shirt, and I catch a glimpse of a gold ring in one of his nipples.

  “Hey,” he says as I pass by, then gets up and follows me inside. “I saw you painting the other day.”

  “It’s personal,” I reply. My mailbox is packed with sweepstakes applications. I think someone is giving out my address.

  “Not to get all woo woo, but what sign are you?” the salesman asks.

  His lips, his hands — something about him makes my skin crawl. Can’t he understand my situation? I don’t have time for his silliness. Pushing past him, I hurry up the stairs.

  THERE’S NO LISTING for Lana in Chicago. I try ten different times with ten different operators to make sure. Then I check other cities: New York, Miami, Dallas. The operator in Paris, France, barely speaks English.

  “Bonjour,” I say. “What time is it there?”

  “Six in zee morning,” she replies.

  “Dawn, huh. And the weather?”

  “Zee numbair you want?”

  “It must be gorgeous. Tell me about it.”

  “Zee numbair, sir?”

  I met Lana at the mall. I saw her shoplifting mascara, and she saw me see her. Later she approached me at the food court to find out why I hadn’t turned her in. “Because you’re hot,” I said. I was doing great then, processing work orders for the phone company. We went out to dinner all the time. I bought her a diamond tennis bracelet I’m still making payments on. She never told me she loved me, but she’d never told anyone else that, either. We were easing toward something special. I was allowed to tongue-kiss her and put my hands on her tits, and she once rubbed my cock through my sweats.

  She was younger than me. Barely legal. Eight years’ difference doesn’t sound like much, but you’d be surprised. I don’t remember ever being as silly as she sometimes was. She got drunk and puked in my car after I warned and warned her. She wrote letters to rock stars and got depressed when they didn’t respond. Her parents thought I was great. Looking back, they were probably happy to have someone take her off their hands. We dated for three months and twenty-two days.

  DOWN AT THE bar, Marty passes around a bottle of pills he found on the floor at Arby’s. The prescription label has been peeled off, and he’s hoping someone might know what they are. Jennifer says antibiotics, but her boyfriend, Bob the snob, smells one and thinks Valium. I drop a tablet on my tongue and wash it down with beer. They all swear I’m crazy.

  Someone’s seen a movie that gets us on the subject of time travel. I can tell you this: My dream is not to go back and lay a bunch of money on the Derby or the Super Bowl. I also wouldn’t save Lincoln or Kennedy or Martin Luther King. Invisibility interests me more, but nobody wants to talk about that. “Figures, you skeev,” is how they put it. This place is a pigsty.

  Some Fridays women come in, two or three together. Usually they’re too old for me. I don’t go for the druggies, either. They giggle and flirt and sing along to the jukebox and get all the wet fart regulars squirming on their stools. Marty’s the worst. I once saw him spend half his paycheck on a couple of grannies who bugged their eyes at each other and laughed up their sleeves every time he turned his back on them. I’m so lucky I have Lana to keep that part of my brain busy.

  The place is dead tonight, though. The end of the line. Marty follows me out to my car, parked in front of the pet store. While we’re standing there talking about nothing, every animal in the place starts screeching at once, like they all have knives at their throats. It gets louder and louder, but Marty won’t shut up. “I mean, the damn world does its thing,” he hollers over the din.

  At Denny’s, where I stop to eat, I get this idea stuck in my head that I can see through everyone’s clothes.

  “THE POLICE WERE here looking for you,” my mom says first thing when I walk in the door.

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I reply.

  “Leave that girl’s family alone. They’re serious.”

  She sets her wineglass on the kitchen table and goes back to cracking walnuts. Shells fly all over the place. It’s like she doesn’t even care where they end up. This makes me angry right off the bat, because I’m reminded of how utterly incapable she is of putting two and fucking two together.

  Dad is in the living room. There’s something on TV. He raises his fingers in a wave but doesn’t say anything. I walk over and look at the family portrait from Christmas 1995 hanging on the wall. My brother before he became an accountant, my sister before she became a housewife, and me. I know what I was thinking back then, and it didn’t have anything to do with this.

  When the commercials start, my dad sits up. He’s wearing a neck brace as a precaution after some kind of operation on his back.

  “Come here where I can see you,” he says. “I can’t turn around.”

  I join him on the couch
. He pats me on the shoulder. They’ve redecorated twice since I moved. I’d have to scratch through two layers of paint to get to a color I remember. The latest thing is the vertical blinds on the sliding glass door that cast prisony shadows across the carpet.

  “I quit smoking,” I tell my dad.

  “That’s fantastic. I’m proud of you.”

  Three weeks ago I was sitting at the bar, turning a pack of cigarettes over in my hands, and all of a sudden the surgeon general’s warning leaped out at me like I was seeing it for the first time: SMOKING CAUSES LUNG CANCER, HEART DISEASE, EMPHYSEMA, AND MAY COMPLICATE PREGNANCY. What an idiot I’d been. What a victim. I went right into the bathroom and crumbled the rest of the cigarettes in the pack into the toilet and flushed them down. For once I was absolutely sure I’d done the right thing, and it felt great.

  My mom comes in and hands my dad and me beers. She needs to know what kind of pizza I want, because she’s calling Domino’s. Then we have to be quiet. Dad’s program is back on, a documentary on the secrets of ancient Egypt. When he thinks I’m caught up in it, I feel him staring at me. During the next commercials I ask, “Has Lana called here for me? Any hang-ups maybe?” and a tear races down his cheek.

  I USED TO cut school and smoke weed with the older brother of the cop who cuffs me for the ride to the station. He and his partner show up at the end of my shift. I think about making a run for it, but James tells me to be cool and get it over with. He went through the same thing with his ex. To this day he’s not allowed to speak to her except via her attorney.

  The world looks different from the backseat of the cruiser. Everything suddenly assumes a new preciousness. If I get out of this, I promise myself, I’m going to buy a camera and start taking pictures. I also want to spend some time at the beach. It’s twenty minutes away, and I haven’t been there in years. Up front they’re talking about a hooker they busted in front of an elementary school. She was so messed up, she was propositioning fifth-graders. We stop at a red light, and there are palm trees wherever I turn, and big white clouds that inch toward the horizon. Click — I snap a mental photo — click click.

  The room they put me in has no windows. The drawers of the big metal desk are empty. I walk the perimeter looking for pinholes that might conceal lenses or microphones. A suit comes in and tells me to sit down. Detective something or other. “I know your dad,” he says.

  It’s his duty to inform me that this is the last straw. If I violate the restraining order again, Lana’s parents are insisting that I do time. I get the feeling there have been conversations about me going on behind my back. Nothing makes me more uncomfortable.

  “I’m going to be blunt with you,” the detective says. “If you’re having mental trouble, we can get you help. Don’t be ashamed to admit that you’re in over your head.”

  “I’m fine,” I reply.

  “Your dad says this is about a girl who dumped you.”

  “Not dumped exactly. She moved away.”

  The detective brings the end of his tie up and brushes it against his nose, then suddenly drops it when he realizes what he’s doing. I can just barely hear someone singing “Happy Birthday” over the station’s PA system.

  “I’ve been dumped; we’ve all been dumped,” the detective continues. “It’s fucked, but you’ll get past it. Just tough it out. Not all that John Wayne stuff is bogus. He had balls, you know.”

  “Ha ha,” I laugh. “Oh, yes, he did.” I’m thinking of the monkey, not the man.

  “Everything else okay?”

  I tell him about the helicopters, but he says he can’t do anything about that.

  When they cut me loose I feel better in a strange way. Something like forgetting. There’s one of those coffee machines in the hall, the kind where the paper cup drops down and the coffee dribbles in. I stand next to it and buy coffee for everyone who passes, good guys and bad. “Hey, thanks,” they say, and, “You the man!” After a while I run out of money, though, and I have to walk all the way back to the newsstand to pick up my car.

  JAMES GETS A nosebleed out of nowhere. He stands in the street so he doesn’t drip on the magazines. One of the old lady customers says he must be low on iron. He leans his head back and pinches the bridge of his nose, and after a while that stops it. His blood turns black in the gutter as it dries.

  We listen to opera on the radio. It’s Friday, and everyone is in a good mood, getting ready for the weekend. The Witch Doctor stops by for the Racing Form. We ask him for a sure thing, but he just laughs at us. My lunch sandwich is especially tasty. “This must be made with love,” I say to Agna behind the counter. She gives me a free refill on my Coke. Walking back across the street to the stand, I have a vision of how normal things could be.

  I handle the register while James rearranges everything according to a plan he got out of a trade paper. The automobile section moves to where the do-it-yourself mags were, and they displace hair and beauty. It’s all about guided focal points, he explains. Every month it’s something new. The parking lot attendant comes over, and I point at James so that he knows what’s up. He passes by the porno and buys a Mexican newspaper instead.

  After work I go to a movie. It’s something about teachers and high school kids. There’s an actor in it I recognize from the stand. We have his picture over the register. Mostly, though, I watch the other people watch the movie. Lots of guys are there with their cute little girlfriends. I feel like I ought to warn them. The air-conditioning in the theater is cranked up so high I start to shiver, and I have to leave before the big showdown at the prom.

  I BUY ONE of those disposable cameras on my day off. Twenty-four exposures.

  1. The checkout girl at the drugstore, to see if the flash and everything works. “I have a cold,” she says. “Leave me alone.”

  2. A police car speeding past with its lights and sirens on.

  3. Pigeons on the steeple of a church.

  4. The Hollywood sign, but I think I’m too far away.

  5. A Mexican girl pushing a stroller. I tell her I work for a magazine and ask her name. “Maria,” I say, “I’m gonna make you famous.”

  6, 7, 8. Two dogs humping in the alley behind Pep Boys.

  9. A cactus with red flowers.

  10. James at the register.

  11. James again, because he says he had his eyes closed in the first one.

  12. The parking lot attendant. He asks for a copy for his wife.

  13. A stretch limo.

  14. The sky.

  15, 16, 17, 18. A girl who looks just like Lana. She won’t stop, so I have to walk backward in front of her while snapping the pictures. She tries to grab the camera, and I almost get hit by a bus, running away.

  19. Jennifer leaning over the bar to hug Marty.

  20. Me and Marty pretending to kiss (taken by Jennifer).

  21. My shoe (a mistake).

  22. The first car that follows me home.

  23. The second.

  24. The third, close enough to see the Vietnamese guy behind the wheel.

  The clerk at the one-hour photo place claims that the camera was defective and that none of the pictures turned out. Not believing a word of it, I tell him I want them anyway. A while later he hands me an envelope containing twenty-four black prints and twenty-four clear negatives. I spend half the night going over them with a magnifying glass, but nothing reveals itself.

  SOMEONE AT THE bar has put a sign-up sheet for a day trip to Catalina on the bulletin board by the restrooms. There are only two names on it, and the deadline is tomorrow. They tried to start a softball team once, too. The mirror in the bathroom, which was broken last time I looked, has been replaced, and a fresh coat of paint covers the piss blisters pocking the metal divider between the urinals.

  It’s against the law to smoke in bars anymore, but the management here doesn’t pay any attention. Everybody’s puffing away, which is fucked, because the only time I crave one is when I’m drinking. I rest my forehead on the edge of the
bar and stare down at my feet. Where was I last New Year’s Eve? I can’t remember.

  “Don’t you dare fall asleep here,” Jennifer says, jabbing my arm with a long, red fingernail.

  Any of these people would sell me out in a minute, and my suspicion is that one of them already has. Those gangsters are awfully familiar with my schedule. The door opens, and the setting sun roars in like a wildfire. A figure stands silhouetted on the threshold. Everyone turns to look, squinting and raising their hands to shield their eyes, and I think, When they finally come for me, it will be something like this, but today it’s just Robo, taking his sweet time.

  “Hurry up, asshole,” Juanito yells. “All the dark’s getting out.”

  “YOU’RE FUCKING WEIRD,” Marty says. I’ve made a whole production out of unveiling my painting for him, the beach scene on the brick wall. I sat him in the recliner and replaced the white bulb in the floor lamp with a blue one for a cool nighttime effect. I fixed him a rum and Coke and made sure everything was perfect before I raised the blinds, and “You’re fucking weird” is what he comes out with, then, “I gotta go.”

  He’s drunk and belligerent. They shut off his phone today.

  “Wait,” I urge. “Give it a minute. It looks almost real.”

  “I gotta go. Lemme use your bathroom.”

  Sympathy is like a gift, I know. You’re supposed to give it without expecting anything in return. But this guy owes me, goddammit.

  “Did you sell me out, you fucking Judas?” I yell.

  I WAKE UP with a headache. The sound of my own footsteps makes me wince. Someone has scrawled WASH ME BITCH and a swastika in the dust on the hood of my car. It’s Lana’s handwriting. I usually stop at AMPM for coffee on the way to work, but today I drive right past, because there’s a gas truck there, filling the underground tanks, and a spark could come from anywhere.

  The night guy left a note asking me to restock the candy rack because he didn’t have time. I get the boxes out of the storeroom and square things away between customers. It’s a slow day. Everyone’s eyes are puffy and red, and there’s a haze that won’t lift. This geezer buying Variety and the Reporter tells me it has something to do with the government putting viruses into jet exhaust. The viruses drift down and infect us and make us easier to control. Then the fucker tries to pay me with a counterfeit twenty.