House of Lazarus

by T. L. Bodine

  “That’s smart,” he says. “The game is rigged, you know? You might win a little sometimes, but if you stay long enough the house always wins.”

  All the same, he’s pulling a 20-dollar bill out of his pocket and feeding it into the machine. He’s wearing scrub pants and a sleeveless t-shirt pulled over the tight girdle holding in his guts. I guess he must have come straight from his shift. I wonder why he’s finally agreed to meet with me, and I’ve got so many questions, I’m not sure which to ask first.

  He sets the machine to the lowest possible bet, spending a penny per spin just to make it look like he’s doing something.

  “Nobody answers the phone at the facility anymore when I call,” I say, finally.

  “Yeah. It’s this whole new thing. I guess there was this leadership change way up the chain? He came in to do some stuff different and try to renew that government contract or whatever. Some of the other places, in other states, were already kind of like that.”

  “So what’s the deal? Is it just, like…”

  “Just an optics thing, you know.” He shrugs. The slot machine makes some kind of overtures like he’s made a good hit, but it’s just a dollar win. “Honestly, we hardly ever got visitors, anyway. I think you’re in there more than just about anybody.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, man. Nobody wants to see their family like that, you know. You take all the people who visit a prison, and subtract that from all the people who visit a nursing home, and that’s about what you’ve got.”

  He goes silent for a while, pressing buttons and staring at the screen like he’s deeply absorbed in his low-stakes game. I light up another cigarette. A woman comes by asking if we’d like any drinks, and I take a water bottle to be nice. It’s small, half-size, with a cheap-looking custom label glued on. I roll it around in my palm and try to think of how I can ask the questions I want answered without giving away everything I know.

  “Chuy…I’m sorry. For leaving you like we did. That was messed up.”

  “Yeah, man, that whole night was pretty messed up,” he agrees, without looking up. “Probably in my top three worst nights ever.”

  I have a hard time imagining what could be worse than dying with somebody ripping out your insides. “What happened? After we left?”

  “Well, Felix had a gun,” he says.

  I have to resist the urge to roll my eyes. Obviously Felix had a gun. I remember that part pretty clearly, considering he shot it at the car when we took off. The bullet grazed Randy and I had to clean up the hole and stuff it with paper towels from the casino bathroom.

  “So he took care of Javier and booked it outta there, I guess. I dunno, man. I was out of it by then. Last thing I remember was Felix like, blam blam!” He pantomimes firing a gun, hands together, both forefingers extended. “Then I wake up and I’m in the morgue, you know? And I’m like, knocking on the door of that big fridge thing they’ve got me in.”

  “Wait. Wait. Hold up. So they know? You’re registered and everything?”

  “Yeah, man. There’s a lot of us working there these days, here and I guess in other states too. Kinda like how all the laundry and cooking and shit at prison is all done by inmates. You knew that, right?”

  My cigarette’s gone cold in my hand because I’ve forgotten to smoke it. I’m staring now, uncomprehending, trying to wrap my head around that development.

  “I mean not everybody, obviously. There’s doctors an’ stuff like that. Science guys. But the rest of us, all we gotta do is clean and keep the patients company and stuff, so…” he shrugs. “It’s a pretty good deal, man. They let me come and go, too, as long as I’m back by curfew. I’ve got a bed, don’t have to pay rent…best job I’ve had. If you want an in…”

  “No!” I say, too sharply, and hurry to continue, “I mean, no, that’s okay. I’m not…Chuy, have you told anybody?”

  He laughs, shaking his head. “Davin, what kind of guy do you take me for? No way. I know you’ve got family to take care of, too, it’s not my place to decide how you do that. I’m just saying, if you wanted…”

  The idea doesn’t sound terrible. That’s the crazy thing about it, the really messed up part — I’m imagining that life, and it doesn’t seem too bad. Money, a place to stay. Maybe a year from now, if I could last that long. Maybe Zoe could be okay on her own somehow. Could she stay with Jo and Delilah? The possibilities are blossoming in my mind so fast and so sharp that I’ve almost forgotten everything I came here for, all the answers I’d wanted to demand.

  “That day in the park,” I say, struggling to keep above water, fighting against the current of the thoughts now pressing through my head. “The thing that happened with Javier. Do you know why that happened?”

  “I dunno, man. It’s just a thing that happens sometimes. Every so often, you see people on the inside too — they just go loco.”

  “She’s loco,” Duncan said, finger twirling by his temple. Gail’s wild eyes, flashing as she lunged for the truck.

  “But why? What causes it?”

  He shrugs, hitting a button on the machine. It spits out a ticket for $21.67. “Quit while you’re ahead, see? Even if it’s not by much. That’s how you do it.”

  He gives me a friendly sort of punch on the shoulder as he passes by.

  “I gotta get back. It was nice catching up, man. You take care out there. Tell me if you need a job recommendation, yeah?”

  Chapter 12

  I’m distracted all night, and the next day. Zoe asks if I’ve got any leads on a job and I have to fight back the urge to laugh, have to bite back the hysteria because, well, maybe? Maybe I do. But I don’t say anything, because it’s not something I want to talk about until I’m certain how I feel, one way or another. Because there’s so much now piling up that she doesn’t know, even though we never used to be the kind of family who kept secrets.

  Randy comes over the next night, and we’re in our usual places: Zoe tucked up into a chair, legs folded up under her, phone in hand and TV tuned to the news. Randy and I in the couch. He’s fidgeting with a throw pillow, a distant kind of look on his face like he’s partly somewhere else. I know the feeling pretty intimately, but it’s weird to see him wearing it. He’s always been so good at playing it cool.

  But the TV makes it pretty clear where his brain is. It’s the mid-week headline slump, and nothing makes better time-slot filler than election news. As the hour strikes for the national news to start, the headline story opens with a photo that’s starting to become all-too-familiar: Ezra Lynch, his careful smile, his easy Southern charm.

  Zoe’s leaning forward in her seat, trying and failing to be covert as she searches our faces for a reaction. She hasn’t figured it out — she’s privy to fewer of Randy’s secrets than I am — but she’s starting to catch on. Randy’s Pavlovian flinch at election news isn’t exactly subtle. She’d have it worked out soon, I’m sure, but then the news goes ahead and blows it open, bursting the mystery like a pustule coming to a head.

  A jump cut, and then there’s a photo up on the screen, blown up so big you can make out the film grain. It’s indisputably Randy, but it looks so different that all I can do is stare, trying to reconcile it with what I know, with the person sitting beside me. He’s younger in the picture, maybe a teenager, with mousy brown hair that’s been carefully cut and combed into an Ivy League haircut. His face is somber, no hint of his signature smirk, and his eyes have a cold, faraway look in them like he’s drawn up inside himself and shuttered a protective hatch. He’s dead now, but he looks a lot more alive than he does in this photo.

  “Lynch’s son, Randall, tragically lost his life just after his 21st birthday…”

  I glance sidelong at Randy, seeing his eyes go wide, then narrow to slits. He makes a dive for the remote, cranking up the volume as he bends forward, almost double, like he’ll see more of the TV if he leans in closer. There’s an energy radiating off of him, a kind of miasma that seems almost tangible, a crackling electricity.
I had thought he was angry when I caught up with him outside CJ’s that night, but that was nothing compared to this.

  The television, blind to the small-scale drama unfolding in the living room, continues with its bloodless report.

  “…lost to a drug overdose, an event which shook Lynch to the core and solidified not just his firm stance against drugs but his faith in God.”

  “They say the Lord never gives you more than you can handle,” Randy’s dad is saying now on the TV, in a way that almost feels sincere. “But losing my only son rocked my whole world. I almost gave up on it all. But the Lord came to me and said, Ezra, you have work to do. And that’s what I’m here for.”

  Randy’s knuckles strain against the skin of his tightening fist, the pale skin a stark contrast to the couch upholstery where he’s buried his fingers. A muscle in his jaw works and pulses. He’s grinding his teeth so hard I’m afraid they might crumble.

  Then all at once he’s rocketing off the couch, an explosion of energy, and I wince and pull away, trying to duck the fall-out of a nuclear blast. Randy plunges his hand into his pocket, pulls out his phone. I can see from where I sit that he’s visibly shaking, his hand trembling even as he punches in the number, but his face is a mask of tightly controlled fury.

  The phone takes a while to connect. He waits in patient silence, rage slowly mounting.

  “Hi. Yes. I’m calling for Ezra.” Faux civility dripping barely concealed rage. His lips have gone thin and white, bared back from his teeth. I want to tell Zoe to go to bed, to urge her out of the living room, but we’re both frozen in place, like Randy’s a bomb that might go off if either of us move.

  “Yes, I’m aware. Tell him it’s from his son.” The words twist, knife-point stabs of irony. “Yes. The dead one. You tell that son of a bitch that —”

  Silent then, cut off, eyes gone wide.

  He stares disbelievingly at the phone screen, as if astonished by the audacity of whoever had just hung up on him. Zoe and I watch him, shocked into silence, not knowing how to ask the obvious questions that are looming and not knowing what to do with this sudden agitation that rolls off him. He’s shaking his head.

  “I’ve gotta go,” he mutters, turning for the door.

  “Randy —” I reach for him, then, shocked out of my stillness. I’m out of the couch and halfway across the living room in two steps. My fingertips brush his elbow. “Stay. We should talk.”

  “I can’t. I can’t —”

  He sidesteps my grasp, wheeling around and snatching his arm away like he thinks I’ll hit him — or like he’s thinking of hitting me. We’re frozen like that, a half-second, him with his arm up, hand balled into a fist, me with my fingers still outstretched like some bad mock-up of the Sistine Chapel. Then he breaks eye contact and heads for the front door, and I don’t follow.

  He doesn’t quite slam the door, but it closes hard all the same, the air pressure shifting with his absence, and I’m left standing there, feeling like I’ve fallen out of step with time, like I’m lagging just behind my body. Zoe’s blinking at me, wide-eyed, like she’s expecting me to chase after him. The television, at least, has mercifully moved on to other things, some sort of inconsequential sports news.

  “You’d better go,” Zoe says.

  I don’t know that I want to. There’s a part of me that doesn’t want the trouble — not the government scrutiny but most of all not the anger, that rage that closes doors and draws back fists. Not now when I’ve come so far, when my dad’s locked away, when I’ve had a taste of peace. I don’t need this. I don’t need the drama.

  That thought bumps uneasily in my brain, my gut giving a miserable lurch of realization. In this new world, without that aching need for Lazarus, without the fear of what I might do if I don’t get a fix — is that the only reason I ever let him close? He found me on the side of the road like some kind of abandoned pet; he was the ferryman who drove me across the river of souls and into a new sort of afterlife. My salvation and my guide.

  Is it really that easy to think about walking away?

  It would be so easy. Let him go. Let all of it go. Go to the Lazarus House and let them take care of everything instead.

  The low rumble of an over-souped sports car engine roaring to life out in the driveway. I lurch for the door and throw it open.

  Through the windshield, I can see him, phone lifted to his ear, gesturing wildly with his free hand. I can’t hear him through the glass, not over the sound of that purring Mercedes engine, but I can imagine the argument he’s probably having. I imagine he’s giving a piece of his mind to whoever mans his father’s phone, whatever personal assistant or campaign manager or lapdog accountant has been given that odious task. Because I don’t know Randy’s dad, but I’m willing to bet he’ll never take a phone call from his son again. I almost feel sorry for whoever’s on the receiving end of Randy’s rage.

  I worry for a minute that he’s going to back out, tear out into the darkening street, but the car stays in place. He hits the lock to let me climb in the passenger set, just as he flings his phone in the back. It lands carelessly on a stack of mail and papers, detritus that’s been there who-knows-how-long, and slides down to the floorboard with a thud. I resist the urge to twist and reach back to rescue it.

  “We should talk,” I say, instead, and feel lame because I’ve already said this, because I can’t think of anything else to say.

  “Let’s get out of here,” he replies, which isn’t an agreement, but it’s not really a ‘no’ either. He pops the Mercedes into gear and backs out without looking. The back fender scrapes the asphalt at the foot of the driveway, where the incline is just a little too sharp, and the soft crunch sets my teeth on edge, but Randy either doesn’t notice or doesn’t mind.

  I don’t ask where we’re going.

  “There’s a speed trap past that light,” is all I say when he takes the turn out of the subdivision.

  The car lurches a little, like a spirited horse given too much rein, but he eases off the gas and we pass the half-hidden police van without triggering the tell-tale camera flash. What I don’t say is: Be careful, it’s past curfew. I don’t say: The Coalition patrols after dark now to pick up the Undead. I’m pretty sure any warnings like that I give are going to be received as a challenge.

  “So.” His knuckles bulge under the skin as he grips the steering wheel. He takes a side road, one that feeds onto an old county highway that doesn’t get much traffic, and the anxious knot in my chest loosens just a little. “You wanted to talk?”

  “Do you?” I don’t know what I’d want if our roles were reversed. But it isn’t helpful to try to imagine, anyway, because we’re so different.

  “I really, really fuckin’ don’t,” he says, and the car trembles as the road gets rougher.

  It takes me a second to realize he’s pulling over onto the gravel shoulder. It’s full-dark out now, the sky still a blanket of clouds, and the few brave lights of the pitiful Los Ojos skyline twinkle at a distance. Out here, once he cuts the headlights, it’s pure dark, like we’re out on the fringes of civilization instead of a couple miles from a subdivision. But the desert is a vast ocean, one that could easily swallow the town; drive a few minutes in any direction and you’ll find it.

  Randy shifts in the dark, and I hear a seatbelt unbuckle, hear the whisper of leather seat seats against his clothes, and then his hand is on me, pawing at the front of my jeans.

  “Here?” I ask, and I can’t quite tell if the anxious thumping of my ruined heart is from nerves or anticipation.

  “I need…something,” he says, leaning in, his breath on my neck. His voice sounds thick, half-strangled. “I need to feel alive. I need to feel anything.”

  His fingers work the button and zipper easily enough, and he nuzzles against the hollow of my neck. I’m still wearing my seatbelt. I’m still staring out into the darkness, waiting for my eyes to adjust so I can make out the shapes of cactus and bushes in the gloom. My heart flutters and
stops, and I’m deathly still for a moment, a hard marble statue, unyielding and cold, but then I suck down a breath and concentrate on willing my body to react.

  Randy kisses down my collar and tugs down the hem of my boxers and I shift my weight so I can free the arm that’s gotten twisted under his body.

  “Please,” he whispers against my skin, and the weight of all the things he isn’t saying, all those unvoiced demands, lies heavy in the word. “Make me.”

  My body reacts.

  I tangle my fingers in the gelled spikes of his bubblegum-shaded hair and push his head down.

  ***

  I can’t keep it up.

  I can feel his mounting frustration, the growing desperation, but I’m going softer with every passing second no matter the pressure or the rhythm or the angle he uses. He’s running through every technique in his usual playbook with a fervor mounting on mania. It tickles, then hurts, a distant kind of pain that feels like maybe it belongs to someone else’s body, and then sharper, more acute, and I push him away with an intake of breath hissing past my teeth. My dick falls limp and shriveled against my thigh, and I hurry to tuck it back under the waist band of my underwear.

  Randy curls in on himself on the driver’s seat, his skin stark white and pale against the dark interior. The moon is out, broken through the clouds in a fat white disk that bathes the car in eerie pale light. I’m amazed at how little space he takes up. He looks small, fragile, like some armored creature temporarily without its shell. I want to reach out for him, to comfort him, but when my hand moves he jerks away like I’m going to hurt him, and I freeze in place with uncertainty.

  “It’s not you,” I say, and know instantly it’s the wrong thing but it’s too late to take it back. “I’m just. I’m distracted.”

  And I am. There’s too much going on in my head, too much chatter that I can’t silence.

  But he’s taking it as a challenge, an insult. A badge of failure.