But my malaise is different. I’m old and broken, I’m lost, I’m soul sick, I need help, I need this. All of it. Just say the names—Adderall/Ritalin/Xanax/Ambien—magic words like ancient magic spells. I’m feeling better already, but not better enough. And, by taking it all, and keeping these pernicious drugs from Hyrum, I will be a good mother and protector. It’s my duty.
She checked her face in the rearview mirror. She saw she was smiling.
26.
SOMETHING WAS IN THE WAY between Josue and Pearl, something unsaid and sore, buzzing and droning like a headache. Pearl could feel it and she wanted it gone. It had been that way since they’d had sex. She’d really opened herself to him, and he’d pulled away. Classic boy move, she figured. But something else wasn’t sitting right; something that needed to be said hadn’t been said. They had a break from rehearsal and Bartholomew told the players to all get some dinner, they were going to do a full run-through after the meal. “You guys are stinking up the joint the past few days, especially my leads—Pearl and Josue. I don’t know what’s up with you guys, but don’t bring it onto the stage. It looks like you don’t even know each other. Leave real-world chazerai in the real world!” That was embarrassing.
Pearl saw Josue grab his jacket and head out with Bernardo, Chino, Baby John, Anybodys, and Action.
She put her hand on his shoulder. “Can I talk to you?” Josue looked irritated.
“Sure,” he mumbled. Pearl led him to a secluded spot behind the set scaffolding where they could have a little privacy.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“Nothing. Whaddyou mean?”
“Josue, come on. There’s something. You won’t even look me in the eye unless we’re doing the play.”
“You know what it is.”
“I don’t.”
Josue looked down, he looked up, he looked all around, could see no way out, and finally said, “There was no blood.”
“What? When?”
“When we … when we … had sex, sin sangre.”
“What?”
“There was no blood.” He pointed below her waist. “No blood.”
“Oh.” Pearl nodded.
“Oh? That’s all you got to say? ‘Oh’?” He imitated her sarcastically. It hurt her.
“I guess I busted my hymen on a horse years ago. When I was like, eleven.”
“Bullshit.”
“You call bullshit? You’re an expert on female anatomy all of a sudden?”
He suffered a hot wave of insecurity that she was alluding to his lack of sexual experience and his performance. He raised his voice. “Bullshit. Blaming a fucking horse.”
“You don’t really know anything about me.” She was speaking gently, but firmly, trying not to attack him even though he was being mean to her. “Where I come from. What my life was like before. I’m not like anybody here.”
“I know about you. I know enough.”
“I’m like an alien.”
“Like from outer space? Keep it up—you’re a horse-riding alien. What else?”
“Josue, I thought I wouldn’t have to tell you. I thought, I don’t know, I could just be two different people, but I can’t, you know?”
“I don’t know … I don’t wanna know.”
He was pouting, but trying to look hard at the same time. It was the face he would make after he realizes, as Tony, that he just killed a man.
“Then I guess I don’t have anything to say,” Pearl said, and started to walk away.
He followed. “You think you’re so different and so special? So you can be some kinda slut?”
“Yes, Josue. I’m a slut, okay?”
He grabbed her elbow and whispered urgently, “It was my first time, you know.”
“I know.”
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter. Forget about it.”
“No, Pearl, I fucking love you and I wanna know what’s up.”
That was the first time a man had told her he loved her. Bronson had never said that. She had longed for him to say it, but he hadn’t. He had shown it, she reckoned, but he’d never said it aloud. He was too uptight. Josue was braver. The “I fucking love you” out of his mouth sounded like music to her. She wanted to hear that song over and over again.
“You love me?”
“Yeah, I love you like crazy. I think about you all the time. And I wanna know everything about you. I can take it, whatever it is—just help me ’cause I’m making shit up in my head that’s driving me crazy. I’m sorry I’m being jealous but these questions just go ’round and ’round my mind on their own.”
“Yeah, I get it. I know what jealous feels like.”
“Go on, you can tell me what it’s like in outer space with all the horses and shit. I’m a man, I’ll take it. I want the truth of you. I don’t wanna go anywhere. I wanna stay with you. ‘Womb to tomb,’ you know?”
She could see he was crying—oh, she thought, he’s not angry, he’s sad. She pulled him into a hug and put her lips on his ear and began to speak in a whisper. “‘Birth to earth.’” He smiled, relieved, ready to move on, but Pearl had something she needed to say. “No, you’re not the first boy I’ve loved, Josue,” she began; he tried to pull away into his hurt again, but she held him tight. She felt strong. “I’m gonna tell you a story,” she said, and then she told him everything.
After the meal break, after all the kids had shuffled back in burping and farting, Bartholomew took the stage. “Children,” he said, “I am in recovery. From many things, and many people. From life. And friendship helps, being kind to one another, loving one another, and making art together. This is just a moment in your lives, when we perform our little show next weekend, just a moment in a little high school play, but look around at all the other faces. Some of you will know success, some of you will know failure, except you, Pearl, you will never fail and you’ll live forever…”
All the kids laughed. Bartholomew continued, “All of you will know sickness, and betrayal, and death. All of you, each and every one of you will know heartbreak and death.” He looked around at the eyes looking back at him and held them. He had them. He was making himself cry. He went for the heartstrings. “But not in here! No! Not tonight! And not next weekend! ALL we will know in here is love, all we will know is trust, and all we will know is truth! Now fucking act and sing like it! Act one, scene one, West Side Story now! Places!”
And the kids, borne aloft on an old gentleman’s sincerity and passion, nailed it beyond their years. Bartholomew worried that he might have given the pep talk too early, but such was the force apparent in the players’ eyes that he knew it would carry over till at least next week, and if they were lucky, for years to come. By the time the last scene had finished, the kids looked out into the audience where Bartholomew normally sat, and it was vacant. He had left at some point, happy with what he’d seen, wanting the kids to experience having been great not for him, but for themselves, they were their own audience. They all jumped up and down and hugged one another. As Pearl was hugging Anybodys, she spotted Bronson over her shoulder standing in the front row by the lip of the stage, a huge smile on his face.
Pearl wasn’t sure if she was hallucinating or not. She walked toward the apparition, like Hamlet dreading and desiring equally the ghost of Claudius.
“Dad?”
“Hi, Pearl,” he spoke. He was real. Up on the stage, she towered above him. From this angle, she could see he had a small bald spot she’d never noticed before.
“How long have you been there?” she asked.
“Long enough to know how wonderful you are. I’ve never seen anything like it. You’re an angel. Better than Natalie Wood.”
And it’s true, he knew what he was talking about, he’d worked with the biggest stars in Hollywood. His kid had as much charisma as any of them. He found himself overwhelmed with a combination of pride and possession. Pearl thought Bronson was looking at her in a way he had never looked at h
er before. It was a way she used to imagine men who were in love looked at the women they were in love with, and she had wanted him to look at her like that, but he never had; and now that he was looking at her like that, she didn’t want it any longer, wanted him to stop, felt sorry for him, a grown man with a bald spot looking at a seventeen-year-old girl with that stupid, sappy, puppy-dog look on his face. He disgusted her suddenly. She wanted a way out.
“Josue!” she called out. Josue came jogging over from where he’d been chatting with Officer Krupke.
“What’s up, babe?” he asked. Bronson visibly flinched at “babe.”
“Josue, I want you to meet my dad.”
“Bronson. You make a fine Tony,” Bronson said, extending his hand up to the stage where Josue could grab it. The kid was giving him a funny look, though, an impudent look, like a smirk. Bronson had half a mind to crush his soft little hand and bring him to his knees.
“Dad, this is Josue, my boyfriend.”
27.
BRONSON FELT RELIEF to be back on his motorcycle again after that. It was strange to be in a high school having those feelings of rage and jealousy over a girl, because he hadn’t had those feelings since high school, it seemed. Was good to get out of there fast, even necessary. He found the block in Rancho Cucamonga where Mary and the kids were staying. He was going to say hi to Mary, Hyrum, and Deuce, maybe talk to Pearl when she got home, though he didn’t know what he’d say to her. He had a feeling he should wait. Either wait or take her back with him to the desert tonight. He’d see how he felt when the time came.
He got off the bike and was walking past a little park toward Mary’s address when he heard a voice that sounded familiar. Kind of singing, kind of talking, kind of chanting—rapping. But it sounded like Hyrum. He followed the voice into the park to a group of kids who were huddled around an old-fashioned “beatbox.” Bronson pushed past a couple kids, and Hyrum was in the center. His son was dressed like a clown. His pants were so big at the waist that they drooped to his hamstrings, exposing his underwear, no temple garment there. He wore a red bandana on his head and on his wrists bangles of all sorts; what looked to be a heavy gold chain around his neck had to be fake, it was the thickness of his finger.
Hyrum looked up at the old stranger in their midst and broke out into a huge smile. “Yo! Pops!” he said. “My nigga! What’s up?” and offered his father an elaborate handshake. Bronson said nothing in reply, offered nothing. He lashed out before he could formulate a thought. He slapped Hyrum so hard across the face that it knocked the boy down.
One of the kids said, “Oh, shit!” And Bronson turned hard on that child like he was gonna knock him down, too. The kid shut up.
“Why are you speaking like that, Hyrum?”
“I speak like I speak, bruh.”
“Get up.”
“Why, so you can knock me down again, old man? Finna pop a cap in yo ass, nigga.”
“Shut up! Get! Up!”
“Get fucked, bruh.”
In a rage, Bronson yanked his son up off the ground, throwing him over his shoulder in one athletic movement, and walked out of the park. The rest of the kids recovered their courage before they were out of earshot and started making fun of both of them, Hyrum and Bronson, calling them “pussies” and “faggots,” whatever they had.
Bronson didn’t put Hyrum down until Mary had opened the door and let them both in. Bronson tossed Hyrum on the floor, on his back. Hyrum was bleeding from his mouth, but he didn’t care. He got up slowly, deliberately.
Standing now, facing his father, Hyrum challenged him. “We done, fool?”
“What the hell happened?” Mary asked.
“I found him acting like a clown in the park.”
“You the clown, Mormon.”
“You hear that?” Bronson asked Mary. “How long has he been like that? Talking like that? He’s eleven!”
“Hyrum, go to your room. Let’s all cool down and we can talk about it later.”
“Later for all y’all,” Hyrum sneered as he smacked his bloody lips together in a dismissive sound and disappeared behind his closed door.
“What the fuck is going on, Mary?”
“It’s when in Rome, I guess, Bronson.”
“What? It’s not fucking ‘when in Compton.’”
“He’s just fitting in. It’s not real, won’t stick.”
“Seems real to me. Where is Deuce in all this? Why isn’t he watching after his brother?”
“Deuce is at work. At BurgerTown. And Pearl is at school, at rehearsal. She’s doing—”
“I know where Pearl is!” Bronson yelled, cutting her off vehemently. “And what she’s doing. Come here.”
“What? Why? I’m right here.”
“Come to me, I said.” Unable to resist, she walked to him. “Closer. Look at me.”
“I am looking at you,” Mary said, glancing down.
“Let me see your eyes.” She reluctantly let him see. “You’re stoned,” Bronson said. “You’re fucking stoned. Jesus Christ, Mary.”
“I can’t do it alone, Bro’,” she cried. “I can’t, I’m sorry, I’m not tough enough anymore, I need help, and I don’t have any help. You don’t know what it’s like out here. It’s fucking everything all the time. I need Yaya, and I need you.”
She started to sob. Bronson was unmoved. The volume of the music coming out of Hyrum’s room, the bass shaking the thin walls, made it impossible to think, or to feel anything other than rage. He didn’t want to do anything stupid and he was in no shape to see Pearl again now. He turned and left.
28.
STARTING BACK TO JOSHUA TREE on the eastbound 10 freeway at about 10 p.m. on a Wednesday, there was little to slow Bronson down and the speed felt good: 85, 90, 95, 100. He missed a well-paved road like this; he could open it up. He took his hands off the handlebars and replaced them with his feet, lying back flat like he’d done as a show-off in his younger stunt days. He was older now, and his balance was not as stable as it used to be. The bike wobbled, then straightened out. On his back, he looked straight up at the stars that flew by above him like the dots on sheets of player-piano music he remembered from the black-and-white movies he knew as a child. The world brought back memories to him. It’s why he didn’t like to leave home. He thought of Abbott and Costello and the Wolfman and laughed; the bike fishtailed again. He sat up and gunned it straight across three lanes toward an off ramp.
Bronson exited the highway, rode a couple blocks, and got right back on the westbound side. He was going to double back and get Pearl, take her out of the world, and bring her home to the fortress of solitude. But when the time came to exit, he found himself passing the turnoffs for Rancho Cucamonga, and speeding for Los Angeles. In an hour, he was passing all the old exits for the studios he used to work in. Western Avenue or La Brea for Paramount. Overland for Fox and Sony. All the old memories were crowding in on him—the old friends, the joys and the disappointments. His Frankenbike, built from stray pieces of Harleys, Ducatis, and BMWs, was a jury-rigged time machine, and it had transported him back twenty, thirty, even forty years.
But he didn’t want to go into the past anymore, the only thing back there was hurt; lack of integrity and confusion—drinks, fights, fucks, and regret. Bronson continued to find it curious how just physically being in an old haunt brought back images and thoughts from so long ago that had lain dormant, waiting for him to disturb the ground and release them like spores kicked up from the dust. Haunts were haunted. He much preferred the clarity of a barren desert that contained no human ghosts or memory. He wanted to time-travel in the other direction, into the future, to see if he had one. About ten minutes later, he gently leaned right and nudged the bike off the highway and onto Bundy in Santa Monica. At 11:30, he rang Maya Abbadessa’s doorbell.
Maya slept with a baseball bat by her bed. Some wooden club she’d found in the garage when she’d moved into this house. She had played some softball in high school and was a good hitter, knew h
ow to use the hips to swing the hands, get some torque. The bat felt good in her hands, she could swing it from either side. Santa Monica/Brentwood was a good neighborhood, but at night, the streets were empty and quiet, and the possibility of good old Southern California senseless violence erupting, as Joan Didion had memorably catalogued the Manson end-times, was always in the back of her mind, like a dark, discordant streak at the back of the sunny Beach Boys harmonies. In another age, Nicole Brown Simpson had been slaughtered not too far from her door. After shooting a gun with Bronson in the desert, she’d thought of getting one, but she hadn’t yet.
She approached the door holding the bat like a righty. “Who is it?” she demanded.
“Bronson.”
She opened the door. Bronson looked like hell, like someone had let out his air pressure a little, but he managed a smile. “Surprise,” he said.
Maya still had the bat shouldered and ready. “Hey.”
“You gonna swing that thing, Steve Garvey?” Bronson asked.
“Who’s Steve Garvey?”
“Great Dodger. Before your time, I guess. Forearms like Popeye.”
“I’m a Phillies fan. Who’s Popeye?”
“Great sailor. Also before your time. Forearms like Steve Garvey.” He was consistently funnier and more charming than she might expect. She took a little check swing with the bat.
“Ha. Depends if I see a pitch I like, I guess.” She let him in, closed the door, and locked it.
Having Bronson Powers of Joshua Tree in your little rented craftsman’s bungalow in Santa Monica was like having a horse or a bear as a house pet. The man felt too big indoors, like he couldn’t turn or sit properly without banging into something or busting something up. He didn’t drink: the Mormon thing. He collapsed on her couch like he’d been deboned, and sighed, and talked about Pearl and how great she was in West Side Story, how much she reminded him of his dead wife, Jackie, with whom he was clearly still in love. She didn’t know if he meant it this way, but Maya found his everlasting devotion to this Jackie attractive and moving as hell. She was buried in one of those mysterious graves Maya had seen when she was high.
Truly Like Lightning Page 27
