The Next Right Thing

by Dan Barden

  “Was Sewell involved?”

  “That guy? He’s just a suit. I never talked to him again after I bought the houses.”

  “It’s way past time to shut this down, Colin. We’ll figure out a way to handle the cops. Together.”

  “These guys are going to take everything I own, man.”

  “That’s a reason to kill someone? It’s a reason to scare the hell out of this girl?”

  “Are you disappointed that there was no great criminal conspiracy? Bored now that you know it was stupid people making stupid decisions?”

  “I’m pretty far from bored right now, Colin.”

  We were standing about six feet apart, and the Glock was sort of pointed at Emma and sort of not. Emma had given up the insults and given herself completely to crying. Something had broken inside of her when she heard about Simon, and it wouldn’t come back together until I got her away from that damn gun. As I calculated how quickly I could be on top of Colin’s right arm, he placed the barrel back against her rib cage. I noticed too that the beach behind Colin was quickly emptying. Uniforms were corralling people toward the clubhouse.

  “No,” I said. “I’ll stand out here in the wind with you as long as you want. We’ll let these cops try to figure out how to shoot us. But this is where we both stop making mistakes. Let the girl go.”

  Colin watched me for a long moment. A bullhorn cracked through the white noise of the waves from the direction of Hector’s house: Mr. Alvarez. This is the Laguna Beach Police Department. Surrender your weapon and lie facedown on the beach.

  He let go of Emma and shoved her toward the sand. She ran toward the houses, where the police rushed forward to sweep her up. My heart rate slowed by half as Colin swung the gun around to point at me.

  “What makes you think they care about my well-being?” I asked. “They’re probably getting ready to unload on both of us. Tell me the rest of it. What about the videos? Did Terry know about that?”

  “That was all Simon,” Colin said. “Terry found out about it after Simon died, and he was heartsick, same as me. We didn’t sign on to any of that. That was Simon, taking advantage of some kids who couldn’t help themselves.”

  It was small comfort in the larger arena of fucked-upness, but I had to admit that I was relieved. “Let’s put this down, Colin. Right now. We can survive this. We’ve come back from worse.”

  “Worse than this?”

  “You think those assholes have anything scarier than the first month of A.A.?” I said. “You think they’ve got anything more painful than detox? We’ve got things that they can never take from us.”

  The thought seemed to please him. Colin actually smiled. “Tell me why you even care. Is it just Terry?”

  “I wished I could have helped Terry,” I said. “Maybe helping you will be a consolation prize. Listen, we’re standing on this very expensive beach together. Everything I touch turns to shit, too. When I want to help people, I hurt them. When I try to hurt people, they end up dead. I didn’t bury Simon Busansky and I didn’t beat Mutt Kelly, but I’m well acquainted with the hell you’re in right now.”

  And that hell got even hotter as I watched a second cop join the guy with the rifle beside the fence. They seemed to have settled on a course of action. Emma was long gone somewhere behind the houses on the beach, hopefully getting some comfort. I glanced behind Colin and had to admit that as far as I could see there were no people except the ones with guns pointed at us. The cops could end this at any moment and tell any story they wanted about what happened.

  “This isn’t the life I wanted,” Colin said quietly. “I wanted to help people.”

  “I believe that,” I said.

  Hearing me say it, Colin seemed to relax. His arm dropped, and the gun pointed down at the sand. Underneath everything, neither of us had become better men in almost a decade of trying. But now we’d done what alcoholics had done since booze was first distilled—shared our story of failure—and maybe that was all that mattered.

  Confronted with any kind of bad luck, Terry used to joke: I had a good run, boys, but apparently the jig is up. We always laughed, but it wasn’t a joke. In our hearts, we knew we were fools for believing we could ever change who we were.

  “I could use a cup of coffee,” I said. “Can we go somewhere they have coffee?”

  I didn’t like the way Colin was holding that gun. His grasp seemed a little too determined, like he needed the gun for something.

  “You ever clean up that mess in Santa Ana?” Colin asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The beating that propelled you into A.A. on wings of glory?” he said. “Your fifteen minutes of fame?”

  “I got sober,” I said.

  Colin laughed. “You didn’t clean it up, did you?” He tossed my ten thousand dollars back at me. He was still holding the gun a little too lovingly. “Get away from me,” he said.

  I held my ground. “I can help you.”

  I have a sixth sense for trouble. Mostly, but not always, because I’m the one who causes it. The beach around us was potent with each of our sins. I swear that the gray, churned-up sand wished that it could swallow us and pretend that neither of our stupid lives had ever happened. I could feel those cops, too, on the other end of the beach ready to finish our conversation. It was time.

  “It cracks me up,” Colin said, moving his finger inside the trigger guard, starting to move the gun up. “You can’t figure out why Terry died.”

  “Why don’t you clue me in?” I said.

  “There comes a point where there’s nothing left to do. You just have to let it—”

  There must have been a great end to that sentence. Colin probably figured it would be the last thing he ever said.

  But: when they told me to study, I skipped school. When they told me to stay out of trouble, I sought it out. And when they told me how a good cop should behave, I did exactly the opposite. Maybe that was my special disease. I wasn’t good at acceptance in any form. And so, before Colin could point his gun at his own head, I scrambled forward the several feet between us and slammed my fist as hard into his face as I possibly could.

  THE FIRST TIME I TRIED to reach Crash was right after putting Emma into MP’s arms.

  We’d been taken to the police station on Forest Avenue, where Clancy and Cardenas and DEA agents and attorneys of different varieties mostly looked us over because they had no idea what questions to ask. Colin was in a world of shit, and what had happened on the beach was only a small part of it. Betsy came by and then Manny came by and then Wade called MP. Which was the thing that made the biggest difference to me, because I knew as soon as I saw her that she could help Emma like no one else could. I cried when I realized that, which must have further confused the shit out of my various interrogators. And so right after Manny and Betsy convinced the cops that I could leave for a while with Wade, I convinced the cops that Emma could leave for a while with MP. After that, I started to breathe again, and I called my daughter. But she didn’t answer.

  Fifteen minutes later, I called her again. And then again five minutes after that. Except when she’d been out of the country with her mother, she’d never taken longer than a half hour to return my calls, not since I’d given her a cell phone three years ago. One time Jean had made me sit her down and tell her not to text-message me from the classroom. The absence of her response was like a gaping bloody hole in my chest. Yeah, sure, maybe she was in the dentist’s chair or backpacking in the Sierras, maybe she was taking a practice test for the SAT, but I more or less knew that my daughter was putting a wall between me and her life, and that was about the worst thing I could imagine.

  Troy drove my truck and I rode shotgun while Wade leaned forward from the backseat. Wade kept his hand on my shoulder as we drove south. If someone had brought the Preamble, we could have held an A.A. meeting. They took me to dinner at the Penguin because it was the next right thing they knew to do.

  The Penguin was an unremarkable, ver
y small breakfasty joint that had been Crash’s favorite restaurant right after my divorce from Jean. One morning when she was about five, we ordered pancakes. Crash started crying because they weren’t silver-dollar pancakes, the kind Jean made. Too many things had changed too quickly. I grabbed a coffee mug and started punching small pancakes out of the larger ones. There you go, sweetheart, silver-dollar pancakes. She stopped crying. At that moment I was the greatest designer in the world.

  If Wade had known the same daughter wasn’t returning my calls, he would have taken us somewhere else. Eating turned out to be a good move, though. As we sat down, Yegua called to say that my house was being taken apart by the cops—Cardenas and Clancy were having a hard time letting go. I wasn’t worried that they would find anything. Since I’d been in business with the totally scrupulous Jeep Mooney, she hadn’t even let me cheat on my taxes.

  Unfortunately, Wade and Troy had more on their minds than feeding me. Wade thought it would be good if I went ahead and took Troy’s fifth step, right then and there.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I said.

  “You told him you would do it,” Wade said. “Frankly, I think it’s a good idea.”

  “Frankly?” I said. “Stop acting like some kind of professional A.A. Can’t I just this one time take a break?”

  “No breaks,” Wade said. “You’re not the patient here today.”

  I studied Wade. He nodded like an old-timer—like he was not only wiser than me but more humble about it.

  “I’m not judging you,” he said. “I’m just being your friend. If my life were at stake, you wouldn’t cut me an inch of fucking slack. I love you, Randy.”

  Wade started to tear up and, goddammit, so did I.

  “I cut Terry too much slack,” I said. “I should have never let him out of my sight.” I was thinking about Mutt Kelly too. He could have been sitting at this table with us. But I wasn’t ready to talk about that yet. Some wounds you have to let fester for a while.

  “Don’t go bogarting all the blame for Terry,” Wade said. “Because the wind’s blowing through my guts right now, too.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Okay.”

  I looked up to see Emma standing outside the restaurant, with her face up between the big letters P and E painted on the window. My heart leaped to see her, but then it did a backflip when I saw MP standing beside her. I was up and out of my seat and out the door before you could say “daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition.”

  Without thinking about it, I threw my arms around MP. But then, wondering if that was kind of selfish, I grabbed Emma and pulled her into the bear hug, too. Maybe it looked like I was going to start crying again, because MP said, “I know, sweetheart, I know.”

  I held on to MP, but I didn’t know what to say to her. I had something to say to Emma, though. “I’m sorry I didn’t take better care of you.”

  “No worries,” Emma said. “I’m going to train you. After MP gets done training me.”

  MP smiled cautiously. “You and I are going to talk. But maybe not today.”

  “Today,” I said, “you’ve got your hands full.”

  When I got back to the table, I checked my phone. Crash still hadn’t called me back. I looked at Troy. “Let’s do it.”

  When I did my own fifth step with Terry, I was as insane as I’ve ever been in my life. Six months of not drinking will do that to you. We shared a pizza at a mall in Laguna Niguel in the late afternoon. He told me he needed to do some shopping before we got down to reading my inventory. He’d been invited to a charity ball by a vascular surgeon he was dating, and he wanted a new tuxedo shirt. I said no problem.

  Two hours and four malls later, we hadn’t found the right shirt. Terry was the kind of guy who was fastidious about grooming and clothes. The ruffles on this shirt were too big. The collar on this one was too spread. “Will you look at those cuffs?” he said. “That can’t be right.” He asked my opinion on each shirt, and I said something like “Looks great to me,” but mostly, he wasn’t listening. I made up my mind to walk out six or seven times, take the fucking bus back to Laguna if I had to, I didn’t want to do this fucking inventory in the first place, before he finally found a shirt at Barneys in South Coast Plaza. It looked a lot like the first shirt we’d seen at Saks in Laguna Niguel.

  But as we drove back toward Laguna—he had told me we would do the fifth step in his living room—he started asking me specific questions about my drinking. How bad was it? Had it always been bad? Did I think it would maybe ever get good again? As much as he hadn’t been paying attention to me for the last three hours, suddenly, his attention was absolute. I have never been listened to so completely or well. Just after we passed Jeffrey Road in Irvine, he asked me point-blank whether I was an alcoholic.

  “Let’s just clear that up,” Terry said, “before we do anything else. Make sure the foundation is solid.”

  I could show you the pavement his Cadillac was driving over. I remember the exact spot.

  “I mean, really,” Terry said. “Are you an alcoholic? Are you powerless over alcohol?”

  The most naked question anyone had ever asked me, and I felt like I had to tell the truth.

  “I mean, I’ve got problems with alcohol,” I told him, “but I don’t know if I can say that. I want to be honest with you. I need help, but I don’t know if that makes me an alcoholic.”

  Saying it, I felt like a dog on a leash. Something was holding me back, but I had no idea what it was or how to unhook myself.

  Terry nodded. I still had his absolute attention. “Let me put it another way,” he said. “Is there anyone on this whole planet who has a better life when you don’t put alcohol into your body?”

  It took under a second to make the list: Jean. Betsy. Manny. Who was I kidding? The citizens of Santa Ana. The citizens of California. Cops everywhere …

  “It’s a long list,” I said.

  “More than one?” Terry said. “Name for me just one.”

  “Crash,” I said. “Crash would have a better life if I didn’t put alcohol into my body.”

  “Crash?” Terry said.

  “My daughter, Crash,” I said. “Alison.”

  He nodded again. It felt like my life was hanging in the balance.

  “You’re an alcoholic,” Terry said. He turned and held my eyes. “You don’t ever have to wonder about that again.”

  From that moment, I never did.

  I let Troy drive us toward Aliso Beach. Until today I could count on two fingers the men I had allowed to drive me anywhere in any vehicle during my adult life: one of them was dead of an overdose, and the other was Manny.

  Troy looked skeptical as I instructed him to pull off PCH into the neighborhood above Victoria Beach. He parked in a space where we might be able to see a sliver of sunset. Where real estate was this precious, the houses were even tighter than the rest of Laguna.

  “We need to pray first.” I got out of the truck to look for someplace to kneel. There was a wooden bench above the beach access. Terry and I had prayed beside his couch, but a bench would work just as well.

  Troy hesitated at the curb. “We’re on the street.”

  “First of all,” I said, “nobody gives a shit what we’re doing. Second, do you think praying is the weirdest thing anyone’s done on this bench?”

  Troy slowly got to his knees. We said the Serenity Prayer together, the way Terry and I had, and then I asked God to help us grow toward Him, to become better members of A.A., and to become better friends. I said this last part because Terry had said it with me.

  Troy quickly got back into my truck. He had about fifteen pages in front of him: laser-printed, infinitely less dog-eared and more orderly than my own. He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Okay,” I said. “Start reading.”

  By the time Terry had driven me back from South Coast Plaza, the air in Laguna was cool and clear. A good afternoon to doze near the beach but not a good afternoon to su
nbathe.

  Then we got down to business, Terry sitting in a rocking chair and me sitting on his couch. It must have been the same old shit. I’ve heard a few fifth steps since, and nobody reinvents the alcoholic wheel. Every so often there’s a guy who starred in gay porn movies, or guarded the president of a South American country, but usually it’s the same litany of resentments and rationalizations and fears. He did this to me and therefore I can’t have that. She said that to me and therefore I feel this. Dad lied. Mom left. We twist our lives into the shape of our anger.

  Terry asked questions to make sure he understood. This was your first girlfriend? How old were you? Had Jean filed the papers yet? For the most part, though, he nodded and said, “There you go again, clamoring for justice.”

  Which was funny, because I was a cop, but it was also true: I was always looking for some wrong to be righted. It had been that way since before I could talk.

  Clamoring for justice again, Randy? Is that it?

  When I shared the shameful parts of my sexual inventory, Terry sometimes shared an incident of his own or a dark thought he still entertained.

  I came into the deal thinking I was the biggest scumbag in the world. I left thinking maybe Terry was.

  But I felt better.

  Troy had lied, cheated, stolen. He didn’t like the world the way he’d found it, so he’d tried to bend it to his will. He hated his parents for not helping him with this project. For the same reason, he hated every woman who’d loved him.

  Someone had once described it to me as driving a car with concrete tires and insisting that the world be paved with rubber.

  Troy’s sexual inventory was pretty bland. He’d slept with a half-dozen women, the kind of sweet girls who get mixed up with idiots like Troy. He was their project. I told him about Jean Trask, how I was her project.