The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

by Charlie Huston

  —Anyway, it wasn't a drug deal.

  —No? Stocks then? Commodities futures?

  —I don't know. I mean, he does deal some stuff. Weed and ecstasy mostly. Works craft services and deals to the P.A.s and the extras. That knife, he was on set for a John Woo movie, one of the prop guys traded the knife for a few hits of X. He loves that knife. Anyway, whatever he's up to, it's not drugs. Jaime always gets into something crazy. Usually it's something having to do with movies. I don't think so this time. But movies is what it usually is. He's going to get the rights to some Hungarian sci-fi movie. He's going to manage the movie career of a Balinese pop star who's the Madonna of Indonesia. He's going to negotiate U.S. distribution for a Canadian production company that specializes in remaking Paraguayan classics. That kind of thing. Movies. He got it from my mom.

  I slid into the interchange lane for the 10 West, thinking about L.L. and the movie game, and what it does to people.

  She pointed at the sign for the 10.

  —Where are you going?

  —Take the 10 out to the PCH and up to Malibu.

  She sat up and reached toward the wheel.

  —No, no, don't, just. Just go.

  She grabbed the wheel and shoved it to the left, sending us veering in front of a barreling SUV.

  I slapped her hand.

  —Hey! Hey!

  The SUV cut around us, horn sounding.

  She took her hand from the wheel as the exit to the 10 slipped away behind us.

  —Sorry.

  She put her face in her hands.

  —Sorry.

  She took it out and looked at me.

  —I don't want to go west right now. I don't want to go home. I want. Oh fuck.

  Tears were leaking out from under the lenses of the sunglasses.

  —Shit, Web. Shit. My dad.

  I nodded.

  —Yeah, no problem. Shit. I get it.

  I stayed with the 405, looking ahead to where it would climb through the Santa Monicas and meet the 101 on the other side.

  —I got a place to go.

  She pushed her fingers up under her sunglasses and wiped her eyes.

  —Thanks.

  I drove, thinking about families. Not my favorite pastime, but one I seem incapable of avoiding. I glanced at her from time to time, black hair pulled back, light olive skin flushed, muscles of her long neck taut as she bent to lean her head against the window, the sky lightening beyond her above the rim of the San Gabriels. And all that shit.

  I thought to distract her from her sadness, strike a chord of shared experience. You know, cheer a girl up.

  —So. Your mom's in the biz? So's my dad. Or he was. Screenwriter. What's your mom do?

  She rolled her head around, pointed the big lenses at me, rolled back against the glass.

  —She was a porn star. So I guess we both have parents who were whores.

  I drove some more. Choosing wisely, I think, not to talk anymore.

  —I suppose it was naïve of me to think you were going to take me to your place and tuck me into your bed while you slept protectively on the floor, wasn't it?

  I watched her as she flipped through Po Sin's binder of before-and-after photos from various job sites, sunglasses still over her eyes.

  —I thought this might be more romantic.

  She froze on a picture of a shotgun suicide, turned the page to a picture of the same room after it had been cleaned.

  —You could play that game with these, you know: What's the difference between the pictures?

  She flipped back and forth between the two shots, the one featuring glossy pink bits that looked almost like strange candy, and the one of a scrupulously clean livingroom stripped of odd bits and pieces. Pointing to where a sofa cushion had been removed, the shade from a lamp, a square cut from the carpet, a blank spot on the wall where a piece of needlepoint used to be.

  She closed the binder.

  —Looking in his bedroom. No mattress. This lap blanket he used to cover his feet with when he sat up at night working in bed. He'd sit on top of the covers in a robe and drape it over his bare feet, you know. That's gone. And he always, always had a handkerchief folded on the nightstand. That's not there. Just things, they tell you someone's gone. And they're not coming back.

  She put the binder back in its place on the office desk and spun around a couple times in Po Sin's chair.

  —So, Web.

  I sat on the bed.

  —So, Soledad.

  She put her feet down and stopped spinning.

  —Do we have to do it this way?

  —Which is to say?

  She got up, took off her jacket, draped it over the chair, and walked over to the bed, where I sat scooted into the corner of the room, my back against the wall.

  —Which is to say do we have to tease this out with all kinds of will we or won't we?

  She put a hand to the wall and lifted one foot and unlaced her sneaker and kicked it off.

  —I hate that shit.

  She did the same with the other shoe.

  —I mean.

  She reached under the skirt of her dress, the same black knit knee-length she'd been wearing at the Malibu house, and pushed her black leggings down, stepping first on one toe to pull her foot free, and then on the other, kicking the leggings away, her light blue panties nestled inside them.

  —I mean, can't we just fuck?

  She took hold of the waist of her dress and peeled it over her head and dropped it, standing flat-chested and braless, naked except for her sunglasses.

  —Fuck and get it over with?

  I could see part of a Quonset hut out the window behind her, a bit of sky turning blue, old-growth palm trees arching up from the streets, brown rocket trails detonating into green tufts. It was chilly in the office. Goose pimples on her stomach.

  I quickly sorted and discarded several responses, none of them delicate enough for this circumstance; a wounded and emotionally vulnerable young woman naked and throwing herself at me in my place of employ.

  Finally knowing what to say.

  —So romance isn't dead after all?

  She smiled, put her knees on the edge of the bed, edged close to me, reached out and poked the wound on my forehead.

  —Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Web.

  I winced.

  —I'm not looking at your mouth.

  She took hold of my hoodie and pulled it over my head, not bothering to unzip it.

  —Wise man.

  I watched her hands as they undid the buttons down the front of my shirt.

  —I don't know when Po Sin will be here.

  She took me by the collar of my T and pulled me forward and pushed the Mobil shirt down my arms.

  —I don't care.

  I lifted my arms and let her pull the T off.

  —And, you know, all joking aside, my balls still really hurt.

  She tossed the T over her shoulder and it landed on top of her dress.

  —I'll be gentle.

  She reached for my belt.

  So.

  She wanted to fuck. And get it over with. Who was I to say no?

  A very little later, while she was on top of me, not being gentle at all, the earth moved. It was only a small earthquake, but it made us both laugh. And, finally, I reached up and took the sunglasses off her face, and I could see her eyes, so very red from all the crying.

  And a little later after that, she had them back on.

  —He hated my smoking.

  I held the lit cigarette for her as she pulled her leggings up.

  —He smoked like a chimney when I was a kid.

  She picked up the Mobil shirt from the floor and put it on and took the smoke from me.

  —Thanks.

  She put it in her mouth and started buttoning the shirt.

  —But he stopped and was one of those classic ex-smokers. A pain in the ass.

  She found one of her shoes and sat back on the edge of the bed.
>
  —I mean, I don't even smoke that much. And when I smoke at the house I only do it on the deck or in my room.

  She put her right foot in the shoe and started lacing it up.

  —Anyway, I was there, this was during a Christmas break when I was in college, a few years back, four or five. Before I graduated and didn't know what the hell to do with a degree in art history and moved back home.

  She bent and looked for the other shoe.

  —There it is.

  She pulled it from beneath the bed and put it on.

  —So I was at home, on break, and we'd stayed up together watching It's a Wonderful Life or something, and I'd been smoking a lot because we were having some Christmas cheer together. I was standing with the door to the deck open, blowing smoke outside. After he went to bed, I stayed up to watch something else. White Christmas'? I don't know. But I cheated and snuck a cigarette inside. Didn't finish it though.

  She turned, facing me, left foot tucked under her right thigh.

  —And I was a little loaded so I forgot to put the ashtray back out on the deck. And in the morning.

  She leaned and snagged her jacket from the back of the chair and reached into an inside pocket and came out with a small journal.

  —In the morning I came down and found this.

  She opened the journal and flipped some pages and pulled out and unfolded a deeply creased sheet of notepaper.

  She handed it to me.

  FROM THE DESK OF WESTIN NYE

  WESTLINE FREIGHT FORWARDING AND TRADE

  When I was smoking (in the 1970s) I learned that when returning to a partially smoked cigarette, you should put it to your lips (before lighting it) and blow your breath out and through it—thus removing most of the foultasting residue that you would otherwise be drawing into your mouth on your first “drag” after lighting up.

  With love,

  your father

  I handed it back, and found my T on the floor and pulled it on.

  —Did you crawl into a closet and bang your head against the wall?

  She stood and went to the door to the bathroom.

  —No. I laughed. He didn't mean it to be funny. Which made it funnier. Which was kind of his style.

  She fiddled with one of the buttons on the old blue gas station shirt that hung to tops of her thighs.

  —I keep thinking there's a good laugh in his suicide somewhere. But I haven't found it yet.

  She ducked into the bathroom, the taps ran, she came out with her cigarette doused and pitched it in the overflowing wastebasket by the desk.

  —I think I need to go.

  —OK. Let me get my shit together and I'll give you a ride.

  I started looking in the blankets for my jeans and underwear.

  She shook her head.

  —No. I want to walk a little.

  I found my BVDs and pulled them on, taking particular care as I snugged them into place.

  —Pretty long walk to Malibu.

  She looked out the window, balled her dress tightly and stuffed it into one of the large outer pockets of her jacket.

  —I can catch the bus in Sherman Oaks and over the hills and out to Santa Monica. The coast bus from there. I'm not, as you may have noticed, in a hurry to be home.

  I sat with my jeans in my lap.

  —Sure, but the bus sucks.

  She shrugged.

  —I like the bus. I like to watch the sides of the road.

  I looked at the floor, trying to keep a lid on something that didn't seem to want to cooperate at that moment of exhaustion and postcoital confusion.

  —I don't like buses.

  —Don't like riding them?

  That was a tricky question.

  —No. I mean, yeah. I don't like riding them. But I also just kind of don't like them.

  —Have you always felt this hostility toward public transportation?

  —Not public transportation. I'm fine with light rail or trams. Subways. Just buses I don't like.

  —Forever?

  I thought about that. But I didn't need to, really, I knew it wasn't forever.

  —Um, no, no, not forever. I used to ride them quite a bit.

  —When you were a kid?

  —No. I mean, yeah, but.

  Words just kept occurring to me, kept finding ways to put themselves together. While I was trying to corral one bunch, another slipped out. These were the next ones.

  —Yeah, come to think of it, it is kind of a new thing. Not liking buses. Hating them, really.

  She took a step over.

  —Web, you're killing me. Are you serious? Are you trying to cheer me up? Because I hate that. If you're making this up to cheer me up I will be so fucking pissed at you.

  Again, I tried to get things under control, knowing where this conversation ended. Not wanting to go there. Ever again.

  But things, they have a way of going out of your control sometimes. Have you noticed that?

  And I kept talking.

  —Yeah. Hell yeah. I mean, no. I mean, really, I can't stand the things. Make me crazy.

  —Why?

  She folded her arms.

  —I want to know why. You better not just be trying to get me to hang around longer.

  I laughed.

  —Well, they're loud and they smell. They get in the way. And they're really kind of ugly.

  She smiled.

  I took this as encouragement and kept talking, something that's rarely gone well for me in my life.

  —And they're haunted.

  She raised her eyebrows.

  I raised a hand.

  —No, no. Really. This is so strange. I don't know. Just this thing. Kind of started. Something happened and I started not liking them.

  She laughed. Sort of.

  —Because they're haunted?

  I rubbed the spot between my eyes and squinted.

  —Yeah, OK. Um, let me think.

  —You're lying. You're so trying to sucker me.

  —No, I'm not.

  —You totally are. You're trying to think of something funny to say. You are fucking with me and you are so busted.

  I laughed again.

  —No. It's just that it's complicated and I sometimes, I don't know, forget exactly how.

  I looked up at the sky outside the window.

  A piece of it snapped off and dropped and hit me on the head.

  And it was all there again, the whole thing, back in my head, one picture, entire. No longer broken into the little fragments I liked to keep it scattered in. Fragments hidden on ghost buses cruising LA. Freighters of lost things. But not of me.

  I looked at Soledad, who'd just helped me to put it all together again.

  And I thought, How kind of her.

  —No, I got it! Yeah, huh, it's funny. You know. Because, it's not like I forgot. It's more like I think about it all the time. So I kind of forget it's there. Like white noise?

  She tilted her head.

  —Web?

  —Yeah, funny thing. Totally fucked up, but funny in a distinctly not ha-ha way.

  —Web. Hey.

  —Weird how I had to think really hard to remember the … details? Details. Yeah.

  —Are you OK?

  —Yeah, I'm fine. So I was on this bus. I was teaching. I was a teacher before. Did I tell you that? I was. My dad always wanted me to be a teacher. Well, not always, but that's a long story. So I was a teacher. And I was on a bus. With my class. Fifth grade. Ten- and eleven-year-olds. Great age for kids, I think. Because they're really coming into their own as people, but the hormones haven't gone entirely berserk yet. They're mostly still kids. So my class and two other classes a little younger are on this bus. It's a field trip. Remember those?

  —Sure.

  —Yeah. This was cool. Did you grow up in LA.? Cuz when you grow up in LA., when I was a kid anyway, you always, sooner or later, you always go up to the Griffith Observatory. The planetarium. But it had been closed for renovations for like a
year. Then it reopened. So we were going. I'd had to twist arms to make it happen. Field trips are a major production these days. So we were going. And we're riding in the bus. Lalalala. Kids talking, yelling, texting to the kid in the seat next to them. Kids in the back of the bus shoving each other and playing with toys they're not supposed to have because they start fights over them. I'm walking the aisle, talking to kids. Talking to this kid Tameka. Cute girl. She's pissed at one of her friends over this hat she's been wearing that no one else had, but now her friend is wearing the same hat and she doesn't understand how her friend could bite off her style like that. And we were talking about that. So then. Um. Crap. What happened then? Oh, yeah, man, how could I forget this part? So then, yeah, there's like a noise, like, like, like when you dent a soda can and pop it back out. But louder. There's a couple sounds like that. And someone screamed for the driver to stop. Crap, who was that? Oh, oh yeah, it was me. So I screamed for her to stop. And she did. And the kids. Some ran for the door. But I told them to get on the floor. Under their seats. And most of them did. Then I thought, Crap, we should get out of here. Or did I yell it? Anyway, I yelled at the driver to drive away. But she was on the floor, too. Aaaaand. There were sirens. And a helicopter. And it happened really fast. But pretty soon there were cops and they came on the bus and got the kids off. And they tried to get me off. But, you know, I really didn't want to leave Tameka behind? So they had to kind of, pry me loose from her. Embarrassing, kind of. And then, well, that was kind of it. Except that there was a real mess in there, in the bus. Man, I had stuff all over me. Don't know how I got those clothes clean. No, that's right, Chev threw them out. And, what happened was there was some kind of thing, some thing on the street between some guys who had a beef with each other, never found out about what. So, bullets were exchanged. Obviously some hit the bus. So. That's what hit Tameka. That's why it was such a mess in there. Aaaaanyway, that's why I guess I don't like buses. Funny, right? That I'd forget something like that? So thanks, you know, for pushing the point, really digging into me and getting me to stir all that up. Because, you know, I clearly haven't been doing enough to keep people at arm's distance and it's a good reminder to me to tell you to get the fuck out of here.

  —Web? Web, are you OK?

  I looked at her from under the bed where I'd crawled and curled into a ball.

  —GETTHEFUCKOUT!