This Wicked World

by RICHARD LANGE

  The waitresses come out of the back room in their street clothes, all ready to go to a club. One of them cracks a joke, and the others laugh. Boone takes another sip of his drink, then moves off to help Gonzalo finish cleaning up.

  2

  FAIL BETTER. BOONE WAKES UP THINKING HE’S GOING TO take this as his motto, the most he can hope for. The previous night’s dreams, more real than life a moment ago, slip away from him, and he lies in bed and listens to the birds’ simple morning songs while waiting for dawn to chase the shadows into the corners.

  He’s in the midst of putting his day in order — the meeting at Denny’s, the Laundromat, grocery shopping — when the past begins to circle like a persistent fly, demanding attention. As far as he’s concerned, it does him no good to look backward when all he’s going to do is beat himself up for the mistakes he’s made. But sometimes, despite his best efforts, he’s forced to contemplate the damage.

  This time he goes back to when he was eighteen, right out of high school, and killing time in his hometown of Oildale, California, working pickup construction jobs and running with a hard crowd of wannabe bikers and gunslingers who were always half out of their heads on something, always zinging wildly between rage and black despair. He’d put in ten hours pounding nails in the merciless Central Valley sun, then spend the night drinking and doping with Chi Chi, McMartin, Frank, and the rest, doing his best to keep up.

  Chi Chi was the ringleader. At twenty-three, he’d already served time for robbery. He lived in a trailer next to an onion field at the edge of town, where the crew gathered every evening to listen to Metallica, drink whatever beer was on sale, and smoke bowl after bowl of dirt weed, and it was he who came up with the idea to break into Tony Rubio’s cabinet shop.

  Frank had worked for Tony for a while and remembered the combination to the lock on the door of the shop. They’d go in, steal as many tools as they could carry, pawn them in Bakersfield, then drive on to Magic Mountain to ride a new roller coaster and party at a motel with some girls Chi Chi knew from East L.A.

  Boone had never stolen anything in his life, but, in a moment of drunken bravado, he volunteered for the job. Why the hell not? His mom was dying of lung cancer, his dad had split when he was a baby, and he didn’t give two shits about anything. Also, his participation would give him some cred with the gang from Chi Chi’s trailer.

  He listened closely as the scheme was laid out: he and Chi Chi would go in and steal the tools, Little Jerry would act as lookout, and Frank would be playing pool at Shooters, so he’d have an alibi if the cops questioned him later.

  The whole thing was so stupid it makes Boone wince even now. They didn’t do any planning, didn’t even bother to case the shop. The night it went down, they guzzled a twelve-pack of Pabst, parked the car by a canal, and set off through an orange grove to reach the shop, which was located in a Quonset hut next to Tony’s house.

  It was slow going beneath the trees. The stink of a nearby dairy came to them on a hot wind that rattled leaves and rearranged shadows, and Chi Chi stumbled in the dark and fell, spitting a curse.

  They paused at the edge of the grove. The shop lay twenty-five yards away, across a dirt road, and beyond that was the house. It was after midnight, and all the lights were out. The full moon, small and bright overhead, cast a graveyard pall, and a dog barked somewhere in the distance.

  Once they got Jerry settled in a spot where he could keep an eye on things, Boone and Chi Chi stepped out onto the road and sprinted for the shop. Chi Chi spun the combination into the lock, and the door creaked as it swung open. Boone’s heart tossed in his chest. He glanced over his shoulder at the house. Nothing.

  It was pitch dark in the windowless shop. Chi Chi fired up his disposable lighter and began pointing out the most valuable items. Within seconds, however, the lighter grew too hot for him to hold, and the flame died. Chi Chi let the lighter cool, then sparked it again, and Boone set about gathering as many tools as he could before Chi Chi’s thumb began to cook.

  They worked in short bursts of weak, watery light. The router and bits, the circular saw. The petty-cash box was right where Frank said it would be, in the bottom drawer of the desk. Everything went into two duffel bags they’d brought along to carry the loot.

  Boone was grinning as they stepped outside. He couldn’t believe they’d actually pulled the heist off. But then a powerful white beam scorched their eyes, and a voice shouted, “Hands on your heads, boys.”

  Turns out Tony had installed an alarm since he’d fired Frank, one that went off in the house if anyone entered the shop. He waited for them to come out, got the drop on them, then used his shotgun to herd them into the yard, where they knelt next to Jerry, who was being covered by Tony’s wife and a .45. She’d spotted him pissing in the bushes, his stream shining in the moonlight. Approaching sirens cut the night’s stillness to ribbons.

  The judge offered Boone a choice of jail or the military, so two weeks later he said good-bye to his mom and caught the bus to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. He enjoyed his four years in the service. The physical training added a thick layer of muscle to his frame, and the complex web of rules and regulations was the first real discipline he’d ever known. Even being forced to show respect for the officers, no matter what species of asshole they were, was good for him, a valuable lesson in how to hold his tongue and play the game.

  Plus, it was a hell of a lot of fun. He got to shoot powerful weapons, blow up stuff with his fellow devil dogs, and see some of the world — the Philippines, Korea, Japan. He learned a little Tagalog, a little Japanese; climbed Mount Fuji while on leave; and fell in mad, sad love with an Okinawan bar girl who called herself Sunshine.

  He also discovered that he could fight. A soft-spoken black guy in his platoon, Carl Perry, had won a few amateur bouts back in Compton, and Boone spent hours in the gym with him, training, sparring, and soaking up his knowledge of boxing. When it came to technique, Boone was a bit of a brawler. The first few times he climbed into the ring, anger welled up in him after taking a few jabs from Carl, and he charged in, swinging wildly. After a while, though, he was able to channel that anger into powerful punches that often rocked the bigger man back on his heels.

  “Damn, Jimmy,” Carl said once. “You got zero style, but when you hit somebody, dude’s gonna know it.”

  Boone returned to Oildale only once, near the end of his first year in the corps, to attend his mother’s funeral. Cancer had finally brought her down. She’d done a lousy job raising him, always more wrapped up in whatever roughneck was helping with the rent and buying her wine than in her only child, but Boone was a Marine now, and brimming with notions of honor and duty. He put on his dress blues, helped carry the casket, and tossed a white rose into the grave when the preacher said it was time.

  Afterward, he stopped by Shooters for a drink. Chi Chi was in the midst of a two-year bit for the cabinet-shop burglary, but Little Jerry was there, having got off with probation, and so were McMartin, Frank, and a couple others from the old gang. It started out fine. They bought Boone shots and told him again and again how sorry they were to hear about his mom’s passing. A few hours of beer and tequila took their toll, however, and eventually Frank asked Boone if he wanted to hot rail some speed, and Jerry said he was a fucking stooge for choosing the military over prison.

  Boone dropped Jerry with a short sharp right to the solar plexus and left him puking Cuervo on the floor of the bar as he walked out to his truck. He filled his tank, spit out the window, and drove all the way back to Pendleton without stopping.

  ENOUGH, BOONE THINKS. He rolls out of bed and pulls on cut-off sweatpants and a T-shirt and sets out for a run in the hills. He has a tough route and an easy one, and today he does the tough one, which is five miles round-trip and takes him up a fire road that gives him a tour-bus view of the Hollywood sign, hanging by its fingertips from a dusty, weedy hillside.

  He hops in the shower when he gets back and is in the process of d
rying off when there’s a knock at the front door. Stepping into the living room with a towel wrapped around his waist, he shouts, “Who is it?”

  “It’s just me, Amy Vitello, from apartment three.”

  The new girl. They met last week when she moved in. Boone manages the complex, eight Spanish-style bungalows set around a small palm-shaded courtyard, in exchange for reduced rent — another deal arranged by his lawyer. It’s easy duty: watering the grass, unclogging sinks, collecting checks on the first of the month.

  “Gimme a sec,” he says.

  Boone steps into a pair of jeans and buttons up a clean shirt, something off a hanger. Wiping the fog from the bathroom mirror with the edge of his hand, he smoothes his close-cropped black hair and checks his nostrils and the corners of his eyes. She’s pretty, this Amy. He’s not looking for a girlfriend, has nothing to offer one, but she’s pretty.

  “Sorry for bugging you so early,” Amy says when he opens the door, “but I heard the shower running.”

  “Not a problem. What’s up?”

  “One of my windows won’t close. It’s jammed or something, and I’ve got to go to work.”

  “Let’s check it out,” Boone says.

  He follows her across the courtyard. She’s about five-five with long, dark hair pulled into a ponytail, very professional this morning in gray pinstriped slacks and a white blouse. He likes that she has some curves, a real figure. It sets her apart from the flocks of skinny minnies he sees in the bar every night.

  “Don’t look,” she says over her shoulder as they walk into her place. “I’m still getting settled.” Boxes are stacked everywhere, and a partially assembled wall unit from Ikea takes up most of the living room floor.

  The problem window is in the bedroom, which is a little more pulled together. The queen-size bed is covered with an orange spread, and Amy’s clothes are hung neatly in the closet. Boone tugs on the window, wiggles it, but it won’t budge.

  “These old double-hung things have a tensioned wire in the frame that gets tangled sometimes,” he says. “I’ll have to remove the sash to find out what’s going on.”

  Amy pulls back her sleeve to glance at her watch and says, “I’m running superlate.”

  “Go ahead and split,” Boone says. “I’ve got a key, and as soon as I get back from a meeting I have this morning, I’ll sort it out.”

  “Is it okay to leave the window open until then?” Amy asks.

  Boone jerks his thumb toward the front door and says, “Have you met Mrs. Hu, in number five?”

  “The little old lady who peeks through the curtains every time I pass by?”

  “She keeps her hearing aid cranked to where she picks up sounds only dogs can hear and carries a .38 in the pocket of her housecoat. You don’t have to worry.”

  Amy has a cute laugh that seems like it might get away from her once in a while. It makes Boone smile.

  He waits on the porch while she gathers her purse and jacket and a canvas shoulder bag stuffed with books and papers.

  “Thanks for your help,” she says as she locks the door.

  “I’m just glad it was something I know how to fix. Makes me seem all manly and stuff.”

  She turns to look at him with a smirk in her green eyes. “And that’s important, right?”

  “Isn’t it?” Boone replies. “I can never remember.”

  He starts back across the courtyard as Amy heads down the walkway to the street.

  “Have a nice day,” he calls after her, wishing instantly that he’d come up with something slicker.

  “You too,” she replies.

  BOONE DRIVES INTO Gower Gulch a little before eight. The corner of Sunset and Gower got its name in the 1920s, when extras hoping to be cast in the silent Westerns being shot at nearby studios would gather there. In a nod to this, the shopping center that now occupies the space has been styled to look like an old frontier town, albeit a frontier town consisting of a sushi bar, a Starbucks, and a Walgreens. The Denny’s takes up a corner of the parking lot.

  Robo is wedged into a booth, talking to a waitress. “There’s my homeboy now,” he says when he sees Boone enter the restaurant. “Come on over here, dog.”

  The security-guard uniform Robo is wearing is too small for him, and his shirt is missing a button. He asks Boone if he wants coffee and orders it from the waitress when he says yes.

  “You look good, man,” he says. “I like that coat. That’s definitely something a cop would wear.”

  “I bought it for job interviews,” Boone says. “Haven’t used it yet.” He leans across the table to flick the badge on Robo’s chest. “What are you supposed to be?”

  “Don’t give me no shit. I been working since you last saw me. I go from the Tick Tock to a prop house over here and guard it all night.”

  “Two jobs, huh?”

  “Two? More like five or six. I do yards with my cousin, hang drywall. Man, I got babies to feed. Check it out.” He struggles to pull his wallet from his back pocket, opens it, and flips through the photos there. “Maria is six, Junior is five, George is three, and Rosalie, the baby, is about a year. There’s something wrong with her hips. We got medical bills up the ass. And George, see how he’s cross-eyed?” — he points with a stubby finger —“He’s gonna need an operation to fix that, special glasses. I’ll tell you, bro, when I’m not sleeping, I’m working. That’s just how it is.”

  The waitress delivers Boone’s coffee. He stirs in some sugar.

  “What about you?” Robo asks. “You got kids?”

  “No,” Boone says, tapping the spoon on the rim of his cup. “No kids.”

  THREE MONTHS AFTER Boone got out of the Marines he met Lila in a bar in Pacific Beach. Lila, oh, Lila. Blond hair, big fake titties, and a rich daddy — a former jarhead’s wet dream. Boone moved into her oceanfront condo two days after they hooked up for the first time, in the backseat of her Beamer. A couple of weeks of drinking and fucking convinced them that what they had was something real, and they drove to Vegas and got hitched on the sly.

  Rich daddy wasn’t happy when he found out about the marriage. He called Boone into the office of his construction company, offered him five grand to get lost, said he respected Boone for turning him down, then asked, “How about ten?”

  “What’s your problem with me?” Boone wanted to know.

  “Truthfully?” rich daddy said. “You’re a good-for-nothing Okie, and I don’t want your blood mixing with mine.”

  He cut off Lila’s allowance, had them evicted from the condo. Fine. They’d make it on their own. Boone’s job installing car stereos paid enough to rent a creaky one-bedroom apartment on the edge of downtown, and Lila signed up with a temp agency, though she never seemed to get any assignments.

  Boone looked forward to Friday nights when they’d splurge on a couple of steaks, maybe invite some friends over to drink beer and listen to music. It wasn’t a glamorous life, but they were paying their bills and having a few laughs. Lila got depressed at times, but a tall Jack and Coke usually snapped her out of it.

  Then Boone came home one day and found her sprawled on the bed, weeping desolately. She’d just learned that she was pregnant. They’d talked about kids but had decided to wait until buying Huggies wouldn’t mean missing a meal, so Boone was a little taken aback. Nonetheless, he tried to say the right things, telling Lila that babies come when they want to, that he could get another day at the shop, and that everything would be just fine. As he spoke, it was wild, but he actually began to believe his reassurances, and a strange, unexpected joy swelled inside him.

  Lila, though, laughed through her tears and said, “Are you crazy? No way I’m having this baby.” Boone remembered rich daddy’s comment about his blood and felt like he’d been sucker punched.

  Things changed after the abortion, or maybe they snapped into focus for the first time. Lila decided she needed to spend more time with her friends, so most nights Boone came home to an empty apartment, threw something in the microw
ave for dinner, and fell asleep in front of the TV, waking when Lila stumbled in at three or four in the morning. Whenever he wanted to do something with her, she was always too tired. On his days off he went to movies by himself or rode his bicycle to the border and back.

  He was as lonely as he’d ever been. His marriage was falling apart, and he didn’t know how to stop it. The one time he tried to talk to Lila about the chasm that had opened between them, she brushed him off, saying, “Is it really that serious?” and on a couple of occasions he caught her whispering to rich daddy on the phone.

  Then one day she announced that she was going on a family trip to Maui, and Boone wasn’t invited. He left for work that morning with a knot in his stomach and the feeling that if he spoke, he’d vomit. Their coldness, father’s and daughter’s, shocked him. They were the kind of people he’d always thought were better than that.

  When he got home that evening, all of Lila’s stuff was gone. She’d left him the thrift-store furniture, a note saying she was sorry, and a five-hundred-dollar check signed by rich daddy, which Boone tore to bits and flushed down the toilet. The divorce papers showed up a week later.

  The marriage had been a stupid mistake, and he’d thought he was done making stupid mistakes after leaving Oildale. Suddenly unsure of his instincts, Boone proceeded cautiously for a long time afterward. Stripping his life to the bone, he retreated into routine, planning his days down to the minute.

  During the week there was plenty to do, with work and keeping the apartment squared away, but the weekends were a little scarier, all that time to fill. He joined a kickboxing gym, pumped iron, and ran until his legs wouldn’t carry him any farther. The idea was to keep moving forward, no matter what, like a locomotive on its track. On a good night he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.

  ROBO SCRATCHES HIS massive forearm. There’s a faded tattoo there of two masks, comedy and tragedy, and the words “Smile now, cry later.” Cholo stuff. Boone sips his coffee and fiddles with a jelly packet.