Now thanks to Beatriz I had the very manual Olympia, olive green and solid as a tank, that he’d used to compose South of No North and parts of Factotum. Off the meds, my fingers flew on the keyboard, just like in the old days when I’d had to knock a column out in an hour. The writing sailed along so smoothly I felt like a plagiarist or James Taylor composing “Fire and Rain.” The keys struck faintly through the old ribbon just dark enough for a first draft. It could not hurt that the fingerprints of an uncompromising wino poet were somewhere under my own.
The thought of a self-help book fulfilled me. It was true self-help, especially if it could sell. I conceived it, as philosophy is divided, in five sections: beauty, ethics, logic, metaphysics, and epistemology, with a side trip into eschatology, the study of last things, like your Chinese wife walking away from you down Stinson beach hand in hand with the vice president of a watch company. Since most people who read self-help seek a substitute for religion, the emphasis would be on ethics. Within metaphysics I planned to discuss laughter, which for many of us takes the place of love. It was the best, anyway that I could do, and it was Shelly’s ambergris, too, his miniature civilization rising above the merciless flood plains, plagues, and invasions of tragedy, his sweet smokestacks and hillbilly crushes and hilarious trees. What was it Kierkegaard said? The more one suffers, the more one has a sense for the comic. Love is no good either unless you’ve been through the wringer.
I should’ve been outlining, but found myself absorbed in the chapter on beauty. Beauty it seemed to me was the real flypaper of destruction. Beauty most of the time was an illusion, a deception, an invitation to a maelstrom. It was Sofia Fouquet believing that art would save her, or that lovely tropical island where I was hospitalized after being stung by six jellyfish. It was the alluring and duplicitous military strategist Alcibiades who “profaned the Eleusinian Mysteries” and eventually led his own Athenians to their downfall. It was sweet-scented Marvelle sitting on a blanket surrounded by rioting estrus-crazed orangutans.
Sweets slept at my feet, radiating remedial waves and cracking powerful eye-watering farts, his paws flipping in a chase dream. After a while he lifted his big sleepy head and said to me: Shelly’s coming up the drive.
What’s he doing here? I asked.
Not feeling well.
Sick?
Mother problems.
I got up and saw his truck through my window. “Shelly baby,” I declared walking down the stairs to greet him. “How did you find me?”
“You told me where you lived.”
“Fair enough. Come on in.”
He followed me up the steps into my 1970s-themed cabin with its faded braided hippie rugs and four-pound black rotary telephone. “Who’s the dog?”
“That’s Sweets, the camp mutt. He won’t bite. Everything all right?” I asked. “You don’t look so good.”
His head bobbled, his mouth turned down. “I’m okay.”
“Keep thinking about that great day last week. Coffee?”
“Sure.”
Taking the wing chair, he cast a wary glance at my typewriter in the kitchen. “You find a job yet?” he asked glumly. There was a hole in his shoe, I noted, as he dandled his foot up and down on his knee.
“Nah. Decided to write a bestseller instead.”
“What bestseller?”
I filled the carafe and measured coffee. “Sex and Murder Self-Help.”
“Oh, that.” He nodded, knowing that I had no chance at success. A sparrow, seeing the reflection of the orange tree in my front window, flew with a sickening thump into the glass and dropped.
“Jesus,” said Shelly, going to the window and peering down to examine the little fellow stunned on the grass below. “Poor bugger wasn’t wearing his helmet.”
“He’ll be all right,” I said. “They always hit claws first.”
It disturbed me that I had shattered the ceiling lamp in my kitchen. I couldn’t remember how or when it had happened. There was still some glass on the floor and I swept it up. Sweets stared at Shelly, his tail still.
Shelly was still looking out the window, his back to me, hands in pockets, when I approached with his mug. “Thanks,” he said, wringing out a smile. He smelled faintly of bus depot and cheddar cheese.
I took a seat on the couch. The coffee scalded my mouth. Sweets came over and began to whisk his tail. “I’m writing a chapter on beauty,” I said.
He sat down across from me. “Hmm.”
“I’ve always wondered why people who chase after beauty end up jumping out the window or putting their head in the oven. Beauty’s the opposite of happiness. I can count all the beautiful things that ever made me happy and fit them inside a Cheerio.”
He nodded, distracted, blew on his mug. Whatever he drank, hot, sweet, cold, went down quickly in nervous gulps.
“You’re a bit of a beauty chaser, it seems to me,” I said.
He cracked a yellow grin. “I like sex if that’s what you mean.”
“I don’t mean Bambi Woods or the whores in Tijuana, babe,” I elaborated. “I mean your music. Your ideals. Coco Debbie. Your quixotic quest for God. Oh, and Marvelle, of course. You ready to go up this week and see her?”
He tried to laugh but coughed instead. “Can’t,” he said. His eyes began to shine then and he tried to blink it away. He massaged the bridge of his nose for a good thirty seconds before he spoke. “I didn’t want to tell you this, but my mom is sick.”
Sweets got up and trotted over to Shelly. Shelly patted him on the head. Sweets wagged his tail.
“Oh?” I said.
“Cancer,” he said.
“What kind of cancer?”
“I don’t know. It can’t be too serious,” he added quickly. “I don’t think.” He laughed, the incongruous laugh. “She won’t die, that’s for sure. All my family lives forever. They’re like cockroaches.” He spurt a puff of dry air, rolling his gaze about. “But I have to go back.”
“To Alabama?”
He set his coffee in the window ledge. “Yeah.”
He wanted to say something else, I saw, perhaps ask me a question, perhaps, “Will you come with me?” But he sealed his lips instead and stood.
“Well, I’d better go,” he said. “Just wanted to let you know I won’t be around for a while.” He showed the broken forest of teeth, took a quick nervous gulp of empty mug and set it back down.
Shuffling to the door, he walked as if he’d been shot. I clapped his back. We never touched except for high fives. He was more solid than I recalled, downright heavy in the shoulders.
“I don’t know when I’ll be back,” he said, with a doubtful glance over his shoulder.
I stood at the door. “Well, do what you need to do. I’ll take care of the nags for you.”
“I don’t know what I’ll do about my business. I’ve never left it longer than a week.”
“It’ll be all right. Japan can wait.”
“Yeah,” he said, and limped slowly down the deck stairs to his truck.
16.Tales of Scottish Mastectomy
TWO WEEKS PASSED AND I COULDN’T STOP THINKING ABOUT Shelly and his mother. One Tuesday I cruised by his house, Sweets the butterscotch brute perched on the passenger seat next to me. It didn’t look as if Shelly was home, and his truck was not in the driveway.
He in there, Sweets?
Don’t think so.
How can you tell?
All that turmoil is pretty easy to pick up. He’s as messed up as you.
You think so?
Birds of a feather.
What do you want to do?
Let’s go to the beach. I feel like frolicking in the waves. You don’t have a Frisbee, do you?
I can pick one up. Need to get a Racing Form and a couple of beers too.
But the minute I pulled onto the freeway I was overcome with pictures of Donny and messages I could not decipher.
Head full of static, I took the next exit, turned down the ramp, felt suddenly prescien
t. And then I knew why. To the right was a Coco’s. It was the Coco’s. It was also Tuesday, and I knew that there was a waitress inside named Deborah who might be wondering where Shelly had gone, and just once I decided I’d like to meet one of his mystery flames. Except for some raw bok choy and the occasional handful of cashews, I had forgotten to eat for several days and my pants were sliding down my hips. I pulled into the lot.
Hope you don’t mind if I drop in here for a few minutes.
Sweets looked away.
It’s Tuesday. I wonder if Shelly is in there.
He’s in Alabama.
How do you know?
That’s what you said.
You never know with Shell. It’s not unusual for him to announce one thing when he intends another, just to clear himself some space.
Okay, so maybe he’s in there. Bring me something to eat, a piece of fish or some French fries.
Coco’s was slow, the limbo lull between lunch and dinner. My eyes scanned the restaurant for Shelly. There were a few oldsters killing time over coffee and a couple of even slower-moving young lovers in the corner, but no Shelly. I tried to imagine where Shelly would sit. That would depend, of course, on who Deborah was. There were three waitresses on duty, none I could rule out. I took a booth by the window.
Two ladies in the next booth over were having a discussion about mastectomy. The larger one, in a Scottish brogue loud enough for the whole restaurant to hear, bellowed: “On me way home from me first fittin’ I’ve a new bosom there and I’m proud of it, but a police pulls me over, see. Well, I’ve put on muh seat belt — that was when they first passed the law, see — but he’s starin’ in at me like I’ve got three eyes. No one’s ever looked at me quite like that before, Viv. I thought for a minute he fancied me. Well, he leaves me finally with a warnin’ only. I was only five over the limit, see, and I think, well, I’ve blagged me way out of it. Only when he’s gone do I look over and notice that me new tit is flung back over me shoulder!”
The ladies howled. The one named Viv appreciatively clanked her dish with a fork.
“Later that year I gets a newer model,” she continued, “a bit more adherin’, ye might say, and I’m out golfin’ wi’ me mucker, Emma, and I takes a mighty swing, and the whole business cooms flyin’ out o’ me blouse and lands out o’ sight in the weeds. Well, Viv, we’re down there lookin’ about for the damn thing, see, and along come some old duffers to help. What are ye lookin’ for? Well, says me mucker, she’s lost her diddy. Oh, now shut up can ye a minute, Emma? I almost clubbed ’er, I did.”
The ladies were screeching now, crying, slapping the table.
“It was that same year this weegie veterinary bloke I brings me dog to has this mutt and when I bend over to pet ’im he snatches away muh falsie, yanks it right out o’ me brar and begins to shake it about. The bloody vet is in hysterics. It might be the fooniest thing he’s ever seen. The man’s a dobber, a bit of a boob ’imself, see? Gimme back me tit, ya daft beast, I says to him. I finally wrest it from him, but he’s put teeth marks all in it, worse than me first ’usband. That was me third boob of the year, Viv. But I’ll tell ye, only a month later, I’m in with me dog again, who snatches off the vet’s hairpiece and scarpers off wi’ it, shaking it about — ooh, well I never saw such a foony sight.”
A waitress was standing above me, her notepad raised. She looked to be in her late thirties. She had haughty eyelids, pale irises. She was firm-jawed, straight-shouldered, masculine in bearing. Despite the amusing tales of Scottish mastectomy, her face was sad. Over the years I had come to appreciate sad people. The sad don’t try to hustle you. They don’t put on airs. Their feet are squarely on the ground. Sad people know the great secret of life, that it’s not going to work out as you’d hoped. I noted there was no wedding ring. Her name tag read: RENEE.
“Good morning,” Renee said. She had a subdued way of presenting herself. Subdued waitresses were rare in my experience. Her eyes were also subdued, perhaps Slavic eyes. I had had a Slavic girlfriend once who was very cruel to me and I still missed her.
She was also faintly familiar, but I could not place her. “Good morning,” I returned.
“Are you ready to order?” she said.
I said, “Is there a waitress named Deborah employed here?”
Renee scrunched her brow. She wore bangs that shivered like Christmas tree tinsel. Her nose was not quite straight. She had that quick but lazy-tongued way of talking typical of southern Californians. “We had a Debbie, oh, I don’t know, a year or so ago, but she only worked here for like three or four weeks. No one called her Deborah.”
“You’ve been here a while.”
“Two years.” She blew upward out the side of her mouth and shivered the tinsel bangs.
“Two years is a long while.”
She rolled her eyes. “Tell me about it.”
“You didn’t happen to go to Hoover High School?”
“How did you know that?”
“Lucky guess.”
“Did you go to Hoover?”
“No, I went to Torrey Pines. We always said that Hoover sucked.”
Her bangs quivered. She studied me, tight lipped, trying to make a judgment about me. Her thoughts were bitter clear with the usual clutter of unspoken questions: Is he worth something or is he a crackpot? Is he giving or taking? Do high schools twenty miles apart in a big city truly count as common ground? And why does he look like a mangy penguin?
“Yes, I’ve heard all the Hoover jokes,” she said. “We never won State because nature abhors a vacuum. It wasn’t easy being a girl from Hoover.”
“Well, you can console yourself with the fact that we never even had a stadium. We had to play all our games at San Dieguito.”
She smiled at me, holding me in her sad gaze for a moment. Perhaps it was the sadness that seemed so familiar.
“I realize you’re busy,” I said. “I’ll take the cod with coleslaw and fries. Coffee.” I handed her the menu. “And a little bag for my dog.”
She had a boyish backside that barely moved as she walked away. Maybe this was the girl that Shelly liked, right age, smart, unhappy, aloof, a more practical version of Marvelle, the kind of crush he could contemplate and make declarations about and encounter physically on a regular basis (kind of like a courtship) without obligation. He’d changed her name for storytelling purposes. Well, I had nothing but empathy for him. He wanted someone pleasant and compatible to share his life with and it wasn’t going to happen. Sweets watched me intently from the truck window. The ladies behind me had paid their bill and were gone.
17.Bee-doo Woman from Another Dimension, Possibly Hell
FOR WEEKS AS I RAN OUT OF MONEY AND HAD TO SUSPEND MY excursions to Foreign Book (the legal sports betting sites all over Mexico, now called Caliente Sportsbook) and my Tijuana cathouse forays and worked on my self-help book with Sweets healing my mind, I continued to hear nothing from Shelly. I thought he might call or write, just to give me an update or perhaps ask me to send along items he might’ve forgotten or that he couldn’t get in Bay Minette, hot Mexican peanuts or a secondhand pair of corduroys or a can of 1958 California hair pomade. I was curious what the record market was like in the small-town South. Lots of Elvis, I imagined. Too bad they’d burned all that Beatles memorabilia after John’s big flub about the Beatles being more popular than Jesus.
One day on Del Mar Heights I saw Shelly pulling out of an Arco station, no doubt, for the scorch marks up the side, it was Shelly’s truck. I was about to turn around until I saw he had company, an awkward figure with a large head who, the stiff way it was leaned against the window, looked like a mannequin. Some people drove in the diamond lanes with dummies for passengers. Others I suppose were so lonely that their inflatable dates accompanied them wherever they went. I wondered why Shelly hadn’t called or stopped by. The cab in which he sat crackled with dissonance, and it wasn’t heavy metal or Stravinsky on the radio. I resisted the temptation to follow.
A couple of days later, still no word, I stopped by his house to check in on him. Sweets stayed in the truck. I didn’t want him in a house where pets had been killed. It didn’t feel right pulling that wooden knob at the end of the string that opened the clumsy latch on the other side of the gate. As I came down the walkway I heard muffled conversation, then a burst of music. To my right, the door that opened into the side of the garage was ajar. I peered in and saw the steel cage where his parents had imprisoned him for days at a time. Why would you keep the cage? I wondered. Why wouldn’t you sell or give away the cage?
The dog next door was yapping frantically and throwing itself against the fence. I stood still for a moment, listening to Shelly’s voice. “You said that Lily was your friend . . .”
The response was a muddle. The dog yapped and hurled itself into the fence, then yelped as its owner cursed and hauled it away.
Well, Shelly is home anyway, I thought. Burglars wouldn’t be shouting and playing music. Shelly had a friend in there, I thought, a love interest, that was all, one of those special friends I never got to meet.
Still, he didn’t have to let me in. My curiosity was strong. He was my only friend in the world and I just wanted to know about his mom and Alabama and if his business was okay. I’d leave him alone for another month if he wanted. I pulled back the screen and knocked lightly. I felt like Jem Finch standing at Boo Radley’s door. I heard footfalls, the dropping of a chain, then the door squeaked open two inches and I was aware of one eye looking down at me like a madman from a castle tower. There was something about the large misshapen head that suggested Ronald Reagan. The door promptly closed.
Spooked, I turned and headed briskly for the gate. The argument resumed. Then the door opened a second time.
“Hey, Eddie.” The voice of Shelly. The screen door creaked out. “I didn’t know it was you. That goddamn dog . . .”
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