A California Closing

by Robert Wintner

  Phillip moans.

  Steffen turns around to stretch his face in displeasure—inadvertently touching tires with Phillip, causing both to veer into wobbles and a likely crash.

  Phillip wrenches a foot free of his clip to break the fall, then wobbles the other way and wrenches the other foot free.

  Steffen emits a tiny screech.

  In unison, they save themselves by the hair of their chinny chin chins, laughing off the fall that would have made the circuit with excruciating amusement for the Big Boys.

  Mulroney grins and proceeds to the punch line—“You know, just soaking away. And this big ole wad o’ splooge pops to the surface. Like in a lava lamp. And one of the gay guys says, ‘Oh, God. Who farted?’”

  Holding cadence at seventy-eight, Mulroney expects no laugh but asks anyway, “What? You guys don’t think that’s funny?”

  Phillip breaks into downhill devil-may-care, transcending ignorance and wheelman posturing, hitting it to forty, fifty and higher, showing his tiny top gear in back that wrenches him to speed and skill outpacing anyone in the near radius.

  Mulroney falls away to the shortcut into town as Phillip and Steffen head for the bridge. He regrets losing a few of the sweetest miles, but he regains refreshing solitude. Besides, it’s massage day. “Hey, you guys take it easy!” Mulroney calls out, no hard feelings, what the hell; it’s why God put forks in roads.

  “Slanjová!” Steffen calls back.

  “Campai!” Phillip weakly adds.

  Slanjová? Campai? What is it with that femme fatale and his dominatrix? Then again, they found each other at this stage of their lives and miserable marriages. Phillip’s not a bad guy. He complains about no pussy but seems thoroughly gay. Maybe he’s not. He likes watching through windows, but that wasn’t pussy. Not really. It was a filthy rich woman entertaining herself, which is also grist for Phillip’s mill. Oh, rich people do attract followers. Maybe Phillip wants to be gay but can’t afford it and needs a sponsor. Steffen is easier to figure; he’d be a twit no matter where he stuck his dick.

  But who cares? Rarely have two individuals engendered greater indifference in a third party. Those two would rather be with each other than alone or with their wives. So what? They’re going down the road right now agreeing that Mulroney is an asshole, laughing and being happy. Mulroney cannot fathom any greater indifference no matter what, though in the big picture he wishes they didn’t know him. That way they could all think of something else.

  That’s life in the proverbial small town, though in the rarified suburbs of the central coast, nothing proverbial survives. Originality rules to the point of tedium. The Mulroneys are moving soon, and it doesn’t matter where to, because it will be far from the tyranny of tolerance. You want to be a whacked-out fuckwad tower-sniping shitball maniac pervert? Welcome home. And good riddance. Steffen and Phillip will stop for twenty bucks worth of latte frappe mocha macchiato grande two percent homo talls in medium cups just up the road, where one will be short a few bucks and the other will be short the balance. They’ll stare at the nubile girls and teen boys and cool off, reviewing the rigors of Catholic school and the sick, sick, sick situation with the priests and altar boys and nuns and so on and so forth one more time. And that’s the negative outlook Mulroney successfully avoided, until running into those two

  He’ll need to tolerate new people wherever. Some assholes are made for each other, and that’s a good thing no matter where. They keep each other busy, canceling each other out. Alone, they’re a bigger nuisance. Those two were made for each other. It’s just like some goofy kid walking onto a lot loaded with fresh cars, and the kid wants one that’s been there for months. It’s got sixty thousand on it, a few dings, worn upholstery, no floor mats, iffy skins—he has to have it. Chemistry. Kid thinks he can fix it up. So? What’s the harm? Keeps him busy.

  But those superior fuckers get Mulroney pissed off. That’s his character defect. So Flip and Steve are in love and like to ride together. They’ll find some nice bushes for a lovely communion and the world will be right. Who cares? That’s what Mulroney thinks.

  He thinks … Oh, shit. He thinks he’s not getting a massage …

  For there on the corner of 129 and Lakeview in the dirt lot that would like to be a grassy yard but can’t because of the wind and dust and trucks running over it stands Rosa Berry crying her little eyes out. Mulroney scans for bruises, contusions, abrasions, and/or breaks. He wheels in to find out how badly Juan Valdez beat her and why. He’ll get no massage, and that’s a tough one. Then again, maybe it’s only allergies.

  “Hey, Rosa. What’s up?”

  Rosa may want to say what’s up, but she can’t quite speak through the blubbering. Like a child who had her dolly decapitated, she laments her losses in broken sobs and syllables. She’s lost it all, from love, happiness and those truths we hold self-evident, to the sofa, her desk, her chair and her artwork—her artwork, not his, but hers. That is, he took her original Gonzales and her toaster—her toaster for fuck’s sake. On that note she achieves comprehensible speech: “Now why would that prick need my toaster? My toaster! Don’t I eat toast? Aren’t three dozen toasters enough for one greaseball? What? He needs three dozen and one?”

  Juan Valdez could not leave a toaster for a lousy toasted bagel because opportunity knocks at forty cents on the dollar, and those toasters go ch-ching ch-ching at the fafa kitchen accessory emporium on the mall for a hundred sixty bucks—each—or they would have if that creep hadn’t stolen them first!”

  That is, Juan Valdez is a thief. Those toasters were hot! He didn’t beat or rob her, really, but she feels mugged. Worse yet, a woman who doesn’t ask so much out of life has had her world turned upside down again. “And every fucking thing is going wrong, and I can’t stop it, and now I can’t even toast a fucking bagel!” Rosa’s emotion gears up to wobbly—to the level known as tantrum. She screeches and shakes her fists.

  “Where’s the kid? And the dog?”

  “The dog is lost. Panchito is with his uncle, looking for the dog or something.”

  Mulroney won’t ask if Juan Valdez took the massage table or the body oil. The betting line on a massage feels about seven to one against, a prohibitive long shot behind the swayback nag. No point in straining the issue, so he mumbles regret and his hope to see her soon as he turns his front wheel but stops.

  “We … I … Come on …” She’s still a tad choked up and tries to wave away the annoying emotions of the thing—but Mulroney is not part of all that mess; she waves him in and leads the way. Up the minimal wooden steps to the minimal wooden stoop they slog. They back down two steps so the screen door can open on a room or a hovel, depending on perspective. This whimpering woman in middle age with recent aspirations to Noe Valley Victoriana murmurs in hoarse sadness, “Welcome to my space.”

  Mulroney assesses practicality for fitting his bicycle into the adobe-come-lately, because he sure as shit won’t leave it outside. He doesn’t mean to sniff at the cheap new carpet but can’t help the olfactory cringe on the cloying smells of plastic and glue. The Little Window Unit That Could chugs along as if aligned with that segment of Rosa’s figurative ride, uphill. The space has no feeling, except for numbness and crowding, with two people, a table, some knickknacks, and a bicycle. She shrugs, allowing that he can’t very well leave a bicycle outside if it’s worth more than some people’s … but she needn’t finish the thought; her meaning is understood.

  Her space provides shelter from the elements, the end, clarifying her preference for outcall. A massage table waits in the center, as the primary tenant. She turns on a boom box, and new age space music sets its dreamy mood of stellar relaxation.

  Mulroney appreciates the effort and attention to detail and moreover nearly lusts for a massage; such is the need of a man with muscles and a bicycle and a happy convergence of the two. Wiping her nose on another whimper she says, “I told you.”

  “Listen.” He removes his shoes and sox, demonstrating rare s
kill in standing up for the removal, at his age or any age. He peels off his shirt, subtly sucking it up. “I’m gonna close my eyes and feel the ropes unwind. I’m really tight.” He hesitates, until she finally catches on and turns around. He peels off the shorts and skivvies and stretches under the sheet on the table.

  “You want it deep?”

  “Yeah. Deep. Make me groan.”

  “I’ll try.”

  Mulroney knows the syndrome, in which a person surrounded by great weather, stimulating company and a cavalcade of color and style will default to personal failure as an excuse for depression. She’s got a massage table and very low overhead, which would be grounds for stability and happiness in most of the world. But this is the land of success—make that fabulous success—with no plastic surgery or glamorous sex or expensive cars for underachievers. Failure is clearly the case for a woman from San Francisco, where chic, urban Zen costs an arm and two legs, not to mention lifestyle accoutrements and updated panache that are simply prerequisite to staying in the game. Depression is simply one of the few cheap pastimes remaining. Then again …

  Mulroney judges a massage therapist by her hands. Rosa is no masseuse but another turkey baster slathering oil that might keep him from rusting but won’t soothe his muscles. At this rate he’ll slide off his seat on the ride home. But lying prone is relaxing, and soon she finds her stride. It’s not great or even good, but it’s not bad and way better than the next grind up Hazel Dell.

  In no time the client lets go, to drift in the acrid chemistry of carpet polymers and bonding agents, scented oil, the humming window unit and the cosmic harmony of a tambourine and a didgeridoo, unless that’s a bass kazoo. He relaxes into lithe and lean recollections of youth. She enables long-forgotten feelings, working the neck and shoulders, down the spine to the sacrum and hips, thighs, calves and feet.

  When she says, “Turn over,” Mulroney is mush. “How you doing?” she asks, more composed than thirty minutes ago.

  “Mm. Good. You’re great.” He hears himself saying it and feels himself believing it. What a surprise.

  “Thanks. I’ve always had the gift.”

  “You can make a living as long as I’m around.”

  “Yeah. If you call seventy-five bucks an hour a living, one massage at a time.”

  “I think a living is what a person makes of it, and you develop what’s available to you.”

  “So you think this is it for me?”

  “Do you mean giving massage is it for you? Or dealing original art is more your line of work? Because I think the one would return seventy-five an hour, and the other would be more of an investment, where you could add some zeroes on the return.”

  Rosa sighs. “That’s what I thought. That’s what Juan said. Do you know this area has three of the five highest-demographic precincts in America? That means rich. You knew that. Art might be dead everywhere else, but we got some tasty originals in this neighborhood. If that can’t get your interest, signed prints by major artists are thick as fleas around here. I don’t mean here. We don’t have fleas here. You know what I mean.”

  “Yes. I know what you mean. I’d know it if you had fleas too. Little bastards love me.” Mulroney is seasoned enough on flea-bit terrain, on which a woman feels necessitated to state that the place has no fleas. He closes his eyes again to drift again, into the second half. She may be a bona fide urban veteran and a gifted masseuse, but … He murmurs that she and her Mexican boyfriend are not typical art dealers. She strokes his shins in soothing release and moves to the kneecaps with subtle manipulation. She feels his pain and addresses it accordingly.

  “I’m not sure what you mean by that. You must have original art in your house. You should know that you can’t generalize on art dealers.”

  “What I mean is, neither you nor your associate in the truck are similar to the art-dealers I know.”

  “He’s not just a dealer. He happens to be a very gifted painter.”

  “Ah, very gifted. That seems to be chronic around here.”

  “What? You have no artistic pursuit? Or real art in your house?”

  “Only some finger paintings from my rosebud period.”

  “Oh. You don’t collect.”

  Oh? “So the real money is in art dealing, but you’re giving massage. How many massages did it take to buy a Gonzales?”

  She moves north. He cracks an eyelid to see her blush. “None. It’s not an original.”

  “You said it was original. It looks original. If I’m not mistaken, it’s signed.”

  “No, I didn’t say that it’s signed. I said it’s not a print. My associate painted it. It’s a copy.”

  “He copied it?”

  “Yes. I told you, he’s very good.”

  “And he signed it? That’s …”

  “Illegal.” She goes deep on the quadriceps. “I didn’t know at first. It doesn’t hurt anybody, but I’m not comfortable with it. Besides, it’s only illegal if you try to sell them as originals.”

  “You and Juan would never deceive anybody. I just know it.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Toasters are one thing. But art forgery isn’t just the next step.”

  “No, of course not. I would think blenders and Mixmasters were the next step. Then came art forgery.”

  “Like I said, the whole thing makes me uncomfortable.”

  “As it should. A toaster is petty. But a load of toasters is grand theft. Your instincts are correct.”

  “God, you’re hard.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I mean your legs. You should stretch more.”

  “Yeah, I know. I keep planning to stretch, but then I forget.”

  “I guess I could make more. Money.” Her dismissive laugh shows uncertainty, suggesting that personal disappointments have mounted to tragic levels, and a once-confident woman has been rendered tentative and anxious by sheer circumstance.

  “Then you should make more,” he murmurs.

  “It’s not that much, really, when you think about it. I mean it wouldn’t be that much … for you. It wouldn’t be anything for you, comparatively speaking. And it really wouldn’t be that much for me, but things could add up, you know, if enough persons—people wanted it. That sounds disgusting, but it’s not. Not really.”

  “Hmm. What are we talking about?”

  “I was thinking, like, seventy-five. I mean another seventy-five. You know, seventy-five for the hour and then another seventy-five for the last few minutes, you know. The happy ending is such a … cliché, but I wouldn’t mind calling it that. Because, it would make people happy. I think.”

  Mulroney takes a peak. She just proposed a chicken choking for seventy-five dollars. That seems bold and beyond, not to mention the other, whatchacallit … the morality thing. Sounds reasonable, considering relief on investment, but a gal down on her luck shouldn’t have to give a massage and whack a guy off for a few bucks more. No big deal, but the massage should be enough. Mulroney was ready to cream over prospects for a massage, much less a flog o’ the sausage. And it seems so … messy, what with the goo, even with a damp cloth. Then there’s the other mess, with the claims and threats and dirty secrets. Who needs it? Well, anyone who needs a wank is who. What a world—in this part of it at any rate. But gee, she is good, and no Samaritan would begrudge her the extra few bucks. So she can have it. Why not? Besides, after last night and a furry glove with teeth on the fingertips …

  So he drifts again on a tiny thought, that seventy-five bucks to a woman down on her luck is a good thing to give. From the semi-consciousness of the thoroughly relaxed, he murmurs, “You know, Rosa … It’s like I tell my wife when she wants more dough…”

  She works the iliotibial band, going deep to find the twitch. Up and down, side-to-side, she asks, “So? What do you tell your wife?”

  “Nothing, really. I give her money. I’ll give you seventy-five bucks. But you’ll see: it’s never enough. She likes to buy stuff. She buys stuff she likes and gives it to me as gifts.
She loves the buying. Gives her those, uh … what the runners get. Makes them happy …”

  “Endorphins.”

  “Yeah, end dolphins. So I tell her: I’ll pay her two hundred dollars an hour, her choice—oh, yeah. Right there.”

  Rosa goes in. “What’s the choice?”

  “Car wash or blowjob, either one. Two bills an hour. Some lawyers don’t make that. But it’s a joke. You like jokes, don’t you? I’ll give you the seventy-five bucks. So don’t bust my balls.”

  “Gee. You are a sensitive guy. But neither one takes an hour.”

  “I don’t pay for the …the task. I pay for the time. Two bills an hour is a hell of a rate, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t get either one.”

  “You’re not joking. You’re serious. You want your horn honked for eight bucks.”

  “Nah! I give her a hundred anyway.”

  “I hope it doesn’t take a half hour.”

  “Takes longer with a hand wax, but only a few minutes.”

  “You’re disgusting. You’re self-centered and greedy and cheap. But you know that. I think you’ve known it for years but self-justify by dropping some chump change with your miserable load.”

  “Gee, Rosa. I wonder why you’re down on your luck. You’re so cheerful and service-oriented. You got a very shitty outlook, you know? Now you say I’ve been miserable all these years and didn’t even know it.”

  “You knew it. You’re telling me you’ll settle for the eight-dollar fellatio and throw in a tip.”

  “The what?”

  “You heard me. Don’t tell me I’m wrong.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  “So an ambitious gal can make four bills on a big gulp and a car wash if she takes two hours?”

  “I doubt it. I expect attention on the rims and bumpers but not exactly a full detail. I try to be fair.”

  “You’re too much. Who washes your bicycle?”

  “Some days we run a special, same deal on a bicycle.”

  “So three hundred dollars for a car wash or a bicycle wash?”