by Johnny Shaw
I handed my keys to Bobby. “Christ, we even make arranging cars complicated. I’ll grab a motel room somewhere. You staying at Becky’s?”
“Too weird. I’ll crash with you. We can have some beers, make some kind of plan of attack.”
“How we feeling about the kid?”
Bobby and I looked over at Gabe. He leaned against the Civic, a watchful eye on Becky. But she just sat in the passenger seat and stared out the windshield.
“Not sure,” Bobby said. “Felt like truth, some punk Julie dated, but that crowd he’s running with—what did he say, Los Hos?—they’ve got to be involved with more than only riding their scooters around. Have to talk to that Chucho. Those boys might not got nothing to do with Julie, but you don’t do that outlaw shit as a grown-up and stay spotless.”
“Bad boys aren’t always that bad. Could just be their look, trying to get laid.”
“You’ve only been back a couple years, Jimmy. You forget living in the desert puts you at ground zero of the War on Boredom, a never-ending fight to stay awake. People do the stupidest shit when they’re bored. And don’t think I don’t realize I’m talking about myself, too.”
“I’m fine with letting Gabe go home. We know where he lives,” I said.
Bobby kicked a rock. “I fucking hate this.”
“We’ll find your girl, Bobby.”
“Yeah, maybe. But it don’t sound like she’s a girl no more.”
I was on a lean budget, so I found the cheapest motel in the vicinity. And that’s saying something when you’re on the outskirts of Indio, California. I checked into the Date Palm Motel, a by-the-hour motor court whose denizens appeared to run the gamut from bathtub meth cooks and their part-time prostitute girlfriends to four generations of Mexicans living together in a single room. But it was nineteen dollars a night and I was eighty-five percent sure I wasn’t going to catch chlamydia or scabies from the toilet seat. Maybe more like eighty percent. Let’s split the difference and say eighty-two and a half.
The cut from Cold Sore’s ring had stopped bleeding, but dried blood painted my forehead and matted my hair to my head. The bags under my eyes and the bruise on my face made me look like a George Romero extra. The guy who gave me the key didn’t bat an eye. Whether professionalism or apathy, it was nice not to have to answer any questions.
Using only the tips of my thumb and forefinger, I pulled the bedspread off one of the two twin beds and threw it in the corner. The sheets and pillowcases joined the bedspread. I’d put my own pillowcases and sleeping bag on when Bobby showed up in my truck. I’ve stayed in a lot of places like the Date Palm. When in doubt, use your own gear.
The TV had an antenna, which meant it only got channels broadcasting from Mexico. It was news on Canal Cinco, so I turned on Canal Tres and watched the beginning of a movie called Intrepidos Punks.
Bobby arrived before I caught the end, but without a doubt and speaking without hyperbole, I can say for a fact that Intrepidos Punks is the greatest movie ever made and that will ever be made ever for all time ever in the history of cinema. It’s like an insane package filled with awesome wrapped in crazy paper.
“What the fuck is this?” Bobby asked, staring at the TV. On the screen, the scene cut quickly between a Mexican with a mohawk that looked like Shel Silverstein playing the drums and some violent sex between another punker and a woman in her fifties. “And how much did I miss?”
Bobby sat down on the corner of the bed, his eyes locked onto the lunacy on the television, a welcome distraction.
“Oh, man. It’s hard to describe and I’m only catching half the Spanish, but there’s this biker gang that includes some Mexican wrestlers. Luchador masks, the whole megillah. And the biker chicks, they rob banks dressed as nuns. They have to bust the leader of the gang, I think, out of prison by having sex with the guards and some other guys—I don’t know who they were. Wardens, maybe. Do Mexican prisons have more than one warden? And then every once in a while the gang rocks out. That’s where we’re at right now. It’s like a game of telephone. Like someone described what punk rock was, what Sid Vicious looked like, and then that person told someone and that person translated it into Spanish, reverse-engineering it. Some parts are kind of Mad Maxy, too.”
Bobby pulled a beer out of a cooler he had brought, tossed it to me, grabbed one for himself, and plonked down on the other bed.
“They don’t clean the bedspreads, Bobby. Seriously, if we had a black light it would look like Jackson Pollock’s drop cloth.”
“This blanket’ll be lucky I don’t give it a disease. Shit’s all bullshit, anyway. Germs aren’t real, man.”
“I don’t even know how to respond to that.” I cracked my beer. “But I assure you that germs are real. Scientists say so.”
“I mean, germs are out there, yeah. They’re things. But they aren’t trying to kill us. They’re being germs, germing around, you know. They’re all over, right? You touch ’em, breathe ’em, eat ’em, all day. We grew up drinking ditch water out of the hose, playing under that crop duster spray—remember that weird, sweet smell?”
“I think that was DDT.”
“Smelled like burnt cabbage-flavored candy. I grew up eating street food in Mexicali. And I’m not talking the good places. I’d eat in the alleys. I can’t digest food unless it has some E. coli in it for flavor. All this nutrition nonsense is horseshit. There weren’t such thing as antioxidants, electrolytes, or superfoods ten years ago. Now I’m supposed to be afraid to sit on the shitter at the park toilets, eat an unorganic apple, and not lie down on a hotel bed. Shit, man, I ain’t the kind of guy that dies of old age. And I’m damn sure that someone else’s dry cum or piss or whatever else is on this blanket ain’t going to kill me.”
“Okay, you convinced me. Lie down on your spermy blanket,” I said.
“You smoke. I could run my tongue across this entire blanket and it wouldn’t do as much bad to my body as one Winston.”
“I quit smoking.”
“Really?”
“Ten days.”
“I ain’t discouraging, but don’t you got to stop for at least a month to call it quitting? If I quit drinking for ten days, you’d say I was taking a break.”
“Fine. I’m taking a break.”
The remote didn’t work. Of course. So I got up and turned off the TV by unplugging it. The dial was missing, too.
“How’s Becky doing?” I asked. “Any news from the cops or the fliers?”
“Nothing. Becky’s a fucking mess, all over the place, but she’s got people around. I want to not like him, but Russell seems to be a stand-up guy. He’s probably still putting up fliers.”
“How you doing?”
“Sitting around, thinking maybe Julie’s lost or scared, drives me apeshit. I’ve been here five minutes and I’m ready to pop. Fucking up those punks felt good. Maybe I should put up some posters. Do something.”
“We spent last night in a sugar beet field. You need rest. You need to be sharp when we got something to do. Tomorrow we’ll hit La Quinta, maybe get lucky, find the rich dude Julie was working for. Maybe she hooked up with him and they went on some trip. Something—while not innocent—harmless.”
“Don’t really want to think about it, but yeah,” Bobby said. “There’s only so many ways to make fast money out here. And they’re all fucked up. Don’t matter whether it’s drug stuff or sex stuff, it puts her around bad people. People that use people.” Bobby drained his beer and dug into the cooler. “If we keep talking about his, I ain’t never going to sleep.”
“How many beers we got left?”
“Five.”
“I’ll run out, get some more.”
Bobby gave me a weak smile and toasted. I plugged the TV back in and Intrepidos Punks came back on.
“Don’t tell me how it ends,” I said, heading out the door in search of a liquor store. “I want to experience the insanity myself.”
I stared at Julie’s smiling face. The flier team was on its
shit. Taped at eye level to the door of the mercado, I almost walked straight into one of their fliers. I lingered for a moment, realizing that I hadn’t really studied it. Julie could’ve walked past me on the street, and I might not have recognized her. That’s a problem when you’re looking for a person.
An electronic bell rang as I entered. I went right for the beer cooler and pulled out a twelve of Coors Light, enjoying the refrigerated air. I lingered in the snack cake aisle, considering some of the Bimbo offerings, but managed enough self-control to pass. I was still Little Debbied out from the night before. I set the beer on the counter and pointed at the big bottles of Jack Daniels.
“A handle of Jack.”
I glanced over the cigarette selection.
Fucking Bobby. I hadn’t even thought about smoking. Now I really wanted one. But I had promised Angie that I’d try to be healthier. Because it’s better for me. Set a better example for Juan. But mostly because it limited Angie’s playful—yet pointed—barbs about my physical conditioning, or lack thereof. I’d been exercising. I’d cut out fried food. I’d been eating non-potato vegetables. (I put chard in my mouth for the first time days earlier. Chard!)
I didn’t buy any Bimbos. Fuck it.
“And two packs of Winstons. And one of these NASCAR lighters.”
The counter guy tossed the smokes onto the twelve. He rang me up.
“You get mugged or something?” the guy asked, more curious than concerned.
“No, got one of those faces people like to punch.”
As soon as I stepped outside, I set the beer and Jack down and lit a smoke, inhaling deeply. The first drag made me light-headed, nauseous, and pukey. It was glorious. In a slow suicide kind of way. I missed you, old friend.
As I enjoyed the shit out of my first cigarette in ten days, I looked into Julie’s poster eyes. I wish that I could say that I saw something in them, the windows to the soul and all that. But I didn’t. Little more than the face of a stranger.
“You better be okay.”
Back at the Date Palm, Bobby and I drank like we had received federal funding to study the impact of beer and Tennessee whiskey on the human body. We talked a little, but mostly we drank. The talk would come, after the booze got us slippery. Drinking was what we knew. The simplest and most effective way to avoid our grown-up problems. I’m not saying it was healthy. I’m saying it was.
I flipped through the channels, but since there were only the two Mexican stations to flip between, that got old quick. After the greatest movie ever made was over, Canal Tres showed the highlights of some politician’s speech. And on Canal Cinco, there were music videos. Mexican music was too happy for the occasion. The lyrics might have been the saddest in the world, telling the story of a mother’s grief for her baby in a well. But once you throw in a tuba and an accordion, it’s got all the seriousness of a circus.
“I got to do better, man.” Bobby said after I turned off the TV and cracked a fresh beer.
“Sure, we all can.”
“Julie’s my daughter. She’s an hour away. And I didn’t make an effort. None.”
“It’s more complicated than that,” I said. “And it’s more like an hour and a half.”
“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying her going missing is on me. We don’t even know what happened yet. I’m saying that me being a shitty father is. I messed up. With Julie. With Griselda.”
“You talk to Griselda?”
“No. I told you, Gris and me are over.”
“You brought her up. I was thinking in terms of Julie. Griselda is a cop. She might be able to help is all.”
“If I thought she could, I’d call her. I ain’t got that much pride. But all she’ll tell me is that the cops here got nothing and until there’s evidence of otherwise, they’ll treat her like a runaway. I call Gris, I’ll dig up old shit. I’ve hurt her enough.”
“You want to talk about what happened between you two?”
“No.”
Bobby shook his head and poured himself another splash of Jack. “You got one kid,” he said. “Hell, he’s not even really yours. And I see you being ten times the father I’ve been to my flesh and blood. I got two kids I don’t never see. And I don’t barely care that I don’t.”
“With Julie, it was always a weird deal.”
“Quit making excuses for me. Call me a piece of shit. That’s what you’re thinking. I can see how fed up you’ve been with me.”
“Knock it off. Pity don’t suit you. So you’re a piece of shit,” I said. “You can’t change what you’ve done. You can change shit from this point on. Say from here, things are going to be different.”
“People don’t change like that.”
“Not if they don’t try. It’s like quitting smoking. Maybe I stop for two weeks and then I’m back at it. But for those two weeks, it’s healthier, better. Not much, but a little. Maybe you try and for a couple months you’re solid, then you slack. Better than nothing. Fix it as you go.”
“Don’t know if quitting being a fuckup is the same as quitting smoking.”
“The withdrawals are a bitch. Now, toss me that ashtray.”
“Is that the last beer?” I asked, watching Bobby drain his can.
“We got time to get more?” Bobby looked at his wrist, but without a watch, it gave him no indication of the time.
“I been thinking,” I said, lighting the filter of my cigarette and causing a small fire. I crushed it in the ashtray and started over with a fresh smoke. I was definitely feeling the booze.
“Thinking can’t be good,” Bobby said. “It ain’t our strongest suit.”
“Gabe said Julie was working for some rich dude in La Quinta, right?”
“Yeah, what Chucho told him.”
“And La Quinta isn’t that big.”
“Bigger than you think. Probably the size of Calexico. And it’s got all those golf courses, weird little nooks, crannies, dead-end streets, and some gated areas and shit.”
“Don’t fuck up my plan.”
“Sorry.” Bobby belched. “That tasted like shrimp. Weird.”
“How do you know so much about La Quinta?”
“Night golfing is free golfing.”
“Gabe said the dude drove a Humvee. A camouflage-painted Hummer.”
Bobby stood up quickly, a sway in his stance. “You’re right. Let’s go.”
“Let me finish. I was going to say that we should drive around La Quinta and look for a camo Hummer.”
“I know. I did the math. It was pluses and takeaways, not calculus.”
“Still. When a guy’s planning a plan, it’s polite to let him plan the plan. That’s all I’m saying.”
“My sincerest apologies. Now stand the fuck up.”
So at a quarter past hammered, we resumed our investigation. The booze had given us fresh insight and enough stupid to get us off our asses. We could have waited for daylight and sobriety, but that wasn’t our modus. And it was more likely for a person’s car to be parked in front of its owner’s house at midnight than if we waited for the next day.
Before we headed out, we made a drunk stratagem to stay on the residential streets and not drive over twenty-five miles per hour, because that’s the kind of elaborate preparations you construct when you’re drunk and have a stratagem.
“Should we bring the guns?” Bobby asked.
“What guns?”
“The just-in-case guns I brought.”
“Show me.”
Bobby went to the closet and pulled out a long gym bag.
“When did you put that in there?”
“When you were getting beer.”
Then, one at a time, Bobby pulled out four pistols, a rifle, and two shotguns. He spread them out on the bed like he was displaying them for sale. It was an impressive arsenal.
“Seven guns,” I said. “For two people.”
“Actually, I didn’t know you were coming. These were intended for my personal use.”
“Were you going to tie them all together and make a super-gun?”
“No, one at a time. If the opportunity arose. Although, let’s consider the super-gun idea. I never turn my back on awesome. Seven is stupid, though. But I could definitely do something with two shotguns. And if I had a sword and some duct tape—I should be writing this down.”
“Let’s leave the guns,” I said. “We’re drunk. They’re guns. I’m not loving the combo.”
“What if we run into trouble?”
“If we run into trouble, we’ll drive away at a safe twenty-five miles per hour, as per our stratagem. What kind of trouble can we get in? We’re looking for a car.”
Bobby shook his head. “It’s like you’ve never hung out with us before. Trouble finds us, bro. We’re shit magnets.”
“Exactly why the guns stay here. No reason to make big trouble out of standard-sized trouble.”
“Not even one of the small guns?”
“It’s not really about the size, Bobby.”
“Is that what Angie tells you?”
“Hilarious. Put the big bag of guns back in the closet.”
“You’re right. We’ll be fine with just my truck gun.”
“Then I’m driving. And you don’t drive a truck, it’s a car.”
“Don’t disrespect the Ranchero.”
Bobby packed the guns back into the gym bag and threw them in the closet. He tossed the bedspread on top for camouflage. Not exactly the hotel safe, but our neighbors were too busy breaking bad to lower themselves to petty theft.
FIVE
I don’t know if it was in spite of our advanced level of intoxication or because of it, but our search was shockingly efficient. Instead of driving around in a haphazard jumblefuck, we laid out a grid and never drove down the same street twice. Apparently, nothing focuses a drunk like a quest. Anyone who has ever yearned for rolled tacos at the end of a tequila binge knows what I’m talking about. The secret to accomplishing anything while drunk is to accept the limitations of one’s not-sober state. Denying drunkenness is exactly the kind of thinking that turns finding one’s car keys into the poorest man’s version of a scavenger hunt.
