The Orchid Eater

by Marc Laidlaw

  “I won’t be staying long,” he said.

  “Stay as long as you like,” said Marilyn. “There’s always room for one more in Sal’s house. Your brother is one of the nicest guys in Bohemia Bay.”

  Lupe smiled. “You mean he has a reputation?”

  “In certain circles.”

  Sal sat down next to Lupe and put a hand on his shoulder. “I try to keep a low profile. Business being what it is.”

  “You’re dealing,” Lupe said, without surprise. “How else could you afford to live in a place like this?”

  Sal shrugged. “It got me here, true enough. But that’s only money. What matters to me is my other work. You don’t see me wasting the money, you know, on a bunch of luxuries. I support my causes—gay rights, shelters for runaways. You’d be surprised at the number of kids who end up here. I teach tai chi, to bring mind and body into harmony, get things in balance. I’ve got a good life, Lupe. I’ve got friends. What about you?”

  Lupe shrugged. “You know me, Sal. Nothing ever changes.”

  Sal hoped it didn’t sound like he was trying to impress Lupe with his success and make all Lupe’s accomplishments seem trivial. In the past, you could never be sure how Lupe would take things. Even the plainest statement of fact seemed to go banging around in his head, ending up twisted beyond recognition.

  Maybe all that had changed now. Maybe.

  Sal’s students crouched down on the floor or dropped into chairs, watching Lupe—some openly, some covertly.

  “God,” Marilyn said, “I would die for your complexion. I’m allergic to hormone creams. Do you shave?”

  Sal tensed up, waiting for one of Lupe’s surges of rage, of violent temper. But apparently Lupe had mellowed enough to answer the question with a weary smile.

  “Naw,” he said. “I don’t have to.”

  “Really? How come?”

  Lupe plucked the last two walnuts from the fruit bowl and cupped them in his palm.

  “’Cause these here, see, are like the only nuts I got.”

  5

  A green bomb dropped through leafy shade, barely missing Mike’s head. He stooped to pick it up and toss it in his bag. In the branches above, Edgar clambered about like a monkey, reaching for another ripe avocado.

  Mike and Scott had two bags full of fruit, some of it warm from the highest branches, some of it cool as the shade. They had crawled through a hole under a barbed wire fence near the roadside, then crept downhill under a continuous canopy of avocado trees. Mike had never seen so many in one place. Edgar scurried up one tree after another, plucking the rough-skinned bulbs and tossing them down.

  Mike kept glancing down the hill, but the trees were so thick he couldn’t see much more than a white flicker of the farmhouse.

  “Keep your voices down,” Edgar whispered from above.

  “Why?” Scott said loudly.

  At that instant, just down the hill, dogs began to howl.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Mike said, snatching up his bag, stuffing a spare avocado in the pocket of his coat.

  Edgar leaped from the tree, landing with an “Oof!” directly in front of Mike. He got up limping. Scott was already halfway up the hill to the fence with one full bag under his arm. Behind them, fallen leaves crackled and branches snapped, but the dogs were silent, devoting their energies to the chase.

  Seconds later, Mike shoved his bag under the fence and crawled after it. Scott was waiting. They grabbed Edgar’s hands and yanked him to freedom on the bare hillside, above the trees. They ran up Shoreview Road, gasping for breath. The dogs were barking again, but getting no closer.

  Mike and Scott glared at Edgar.

  “I swear to God, there weren’t any dogs last time,” Edgar said. “Anyway, we got enough to last us. Two full bags? That’s plenty.”

  “I don’t even like avocados,” Mike reminded them.

  They started up the road, slowly catching their breath. It was a steep climb. Mike slung his jacket over his shoulder though Scott, perversely, kept his on.

  “The avocado was the original fruit of knowledge,” Scott said eventually.

  “Oh yeah?” said Edgar. “Says who?”

  “You think they had apple trees in the Middle East?”

  “You mean Eve gave Adam an avocado?” said Edgar with a sour expression, still limping.

  Scott nodded with a look of unimpeachable authority. “She would have, if Adam or Eve had ever existed, which they didn’t.”

  “Don’t ever tell that to Hawk.”

  “You can’t argue with Scott,” Mike said. “He knows everything.”

  “You can’t argue with Hawk either. He’ll just blow your head off.”

  “The Bible’s nothing but symbols and metaphors, with a lot of old history mixed in,” Scott said. “I’m sure Hawk knows that. Look at his Fightin’ Jesus stories.”

  “Still . . . you can never tell with Hawk. I wouldn’t tempt him.”

  “Not even with an avocado?” Scott said.

  The road wound up and up. When it leveled off, Mike was grateful, thinking they had reached the peak. Then Edgar led them up another three steep blocks. The last time he’d come up here, by car, he’d been reading in the backseat and hadn’t paid attention to the road. By the time they surmounted the next rise, the sun was sinking behind them. He looked back at the ocean, far below. Ahead, the road went on for another quarter mile, rising more gradually. There were fewer houses to be seen, and only sparse chaparral vegetation. He saw a broad gorge with a row of houses lined up along the far end.

  “One of those is our new place.”

  “Which one?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s kind of hard to tell them apart.”

  They did look alike, stacked tall and thin on the canyon’s steep wall. Their westward-facing sliding glass doors glared bright orange with the setting sun. Below them, the canyon was a darkening lake of shadow. As the boys walked along the edge, Mike looked down into it, thinking of all the hiding places and forts he could build down there, if he were still young enough to care about that sort of thing. His brother might enjoy it, although Ryan was mainly interested in sports these days. Better than forts, though—it was a place he could go with a girl, when he met one. Down there under the bushes, naked on a blanket, he wouldn’t care if he got dirty or if bugs climbed all over him. It would all be worth it when she wrapped her legs around him.

  When they finally reached the houses, they turned and walked along the row. At the fifth one, Mike stopped. “This is it.”

  There wasn’t much to see except an empty carport identical to every other on the block. That was about all he’d seen of the place. A black Cadillac was parked in the carport next door. Mike walked across the oil-stained cement and over a redwood porch linking the carport to the front door. He slid the key into the lock.

  Inside, it smelled like a house that had been lived in till yesterday. Odors of butter and garlic, faint and fading even now, slipped past him as he stepped inside, like the last ghosts of the prior residents. Scott and Edgar followed him in. As they got a good look at the place, all three of them let out exclamations.

  Mike’s mother had mentioned that the walls were painted, but he had never imagined anything like this. One of the two men who’d lived here before, Roddy, was an interior decorator, and he had partitioned the top floor into three areas. The walls were midnight blue. A square of gold carpet lay in a small dining area, divided from the kitchen by a wooden counter. Beyond the kitchen was a big living room, with sliding glass doors opening onto a balcony at the far end. Stairs ran down into the house, colored stripes running with them, zigzagging past one landing and ending at a second two floors below.

  “Wow,” said Edgar, shutting the door. Scott stepped onto the square of yellow carpeting and stared at the wall opposite the kitchen. It was one solid mirror.

  “Get out of there, Scott! Jesus, your feet are dirty!”

  Scott gave him a look he usually reserved for morons. Mike found himself wo
ndering if he could actually live in a house like this. It was like a place in a magazine. He was afraid to put his own feet down.

  They took the stairs to the second level, which held two bedrooms. The biggest opened onto another balcony. Three huge overlapping colored circles decorated the main wall. The color scheme continued into a private bathroom.

  “This has got to be Mom and Jack’s room,” Mike said.

  He backed into the hall and saw Edgar opening a door next to the stairs.

  “Look at this!” he said.

  Scott and Mike followed him into the room—stopped in awe when they saw where they were.

  They had walked into a fairy tale. A full, silvery indoor moon hung in a luminous blue sky, above rolling hills layered in shades of green, seeming to go on for miles. The landscape covered every wall, except where a large walk-in closet opened under the stairs. The design continued right on into a second bathroom, which had a second entrance leading back into the hall.

  “Unbelievable,” Scott said.

  “This is my room,” Mike said, determined that it would be. He had never dreamed that such a room could exist. It was like something out of the Narnia books: a plain wooden door opening onto a secret world.

  “You are one lucky dude,” Edgar said. “Lucky, lucky, lucky.”

  Mike couldn’t possibly disagree.

  The rest of the house was an anticlimax. They followed the colored stripes down the stairs to the third level, a large white room with mirrored tiles on opposite walls, so you could stand between them and see your image reflected to infinity. It was too bright for Mike, who preferred dark woods and cool shade, but for Ryan, who could spend all day on the beach without getting burned, it seemed fine. He began instantly thinking of it as Ryan’s room. It had a balcony of its own, like the master bedroom. A private back door opened onto a mossy patio full of ferns and dichondra, like a cool cave tucked beneath the house.

  A flight of spiral stairs penetrated the floor of Ryan’s room, leading down to a tiny, wood-paneled room that smelled of new carpeting. Sliding glass doors opened directly onto the edge of the wild brush canyon. A slender young eucalyptus tree swayed beyond the glass.

  “TV room,” Edgar said.

  “Library,” said Scott.

  “Who cares? As long as I get the moon room.”

  They hiked back up to the second level. They had dropped their bags of avocados on the landing. It was getting dark—especially in the house—and as they entered Mike’s room, he could almost believe he was stepping outside. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to live in this room, to wake and sleep in such beauty every day. It would be like inhabiting a painting. He could only imagine that his own artwork would soar when he worked here. It would inspire him every day. And imagine . . . if a girl ever saw it? She would have to love this room. They would lie on the floor under that fat white moon, among the green hills, and do everything imaginable.

  Edgar said, “Let’s stash a bag of avocados here for later, in case we sleep over.”

  Suddenly Mike wasn’t sure he wanted them here at all. He felt protective of the room, as if it were already his private territory. He wondered if he would have to battle Ryan for possession.

  “But there’s no furniture or anything,” he said.

  “I’ve got sleeping bags and blankets at my place,” said Edgar.

  “I don’t know. You heard my mom . . .”

  “How’s she gonna know? I mean, you can stay at my place if you want, but just look at this. . . .”

  “I’ll think about it.” Mike stashed his bag of avocados in the big closet, which went far back under the stairs. He felt he was marking the room as his own. With extreme reluctance, he went out into the hall and shut the door on the nightscape.

  It was dusk now, the houses around them gray as the sky, most of the windows dark.

  Edgar lived less than a block away, up Shoreview Road. Mrs. Goncourt wasn’t home, so they fixed sandwiches and went down to Edgar’s room. He had a sliding glass door of his own, facing on the dark, weedy expanse of cactus and brush behind his house. While they were eating, someone rapped on the glass. Mike looked up to see two faces grinning in from the night, two guys carrying skateboards. “Hey!” he said, sliding open the door. “You guys are just in time.”

  “For what?” said the first kid in, a skinny blond named Kurtis Tyre. Kurtis was another student from the Alt-School. Mike had never spoken to him, though occasionally he’d held his schoolbooks tight to his chest when Kurtis passed, in case the kid tried to knock them out of his arms.

  “We’re figuring out what to do tonight,” Edgar said. “Hey, it’s Mad-Dog!”

  Mad-Dog Murphy, Kurtis Tyre’s inseparable companion, nodded a greeting and slid the glass shut behind him. He was dark-haired and gap-toothed, with a crazed look exaggerated by the way his eyes wandered off in different directions. Kurtis propped his skateboard against the wall; Mad-Dog dropped his on the floor and sat down on it, rolling back and forth in great agitation.

  “You talked to Hawk lately?” Kurtis asked, ignoring Mike and Scott.

  “Saw him at Saturday Sermon,” Edgar said. “Where were you?”

  “Avoiding him, man. Craig warned me he’s coming down on us for scratching ‘S.S.’ on dirty cars. Says the cops are bugging him about it.”

  “What’s wrong with ‘S.S.’?” Edgar said.

  Scott chuckled deeply and everyone turned to look at him. “It’s a Nazi emblem,” he said. “For the Schutzstaffel, the Black Shirts.”

  “Really? I thought it stood for Silver Skaters,” Edgar said.

  “It does,” Kurtis said, irritably. “What’s he doing here anyway?

  “Scott’s cool,” Edgar said. “Hawk likes him.”

  “You another Jesus freak, Gillette?”

  Scott didn’t deign to answer. Instead he rolled his eyes at Mike, who suddenly didn’t feel quite so isolated. But if Kurtis Tyre and Mad Dog could show up out of the blue, some of those Alt-School girls couldn’t be far behind.

  “I get so sick of that Jesus stuff,” Kurtis went on. “Making out like he’s such a fuckin’ saint. So what if the cops think we’re Nazis? Maybe they’d give us some respect.”

  Edgar picked up the phone.

  “Who you calling?”

  “Craig Frost. See if him and Howard want to come up, bring the other guys.”

  Kurtis turned his attention to Mike. “Never thought I’d see you here, James. You trying to join the club or something?”

  Mike shrugged. “I don’t know about any club. I’m just with Scott.”

  “And with me,” Edgar said, covering the phone. “Mike’s moving in down the street. He wants to be a master thief.”

  Mad-Dog barked his patented hyena laugh.

  “A master thief?” said Kurtis in disbelief. “Oh, man, what is this? Are you serious?”

  “I saw a murder once,” Mike blurted.

  For a minute, Mad-Dog stopped laughing. Edgar was muttering on the phone but even he looked up.

  Kurtis gaped. “What does that mean? Do you want to see another?”

  “I was just . . .” Forget it, he thought. He wasn’t going to tell the story.

  “You’re full of shit, Kurtis,” Edgar said.

  “What kind of club is it, anyway?” Mike said.

  “It’s Hawk’s One-Way Gang.”

  “One-Way?” Mike said.

  Edgar pointed a finger at the ceiling. “You know, straight up. To Heaven? We’re all in it.”

  Mike looked at Scott. “You too?”

  Scott shrugged.

  “Not if I have anything to say about it,” Kurtis said.

  “Hawk likes him. That’s what matters.”

  “Yeah, Kuuur-tis,” said Mad-Dog mockingly, laughing till Kurtis grabbed an ear and twisted it.

  It was almost an hour before Craig Frost and Howard Lean showed up. In that time, Mike and Scott had to endure so many of Kurtis Tyre’s jibes that it was a relief to see new face
s at the glass—even these faces, which were not the most comforting in Bohemia Bay. Craig and Howard were several years older than the others. Craig was out of school completely, though he hadn’t graduated. Everyone knew his story, the high school was so small. He was a grease monkey at the Central Beach station now. Howard was still in school, though he had been kept back at least twice. His orthodontist father and realtor mother wouldn’t let him drop out like his idol, Craig. They had big plans for him, apparently.

  “So, Frost, you got a car tonight?” asked Kurtis.

  Craig shook his head, looking embarrassed. “No, man, we hitched.”

  Kurtis chortled. “Never heard of a mechanic without wheels.”

  “My engine’s laid out all over my fuckin’ garage. Never shoulda let Dusty touch it.”

  “So tell him to steal you a new one. Or do it yourself. You got to brush up on crime, man, unless you plan on working the rest of your life.”

  “Howard, put a fist in his mouth, would you?”

  Howard smiled, showing gray chipped teeth crammed in rows like a shark’s. He stooped toward Kurtis, fist soaring in slow motion. Kurtis lightly batted it away.

  “Guess who we saw today,” Edgar said. “Sal Diaz!”

  Howard’s face grew even sallower. “That queer? Did you suck his dick this time?”

  “No, I bit it off and brought it for you.” Everyone but Howard laughed. “He was trawling for chicken in his black van.”

  “That guy makes me sick,” Craig said. “Why hasn’t somebody firebombed his house?”

  “Let’s us do it,” Howard said.

  “Guy thinks he’s a Mexican Bruce Lee,” said Kurtis.

  “Well, he’s only a block from here,” Edgar said. “We could do it.”

  “You’re not going to firebomb somebody’s house,” Scott said suddenly.

  “Who is this pussy?” Howard asked.

  “Meet Albert Einstein,” Kurtis said.

  “Don’t worry, Scott,” Edgar reassured him. “We’ll just go over and moon the guy. Bug him a little.”

  “Oh, he’ll like that all right,” Kurtis said. “Give him a nice whiff of his favorite food. I mean, don’t do the fag any favors.”