Halfway House

by Weston Ochse

  Bobby gathered the blanket at his waist and stood. His impromptu dress was only marginally better than being naked. He duck walked to the kitchen like a Japanese geisha and waited for Lucy’s grandma to stop puttering around the counter long enough to notice him. He hoped beyond hope that his pants were clean. If he was embarrassed wearing the blanket alone in the house, he could only imagine how bad it would be if Split, Blockbuster, or one of Lucy’s friends showed up. He’d never hear the end of it.

  The kitchen was a room large enough for a dining table that could seat six or eight on one side, with the washer and dryer on the other. Counters with upper and lower cabinets rimmed the left side of the room, while a stove and a refrigerator bookended a cutting board on the right.

  Grandma finished rinsing several plates, dried them, then placed them in the slats of the wooden drainer on the counter. She finally turned. When she saw him she placed her hands on her hips and shook her head.

  “Deme que manta. Tengo que lavarlo ahora, aunque yo lo deba quemar.”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t understand you, ma’am.”

  She snapped her fingers and pointed to the blanket that he held firmly around his waist.

  “Nuh uh. No way are you getting this until I get my pants back.”

  “Elvis mi nalgas. Elvis nunca sería agarrado muerto en mi cocina que lleva una manta.”

  “I don’t know what that means, but there’s no reason to bring Elvis into this. As I see it, this is between me, you, and my pants. You know pants don’t you? How do you say it, le pants?”

  “Eso es Elvis estúpido francés chico extraño.” She smiled and twisted her lips. “Pantalones?”

  “Yeah. That’s it. Pantalones. Where is my pantalones?”

  “Ellos están en la lavadora.”

  “What?”

  “Esto es California. Yo no puedo creer que usted no pueda hablar español. ¿Qué enseñan se ellos chicos blancos en la escuela de todos modos?”

  “Pantalones. My pants. Come on, Grandma. I can’t go around in this blanket forever. Can you help me?”

  She stared at him like he was a broken toy at Christmas. She finally moved to the dryer and pulled an immense pair of shorts from a pile of folded clothes and threw them at Bobby.

  He reached up and barely managed to keep control of the blanket while catching the shorts. He went into the bathroom to change. A few minutes later, he came out, the blanket in one hand, and his other hand twisting the front of the shorts as a homemade cinch. He passed her the blanket.

  She grabbed it with two fingers and carried it over to the open washing machine and dropped it in. She busied herself with the process of preparing the washer, all the while muttering to herself.

  Bobby took his leave. He headed to the front door, eased outside and closed it behind him. A breeze immediately cooled his cloying skin and he paused to soak it in.

  The porch was as old as the house, both built sometime in the fifties. The floor, railing walls and twin front pillars were made of concrete and painted universally red. On his left where he stood looking toward the street was a long bench, a box of miscellaneous shoes, and half a dozen plants with enough energetic growth to show impetus for a miniature rain forest—a forest that the GI Joe he’d had back at the home would have used as the perfect place to stage an assault on a tribe of broken Ken dolls.

  He turned to his right and was stunned to see Lucy’s father and another man dressed in a mechanic’s jumpsuit taking a break from their game of dominoes, staring at him. They’d been so silent he hadn’t even known they were there. They stared first at his perplexed expression, then at the tent-like shorts he wore. They exchanged a wordless glance, then returned to their game. Inscrutable as a pair of blind cats, Bobby could only hope he didn’t look as ridiculous as he felt.

  Dismissed by the pair, he moved to the stairs and sat. He watched the street, noticing that the curbs along both sides were bumper to bumper parked with cars, except for the space in front of Lucy’s house. No sign of the gang leader. No sign of any of his crew. With a grandma who spoke only Spanish and a father who spoke only in dominoes and Lucy away with his thugs, Bobby felt immensely alone.

  He stared into the night, allowing his gaze to rest upon the lighted cranes of the port. Tension seeped from him as he let the events of the past few days replay through his mind.

  * * *

  Jimmy Hixon had lived the good life until his adopted father’s car had slid off the road into the Mississippi River. That tragic event and Jimmy’s stepmother’s desire to take the insurance money and run off to the Greek island of Santorini was the reason for Bobby’s love of the Silver Surfer.

  Jimmy had arrived amidst a hurricane of activity. The old girls’ wing of the home was being renovated, which placed all of the girls on cots in the gymnasium. Intramural basketball was gone. Dodge ball, red rover and volleyball were cancelled. The boys were expected to spend their time reading, reflecting and playing board games. With the outlet for their aggression denied, the boys devolved into gangs that skulked around the home in search of other kids to terrorize.

  Jimmy was one of those kids. Deaf and dumb, he was the perfect foil for their aggression. He couldn’t hear them coming, nor could he scream. Had it not been for Sister Agnes, there’d be no telling what would have happened to Jimmy that summer. As it was, the worst that happened was finding Jimmy hanging from his feet from the flagpole three stories above the home’s entrance. He’d been wrapped completely in duct tape, with only his nose and eyes free. On second thought, the worst thing that happened that summer was when they’d removed the duct tape. Bobby knew about it. He’d been there because he was the only person who Sister Agnes trusted to be there.

  “Know what’s better than winning a gold medal at the Special Olympics?” Billy Picket had cracked. “Not being retarded.”

  “He’s not retarded,” Bobby had said.

  But his words went unheard as the boys guffawed and pointed fingers at Jimmy. If laughs could kill, it was a massacre. But Jimmy didn’t care. He’d stood staring back at them with a smile on his face. He had looked a little retarded with that inscrutable smile. A normal person would at least be angry. But not Jimmy. Never Jimmy. He had a secret that would change Bobby’s life forever.

  This is my real father, scribbled Jimmy on a pad later that day.

  They’d lain on their stomachs in the middle of the room, flipping through Jimmy’s stack of comics—Fantastic Four numbers 48 through 77, Defenders, Avengers and Silver Surfer 1 through 146—comics, Bobby later discovered, that were worth more than a new home down by the river. From his first appearance with Galactus, the great evil world eater of the cosmos, to the last issue where he faced the Firelord, the Silver Surfer soared from cover to cover, balanced on his silver cosmic surfboard like a mercuric California boy.

  “He can’t be your father. He’s a comic book character.

  Just because they’re in comics doesn’t make them not true.

  But he’s not even American. Heck, he’s not even from this solar system. Says here he’s from the planet Zen-La,” Bobby wrote, trying ten-year-old logic on the boy.

  How do you know that I’m American? Jimmy countered.

  Bobby had no answer to that. He granted that maybe the boy wasn’t American, but he certainly wasn’t Zen-Laian.

  Later, Jimmy told him his greatest secret.

  I was born not being able to speak or hear because of my father. I have the power of the cosmos, too. One day, when I’m ready, I’ll be able to read minds. I’ll be able to tell when people are thinking bad thoughts and when they do, my father will come. All I have to do is wait and my father will come.

  As boys tended to do, Bobby and Jimmy drifted apart after that summer, until eventually they didn’t even respond to one another as they passed in the halls. It wasn’t until Bobby turned thirteen, when the trash truck crushed Jimmy behind the dumpster where he’d gone to sneak a smoke, that he thought of him again.

  At his r
equest, Sister Agnes gave Bobby the box of comics and he’d read each one all the way through. With each issue he’d developed a better understanding of Jimmy Hixon and his father, the Silver Surfer.

  The Silver Surfer had the ability to channel ambient cosmic energy into his body at will, and expel it violently as concussive force or gently as a means to restructure molecules according to his mental design. He could generate beams of energy through his hands with sufficient destructive force to level a large city or generate such subtle amounts of energy to restructure the molecules of the natural dyes within a plant to change its color. But he could not transmute elements. The forces binding together the molecules making up the silvery material that comprised the Silver Surfer’s skin were so great that there were few known forces in the universe strong enough to overcome them.

  The inner portions of his body had also been made highly resistant to injury. Thus, the Surfer was invulnerable to most forms of physical harm. He could survive extremes of temperature caused by the buildup of friction within atmospheres or the vacuum of space or the intense heat within the near vicinity of stars. His body could even withstand the stresses of near-light-speed travel in this universe, and of even greater speeds in hyperspace.

  The Silver Surfer could trounce Superman, Spiderman and the X-men all at once if he wanted. What better superhero to have as a father?

  When Bobby turned sixteen, he gave up the comics, but he’d always understood Jimmy’s need to identify with parents. Most of the kids at the home dealt with that very same issue, albeit not by co-opting a superhero alien parent. Bobby had determined in his sagely teenage mind that because of Jimmy’s physical handicaps, he’d needed a very special parental cipher. The Silver Surfer had been changed to his form against his will by Galactus. Jimmy had been changed from the potential of a perfect baby to one with only three senses. Whether it was Galactus, the devil or goddamned blind fate, Jimmy had been forced to be something he didn’t want to be, and he’d finally found a reason for it.

  Part of Bobby needed to find out why Jimmy had decided to make the Silver Surfer his father. He wanted to understand the boy’s thought processes, because there was one thing he’d known beyond a shadow of a doubt, and that was that Jimmy Hixon was just as sane as the next person.

  And then Elvis had become his father. The irony was eternally forefront, and ever since that day Jimmy Hixon hadn’t been far from Bobby’s thoughts. The boy had believed a superhero was his father and everyone had laughed at him. Bobby had been told Elvis was his father, and did he dare believe? Was he strong enough to find out?

  Chapter 15

  A neon green late-fifties Chevy and a canary yellow Mercedes sedan with a white hood scoop and tail purred like tomcats as they waited for the light to change at the corner of Crest Road and Hawthorne Boulevard in Rancho Palos Verdes. Split and Blockbuster sat in the Chevy. Behind them was the Mercedes driven by Jimmy V, with his cousin Paco in the passenger seat. Lucy sat in the back, his bulk comfortably filling the bench-style seat. He held a cell phone in his right hand and was busy.

  A Jetta filled with four blonde high school girls pulled to a stop in the next lane. Their four heads bobbed in rhythm to some song on the Volkswagen’s radio, reminding Lucy of the little plastic Chihuahuas on the dashboards of taxis. Once he’d seen a bobble-head Jesus. He’d also seen a bobble-head Elvis. Sacrilegious.

  “Lucy. We turning up here on the right?” Blockbuster asked through the phone connection.

  One of the girls glanced his way, her eyes as blank as the plastic dog’s. Her hair was pulled into four pony tails with colorful ribbons woven in and out of her hair. She mouthed unintelligible words to the unheard song, her mouth moving like the incantation of a spell, looking right through him.

  “Lucy. We turning?”

  She reminded him of a white girl he’d dated in junior high. Her name had been Colette. She wore her hair just like the girl in the Jetta. Her lips had tasted like bubblegum, but that’s as far as he’d ever gotten. He’d tried to force her one night, but she’d ended up crying.

  “Lucy!”

  “What?” He glanced at the map in his lap. “Stay on Hawthorne, then turn off Valon. When you see Via La Cresta, take that.”

  “Left or right?”

  “There is no left or right. There’s only one way to go.”

  The light changed and the Jetta pulled away. Lucy watched the girl’s receding head. What had made him think of Colette after all this time? It’s not like he pined after her. She was just another girl from his younger days. The insinuation of his past into the present disturbed him.

  “There has to be a left or a right,” Split argued from the front car. “How the hell else are we gonna turn if it ain’t left or right.”

  “You better keep it down, or else Lucy’s going to get pissed.”

  “He should be pissed. I mean he wants us to turn but not left and not right? What crack is he smoking?”

  “Shut the fuck up, vato.”

  Lucy finally stirred. “You two want to keep your finger off the send button when you’re acting like punks? Pull over at the service station on the corner.”

  “Now you’ve done it.”

  “Me? I didn’t do anything. But I am going to take a right when I turn into the station. See, you have to take a right. There is no just—”

  Lucy sighed in the silence. The Mercedes followed the Chevy as they both pulled into the parking area of the service station. Jimmy Z and Paco both looked questioningly into the backseat but Lucy ignored them. He ignored everything except the feelings that were washing over him. He had a gift for staying out of trouble, and right now his gift said to get the fuck out. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what it was, but something was definitely wrong. Their cars were as out of place as a black eye at a wedding. But this was L.A. He could always come up with a reason for being anywhere. It had to be something else. It had to be a warning on a deeper level.

  Lucy suddenly jumped.

  Split rapped on the window. A worried, lopsided smile rode the man’s awkward face as he made the universal roll-down-the-window gesture. Lucy depressed the button and lowered it halfway. Split was so much the puppy dog.

  “What?”

  “Did you want to see me, Lucy?”

  “Nope.”

  Surprise slashed his features, “Aren’t you mad at me?”

  “Nope.”

  About a dozen seconds elapsed before Split added, “I’ll be getting back to my ride then.” He stepped away, then jogged back to his car and leapt inside.

  Lucy’d deal with him later when he least expected it. He hadn’t missed the insubordination. He was just too busy to be concerned at the moment. Making Split think it was all over was a timesaving measure that had the added benefit of being devious as hell.

  He came to a decision.

  “Split and Blockbuster, you guys head down to Portuguese Bend and wait for me there. We’re going to handle this ourselves.”

  “Okay, Lucy,” Blockbuster said. Worry colored his voice as he spoke to Split, once again forgetting he had the send button depressed. “I told you to shut up and now look what happened. We’ll be lucky if we’re delivering burritos tomorrow down on the beach. What the fuck were you—aw, shit.”

  Lucy’s cell phone went silent as the green Chevy pulled back onto the street and headed down Hawthorne. They’d be safe if they followed his orders.

  Now for his plan.

  The problem was he didn’t have one. Driving into the neighborhood was going to raise eyebrows and probably the blood pressure of the local neighborhood watch. Growing up in San Pedro, he knew how the people of Rancho Palos Verdes looked down on him. It wasn’t just his skin color and it wasn’t just his heritage. The mere fact he lived at the base of their hill said it all. He was low-class by virtue of elevation.

  Originally owned by the Vanderbilts back before Carl Laemmie built Universal City in 1915, which became Hollywood in the hands of Samuel Goldwyn and Louis B
. Mayer of MGM, Rancho Palos Verdes now boasted the homes and resorts of Donald Trump, Pete Sampras, P Diddy and four thousand other millionaires whose right to their lofty purchase rested in the fulcrum of cold hard cash. The only Mexicans in the zip code were day laborers, gardeners and maids. He’d be pegged for a gangbanger right away. His only choice was to play dumb. Bobby Dupree better fucking appreciate what Lucy was about to do for him. Instead of relaxing on his porch while his dad played dominoes, he was about to put his nuts in a gold-plated fire. If he wasn’t careful, he’d be burned alive.

  “All right boys, nice and slow, let’s take a drive through the neighborhood and see what we can see.”

  They turned into Via La Cresta. To his left, between the homes, he could see the lights of ships and Catalina Island in the distance. Royal palms lined the streets like sentinels. Birds of paradise and butterfly bushes hemmed the sidewalks. Million dollar houses preened on perfectly manicured lawns. A two-story Santa Fe sat next to a four-story French Revival, which in turn sat by a sprawling California Craftsman. There wasn’t one style, nor was there a size, that the homes shared. Everything was about location, the view, and the elevation.

  “That’s it up ahead.”

  The three-story mansion was lit up with spotlights from the front yard and Tiki torches along the side. Two men in tuxedos parked cars and escorted scantily clad women and their dates from the backs of limousines.

  Jimmy V pulled the Mercedes to the curb.

  There had to be at least a hundred people at the party. Mostly white, the women mostly blonde, and every one of them gorgeous.

  “What is it that this pajiero does?” Jimmy V asked.

  “He’s a film director.”

  “Any idea what kind of films?”