Dead Boys

by RICHARD LANGE

  The waves are sluggish today, syrupy, breaking with only the greatest of effort. Propped on my elbows, I watch them struggle toward shore, while Judy, sitting beside me, flips through the pages of a magazine. I find that if I lie perfectly still, the sun eventually wins out over the breeze and provides a fragile warmth.

  The high tide line is marked by a band of waterlogged debris, kelp mostly, driftwood, odd chunks of Styrofoam and plastic. Karl strolls along beside it, stirring up a cloud of flies every time he stops to poke around in the mess with a stick he found somewhere. In the distance, the pier stands black and skeletal against the sky, its burden of joyless fishermen and stoned teenagers placing entirely too much faith in the strength of its spindly pilings, or perhaps the possibility of collapse is all part of the fun.

  “What are you thinking about?” Judy asks, her cold hand on my shoulder.

  “Nothing.”

  “Is your brother enjoying himself? Seems like it.”

  “I’m doing my best.”

  She reaches down to scratch her ankle. “That tree you guys got is something else.”

  “I knew you’d like it.”

  “We’re awful, aren’t we?”

  The conversation has upset my delicate relationship with the sun. I sit up and hug myself for a quick fix of warmth. “We should have brought beer,” I say. “Or tequila. Tequila would have been great.”

  Karl approaches the blanket, carrying something on the end of his stick.

  “Check it out, a jellyfish,” he yells.

  “That’s close enough. Those things can sting even when they’re dead,” I caution.

  “Yeah, keep it away from here,” Judy chimes in.

  Karl stops short, disappointed by our reaction. He examines the jellyfish up close once more, then drops it into a hole he kicks into the sand and buries it with his foot.

  “I’m going swimming. Come on, bro,” he says.

  Judy throws down her magazine. “I’m ready.”

  “There’s shit in that water,” I scoff. “Big poisonous turds.”

  They laugh at me before running down to the waves together. Judy advances slowly on stiffened legs and screams as the frigid water swirls around her calves, but Karl enters at a run and dives headfirst into the breakers. By the time she’s in up to her waist, he’s already bobbing in the swells, not touching bottom.

  I turn away from them, from the sea, and lie on my stomach. In the parking lot two young lovers wrapped in one jacket lean against the hood of a car. The girl rests her head on the boy’s chest, and he strokes her hair. A thing like that isn’t supposed to make you angry, I know.

  A CHRISTMAS STORY? I’ve got one. I was sixteen, thumbing my way out of trouble somewhere down in Louisiana, I believe, and this old boy picked me up on Christmas Eve. He asked was I hungry, and I was, so he told me there was a birthday cake in the backseat I was welcome to. He worked in a bakery, see, and got to take home the leftovers and mistakes. It was chocolate with white frosting and big blue flowers, and I dug right in with my fingers and ate it all up while the dude laughed and laughed. Afterward he sparked up a bomber, and I was like, well, here we are, man, here we are.

  A few miles down the road he started in. “You like cock? You sure look like you would.” Ain’t nothing come for free, right? I don’t know what I was thinking. You gotta figure a guy must be packing if he’s talking like that, so plain to a stranger, and I’m not gonna lie but I was scared. I told him I had to piss, and he asked could he watch. “Sure,” I said. “Enjoy the show.” As soon as the car pulled over, I was out the door and up the hill into the woods as fast as I could get. I found a good hiding place and hunkered down where I could see him through the trees. He fired a few rounds from a little pistol up my way, then got back in his car and left.

  After an hour or so I started walking. Didn’t even bother to stick my thumb out. It was so bitter cold and kind of sleety, and in the middle of the night with me looking such a mess, nobody was gonna stop. Up the road a ways I came upon a blanket I thought I could maybe use, but when I went to snatch it up, there was something wrapped inside it. A dog, I thought, or, I don’t know why, a monkey, but it was a baby, a little blue baby. It seemed dead till it started to cry. I can’t say I didn’t think about just moving on down the line, but it was a baby, man. A baby. On Christmas Eve.

  I shoved it up under my shirt and jacket, and it was like carrying a block of ice. I could feel its heart beating right next to mine. Cars were passing all the while, and I waved like crazy, but they went right on by. First time I ever prayed to see a cop, I can tell you that. After a few miles of walking, the little guy warmed up a bit, and you know what he did? He went right for my tit, like I was his momma. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so hopeless, but my tears froze before they made it halfway down my face.

  Finally I saw a house all lit up for the holidays. I banged on the door, and they let me in, real nice black folks, just sitting down to dinner. The lady of the family took the baby from me and set about making it comfortable till the ambulance could get there. They fixed me up with a plate, and their children sang Sunday school songs for me. The sheriff gave me an empty cell to sleep in that night and had me over to his house the next day. There was a present for me under the tree and everything, a new coat. It wasn’t until he put me on the bus to New Orleans after dinner that he told me the baby had died.

  OH, LOOK! JUDY and Karl are friends now. They’ve crossed that line. I can see it at the dinner table over the takeout Chinese. They’re finally comfortable with each other, moving easily from joking to paying attention when it seems important, discovering common ground, that whole thing. This leaves me pretty much ignored. My contributions to the conversation earn a quick smile and nod, if that.

  I take my beer into the living room and sit on the couch. The Christmas tree lights are on, twinkling stupidly. I think about those astronauts at the mall. What was it: Mercury, Gemini, Apollo. If I went into space, I’d want to go alone, and if I made it as far as the moon, there would be no stopping me. Judy laughs, and I turn on the TV. Loud.

  “What do you think, honey,” Judy shouts over it. “A tattoo.”

  “That’s against your religion.”

  “What about you, then?” Karl asks.

  “Not my style.”

  Karl stands and begins to clear the table, but Judy tells him to leave it, she’ll do it later. They join me on the couch, she on one end, he on the other. Judy grabs the remote and clicks off the television.

  “If we’re going to do this, we might as well do it right. There have got to be some carols on the radio.”

  “Now you’re thinking,” Karl says as he jumps up and goes to the stereo. A few twists of the dial, and “We Three Kings” fills the room.

  “I can play this, you got a guitar,” he says.

  “Nope. No guitar,” I reply.

  Judy says, “That baby, if you don’t mind me asking, did they ever find its mother?”

  Karl shakes his head and looks down at the carpet. “I’ve wondered about that, too, I really have.”

  This guy could be full of it. That’s certainly something to consider. A good liar is a kind of genius. We may be playing right into his hands.

  When I get up for another beer, Judy is explaining Hanukkah to him. I can see into the apartment next door through the kitchen window. A family is gathered there — old people, young people, babies. Everybody is talking at once. I don’t understand Spanish, but they seem to be happy. My mother is in Hawaii with her new husband. That’s where his children live. And that’s fine. It’s good for her to get away. Everybody should be able to enjoy themselves if they get the chance. I drink the beer, standing in the kitchen, the whole thing in three gulps, and open another.

  “Come on, bro, let’s have a sing-along,” Karl calls.

  I reclaim my spot between them on the couch. Judy has a slight sunburn from the beach. She looks healthy and happier than I’ve been able to make her in a long time. Karl sta
nds and raises his arms like a choir director. He cocks an ear toward the radio.

  “ ‘Little Drummer Boy.’ Let’s do it,” he says.

  Nobody really knows how the song goes, but we give it our best shot, singing the parts we remember loudly and letting the radio carry the rest. Next up, though, is “Little Town of Bethlehem,” which loses us all.

  “We’re pitiful,” Judy says.

  Karl laughs. “Well, fuck it, then,” he says. “Let’s just sing the easy ones.”

  We run through “Rudolph” and “Jingle Bells” and a few others, then give up on Christmas crap completely to serenade each other with anything that comes to mind. I do my Cub Scout cowboy repertoire — “Streets of Laredo,” “Darling Clementine,” “Polly Wolly Doodle” — and Judy offers something in Hebrew she memorized a thousand years ago and a few numbers from My Fair Lady.

  When it’s Karl’s turn, he moves to the middle of the room and busts out with a creepy old song his grandfather taught him, something about a murdered child in a garden. He stands with his eyes closed, arms dangling at his sides, and his voice is a high graveyard whine that squeezes the breath out of me. It’s as beautiful as such a thing can be.

  Judy watches and listens with trembling lips, her hands clapped to her cheeks. “Karl,” she exclaims when he finishes. “My God!”

  He shakes himself out of his trance and smiles broadly. “Whew! That’s a goody, huh?”

  “You fucking jailbird,” I say in a voice choked with anger and envy. “You don’t have a clue, do you?”

  “Take it easy, bro,” he says. “Have another beer, why don’t you.”

  I LIE QUIETLY beside Judy until I’m sure she’s asleep, then roll out of bed and dress in the hallway. The only thing I think to grab is my toothbrush before creeping through the living room, past Karl sprawled on the couch, and out the front door. I’m dizzy with excitement, tight in the belly, and I swear I can see in the dark as well as any cat. The streetlights are as bright as the sun and shadows hold no mystery. I try to work up some emotion when I turn at the bottom of the stairs for one last glance at the apartment, but all that comes is a smile. Perhaps I will change this to a tear in the retelling somewhere down the road. Perhaps not. Perhaps I will never speak of this life again.

  My car is parked on the street half a block away. There is a 4-Runner in front of it, backed right onto the bumper, and a car has wedged itself in behind. I start the engine and shift into reverse, stomping on the accelerator in an attempt to gain enough space to maneuver away from the curb, but the car behind me won’t budge. Neither will the 4-Runner. I get out and check the doors of both vehicles and find they’re locked. And it’s cold. Really cold. I should have brought a jacket.

  I scoop up my steering wheel lock and look both ways on the street. The incredible clarity of a few minutes ago has faded. I draw the steel bar back over my shoulder and move up next to the 4-Runner. It should be a simple matter to slip the vehicle into neutral and push it forward a few feet to facilitate my escape. I swing the lock as hard as I can, and the window shatters into a million tinkling pieces. This is followed by the piercing whoops of an alarm, which echo off the surrounding buildings and return twice as loud as when they left.

  Gutless instinct takes over, sending me sprinting down the sidewalk and up the stairs to the apartment. Karl is standing in front of the window in the living room when I burst through the door. The alarm can be heard as clearly here as it could down in the street.

  “What’s going on?” he asks.

  “Nothing,” I say, passing through without stopping. “Happens all the time. Kids and shit.”

  I undress in the dark. Judy doesn’t stir as I climb back into bed. I bury my face in the pillow while my heart slams itself against my ribs in frustration.

  I MUST HAVE been drunk, because I now have a vicious hangover, or at least it feels like a hangover. On Christmas morning. If it wasn’t for Karl, that wouldn’t mean anything. It would be just another day for Judy and me. No hideous tree. No turkey and cranberry sauce to deal with. Judy’s up to her elbow in the bird, stuffing it. I offer to help, but she laughs and says, “No, no, go talk to your brother.”

  Karl is on the couch, fresh out of the shower. He sits there all big and clean and shiny.

  “Hey, bro. Good morning. Merry Christmas,” he says. He motions me closer with a finger, checks over my shoulder to make sure Judy’s busy.

  “I want to get your old lady something,” he whispers. “You gotta drive me.”

  A kind of sureness that infuriates me has appeared in his tone. “That’s not necessary. Forget it,” I reply.

  “No, no, really.”

  Judy and I should have worked out a signal beforehand. We should have been a lot smarter about this whole thing. Now it’s all up to me.

  “Dear,” I call out. “Do we have time to go down to the Boulevard? Karl wants to see the footprints.”

  Judy looks up from a cookbook, pushing away a strand of hair from her face with the palm of her hand. “Do you know how long these things have to roast?” she asks. “Stop at the store and pick up some whipped cream.”

  Karl slaps me on the thigh and grins. My head starts throbbing again, the pain sneaking right past the aspirin.

  CHRISTMAS DECORATIONS COIL like red and green snakes around the streetlights on Hollywood, and Santa and his elves fly from one side of the Boulevard to the other on banners stretched between the buildings. We join the Mexican families dressed in church clothes who are strolling past the souvenir shops and lingerie stores and the cheap restaurants with menus in five languages taped to their windows. I point out one to Karl, a burger joint where all the homeless punks gather to preen and tweak, and tell him that rumor has it you can fuck them for a corn dog, but he’s more interested in the sidewalk stars, calling out the names he recognizes as we step over them.

  “Lucille Ball! Bob Hope! Michael Jackson!”

  A line of tour buses idles in front of the Chinese Theater. Despite the holiday, the forecourt is packed with tourists taking turns posing next to their favorite actors’ and actresses’ hand- and footprints. Japanese, Germans, Frenchies. Karl wades in among them, a white trash Gulliver. He stops at John Wayne’s slab and stares down at it like he’s all alone somewhere, in a church or a cemetery. With great solemnity, he places his tennis shoe over the impression left by Wayne’s boot. “Will you look at that,” he says, not to me, not to anyone, and I wish Judy were here to see him, although on second thought she’d probably find a way to twist it into something charming.

  I walk out to the curb for a cigarette. I don’t know how people do it, live this life. It seems incredibly difficult to me today, incredibly annoying. A few years ago, when the city spruced up this neighborhood, they mixed something sparkly into the asphalt used to repave the street. When the sun hits it, it looks like broken glass, like you’d cut yourself if you stumbled. And they wonder why there are so many lunatics around here. Even the ground beneath their feet seems to have turned against them.

  THERE WASN’T MUCH open because of the holiday and all. We went into this place that had like posters and T-shirts. Junk. It wasn’t what I had in mind, but my bro’s like, “Fuck it, man. I got a headache and she doesn’t give a fuck what you bring her, so just pick something.” Whatever, right? Merry Christmas. I found this teddy bear wearing a little shirt that said LOVE, and when I showed it to him, he just smirked. I didn’t care, though, because it wasn’t for him, it was for his old lady, and she was good people.

  This is a weird one, dude, I warned you. As we were walking back to the car, he asked me if I’d stolen anything from the store. I thought he was fucking with me, you know, ’cause that’s how he was, so I said, “No, man, boosting’s your trip, remember?” giving it right back to him. “Well, I don’t know. Best check your pocket,” he said. So I reach into my coat, and I’ll be damned if there wasn’t one of those little plastic things that snows when you shake them. That cocksucker must have slipped it in
when I wasn’t looking.

  He started laughing, but I was pissed. Motherfucker was toying with my freedom. I say, “They could send me back for that, you know. I’m not even supposed to be in this state.” And out of nowhere he goes off about didn’t I want to go back because I missed my boyfriend so much, and by the way, how does it feel to take it up the ass? Without even thinking, I slammed him against a wall, whereupon he came at me, kicking and screaming that I was out to fuck his old lady. Dude had some serious problems. I mean, he was my bro, but for him to pull that shit. And he would not let up. He wanted to throw down right there on Hollywood Boulevard. I gave him a shot to the head to calm his ass, and he started yelling for the cops, so I gave him another that dropped him and took off running, just left him laying on the sidewalk. Broke my heart.

  JUDY IS SETTING the table when I get home, with the good china, which has been buried in a closet for years. She’s such a sport. I forget to acknowledge that sometimes. The radio plays Christmas carols, and the smell of food cooking almost gags me. I put my hand over my split lip so it doesn’t startle her, but there’s not much I can do about the blood on my shirt, so I walk quickly into the living room.

  “That’s that,” I announce.

  She turns to me with a smile. “What?”

  “We don’t have to do this anymore.”

  I pick up the tree. Ornaments and fake snow go flying. As I’m carrying it to the front door, Judy moves to block my way, and I don’t understand the look on her face.

  “Wait,” she says.

  “He attacked me. I caught him stealing something from a store, and when I confronted him, he went crazy.”

  I push past her and carry the tree out. More blue glass balls are dislodged, and they pop like balloons when they shatter against the stairs, collapsing into nothing. The cold yellow smear of sun in the sky is not even bright enough to give me a shadow. Down in the street, I toss the tree into the gutter. Maybe some poor family will drive by and pick it up. It might make their day.