IT WASN’T UNTIL Saturday, when Emma shopped garage sales after church, that I could hunt in earnest. The crushed soda crackers I spread over a bare patch in the yard drew a whole flock of small brown birds, any of which might have been the one I was after. This was an unexpected complication, but I didn’t let it discourage me. A picnic table and an old canvas tarp served as a blind. I had no trouble dropping a bird with my first shot. The others leaped into the air and disappeared when it fell.
The bird lay on its back, not quite dead yet, and I walked out to examine it. Its scaly little claws made me nauseous, the way they jerked and clutched as if trying to tear something apart. I rolled it over with the barrel of the pistol, and the blood welling up in its open beak was like a shiny red berry.
Suddenly it began to thrash about, its spastic wings beating the dirt into dust, and I ran to the porch and stood there shaking, my hand on the doorknob, ready to flee if the bird came at me. It quieted down quickly enough, though, and I finally worked up the nerve to approach it again and fire three more times, putting the last pellet right into its hateful black eye.
I waited for punishment then — the bird had suffered, after all — but the sun glowed just as brightly, and the ground stayed firm beneath my feet, and I knew the disappointment some criminals must feel when their most daring transgressions fail to make the papers.
I used a shovel I found leaning against the house to scoop the bird up and toss it over the fence into the neighbor’s yard, and the others returned and settled onto the saltines before I’d even concealed myself again. Their greed disgusted me. There was no need to take aim, and I didn’t bother to remove the bodies of those I killed after that. The flock dispersed each time one of their number went down, but reassembled out of nowhere seconds later, like something snapping suddenly into focus. They ignored the dead completely, bouncing merrily over the corpses.
I fired until the pistol was empty, which was a mistake, because some of the birds were still alive when I finally went out with the shovel to gather them up. I couldn’t bring myself to wring their necks, so the wounded ended up with the dead in a hole I dug at the back of the yard.
The telephone bird rang louder than ever from a lemon tree as I smoothed topsoil over the grave, and I sat down and cried for a while, brokenhearted because I’d saddled myself with another secret, this butchery.
SANDAL SHOUTED ME out of a beautiful dream in which my wife and I were planning a ski trip, and the water-stained ceiling of my room was almost too much to bear. I’d been asleep since burying the birds, and my legs felt hollow when I got up to unlock the door.
“Bobby’s on the roof again,” Sandal said. “He’s all whacked out.”
“Can’t you handle it? Or Emma?”
“The only thing I’m going to do is get the cops to haul him off to the fucking loony bin. I’m so sick of his shit. Besides, you’re the one he wants.”
It was usually a phone call from his mother that set Bobby off. She was kind to him, and nothing but supportive, but all he heard in her voice was pity and disappointment. He’d been royally fucked, as far as I was concerned. What good was it to be crazy if you still felt shame?
The window in Sandal’s room opened onto a small balcony, and from there a ladder led up to the roof. Emma stood on the balcony, her hands cupped around her mouth, her long gray braid coiled on the back of her head. She was talking to Bobby, even though she couldn’t see him.
“I said we’re going bowling. Don’t you want to come?”
Foster was out there, too, shirtless, his tattoos looking like some kind of disease. When I started up the ladder, he said, “If he’s gonna do it, let him. Get too close, and he’ll put a death grip on you.”
My bare feet were sweaty and kept slipping off the thin iron rungs, and the ladder rattled against the house as I climbed. I expected Bobby to be crouched on the edge, where I’d found him before, but this time he was straddling the very peak of the dizzyingly pitched roof, holding on to the TV antenna with one hand, a bottle of Wild Turkey clutched in the other.
“Didn’t you hear?” I said. “We’re going bowling.”
“Have fun,” he replied.
“Can I get a hit of that Turkey?”
“I don’t know. Can you?”
I worked my way up the steep incline backwards, like a crab. When I reached the top, I turned and swung a leg over so that I sat astride the house like him, and he passed me the bottle. I drank more than I meant to, and my throat closed off. I spit, but the wind blew it back in my face.
The sun was setting behind the scraggly palms and sagging telephone lines. In the distance, the Hollywood sign leaned rosy against its dark hillside while the sky over the Boulevard soaked up the cheap reds and greens of the tourists’ neon. Bobby stared off in that direction, sliding his thick glasses up his nose with the knuckle of his thumb. What to say now was always a problem, or whether to say anything at all.
“Looks like it’s going to be a nice night,” I ventured.
Bobby nodded.
“Maybe we should get out, see a movie or something.”
“Did you go to your high school reunion?” he asked.
“The ten-year, sure.”
“But you were married then, right? You had something to show off, your wife.”
“My wife? Yeah, I guess I showed her off. Somebody should have shot me.”
Bobby smiled around the bottle, which he’d raised to his lips. Pulling himself up with the antenna, he stood and balanced on the peak of the roof.
“Now, hey,” I said. “Bobby.” If a funnier joke had ever been played on me, I couldn’t remember: putting me in charge of saving someone’s life.
Televisions blared from every open window in the neighborhood, and three kids chasing a soccer ball across the empty lot next door called each other dirty names in Spanish. The streetlights flared once, twice, then all snapped on at once.
“Give me another drink,” I said.
Bobby edged over to hand me the bottle. A good beginning, except that now that he was away from the antenna, he held his arms out like a tightrope walker, wobbling back and forth.
“I’m not going to mine,” he said. “They sent an invitation, but forget it.”
“You won’t be missing much.”
“I was class president, you know. And valedictorian.”
“Hey, meet Best Dancer and Best Hair.”
Bobby sat down again just like that and motioned for the bottle, and my first thought was to break it over his silly head.
“I’m the biggest damn bull in the barnyard, aren’t I?” he said.
“Yes,” I replied. “Yes, you are.”
Something tickled the back of my throat, and I coughed, catching Whatever it was on my tongue and bringing it to my fingers. A feather. Bobby straddled the roof of the house again, and pretended to ride it like it was a bucking bronco, screaming, “Yeeehaw!” his heels scraping the shingles in sync with my squirming heart.
A CHEER THAT could be heard throughout the building went up from the picket line. The strike had ended. Our supervisors thanked us for all our hard work and sent us home early, and the strikers chanted, “So long, scabs,” as we were bused out for the last time. It was a solemn ride back to the underground parking lot where we’d gathered each morning for the past month. Some of the women sniffled into great wads of Kleenex.
We’d been cut loose again, and being cut loose was never pleasant, no matter how bad the job. You always took it personally, and it made for some awfully scary grudges. According to the experts, the best strategy to avoid depression was to update your résumé and stay close to the telephone. The agency would call the next day with something else, or the next week, or the next month. It helped to have a friend there, but I didn’t.
Culver City
SHELLY’S ACTING AGAIN, ACTING LIKE SHE CARES, SAYING, “I swear to God, honey, this will change our lives forever.” Reaching across the kitchen table, she burrows her fingers betwee
n mine and gives me a pout and wiggle that’s pure porno, and I have to smile back even as I’m thinking, Who is this tramp?
There are eight Polaroids spread on the table. Eight Polaroids that show a famous young actor doing things with a famous older actor. Sex things. On a bed, on a lawn, in the sparkling water of a swimming pool like the one we’ve always dreamed of owning. Shelly was at a party in the Hills last night, and she claims the photos fell right into her purse out of a book she pulled off a shelf. Somebody will pay for them, she’s sure. First we’ll try the actors, then the Star or the Enquirer or somebody like that. She figures $100,000 easy.
It’s dirty business for a Sunday morning. I’m starting my first cup of coffee, and she just got home. We spend a lot of our time like this, at opposite ends of the day. I want her to go to bed happy, but the holes in her scheme are as obvious to me as the hickey she’s tried to cover with a smear of flesh-colored makeup.
I’m working on a tactful way to tell her that she’s gone too far this time, when the kid, giddy at seeing us so calm for once in each other’s presence, snatches a Polaroid and makes a run for it. I yell and lunge, but he’s halfway to the TV, slowing to examine his prize. I go over the back of the couch like a hurdler, completely forgetting about the coffee table on the other side. It collapses with a splintery crack, and the kid’s screaming even before I land on top of him. He’s okay, though, just scared. I rub his head until he eases off into a whimper. His teary eyes reflect a couple of cartoon mice skidding across the TV screen, and he slips away to watch them.
Back in the kitchen I crumple the Polaroid and throw it on the table, where it blooms like a flower as soon as it hits. Shelly grabs it and shoves it into her purse with the others, out of my reach.
“People get killed behind this kind of shit,” I say. “Get them the fuck out of here today.”
She rolls her eyes like I’m an idiot. She was different once upon a time, or I was. Her face turns tired, her mouth hateful. “Like you’d be any help,” she says and, without even a good morning for the kid, slinks off to bed. I’m left to ponder that hickey and what to do about it. I stir my coffee and watch it swirl in the cup. If it was possible for me to dive into it and drown, I can’t say that I wouldn’t.
CULVER CITY IS south and east of everything worth anything in L.A. We’re all between jobs here or between marriages, between runs of good luck. We wait out our slumps in flaking stucco apartment buildings, count the stars on our cottage cheese ceilings. There are three different kinds of palm trees between me and the 7-Eleven, and, when the wind’s right, the faintest tang of ocean — just enough scraps of paradise to drive you nuts. We’ve been here too long now to go back, though, no matter how bad it gets. At least Shelly and I agree on that. The great state of Texas can kiss our asses. It was her dream to come out here, and I jumped at the chance to make it happen. That’s how crazy I was about her. With all the nothing I’d seen in my life up until I met her, she seemed to be an extravagant gift from a very stingy God.
I THROW THE kid in the truck and head out to see a man about some work, a Mr. Caldwell, who got my number from the sign I keep tacked to the bulletin board at the Laundromat. He sounded drunk when he called, but that doesn’t bother me. Some of the nicest bosses I’ve had have been alkies. A low chain-link fence surrounds his house, and the yard is an expanse of white rocks that crunch like ice cubes beneath my feet. The doorbell plays a church song.
Mr. Caldwell takes a long time to answer, an elderly black man in a bathrobe. I smell booze right away, but like I said, so what? I’ve woken him up, so we spend a few minutes getting straight who I am, him squinting at me over the bifocals hanging on the end of his nose.
“You got something to haul something in, right?” he asks.
“Yes, sir.” I point to my truck out on the curb. The kid is pressing his face against the window, licking the glass.
“That your little partner?”
“We’re letting Mom have the day off.”
What Mr. Caldwell wants me to haul is his dog. It’s old and blind and arthritic and hasn’t been able to get to its feet for a week now. He wants me to take it to the vet and have it put to sleep because he can’t bear to. I say I’ll do it for fifty bucks. That’s double my usual rate, but I figure I deserve it since it’s Sunday and I’ll have to explain to the kid what’s going on and everything. Mr. Caldwell says that’ll be fine and invites me in.
The dog is lying on a blanket in the middle of the living room. It’s bigger than I expected, part shepherd maybe. Its cottony eyes fidget as I move closer, and a shudder ripples from its snout to its tail. Other than that, it might be dead already. A bowl of food placed near its head is busy with flies.
“He’s been a good friend to me,” Mr. Caldwell says.
“I’ll bet,” I reply.
“Sonofabitch broke in here one night a while back, and Rowdy took ahold of his ass and didn’t let go until the cops showed up.”
“A real watchdog, huh?”
“Smart, smart, smart, too. He could count, I swear to you, and knew all the colors. I’d say, ‘Get me that red shoe,’ and he’d trot over and pick it out of a whole pile of them.”
Poor old dog, poor old man. I have to move things along, though, because who knows what the kid’s up to out in the truck. When Mr. Caldwell stops talking for a second to thumb the tears from behind his glasses, I suggest we carry the dog on the blanket, me taking one end, him the other. He stalls, offers me a drink. “I’m driving, but you go ahead,” I tell him. He pulls a pint of something from between the cushions of the couch and has a swig. I wonder if he’ll find another dog to keep him company, or whether he’s decided, no, this is it, never again, as old men sometimes do.
The dog doesn’t even stir on the way to the truck. We lift it up and over the tailgate and set it gently down. Mr. Caldwell leans in and arranges the blanket so that just the dog’s head is sticking out. He kisses his fingers and touches them to its nose. I almost tell him to keep his money when he opens his wallet, but that would be stupid. Shelly didn’t speak to me for a week once after she saw me give a bum a dollar at the supermarket. As we’re driving away, the kid stands on the seat to look out the back window at the dog.
“He’s dying,” I say. “We’re taking him to the doctor.”
“Did that man kill him?”
“No, that man was his friend.”
I’m prepared to answer the harder questions, the ones I would have asked at four years old, about angels and heaven and death in general, but the kid’s already turned his attention to the truck’s radio. He punches the buttons, jumping from station to station, never holding on one for more than a few seconds. It’s something his mother would do in the same situation, not giving a damn about anybody but herself.
SHELLY WOULD HAVE you believe she’s on a first-name basis with half the famous people in Hollywood. According to her, all kinds of stars are always coming into the coffee shop where she waitresses. They ask if she’s an actress and invite her to parties and nightclubs, which is why she rarely makes it home before dawn, even though her shift ends at one. Of course it bothers me. I’ve even given up watching TV with her, because we can’t go fifteen seconds without her saying, “I know him,” or, “Look at Jimmy there. I’ve been to his house,” as if I was some stranger she was trying to impress.
She swears she’s been faithful, but what’s that hickey about, then? And the bastard in the Escalade who dropped her off that other time, the one I saw through the curtains with his hands all up in her shirt, what about that? In her book these questions reveal my jealousy, paranoia, and lack of trust. In her book they’re an excuse to gut our checking account and disappear for three days. “How could you do that to your son?” I asked her after that episode. “Three days never killed anyone,” she said.
If I was anything like my dad, I’d knock her on her ass, and that would be that. But my dad only used his fists to shape the world to his liking because he was too stupid and imp
atient to wait for things to fall into place on their own. Shelly and I loved each other before, and we will love each other again, I’m sure of it. We can only, all of us, run so far before what we really are and what is meant to be catch up to us. She’ll slip into the apartment one morning just as the sun is beginning to peep into the dark corners and unroll itself across the floor, just after the sprinklers in the courtyard have shut off, leaving each blade of grass crowned with a ghostly drop of water. She’ll be tired and ashamed but happy at the same time, as anyone is who suddenly comes to their senses. “What was I thinking?” she’ll say, or something like, “I’ve been so foolish.” And there I’ll be at the kitchen table with a fresh pot of coffee and a full pack of cigarettes, as cheerful and steadfast as one of those birthday candles you blow and blow on but just can’t blow out, no matter how hard you try.
SHELLY TURNS ON her side to make room for the kid on the couch. “Who’s this?” she asks every time another video starts on MTV, and the kid names the band. If he misses one, she goes over and over it with him until he gets it right.
“See how smart he is?” she says.
“So when’s he going to learn to tie his shoes?” I reply, and believe me, unless you’ve ever been the person who has to bring up these kinds of things, you don’t know how mean it can make you feel. That’s why I decide to leave them to their fun. I go into the bedroom with the calculator to figure out how we’re doing at sticking to our budget. Turns out, not half bad. With the fifty from Mr. Caldwell and the tips I finally talked Shelly into kicking in, we have twenty-five extra this week to save or spend as we please.
It’s not even noon yet, but I lie down on the bed with the intention of taking a short nap and starting the day over with a better attitude. I roll onto my stomach and grab a pillow and think how nice it would be if Shelly joined me. I’ve been doing without for a long time now, one of those things where she’s always tired and I’ll be damned if I’ll beg. It’s still her who comes swimming into my head, though, when the TV fades and gravity gives way — on all fours, smiling over her shoulder, astride me, bounce, bounce, bouncing, a pale nipple grazing my lips, long blond hair taut across my knuckles, the backs of her knees sliding sweaty into the crooks of my arms. I kiss her feet, I kiss her stomach, I kiss the perfect swell of the young actor’s perfect ass while the older one tugs at me, insistent.
Dead Boys Page 12
