Angel Baby

by RICHARD LANGE

  I bite down on my ice, tear off a big chunk. A toddler breaks free from his mom and makes a bowlegged dash for the lake. Stand up, I tell myself, do something, but David is already there. He grabs the kid’s arm just as he’s about to tumble into the water and swings him up into the air.

  “Careful, Panchito,” he says.

  The boy’s mother is more upset than she should be. She’s gasping for air, practically weeping, when David hands the kid back to her. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she says.

  “De nada,” David replies, patting the kid on the head and returning to the bench.

  He’s looking at me and wondering what kind of father I’m going to be if I couldn’t even rouse myself to stop that kid. I don’t blame him. I worry all the time that parenting is an instinct some people have and some don’t, and because my dad didn’t, I might not either. Claire tells me I’m being ridiculous, assures me that I’ll do fine, but that’s only because she’s so unsure of herself. Look around you: Parents fail every day, and half the people you meet were ruined by the time they were twelve.

  “Koreatown is near here, isn’t it?” David says.

  “Not too far,” I say, happy to move on to something else.

  “I’m supposed to have a drink with a friend. He’d probably get a kick out of meeting my son-in-law.”

  “You mean now?” I say. “I’m kind of—” I put my fingers to my lips and mime a joint.

  “You’re okay,” he says. “A drink will straighten you out.”

  A church bell rings somewhere, and I lift my foot to warn away a strutting pigeon that’s getting too close. This is the first time David has referred to me as his son-in-law, and I feel I owe him something. It’s a feeling I’m not sure I like, but nonetheless I say, “Yeah, cool, let’s go.”

  I was nervous about meeting David and Marjorie that first time, at our wedding. They were Jewish, I wasn’t. They had money, I didn’t. Claire had gone to Yale, I hadn’t. “Relax,” Claire said. “They’re not like that.” She and I had been dating for a year, and she’d visited her parents only once, flying over to spend a week in Switzerland with them. I hadn’t seen my own mother in ages, but I’d always thought rich families were different.

  Marjorie was great, a little ditzy but sweet. As long as Claire was happy, she was happy, and will someone please bring me one of those crab things being served right now, and another glass of wine while you’re at it?

  David, on the other hand, didn’t have much to say to me. I sensed disapproval, but I don’t know if he’d been told to keep it to himself or decided on his own that he shouldn’t comment on his daughter screwing up her life when he’d pretty much checked out of it years earlier, when she’d left home for college.

  Our one extended conversation was about Clint Eastwood. David had met him at a golf tournament and been very impressed. “You should make a film with him,” he said. When I went to shake his hand after Claire and I exchanged vows in a friend’s backyard, he put his arms around me, hugged me tightly, and said, “Give love to get love.”

  “Is that a song?” I asked Claire later.

  “A sucky one, if so,” Claire said.

  I went over it in my head for weeks, wondering if that was the best he could do, or whether he wasn’t even trying.

  The bar is called the Alps. It’s shoehorned into a crowded mini-mall at Sixth and Berendo, between a dry cleaner and a tofu restaurant. David parks his rental in the lot and checks himself in the rearview mirror. He’s wearing a black polo and pressed khakis. I asked if I should dress up, and he said a shirt with a collar would be fine.

  We’re the only non-Asians in the place, which is decorated to evoke a mountain cabin, with skis and poles and snowshoes hanging on the knotty-pine paneling next to large photos of snow-covered peaks. A fire is burning in the circular fireplace in the middle of the room, surrounded by couches. The air conditioner is turned all the way up to compensate for the heat of the flames.

  The place has lots of customers for so early in the afternoon, mostly well-dressed middle-aged men drinking in groups of three or four. They watch warily out of the corners of their eyes as David leads the way to the bar and motions for me to sit. The bartender is a beautiful Korean girl in a tight red dress. She ignores us, polishes wineglasses, until David calls her over.

  “What’ll you have?” he says to me.

  “I’m not really drinking these days,” I reply.

  “Get something so you don’t stand out,” he whispers, then turns back to the bartender. “Two Johnnie Walker Blacks on the rocks.”

  While the drinks are being poured, he nods to a little man with a complicated comb-over who is sitting by himself in a booth. The man nods back ever so slightly, then pulls out a phone and makes a call. Signals are definitely being sent and received in here. I can hear them whizzing through the air around me. Some kind of work is getting done.

  The bartender sets the Scotches in front of us, and I take a big sip and try to look hard. David downs half of his in a gulp and says, “I should remember, I know, but how did you and Claire meet again?”

  It’s a filler question, one he presumes I’ll have a long answer to that’ll eat up the next few minutes. He wasn’t even looking at me when he asked it; he was watching the man in the booth. Him thinking I’m such a chump that I can’t see right through him should make me angry, but it doesn’t. I get the idea that he’s counting on me to play my part in whatever he’s got cooking, and I don’t want to let him down.

  Of course, the story I give him about Claire and me being introduced by a mutual acquaintance and gradually growing closer during a series of dinner and movie dates is complete crap. In reality, we met at a downtown bar, and I fucked her standing up in an alley two hours after I bought her a drink.

  A couple of buddies who’d done her and dumped her in the past warned me that she’d get too serious too quickly, but I was coming off a string of psychodramas starring women who’d left me feeling like I’d been beaten and robbed, and a bit of stability sounded appealing.

  Turned out Claire was as sick of her life as I was of mine, and that’s where we connected in the beginning. We teamed up to build our own thing, us against the world, carving out a new space and tossing aside any junk from our pasts that didn’t fit. We lost friends, we burned bridges, but we told ourselves it was the price of progress.

  And now, here we are. Mission accomplished. Married, baby on the way, cool apartment in a cool neighborhood, eating right, no more binges, no more soul suckers, no more morning-afters, yet I still wake terrified some nights and spend long, lonely hours in the dark conjuring up demons and disasters and torturing myself with the knowledge that everything we have could be snatched away from us as quickly as the wind blows out a candle.

  David says, “That’s how it usually goes, I guess,” when I finish giving him the sanitized version of how Claire and I came together. Then he continues: “Marjorie and I fought like wild animals for the first few years. We almost killed each other before we learned to get along. I’m glad you two had an easier time of it.”

  He finishes his Scotch, bouncing the ice off his teeth. I’m halfway through mine, and it’s gone to my head. This is dangerous because I’m a mean drunk. A few belts, and I get a mouth on me. The mirror behind the bar is covered with that spray-on snow you use on Christmas trees, and someone has scrawled something in Korean on it. I have to stop myself from calling the bartender over and asking her what it says.

  “How do you like teaching?” David asks, another question he doesn’t want the answer to. Before I have a chance to respond, the man in the booth stands and walks over to us.

  “Hello, Mr. Song,” David says.

  “Hello, Mr. Friedman,” Mr. Song says in heavily accented English. “So nice to see you.”

  “This is my son-in-law, Haskell,” David says.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Mr. Song says to me.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I reply, feeling like we’re reciti
ng dialogue from a beginners’ language class.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” David says.

  “No thank you. I must attend to some business,” Mr. Song says. “However, I do have the information you requested.”

  He passes David a slip of paper with an address written on it.

  “Thank you very much,” David says. “Are you sure I can’t get you something?”

  “I’m sure,” Mr. Song says. “I must be going.”

  We finish up with handshakes and bows, and Mr. Song takes his leave, waving to the bartender and shouting something in Korean on his way out.

  “What was that?” I say to David after another sip of Scotch.

  “What was what?” he replies.

  I tell myself to slow down, think things through, but, as I mentioned, I get mouthy. “I’m not an idiot,” I say.

  The only sign that David is irritated is a quick tightening of his jaw. It’s enough to back me off.

  “Mr. Song is the friend I was telling you about,” David says. “I’m sorry he couldn’t stay longer.”

  “Me too,” I say.

  David reaches over and flicks my glass with his finger, a strangely menacing gesture. “We should get going,” he says.

  I nod and down my drink, finally accepting that I’m just along for the ride. And you know what, something in that is immensely freeing.

  How do I like teaching? I hate it. I hate the kids, who hate me back; I hate the other teachers, both the bitter burnouts and the deluded idealists; and I hate the principals. I hate the classrooms for their fluorescent sterility, and yet I’m filled with scorn when I enter whatever room I’m assigned to and see the regular instructor’s attempts to personalize the space: the inspirational posters, the photos of smiling students, the drooping houseplants. I hate the desks, I hate the pencils, I hate the blackboards.

  Why do I continue to do it, then? Because I’m too lazy to look for something else I might end up hating even more. And I stay part-time rather than going on full so I’ll be free to take any film gigs that come my way, even though five years have passed since I’ve been on a set. I used to tell myself I was going to put together something of my own, a short that would serve as a calling card, but I get sleepy as soon as I pick up a pen or open Final Draft.

  At least I’m not alone. Lots of folks are spinning their wheels. Being nothing special is nothing special.

  The car is hot enough to boil blood. David starts the engine and turns on the air conditioner. Two men are smoking cigarettes in a patch of shade in front of the bar, and I think about asking for one. The traffic report comes on the radio. Everything is a mess in every direction. David lights the joint we were working on earlier and takes a hit. He doesn’t offer it to me.

  “One more stop,” he says as he puts the car in reverse. “It’s not far.”

  We drive to another mini-mall, this one on Olympic, and park in front of a shoe store. At least I think it’s a shoe store. All the signs are in Korean.

  “Do me a favor,” David says. “Go in there and pick out some shoes and send the owner into the back to pull your size.”

  “What for?”

  “I want to surprise him. He’s another old friend.”

  This is a lie, but I’m afraid of how David will react if I ask again what we’re really up to. I’m going to have to trust that he wouldn’t drop his son-in-law, his daughter’s husband, the father of his grandchild, into anything too shady.

  “Pick out some shoes,” I say.

  “That’s it,” David says.

  A chime sounds when I walk into the store, but the owner, staring at a laptop behind the counter, doesn’t look up. He continues to ignore me as I wander around the store. There’s nothing here I’d actually buy. All the styles are a little off—too shiny, too pointy. I eventually settle on a crazy pair of tasseled loafers made of green suede.

  The owner glares at me when I set the shoes on the counter.

  “How about these in a ten?” I say.

  The guy mumbles something under his breath, then slinks through a doorway into a back room stacked to the ceiling with shoe boxes. The chime sounds again, and I look over my shoulder to see David coming into the store with a finger to his lips. He motions to the front door and mouths, Wait in the car, then hurries over to stand with his back to the wall beside the entrance to the storeroom.

  Before I can move, the owner reappears carrying a box. David reaches out and throws a choke hold on the guy, who drops the shoes and struggles to free himself.

  “Get in the fucking car!” David yells as he drags the owner back into the storeroom.

  I’ve chosen sides or been chosen or whatever, and I can’t switch now. The heat comes down on me like a hammer when I step out of the store, and my legs are shaking. Anybody looking at me would get ideas, but luckily the parking lot is deserted. I move quickly but casually to the car, open the door, and fall into the passenger seat.

  The Scotch has turned into a snake in my gut, one that’s trying to slither its way back up my throat. I take out my phone and scroll madly through the names and numbers. Hello, Claire? Your dad is beating the shit out of some guy in a shoe store in Koreatown. Should you have maybe told me something before you left me alone with him? Hello, 911? Get me out of here.

  The worst part is, I saw the whole business coming and could have sidestepped it, but didn’t. So nothing’s changed. Wife, baby, wine instead of whiskey, and I still stand there grinning like an idiot as trouble bears down on me, wondering if it’ll feel any different from last time when it hits.

  The owner walks out the front door with David right behind him. The owner’s hair is mussed, and a twist of bloody toilet paper protrudes from his left nostril. David glances at me while the guy is locking up the store, and I sneak my phone back into my pocket. The two of them approach the car. David opens my door and says, “Mr. Lee is going to navigate.”

  I climb out and move into the back. Mr. Lee sits stiffly in the passenger seat, staring out the windshield. Waves of rage and humiliation ripple off him. David starts the car and drives out of the parking lot. One of his knuckles is oozing blood. He checks on me in the rearview, his icy blue eyes searching for weakness. I do my best not to give anything away.

  “Where to?” he says to Mr. Lee.

  In the years between my father leaving and my mother marrying my stepdad, Mom dated a number of men and even let a few move in. I liked those who played Star Wars with me and let me watch R-rated DVDs and showed me how to load and shoot a .22. Others weren’t so great: the one who made me go to Sunday school with the neighbors so he and my mom could have “alone time,” the one who punched me in the stomach when I scratched his truck with my bicycle.

  And then there was Bill. He was one who stayed with us for a while, his excuse being that he was waiting for a big check the government owed him. He was a cocky, long-legged redhead just out of the navy who had lots of great stories about serving on the USS Nimitz. He’d call me sailor, and I’d snap to attention and shout out, “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  One day he and I went to Walmart while my mom was at work. Two security guards stopped us on our way out and patted Bill down. Unbeknownst to me, he’d swiped a screwdriver, two Snickers bars, and a pack of D batteries. The guards searched me too, and I couldn’t stop crying, because I was sure I was going to jail. Bill hung his head when they laid into him. What kind of man shoplifts with a kid, they wanted to know. “A dumbass,” Bill said. “A real dumbass.” One of the guards prayed with him, then they snapped his picture and let us go without calling the police.

  Bill begged me not to tell my mom what had happened, said it was some pills he was on that made him forget to pay. I’d never had an adult ask for my loyalty before, so I gave it wholeheartedly. A week later he snuck off while Mom and I were at the grocery store, taking our TV with him.

  Aye, aye, Captain, you son of a bitch.

  We take a short drive to a duplex on Normandie, a run-down heap with faded wood sidi
ng and bars on the windows. A pack of kids are kicking a soccer ball in the dirt yard and shouting at one another in Spanish when we pull up in front. David and Mr. Lee open their doors and get out of the car. I stay where I am, hoping they’ll forget about me. When David leans in and says, “I need your help, Haskell,” I say, “I’m not doing anything illegal.”

  David frowns and thumbs a bead of sweat from the tip of his nose. “Nothing illegal is going on here,” he says.

  If I refuse, things might turn even uglier. That’s my thinking as I leave the car and follow David and Mr. Lee to the side of the building and up a rickety staircase that leads to the entrance to the second-floor unit. At least if I’m there, I can get between them.

  Mr. Lee unlocks the door to the apartment, and we walk into the kitchen. The cabinets are all wide open, and flies buzz around a dirty rice cooker sitting on the counter. The place smells like garlic and rose-scented air freshener.

  “Wait here,” David says to me. He and Mr. Lee go down the hall, turn into another room, and close the door.

  I flip through a calendar that’s stuck to the refrigerator. Each month has a different photo of Korea: a neon-drenched cityscape, a stone temple, a group of women in colorful robes. I imagine Mr. Lee, homesick while he waits for his rice to get done, sitting with his head in his hands at the little kitchen table and wishing he hadn’t given up on Seoul. A picture of Jesus hangs on the fridge too, and a Pollo Loco coupon.

  The sounds of a scuffle drown out the shouts of the kids playing in the yard. Someone is slammed against a wall once, twice, three times, and the apartment shakes like it’s about to come down on us. The door in the hallway opens, and David steps out. He storms back into the kitchen, red-faced and breathing hard.

  “Go in there and tell him this is his last chance,” he whispers. “Say that you’re afraid of what’ll happen if he doesn’t give me the money.”