The Low Desert

by Tod Goldberg

  Bongo sighed again. It was an especially pitiful noise coming from him. He was one of those Native American guys who looked like he had some Samoan in him, his torso like a barrel, his hair always shaved close, though sometimes he grew a rat tail off the back of his head, which he then braided. He had a tattoo of his name on his stomach, which Cooperman thought he must have gotten in prison, though he didn’t even know if Bongo had done any time, but who would be bored enough on the outside to get that done? Funny thing, though, was that Bongo was actually pretty easygoing. Married to Lupe since high school, had her face tatted up on his forearm. A couple kids. Three now, William corrected himself, with the newborn. Coached soccer. One time Cooperman even saw him at the Rockin’ Taco eating with his family, and they just nodded at each other. He had some hard knocks in his employ, there was no doubt about that, but Cooperman always admired Bongo’s approach to business—apart from the timing issue—which boiled down to the simple credo tattooed in Old English on the back of his thick neck: Not To Be Played.

  “I left what I owe you in the bathroom, second stall, taped inside the toilet tank,” Bongo said. “I can get you twenty-four hours to get ghost. After that, I don’t know you.”

  “I’m just a scientist,” Cooperman said.

  “Nah, ” Bongo said, “you a fugitive.”

  “I’ve got a job. I’ve got a life here,” Cooperman said. “Let’s be reasonable. Bongo? Bongo?” Cooperman pulled his phone from his ear to see if he’d lost the signal, but it was still four bars strong. He called Bongo back, but the phone just rang and rang, didn’t even go to voicemail.

  “Well, fuck you then,” Cooperman said, and he set the phone down on the passenger seat. Thinking: I’ll just let it keep ringing. See how annoyed that makes him. Let him know I’m not just going to lie down. William Cooperman doesn’t get played, either.

  Cooperman reached under his seat for his nine, shoved it into the front pocket of his Dockers, and got out of his Escalade. He circled around the Sonic once to make sure there wasn’t a SWAT team waiting for him, and then entered the restroom. The only person inside was a Sonic carhop, still in his roller skates, washing his hands at the sink. The only sound was the running water and the ringing of a cell phone, which sounded like it was coming from inside the second stall.

  “Oh,” the carhop said when he saw Cooperman. “What’s up, teach?”

  Cooperman looked at the carhop, tried to see his face, but he was finding it hard to concentrate on anything. Bongo had been right fucking here, the entire time; probably got off watching him stew in the front seat of his car, probably thought about killing Cooperman himself. Probably should have. Christ.

  “Who are you?” Cooperman said.

  “Miles Key?” He said it like a question, like he wasn’t sure that was his own name. “I’m in your Intro class.”

  “Where do you sit?”

  “In the back,” Miles said. “I know, it’s stupid. I should sit up front. All the studies say people who sit in the front do better, but, you know how it is when you have friends in class, right?”

  “Right,” Cooperman said. The longer he looked at Miles, the less he seemed real, the less his words made any sense. Maybe it was that constantly ringing phone that was making everything skew oddly. Maybe it was that he could feel his nine pulling the front of his pants down, making him aware that he looked like one of those slouch-panted thugs he avoided at the mall. “Was there a big fucking gangster in here a minute ago? Maybe holding a baby?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “There is no ‘not sure,’ Miles. Either a human being meeting the description of a big fucking gangster was in here or was not in here.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

  “A Native American gentleman,” William said, calmly, trying another tack. “Holding a baby.” Nothing. “A fucking gangster. A bad motherfucker. Did you see that? Was there a bad motherfucker taking a piss in here, while holding a crying baby? You would remember that, correct? This is for your final grade, Miles. You get this right, you get a fucking A. No more class. All summer off.”

  “Professor,” he said, “you’re kind of scaring me.”

  Professor. Of all the times to finally show some deference. It never failed to amaze Cooperman how often people could astonish you, because even the way Miles had said the word indicated a kind of awestruck reverence for the moment, for all the time Cooperman had put into his place of academic standing, even if the truth was that he’d put in shit for academics, it was all just the sprinklers that had brought them to this moment. Or maybe it was just confusion Cooperman heard. Either was fine with him.

  Cooperman stared at Miles Key for a moment and tried to decide what to do next. His options seemed simple enough. Shoot him or let him roller skate back into his mundane life. The realization that those were his two best choices sealed the deal.

  “I have to take a shit,” Cooperman said. He walked over to the second stall, opened the door and closed it behind him, then waited until he heard Miles skate out the door before he dropped Bongo’s ringing phone into the toilet. The cash was right where Bongo said it would be, but there wasn’t much there. Maybe ten thousand. Enough to get out of town, but then what?

  This whole thing was ridiculous. At his house in the Coyote Hills Country Club, where he’d lived a grand total of six months, he had another fifty, maybe more, plus his entire harvest growing in his backyard, which would net three times that much this month. Probably closer to four. He wasn’t a big mover. Cooperman had no delusions about that, he was just happy to provide a niche market, so maybe he’d been wrong thinking globally with this whole cartel thing in the first place; but he’d realized that in time, that was the ironic thing now.

  Cooperman just wanted to go home, spark up a bowl, grade some papers, and forget this mess, but going home didn’t seem all that prudent. He realized Bongo was trying to do him a favor, realized that Bongo could have killed him if he wanted to, could have alleviated this now-international incident without a problem, but didn’t. Cooperman didn’t know what to make of that, except that perhaps Bongo felt a twinge of loyalty. Another surprise. Getting out of town was a gift, but where would he go? He’d lived his entire life in Orange County, and it’s not like moving to Pasadena was going to somehow change the fact that a bunch of angry cartel motherfuckers were now looking for him.

  He stepped out of the stall and saw that the sink where Miles Key had been standing not five minutes before was now overflowing with water, the tile surrounding the sink a growing lake of piss-colored water. His natural inclination was to turn the faucet off and conserve the water, but then he thought about where he was standing; thought about how just up the street there used to be groves of orange trees that grew wild from the water in the soil that had, nevertheless, been ripped up and paved over; thought about the chimpanzee and gorilla that lived in a cage next to that jungle restaurant on Raymond back when he was a kid and how no one seemed to give a shit that it wasn’t in the least bit natural; thought about how nothing in this place has ever lasted, how it’s always been a course of destruction and concrete gentrification. And what did that produce? Nothing came out looking any better, Cooperman thought. No one had figured out a way to make the Marriott across the street from campus as pretty as the citrus trees that once lived in the same spot. No, Cooperman decided as he walked back out into the furnace of the late afternoon, the faucet still going strong behind him, no one ever recognized the ripples.

  THE INDIGNITY OF teaching at Cal State Fullerton extended beyond indignant students and keeping a clock. On top of it all, William Cooperman, who’d invented the most technologically advanced piece of sprinkler machinery ever, who thought he should be held up as a paragon of conservation and awareness in this new “go green” world, who’d figured out how to grow marijuana in an environmentally sound way that actually heightened the effectiveness of the THC in ways that could probably help a lot of cancer patients (and i
n fact, that was what Cooperman had always thought he’d use as his alibi when he was finally busted, that he was growing a mountain of weed in his backyard as a public service to those poor souls with inoperable tumors and such), “the William Cooperman,” as his ex used to call him, had to share an office.

  It was up on the second floor of McCarthy Hall and overlooked the Quad. During the term, it wasn’t such a bad view. Cooperman even sort of liked sitting at his desk and watching the students milling back and forth. As long as he didn’t have to teach the students, he liked the idea of them, of their determination to learn, their enthusiasm for stupid things like baseball and basketball tournaments, their silly hunger strikes protesting fee hikes. Back in the 1970s, riot police beat the shit out of students in that quad, but now things were much more civil. Protest was just as cyclical as the tides and, in a bizarre way, it comforted Cooperman during the school year. It also made the prospect of sharing his space with fostering Professor James Kochel less offensive since there was something to occupy his vision other than Kochel’s collection of “family” photos, all of which were of cocker spaniels and shots of the geology professor in various biblical locales.

  In the summer, however, it was just the two of them with no view to speak of, since the students who liked to protest and march and rally in the Quad typically avoided summer session. Cooperman didn’t know where they went and didn’t really care, but the loneliness of the campus this evening made him nervous as he walked from the faculty parking lot to McCarthy. He paused in the Quad and looked up the length of the building to see if his office light was on, and sure enough he could see Kochel moving about. Cooperman found it strangely comforting, especially since he’d left his gun in the car, figuring he’d just run upstairs, grab his laptop, maybe heist a few other laptops from open offices since they’d be easy to sell along the way, and then . . . get ghost. Bringing a gun onto the campus might awaken his worst traits, a likely scenario since he was supposed to be teaching another class within the hour, and that meant a few students might show up early wanting to talk.

  He hadn’t figured out where, precisely, he was going but had a vague notion that the Pacific Northwest would be a hospitable place for the world’s finest weed grower, sort of liked the idea of finding himself in Eugene or Olympia or Longview or Kelso, particularly since he’d spent the last few hours liquidating his bank accounts and now had $40,000 in cash stowed in the Escalade, a couple RD-2001s, and, finally, a reason to leave. The idea of living in constant rain had a sudden and visceral appeal, and it astonished Cooperman that he hadn’t thought of living in Oregon or Washington previously. He liked apples as much as oranges.

  Cooperman climbed the two flights of stairs up to his office. He was surprised by how light he felt, how clarity had lessened the weight of all this crap. It wasn’t just about water anymore; it was about living a more principled life. He’d stood for one thing for a very long time, and what had it earned him? Cash, of course, but in the end no one cared that he possessed the key to saving the world. What good was being a superhero if no one respected your powers?

  Proof was right in front of him, even: Professor Kochel’s nameplate was above his on the little slider beside their office door. Respect was dead, so fuck it to death. Maybe I’ll get that inked on my neck in Old English, Cooperman thought. Fuck it to Death.

  “There you are,” Kochel said when Cooperman finally opened the office door.

  “Have you been looking for me?”

  “Your phone has been ringing constantly. I took some messages for you.” Kochel handed Cooperman a stack of Post-it Notes. The first was from Monica Williard, another was from Enterprise Rent-A-Car—a problem Cooperman hadn’t quite taken care of yet—and another still that had one word on it: Bongo.

  “What did Monica Williard want?”

  “Lovely girl, isn’t she? So bright.”

  “What did she want?” Cooperman heard a new tone entering his voice. He liked it. Thought it made him sound like the kind of guy who just might have some neck ink.

  “Candidly? I think she’s upset about your afternoon class.”

  “Did you talk to her?”

  “Briefly. She indicated to me that she just wasn’t satisfied in the level of teaching. It’s no reflection on you, William, I’m sure.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I’ve had Monica in other courses and she’s just very particular,” Kochel said. He had a look of smug satisfaction on his face that Cooperman recognized as the same face he used when he talked about how his faith in Christ allowed him to see that many of the great mysteries of science were merely God’s way of testing us.

  “Someone named Bongo called?”

  “Oh, yes, sorry,” Kochel said. “That’s what the name sounded like. I could barely hear him.”

  “He say anything?”

  “It was very strange,” Kochel said. “I thought maybe it was a wrong number. All he said was to tell you that he couldn’t get you twenty-four anymore. I have no idea what that means. Do you?”

  Cooperman looked out the window and down at the Quad, half expected to see an army of men already massed. But it was empty except for a lost seagull picking through an overflowing trash can. It was still sunny out, would be for another hour and a half, two hours, not that it probably mattered. The more frightening aspect was that Cooperman couldn’t remember ever giving Bongo his office phone number.

  This was not good.

  “No,” Cooperman said. “Must have been a wrong number.”

  “Anyway,” Kochel said, “you should really ask for voicemail in the fall.”

  “I won’t be here,” Cooperman said. He was still looking out the window but wasn’t sure what he was hoping to find. Something or someone that seemed out of place. Like a guy walking around with a MAC-10. Across the Quad, a black SUV pulled up in front of Pollak Library. A man holding a stack of paper walked out of the Performing Arts Center. A gust of wind through the breezeway picked up a Starbucks cup from the ground. What he wouldn’t give for the Quad to suddenly fill with riot police.

  “No?”

  “I’ve been offered a job back in the sprinkler industry,” Cooperman said.

  “It really is a despicable profession, if you must know,” Kochel said. “From a geological and religious standpoint, if you must know.”

  “Tell me about it,” Cooperman said, and Kochel did, at length, somehow winding it all up in a rant that included the mainstream media, Muslims, globalism, globalists, Bill and Hilary Clinton, and the need to return to the gold standard.

  The Starbucks cup hovered in the air and then fell and then was swooped up again in another gust. Wind technology. Maybe that’s where he’d make his second wave.

  “What time did this Bongo call?” Cooperman asked when Kochel eventually ran out of righteous steam.

  “Please opens more doors.”

  Cooperman turned from the window and found Kochel staring at him in beatific glory. Why had he left his gun in the car? A dumb mistake, really. But he wasn’t used to being the kind of person who was always packing, at least not on campus. “What time, Professor Kochel,” Cooperman said, his voice finding an even deeper register than before, “did this fucking message come in, please, before I put your hand in the paper shredder?”

  “Ten minutes ago,” Kochel said. “Okay? Ten minutes ago.”

  “Thank you,” Cooperman said. He fixed his gaze back out the window. A man got out of the backseat of the SUV in front of Pollak and walked in a semicircle, a cell phone pressed to his ear. Cooperman couldn’t make out much from his vantage point but could see just from watching his body language that the guy was confused about something. It was probably nothing.

  “If you want my opinion,” Kochel said, as if Cooperman had just asked him a question, “you might want to look into anger management courses. Your attitude will be a real detriment in a corporate environment. Not everyone is as easygoing as I am. You get back with a bunch of MBAs and those egos, we
ll, I’m just saying it might be a bad fit.”

  The man from the car was walking toward McCarthy now, his cell phone in his hand. He looked like his head was on a swivel—looking this way, that way, back behind him—and when Cooperman looked back to the library, the SUV was gone.

  “I’ll work on that,” Cooperman said.

  “I know this isn’t your speed, Will, but you might also start thinking about your relationship with the Lord.”

  “That sounds like a good idea,” Cooperman said. The man was in the middle of the Quad now, and Cooperman could finally make him out more completely. He was older—maybe fifty—and wore white slacks and a black shirt, had on wraparound black sunglasses, nice shoes. Cooperman thought he was maybe Mexican but couldn’t really tell. Had Bongo mentioned a cousin?

  It didn’t matter. Cooperman was getting the fuck out while he still could. He grabbed his laptop, a few books that meant something to him—Forest Hydrology and Groundwater Hydrology. He tucked everything into his messenger bag while keeping an eye out the window. The man was on the move again now, his pace more brisk, his direction clear.

  “And anyway,” Kochel was saying, and Cooperman realized his office mate hadn’t ever stopped talking, was actually quite animated about something, “what you might find out is that everything has consequences, Will.”

  Cooperman turned to Kochel and studied him seriously. He didn’t hate Kochel, didn’t really think about him on a regular basis, though he never enjoyed being around him. It wasn’t only the religion that bothered him. It was Kochel’s presumption that he was always right. “You know, this is all very fascinating. I’d like to learn even more about this, James. Can we continue this conversation after I get back from my car?”

  Kochel brightened. “Of course, of course, I’ll be right here.”

  Cooperman took one last look outside before he exited his office, saw that the man was now only twenty yards or so from the building, and closing fast.

  Professor William Cooperman stepped out of his office and closed the door lightly behind him. No panic, no fear in the least, just a person skipping out of his office, just a person, just anyone at all. He looked down the hallway and saw that a few students were loitering down by the vending machines, another couple were lined up in front of the photocopier, two were sitting on the floor in front of his classroom reading from their textbooks. None of them bothered to look at Cooperman, so they didn’t notice him slipping Professor James Kochel’s nameplate out of the slider and into his messenger bag, though Cooperman did pause for a moment before exiting out the back of the building, to look at his own name. He liked how it looked on the slider by itself, thought that it looked esteemed and powerful and worthy of respect.