It started with Andy’s piece of shit bike.
– What the fuck were you doing not locking it up?
– I just went in for a second.
– I just went in for a second. How long do you think it takes to steal a bike, dickweed?
– It was right next to the window.
– Yeah, that’ll do it; no one ever steals shit that’s next to a window. Numbnuts.
George is kneeling next to a bucket of water, submerging the half inflated innertube from his bike’s front wheel. He looks once at Paul, then back in the bucket.
– Don’t be such a dick, man, he lost his bike.
Paul picks up a rock from the huge pile that occupies half the driveway. He shakes the rock around in his hand.
– He didn’t lose his bike.
He tosses the rock, bouncing it off Andy’s back.
– He let someone steal it.
Andy feels pressure behind his eyes and fights it. Already cried once coming out of the store and finding the bike gone. Can’t cry again.
He picks up a rock of his own.
– I didn’t let anyone steal it.
He throws the rock at Paul.
– It was stolen.
Paul stays right where he is, the rock skipping across the pavement and into the street without coming near him.
– Yeah, big diff.
George is still shuffling the innertube between his hands, looking for the string of bubbles that will point to the slow leak that’s been plaguing him for days.
– Don’t throw the fucking rocks around, dad’ll have a fit.
Andy kicks at a couple rocks, nudging them back toward the pile. His and George’s dad had them shovel the rocks from the back of his 4×4 two weeks ago. This weekend he’ll rent a rototiller and plow up the back lawn and they’ll have to move the rocks a wheelbarrow load at a time to spread over the yard. It’s gonna suck and he’s not even going to pay them. He says they should be thanking him for plowing under the lawn that they hate mowing and weeding.
A line of bubbles shoots to the surface of the water. George covers their source with a fingertip and lifts the tube from the water.
– Hand me that rag.
Andy bends to pick up a scrap of chamois that’s lying next to the toolbox. Paul takes a quick step and places his foot over it.
– George, don’t let this guy help with your bike. He’s bad luck. He touches your bike and it’s gone.
Andy yanks on the rag.
– Get off, dickmo.
– Make me.
– Get. Off.
Andy pulls harder and Paul lifts his foot and Andy falls back on his ass.
– You’re such a feeb.
– Dick!
George holds out his hand.
– Give me the rag.
Andy throws the rag at him.
Some big brother. Think he could take his side against Paul just once. Just today. Fucking bike. Still can’t believe he was so stupid not to lock it up.
George lifts his finger from the puncture in the tube and starts drying the rubber around it.
– Did you see who took it?
Andy gets off his ass, takes the puncture kit from the toolbox and pops the shiny tin lid from the cardboard cylinder.
– No. If I had I would have kicked their ass.
Paul reaches up, grabbing a lower branch of the maple tree alongside the driveway and chinning himself on it.
– Yeah, George, what are you thinking? If he’d seen them he would have kicked their ass. He’s such a badass ass kicker. Asses all over town are afraid of him.
Andy flips him off and hands George the top of the puncture kit.
George drops the rag, takes the lid, and uses its ridged upper surface to score the rubber around the puncture.
Paul hauls himself up onto the branch, hooks his knees around it and dangles upside down, long curls falling over his face.
– Come kick my ass, Andy, I’ll just hang here and you try to kick my ass.
Andy stays where he is, watching George fix the leak, taking the lid back and handing him the metal tube of cement.
He’s imagining picking up the hammer from the toolbox and swinging it at Paul’s face. He’s picturing finding whoever stole his bike and stabbing them in the throat with a screwdriver.
Paul puts one arm behind his back.
– C’mon, man, one handed and upside down! You gotta be able to kick my ass.
George rubs the cement over the puncture.
Paul puts his other arm behind him.
– No hands. No hands. It’s never gonna get easier than this, man. C’mon and take a shot. You know you want to. Remember that time I pantsed you on the quad? Here’s your chance to get back at me.
Andy remembers. First day of his freshman year, bad enough that he’d been skipped a year to start high school early, but there was Paul, greeting him by running up and yanking his hand me down bell bottoms to his ankles while the entire student body was crisscrossing the quad on their way to homeroom.
He pictures standing in the middle of that quad with a machine gun in his hands, pulling the trigger and turning in slow circles until he is all alone and it is quiet.
He shakes his head sharply, trying to jar the image loose. He fails.
He takes the cement back from George, caps it and drops it in the kit, chews the inside of his cheek.
Paul swings himself back and forth a few times.
– What’s the matter, spaz? Looks like you’re getting twitchy over there. You gonna freak out and start throwing things again?
George picks up one of the rocks, cups it like a marble and flicks it at Paul, bouncing it off his forehead.
Paul laughs.
– You’re off the hook, Andy, your bro’s fighting your battles again.
George sets the innertube aside, carefully draping it on the frame of his upside down bike. Andy hands him a large piece of patch and a small pair of scissors.
George clips a small square from the patch.
– I ain’t sticking up for the puss, dickhead. I’m just sick of hearing your shit. Our dad’s gonna unload on him tonight and I’m gonna have to listen it.
George squares his shoulders and lowers his voice.
– Opportunity, boys, that’s what a thief looks for. Turn your back for a second, your property will be gone. Always lock up your bike. It’s not just a toy, it’s a responsibility.
Paul rubs the spot where the rock tagged him.
– Whatever.
George peels away the bright blue backing from the patch, careful not to touch the sticky underside, and picks up the innertube. Pressing the patch over the hole, using his thumbs to smooth away any air bubbles trapped under it, he looks at Andy.
– What’re you gonna tell him?
Andy stares at the patch, the violence in his head finally fading as he draws blood from his cheek. Why does he have to think about that kind of shit? It’s not like he’s like Paul. Paul likes to fight. But fighting sucks. Getting punched sucks. And hurting someone else, that almost sucks worse.
George kicks him in the shin.
– Dude, what are you gonna tell dad?
Andy shrugs.
– Dunno.
Paul unclamps his legs and tumbles to the ground, bracing with his arms as he lands.
Andy flips him off.
– Nice move, grace.
Paul doesn’t move, just lays there with his eyes closed, his face suddenly pale and sweaty, skin drawn tight over his forehead.
George is focused on the tire and doesn’t notice.
Andy does.
– You OK?
Paul doesn’t move, just breathes deeply.
Andy steps closer.
– Migraine?
Paul opens his eyes, wipes the sweat from his face. He sits up slowly.
– I’m fucking fine. You’re the one with problems. Better tell your dad you locked it up.
Andy bends to pick up the patch backing that George discarded.
– He won’t believe someone could steal it from in front of the store if it was locked up.
George nods.
– Tell him you had the wheel locked to the frame, but not locked up to anything. Someone could have tossed it in the back of a truck. He’ll buy that.
– Whatever. I’m still gonna have to walk everywhere.
A car swings around the corner, a ’78 Firebird T-top, “Another Brick in the Wall Part II” blaring from the stereo.
Paul watches it all the way to the end of the street.
– Wouldn’t have to walk if we had a fucking car.
Andy nods.
– Yeah, that would be sweet.
Paul reaches out and slaps the back of his head.
Andy does nothing, atoning for the imaginary hammer he smashed into Paul’s face.
Hector barrels up the driveway.
– Hey!
He skids to a stop, leaving a streak of black rubber on the pavement, his front wheel scrunching into the rock pile.
– Hey, Andy, what’s up with your bike? I just saw one of the Arroyos riding it around.
They all look at him.
Paul hawks and spits.
– Which one?
– Timo.
He sticks a finger in Hector’s face.
– You fucking sure?
Hector knocks the finger away.
– Yeah, asshole, I’m fucking sure. We may all look alike to you, but I can tell my Mexicans apart.
Paul picks up a rock.
– Fucking Timo.
He heaves the rock, sending it far down the street in the same direction as the Firebird.
– Sweet.
It couldn’t be better. Sweet enough it was one of the Arroyos that stole Andy’s bike, better yet that it was Timo.
That shit that happened when they played city league soccer, the year they were under twelves, Paul still thinks about that shit. Just about every day.
It’s a City finals match and Paul’s playing fullback, Timo is a forward on the other team. In a scrum down by Paul’s goal, everyone going up for a header, Timo flails his elbow into Paul’s face, sending him to the sideline with a split lip and a bloody nose. In the second half, cotton stuffed in his nostrils, Paul catches a deflection on his instep, traps the ball beneath his foot, waits for Timo to charge him, and drills the ball right into his gut. Timo goes down on top of the ball and before the whistle can sound Paul is kicking Timo in the crotch, not even trying to look like he’s going for the ball. Redcarded, he argues that Timo was wearing a cup so no big deal, then walks from the field, screaming an endless string of fuck you’s at the refs.
On his way home a gold flaked lowrider Impala rolls up next to him, Timo and his big brothers Fernando and Ramon get out. Ramon has a switchblade. Shit, they all have switchblades, but Ramon, he holds the point of his to Paul’s throat and tells him to take his cup off. Paul doesn’t think they’ll stab him, but that doesn’t keep him from getting scared. His face goes red and tears run down his cheeks. The Arroyo boys say something about what a puta he is, the only Spanish Paul knows. Once his cup is out, two of them hold him upright while Timo sets up for a penalty kick from five yards away and pounds an Official Primera League futbol into his nuts. Paul goes down and coughs up the orange slices he ate at halftime.
Wasn’t till that evening that George and Hector found him at the firebreak at the edge of their housing tract. Drunk on the three sixteen ouncers he’d grabbed from the fridge, head spinning from the smokes he’d bummed off a high school kid, telling George and Hector that Timo is dead. He’s gonna kill that little fucking faggot. He tells them all the way home.
He doesn’t tell them that he cried. And he doesn’t tell them why he cried.
He doesn’t tell them that reaching to pull his cup out of his athletic supporter, being told to put his hand down his shorts like that, made him think of his father.
– I’m gonna kill that fucking faggot.
George is sitting on the ground, turning his bike’s front wheel in his lap, tucking the innertube back up inside the tire.
– Where’d you see him?
Hector is picking up tools.
– Over by their house.
– Was he fucking around or headed home?
– He was headed toward Fernando’s pad.
George is using a screwdriver to flip the edge of the tire back inside the wheel rim. He stops.
– Fernando’s?
– Yeah.
George goes back to work.
– Shit.
Paul is on his bike. He’s already ridden it to the corner and back twice, Andy trailing him on foot both ways, saying nothing.
– So fucking what, he’s going to his brother’s; I’m still gonna kill him.
Hector shakes his head.
– Fine, man, go pedal over there and kill him. Not like Fernando won’t be home. Not like Ramon didn’t get out of Santa Rita last month. You see him since he got out?
– Fuck him.
– Looks like all he did in there was eat and pump iron.
Paul limps his wrist.
– And take it in the ass.
Hector turns away.
– I’m just saying, you know, you don’t want to mess with Fernando and Ramon.
George has slipped the wheel back onto his bike’s front forks. With a crescent wrench he gradually tightens the nuts on either side of the wheel, giving it a spin after each turn of the wrench to be certain that it stays true.
– When’d Timo move out of his folks’?
Hector has pulled out a nearly full pack of Marlboro Reds. He takes one for himself and hands the pack around.
– Don’t know. My sister says he got in a fight with his mom and hit her in the stomach and his dad threw him out. Like, dragged him out the front door and threw him and a bunch of his shit on the lawn. So now he’s at Fernando’s.
The others are quiet as they each take a smoke from the pack.
George takes out a Bic sheathed in the stainless steel and turquoise case he bought at the Devil’s Workshop head shop last summer. They all bum a light.
Hector takes the pack back and looks at Paul.
– And that’s all. He’s over there with his brothers. You ride over there and fuck him up, they’re gonna kill you.
Paul bites the filter of his cigarette and gets back on his bike.
– Fuck ’em. I’ll fucking kill those faggots if they let me take ’em one on one. Only way they can take me is if they gang up.
– Well, shit, man, that’s what they fucking do.
George gives the wheel a final spin and packs the last of his tools away.
– Doesn’t matter what they do. We got to go over there. They got Andy’s bike.
And that’s when they look around and realize that Andy’s gone.
Andy was cool till Hector mentioned Alexandra and they all stopped talking.
Andy stopped talking because the thought of Alexandra always shuts him up. Shuts him up and makes his face hot so that he has to turn away. What sucks is that George and Paul stopped talking, too. Like they didn’t want to accidentally say something in front of Hector about the sudden curves that have broken out over Alexandra’s body. It’d be bad enough if Hector knew Andy was thinking about her that way. If he knew George and Paul had started checking her out, he’d have flipped. Pulled out the length of bicycle chain he keeps stuffed in his pocket, wrapped it around his fist and started swinging at his best friends.
Not that they really have to worry. Hector hasn’t noticed the looks that follow Alexandra down the street. Hector still sees the same little girl he’s always seen. But Andy’s always seen her different, always seen how pretty she is. Not that she knows anything about it. Or anything about him.
But she knows about Timo.
Why couldn’t it just be the damn bike?
Thinking about Timo on his bike, that sucks. That made him start thinking about ways of hurting Timo. Started a riot in his head. Dreams of finding Timo on his bike and pushing him off it and into the path of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler.
Another imaginary murder skidding across his brain. Leaving him wondering what the fuck is wrong with him. Why does he think about shit like that?
Which is stupid, because it’s really his own fault the bike got stolen in the first place. If he’d not been so stupid, if he’d just locked up the bike, that piece of shit bike, Timo wouldn’t be on it right now. Not Timo’s fucking fault that he found an unlocked bike lying around. You don’t blame a guy for picking up the five dollar bill you let fall out of your pocket. So what if Timo’s never missed an opportunity to casually run him into a wall in the corridors at school? So what if Timo shouts choke every time he swings the bat in PE softball games? Lots of kids do that. Man, kids have been doing that shit to Andy since his first day of kindergarten. Since the first time he started getting noticed and people started talking about how smart he is. If he can’t put up with that shit by now, what’s the point? He pictures using one of the nicked and scarred aluminum PE bats to cave in Timo’s forehead.
And repeats his mantra: ImsuchadildoImsuchadildoImsuchadildo.
The secret formula that halts the violence in his head. Most of the time.
But Alexandra.
Andy understands why she knows that Timo had been kicked out. She knows for the same reason that Andy knows many of the details of her life: because she likes Timo. God! Bad enough he catches Paul and George looking at her. Just now, after he’s been looking at her for years. That’s bad enough. And it’s fucking gross. Bad enough that Timo might like her. But that she likes him back?
Isn’t anything his? Isn’t there one fucking thing that is worthless enough that he can have it to himself? His own pair of jeans that aren’t George’s hand me downs? His own smokes that aren’t bummed from someone else? A crap pair of Cheetahs sneakers because his folks won’t get him Pumas because he’s just gonna grow out of them anyway? His water spotted books that come from some library sale of shit that’s not good enough for the shelves anymore? The girl that no one else notices because she’s quiet and scrawny and he’s the only one who sees how pretty she is? His own piece of shit bike that his dad cobbled together from old Schwinn and Huffy parts that he salvaged from garage sales? Can’t he at least have that? A bike that everyone makes fun of? Can’t he have that without having to worry about someone fucking jerking it away from him and not giving it back till it’s broken and used up and all the fun has been taken out of it because it’s just one more fucking reminder of what a dildo he is?
Fucking Timo!
The pictures come again, and he does nothing to try and stop them.
Fucking Andy!
George rides hard, trying to find his brother.
Sometimes? Sometimes, man, he just wishes he didn’t have a brother at all. How much easier would that make life?
Fifteen years since the little shit was born, and he’s been underfoot every single day of every single year. Always such a baby. Such a crybaby. From the moment Mom came home from the hospital with him he was crying. God! The years of sharing a room with him after he was too old to sleep in mom and dad’s room but before dad put in the attic room, was there anything worse than that? Six years old and the kid was always waking up with nightmares, crying.
Dad off on the graveyard shift at the quarry back then, mom so tired at the end of the day you could throw rocks at the wall and she wouldn’t wake up. Having to climb out of the top bunk, the one Andy wouldn’t take because he was afraid he’d roll out in the middle of the night, and sit on the edge of his mattress and rub his back until he stopped being scared and went to sleep. And then being awake for an hour after that before he could get back to sleep. Getting in trouble the next morning for not getting out of bed right away when mom came to wake them. Years of that shit. Walking downtown together to go to a matinee during the summer, having to walk slow because Andy couldn’t keep up. Andy, the little super genius, always so special. Always such a pain. Teachers and people looking at George, wondering what went wrong with him, why he didn’t get to take the gifted classes. But finally getting to high school, having it to himself, two years before having to worry about Andy, before having to worry about wiping his nose and making sure he didn’t get initiated too bad. And then the little punk goes and gets skipped a grade and it turned into only one year without him. Fine, they were still in different buildings. Then he got skipped again. Straight from freshman to junior. All last year, his little brother on the same schedule, walking between classes at the same time, taking the honors versions of the same courses he’s taking. And it’s gonna be worse when school starts again. Senior year, class of ’84. Should be nothing but good times, nothing but ditch days and double lunches and make work and senior trip and barely having to be around the fucking hellhole because the senior classes are such a joke. Best year of his life and he’s gonna have Andy with him for every day of it. Every single day. Why couldn’t he get skipped again? Why couldn’t the little freak be going straight off to college like everybody knows he’s going to do? Sometimes he’d swear the kid could have skipped if he wanted to, could have worked a little harder, but didn’t. Worked just hard enough so he could catch up to George and drag around behind him like a fucking boat anchor.
He pumps down the street, cutting across the heavy traffic on Murrieta, the shaft of the ball peen hammer stuffed in his back pocket banging against his lower back. He coasts for a moment so he can reach behind and shove the head of the hammer deeper into his pocket, making certain it doesn’t fall out. He doesn’t want to lose the hammer. If the Arroyos hurt his little brother he’s gonna use it to smash their teeth out.
Andy watches from the little league fields behind the elementary school as George rides past on the street. Paul already came by, taking his bike straight across the school’s blacktop playground. Hector will be riding the longest way around, all the way down Murrieta to Olivina before cutting toward the Arroyos’ neighborhood. They’ll have split up the routes to catch him before he can get himself into any trouble. And if it were a race, they would catch him, any one of them could run him down easy. But he’s not racing, he’s hiding, and no one can catch him when he’s hiding.
Out after curfew, when a cop car rolls up and they all break in different directions, Andy is the one who’s never caught. He’s not sure how he does it. The hiding places aren’t even that good sometimes, but he knows when the spot is the right one.
When George goes on a rampage in their house because he’s realized that Andy borrowed one of his favorite albums without asking and then put it back in the wrong jacket, he has a checklist of hiding places to look in. Cupboards, under the stairs, cracks behind large pieces of furniture, the roots of shrubs, high branches of trees even though he knows his brother fears all heights, in the hatchback of their mom’s yellow Fiesta. Once, he opened the sofa bed, certain Andy had figured a way to close it and replace the cushions with himself folded inside. But in the end George always has to do the same thing. He stands in the middle of the house and yells. Come out right now and I’ll only punch you once, make me wait and I’ll fucking kill you. And when Andy comes out he hits him. Twice.
Now George passes and Andy stands up from where he’s been sitting in the shadow of one of the bleachers, trots across the blacktop, over the white painted basketball and foursquare courts, his pockets loaded with rocks he sifted from the dirt while he hid. The new twenty sided die he bought today, the one that drew him into the game shop and caused him to leave his bike unlocked outside, squeezed tight in his hand.
Hector takes the long way around. All the way down Murrieta and then across on Olivina and then up on North P. Like Andy is gonna go that way on foot.
But George is right, they have to cover it. It would be like Andy to take the long way around just because they would be thinking he’d never take it. But it’s also too obvious a dodge, so there’s still no way he’d take it. But maybe it’s so obvious a dodge, he might take it. Freaky little kid. They have to cover it. And Hector has to ride it.
Partly it’s because he can ride the longest without getting winded. George can beat him in any sprint and can out trick them all when they start pulling stunts. Paul will take his Redline over any jump, pedal full out down any gravel strewn hill and bang off any other BMXer on the homemade dirt track all the kids ride on in the fields beyond the firebreak. But for distance it’s Hector. He can ride all day, all night, he can ride full out for a mile and hop off and start swinging.
The other thing is, George and Paul think they’re better fighters. Well, they talk more about it, and Paul gets in more fights than anyone, but that’s because he’s always mouthing off and starting them. He just doesn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. Doesn’t know how to keep shit inside. Doesn’t know that if you want to kick someone’s ass you just do it, you don’t talk shit about it. Hector knows that’s how it’s done. Just stand there and stare at the sidewalk while some redneck calls you spic and wetback and makes fun of your mohawk and the safety pins in your earlobe, and when he turns to his friends to laugh at you, you pull your fist, wrapped in eighteen inches of bicycle chain, out of your pocket and start punching him in the side of the head.
George and Paul think if there’s trouble at the Arroyos’ it’s best they be the first two showing up. They think they’ll be able to do something. They’re wrong. They could all three show at the same time, leap off their bikes and dive straight into a hook, but if Fernando and Ramon are there they won’t stand a chance.
The Arroyos were legend long before George, Paul, and Hector got to high school.
Bantamweights, they brawled their way through the school system until they emerged at high school, having moved up several weight classes.
Fernando was the first. He spent five years at the high school, leaving behind him a shattered and exhausted administration and a faculty that was to a soul nothing but grateful that they had survived. He had taxed the personal behavior codes to the limit, twisted them, and found loopholes so obscure the entire rule book had to be revised upon his departure. And yet, despite the physical damage he had done to the campus and assorted classmates, despite the psychological scars he had left on his teachers, despite all this, the football coach and athletic boosters had campaigned relentlessly to have a special grading curve installed to keep his GPA hovering in the vicinity of a C+, just that fraction across the border from C that would have allowed him to play varsity football. Their efforts had been inspired by the havoc he had wreaked as both an offensive lineman and linebacker in j.v. ball.
Any opposing player unlucky enough to have to line up opposite him, any bullrushed quarterback, any running back or wide receiver required to pass through his domain on the field, was inclined to trip and fall while he was still yards away rather than endure the rib cracking nose breaking concussion inducing hits he routinely laid down. If the ball was fumbled, every player, his own teammates included, ran from it, terrified of the prospect of ending up in his clutches at the bottom of a pile. His heavily taped fist pounding your groin, fingers gouging at your eyes, a barrage of Spanish curses regarding your mother’s pussy screamed in your ear. But, gamer though he may have been, his all but flawless record of nonattendance in class kept him from advancing to the varsity squad.
State, Coach sometimes mumbled drunkenly at the Rodeo Club, we had had that Arroyo muchacho, we woulda gone State.
In his third junior year he turned eighteen and passed finally into adulthood and the clutches of the criminal justice system. His record as a minor was admirable enough that his first adult arrest earned him a conviction (sentence suspended), and a final expulsion.
With Fernando gone, the school board heaved a brief sigh of relief, then began preparing for the arrival of Ramon.
The preparations were insufficient. Ramon commenced upon his own Sherman’s March the first day of his freshman year. Announcing his presence by egging the entire faculty parking lot at midday in full view of the sixty eight year old campus security guard, who had been phoned at home the night before and told that if he ever called the police on an Arroyo he would have a Colombian necktie the next morning. He didn’t know exactly what a Colombian necktie was, but, recognizing Fernando’s voice over the line, he knew he didn’t want one.
Ramon lasted barely one year, doing as much damage in that time as Fernando had done in five. But shortly after summer vacation began he was arrested for armed robbery and assault with a deadly weapon. The deadly weapon being a hacksaw he wielded like a machete when a clerk at the 7-Eleven refused to open the register for him. He was convicted and sent to juvy and was never seen on campus again. As a student anyway. As a former student he was often seen in Fernando’s Impala, spinning donuts on the grass. The school left the lawns torn and unseeded until Ramon earned his first conviction as an adult and was sent to county for three to five.
Both were long gone when George, Paul, and Hector began their freshman year, but Timo was in their class.
It seemed Timo had watched Fernando’s and Ramon’s progression and decided it wasn’t for him. He played j.v. and varsity soccer and starred on both squads. He maintained a dead on C+ average that never faltered, the product of a series of tutors who were paid to write his papers and prep cheat sheets for his tests.
One of the school’s five letterman Mexicans, and altogether different from his brothers, Timo cruised through high school, far and away the number one Mexican citizen. Also, far and away the school’s biggest pot dealer. Stoners were compelled to buy his shit brown ditch weed even when there was an abundance of green buds to be found. The penalty for not purchasing his goods being a visit from one of his older brothers.
He sported his brothers’ lowrider style: khaki chinos, black leather shoes with white socks, long sleeved plaid shirt buttoned at the collar and wrists but open all the way down the front and left untucked to reveal the white wifebeater underneath, a net over his blow dried jet black hair, and a thin mustache he’d been cultivating since sixth grade. He wore the look, but minus the switchblade in his back pocket or the bag of reefer tucked in his sock or the Newports in his shirtfront. His lackeys carried these for him. He was always clean, ready for a patdown. A fine athlete, he was always welcome at the top jocks’ table. Sleepy eyed and handsome, watched not just by the Mexican girls but by the white chicks as well. Cowgirls, cheerleaders, brains, and jockettes had an eye for him.
All of this concealing from the faculty what an enormous dick he was.
Rounding the corner onto Fernando’s block, Andy envisions hurling fistfuls of rocks and broken glass into Timo’s face. Throwing things, always his opening bid in a fight.
Whenever his brother and the guys throw down on a pack of cowboys or some jocks who have been talking too loud about their ragged jeans and torn Zeppelin Ts, he gets pumped to the gills with adrenalin, spazzes out, and runs ahead of the guys, hurling whatever comes to hand before lowering his head and throwing himself into whatever’s in front of him. And man, when his fist makes first contact, when a rock has actually bounced off some asshole’s forehead, for that split second, it’s the best feeling in the world. Then it all goes wrong. All the bloodlust, wanting to grab hair and yank it off along with bleeding bits of scalp, wanting to bite into the cheek of some dick twice as big as him, it goes sick inside him and his imagination takes over. What would happen if one of those rocks hit someone in the eye? What if he actually did bite through someone’s cheek, snapped the line of their lip? What if a lucky punch or kick shattered a bone and sent it splintering through skin?
What if he really hurt someone?
Once that gets in his head he’s done.
The sad part being, he’s never gonna land a good punch. He hits like a girl.
Such a dildo.
And then he gets knocked around and put on the ground and the guys are left to finish things up. And they do. They could give a shit if they hurt the pricks they’re fighting. Jesus Christ, it’s a fight, man, that’s the point.
The guys don’t really fuck with him about it. After all, he’s up for the fight. And it’s kind of cool when he goes berserker and leads the way screaming gibberish. Fuckfuckkillshitbreakyouyoufuckingfuckingdildobreath!
Far as they’re concerned, he never lasts because he can’t fight worth shit. How much can you expect from him? He’s a kid.
So when he rounds the corner, it’s pretty much the same old story. He sees himself throwing shards in Timo’s face, and then sees himself trying helplessly to stop a torrent of blood pumping from a severed artery in the asshole’s neck.
He sees an entire funeral and grieving family.
He sees the revenge Timo’s older brothers have taken, not on him but on George.
His brother lacerated by Ramon’s infamous hacksaw.
And when he sees Timo just up the street, on his bike, bunny-hopping it on and off the curb with an ease he could never equal, he opens his hands and lets the rocks spill out and walks to the middle of the street.
– That’s my bike.
Timo hears him, looks up, and glides over. He stands up on the pedals and swoops around Andy, circling him once, twice. Andy doesn’t move, doesn’t turn his face, just stands.
– That’s my bike. You stole it.
Timo gives the pedals a couple pumps, just enough to keep the bike cruising in slow circles.
– This bike? This is your bike? This shitty bike?
He circles.
– Shit, man, you want this shitty bike from me?
Circles.
– All you got to do is take it.
He puckers his lips, makes a kissy noise.
Andy doesn’t move.
Timo tightens his circle. Makes the noise again.
Andy stares up the street.
Timo circles closer, reaches out, slaps the back of Andy’s head.
Andy does nothing.
Timo stops, puts his feet down, straddles the bike right in front of Andy. Waits.
Andy doesn’t move.
Timo gets back on the bike, circles him one last time, and rides back up the street.
– Mujera.
He laughs and Paul skids around the corner, cutting off the path to his brother’s house.
Timo turns back and finds George braking to a stop next to Andy. Further down the street, Hector’s blond mohawk.
Timo rides up onto the sidewalk. George pushes off, chasing him. Paul cuts toward the gutter, popping his front wheel in the air, taking his bike hard over the curb. Timo swerves onto someone’s front lawn and scoots past him.
Paul skids across the same lawn.
– Get off the fucking bike!
George stays in the street, paralleling Timo.
– Don’t be a dick, Timo, get off my brother’s bike.
Timo lifts a hand from the grips and flips him off.
He’s starting to leave Paul behind, but George paces him, searching for a spot where he can put on a little burst, get around one of the cars parked at the curb, and cut his bike in front of Timo’s.
A car door opens in front of him.
He hits front and back brakes, skids, releases the front brake, kicks his rear wheel out and edges around the door further into the street as an El Camino comes around the corner, horn blasting.
Hector has reached Andy and they both watch as George wrenches the bike back into the side of the parked car, bounces off it, and falls into the street as the El Camino drives on.
Andy starts running, Hector riding ahead of him.
George lifts his head from the pavement. He can feel the scrapes on the side of his neck. He wants to turn his head to check on his bike, but he can’t take his eyes off of Fernando Arroyo as he climbs out the open door of the parked Impala.
Paul jumps off his bike and lets it run into the ice plant bordering the driveway at the house next to Fernando’s, leaving Timo to ride up onto his brother’s porch and straight into the house. Running to his best friend, he’s forced to pull up as Ramon emerges from the driver’s side of the Impala.
Fernando looks down at George, takes a hit off the joint he and his brother have been smoking in the car.
– You fucking with my little brother, Whelan?
George is still seeing the primer spotted hood of the El Camino scraping past him. One of Fernando’s shiny black shoes smacks him in the thigh.
– I say, you fucking with my little brother, puta?
Standing on the opposite side of the car, Paul sees that Hector was right about Ramon; he’s fucking huge. His sweat stained wifebeater is stretched tight over mounds of jailhouse muscle covered in jailhouse tattoos. He’s come out of the car armed, the hacksaw, his weapon of choice, dangling from loose fingertips.
Eyes hidden behind wraparound black shades, Ramon waves the rusty bladed saw conversationally.
Timo comes strolling back out of the house.
– Fuck ’em up, bro.
Ramon shakes a finger at him.
– Settle down, ese. Don’t be getting all bloodthirsty right after running away and shit. Don’t look good.
He smiles at Paul.
– So, big Paul Cheney. What’s up, man? You wanna fight?
Paul blinks, looks from Ramon’s face to the saw.
– Drop the saw, I’ll fight.
Ramon looks at the saw, points at it with his free hand.
– This, ese? I drop it I might bend it or some shit.
– Fucking drop it, pussy.
– Pussy?
He looks over the roof of the car at his brother.
– Yo, vato. Called me a pussy over here. Thinks he can get away with that shit.
Fernando kicks George again.
– This one don’t say shit.
– What you gonna do to him?
Fernando hits the joint, flicks the roach away, and gestures at Timo.
– Stick me up, joven.
Timo joins his brother, reaches into the car, and brings out a green and gold minibat from an A’s game and gives it to his brother.
– Here, bro. Bust him up.
– Gonna bust him. Gonna break his head.
He raises the bat.
Ramon nods, looks back at Paul.
– I’m gonna cut this one, cut his dick off.
He takes a firmer grip on the saw, slashes it through the air a couple times.
– Cut that shit off so Timo can bounce his futbol off it whenever he wants.
Timo giggles.
– Cool.
Paul goes for Ramon’s face.
Two handfuls of rocks pepper the back end of the Impala, pocking and scratching the flawless gold flecked deep burgundy paint job.
Tableau.
George on his back in the street. Fernando over him, bat raised to smash into his face. Timo behind him, leaning in to get a better view. Paul ready to seize Ramon’s throat. Ramon ready to scythe Paul’s fingers off.
All of them, their heads turned, looking at Andy, fifteen feet behind the car, hyperventilating, Hector next to him.
Fernando tilts his head back and screams at the sky.
– My car!
Tableau broken.
Hector flings the eighteen inches of bike chain he’s held bundled in his hand. It smashes into the rear window of the Impala, wedging itself in its own hole.
– Fuck your shitty car!
It is as if Fernando never left the game of football, it is as if a ball has just been fumbled into the midst of the scene and everyone else on the field is scattering from it as he charges to scoop it up.
He barrels at Hector, whirling the minibat above his head, Timo dodging out of the way.
Hector spins himself about and begins to pedal away. George scrambles to his feet. Paul yanks his bike free of the ice plant, Ramon ignoring him and starting to climb back inside the Impala. He makes it halfway inside before Fernando returns and raps him across the back of the neck with the minibat and shoves him across the seat, climbing in behind the wheel, Timo diving into the back.
George and Paul are both on their bikes, riding in the opposite direction from Hector.
Fernando hits the hydraulics, boosting the Impala high on its shocks, screeching away from the curb in a tight circle that takes him after the rapidly disappearing Hector, and reveals Andy, where he has been hunched at the rear of the Chevy, now utterly exposed, but with no one left to see him.
He stands there.
Across the street, three small girls are frozen in the midst of a hopscotch they’ve chalked on the sidewalk. Andy waves at them and they run shrieking into their house.
Rocks and broken glass outline the space the rear half of the Impala occupied at the curb. His eye catches on some flecks of blood; his brother’s. In the middle of the street is the hammer that slipped from George’s pocket when he went down. Andy bends, picks it up, looks both ways along the street, walks over the sidewalk across the dead lawn and onto the Arroyos’ front porch.
George and Paul ride around the corner.
George’s handlebars were twisted to the side in the crash and he has to ride with them at an angle. They both pedal onto the lawn.
Paul picks some ice plant from his front spokes.
– What are you doing, dipshit?
Andy points the hammer at the open door.
– Gonna get my bike.
George and Paul look at each other. The left side of George’s neck is badly scraped, a trickle of blood runs to the hollow of his throat and stains the collar of his Double Live Gonzo! T.
He nods.
– Fuck yeah, let’s get it.
They hop off their bikes and wheel them onto the porch.
Andy offers the hammer to George.
– Hector OK?
George takes the hammer.
– They’ll never catch him.
– They’re in a car.
Paul shakes his head.
– Don’t matter. He’ll hit the fields by the railroad tracks before they can catch up.
Hector rides up the driveway.
– Hey.
He stops, kicks one of the empty beer cans littering the front walk.
– What’s up?
George points at Andy.
– Getting his bike.
Hector joins them on the porch.
– Cool.
Andy squints.
– What happened?
– They chased me to the fields by the tracks and had to park and come after me on foot and I lost them in the weeds.
– Cool.
– Yeah.
They all stand there on the Arroyos’ porch.
George touches the blood on his neck.
– Let’s get the fuckin’ bike before they come back.
They go in, Paul, George, and Hector wheeling their bikes with them.
Their eyes adjust to the darkness inside the house.
Paul leans his bike against the wall.
– Fucking A.
The livingroom is littered with the mutilated carcasses of several dozen bikes.
Hector picks up the gear assembly from a ten speed.
– It’s a fucking chop shop.
Paul kicks a milk crate full of pedals.
– Bike thieves suck.
Andy bends and lifts his own bike from where Timo dumped it on the floor.
– That’s a movie.
They all look at him.
Paul starts picking through the pedals.
– What the fuck are you talking about?
– The Bicycle Thief. It’s a movie we watched in Humanities.
He’s inspecting his bike, searching for outward signs that Timo has ridden it. Marks he’ll have to avoid looking at for fear that they’ll remind him of what a dildo he was, not locking up his bike.
George lifts the edge of a blue plastic tarp to look at whatever is tented beneath.
– They show movies in Humanities? Fuck, why didn’t we take that class?
Paul chucks a rusty pedal at Andy’s foot.
– Because we’re not super mutant brains like your mutant brother.
Andy ignores the pedal, clutching both the brake levers on his handlebars, making sure the action has stayed springy in the two hours the bike was gone.
– It’s not that brainy of a class. Just reading and talking and stuff. Writing a few papers.
George shakes his head.
– And watching movies. Only movie we ever got to see was the car crash movies in Driver’s Ed.
Hector is squatting next to a snaked pile of chains. He finds a broken one and unclasps the master link, leaving himself with two lengths, neither the perfect eighteen inches he prefers.
He chooses the shorter of the two and drops the other.
– It is a good movie?
George stares at him.
– It’s a bunch of people who got creamed on the highway.
– No, the movie Andy’s talking about, the bicycle thing.
Andy remembers the movie, the way it made him feel.
– Yeah, it’s, you know, it’s sad, depressing. But it’s a good story. Black and white. It’s in Italian. You have to read the subtitles.
Paul has picked out two matching chrome pedals. He drops them back in the crate.
– Black and white movies give me a migraine.
Hector whips his piece of chain back and forth a couple times. It’s a little rusty. He wraps it around his hand, over the scratches and thin white scars on the backs of his fingers that come from fighting with chain. He flexes his encased fist.
He walks over to Paul.
– Everything gives you headaches.
– Fuck you, they’re not headaches, they’re migraines.
Hector punches the wall, cracking the plaster and leaving a series of deep parallel tracks.
– Whatever, your head’s always hurtin’ and you’re always whinin’ about it.
– You ever had one you’d know the fuckin’ diff.
He turns and jabs Hector’s forehead with the tip of his index finger.
– And I don’t whine, fag.
Hector slaps the finger away and takes a boxing stance.
– Whiner.
Paul slaps at his head.
– Fuck you, puss.
They spar for a minute, Hector jabbing, Paul letting him hit his shoulders and chest and reaching out to deliver open hand slaps to the side of Hector’s head.
Hector goes up on his tiptoes.
– Oh meee, I got a miiigrane. It hurts sooo bad.
– Fuck you, mama’s boy.
– Hey.
They look as George whips the tarp away and reveals the final product of the Arroyos’ chop shop.
Resting on top of several flattened cardboard boxes are two custom BMXers built around Mongoose frames. The bikes are flipped upside down, balanced on their handlebars and seats, the brake cables unattached but the other hardware in place.
Hector squats next to the electric blue one and runs a finger over the graffiti lettering that runs down the crotchbar.
– Oh, man, this is trick.
Andy looks over his shoulder.
– What’s it say?
– Chupacabre. It’s like a Mexican demon.
Paul picks up a box cutter from the floor and slips the blade in and out.
– Fuckin’ bike thieves still suck no matter how good they put shit back together.
George takes a look at the yellow bike with the chopped forks.
He points.
– The blue flames are rad.
Paul clicks the box cutter all the way open.
– We should trash that shit.
Andy looks at his own piece of shit bike and then at the two works of art.
– What?
– We should trash ’em. Teach the Arroyos’ a fuckin’ lesson for stealin’ bikes.
He takes a step toward the BMX chopper, box cutter in his hand.
Andy gets in front of him.
– No, man, leave ’em alone.
Paul points the cutter at Andy’s bike.
– Fuck do you care? They would have done that shit to your bike, chopped it up and used it for someone else. ’Cept your bike is so lame they probably only could of used like the sprocket or a couple spokes. They stole your bike, man. Let’s do something about it. Don’t puss out.
– I’m not pussing, I just. You know, we should just get out anyway, they’re gonna be back.
– Fuck that. They stole your bike, we’re not going anywhere until we do something about it.
Paul’s voice is rising, his face turning red.
Andy sees him wince.
– You OK?
Paul closes his eyes.
He breathes. He turns his back to his friends, lets his mouth drop open, relaxes the muscles in his neck.
He dreams.
He’s dreaming about Chargers and GTOs and Mustangs. He’s dreaming about driving. He’s dreaming about the four of them piled into a black ’72 fastback with red detailed louvers over the sloped rear window and a fat yellow racing stripe down the middle of the hood. Dreaming about laying rubber out the exit of the bowling alley. Dreaming about speeding after a European sports car full of fucking jocks and cutting it off and piling out the doors and fucking them up because they can’t just drive away after they scream shit at them on the sidewalk. About nailing chicks in the backseat.
He’s dreaming about walking out the front door of his house and getting in a badass set of wheels and driving it away and deciding never to go home and no one ever being able to catch him.
Andy touches Paul’s back.
– You OK?
Paul turns and slaps his hand away.
– Don’t touch me, puss, I’m fucking fine.
He drops the cutter.
– So leave the bikes alone, whatever, but I’m robbing these motherfuckers blind.
And he sets off down the hall toward the bedrooms.
Andy looks at George and Hector, points at the door.
– C’mon, guys, we got to get out of here.
George and Hector look at one another.
And they follow Paul.
– Fine. Whatever. I’m getting out of here.
Andy goes to the window and looks out. The girls are back across the street, playing on the sidewalk. He touches his bike, imagines the havoc if the Arroyos come home with them still in the house. Imagines the feeling if something were to go down without him being there, and then he goes down the hall.
He watches the doorways as they toss Fernando’s and Ramon’s rooms and sees Hector find the fistfuls of stolen gold and silver chains hidden in the body of a donkey piñata. Sees Paul sweeping Fernando’s dresser top clear of combs and hairnets and bandanas and a small shrine of the Madonna, sees him finding the rolls of singles and fives and tens stuffed to the back of the underwear drawer. He goes back into the hall and opens a door and finds the closet Timo’s been dumping his stuff in and picks through it, taking a single photograph and walking away and pulling open another door and looking into the garage.
– Hey, guys!
They all come out into the hall.
George moves toward the bikes.
– They back?
Andy is still looking in the garage.
– What is this shit?
George comes over.
– Oh, fuck.
Andy looks at him.
– What is it?
George looks over his shoulder at Hector and Paul.
– What’d you think?
Paul takes a look.
– Fuck me.
Hector moves Andy aside so he can see.
– What? Oh fuck.
They stare at trash bags spilling hundreds of empty cold and allergy medicine boxes, bottles, and foil packets; at gallon jugs of iodine tincture lined against the wall; heaps of matchboxes with the strike surface cut off; various cans and bottles of acetone, Red Devil Lye, methanol, muriatic acid, and Coleman’s camp fuel. A pingpong table in the middle of the garage is covered with an assortment of PVC fittings, flasks, Pyrex bowls, and pie tins. Baking sheets line a catering table against the wall, and two blow dryers are plugged into sockets next to a toaster oven with a shattered glass front. The row of tiny windows in the garage door are taped over with the same lowrider and skin magazine posters that cover the walls.
Paul takes a step forward.
– Fuck. Me.
George hooks the back of his shirt.
– C’mon, man, this shit can blow up.
Andy squeezes past Hector.
– What is it?
Paul jerks free of George and looks at the baking sheets, all of them covered in a coarse powder.
– Looks like the Great Brain doesn’t know it all. It’s a crank lab, man.
– What?
George grabs his brother’s shoulder.
– Stay out of there.
Andy shrugs him off.
– Fuck you.
He goes to Paul, points at the powder on the sheet.
– That it?
Paul shakes his head.
– No, man, that’s like a stage you go through. Jeff told me about it.
Hector steps into the garage, toes the plastic jugs next to the wall.
– How’s he know?
– Working for Security Eye. He was guarding that house out in Springtown for an insurance company, the one that burned down. That was a crank lab that blew up. He talked to a detective or something. Guy told him.
George steps into the garage.
– See, the shit blows up, that’s what happened to Richard Pryor.
– That was freebase, fuckwad.
– Same thing.
– No it’s not. Freebase is smoking coke. Crank is crystal meth.
– Fuck you.
– Fuck you. I know.
– I don’t give a fuck what it is, let’s get out.
Hector whips his new chain at one of the lowrider pinups, ripping it through the middle and leaving a gash on the dirty drywall behind it.
– Arroyos are dealin’ crank. Bikes must be a fucking hobby.
Paul rummages in a cardboard box. Dirty kitchen utensils, tangles of rubber bands, newsprint coupons for Mountain Mike’s Pizza, more bits and pieces of bicycles and PVC.
– Maybe. Might just be making it. Selling to a dealer.
George is looking at the homemade chemistry set cobbled together on the table.
– Jesus, they’re making a lot.
Andy opens a paint smeared Kelvinator refrigerator in the corner.
– Yeah, they are.
Paul is fingering a rusty Buck knife with a broken tip, he looks up.
– What?
Andy points at the contents of the fridge.
– They’re making a lot.
The top shelf of the fridge is loaded with six large Ziploc storage bags, each stuffed full with yellow crystals.
Hector, about to slash a Oui centerfold, pauses to look.
– Shit. Holy shit.
Paul drops the Buck knife and comes over. He picks up one of the bags.
– Man. Oh, man. Fucking A.
Andy picks up a bag.
– How much is this?
George grabs the bag and puts it back in the fridge.
– It’s a fucking lot. C’mon, let’s go.
Paul opens his bag.
– I don’t know, man. A quarter gram is like this much.
He holds his thumb and index finger about an inch apart.
– That costs twenty.
He hefts the bag.
– This is like, man, gotta be a pound. How many grams in a pound?
Andy blinks once while his brain arranges the numbers and they appear on the inside of his eyelids. He reads them off.
– Four hundred fifty three and a half. Well, a little more than a half. Like point five nine and change.
– Four hundred fifty three, point five nine and change times four?
– Eighteen hundred fourteen, point three six.
Paul licks his lips.
– And that times twenty?
– Thirty six thousand two hundred eighty seven, point two.
Paul squeezes the bag, it rustles, and the crystals crunch.
– That’s a car, man. That’s the most bitchin’ car ever. Fuck, man, that’s four decent cars.
George takes the big bag from Paul and hands it to Andy.
– Put everything back like it was, man. This is not a car. It’s fucking crank and you have to sell it to get the money to buy the car and you don’t know how to sell it and you get busted and end up in Santa Rita playing bitch to some fuckstick like Ramon.
– Fuck you, man. What’s easier than selling drugs? Your aunt deals pills. She does OK.
Andy finishes arranging the bags and steps back.
– That’s it.
George looks.
– You sure? It looks different.
– Maybe move that one on the end to the right a little.
George pushes the bags around. Hector’s found a can of WD40 and is using it to loosen up his chain.
Andy looks at his brother’s back, nudges Paul with his elbow.
Paul gives him a shove.
– Knock it off, fag.
Andy rolls his eyes, nudges him again.
Paul raises a hand to give him a slap.
– What did I just fucking?
He sees the bag of crank Andy is holding behind his back.
George closes the fridge and turns.
– That shit’s more trouble than it’s worth. I told you that story about that guy.
He has told them the story. They’ve all heard the story from last summer when he was making pill runs for aunt Amy.
He was dropping a vial of ludes with a guy who needed them to come down. A crankhead who’d been binging for like a week. George went in the guy’s apartment and the guy wouldn’t let him go.
George was still freaked hours later when he told them the story.
The guy just kept fucking talking shit and spazzing out and making me play Monopoly. Wouldn’t let me be the dog like I always am, didn’t want to be the dog himself, he was the fucking racecar, kept going Zoomzoomzoom, but I couldn’t be the dog. Just played and played and kept talking about nothing, just spewing shit and just when it seemed like he was winding down I’d make a move toward the door and the guy would do another couple lines and start jumping around and get pissed if I tried to leave the kitchen. Guy finally went bankrupt and started crying and saying that he lost everything and he was gonna kill himself and went to the closet to get a gun he said he had and I shoved the guy in the closet and slammed the door and ran the fuck out of the place. Told aunt Amy that’s it, man, no more fucking crankheads. Rather drop a bag of bennies at a biker party than do another lude run for a crankhead.
And he’s been down on crank ever since.
Paul holds up a hand.
– OK, man, whatever.
Through the garage door they hear a car pull into the driveway, the sound of Fernando screaming at his younger brothers, then the two of them screaming back at him as “Beat It” blares from the Impala’s stereo.
Paul makes a face.
– Fucking Michael Jackson.
By the time the Arroyos are coming in the front door the guys have run out the back with their bikes, thrown them over the rear neighbor’s fence, and gone over after them. Their pockets crammed with the money, jewelry, a bag of loose joints from Timo’s stash, a pearl handled switchblade, a box of Trojans, and a few copies of Oui. Paul with the bag of crank he’s taken from Andy shoved down the back of his pants.
By the time the Arroyos have stopped screaming at each other and Fernando has broken Timo’s nose for being a smartass and squared off with Ramon in a no holds barred fistfight that has Timo hiding behind the legless couch, by the time the fight is over and Timo has gone for a doobie to kill the pain of his throbbing nose and found everything trashed and told his brothers and they’ve run to the garage and found that a half kilo of crank is missing and Ramon has gone for his little chrome.22 automatic, by that time the guys have cleared the neighbor’s yard, ridden to the Senior Taco in the P amp;X shopping center, and ordered sixteen tacos with fries and milkshakes.
They know being a rat sucks, but the Arroyos are gonna know who robbed them and if they don’t do something those crazy fuckers will. Paul’s ready to do it. It was his idea they rob the place, if someone has to rat the Arroyos, it’s him.
But as they’re talking and waiting for their food, Andy gets up and makes the call. Not that he still wants revenge for the stolen bike he’s leaned against the phone booth, but he does want to make the call himself. He just can’t help it. Finding the school picture of Alexandra when he was digging through Timo’s shit was too much; the little photo clipped from a large sheet of them; Te quiero, Timo written in the corner in red ballpoint, in her own hand.
So he dials 0 and asks for the cops and anonymously reports a disturbance at 1367 North P Street. Some kind of fight or something.
The cops know that address. Small town heat that they are, they like nothing more than to bust the chops of the local spic hooligans. So they send a couple cars right over there.
Paul has just grabbed the last taco from the pile in the middle of the table and peeled off the grease stained orange paper and crunched into the taco, biting it in half, when a few blocks away the cops arrive at the Arroyos’ just in time to see Ramon stepping out the front door, tucking the bright silver.22 into his waistband.
They don’t bother telling him to drop it.
They roll their bikes up the driveway as if they live there, Paul flipping his new Buck knife open with the edge of his thumb the way Jeff showed him, the razor edged blade slicing clean through the hank of yellow rope, the crooked gate creaking open on rusted hinges before creaking closed behind them.
George loops one of the loose rope ends around the gatepost to keep it from swinging open. He peeks through a wide crack between the gate’s warped planks and watches the street. No one comes out on their front porch to gaze across the street. No bright lights shine out from the cracks between curtains as someone looks from their kitchen window. The street is TV time quiet. Everyone parked in front of the tube watching Magnum P.I.
He turns around. Andy is lining up the bikes, turning them so they face the gate, enough room between them so that they can all jump on and start riding without being on top of each other.
Paul is at the side door. He turns the knob. Shakes his head. George joins him. The window peeking into the garage is covered on the inside. Tinfoil and black duct tape.
Hector has gone around the rear corner of the house, trying the back windows for one that’s unlocked.
He stays low so the tall crest of his mohawk can’t be seen from any of the other backyards. The guys wanted him to wear a cap or something over it. Fuck that. Thing takes almost as long to do as his sister’s hair. Besides, these old houses off Junction Avenue have huge yards and tons of big trees that are like a hundred years old or something. No one is gonna see shit. What the guys really wanted was for him to cut it off. They’re uptight that if someone gets a look at them going in or out the mohawk is gonna get them all busted. Sure, there’s only a couple other guys in town that got ’em. And he’s the only Mexican. But that’s the point. Looking different is the point. Having your appearance spit in people’s faces and piss them off is the point. Cut off the hawk and it’s like caving in. Fuck that.
And where the fuck’s an unlocked window for fucksake?
He’s checked the whole back of the house, tried the kitchen and bedroom and livingroom windows and they’re all locked. Normally, you could slip a jimmy into the crack between the sliding glass door and the jamb, but the owners have a piece of 1×2 laid flat in the door’s guide slot or whatever the hell it’s called. Pop the lock and try to open the door and it’ll just get jammed against the stick.
And, man, it’s a mess in there. Boxes and shit piled all over. Stuff that just looks like garbage. A shitty old couch and a lamp. Not even a TV. What kind of stuff they supposed to find in a place like this?
Fuck it. Not his problem.
He peeks around the corner into the narrow space that runs between the far side of the house and the fence. One of those little louvered bathroom windows is cranked open. He goes back around the other side of the house and gets the guys.
He tells them what the deal is, and they all look at Andy.
Andy keeps his hands in his pockets, his right hand fingering the twenty sided die.
Bob Whelan stands at the foot of the stairs, sipping coffee and looking up at the door to his older son’s room. He thinks about going up and kicking the foot of George’s bed and getting his lazy ass up and dressed and out to the job site with him. Been weeks since the kid’s come out for a day’s work. It’d do him good to get out there and make a couple bucks instead of screwing around with his pals all day.
Cindy shuffles into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes and yawning. Barely looking at what she’s doing, she gets a mug from the cabinet, fills it with coffee, rips open two packets of Sweet’N Low, dumps them in the mug, pours in a drop of milk and stirs it with her index finger before taking a big swallow.
She looks at Bob at the bottom of the stairs.
– You should go get him.
He shrugs.
– Not gonna force him to make money he doesn’t want to make.
She reaches under the XL T that reaches halfway down her thighs and scratches her stomach.
– If you want his company all you have to do is ask.
Bob walks away from the stairs.
– Not about wanting his company. Doesn’t matter. He’d rather mess around with Paul and Hector.
She picks up the coffee pot and tops off his cup for him.
– So take Andy. Andy would love to go.
He rolls his eyes.
– Honey, if you’d been there the time I took him. That kid on a construction site is like the opposite of a bull in a china shop. Thought he was gonna kill himself, wandering around daydreaming.
– So give him a broom and have him sweep some stuff up.
– It’s not like that. Can’t just stand off to the side. You have to be on the ball and pay attention to what’s going on around you. He’ll be out there sweeping and thinking about math problems and Dungeons amp; Dragons and whatever else and end up under a grader or something.
– Take them both. George can keep an eye on Andy and you can spend some time with both of them.
Bob’s cup bangs on the counter when he sets it down.
– I’m not trying to arrange quality time with my sons, Cin. I was just thinking George should be working a little more this summer and fucking around a little less. OK?
Cindy shakes her head and starts for the bedroom.
– Fine, Bob, whatever you say. I’ve got to get dressed for work. You want to wait a few minutes I’ll make you some breakfast.
– I’ll get something from the cater truck.
– Suit yourself.
He watches her disappear down the hall, looking at her legs, the bruises on her thighs from where she’s banged them against the checkout counter at Safeway where she spends her days at the cash register.
He thinks about what it would be like if his wife didn’t have to work. His mom never had to work. Well, she worked plenty on the ranch, but she never had to go and take a job outside the house. Not till pop lost the ranch anyway.
Could have been different.
He stares into his coffee cup and thinks about what he could have done to make it different.
– Hell with that.
He walks to the front hall, sits on the little bench Cindy found at a yard sale and stripped and sanded and stained so it would look nice in the house. He sets his cup down, pulls on one of his scuffed steel toes and laces it up.
Things could have been different. Doesn’t mean they would have been better. Not for him. Not for Cindy. Not for the boys.
He stands and stretches and tries to remember how much gas is in the truck and whether he has any cash in his wallet to fill it up.
– Hey.
He looks at Cindy, coming toward him in her bikini pants and bra, running a brush through her hair, Andy’s cesarean scar across her stomach, a good looking woman.
She taps the brush against his arm.
– I’m just saying, you could tell George you want him to come with you. It doesn’t have to be a contest to see who says something first.
– It’s not a contest.
– Well you sure act like it is. Both of you.
– Cin, the boy is getting older. I’d like to see him making some decisions on his own that don’t involve riding his bike to the bowling alley or copping a few extra bucks so he can get someone to buy him a six pack.
She reaches up and loops her arm around his neck.
– Just because the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, that doesn’t mean it’ll grow the same way.
He pulls out from under her arm.
– What? Where the hell did that one come from? That a Hallmark card?
– You know what I mean. Even if he’s like you, you worked out just fine.
He looks at the wall, the series of pencil marks that rise up it, charting the growth of his sons.
– I got lucky.
He goes out the front door.
– Almost through with that?
Paul doesn’t look up, just folds the newspaper and places it on the table in front of his father’s chair.
Mr. Cheney pours himself a cup from the Mr. Coffee.
– Don’t have to give me the whole thing. Finish reading what you were reading.
Paul gets up and takes his cereal bowl and spoon to the sink and washes them and puts them on the dish rack. He picks up his own coffee cup from the table and starts for the kitchen door.
His dad is at the table, fingering the corner of the front page.
– You got in late last night.
Paul stops.
– Ya huh.
– Out with the guys?
– Ya huh.
– How are they?
– I’uh nuh.
Mr. Cheney takes a sip from his cup.
– What are you doing today?
Paul stands in the doorway, back to his father, shrugs.
– Summer almost over. Got any big plans?
Another shrug.
– Never see the guys anymore. Used to play over here all the time.
Paul walks.
– My head hurts. Goin’ to my room.
Mr. Cheney moves to the door.
– Need anything?
Paul keeps walking. His father watches him disappear down the hall, then sits at the table and waits.
He hears it when Paul slips past the kitchen and into the garage, hears the automatic door swing up, and knows his son has ridden off on the bike he bought him for his sixteenth birthday in lieu of the car he really wanted.
He gets up and goes to the cabinet next to the refrigerator and squats to reach behind the stack of newspapers Paul hasn’t taken to the curb for recycling in weeks, and takes out the jug of Delacort brandy hidden there. He holds it up and checks the level against the mark he made on the label last night. No change. He takes the bottle to the sink, pours half his coffee down the drain and replaces it with brandy, makes a fresh mark on the label and puts the bottle back behind the papers.
He swirls the coffee and brandy and takes a drink. Need to pick up a new bottle today. The Liquor Barn in Pleasanton this time. Haven’t been there in a few weeks. Not that he’s got anything to hide. Just nobody’s business how he lives his life.
Unfolding the paper, knuckling his glasses higher up on the bridge of his nose, he reads the story about Ramon Arroyo being shot in the leg by police and he and his brothers being busted on an assortment of charges: stolen goods, drugs, weapons, resisting arrest.
Good lord.
He thinks about Caesar Arroyo, the boys’ father. The squat bundle of calluses and muscle that he used to see swatting his boys’ ears at soccer games when they didn’t play up to his standards.
He’d tried to have a word with the man once. Walked over to him on the sideline and smiled and suggested to him that his boys might play better, have a better time if they didn’t feel quite so much pressure. Caesar had stared at him, then waved one of his boys over. Ramon? Fernando? How long ago was this? Could it have been the youngest one? The one Paul had that trouble with?
The boy had come over and, staring Kyle Cheney in the eye, Caesar had slapped the boy hard. And stood there waiting until Kyle walked away, back to the adjoining field where Paul and George’s team was playing.
Bob Whelan had been there. He’d seen what Caesar was doing and looked away. He could have done something about it. Whelan is the kind of man who could have said something to Arroyo and made him think twice about knocking his kids around like that. At least made him stop doing it out on the soccer fields where the other kids saw it and got freaked out. But he didn’t do anything. Just like most people. Most adults just don’t have the kids’ best interest at heart.
Any wonder the Arroyos have grown up like they have? A drug lab. Here. In his town. When do these things happen? How do they happen? Don’t people know they have to monitor their children? Care for them? Love them? Otherwise, things like this happen.
Tragedies. Family tragedies.
He gets up, tops off his cup again. Marks the bottle. Then goes down the hall to his son’s room.
He fingers the Master Lock Paul mounted there last year. He takes out the duplicate key he had made the afternoon he was doing laundry and found Paul’s key, forgotten in the pocket of his dirty jeans. He opens the lock and goes into his son’s room and sits on the bed.
He remembers the room as it was, before it became plastered with posters of Iron Maiden and Van Halen and Ozzy Osbourne and Ted Nugent and AC/DC and The Scorpions and Judas Priest and all the others dripping blood and wrapped in Spandex and surrounded by skulls. He remembers when the floor was littered with Legos and Lincoln Logs instead of microwave burrito wrappers and empty matchbooks and torn copies of Rolling Stone and crushed beer cans pushed under the bed and discarded cigarette pack cellophanes. He remembers this room before it smelled of spilled beer and smoke and the stale incense that’s meant to cover it all up.
He gets up, takes a long drink, sets his coffee cup on top of the dresser and starts to search the room, just as he does every day.
An empty half pint of Fleischmann’s vodka and the same old stash of Playboy back issues with Bob Whelan’s address label on the cover.
Booze and dirty magazines. Kyle Cheney knows there’s worse somewhere.
When Paul first started changing, when his mother took off and left them alone six years ago and he started talking back, that’s when he’d had to start this. She’d driven a wedge between him and his son. That’s what he couldn’t forgive her for. Not the stupid way she left them, but the things she’d said to the boy, the things she’d said about him. Things she’d screamed that scared Paul. Things Paul was just too young to understand.
Things that confused him about their relationship.
What it was.
What it meant to him.
When he started finding the boy’s door blocked, a dresser shoved in front of it, that’s when he knew the extent of the damage she’d done. The damage she’d done to their trust.
Paul stopped talking to him. And he’d had no choice but to take things into his own hands, to find out what his son was up to.
And he found things. A few joints. Pills. A boom box and someone’s class ring, both obviously stolen. Girls sneaking in the window in the middle of the night. Girls he’d seen, and heard. Stood in the hall outside the boy’s room and heard them.
But it wasn’t enough. None of it was enough to make him feel like he was still inside his son’s life.
He just had to keep looking. Keep looking until he found the secret that would open his son back up to him.
Hector wakes up, reaches for his turntable and hits play.
The tone arm jerks and drops heavily onto the album that’s cued up and waiting to start his day. The speakers hiss and crack and then explode into “Memories of Tomorrow.”
The sound yanks him from bed and he pogos around the room, flailing his arms and bouncing off the walls.
Suicidal Tendencies got it right.
The Pistols were a great start. Dead Kennedys and Black Flag carried him for awhile. He thought it might be the Bad Brains that did it for him. But it was Suicidal Tendencies that took it all the way. He heard about them after taking the bus to Hayward and riding the BART train into San Francisco for a Kennedys gig at Mabuhay Garden. He had to wait another month for the album to come out. It was worth it. It’s perfect and he’s been listening to nothing else ever since.
He jumps on his bed, jumps from it to the twin his little brothers sleep on, bounces back and forth between them. The little fuckers must be up already. Up and outside, fighting with each other and talking back to their mom. Little pieces of shit.
Alexandra opens the door.
– Turn it down!
He bounces high off the bed and lands in front of her, smiling and jumping up and down.
– What?
– Turn it down, Hector, it’s awful! Turn it down.
He pogos higher, arms plastered to his sides, leaping.
– Turn it up?
– Down! Down!
– Louder?
– Heeeectoooor! Stooooop iiiiiiit! It’s awwwwwfuuuuuul!
He grabs her hands and drags her into his room, pulls her up on the bed and bounces.
– Dance, mija, dance to the music!
She tries to jerk free.
– Noooo, it’s not dancing! It’s not music! It’s awful!
He wraps his arms around her, bouncing, laughing.
– Dance with me, little sister.
– Moooooom! Muuuuuhhoooooom!
But she’s jumping with him now, her perfectly blownout hair mussed, her sharply creased khakis wrinkled, heavy eye liner smeared by tears as she laughs at her crazy big brother.
He lets her go and they jump up and down on the bed.
Their mom comes in.
– Mijo!
He flies off the bed and crashes off the wall, the record skips once, plays on.
He dances.
His mom puts her hands on his shoulders and tries to push him down, to stop the bouncing.
– Mijo! So loud! So loud!
But she can’t stop him. She’s laughing.
– Mijo, no, it’s too early. Come eat breakfast. Turn it off! Come eat.
He bounces to the turntable, lands, thrashes his head back and forth at the end of the song and takes the needle off the record, becoming still.
Alexandra climbs off the bed, running a fingertip under her eye.
– Hectooor, you ruin my makeup. Mooom, look at my face.
She runs out the door and into the bathroom, where she’ll spend the next hour redoing her hair and makeup.
Their mom is still laughing.
– You look like a dancing fish, mijo. A fish.
He smiles.
– C’mon, Ma.
He puts the needle back down on the beginning of the song, bounces back to her and grabs her hands, pulling.
She jumps up and down a few times with him, then frees her hands and covers her ears.
– Enough, mijo, enough! Too loud. Come eat.
She reaches out and grabs a fold of his belly skin between her thumb and index finger and gives it a twist.
– Eat!
He bounces free and moshes around the tiny room.
She waves her hands in the air and walks away, still laughing, the song thundering and ripping new cracks in the taped up speakers.
Through the open door he watches her walk back to the kitchen, where she spends her life minding pots of rice and beans and stewed pork and chicken.
His dad is in the livingroom, asleep on the couch already, his ruined leg propped on a kitchen chair, a bottle of his painkillers sticking out of his bathrobe pocket, a half empty gallon jug of Gallo on the floor.
Hector pushes the door closed and dances, slashing his hand up and down over the strings of an invisible guitar. The guitar he’ll have one day when high school is over and he takes BART into The City for the last time.
He’ll crash in a squat full of punks and put together a band and play that guitar when they gig at Mabuhay and he’ll take it on the road and he’ll see shit that he’s never gonna see if he takes a job at the quarry and marries one of the pachuco chicks from the neighborhood and has three kids by the time he’s old enough to go in a bar. Fuck that. He’s gonna buy a guitar and be a fucking punk.
He is a fucking punk.
And he sings.
Mass starvation
Contaminated water
Destroyed cities
Mutilated bodies
I’ll kill myself
I’d rather die
If you could see the future
You’d know why.
It’s hot in George’s attic room. All summer long he wakes up sweating. Today he wakes up sweating and screaming, having dreamed the El Camino running him over.
He sits on the edge of the bed, sweat coating his scalp under his long hair and running from his pits and down his sides, soaking the seat of his Fruit of the Looms. He gets up and goes to the mirror over his desk and looks at the scrapes running from his jaw down the left side of his neck.
When he and Andy came home yesterday he told their folks he pulled an endo on a jump at the firebreak. His dad asked if his bike was in one piece while his mom cleaned the cuts with hydrogen peroxide. Andy had gone straight to his room.
You don’t want Andy around when you’re lying to mom and dad. Little spaz gets restless and starts talking too much and fucks it up.
But it wasn’t a big deal. Mom was relieved it was nothing that required a trip to the emergency room. Dad was satisfied that the bike wasn’t messed up. But he gave one of his speeches: Got to value the things money buys, the hard work that goes into making that money. You’ll need that. You’re not gonna be getting a scholarship anywhere like your little brother, you’re gonna be working for a living. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with you. That’s the way it is. Life’s not fair. Sooner you learn the truth that work sucks and working for someone else sucks even worse, the better. Got to put value on what you earn when you hate doing what you have to do to get it.
Big Bob Whelan, saying it like it is. Again. Telling him that everything has a cost. There’s no free rides and life’s not fair and there’s always assholes wherever you go. Work, work, work and get by and take a break on weekends and crack a beer and watch a game and show your kids how to mow a lawn and drywall a house and shovel rocks and play hard and there’s no such thing as second place winner and be nice to your wife and she’ll be nice to you and don’t take anything for granted and clean your plate and as long as you live under my roof you live under my rules and there’s no such thing as a free ride and if it ain’t easy that just means you should work a little harder, doesn’t it?
The lesson of life: You get what you work for, if that.
George turns from the mirror and goes to the bathroom at the foot of the stairs. He gets in the shower and blasts it cold to stop the sweat. He should have brought his jeans down with him, his jeans and the Aerosmith Toys in the Attic T he plans on wearing today. Getting dressed up there, he’ll just start to sweat again. He thinks about the money from yesterday, wonders if there’s enough to buy an air conditioner for his room, a window unit. No. His dad would want to know where he got that much cash. But a fan, he could probably get away with a fan.
He thinks about the money, but that makes him think about the Arroyos’ house, and that makes him think about hitting the street and the El Camino just missing him and what it might have felt like to go under the wheels.
He could have died. But according to dad, that’s not the worst thing that happens to you. The worst thing is that you work for someone else and have to put up with assholes telling you what to do, that’s the worst thing.
But it doesn’t have to be like that. Be smart enough, and maybe it doesn’t have to be like that. If he can get to be good at something else, he won’t have to work. Not really.
Andy makes a map.
He starts with a blank piece of graph paper. Sitting at his little desk, wearing the glasses he hates, tracing heavy black lines over the light blue lines on the paper, creating a world.
Not a whole world, just a part of it. A tiny secret corner filled with puzzles and traps and treasures and monsters. A dungeon for heroes to explore and plunder.
With one hand he draws. With the other he fingers a set of geodesic dice, tossing them one at a time or in combination, glancing at the numbers and applying them to secret formulas only he knows. The results dictating which way a tunnel will twist, where a crevasse will open suddenly, a goblin leap from a recess, a potion of healing be found.
He could design it all. Lay it out in his head and put it on the paper, but randomness is cool. It injects chaos into the game. Chaos is cool. He wouldn’t have thought of that on his own, but reading about it lately, it’s cool. The way order is just an illusion, something we create in our heads and lay over the world to try and force it to fit all these ideas we have about the way things should be. But the world’s not really the way people think it is. Or maybe it is. Hard to really say for sure. But chaos seems to make more sense than anything else.
It explains a lot.
Like how you can be so smart about some things and so dumb about others.
Like stealing the methamphetamine and giving it to Paul.
Now that was stupid.
He stops drawing for a second and bangs his forehead against the desktop. Really, really stupid. Man, why is he so damn stupid?
Imsuchadildo.
He lays his head on the desk, still fiddling with the dice, letting part of his brain play with the numbers. Letting the smart part of his brain play.
Stealing the crank is either the coolest thing he’s ever done or the lamest, he’s not sure which. Order or chaos.
Paul’s into it. But there was never any question that he’d be into it. Paul likes all the ups. He likes getting baked and drunk and dropping a lude, but he really likes the beauties and the whites and the greens. Any kind of speed. Like Paul needs to be more high strung. Like they need Paul to be more high strung and starting any more trouble than he already does. Half the hooks they end up in are because Paul is so uptight and can’t keep it together.
Some jocks walk past laughing, probably talking about the time one of them farted in remedial English, and Paul thinks they’re laughing about him and starts calling them fags and telling them to say whatever they have to say to his face. They take one look at the four of them; big Paul with the curly hair and acne scars on his cheeks, Hector with his mohawk and safety pins, skinny George with his pretty face that all the girls dig, and Andy, short and scrawny with the long unwashed hair; and it’s on.
Fag this and fag that and kick your fucking ass and do it if you’re gonna do it stop talking about it and fucking do it, fag, until one of them explodes from the pressure.
Chaos.
Fists and kicking and going down on the pavement with someone’s arm around your neck and your hair getting pulled as your brother tears that guy off you and seeing someone’s legs in front of you and grabbing their ankles and pulling them and hoping the fucker doesn’t split his head open when he hits the ground and Paul always going after the biggest one and getting him down and sitting on his chest and punching his face over and over until someone drags him off.
A dozen fistfights play out in Andy’s head. He throws a grenade into the middle of them all and watches the body parts fly and winces and bangs his head again and rolls the dice and only stops rolling when the sum of their faces divided by the number of dice he’s rolled totals a prime.
Order.
Yeah, Paul thinks the crank is cool. And if he does like he was talking about and sells it and gets enough money for a car they can all cruise around in, then stealing the bag will be cool. If he ends up whiffing it all himself and getting higher strung than he already is, then it’s just the lamest idea ever.
And he can’t even tell George what he did.
George’ll be pissed.
Just have to wait and see what Paul does. He’ll either tell the guys he has it and make like he was the one who took it and tell them it’s too late to do anything about it now and start figuring a way to sell it. Or he’ll keep his mouth shut. And if he keeps his mouth shut, it’s because he’s snorting it.
He lifts his head, rolls the dice, puts a trap in an empty room. Then changes his mind and replaces it with treasure.
Paul rides his bike into George and Andy’s garage. The cars are gone. Their mom and dad already at work. He leans the bike against the toolbench and lights one of the Marlboros from the pack he bought yesterday with the Arroyos’ money.
It’s so cool George and Andy don’t have to worry about their folks being around during the day. Not like his dad. He’s always around. Teaches computer classes at the community college down the 580. Staggered schedule. Night classes, day classes, morning classes. Summer, winter, fall, spring. Sooner or later, every fucking day, he pops up. Asking questions, nosing in his business like it’s not enough already. Like he hasn’t gotten enough and wants more, more than he’s already had.
He grinds his smoke out, tossing the butt in the coffee can full of sand that Mr. Whelan keeps out here, lighting another.
He smokes. And finds something else to think about, taking out of his back pocket the tightly folded copy of the Valley Times that he snatched off someone’s lawn on the way here, and unfolding it on the workbench.
So much for the Arroyos.
Those fucks are gone. Only part of it that sucks is that he never got a chance to beat the shit out of Timo. Or Ramon. Would have liked a crack at Ramon without that saw in his hand. Fucker’s big, doesn’t mean he can fight. Doesn’t mean he can take it. Paul can take shit those vatos never heard of.
He remembers all he’s taken.
Lightning crackles between his eyes, the first flash of a migraine.
He drags hard on his smoke, the cherry flares. He lifts the bottom of his T and touches the tip of the cigarette to his stomach, adding another mark to his collection. The migraine recedes, blown over the horizon.
And the pictures of what he’s endured go away.
He drops his shirt, the cotton stinging his stomach when it touches the fresh burn. He drags on his cigarette, tasting his own skin.
He can take it.
He can fucking take it.
He touches the wad of the Arroyos’ money in his pocket.
His money now. He boosts himself up on the bench and pulls the cash out. After the food and the smokes and the bottle of tequila they got a college guy to buy them at the QuickStop by the freeway, there’s a little over two hundred left. Fifty and change each.
Fifty bucks for weed and booze and pills and video games at the bowling alley. Fifty bucks to finish off the summer. Before senior year. Before he has to get serious about classes.
Serious enough to pass a few. Just enough to graduate. Just enough to get a diploma. Just enough to get that piece of paper so that there won’t be any question about the Army accepting him when he turns eighteen next June thirteenth and goes to enlist that same day. Next stop basic training. Next stop after that, the other side of the fucking world. Never to return, man. Never to return.
So fifty bucks worth of partying before that grind starts.
And the crank.
Sitting on the can this morning, door locked, bag of crank on his lap. Fingered a couple crystals out of the bag and set them on the edge of the sink and thought about crushing them with the bottom of his water glass and spooning up the powder on the end of his nail clipper and doing a couple whiffs. Enough in that bag to keep up for weeks. Keep up and clear. Keep him focused. Keep the shit that comes into his mind on the outside.
But if you could sell it.
And not like dealing it, George is right about that. Get into trying to deal it, say around the bowling alley with the loose joint dealers pedaling their bikes around and whispering, Loose joints, man, loose joints, one for two or three for five, loose joints, get into that scene and a bust is on its way. Cops always cruising the bowling alley. There’s the parking lot at the Doughnut Wheel. But those acid dealers from the other high school, they got that lot staked out. Besides, who knows how long it will take to sell it all?
Better to sell the whole bag at once. Won’t be worth as much, but still a lot. Enough for a car. But who the fuck has that kind of money? George and Andy’s aunt might be able to hook him up with someone. Or she might freak out. She doesn’t like crank. Stays away from dealing it herself.
Jeff.
Jeff doesn’t have the money himself, but he knows people. He talks all the time about stuff that fell off the back of a truck. Half the parts he gets for his Harley are hot. And he’s done some stuff himself. Talked about some of the places he’s guarded for Security Eye, goin’ in when he’s alone, boosting shit. He knows people who buy shit. And he knows dealers. Jeff knows everyone. And he won’t give a crap it’s crank.
Just got to handle it right. Got to be cool about it. Don’t just knock on his door with a bag of crystal and drop it on the table and ask what he can get for it. Start with the other stuff. Take him those chains and see how that goes. Maybe mention to him there’s some other things to talk about when the rest of the guys aren’t around. Yeah, be cool about it.
And then, the look on the guys’ faces when he rolls up in a couple weeks in a car? Sweet. They’ll have to work out some kind of deal. Park it at Jeff’s or Amy’s. Take turns with it. Hector can take it into the city to those punk gigs instead of having to go on the bus and BART. George can take his chicks for a ride instead of having to rely on them to borrow their dads’ cars. Andy, well, Andy can learn to drive in a badass set of wheels.
Sat on the can in his old grass stained soccer shorts and the George Blanda jersey he sleeps in, staring at that bag. And he did the right thing, dribbled those crystals right back inside. Then got a roll of athletic tape from beneath the sink, taped the bag closed, lifted the lid from the back of the toilet, and taped the bag to its underside before replacing it.
Dad’ll find anything you leave in the room. Checking it every day. Using that key he left in his jeans that time. Sure, let the old man dig around in there, that way he doesn’t dig around anywhere else. Don’t have to be as smart as Andy to figure out that kind of shit.
Course, the cherry on top of the morning was the newspaper. Saw the story about the Arroyos on the front page of the paper. Almost choked trying to keep from laughing and blowing milk and Cheerios out his nostrils.
Kyle Cheney jiggles the handle on the toilet, but the plug still doesn’t drop. The chain is snagged again. He lifts the lid off the back of the tank and sets it on the seat. Sure enough, snagged chain. He reaches in and untwists the tangled links and flips the plug down over the drain and the tank starts to fill with water. He fiddles with the handle, pressing it down and releasing it, trying to see why the chain only snags when he flushes.
Paul says it’s because he’s doing it wrong.
Flushing the toilet the wrong way.
He wipes his fingers on a hand towel and picks up his cup from the sink. Almost all brandy now. He drains it.
When did that happen? When did he become the kind of man who flushes toilets the wrong way?
It wasn’t always that way.
He’d been far and away the smartest boy in class. Not a prodigy maybe, not like Andy Whelan, but valedictorian nonetheless. He’d gone to college when that really meant something in this town. Not just college, but Berkeley. And a scholarship. Partial, yes, but a scholarship. And perhaps at Berkeley he was no longer the smartest, but he worked plenty hard. So, not top of his class, but good enough to be accepted for postgrad work in computer science.
And computers! That had been thinking ahead. He’d been dead right about that. It was one thing to say computers were the future, it was quite another to have the strength of your convictions and commit yourself to that path.
If he’d just finished.
If he’d just not let himself get distracted by Paul’s mother and her campus politics and idealistic crusades. And then, pregnant. Of all clichés.
With the PhD he’d still be there, teaching at UC Berkeley in one of the most prestigious departments in the country. Tenured. Perhaps a chair by now.
Well, he has a chair. At the satellite campus of a community college. An institution that specializes in GED prep courses and AA degrees.
Department chair.
Lord, he’s the entire computer department himself. Teaching data entry and machine language to borderline high school graduates.
Should have been more focused when he got the IBM job. Be a project manager by now. But Paul was born by then. And he’d fallen so in love with the boy.
His son.
Taken sick days just to spend more time with him. Margaret had loved that at first. Didn’t give a damn about his career. So many of the other men at IBM, complaining about their wives and how all they could do was shop and rag on them about getting ahead. But not Margaret. As long as there was food on the table and a roof over Paul’s head she didn’t care about money at all. He could hang about the house playing with his son all he liked. She was moved by what an attentive father he’d turned out to be.
But then she stopped loving it. Started saying things about it. As if it was wrong that a boy’s closest friend should be his father. That a father’s strongest friendship should be with his son. As if it were wrong.
Jealous is all she was.
And unreasonable.
She just could not listen to reason when he tried to explain it to her. Imagine, threatening to take his boy from him.
Nonsense.
Well, in the end it was her own fault. What happened was her own fault. No one told her to get so drunk and say those things and scare Paul so much he went running from the house. No one told her to go speeding off like a crazy woman looking for him. If she’d exercised just a little self control she never would have lost control of her car.
That had been hard. Explaining to Paul that his mother wouldn’t be coming home.
The look from the boy.
Like it was his fault.
The toilet tank is full now.
He lifts the lid from the seat and his fingers graze something and he flips it over and sees the plastic baggie held to the underside by a large X of white athletic tape.
And for the first time in years he knows just what to do.
– What about when they get out?
Paul snorts, blows smoke and passes the joint around.
– Get out? A crank lab in this town? They’re never fucking getting out. Something like that here, that’s like cheating at cards in the Old West. Hanging offense, man. They’re done.
Andy looks again at the paper spread across his dad’s workbench.
– Think Ramon’s OK?
Paul turns his back and walks to the other side of the garage.
– Somebody else please slap at the back of numbnuts’ head this time.
George slaps at the back of his brother’s head.
– Who gives a fuck if he’s OK, numbnuts?
Andy ducks, the slap glancing off the top of his head and sending his unwashed hair into his eyes. He tosses it back.
– I didn’t say I cared, I just asked if you thought he’s OK. That’s all.
Hector finishes counting the money they took from the Arroyos’ and sets it on the newspaper.
– Ramon is a psycho, man, kind of guy they shoot twenty times and keeps coming. Bullet in the leg means shit.
Paul points at the money.
– How much?
– Two fifty eight altogether.
Andy nods.
– Sixty four dollars and fifty cents each. Two of us get sixty five and give the other two fifty cents to make it even.
Paul takes a hit from the joint.
– Gee, I’m so fucking glad we have a rocket scientist here to do our math for us. Don’t know how us retards would have figured that out with the fifty cents and all.
Well baked, Andy giggles helplessly.
Paul hands the joint to George.
– Better keep this away from Mr. Lightweight. Looks like he’s over the edge again.
George hits the joint, watching his brother spaz helplessly, caught in a giggle fit that is clearly going the distance.
He passes the joint to Hector.
– I don’t know, man, I’ve been thinking about this. Maybe the secret, maybe the secret is to get him higher.
Andy is panting, shaking his head, tears starting to pop from his eyes.
Hector takes a hit, sucks the smoke in deep, holds the joint out to Andy.
– Take another hit, man, don’t listen to them, you’re handling this shit just fine. No, seriously, man, you got it all under control. Cops, teachers, parents, whoever, they’d never know you’re stoned out of your mind. Take another hit, go on, man, you’re fine.
Andy waves his hand at the joint, sides heaving, gasping through the giggles, in danger of pissing his pants.
Hector holds the joint up, strikes a pose. Eureka!
– He wants help hitting it!
Paul nods.
– Supercharger.
George nods.
– Definitely a supercharger situation.
Andy whips his head from side to side, tries to hold his hands up in front of him to keep them away, but clutches his aching sides instead.
– Nuhhhooo! Nuhooo!
Hector turns the joint around and puts the cherry inside his mouth, puffing his cheeks, while Paul and George take hold of Andy. He puts his face close to Andy’s and blows. A thick stream of smoke jets from the tip of the joint.
Andy wheezes most of it in through his flaring nostrils and gaping mouth, instantly choking.
They release him and he doubles over, coughing and laughing and sneezing, ropes of drool and wads of snot hitting the concrete floor of the garage.
George pounds him on his back.
– Don’t puke, man, that would be a breach of good taste.
Still bent over, Andy reaches back and slaps his brother away, the giggles fading as he gags a few more times.
Hector has taken the joint from his mouth. He blows some ash off the cherry.
– Looks like the supercharger did the trick.
Paul is laughing now, near silent hisses that slip in and out of his open mouth.
George looks at him.
– It’s catching. Lightweightness is catching.
Andy is straightening, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.
– You guys are dicks, I thought I was gonna choke to death.
Paul slaps the toolbench, mouth still hanging open, tiny seal barks coming from the back of his throat.
George points at him.
– Supercharger, man?
Paul bends, puts his forehead against the top of the bench, banging his fist on the scarred wood, tears streaming.
Hector waves the joint in the air.
– He’s gone over the edge, man.
George bites his lip.
– Definitely on the dark side now.
Andy is at the sink that their dad uses for washing paintbrushes and their mom uses for bleaching things. He splashes water on his face, rinsing away the mucus around his mouth and nose.
– Man, he’s losing it, he may never come back. No wonder you guys laugh at me when I’m like that, he’s a mess.
Still bent at the waist, Paul lurches across the garage, shouldering Andy to the side and sticking his head under the tap.
George goes and stands right behind him.
– That’s a good strategy, wash that shit out of your system. Nothing like a quick shower to help reestablish some fucking self control. You want me to wash your hair for you?
Paul comes up, flinging his head back and shaking it from side to side, water flying and spraying the others.
– Oh fuck, man! Whew! Oh my God. I lost it, man.
He shoves Andy.
– You busted my shit up.
Andy grabs a dirty bath towel from the basket sitting on top of the washing machine and dries his face.
– Yeah, nice to know when I’m choking to death it’s good for a fucking laugh.
Paul snags the towel from him and rubs his hair.
– Fucking A right about that.
Hector holds out the joint.
– So who’s ready for another hit?
They all fall out, staggering into the open air and sunlight of the driveway.
Across the street, Mr. Marinovic comes out of his house and stands on the porch shaking his head at them. He walks down the cement path to the driveway and swings his garage door open and walks around the side of his ’78 Bonneville. Pulling into the street, he stops for a moment and watches them standing around their driveway, laughing and screaming and pointing at each other.
He rolls down his window and leans his head out.
– You should be working. It’s summer. Why don’t you have summer jobs?
The laughter stops. They all stare at him. The laughter starts again.
Mr. Marinovic rolls up his window, adjusts his rearview mirror, and puts the car in drive.
The boys watch Marinovic’s car turn the corner as they snort a few last laughs out their noses, shaking their heads, exhausted.
George walks to the curb and looks up and down the empty street. Paul joins him. A Cessna buzzes by overhead on its way to the municipal airport. It’s quiet again.
Paul blows out his cheeks to make himself look fat.
– Why don’t you have a summer job? Blah. Blahblahblahblaaaaaah.
George nods.
– Fuck him. We have a summer job.
– Fucking A. Let’s get to work.
And they run across the street into the open garage and through the unlocked door that leads inside Mr. Marinovic’s house.
The house smells like bug spray and TV dinners. Plastic runners laid across the wall to wall carpet lead through the livingroom and down the hall.
They ignore the kitchen. Nobody hides shit in the kitchen. They ignore the color TV and the console stereo and anything else that’s just too big. They go to the master bedroom and Paul hits the medicine cabinet while George goes through the dresser drawers. If there’s cash or jewelry stashed, it’ll be in the dresser or the nightstand or the closet.
He runs his hands between neatly folded shirts. Squeezes rolled pairs of socks to see if anything offers resistance. He finds a box of condoms and a business card from the massage parlor across town, a phone number written on the back in green ballpoint. Which is all pretty gross. But at least the guy’s wife is dead. So it’s not as gross as it would be otherwise.
Paul comes out of the john rattling a brown prescription bottle. George looks at the label. Phenobarbital. He remembers something Aunt Amy told him.
– Shit’s for epilepsy.
Paul opens the bottle and looks at the pills.
– Does it get you sideways?
– Fuck yeah.
– Think Marinovic is epileptic?
– He’s got the pills.
Paul pours his palm full of pills and caps the bottle.
– I’ll only take half.
He puts the bottle back where he found it and goes to check out the spare room.
George is going through the pockets of the clothes hanging in the closet. He spots something on the top shelf, reaches up and pulls down a jewelry box and opens it. Mrs. Marinovic’s old jewelry.
Five bucks a week allowance for doing chores around the house doesn’t even cover smokes. And the few extra bucks to be made some weekends when his dad takes him to a job site where they need a couple kids to clean shit up? Four bucks an hour to shovel plaster fragments and splintered plywood and bent nails and haul the shit out to a dumpster. Sweeping up and packing tools away in the sun and a half hour for lunch and all the guys on the site calling him kid and giving him shit about his long hair and the silver and turquoise necklace and ring he wears.
Only way he’s ever really made money was running pills last summer for Aunt Amy while his mom and dad thought he was doing custodial at the water treatment plant by the airport.
She robbed the pills from the hospital dispensary on her RN shifts and dropped two bucks on him for each delivery. He spent last summer ducking in and out of her house on Rincon Avenue to see if she had anything for him to run. She told him not to tell the other guys, especially not Andy, but he couldn’t keep it to himself. Running dope, man, it was too cool not to tell them about it. Plus, they knew he wasn’t mopping any fucking floors and he wasn’t gonna lie to his brother and his best friends about how he got the cash for his Mongoose.
He kept doing it after school started, just a couple deliveries a week when he had time, cigarette money and shit. Hell, he’d still be doing it except they got in a fight about a delivery that came up short. A few ludes and a couple whites and she pitched a fit. Like it hadn’t happened before. But all of a sudden it was a big deal this time. Fuck it. By then he had the bike. He walked out of her place while she was yelling at him.
Acting like she was a boss or something.
Only time he’d seen her since was when she came over for last Christmas. Gave Andy a Star Wars model, an X-Wing. Gave him a sweater with a reindeer on the front. Whatever. They’ll make it up sooner or later. She’s too cool not to be friends with.
Totally different from his dad. Which is why his dad can’t stand her.
Delivering the pills had been cool. Hanging on Aunt Amy’s couch and smoking her Marlboro 100’s and helping her sort the pills she stole from the dispensary into baggies and cranking twist ties around their tops and tucking the bags into his pockets after a few calls had come in. Hustling over to Shovelhead’s, pounding on the door to be heard over Steppenwolf playing “Pusherman.” Folding the cash into a tight bundle and slipping it into his sock. Taking a hit off Shovelhead’s huge neutronbong and bouncing two blocks to Tiny Red’s. Swapping a quarter gram of pharmaceutical coke for sheets of Mickey Wizard blotter acid, tiny pictures of Mickey Mouse in his Fantasia costume printed on each tab. Hanging with some of the younger guys, the cooler ones. Like Jeff. That’d been alright.
But it was still a job. It was still someone telling you where to go and what to do and how to do it.
This is different. Going in someone’s house when they’re not there? Better yet, when they are? That’s like the total opposite of doing what you’re told. That’s blazing a trail and doing it your own way. Whatever you find, cash, drugs, some silver or gold that you can take out to Hayward on the bus and hock, it’s all yours. You take the risks and you get the rewards. Get caught, well that’s just your own fault. It’s all on you. No bosses. No coming home like his mom and dad, burned out and sleepwalking through the evening and dropping into bed and struggling through the next morning to do it again. None of that shit.
He takes Mrs. Marinovic’s engagement ring and her wedding ring and a set of tiny diamond earrings and a pearl choker and puts the box back on the top shelf, and he and Paul head out.
In the street, Hector and Andy toss a football back and forth. Hector lobbing the easiest passes he can, Andy dropping them anyway, then chucking the ball way too low so that Hector has no chance to catch it and it ends up under a car half the time.
George whistles from inside the garage and Hector and Andy look up and down the street and give a thumbs up and George and Paul run out and they all trot back into their own garage.
Paul doles out the phenobarbital, two each and three for him, and they add the rings and earrings and pearls to the chains from the Arroyos and look at the pile.
Paul tosses a pheno in his mouth and dry swallows.
– Fuck the bus ride to Hayward. Let’s bike over to Jeff’s and see if he can help us move it here in town.
Paul leads them in a pack across the field to Portola. They cut across the QuickStop blacktop, go under the arching sign for the Rancho Vista Trailer Park, and down the gravel drive that runs between the trailers. They round a bend, pass a double with a mini white picket fence running around an Astroturf lawn patrolled by a toy poodle, and there’s Jeff on the porch of his own single.
Rust streaks down the yellow and white siding, weeds standing knee high all around, a corrugated tin awning shading the porch, cracked plastic tiki lamps dangling from its lip. Two beat to hell ’63 VW Beetles, one being cannibalized for parts, the other consuming them; a ’70 Datsun 240Z on blocks; and a sometimes functional ’69 Chevy pickup, stand in front leaking oil, antifreeze, and radiator water into the weeds.
In the shade of the awning, Jeff sits on an upside down milk crate, the stripped carburetor from his ’76 Harley XLH 1000 Sportster spread on a flattened cardboard box at his feet. The guys crunch up, and he waves oily fingers at them, pulling a filterless Camel from between his lips.
– Hey, fuckos.
Paul leans his bike on the 240Z and Jeff waves his cigarette.
– Hey, whoa, no, not on the wheels.
Paul moves the bike, leans it against the porch.
– Sorry, Jeff.
Jeff puts the smoke back in his face.
– ’S no problem. What up with you guys?
Paul stands at the foot of the steps leading to the porch, the guys are still straddling their bikes, looking at rocks, trees, weeds. He pulls out a Marlboro.
– Kinda wanted to talk.
– Yeah?
– Yeah.
Jeff goes back to work on the carburetor, dipping a rag into an old baby food jar full of gasoline and using it to clean a residue of black carbon from inside the carburetor.
– What about?
– Some shit.
Jeff cleans. The guys stand around.
Paul takes a step up.
– Jeff?
– I’m still here.
– Yeah. Could we maybe talk about it inside?
Jeff rubs his wrist against his chin, takes the smoke from his mouth and tosses it in the dry weeds.
– Look, guys, I got to be at work in a couple hours and I want to get this thing back together so I can ride. Sick of the damn bus. Something’s up, get to it.
Still straddling his bike, Andy waddles forward and steps on the smoldering butt before it can ignite the oil soaked weeds around the cars.
He looks at Jeff.
– We stole some stuff and we want to know if you can hock it for us.
Jeff gets up, wipes his hands on the ass of his jeans, opens the front door and points inside.
– Everybody out of the fucking water.
By sitting on the kitchen counter and leaning his face against the far end of the window over the sink, Mr. Cheney can see all the way down the street to the front of the Whelan house.
He’s watching when Hector rides up, that disturbing wedge of hair jutting up from his head. He’d been such a sweet quiet boy when his family moved into the neighborhood. The first Mexican family on the block. Well, the only one actually.
He reaches for the brandy and tips more into his coffee cup, no longer bothering to mark the label or put the bottle back in the cupboard after each drink. It’s nearly empty now, so why bother? A quick run to the Liquor Barn and he’ll have a full one. Or maybe not, a drive into Pleasanton seems rather far. The Safeway is closer. Except that Cindy Whelan will be working there. Well, a few groceries to surround the bottle then, just to keep her minding her own business.
Oh nonsense!
Dave’s Liquors is right next door to the Safeway, if he’s going to drive to the shopping center he can just go to Dave’s. To hell if anyone sees him going in there twice in one week. Three times? Hell with it anyway. And he can get a pint at Dave’s, something for the glove box as well as the bottle for the house.
He empties the last of the brandy and leans his forehead against the window as the boys tumble out of the garage, laughing.
They’re high. Christ, they’re stoned out of their minds. He saw enough of it. From Paul’s mom. Woman could barely get up in the morning without smoking a joint.
His son is reeling around the driveway, mouth open, too far away for his father to hear the sound of his laughter.
Mr. Cheney remembers when he could make his son laugh like that. The boy was so ticklish. Under his arms. Tickle him under his arms and he would kick and scream, tears running. Not any more. Now he has to get stoned to have a laugh.
Damn that woman.
If only she had left sooner. If she had taken her drugs and her rock and roll and her Disarm Now posters and gotten the hell out of here sooner. Maybe it’s not kind to say, but if only she had died sooner, maybe then his son wouldn’t be the mess he is today.
But that will be changing soon. Paul may ignore him, ignore his attempts to communicate and to return their relationship to what it once was, but he will have to listen when confronted with the contents of that bag.
He’s not a stupid man, after all. Top of his class. He knows amphetamine when he sees it. And he knows enough about his son’s history with the Arroyos to see that the bag is somehow connected to their arrests. Paul will have to listen to him in the face of that knowledge.
Not that he wants to threaten the boy. Not that he’ll handle it that way. A conversation is all it will take. A conversation explaining that he doesn’t want to see his son getting into trouble that he can’t get out of.
And what’s he asking for anyway? Nothing. Just to be included. Just for them to spend time together. Just for his son to be available to him.
He brings the cup to his lips, but it’s empty again.
He looks at his watch. His first class begins in two hours. A quick trip to Dave’s and then out to the campus will take half an hour. That gives him another ninety minutes to watch his son. Mr. Marinovic stops his car in front of the boys and says something. He watches as the old man drives off and Paul and George run across the street and out of his view. And he’s still there, face pressed to the glass, five minutes later when they run back into the Whelans’ garage followed by Hector and Andy.
By the time they’re on their bikes and riding down the street hurling insults at one another, he’s called the school and told them he’s too sick to come in today and is crouched low in the driver’s seat of his car.
He drives around the block, going the opposite direction from the boys, and rounds the corner in time to see them taking their bikes across the field where the old elementary school used to be. He ignores the stop sign at the end of the block and turns onto Murrieta in front of a speeding station wagon with fake wood paneling on the side, forcing the other car to hit its brakes, the driver leaning on his horn.
As he takes a left on Portola, the boys have broken from the field and are skidding from the sidewalk into the QuickStop lot and on under the sign for the trailer park. He parks in the Orchard Hardware lot across the street and waits.
Baking in the sun that pounds through the windshield, looking at the liquor display in the QuickStop window.
Jeff takes another sip of lukewarm beer, looking at the pile of jewelry on his counter, teasing one of the chains loose from the tangle.
– See, what you have here is mostly shit. The silver, the fourteen carat gold stuff, it’s crap. The twenty four carat chains and these ones here, these two are platinum, these are worth something. The diamonds and the pearls, I don’t know. Could be something, could be crap. Problem is, pawnshops are full of this shit. They buy it because it has intrinsic value and it takes up no space. Way better than a TV or some stereo or some shit like that, but still they got tons of it and it’s a buyers’ market so you get, maybe, I don’t know, ten percent of value. If you’re lucky. So, you know that, you’ve hocked shit before. But, also, most places, you walk in with a handful of gold and silver chains and they don’t want to fuck with them. A couple at a time, even from kids like you, that’s whatever, no big deal, but a handful of hot jewelry, that’s a no no. Whatever you guys have heard, seen on Baretta or Hill Street Blues, whatever, pawnshops aren’t all fences. Not professionals anyway. And the ones that are, go in with something like this, all in a pile like this, next time the owner gets in trouble with the cops you’re gonna be one of the guys he snitches.
Sitting on the filthy carpet, his back against the wood paneling, just underneath an Easy Rider calendar, Andy blinks when he hears the word snitch.
Paul is perched on the fold down kitchen table, having cleared space in the mess of magazines, used paper plates and assorted scraps of the cars out front.
He sips his own warm beer.
– OK, but it’s worth something, right? It’s got to be worth something.
Jeff looks at the kids.
How’d he end up with this crew hanging around? Wouldn’t have happened if George hadn’t been delivering pills for his aunt last summer. First time Bob Whelan’s kid showed up on his porch with a baggie of ludes, he just about shit his pants.
Truth is, if he hadn’t been tripping three days straight and desperate to crash, he never would have let the kid in the front door. Not that there’s anything especially wrong with scoring off a high school kid, just, you know, Bob Whelan’s son? That’s begging for trouble. But, man, he’d needed those ludes something desperate. Turned out the kid’s mellow as hell. Totally solid. No chance that kid’s gonna lose his cool and say the wrong thing around his dad, let him know what he’s up to. Bob probably wouldn’t mind the kids over here, but he’d flip if he knew about the pills. Found out Jeff scored off his son, it would not be pretty at all.
Yeah, George is definitely a chip off the old fucking block. But he doesn’t have a clue what his dad was like back then.
’64 to ’68, they had themselves a time. Might still be having a time if Bob had handled things a little different. Well, that was then. Dude turned grim after he had the second kid and took the job at the quarry. For awhile he was still looking to party on a Friday night, blow a joint, go down to the Rodeo Club have a couple drinks and some beers. Then he stopped coming in at all.
Now? Say hi when they cross paths at the gas station or something, but haven’t hung out for years. Too much baggage. Too much water under the bridge. Something like that.
But blood is blood. Whatever went down, whatever trip Bob got into with grinding the 9 to 5, his kids haven’t bought in. Close your eyes around George, sometimes you’d swear you were hearing Bob talk. Got that thing, that easy mellow, makes people listen to what he has to say, makes people trust him. Fucking gift, that is.
And once he got his foot in the door, the others just seemed to squeeze in after him.
His brother is just a total spaz. Where that weedy little braniac came from is a mystery. Couldn’t be more different from Bob. Cindy, she was a smart girl, a real bookworm, but hard to see a chick that hot having a kid that geeky. He is a trip. Picked up that copy of The Tao of Physics and whipped right through it. Took Jeff the better part of a year to read that.
Hector’s cool, too. Knows more about rock and roll than any other Mexican. Tried to bring some of that punk shit in here and play it, turn him on. Fuck that. Loud and hard is loud and hard, but you got to know how to play your fucking instruments, sing a little, man.
They’re all OK kids. Why shouldn’t they hang here, play his albums, have a place to bring a chick every now and then? Long as they sometimes bring their own bottle or a couple Js, it’s no big deal.
Paul’s the one spends the most time here.
Cuts classes so he can come around and work out with the DP weight bench on the porch. Hangs around and passes tools while Jeff tries to get the 240Z running. Hell, come home from the Club some nights, find the kid crashed on the shredded vinyl easy chair out front. Middle of last winter the first time it happened.
Came home drunk as hell, weaving the pickup all over the road, ran over that old bitch’s toy fence across the way. The chick he was with screamed when she saw Paul on the porch. Sweatshirt and a patched Levi’s jacket, arms wrapped around himself, hands stuffed in his armpits, curled up and passed out in the chair. Tried to slap him awake and send him home, but he was out. Chick felt sorry for the kid, made Jeff bring his ass inside. Next day he woke up around two, chick was gone along with twenty two bucks from his wallet; Paul was outside pulling weeds. Next time it happened he wasn’t passed out, just asleep. Kicked him in the foot, asked him if he wanted to crash inside. Kid said he was cool on the porch if it was OK. Told him to get his ass inside. Found a sleeping bag and put him on the floor. Kid’s wearing one of Jeff’s Harley caps right fucking now. Weird. Kind of like having a little brother when you never had one your whole life. ’Cept he’s not. Just some kid needs a place to hang and get out of his own house. And, shit, who the fuck doesn’t know what that’s like?
He finishes his beer and balances the empty can on top of the overflow erupting from the garbage bag under the sink.
He looks at George, over there leaning against the wall with his arms crossed.
– How’s your dad?
George shrugs.
– He’s cool.
– That right? Your old man’s cool? He get to be cool all of a sudden?
George scratches his armpit.
– He’s fine. You know, work. Whatever.
– Your mom?
– Same.
– Uh huh.
Andy’s still picking fuzz from the carpet.
– That right about your folks, that’s what they’re up to, working?
Andy rolls his head back.
– Yeah, you know. Work. Dad’s doing stuff in the yard. Tearing it up. Mom wants a rock garden.
– Rock garden.
Jeff thinks about their mom. Cindy Hunt. She’d been a piece of ass. One of those smart hot chicks. Did they make out that one time? Shit, can’t remember if that was her or that other chick. Rock garden. What the fuck happens to people?
Hector is flipping through his albums.
– Your pop, what’s he, still at the quarry?
Hector keeps looking for something recorded later than ’75.
– Disability.
– How’d that happen?
Hector flips past Grand Funk Railroad and Jefferson Airplane and The Average White Band.
– Had a front loader drop a couple tons of gravel on his leg and got put on disability.
– What’s he doin’ now?
Hector pushes the stack of records back together with a thump.
– Sitting around taking painkillers and drinking wine.
– There’s worse things.
– If you say so.
– I say so.
He pokes Paul in the shoulder.
– What about your dad, what’s up with him?
Paul plucks at the pull tab on top of his can, playing the “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” guitar riff.
– I’uh nuh.
– He’s still teaching, right?
Paul twists the pull tab back and forth, trying to tear it free.
– Hey, man, wake up. He teaching, yeah?
Paul wrenches the tab loose.
– Yeah, whatever, he’s teachin’, what the fuck, that’s what he does.
Jeff picks up the wad of chains.
– So, safe to say none of your folks know about this shit.
Nothing.
– Safe to say they’d be pretty pissed, they ever found out.
Nothing, all of them just watching the floor, waiting.
He hefts the knot of chains a couple times on the palm of his hand. He thinks about his shitty minimum wage job with Security Eye and the cash he just dropped on a rebuild kit for the Harley’s carburetor. He thinks about if Bob heard he helped his kids hock some hot jewelry.
– Yeah, they’d be pissed. And if I get involved in trying to move this shit, they’ll be more pissed at me. And the cops, they’d be really pissed at me and hit me with receiving and possession of stolen shit and contributing to the delinquency of minors and all that crap.
Paul puts down his empty can and grabs at the chains.
– So fuck it, we’ll get rid of it ourselves.
Jeff pulls his hand back, still full of gold and silver.
– Get rid of it yourselves. This much shit, get busted is what you’ll get.
He puts the chains on the counter, out of Paul’s reach.
– I know a guy. He moves stuff sometimes. Buys shit. I look at this, I think I can get him to come up with a hundred, maybe. I’ll take twenty percent for setting it up, leaves you with twenty bucks each.
– Fuck, man. It’s got to be worth more than that.
Jeff shrugs.
– Hey, it probably is to the right people. You know who that is? Cuz I sure as shit don’t. Who I know is a guy who knows those people. And his price, what he’ll pay is, I think, a C note. I mean, look, you’re always gonna be disappointed with what you get. You know that. First eight track player or whatever you ever boosted, bet you walked into the hock in Hayward expecting fifty bucks. Lucky if you got five. Lucky if the guy didn’t laugh at you and tell you to fuck off with that shit. If everybody got rich at being a thief, that’s all there’d be in the world. It’s never gonna be as much as you want it to be. Snatch the Hope Diamond, know what you’re gonna get? Less than you believed was possible. So look, I don’t want to fuck with you guys. I’m just telling you, I think I can walk out that door, be back in about half an hour with a hundred bucks. That’s no shit, that’s not a bad deal. Your aunt, ask her, she’ll tell you it’s not a bad deal. Right now, what you got is a worthless pile of shit that you don’t know what to do with them all together and all they’re gonna get you is busted. You can piece them out for the next couple months and take the bus back and forth to Hayward and end up making maybe a hundred and fifty. Sounds like a drag to me. Or we can Monty Hall this thing right now and take what’s in the envelope. Which I’m pretty sure will be a hundred. Less my twenty.
George shoves himself away from the wall.
– We’ll take it.
Jeff opens a drawer, digs out a crumpled brown paper lunch sack, shakes it out and drops the jewelry inside.
– You gonna hang here?
Paul shrugs.
– If it’s cool.
– Yeah. Like I said, maybe half an hour.
George works his Marlboros out of his hip pocket.
– What about work?
– I’ll be late. Fuck do you care? There’s beer in the fridge. Make sure you leave me a few. And don’t run the fan, the PG amp;E bills are killing me. If it’s too fucking hot in here hang on the porch. Just keep the beers down so I don’t catch shit from the hag across the way.
He goes on the porch and out from under the awning and gets pelted by the high Valley sun. August in this town. A month of limitless blue sky over brown hills with never a breeze or a cloud. He looks at the pieces of carburetor. That’ll have to wait till tomorrow now. But he’s gonna make it worth his while.
He climbs into the pickup.
– Hey, Jeff.
Paul is coming down the porch steps.
– Hang up a sec.
Jeff cranks down both windows, trying to get some air to move through the cab.
– What?
– This guy you’re going to see?
– Yeah?
– He handle other stuff?
– Like what?
– Like whatever. I might have some other shit.
– You guys on a crime spree? Gonna hit a bank?
– No. Other stuff. Like shit, you know.
Jeff adjusts himself on the hot black fabric of the pickup’s bench seat.
– Like? What? Like shit?
– Yeah. You know. Maybe. I might be able to. Maybe. Get some stuff.
– Pot?
– Other stuff.
Jeff tugs a heavy ring of keys out of his pocket.
– Could be. You want me to?
– No. Don’t. I could have something. Or not. So, just to maybe know if there’s someplace to take it. Maybe.
Jeff slides a key in the ignition.
– Sure. I’ll see what I can find out.
– Cool. Thanks, man. Thanks for taking care of this for us.
– Sure. No problem. So go inside and crack another beer. I’ll be right back.
He watches Paul go inside the trailer, leaving the front door open.
He has to tease the pickup to get it to start up, pump the gas pedal four or five times so it’s on the edge of flooding, then hit the ignition and let the fucker wahwahwahwah till you’d swear it’s never gonna catch, and then it does. He revs it, black smoke coughing out the exhaust, and yanks the gearshift into reverse. It bitches and grinds, but it goes. He pulls out, then jams it into first and starts down the gravel drive, first gear whining all the way. Second is shot and it’ll stall if he tries to drive this slow in third. He could give a damn about the park speed limit, but the property manager’s been up his ass about the late rent on the lot and he doesn’t want to give him any excuses to come around being a dick.
The drive curves to the right. His own trailer is well out of view when he pulls up in front of a shiny new double just a couple slots from the rear exit to the park. A swing set and a litter of kid’s toys on the small sod lawn. A line of pinwheels shaped like sunflowers borders a short flagstone path that leads to the bottom of a carpeted porch that’s stocked with a gas grill and a set of iron lawn furniture.
He takes the bag of jewelry from the seat and climbs out, the cab door grinding shut as he slams it. He could have walked over here. But he doesn’t want the kids to know how close the guy lives. Better they think he has to take a little trip to get this done. Expend a little elbow grease. Especially as he’s pretty damn sure he can pull down a hundred and fifty for this stuff.
Not that he’s ripping the kids off. He’ll pocket fifty on his own, plus another twenty. That’s less than fifty percent. That’s what a fence gets. And he’s the one acting as the fence here. Try explaining that to the kids, they wouldn’t buy it. End up trying to unload it themselves and they’d wind up getting taken. Worse, they’d end up getting busted. See what Bob would think of that. This way is better. Take care of it himself, take care of the kids so they don’t get screwed over.
He goes up the steps. This should be easy as hell. Geezer’s always in the market for shit like this, and whatever pills or acid Paul’s maybe got his hands on.
Just that there’s no reason at all to mention Geezer’s name to the kids. For that matter, there’s no reason to say anything to Geezer about George and Andy being Bob Whelan’s boys.
Andy doesn’t like to go in. The Arroyos’ was one thing. His bike was in there. But mostly, when they do this kind of thing, he stays outside and watches the street, keeps an eye on the bikes. He gets panicky inside the house. Short of breath. Once, he passed out and Paul had to throw him over his shoulder and carry him out.
He just doesn’t like going in.
But that bathroom window Hector found. That tiny fucking bathroom window. He’s the only one who can fit through it.
So he watches as Paul wiggles the last of the glass louvers out of its slot and passes it to George, who stacks it neatly with the others on the ground.
George looks at Andy, bends and laces his fingers together and holds them down low.
– Let’s go, little brother.
Andy stares at the window.
Paul gives him a shove.
– Get in there, man.
George straightens and puts his hand on Paul’s chest.
– Dude, just chill. He’s scared.
– Fag should be scared. He passes out in there before he lets us in, who’s gonna carry him out?
Andy jumps up and grabs the bottom of the windowsill and tries to pull himself up. Hector grabs the bottoms of his feet and lifts him.
– Got it?
Andy heaves his upper body through the window.
– Got it.
His favorite T, the one with the dragon silk screened on the back, snags on one of the empty louver brackets and starts to tear.
– Hang on.
Hector stops lifting.
– What?
– My shirt. Unsnag my fucking shirt.
Paul grabs his calves and starts to shove.
– Fuck the shirt, get in there.
The shirt rips a little more. Andy grabs the window frame to keep himself from being pushed inside any farther.
– Fuck you. It’s my favorite shirt.
Paul pushes harder.
– You can get a new shirt. Get in there.
The fingers of Andy’s right hand slip off the window ledge and he flails his arm, grabbing the shower curtain. Two of the curtain rings pop loose. His upper body hangs in the air.
– Fucking stop it, I’m gonna fall and rip the shirt. Unsnag it.
Paul starts to push again.
– Fuck the shirt.
George grabs his brother’s ankles and tries to pull him back.
– Stop being a dick, unsnag his shirt.
– I’m not being a dick, he’s being a pussy.
Hector jumps up, grabs the corner of the window frame with one hand, wall walks two steps, reaches in and unsnags Andy’s shirt with his middle finger before dropping back down.
– Fags.
Paul and George let go of Andy’s legs and he falls headfirst, the curtain rings popping off the metal rod, a stack of titty magazines on the back of the toilet slapping to the floor. He puts his arm out and jerks the last few rings free, the bar coming down with them, crashing down into the chipped tub and ringing off the cracked wall tiles.
They all freeze. A car drives past out front.
George hauls himself up and sticks his face in the window.
Andy is on the floor, half of the curtain draped over his legs.
– You OK?
Andy looks at him, a little blood on his lower lip from where his teeth sliced it when his face hit the floor.
– Yeah, thanks, fag.
– It wasn’t me, it was Paul.
Paul punches George in the back of his leg.
– Fuck off.
George kicks at him.
– Stop being a dick all the time for a change.
Hector heads for the glass door.
– If he’s OK, tell him to let us the fuck in.
George adjusts his grip, pulls himself up a little higher.
– You cool to let us in?
Andy is getting off the floor, looking at the hole in his shirt.
– I’ll be there in a sec.
Still inspecting the hole, he opens the bathroom door and Fernando is standing there and he punches Andy in the face and starts kicking him when he hits the floor while George screams and tries to claw his way through the window that’s far too small.
Geezer untwists the neck of the paper bag and looks inside.
There’s a word for this. The moment he sees the jewelry he knows there’s a word for what has happened and what will happen as a result.
– Un something.
Jeff blinks.
– What?
– An un word. Un something. When there’s just no fucking excuse whatsoever for it. The kind of thing you cut people’s eyes out for.
Jeff runs a hand down the length of his ponytail.
– Unconscionable?
Geezer looks up from the bag.
– That’s it. Unconscionable. That for which you cut some fucker’s eyes out.
He rubs his nose.
– Kids?
– Yeah. Teenagers anyway.
– The ones you got crawling around your trailer all the time?
– Yeah.
– One of them knows somebody or something. What’s the deal on that?
– One of them, he.
– One of them he, what?
Jeff looks at the bullfighter in black velvet hung over Geezer’s head.
– He was running Amy Whelan’s shit for a while.
Geezer upends the bag in his lap. He picks out an engagement ring he doesn’t remember being with the rest of the jewelry when he told the spics they could keep it.
Amy Whelan.
Could have swore she was clear on the concept. Went over there and made a point of showing her that Oakland holds this town, that as far as that’s concerned, he’s Oakland’s hand here. Showed her how the Oakland boys handle shit. Thought she was clear. Should have known better. Doesn’t matter how together a person seems, how well they got their priorities in line, they start seeing drug money roll across their table and they get greedy and stupid. The two being pretty fucking much…fuck.
– The word?
Jeff shifts from foot to foot.
– The word?
– When two things mean the same thing? Two words got the same meaning. Not when they’re spelled the same but mean different things, the opposite of that.
– Synonymous.
Geezer rubs at the small stone in the engagement ring.
– That’s it. Synonymous. When two things look different, but they’re the same.
Greed and stupidity. Synonymous. Amy Whelan’s done gone and got greedy. Got stupid. Got some kids involved in his shit. Fucking up shit for everyone. Upsetting his personal applecart, creating friction with Oakland, interfering with supply and demand. The supply of cash that Oakland demands for staying out of his ass.
Unconscionable bitch.
– Where they now?
– My place.
– This all they got?
– One of the guys, this kid Paul, the big one who’s over there the most, he said he might have something else.
Geezer runs his palm over the slick nylon of his shiny gold sweat suit.
– More jewelry?
– No. I don’t think so.
– Guns? He pick up a couple pieces somewhere?
– Maybe. Sounds more like he got his hands on someone’s stash. A bag of coke or something.
Geezer wraps his fingers around the handle of his grabber, squeezing, making the plastic claw at the end of the aluminum pole into a fist.
– Yeah. Coke. Crank, maybe?
– Um, I don’t. You know, that’s your thing, man. I don’t know where they’d get crank that didn’t come from you.
– Said one of ’em works for Amy Whelan?
– Used to.
– So maybe she wants to get some new business going?
– I don’t think so, man. I mean, everyone knows that’s your deal. No one’s gonna mess with you, Geez.
– Sure. Of course. Kid got his hands on a couple eight balls, wants to move one of them.
– Yeah, probably.
– OK, look into that.
Geezer scoops the jewelry out of his lap and back into the bag and sets it next to him on the black leather couch.
– How much they want?
Jeff looks at the bullfighter again, looks at the gilded plaster sconces that bracket it dripping plastic grapes.
He shrugs.
– Shit, Geez, they’re kids, you know? They’ll take whatever you give and be happy with it.
Geezer smiles, leans back, the couch creaks as his fat rearranges.
– And you, you gonna be happy with whatever you can get?
– I’m just doin’ them a solid. Shit ain’t mine, they just brought it to me.
Geezer looks him over.
Loser. Guy should have it stapled to his head. Stapled to his head. Could you do that? Probably not with a regular stapler. A contractor’s stapler, a big industrial one that would go in the bone, the kind they use to staple into concrete and shit. Use one of those, you could staple a dead cat to a guy’s head and it’d stick. Or a live cat. Or a weasel. Staple a live weasel by its tail and watch and see what it does. Or one of them…long and wormy…like a weasel, but?
– Like a weasel, but different?
– Um.
– Long and skinny and furry, a rodent, but it hunts other rodents.
– A ferret.
Geezer closes his eyes and laughs.
– Yeah. That’s it. Ferret. A ferret by the tail. That’d be something.
He laughs until he coughs.
Jeff takes a step closer.
– You OK?
Geezer waves him off. Choking, he reaches over his stomach for the glass of juice on the coffee table, squeezing the grabber’s handle, the claw closing around the glass.
He brings it close, removes the glass from the claw and takes a sip.
– Pluck your eye out with this thing. Best five bucks I ever spent.
He puts the grabber back in its place.
– So, you’re just selling the shit for them, getting nothing out of it?
– Well, I get, you know, twenty percent. A couple bucks. Who can’t use a few bucks?
Geezer nods, runs his fingertip around the Looney Tunes characters enameled on the side of the glass he got from Burger King. This loser. Had some moves back when. Now look at him. Security guard. Good for opening a lock and turning his back every now and then. Good for giving the Seville a tune up and detailing the mags. That’s it. Should have cut him loose years ago. What you get for being sentimental, you get dead weight like Jeff Loller on your back.
Still, Amy Whelan’s punks trust him.
He rolls his bulk forward, reaches between the black leather sofa cushions and pulls out a thick roll of bills.
– Two hundred.
Jeff wraps his arms around his torso, the cold air blasted into the trailer by the swamp cooler starting to raise gooseflesh.
– Two. Um.
– That’s not what you were looking for? For the kids who’ll take anything?
Jeff shakes his head.
Geezer snaps the rubber band off the cash.
– It’s too much, right? I know it’s too much. Don’t go spastic because it’s too much, Loller.
He pats the bag.
– This is good stuff. These kids, they might be good little thieves. I want to overpay a little, give them a little career encouragement. You take your twenty percent and forget ripping off whatever you were going to rip off. I want them to like me. Right?
– Hey, I wasn’t gonna rip anybody.
– Really, who gives a fuck? Just don’t do it. OK?
– Yeah, but I wasn’t even thinking.
– Jeff, I’m not gonna apologize for saying the truth. Drop it.
– OK. OK.
– Two hundred?
– Yeah. Of course, man.
Geezer grunts and holds out the empty juice glass. Jeff takes it and puts it on the coffee table next to the lily pad shaped ashtray with the ceramic frogs waiting to hold a cigarette for you. Geezer licks his thumb and starts peeling twenties from the roll.
– Here we go. Come and get it.
Jeff takes the money and puts it in his pocket.
Geezer shoves his bankroll back in the couch.
– And see if maybe they want to do something for me.
– Like what?
– Steal some more shit. I know a place. Here, let me write this down.
– Sure, but I should split. Gotta get to work.
Geezer uses the grabber to pluck a notebook from the coffee table, brings it to his lap and scribbles, passes Jeff a scrap of paper clutched in the claw.
– Split. Have fun.
Jeff turns the knob, starts to open the door.
– And, Jeff?
Jeff stops.
– Yeah?
Geezer leans forward.
– You know where a guy would get a stapler? A big one?
Paul comes back into the trailer and finds Andy sprawled on the floor.
George is leaning Jeff’s cabinet speakers together to form an A frame above Andy’s face.
He looks at Paul.
– What’d you have to talk to him about?
Paul squats next to Hector, looking through Jeff’s albums, looking for the perfect one.
– Seein’ if the truck needed a push to get started.
Hector pulls Van Halen Van Halen from the stack.
Paul shakes his head and pulls out Number of the Beast.
Hector rolls his eyes.
– Shit may as well be pop.
– Fuck you, Maiden rocks.
– Rocks your grandma.
George leans between them.
– I don’t know what you guys are fucking around for. There’s only one way to do this.
He grabs an album and slides it from its sleeve.
Hector stands up.
– All this shit is tired anyway. It’s like Day on the Green Greatest Hits or some shit.
George puts the album on the turntable.
– Fuck you, you like going to Day on the Green as much as anyone.
– I like going and getting fucked up and checking out the chicks, but the music is dinosaur rock. Beat and tired.
Paul puts an elbow in his ribs and heads for the fridge.
– Metallica is not beat.
Hector jumps on his back.
– One decent fucking band! A whole day of tired music and one decent headbanger in the whole lineup.
Paul crashes into the sink and falls to the floor with Hector clinging to him, the two of them wrestling on the linoleum.
– You’re dead, fag.
He goes after Hector’s hair, Hector slapping at his hands.
– Not the hawk, not the hawk, man! That’s not cool!
Paul is rubbing his hand over Hector’s head, demolishing the hawk.
– Gonna scalp you this time. You wanna look like a injun, you can die like one.
George turns away from the spectacle and kneels next to his brother and offers him a chromium blue sneak a toke made out of spun aluminum.
– Here.
Andy takes the bomb shaped pipe and sucks a hit out of it and hands it back to his brother.
– Thanks.
George turns to look in the kitchen as the garbage can is kicked over and empty beer cans spray across the floor.
He looks at the pipe in his hand and then at his genius brother.
– What the fuck are you doing here, Andy?
Andy is staring up into the angle where the speakers meet, thinking about Pythagoras. The sum of the three angles will be equal to two right angles. That’s a fact. He focuses on trying to generate an accurate measurement of the angles by applying his estimations to the formula.
He has cottonmouth and sucks the back of his tongue to try and create some moisture.
– Hangin’. You want me to leave?
– No, man, I just. I mean, why aren’t you doing something else?
George blows smoke at his two best friends rolling around in the mess of cans and cigarette butts and fast food bags.
– We got nothing better to do. You could be doing shit. You could be studying for the SAT. You could be working on science fair shit. You could be making one of your dungeons. Something, you know, creative or something.
Andy’s looking for the trap. Is George being serious? If he answers him, will he grab his hair and call him a fag?
If the triangle made by the speakers and the floor had a right angle he could apply Pythagoras’ Theorem and show that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. No one could argue that it is not.
– You guys are my friends.
George is looking at the floor now, his eyes hidden by the fall of his hair.
– You have other friends, man. You could be off playing Dungeons amp; Dragons with them. Not getting into trouble. Not burning up brain cells. You’re going to college, man, you got better things to do.
Andy blinks.
College. What’s so great about college? Everyone makes a big deal out of it. All college really means is going someplace and being all alone. Pythagoras was head of a secret society, he believed that at its deepest level, reality is mathematical. The inner circle of his followers were the Mathematikoi. They shared his beliefs.
– My other friends don’t understand me.
George laughs.
Andy closes his eyes. Here comes his ration of shit.
George reaches for the stereo.
– Little brother, if you’re hanging with us because you think we understand you, you are in the wrong place.
He flips the needle down and it hits the groove and “Children of the Grave” blasts Andy’s face in perfect stereo.
He opens his eyes and watches his brother get up and kick Paul and Hector apart long enough to be able to get a beer out of the fridge.
He smiles and listens to the music, his favorite Sabbath song, the one his brother picked out for him.
Jeff angles the pickup into its spot between the 240Z and the Beetle that he hopes will be running someday. He kills the engine, keeping his fingers crossed, and the engine cuts without giving the particular shudder and groan that means it won’t go anywhere else for the rest of the day. Thank God for that. Late enough for work now that the bus is no longer an option. The truck is gonna have to get him there.
He listens to the sound of top volume Black Sabbath coming from inside his place. It’ll be par for the course if they’ve sucked down all his brews. He thinks about peeling a twenty from the money Geezer gave him. Just to cover the cost of the beers those punks drank. He gets as far as sticking his hand in his pocket, and then pulls it out.
Better not. Geezer ends up meeting the kids, someone might say something about how much money they got. He wants them to have two bills, it better be two bills. And he’ll still come out of it with forty. So that’s cool.
He walks around the 240Z, running his hand across a primered patch of Bondo. He remembers when he and Bob used buckets of the stuff to fill in the dents and creases on a ’53 Ford Crestline they’d fixed up in high school. Man, they’d just about shoveled it onto that car. Sucker made some time, though. So did they. Lots of chicks took a ride in the back seat of that jalopy.
It was the right thing, not saying anything to Geezer about George and Andy being Bob’s kids. Would have just queered the deal and they’d have been out the cash. Bad enough Amy’s name came up.
He steps up on the porch, wondering if she really is dealing crank these days, pulls open the door of his trailer, and looks at the mess in the kitchen and the stoned kids scattered on the carpet.
– Fucking A.
Paul points at Hector.
– He did it.
Hector throws a beer can at him.
– Faggot.
Paul goes for him, but Jeff gets him by the scruff and trips him.
– Enough. Cool it. Don’t care who did what, let’s see some asses cleaning this shit up.
Andy gets up, moving around the trailer with the garbage bag, picking up the mess he had nothing to do with making.
Jeff points at the blaring stereo.
– And turn that down for a second. We got business.
George twists the volume down to nothing.
– What’s the word?
Jeff has his head in the fridge.
– The word is I told you punks to leave me a couple beers.
Paul points at Hector.
– He did it.
Hector throws a beer can at him.
– Faggot.
Jeff stands with his hands on his hips.
– What the fuck are you guys on anyway?
Paul looks at George.
– What’s it called?
– Phenobarbital.
Jeff’s eyebrows go up.
– No shit? You get it from your aunt?
– Boosted it.
– Give me a couple.
George takes a pill from his pocket and tosses it to Jeff.
Jeff shakes his head.
– C’mon, one of these won’t do shit for me.
– That all I got left.
Andy takes both of his from his pocket.
– Here.
Jeff nods.
– Cool. More like it.
He pops two of the pills in his mouth and washes them down with the dregs of the beer he takes from Paul.
– Hey, man, I was drinking that.
– No, man, you were finished with that.
Hector is taking the needle from the album on the turntable.
Jeff taps him on the shoulder.
– Any chance you could put on something mellow? Some old man music for a change?
Hector brushes back his demolished mohawk.
– You got some Carpenters in here?
– Fuck you. Put on some Marshall Tucker or something. Just give me a break for about five minutes, then I’ll be out of your guys’ hair and you can burn the place down.
He plops onto the bench seat torn from a ’55 Bel Air.
– So anyone want to ask how it went? Now you’re all wasted you no longer got the head for business? The big deal no longer bears the same interest for you?
George busts out a smoke and offers one to Jeff.
– There a problem?
Jeff lights up.
– A problem? Well, could be there was a problem. Could be I didn’t get the price we were talking about.
Paul comes out of the kitchen.
– What the fuck? That’s bullshit, man. That was a discount price. That was like a sweet deal for doing it bulk or wholesale or whatever. Don’t tell me you took this guy’s bullshit price, man.
Jeff wags his head.
– Hey, man, sometimes it’s a matter of what the market will bear. Just got to take what you can get.
– Fuck! Fuck, man! Fuck!
Paul stomps out to the porch and kicks something.
Jeff leans forward on his seat and looks out the door.
– Don’t be screwing with my tools and shit out there.
Paul kicks something else.
– I’m not screwing with your tools and shit.
He comes back in and takes one of George’s cigarettes.
– I’m not screwing with any of your shit.
Hector has dropped Searchin’ for a Rainbow on the turntable, shaking his head the whole time.
– How bad we get screwed?
Jeff reaches in his hip pocket and pulls out some bills and counts.
– Well, let’s see. Got twenty, forty, sixty, eighty, aaand, ho, what’s this? Hundred. Hundred twenty, hundred forty, sixty, eighty. Looks like two hundred to me. Who knows how to say thank you? Who can say thank you, Jeff?
Andy puts the garbage sack back under the sink.
– Thank you, Jeff.
George, Paul, and Hector all drop their heads.
Paul nudges George.
– What’s it like having a fag brother?
– Man, I don’t have a brother.
Jeff waves the money.
– Fuck them, Andy. Manners are worth their weight in gold. Come over here and get your cut first.
Andy brushes between his brother and Paul.
– Fuck you guys, manners are worth their weight in gold.
Jeff peels off a couple bills.
– Forty bucks for the kid with some manners.
George tosses his butt in the sink and runs the tap over it.
– Forty?
Paul points at the money.
– Should be forty five, man.
Jeff holds a couple bills up between his fingers.
– Two, minus forty for me, equals one sixty. Equals forty each for you guys.
– Forty for you?
– That’s twenty percent.
Hector stands up.
– Said twenty bucks, man.
– Said twenty percent, holmes.
– Don’t holmes me, man. You ain’t no vato.
– Well you ain’t, neither.
George comes out of the kitchen.
– Cool it, Hector, he didn’t mean anything.
– Sure, sure, I know, but I don’t need that shit. Get enough of that shit out there, don’t need it from my friends.
Jeff puts out his hand.
– Hector, my man, it’s cool. Didn’t mean anything at all. You’re right, it’s all friends here. Be cool.
Hector takes his hand and they shake down, sliding their palms up, down, across, locking fingers and snapping them loose.
– I know, man. It’s cool. We’re cool.
– Alright then.
Jeff leans back.
– So, twenty percent. You guys tell me that’s not what I said, it’s not what I said.
Andy shakes his head.
– No, it’s what you said. Twenty percent.
He looks at the others.
– It’s really what he said.
Paul lifts his arms.
– Hey, man, who’s gonna argue with the human computer. Fagmo says it was twenty percent, that’s what it is. Let’s just get to the cash and go hit the QuickStop for a bottle of Jack.
Jeff splits the money.
– And you guys gotta give the truck a push.
George takes his cash.
– How’d you get the price up?
– Started high, you know. Truth is, guy bit on my price so fast, I was probably asking too low. Looks like you guys got a better eye for this shit than I thought.
He gets up.
– Matter of fact, guy I was dealing with, he’s looking for more of the same.
He heads for the bedroom.
– But he wants to get his hands on it fast. Has some deal of his own going.
Paul looks at the others and sticks his thumbs in the air, yelling down the hallway.
– How fast?
Jeff pops his head out of the bedroom.
– Fast. Couple days at the most. As much as you can get. Gold, silver, jewels, platinum. Coins. Whatever you can get your hands on, he’ll take it.
George waves Paul down.
– Hey, man, that’s cool and all, but we kind of lucked into this shit. Wouldn’t know where to start actually finding the right houses for good stuff.
– Not a problem.
Jeff comes back down the hall, cracked black leather boots draped by the cuffs of indigo polyester slacks with a baby blue stripe down the side, tattooed arms hidden in the sleeves of a matching shirt with the Security Eye patch on the shoulder.
– He’s got a house he says is prime.
Paul freezes, and watches George’s legs as he’s jerked into the bathroom, his jeans catching, pulled low, deep gouges being cut into his thighs.
He grabs his friend’s ankles and digs his heels into the dirt.
– Let go! Let the fuck go! I’ll fucking kill you if you don’t let go!
George is howling, blood running down his legs.
– Paul! Paul! Letmegoletmego! Fucking Andy is! Letmego!
There’s a sound like a piece of firewood hitting a gourd.
George’s legs stop kicking.
Paul freezes.
His friend’s legs are yanked from his hands, disappearing into the window and leaving behind a scrap of bloody denim and a single tennis shoe that falls to the ground.
Fernando’s face appears in the window.
– You coming in, Cheney?
Paul runs.
He runs and boosts himself over the fence and lands in the front yard and runs some more and keeps running.
Mr. Cheney ducks low behind his steering wheel when the boys come out of the trailer park pushing a pickup. It jerks and a huge cloud of black smoke spits out of the tailpipe and the boys and the truck leap forward a few yards. Paul jumps in and slides behind the wheel as the driver gets out and heads into the store.
Good Lord, Jeff Loller.
How long has Paul been hanging around that overgrown delinquent?
Would barely know the man if Loller hadn’t taken one of his intro computer classes last year. Didn’t last. Once he realized they wouldn’t be sitting around playing Tetris and Flight Simulator he dropped out. Before that he was just a vaguely familiar face. Memorable in high school mostly because he was one of Bob Whelan’s cronies. By the time he’d come back from college and moved into the house down from Bob’s, Loller had faded entirely from his memory. Until he’d slouched into class looking much the same as he had eighteen years before.
And now Loller is buying liquor for his son.
The appeal for Paul is pretty clear. Loller is much like any number of the boyfriends his mother’s friends dragged through the house when he was small. Nothing like his father. Long hair. A motorcycle. Aimless. A bad cliché.
He watches his son in the other man’s truck, revving the engine to keep it from dying. Does he know how to drive it? Of course he does. He smokes and drinks and takes drugs and steals things and has sex; of course he knows how to drive. Did Loller teach him? The thought.
Jeff comes out of the store with a brown paper bag. He lifts it to his mouth and takes a drink from the bottle inside, then hands it to George and gets back in his truck, Paul jumping out the other side.
After he’s driven off and the boys have left with their bottle, Kyle waits several minutes, then runs across the street for his brandy. Just for a little relief.
– If you guys are gonna stay over tonight you can help with those rocks on Sunday.
Paul turns from the sink where he’s washing his hands with a gritty bar of Lava.
– What if we’re not staying over the whole weekend?
Mr. Whelan pops the tab on a can of Oly and pours it into one of the beer mugs he keeps in the freezer during the summer.
– Paul, if you manage to get through the weekend without spending a night here or eating at least one meal in my house, I will apologize on Monday for having made you shovel rocks. But until that jury is in, the cost of a hot and a cot is you lend a hand. Got it?
Hector takes his turn at the sink.
– I got it, Mr. Whelan.
Sitting at the kitchen table with his beer, George and Andy’s dad looks at Paul.
– You got it?
Paul wipes his hands on a dish towel and hands it to Hector.
– Yeah, no problem. Sir.
– Can that sir crap.
– Yes. Sir.
Mr. Whelan is bent over, unlacing his boots.
– You still planning on joining the Army, Paul?
– Yep.
– That smartass crap will not float. I didn’t serve myself, but I can tell you right now, that crap will sink like a turd made out of brick. And drag you with it.
Paul laughs.
– Yes, sir.
Mr. Whelan leans back and crosses his legs, flexing his toes in his filthy socks.
– See, if this was the Army and I was your sergeant, I’d be busy slapping you down and watching you do about five hundred pushups before I sent you down the hall to clean my toilet so my wife doesn’t have to do it this week.
He leans forward and tugs the back of his wife’s tanktop.
– How ’bout that, you like to have this punk clean the bathrooms for you this week?
She looks from the giant bowl of fruit salad she’s making.
– It’d be a nice change of pace from the messing up he does in there.
Andy comes in from the bathroom.
His mom squints at him.
– You feeling alright?
He shrugs.
– Sure, fine.
His mom puts the back of her hand on his forehead.
– You feel a little hot.
– It’s like a hundred degrees out. Everything’s hot.
– Well, drink something cold. Drink some Kool-Aid.
He gets the jug from the fridge.
Hector grabs two glasses from the cupboard.
– Let me get some of that.
Bob Whelan drinks his beer and watches the boys jostle around the kitchen, enjoying the noise and the roughhousing.
George comes in, hair wet from the shower. He takes the Kool-Aid jug from his brother and starts drinking directly from the spout.
His mom throws her hands in the air.
– Hey. Hey!
He stops drinking and wipes his lips and looks at his mom.
– What?
– A glass? Is it so much trouble to open the cupboard and take out a glass and use it?
– I’m just having a quick drink, why get a glass dirty?
His dad knocks the bottom of his mug on the table.
– Don’t talk back to your mom. You want a drink, you use a glass.
– Fine. Whatever. I’m not even really thirsty.
He opens the fridge door and puts the jug back and stands looking at the contents of the shelves.
His mom swings a towel at him.
– The door. You’re using energy. What’s in there isn’t gonna change. And I’m making dinner right now.
– I’m just seeing if there’s anything.
Mr. Whelan reaches with his foot and pushes the door closed.
– There’s plenty. But your mom said she’s making dinner and I’m paying the PG amp;E bills, so don’t stand with the door open. Got it?
George moves closer to his mom and looks at what she’s doing.
– Fruit salad?
– And sandwiches. It’s too hot to cook.
Bob snaps his fingers; three sharp shots.
– Hey, I said, got it?
George faces his dad.
– Yeah, I got it. Don’t stand with the door open. It wastes energy and energy costs money. I got it. You’ve said it a million times.
– So if you don’t want to hear it, stop doing it. Got it?
– Got it. Got it.
– You keep going with that attitude, Paul and Hector are gonna be heading for home and me and you are gonna be outside shoveling rocks right now. You got that?
George looks his dad in the eye.
– Yes. I got it. I’m sorry.
His dad points at his mom.
George looks at her.
– Sorry, Mom, didn’t mean to be a smartass.
She nudges him with an elbow and smiles.
– Mustard?
– Please.
She looks at her husband.
– Lettuce and tomato?
– The works, please. Thanks.
She cuts a cheese sandwich in half from corner to corner the way Andy likes it, puts extra mayo on Paul’s ham sandwich, and pickles on Hector’s, and brings it all to the table.
The boys scrape chairs and grab sandwiches and fistfuls of chips and start eating, pausing between bites just long enough to breathe and to wipe their mouths with paper napkins.
Bob bites into his sub and nods at his wife.
– S’good, babe. Thanks.
Hector bobs his head while he chews.
– Yeah, thanks, Mrs. Whelan.
Andy picks grapes from his fruit salad and pops them in his mouth one by one.
– Good salad, Mom.
George and Paul grunt through their stuffed mouths.
Bob takes a long swallow of beer and listens to the boys argue about a band called Rainbow and whether its lead singer should be allowed anywhere near Black Sabbath.
This had never been the plan.
Being a family man, having a wife and kids, let alone playing troop leader to a couple strays like Paul and Hector, had never been in the cards at all. He’d had other things on his mind altogether. And a wife like Cindy? How the hell did he manage that? Her plan, her parents’ plan anyway, had been Stanford. Hell, they’d never have crossed paths if she hadn’t started tutoring Amy. That hadn’t happened, Amy never would have brought her to that party, he never would have ended up making out with her, never would have gotten her pregnant with George, never would have gotten married. And all the rest that came after.
Cindy’d be living in a big house over in Blackhawk or something. Lawyer husband and a housekeeper and a BMW and the country club and all that shit. Well, they could have had that stuff. Don’t have to be a lawyer to get money. Just need to have the want.
Bob thinks about the kinds of things a man can do to make money if he has the want. And he looks at his sons.
He watches George laugh and spray some chips out of his mouth and clean them from the tabletop and say excuse me. He watches the way Andy and Hector and Paul all watch him, take their cue from him. The leader of the pack. But not taking advantage of it, not lording it over his pals. Kid could be something special, just needs to put some elbow grease into it. So many things come easy to the boy, he thinks that’s the way it’s always gonna be. Bob knows that feeling. And it didn’t matter how hard his pop tried to slap it into him, he had to learn different on his own.
Cindy scoops some more fruit salad into Andy’s bowl. He picks through it, eating first the grapes and then the oranges and then the bananas and then the apples, leaving the little slivers of strawberry for last.
Bob shakes his head.
Where did he come from? And how in God’s name did he survive in the first place? Six weeks early. Could rest on the palm of your hand. Doctors telling them not to get their hopes up. Telling them that if he made it he might not be normal. Shit, they were right about that one. Normal is the last thing his youngest turned out to be.
Nine days out of ten it’s more fun to butt heads with George than it is to try and figure what the hell Andy is talking about. Pick him up from school on a rain day, he’s chattering about some theory of how the universe is all made of empty space, how everything solid is mostly just air. Or not even air. Made of just nothing. Made of the chance that something might be in all the nothing. Or some shit like that. A little kid with stuff like that in his head. Still, it’s better than when he starts in on Dungeons amp; Dragons. Might as well be speaking in tongues.
Man, if the apple’s ever fallen farther from the tree, he’d like to know about it. Still, college. Two years early and all expenses paid. His son. If that doesn’t make it all seem worthwhile, nothing else will.
He finishes the last bite of his sandwich, crumples his napkin and drops it on the plate and leans back in his chair. Cindy reaches over and kneads the back of his neck, and he runs his fingers over her bare forearm.
None of it in the cards. Thirty five. A woman like this. Sons like these.
They’d been taking bets on him fifteen years ago, most people who knew a thing about him would have had theirs on prison or a coffin. And it would have been safe money.
– Eurythmics, Culture Club, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode and the Talking Heads.
– I like “Psycho Killer.”
– I know what you like, man, it’s my fucking list and those are the five gayest bands in the world.
Hector rips open a bag of Doritos.
– There’s not really anything gay about Talking Heads.
Paul grabs the chips from him.
– Just because you like one of their songs doesn’t mean they’re not gay.
George holds out a hand and Paul passes him the bag.
– I’m with Paul on this one, the Heads are pretty gay. I mean, what’s up with the big suit?
– Fuck cares about the big suit, listen to the music.
Andy peels back the lid on a can of bean dip.
– I think Hector likes them.
– Fuck you. You don’t even have a list. There’s no music too gay for you.
Andy gets a chip from the bag and scoops a wad of dip.
So he likes a lot of music, big deal. Course, the problem isn’t liking all kinds of music, it’s liking mellow music. Not just a track like “Behind Blue Eyes,” which rocks toward the end, after all, or even instrumentals like “Orchid,” but really mellow shit. Jackson Browne. Journey. John Denver. Paul caught him listening to Denver once. Would have been better if he’d walked in on him jerking off.
For now he needs to keep his mouth shut. Otherwise the Rocky Mountain High Incident will be mentioned and harped on for the rest of the night.
He dips another chip and rolls a four sided die on his notepad and writes down a number.
Hector holds up a hand and checks off fingers one by one.
– The gayest bands are. Culture Club.
George flips another page in the Monster Manual and looks at a picture of a fire elemental.
– Culture Club goes without saying. At this point we should really be doing the gayest bands other than Culture Club and Duran Duran.
Paul has moved and is sitting next to him on the bed, looking at the pictures over his shoulder.
– Fuck, that’s cool. That’s what I want to be. Andy, I want to be a fire elemental.
– You can’t.
– Fuck can’t I?
– There’s no stats for them. I’d have to make it up again and it takes too much time. I’ll give your character something with fire that’s cool.
– Cool. Thanks.
Andy thinks about fire, he thinks about fire as a weapon and what it would be like to burn someone, and he sees what it would look like. He shakes the image away and rolls the twenty sided die.
At first he fought when the guys wanted to be monsters and shit, stuff that Dungeons amp; Dragons isn’t designed for, but then he realized it was more fun that way. The more they ignored the way the game was supposed to be played, the more fun it became for him. Chaos.
He thinks about fire again, about fractals and how they can describe a natural phenomenon like fire. He thinks about whether there is a difference between what is random and what is chaotic.
Numbers arrange themselves for him and he writes them down.
Hector starts with his first finger again.
– Fine, no Culture and no Duran and Paul can’t be a gay fire elemental. The five gayest bands are Devo, Depeche Mode, Flock of Seagulls.
Paul hits his own forehead.
– Hugely gay. The Flock. How’d I miss those cocksuckers?
– Wham.
– Massively gay. Again, how’d I miss that?
– And Phil Collins.
George slaps the Monster Manual shut.
– Not a band.
Hector stands up.
– You know, I don’t even care. He’s so fucking gay and his music sucks so fucking hard he has to be on the fucking list.
Paul takes the Monster Manual and flips it back open, looking for the fire elemental again.
– I’m still so stunned by Fuck a Seagull and Wham, I don’t think he even needs Phil. You can D.Q. Phil and that is still the gayest list ever.
He nudges Andy with his toe.
– What say?
Andy writes a number for armor class and looks up.
– Mondo gay. Hector clearly knows his gay. His gayometer is in fine working shape. His recognition of gayness is noteworthy and admirable. All hail Hector, King of Gay.
By gayometer Paul and George have already fallen out laughing. They’re helpless long before King of Gay.
Hector holds his hands above his head.
– So be it, King of Gay. Still better than being Mellow Lad, like John Denver over here.
Andy laughs and writes something on a paper and holds it out.
– Here’s your character, Hector, King of Gay. He has a plus five to find gay.
One arm held out straight, Hector spins in place.
– Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep.
Slowing, stopping, swinging back in the other direction, bringing his arm down toward Andy.
– Beepbeepbeep. Beeeeeeeeep!
Pointing right at him now.
– Cool, it works. Guys, I just found some gay.
It’s another half hour or so before they get started, spread around the room, Diary of a Madman in the tape player, the last of the bottle of Jack that Jeff bought for them making the rounds.
Andy doesn’t remember how they ended up playing the game with him. Somehow, one of the days they’d started by fucking with him about it had ended with them playing. George had probably had something to do with it. Leading Paul and Hector from messing with him into letting him show them something new. And now they play just about every week. Getting stoned while Andy takes them through a new dungeon or a haunted forest or whatever. Playing until they get bored and just start saying I hit it with my battle ax every time they run across something that breathes.
– I hit it with my battle ax.
– I use my flame sword.
– I find its gay.
Andy starts dropping the geodesic dice back in the little leather bag he keeps them in.
– When do we meet Jeff?
His head stuck out the window so he can smoke, George holds up a couple fingers.
– Two. He’ll drive us over to check out the house.
Paul crowds next to him at the window and takes the smoke from his hand.
– We should just hit it tonight.
– Let’s take a look first. Could be a dog or it could have an alarm or some shit. You know how to do anything with an alarm? Cuz I sure as shit don’t.
– But if it’s cool, we should rob it tonight.
– The guy wants to pay us to do this shit, man. Let’s be cool.
Hector squeezes next to them and takes the smoke.
– Yeah, let’s do it when he says. Two bills for that shit we had. I want more of that.
George gets his cigarette back, takes the last drag and flicks the butt, the cherry trailing over the neighbor’s fence.
– That’s the point, man. If he can do this, tell us what houses have good shit, and he’ll buy it from us? I don’t want to fuck it up. Jeff says the guy says it’ll be empty tomorrow night. We’ll just take a look tonight. Make sure it’s not too sketchy.
Behind them, Andy’s eyes scan the dungeon he designed earlier in the day, mentally crossing off the rooms the guys have already traversed, the hazards survived, the riches plundered. More monsters and fewer traps next time. The guys like fighting more than they like figuring things out.
Hector hears the screams from the side of the house.
He wraps the chain around his hand and punches the plate glass door. It shatters, shards raking his forearm. He reaches down and flips the lock and pulls his arm out. He yanks on the handle and the door jams against the length of 1×2 he’s forgotten about.
He throws rabbit punches at the glass, widening the hole.
The screams stop.
Someone is coming into the livingroom.
– Yo, Hector.
He stops punching the glass, stands there staring at Timo.
– Hector, I ever tell you what a piece of ass your little sister is?
Hector hits the glass again, spattering it with his own blood.
Timo is laughing.
– Keep coming, I want to talk to you about her. You pop her cherry yet? Or your old man beat you to it? Hope not, I’m looking forward to that shit. So far all she gives up is tit, but I’ll be in her pussy in a week.
Hector kicks the glass, the hole is almost big enough to get through now.
Timo points at something.
– Hey, yo, what’s that?
Hector sees the reflection in a hanging shard of glass just before Ramon limps up behind him and cracks him in the back of his head with his crutch.
The pickup starts.
Jeff rolls out of the trailer park and pulls up at the QuickStop gas pumps. The gas is eight cents cheaper in the middle of town, away from the freeway entrance, but the guys here know him and won’t give him shit when he leaves the engine running while the gas pumps. Let it die and it may never start again. He puts five bucks in the tank and heads out, a tallboy in a brown bag between his thighs.
A little breeze blows through the open windows and cools off the cab. Fucking Security Eye and their polyester uniforms. Couldn’t they at least throw down for something made with a blend, something that might breathe a little? He uses his left hand to undo the buttons all the way down his front, exposing his sweat stained T.
He swigs the beer.
Should be at home. Sitting on the porch, finishing the rebuild on that carburetor. Should be getting the Harley back together so he can ride and not have to worry about the pickup starting, not have to worry about if he’s gonna have to take the bus. Instead, gotta pick up the kids.
Damn it, Geezer. Fat slob doesn’t have enough guys around he can get to rob his houses for him, has to get these kids involved?
Oh well, not like he can really do anything about it. Gonna tell Geezer how to do his business? Gonna tell the kids to knock this shit off and tuck in their shirts and go to class? Geezer’s gonna do what he wants. The kids are gonna do what they want. Everybody’s gonna do what they want, just like they always do. Everybody’s gonna do this shit, no reason why he shouldn’t help out here and there and make a few bucks himself.
But shit, gotta be tonight? Really want to get the Harley on its feet.
He pulls the pickup to the curb, finishes the last of the beer and drops the bag and the can out the window and lights a smoke.
Little fuckers best not be late.
– Hey, littering makes the Indian cry. Don’t you watch TV? Ain’t you seen the Indian cry when people litter?
The pickup lurches as Andy and Hector climb into the bed.
George strolls up, bends over and picks up the beer can.
– Crying Indians, man, that’s no joke.
He holds out the can.
Jeff takes it from him.
– You guys high again?
– The word is still.
– Yeah, well you’re still a punkass without a car. So get your ass in and let’s go.
George sees Paul about to pull open the passenger door.
– Shotgun!
Paul flips him off.
– Fuck you, I called it on the way over here.
– You can’t call shotgun until you see the car.
– Since when?
– Forever, man, that’s always been a rule. No early shotguns.
– It’s a gay rule.
George comes around the truck.
– Hector, what’s the shotgun rule?
Hector sits on top of the wheel well.
– Got to see the vehicle in question, man.
George reaches in the back of the truck and pokes his brother.
– Andy?
Andy is on his back, looking at the sky.
– It’s the rule. The only rule standing between us and the savages. It keeps the forces of chaos at bay. Scorn not the rule.
Paul starts to climb in the cab.
– Fuck chaos. I called this shit right after we climbed out the window. You can see the street from your window. You look, you can see your window through the trees. I called shotgun when we could see the truck.
George blocks him.
– You can see it. But did you see it?
– Man, are you splitting hairs with me on calling shotgun?
– Hey, you heard Andy, man. Chaos. You want to risk chaos?
Paul moves George’s arm from his way and gets in the truck.
– Dude, I’ll take my fucking chances.
Jeff looks at both of them.
– You ladies settled? Got that one all worked out? I just want to know so I can keep track of the gas I’m burning here so I know what to charge your asses for the taxi service.
Paul closes the door.
– Shotgun. It’s a complicated issue.
George boosts himself into the bed of the truck and stands behind the cab and slaps the roof.
– We ride!
Jeff drops the empty beer can back in the street and pulls away.
– Fucking kids.
Andy raises his arm, pointing at the stars.
Calling out.
– Daring chaos by breaking the eternal rule of shotgun, they set out on their journey.
On the dark street off North L, Jeff drives the truck past the house, letting the kids get a good look. It’s just another crappy house in another run down neighborhood. A couple lights are on. There’s a streetlamp out front. Second time around the block Jeff dumps all the kids except George at the corner. George lies on his back in the bed of the pickup with the pellet gun Jeff dug out from behind the seats. He pumps it until it won’t pump anymore. Jeff stops below the streetlamp, and George draws a bead the way his dad taught him years ago when they shot his grandpa’s old.22 in the fields beyond the 580. The gun pops and the lamp goes black and Jeff pulls away as glass showers the street. They pick up the guys and go home.
Why doesn’t he come home?
He stays out all the time. But tonight of all nights, why doesn’t he come home?
Kyle Cheney sits in the livingroom, his back to the front door, TV tuned to NBC. The Tonight Show was on when he nodded off, but now it’s only a cloud of static. All the lights are off. The scene is set. But his son won’t come home.
He’s at George and Andy’s.
Where else would he be.
That’s where they always end up. He watched them exit the trailer park, weaving their bikes back up the street, knowing where their next stop would be. After they disappeared he let himself go back to the QuickStop, ignoring the pints and half pints behind the cash register this time, going to the back where the proper bottles are. And then discovering he was 27 cents short. Having to dig through the change in the loan a cent on the counter. Sweaty, counting pennies out of the green plastic dish, the look from the Middle Easterner behind the counter.
Then heading for home and realizing he couldn’t park the car in front of the house. If there was any chance of the boy coming home before midnight it would be ruined if he thought his father was there.
Parking the car two blocks away. Walking with the bottle in a brown paper bag, cradling it in the crook of his arm so it would be less visible.
People, nosy people, butting in.
Waiting. Sitting on the kitchen counter, peeking out the window, waiting. Waiting doesn’t work. And it’d be worse if Paul found him like that, desperate like that. He got cleaned up, took a shower. Ate a Hungry Man. A few bites, anyway. Thought he should get the car, decided not to.
Maybe Paul will look out a window over there, late, see the car missing, wonder what’s wrong, come looking for his father. Like any son would.
He needs not to be desperate when that happens. In control. Relaxed. In the livingroom, watching TV, back to the door, not concerned.
Don’t let him know anything. Not until he goes to the bathroom and opens the toilet and sees the note. Then he’ll be scared. Then he’ll have to listen to what his father has to say.
When he comes out of the bathroom and sees his father with the bag of methamphetamine sitting right next to him? Paul will understand everything, without being told.
He reaches for the brandy bottle on the floor, misses, gets it on the second try, opens it and takes a drink. His eyes want to close again. It’s the brandy. Too much today. Normally he has it under control. It’s just that today was so stressful. Finding out your son is involved with drug dealers is stressful. Who wouldn’t need a few drinks? The problem, the problem now, is to stay awake. Can’t let the boy see how upset you are, but you also can’t have him slipping in and out while you’re asleep. Time for a little self discipline. He puts the cap back on the bottle and puts it down.
The TV hisses.
And his son doesn’t come home. Doesn’t see the missing car. Or sees and doesn’t care.
Yes, the trick will be not letting Paul know how much he cares. He wipes the tears away, hiding the signs.
– Mijo, where have you been? All night. All night.
Hector bends and kisses his mother’s cheek.
– I was at George and Andy’s. I told you yesterday, Ma, I spent the night like I told you.
– No, mijo, you didn’t.
– I did.
She turns from him and stirs a pan of refried beans.
– No, Hector, you didn’t tell me. I didn’t sleep. All night I didn’t sleep.
– Ma, I told you.
– No. You did not tell me. You did not. Do not lie to me.
– Ma.
– You tell me you told me, that is a lie. Lying to your mother.
– What did he do?
Hector’s father stands in the open door of the kitchen, leaning on his cane, his bathrobe hanging open over his belly.
– What did he lie about?
She crosses the kitchen to him.
– Nothing, nothing, mi amor.
She puts a hand on his arm and tries to guide him to the table.
– Sit, I have your breakfast, sit.
He shrugs her off.
– I can walk. Leave me, I can walk to the table.
She smiles and nods and backs away toward the stove.
– Amor.
She starts filling a plate with beans and tortillas and a few links of Brown ’N Serve.
– Hector, take this to your father.
Hector takes the plate and a fork and a paper napkin and sets them on the table.
– You been lying to your mama?
– No, Pop.
– Bring me some water.
Hector fills a glass of water from the tap and takes it to the table. His mother keeps her back to them, tending the pots on the stove.
– Here, Pop.
His father takes the pills from his robe pocket and hands the bottle to his son.
– Two.
Hector opens the cap and takes out the pills and hands them over and watches as his dad washes them down with the water.
He puts the glass aside and cuts one of the sausages with his fork and pushes a piece of it around in his beans.
– What did you lie to your mama about?
– Nothing, Pop.
He puts the sausage and beans in his mouth.
– And now you’re lying to me?
– No.
– Yes. Yes, you are.
He swallows the food.
– Go on. You came here to get some food, to change your clothes, to do that thing to your hair. Go on. Do the things you came here for. But don’t come to my house and lie to my wife. You come home when you want to, I am not an animal, my son has a home, I don’t kick my son out no matter what he does. But don’t come home to break your mother’s heart. Go on, go take care of your things. Just get out of the kitchen before you tell another lie.
– Pop.
– Go on, get out.
Hector puts a hand on his mother’s shoulder.
– Ma, I didn’t.
She shakes her head, brushes her hand in the air, doesn’t look at him.
– Go on now, Hector, like your father says. Go on, it will be better right now.
– But.
His father bangs his cane on the floor.
– You heard your mama, go on. Go be with your friends and listen to your music. Go tell lies in their homes.
Hector squeezes his mom’s shoulder.
– I’m sorry, Ma.
She smiles, but doesn’t say anything.
His father points at a cabinet.
– Where’s my wine?
Hector leaves the kitchen.
– Look at the bad penny.
– Hey, Amy.
– Don’t let the cat out! Don’t let the damn cat out!
Jeff sticks his leg in front of the cat, blocking its path, and snags it by the scruff.
– Got ’im.
He dangles the cat.
She puts her Marlboro 100 in her mouth and holds out her arms.
– Easy, easy, he’s a old cat.
She takes the cat and rubs her ear against its neck.
– Aren’t you? Just a little old man, aren’t you?
She turns and walks back into the house.
– You comin’ in?
– Yeah, sure.
Jeff follows her, watching her ass under the tight white jeans.
She climbs inside the bell of a wicker chair that dangles from the ceiling by a heavy chain, crossing her legs and putting the cat in her lap.
– What’s up, what you looking for?
He settles on a Spirit of ’76 souvenir beanbag from the bicentennial, the white patches turned gray by the years.
– They got me doin’ splits again.
– Shit.
– Yeah. Graveyards, I can take a couple ludes the first few mornings, get used to sleeping during the day. This half and half shit, don’t know when I’m up and when I’m down.
– Need help with the ups, huh?
– Supervisor drove by this parking lot, a parking lot I’m fucking protecting, I was crashed out. Finds me asleep again, says he’s gonna suspend me. At least. Like I care if I lose the job.
– Uh huh. Want to get high?
– Yeah.
Amy points at an ashtray on the floor.
– There’s a roach in there.
– Got a clip?
She bends forward, sticking her head out of the wicker cocoon, the chair tilting beneath her.
– Here.
She turns her head to the side and Jeff removes the feathered clip from her ponytail, opens the alligator jaws and places the roach between them.
He lights up, takes a hit and offers it to her.
– You in?
She waves the joint away.
– Go ahead, I already did a wake and bake. Got to be at the hospital in a hour. Doubling up my shift. Get too wasted and I’ll be taking naps on the gurneys.
– I hear that.
She watches Jeff blow the roach.
Cute guy. He’d been a serious maybe at one time. Back in high school he’d been a definite yes. But she’d been Bob’s little sister, fucker hadn’t even noticed her. Not till her tits popped, then he noticed all right. By then she knew what she had, didn’t need to be screwing her big brother’s biker buds. But he’d stayed on the maybe list for a long time. If he’d tried a little harder he’d probably have got in. Made out that one time when they got drunk together on wine cooler. But some of the skanks he’s walked out of the Rodeo Club with? Who wants to be on that list?
Still, he did give a good back rub. And he’s a great kisser. And when she passed out he didn’t even try to fingerbang her or anything.
So he’s not on the serious maybe list, but he’s not on the no fucking way list either.
She adjusts a bra strap, moves the cat so he hides the tummy she started getting in the last two years.
– Whites OK?
She pulls a baggie from under the chair’s seat cushion.
Jeff sucks the roach dead.
– If that’s what you got. What I could really go for is some crank.
– Don’t got it.
– Not a little? Just a quarter for an old friend?
She leans back, deep inside the chair, her face disappearing in the shadows.
– I don’t fuck with that shit. You know that.
– It’s cool. I’m sorry. Just asking. No biggie.
– Why would you even ask that shit?
– No reason, just thought you might have changed the menu.
– Why? Where’d that idea come from? You ever hear me say anything about crank other than it’s a shitty high? I don’t deal in shitty highs. I’m a specialist, man. Pharmaceuticals. A little acid maybe. None of that cheap bathtub, do it yourself nose Drano.
– Got it, got it. I was out of line asking. Just.
– What?
– Nothing.
– Bullshit. Nothing. My ass. What?
Jeff opens and closes the roach clip, runs his fingers over the fluffy white and black feathers that hang from it on a suede cord.
– It’s nothing. No big deal. Just something I heard.
She leans forward, the cat jumps from her lap and scoots under the couch.
– You heard what?
Jeff stands, gets a Camel from his pocket.
– Those whites handy?
Amy unfolds her legs, sticks them out of the chair, looks up at him through dirty blonde bangs, the same shade as her nephews’. She holds out a hand.
– Jeff, come here, baby.
He steps closer, offers her the roach clip.
She takes the clip from him, drops it on the floor and holds his hand.
– Baby, how long we know each other?
He fiddles with his unlit cigarette.
– Long time.
She runs her thumb across the back of his hand, massages an old white scar that covers an entire knuckle.
– Since we were kids. When did you and my brother first start hanging out? What were you, like, thirteen? I would have been nine. That’s, what, over twenty years, man? That’s crazy. You ever think you’d know anybody more than twenty years?
Jeff puts the cigarette away and takes her hand between both of his.
– Baby, I never thought I’d be twenty. Trips me out all the time.
She swings a foot back and forth, the basket chair rocks slightly.
– Being over thirty just blows my mind. And the way things change. Like the shit Bob was into when I was, like, the good little sister. And now look at him, and look at me. A trip. And like you and Bob were best friends and I was just his kid sister and now you guys don’t ever see each other and me and you have been friends for a long time. Weird how that shit happens.
Jeff pulls lightly on her hand, adding to the chair’s motion, rocking her.
– I like that part, baby. A lot of it, getting older, most of it is a drag, but I like being closer with you.
She holds his hands tightly, pulls, drawing herself closer to him.
– Well, I tell ya what, baby, you want us to be close, you want to ever have a chance of getting closer, you ever want to score another pill off me ever, you need to tell me where you got the fucking idea I might be holding crank.
She frees her hand from his and swings away, dropping her feet to the floor, halting the chair.
– Now, Jeff.
He looks at the floor, shakes his head, takes out the cigarette and lights it.
– Nice, Amy, nice way to be with a friend.
– Right now, you’re barely a customer. You want to be my friend again, do something to show me that you are.
Jeff nudges the beanbag with his boot.
– Fucking.
– Jeff.
– Yeah, I heard you. Just, look, don’t make a big deal out of this.
– Jeff.
He kicks the beanbag.
– Geezer. OK? Geezer said something about you and that he thought you were maybe dealing a little crank.
She points a chipped red fingernail at him.
– You fucker.
– Hey!
– You weren’t gonna tell me. You knew that, and you weren’t gonna warn me.
– That’s not.
– You came in here. Um, shucks, got any crank? Wait a minute…
– Whoa, Amy.
– You. Are you here for him? Did he send you over here too?
– No. No way. No fucking way. You know me better than that.
– Do I?
She stands, the top of her head at his chin, a finger in his face.
– OK. OK. You tell, him, that fat fucking slob, you tell him no fucking way. I am not dealing crank. No. You tell him, tell him to stay away from me. Tell him, he comes around here, he comes, I see him on my lawn, tell him I’m calling every old man I ever had. Tell him I’m gonna have every biker in the Tri Valley on his ass. Tell him to stay away. Tell him to leave me alone, just leave me alone.
Jeff tries to touch her face, to wipe away some of the tears pouring over her cheeks.
She jerks away, stomps her foot, exhales and drops back into her chair. Head hanging, arms and legs limp.
– Geezer.
She pulls her legs up into the chair and wraps her arms around them.
– Oh fuck. Ohfuckohfuckohfuck.
– Let me borrow a shirt.
George looks down into the drawer of carefully folded concert Ts. He’s standing in his underwear, his arms held away from his sides so he won’t start sweating again.
– Why?
Paul pulls off his own shirt.
– Got bean dip all over mine.
George takes out a Stones shirt from their “Face Dances” gig at the Cow Palace.
– So go home and get one.
Paul lies back down on the sleeping bag spread on the floor.
– Fucking never mind.
George puts on the Stones T.
– Dude, don’t be a girl, borrowing my clothes all the time. Go get a clean shirt.
– Don’t be a rag, fucking lend me one.
George closes the drawer.
– No way, you get bean dip on your own shirts, not on mine.
– Yeah, now who’s the girl?
He gets up and goes to the dresser and opens the drawer.
– Look at this, man, you wash these things in Woolite or what?
– Fuck you.
– They’re just shirts, man. You wear them, that’s what they’re for.
– It’s a collection, OK? It’s a collection of shirts from concerts I’ve gone to and paid money for the shirts and taken good care of them because I want to keep them around and wear them. You five finger discount every concert shirt you ever had. No wonder you don’t give a fuck if they get thrashed.
Paul takes a step back.
– Whoa. Sorry. Didn’t realize I was talking to your dad here.
George pulls on his favorite cutoffs.
– Fuck you, man.
He grabs his smokes and lighter and shades and walks out.
– Do whatever you want, take whatever you want.
Paul stands alone in the room.
Fucking George. No joke, the guy can get like infected with his dad sometimes. Not that that should be a big deal. They all make jokes about how uptight Mr. Whelan is, but he’s far and away the coolest dad any of them know. George doesn’t know how good he has it, how easy.
He looks at the shirts, picks up the one from the Blue Oyster Cult show last December. He unfolds the shirt and looks at the front, the ankh and the reaper in a night sky, the tour dates listed down the back.
George loves his shirts, doesn’t mean he has to be a dick about it. Knows how much it sucks to go home after staying out all night.
You OK? Everything all right? I wish you would call if you’re going to stay out all night. Something is going to happen one night and I won’t even know to be worried or to look for you. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call. Even if you need a ride. Especially if you need a ride. Don’t ever get in a car with a drunk driver. If you’ve been drinking that’s one thing, but don’t get in a car with someone who’s been drinking themselves.
George can’t lend him one cocksucking shirt so he doesn’t have to deal with that? They been friends how long? Jesus. Just ever since The Fight, that’s all.
It happened a couple days after Paul and his family moved into the neighborhood. George was the local hero, eight years old, wearing jeans and boots and a pearl button shirt like his dad. What a fag he looked like. And coming on all cowboy tough, giving Paul shit about the hippie stuff his mom found for him at the Salvation Army store.
They fought for so long the kids watching started to cry. They were so scared one of them was gonna kill the other one. They beat the living shit out of each other. Went on for hours. Seemed that way. Anyway, didn’t stop till Mr. Whelan drove home and saw them punching each other on the Phelps’ front lawn. Pulled to the curb and came over and got a handful of their hair in each hand and yanked them apart.
That was a great fucking fight, man.
Next day they ran into each other on the sidewalk and talked about it and showed each other their bruises and scrapes and scabby knuckles.
He crams the shirt back in the drawer. Fuck this, man. Got cash on hand. Go down to Galaxy Records and buy a brand new shirt. Get that black Ozzy T with the red jersey sleeves. Yeah, man, cut the sleeves off, that’ll look cool as hell.
He climbs into his shredded jeans and the dirty T and pulls on Jeff’s Harley cap.
– George!
He heads down the stairs to the kitchen.
– George, let’s cruise over to Galaxy, check out some tunes, there’s a shirt I like on the wall over there.
Andy walks around the empty house.
It’s after twelve. The thermometer on the back porch is hitting ninety. Mom and dad left for work first thing. Who knows when George and Paul and Hector took off.
He goes to the bathroom and brushes his teeth and fills a plastic cup with water from the tap and drinks it standing at the sink. He looks at himself in the mirror. Skin and bones and greasy, tangled hair. Mostly bones and hair. No wonder no girls like him.
Paul says he’d do better if he was bigger. Chicks dig muscles, he says, and flexes. Chicks like Paul OK, dig his muscles, until they get to know him. Then they get scared of his temper.
Hector says Andy needs to be himself. Chicks don’t dig him when he’s being himself, then fuck them anyway, he says. Chicks used to be into Hector, until he went punk and started wearing the mohawk last year. There are a couple that are still into him, funky ones with tons of black eye shadow and black nail polish and shit.
George says he just needs to be cool, not dig the chicks too much. Just do your own thing and they’ll come around. And it works for him. Like most things work for George. He’s the one chicks come around to talk to, trailing a couple friends. Paul and Hector get the friends. Andy gets told to go home.
That’s what it’s like being the little brother.
He’s made out twice in his life so far. Both times with girls that were older than him. Both times at parties where everyone was drunk and stoned. Both times they found out he was at least a year younger and ignored him after and told their friends it didn’t happen.
He picks up a brush and tries to run it through his hair, but it snags and pulls at his scalp. He gives up and leaves it in a tangle.
In the kitchen he finds some of last night’s fruit salad and sits at the table in his underwear. He studies the bowl and estimates how much more fruit is in it than was in his bowl last night. He remembers the total numbers of each type of fruit he had in his bowl because he counted them all and he multiplies that number based on his estimate and calculates the odds of selecting any particular type of fruit if he were to do it blindfolded.
He remembers catching his dad watching him pick through the fruit. Remembers the look on his dad’s face. He gets that look a lot, the where did this weird kid come from look.
It’s not like he’s trying to be different, like he wants to be weird. He just is. Not like it’s easy being this way. He’d rather be like George. He’d rather be like his dad. He’d rather be like anyone else. But he’s not. Because no one else is like him. No one else is this weird. And that’s just the weird stuff people know about. They don’t know about the stuff inside his head.
Dreams where soldiers attack their house and he sneaks around with a toy gun that shoots real bullets and he kills them all. Moments in the middle of the day where he’s by himself doing homework and suddenly sees himself with a knife, walking up behind some jock who picked on him in school and sticking it in his eye while he’s talking to his jock friends and then just going crazy and cutting them all up. Things inside his head that he doesn’t know where they come from and he can’t tell anyone because they scare him so much.
He looks into the bowl. Apples are the most likely. He closes his eyes and reaches into the bowl. Apple. He drops it back in the bowl and fishes out a strawberry.
He wishes George and Paul and Hector hadn’t taken off without him. Being alone sucks.
He finishes the fruit salad, washes the bowl, and rinses his hands and wipes them on a paper towel and uses it to blow his nose.
Making sure one more time that the guys aren’t lurking somewhere in the house waiting to ambush him and scare him shitless, he goes to the stereo and puts on Madman Across the Water, one of his mom’s favorites. He turns the volume up and goes to his room and takes out a fresh piece of graph paper.
He starts to draw a new map, ignoring the grid of lines this time, drawing jagged twisting lines, caves and tunnels and dead ends. A labyrinth with more monsters in it for the guys.
After a couple minutes he stops drawing and goes back in the drawer and finds the picture of Alexandra that was in Timo’s things. He looks at it, covering Te quiero, Timo with his thumb.
“Tiny Dancer” plays in the livingroom.
He pictures hitting Timo with a battle ax.
ImsuchadildoImsuchadildoImsuchadildo.
– Chester. Muchacho, it’s Geezer. Got a minute? Not bad, no complaints. Well, that’s a fucking lie, course I got complaints. Man ain’t got complaints ain’t alive. Man that can’t open his mouth to bitch is…the word? The word when someone’s out of it, asleep, knocked out, but forever? No, like that, but the other one. Someone gets hit by a hammer they go in a coma, but if the hammer hits you then you’re what? Comatose. That’s it. Man ain’t got something to bitch about, he must be comatose. Yeah, yeah, then he’d really have something to bitch about, just couldn’t, yeah. Hey, Chester, can we pass the fucking time later, I got something. A bond? Why the fuck else do I call you? Yes, a bond. A big fucking bond. Two big fucking bonds. Yeah, them. No, two. The little one is a minor, they released him to his parents. Too bad for him, what I hear he’d be better off staying in a cell. His old man’s gonna beat the shit out of him. That’s sure as hell what I’d do I was his dad. So his older brothers. Yeah, it’s a load. No. No. Tell you what, no, you just put it up. Fuck do I care that’s not the way you do business? That’s not my problem. You, no, you put up the bond. They’re not going anywhere. Only place they’re going is to do some work for me. They take off, we can talk. Till then, just bond their ass out of jail. Fuck do I care how you make money? I care about you bond the fucking Arroyos and tell them to get their asses over to my place. You worry about making money off some useless cocksucker out there who isn’t gonna have someone come in your office one night and hit you with a fucking hammer until you’re fucking comatose.
Geezer hangs up the phone.
Fucking people. What are they thinking some times? Guy asking him, How am I gonna make money if I don’t get my ten percent? If there was ever someone else’s problem, that’s it. Go around expecting other people to take care of your business for you, you get what you deserve.
He should know. Look at this shit with the Arroyos. What he gets for trusting a litter of spic puppies to take care of shit in a responsible manner.
Now it’s all about doing a job yourself if you want it done right.
Gotta get the spics out on bond. Gotta get them over here and tell them some bullshit story about how it’s all gonna be OK. How he’s gonna set them up with a real deal lawyer who’s gonna get them off. Yeah, right. Get a bunch of spic thugs off manufacturing and possession with intent to distribute and all that other shit. Fuckers are lucky the judge set any kind of bail. So, gotta tell them that fairy tale. Then gotta have them deal with these punk kids and get the rest of the stash back and…fuck. You ever get a break? And after the kids, gotta deal with that bitch Amy Whelan sticking her tits in his area of commerce. His markets. Knew she was gonna be trouble when she started in with the pills. Thought she got the message about not expanding her product line, turns out she’s just plain stupid. Runs in that family. Seeing the experience he’s had with Whelans, should have taken that stupidity into consideration with her in the first place. Well, that shit’s gonna get sorted out with everything else. Gonna make a clean sweep of everything.
Including the spics.
Gonna have to take care of that before they get it through their thick spic skulls that they’re fucked for life.
And do it all without pissing up Oakland’s tree any more than it’s been pissed up already. Fuckers don’t care to hear about legal troubles or what shit your employees drop you in, just want to see the envelopes with the dollars inside. Fuck they care a lab gets busted? Rent on the town is due, pay up. The half key the brothers say was missing from their fridge will cover it. Give some space to think, get the new lab going.
Running your own business, is there anything worse?
He leans as far forward as his gut will allow, puts one hand on the coffee table and the other on the edge of the couch and pushes himself to his feet, taking the grabber with him because he won’t be able to bend for it once he’s standing.
Making a short mental list, a list that starts with gun and ends with garbage bags.
Hector comes back to the Whelans’ with his mohawk reestablished. He hears Elton John playing but doesn’t say anything, just turns it off, tunes the radio to KSAN, and “Baby’s on Fire” comes on. He goes into Andy’s room, watches him drawing one of his dungeons, and sits on the floor and looks through a pile of old comic books until he finds one with the Guardians of the Galaxy in it.
Andy barely notices him, rolling dice, sketching twisting lines, exploring probabilities, deep inside a world of small things.
George and Paul get back from the record store.
George turns off KSAN and puts the copy of British Steel he bought at the record store on the turntable. He drops the needle on “Breaking the Law” and turns it up.
Paul goes in the kitchen and finds a pair of scissors and sits at the table and cuts the sleeves from his new shirt so his arms will show when he’s wearing it. He tosses the dismembered sleeves in the garbage and puts on the shirt and goes into the bathroom and looks in the mirror. It looks badass, the Diary of a Madman cover on the front and the picture of Ozzy lifting Randy Rhodes in the air on the back.
He remembers how he locked himself in his room when he heard the news that Randy had died. The best guitar player to come around since Jimi, dead at twenty-five. Just wanting to sit in his room and listen to Blizzard and Madman all day long, but his dad kept knocking on the door and asking if he was OK, ruining everything. Again.
It feels suddenly hotter in the bathroom. The spike digs between his eyes and knocks the air out of his lungs. He chokes and bends over the sink and presses his forehead against the cool countertop. The spike goes a little deeper. He fumbles with the cold water tap and sticks his head under the faucet and tries to breathe slowly as water runs over the back of his scalp and his neck. The spike pulls out, slowly.
He stays bent at the sink for a few minutes, turns off the water, and looks at himself in the mirror, pale, red eyed, hair dripping.
He makes sure the door is locked and drops to the floor and does a quick set of pushups and looks at himself in the mirror again with his chest and arms pumped.
Badass.
They hang around the house until it’s too hot to stand it and then they ride to the bowling alley and blow a joint out back and go inside and eat lunch at the counter and play some video games. Andy mostly watching because he’s so bad at the games it just makes him feel like he’s throwing his quarters away.
Suchadildo.
They’re late getting back to the Whelans’ for dinner because George hits a new level on Missile Command and goes for the high score and gets it.
Mr. Whelan gives them a ration of shit and tells Paul and Hector that the kitchen isn’t a restaurant where you eat whenever you want to and if they want their dining privileges to continue they can damn well be there when the family sits down. George and Andy he just gives a look and asks them if this is going to happen again any time soon and they tell him no. He tells them to empty the ashes from the Weber and get some coals going and scrape the grill, and goes inside to make the burger patties while his wife cuts tomatoes and chops iceberg lettuce and peels slices of American cheese from a yellow stack.
They eat in the backyard, sitting around an old picnic table Mr. Whelan salvaged from a building site. Right after the meal he’s walking around the yard with his fourth beer in his hand, kicking stones from the ground he’s going to rototill the following day, giving his sons and their friends a bad time, asking them if they have their back braces ready for the Sunday rock haul. Telling them to start drinking water now, gonna be hotter than hell. Warning that he’ll be getting them up at the crack of dawn on Sunday to try and beat the heat. Laughing at the looks on their faces as they think about how much it’s going to suck.
Paul helps Mrs. Whelan clear the plates. Something he always does.
– I thought Sunday was the Lord’s day, sir.
Bob Whelan yanks one of the weeds he let grow over the last couple weeks.
– Young Mr. Cheney, if Jesus can get up on Easter Sunday to move a rock, you can do it this Sunday.
They have popsicles for dessert and the boys say they’re going back to the bowling alley and they get their bikes and take off.
Bob Whelan comes up behind his wife at the kitchen sink and reaches around her and puts his hands on her tits.
– Looking good, baby.
– Stop it.
– Mmm, feeling good, too.
– You’re drunk.
– Drunk? On five, six beers? Baby, the day I can’t knock over a sixer and keep my wits is the day I give up beer.
– Uh huh.
– It’s Friday.
– I know what day it is.
– Date night.
– I know what it is.
– Empty house.
– Not for long.
– That’s my point.
– Let me wash these dishes.
– Let me help.
He presses against her back, slides a hand, cold from his beer can, down the front of her cutoffs.
– Stop it. Bob! Stop it, your hand’s cold. Stop it!
He doesn’t stop. And they go to the bedroom.