T. Boyle - T.C. Boyle Stories II - Volume II

Anyway, I went at that mess as if I were possessed, working past dinnertime so that Wyatt and I had to go out to the Kettle to eat and I ordered the fried scallops and polished them off with a vengeance, not caring a hoot if they hardened my arteries or not. I couldn’t sleep that night thinking of the shambles of the doctor’s bedroom and his filthy sheets — how could anybody sleep like that? — and of all that remained to be done not only in the house itself but in the office, especially the office. The ferry would be back at two, I knew that, but I wouldn’t rest till I had that desk cleared, the floors gleaming, the examining room and all the stainless-steel cabinets and instruments shining as if they gave off a light of their own. This place was a shrine, didn’t he realize that? A place of shriving and forgiveness and healing as sacred as any church. By God, I thought, by God.

I got lost in the rhythm of the work and when two o’clock rolled round I was still at it, which is why I really couldn’t say when he came in. I was down on my knees scrubbing the floor under the examining table till I thought I was going to take the finish right off it, my hand moving automatically from brush to pail and back again, and for a moment I didn’t realize he was there in the room with me. Somewhere in the distance I could hear the washer going and the dryer tossing his clothes with a rattle and clack. He might have cleared his throat, I don’t know, but I looked up then and saw him whole, from his clunky shoes and ill-fitting pants right on up to the look of shock and astonishment on his big whiskered face. He didn’t say a word. I got slowly to my feet, wiping my hands on the apron I’d run through the washer before dawn, the dial set to hot and a quarter cup of bleach poured in on top of it. “Doctor,” I said, and then I used his given name for the first time in my life, “Austin. I’m sorry, but I just had to — talk to you. About me. About my problem, that is.”

He might have said something then, a faint murmur of reassurance escaping his lips, but his face was so comical, so caught between what he’d been yesterday and what he was now, I wouldn’t have noticed it anyway. Was he angry? A little, I suppose. Or maybe he was just relieved, because finally the ice had been broken, finally we were getting down to the bottom of things. For the longest moment we simply stood there, ten feet apart, and let me tell you, everything in that room and the room beyond it shone as if we were seeing it for the first time, both of us, and when the sun broke free and poured through those spotless windows to pool on the shining floor, the glare was almost too much for us.

(2010)

He always took Joey with him to answer the ads because Joey was likable, the kind of kid anybody could relate to, with his open face and wide eager eyes and the white-blond hair of whoever his father might have been. Or mother. Or both. Royce knew something about breeding and to get hair like that there must have been blonds on both sides, but then there were a lot of blonds in Russia, weren’t there? He’d never been there, but from what his sister Shana had told him about the orphanage they must have been as common as brunettes were here, or Asians and Mexicans anyway, with their shining black hair that always looked freshly greased, and what would you call them, blackettes? His own hair was a sort of dirty blond, nowhere near as extreme as Joey’s, but in the same ballpark, so that people often mistook Joey for his son, which was just fine with him. Better than fine: perfect.

The first place they went to, in Canoga Park, was giving away rabbits, and there was a kid there of Joey’s age — ten or so — who managed to look both guilty and relieved at the same time. A FOR SALE sign stood out front, the place probably on the verge of foreclosure (his realtor’s brain made a quick calculation: double lot, maybe 3,500 square feet, two-car garage, air, the usual faux-granite countertops and built-ins, probably sold for close to five before the bust, now worth maybe three and a half, three and a quarter), and here was the kid’s father sauntering out the kitchen door with his beer gut swaying in the grip of his wife-beater, Lakers cap reversed on his head, goatee, mirror shades, a real primo loser. “Hey,” the man said. He was wearing huaraches, his toes as blackened as a corpse’s.

Royce nodded. “What’s happening?”

So there were rabbits. The kid’s hobby. First there’d been two, now there were thirty. They kept them in one of those pre-fab sheds you get at Home Depot and when the kid pulled back the door the stink hit you in the face like a sucker punch. Joey was saying, “Oh, wow, wow, look at them all!” but all Royce was thinking was Get me out of here, because this was the kind of rank, urine-soaked stench you found in some of the street fighters’ kennels, if they even bothered with kennels. “Can we take two?” Joey said, and everybody — the father, the kid and Joey — looked to him.

He gave an elaborate shrug, and how many times had they been through this charade before? “Sure,” he said, “why not?” A glance for the father. “They’re free, right? To a good home?”

The father — he wasn’t much older than Royce, maybe thirty-four, thirty-five — just nodded, but on the way out Royce bent to the kid and pressed a five into his palm, feeling magnanimous. The next stop yielded a black Lab, skinny, with a bad eye, but still it would have to have its jaws duct-taped to keep it from slashing one of the dogs, and that was fine except that they had to sit there for half an hour with a cadaverous old couple who made them drink lukewarm iced tea and nibble stale anise cookies while they went on about Slipper and how she was a good dog, except that she peed on the rug — you had to watch out for that — and how sad they were to have to part with her, but she was just too much for them to handle anymore. They struck out at the next two places, both houses shuttered and locked, but all in all it wasn’t a bad haul, considering these were just bait animals anyway and there was no need to get greedy.

Back at home, the minute they pulled up under the oaks in front, Joey was out the door and dashing for the house and his stash of Hansen’s soda and barbecue chips, never giving a thought to the rabbits or the black Lab confined in their cages in the back of the Suburban. That was all right. There was no hurry. It wasn’t that hot — eighty-five maybe — and the shade was dense under the trees. Plus, he felt like a beer himself. Just driving around the Valley in all that traffic was work, what with the fumes radiating up off the road and Joey chattering away about anything and everything that entered his head till you couldn’t concentrate on the music easing out of the radio or the way the girls waved their butts as they sauntered down the boulevard in their shorts and blue jeans and invisible little skirts.

He left the windows down and kicked his way across the dirt expanse of the lot, the hand-tooled boots he wore on weekends picking up a fine film of dust, thinking he’d crack a beer, see what Steve was up to — and the dogs, the dogs, of course — and then maybe grill up some burgers for an early dinner before he went out. He’d have to lift the Lab down himself, but Joey could handle the rabbits, and no, they weren’t going to bait the dogs tonight no matter how much Joey pleaded, because tonight was Saturday and he and Steve were going out, remember? But what Joey could do, before he settled down with his video games, was maybe give the bait animals a dish of water, or would that be asking too much?

—

The house was in Calabasas, pushed up against a hillside where the oaks gave way to chaparral as soon as you climbed up out of the yard on the path cut through the scrub there, the last place on a dirt road that threw up dust all summer and turned into a mudfest when the rains came in December. It was quiet, private, nights pulled down like a shade, and it had belonged to Steve’s parents before they were killed in a head-on collision with a drunk three years back. Now it was Steve’s. And his. Steve paid the property taxes and they split the mortgage each month, which for Royce was a whole lot cheaper than what he’d be paying elsewhere — plus, there was the barn, formerly for horses, now for the dogs. They had parties every couple of weeks, various women circulating in and out of their lives, but neither of them had ever been married, and as far as Royce was concerned, he liked it that way. Tonight, though, they were going out — cruising, as Steve liked to call it, as if they were in some seventies disco movie — and Joey would be on his own. Fine. No problem. Joey knew the score: stay out of the barn, don’t let anybody in, bed at ten, call him on the cell if there were any problems.