Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

I raised the tray of pansies I’d picked up at Home Depot and said, “It’s freaky, I know, but I thought these might look good in your yard.”

“It’s freaky,” she confirmed. She was wearing cutoff denim shorts and a red tank top, under which I could see a scallop of black bra strap.

“I can just leave them, or if you want you can show me where, and I’ll put them in for you.”

Her bottom lip slid up over her top one, and she furrowed her brow for an instant before opening the screen and calling over her shoulder, “Hey, guys, ready for some gardening?”

I could see past her then, into the living room, where her daughter and a big balding man about my age were playing with Barbies on the couch. The man held up one of the dolls in my direction and called out in a high voice, “Just a minute. I’m not dressed yet.”

His name was Heinz — that’s what he went by, anyway — and he and Kate had met at the supermarket or some such place. He had all kinds of suggestions about where to plant the flowers, but Kate ignored him and let her daughter, Monica, decide instead. While the girls placed the dog-faced blossoms in holes they scooped in an empty bed at the edge of the front yard, I leaned against the fence with Heinz.

He tried to get the lowdown on me and Kate, but I sidestepped his gentle probing. He’d have to come right out into the open if he intended to cock-block me, and I didn’t think he had it in him. Someone had gone after every tree on the street with a can of spray paint. The loopy blue letters circling the trunks didn’t make any sense at all. The house next door still had a Christmas wreath in the window and a plastic jack-o’-lantern on the porch.

Heinz’s earring sparkled as he flexed his thick biceps, showing me how he once reeled in a shark he hooked on a day boat out of San Pedro. His pale eyebrows were almost invisible against the pink expanse of his sunburned forehead.

“Hey, Kate, you fish?” he called out.

She was on all fours, but raised herself to her knees to shoot him a sarcastic look. “Oh, yeah. Love it.”

Monica, bored with the flowers, walked over to stand between me and Heinz. A man in a wheelchair passed by, rolling himself along the buckling sidewalk. Monica hooked her fingers through the fence and closed her eyes. “Don’t stare,” she hissed at us. “It’s not polite. You have to peek.”

KATE INVITED ME to stay for dinner. Heinz sold steaks door to door and had brought along some samples. If my continued presence was a disappointment to him, he didn’t let on. We moved to the backyard, and he started the barbecue while I helped Kate set the picnic table and mix tiny canned shrimp into the salad. Crickets began to chirp as day folded smoothly into night. I was finally able to relax a bit. The sharp edges of everything lost their gleam, and you could feel the dusk, like a feather, on your eyelids and the backs of your hands.

After we’d eaten, we dragged chairs onto the grass to watch the stars come out. The sky soaked up so much light from the city that only ten or so were visible, but that was all we needed. Monica, in her bathing suit, skipped to and fro through a sprinkler that hissed quietly in a corner of the yard while Kate told us funny stories about the lawyer she worked for, a man so reviled that someone once shit in his desk drawer while he was out to lunch.

“I love her,” Heinz said when Kate took Monica into the house to get her ready for bed.

I nodded, staring at the distant lights of a plane headed for LAX.

“The first time I saw her. . you know what I mean?” he continued.

A dog barked in the next yard, and both of us flinched. It seemed only fair that I leave before him. Kate walked me to the gate. She said I should call first next time and gave me a business card with her home number written on the back. Her lips on my cheek turned me inside out.

“DIDN’T THINK I’D find a white man for this job,” Frank said. He hired me without even reading my application. There were not even any questions about why I’d left U-Haul. According to him, the Oasis was the last American-owned motel in the city. I liked it because it was within walking distance of my apartment. I worked nights at the front desk, “fighting off the zombies,” as Frank put it. The lobby was locked after ten, so I dealt with the guests from behind a sheet of bulletproof Plexiglas. Money and keys were exchanged by means of a sliding drawer.

People didn’t plan to stay at the Oasis; bad luck and lack of options forced them to. They arrived angry or in tears or so fucked up they had to lean against the window to pull their wallets out of their back pockets. I treated them all the same. You got a smile at the beginning of the transaction, a smile at the end. The porno channel was five dollars extra.

As far as jobs went, I’d had worse. Things usually calmed down around three or so, enough on some nights that I actually got in a nap before the maids came on at six. Either that or I listened to the radio. There was this crazy show where people called in to talk about UFOs, ghosts, and the Book of Revelation. Barricaded in the office, watching ambulances rocket past and helicopters flush suspects from the alleys, I couldn’t understand why anyone would search for new things to be frightened of.

One morning, as I was hosing down the parking lot just after dawn, a man came out of a room on the first floor, got into a car, and sped away. He left the door to his room wide open, and I stood there waiting for someone to close it. When that didn’t happen, I walked over and peeked inside. A naked woman lay on the carpet, her face and upper body covered by the bedspread. “Hey,” I said. “Hey, you.” Her toenails were painted black, and there was blood everywhere. I didn’t realize what I was seeing until it was too late, until one more bad thing had sneaked in and taken up space I’d been saving for the good. The police hypnotized me afterward, but I was no help at all.

KATE KEPT THE urn on a bookshelf, high enough up that Monica couldn’t reach. I learned to ignore it after a while, but in the beginning I’d catch myself staring while we played cards or ate breakfast. I was afraid Kate would notice and start asking questions, and then the truth would dribble out, that it was just charcoal in there, not really old Bud. It probably wouldn’t have mattered, she probably would have laughed, but those kinds of things will come back to haunt you.

One night soon after I found the dead woman, Kate and I were watching a DVD. I sat on the couch; she lay with her head in my lap. Monica was with her dad. The T-shirt Kate wore as a nightgown had climbed above her hips, and she wasn’t wearing panties. My hand was resting on her thigh when something about the way her ankles crossed reminded me of the corpse. There was the bluish glow from the TV, too, a color akin to morning.

The chemicals began to flow, mixing and matching and doing a number on me. My chest filled with gravel, and each breath was like a finger down my throat. Kate’s voice worked its way through the muck. She asked why I was shaking. “It’s not me,” I wanted to say, “it’s everything else,” but all that came out was a cough.

Denver again. Instinct urged me to flee. The shadows grew thick and painful, and I could have sworn someone was hiding in the kitchen. I fought the panic as long as I was able, but there wasn’t enough air in the room, and I didn’t want Kate to see me that way.

She stopped me on the porch just by calling my name. I waited cramped and panting, one hand cradling my racing heart. The lawn shone silver in the moonlight, like a bed of nails. We sat back to back, the screen door between us, Kate inside the house, me out. I told her some things about myself that had been secrets before; I put some things into words for the first time. It felt good to get through it. My pulse slowed and my fists unclenched.