Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

“I’ve dreamed this,” I say. “I’ve killed the fucker in my dreams.”

Karl pauses, derailed momentarily by my interruption — shocked, if that’s possible. He swirls his straw in his cup.

“I had a pistol,” he continues, “but it’s when I reached for it, when my fingers touched it, that I lost my nerve. I slapped his ass around until he gave up your name and that you were in California and all, and then I got the fuck out of Dodge. ‘Son,’ he called after me. ‘Son.’ But I didn’t look back. He put another notch on his going-to-hell belt that day, that’s for sure. And me, I haven’t had a mean spell since.”

Even if it had gone differently, if he’d confessed to murder, I don’t think I would have rejected him. He is everything I could have been, everything I am, except a coward.

He wrestles his anger back into its cell, and a wry sweetness returns to his eyes. There’s something of an eager child about him as he takes a bite of his burger.

“What did you do with the gun?” I ask.

“Pawned it. For traveling money.”

A black girl screams at the old Mexican man behind the counter. “I told you no tartar sauce, you motherfucker, and what is this?” She throws her fish sandwich at him and stands with her hands on her hips while a stray dog that has somehow slipped inside laps at a puddle of spilled Coke.

“I can’t help you,” I say.

Karl purses his lips and draws his head back. “I ask for anything?”

“I mean spiritually, philosophically.”

“I understand.”

“Something happens, you live through it, and then another thing happens. That’s all I can say.”

Karl grins. “You’re full of shit, bro.”

“Let’s go get your stuff.”

“I don’t want to ruin your Christmas.”

“It’s not a big deal. Really.”

I CALL THEM the gray men, my coworkers, though there are a few women in the bunch. We sit side by side in the basement of the building, ten of us, in shoulder-high cubicles the size of barnyard stalls. The others have decorated their workspaces with comic strips clipped from the newspaper and maps and photos of their cats, but not me. Except for my company-issued lamp, desk, and chair, my cubicle is empty. I’m ready to walk away at any time.

The gray men think I’m a snob because I make fun of the detective novels and spy thrillers they pass along to one another with rave reviews. Little do they know I haven’t read a book in years. I stopped because nobody was writing about me. For a while I had my screenplay to keep me occupied when I went home at night. It was about a man who killed his boss and got away with it. I let a friend read it, and he said I was crazy. “Don’t you understand the good guy has to win?” he asked. Now I watch old Westerns and dream of moving to the desert, and I’m not talking about Vegas, I’m talking about some lawless spot where it’s just me and rocks and the bluest blue sky. I will go months without hating my face in a mirror. I will learn to shoot a gun, set a trap, the art of ambush. My legend will deepen and spread. When I was a boy, I thought I would grow up to be some sort of poet. Now, when it’s ridiculous, my heroes are bank robbers and vengeful desperados. “Don’t be surprised if you wake up one morning and I’m gone,” I tell Judy. “If I just disappear.” God, does that make her laugh.

KARL STANDS IN front of our living room window, watching the sun set. I point out the landmarks — the Hollywood sign, the observatory, Capitol Records. It’s a view I like best at night, when, with a squint, I can transform the lights of the city into stars.

“If you stretch, and it’s not too smoggy, you can even see the ocean,” I say.

“No shit?” Karl asks with genuine wonderment. His duffel bag is on the couch, everything he owns in a bundle small enough to be carried under one arm. I do my best to get past the envy that triggers in me.

The downstairs neighbors are throwing a party; the nose ring and platform sneaker crowd. Their music seeps right up through the floor, and every time someone slams the front door, the whole building shakes. This place will come down in the next earthquake. And I will be here. Still.

In the kitchen Judy is taking stock of the refrigerator. We eat like birds when it’s just the two of us. The look she gives me when I reach around her for a beer lets me know I’d better step lightly.

“It’s only for a couple of days,” I say. “I’ll do the cooking and everything.”

“Turkey and all the fixings, huh?”

“The cleaning, Whatever.”

“You’d better pick up a tree, too, and some decorations.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Do you want a beer, Karl?” she calls out.

“Thanks, but I’m on the program.”

I make a horrified face, and this gets a smile out of her. We’ve been together for ten years now. It’s hard to believe. I never planned on knowing anyone as well as I know her. You get so comfortable after a while. You start to wonder if you could make it on your own. She grabs the beer out of my hand, snaps it open, and takes a sip, then goes back to writing the grocery list.

Karl is studying the old photos of Judy’s relatives that hang on the living room wall. He touches the faces with a tattooed finger.

“These were taken in Poland, before the war,” I say. I move up beside him. “This little girl, her uncle here, her great-grandmother — all of them died in the camps.”

“Hitler, you mean?”

I nod.

“I never was down with the Nazis. They kept at me in the joint.”

“Hey, I’ve got something to show you. Hold on.”

I go into the extra bedroom we call the office and dig out a photo of my grandfather from my desk drawer.

“My mom gave me this. It’s our dad’s dad when he was about twenty or so.”

Karl rests the photograph in the palm of his hand. It shows a young man in a hat and suit, smiling and squinting into the sun. Behind him, a dusty plain stretches to the horizon. I’ve always imagined that he’s come back to West Texas for a visit, that the suit is new and worn to impress the folks. He’s been to Dallas, Kansas City, Chicago, which is where he picked up the camera and the radio he’s brought for his mom and pop and little sister.

“All I really know about him is that his name was Karl, like yours, and that he used to box a little and make his own wine. I never met him. I think he came from Germany or maybe Ireland.”

Karl smiles and strokes his chin. “Well, you got his fucked-up nose,” he says.

“So did you.”

“And I guess that’ll do for history.”

The party downstairs is raging. The drugs must be kicking in. Someone yells, “I drink Dr. Pepper and I’m proud!” Judy comes in and asks Karl what he’d like for dinner. He ducks his head shyly and says anything’s okay.

Night falls so quickly in winter. The sun has barely dropped out of the sky. We sit together watching television, the three of us, nobody speaking. Karl is perched gingerly on the edge of the couch, like he’s afraid he’ll be asked to leave at any moment. He finally clears his throat and says almost too loudly, “I’ve been to prison. He tell you?”

“Yes,” Judy replies.

“So we’re cool, then?”

“We’re cool.”

Karl leans forward and rests his forearms on his thighs and stares out the window. At what? Thinking what? I’m joyfully at a loss.

HER NAME WAS Tiffany, and I knew from the start we were gonna fuck this up. Most of the dancers you meet, you get them outside the club, and it becomes pretty clear pretty quick that it isn’t really just a job, no matter what they want to believe. At least Tiffany was honest with herself. She’d been diddled by her stepdad, okay, and was born with one leg shorter than the other, which gave her a limp that made her feel ugly. There are reasons for everything, right?