Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

I was doing a lot of speed back then but not having much fun. In fact, I was pretty desperate to crawl out of the hole I’d dug myself. Along comes Tiffany and her boy, and I don’t know what I was thinking when I thought, Hey, I can do this. He was about six, Jack, a cute little guy, tougher than shit. I’d let him punch me in the shoulder sometimes, and it fucking hurt! I got my act together, took a job as a mechanic, and she let me move into her condo, which was in a real decent part of town. You felt like a citizen there. Our neighbor was a chiropractor. The sprinklers were all on timers. I worked in the day and watched the kid while she danced at night. We had dinners, man, Kentucky Fried Chicken, went to the park and Little League on weekends. You want something like that to work out. You really do.

Our problem was Ed Landers, this old, rich bastard with a red Seville who started hanging around the club. Big, fat, white-haired fucker. Big tipper. Tiffany swears to me nothing’s going on, but it’s always Eddie, Eddie, Eddie. I’m a jealous man, I’ll admit it, and the whole thing started to wind me up after a while, soured all my good intentions. She invited Ed to supper one night so I could see what it was, but the two of them, I mean, what were they thinking? That they could play me like that? We were drinking some, and he was holding the kid in his lap, telling him to call him Uncle Eddie and shit, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I went off on him right there in the living room. Broken glass, the kid crying, a real fucking mess.

Needless to say, I was out on my ass with the clothes on my back and some righteously bruised knuckles. No good-bye, nothing. You know, sometimes what we call love is something else, but it’s just that there aren’t enough words for all the kinds of wanting in the world, and people, bro, people are fucking lazy.

WE HAVE A good time at the supermarket, even though it’s so crowded with people shopping for the holidays I can barely squeeze the cart down the aisles. I read the items off Judy’s list, and Karl retrieves them from the shelves. He’s wearing a red tasseled hat trimmed in fake white fur that he picked up from a display at the front of the store. “Here comes Santa Con,” I sing, and, “Santa Con is coming to town.”

“Ho ho ho,” he bellows. We deviate from the list whenever we feel like it, grabbing potato chips, ice cream, caramel corn, and cookies.

“You sure it’s okay?” Karl asks as he reaches for a box of graham crackers.

“Come on, man, it’s Christmas,” I reply.

He tries to give me money at the checkout counter, but I wave it off. While the clerk is ringing us up, I turn to the candy rack and casually slip five Hershey bars into my jacket pocket. It’s a silly habit that took hold a few months ago. Every time I pay for something, I look for something to steal. An odd compulsion to develop at my age, I know, but I kind of enjoy it. It worries and disgusts me and gives me a thrill all at the same time.

We walk over to examine the trees for sale in the parking lot after putting the bags in the car. The night has grown colder, and neither of us is really dressed for it. Karl raises his hands to his mouth and blows on them, and they disappear in the fog his breath makes. Colored lights hang above the sad forest of misshapen pines and scrawny firs, and the bulbs are reflected in the drops of water clinging to the needles of the freshly misted branches. A Mexican kid in a stocking cap follows us as we search for the least lopsided of the bunch.

Actually, I’m not all that particular. It’s Karl who seems to have some idea of what he wants. “How’s this?” I ask once or twice, but he shakes his head and moves on. After two circuits of the place, I’ve had enough. I stroll to the flocking tent, where a fire burns inside an oil drum. Standing over it, I let the flames lick my palms, then press them to my face and cup my icy ears. A few minutes later Karl joins me, and the kid.

“What a bunch of garbage,” Karl says. “Looks like they kept the best for themselves.” He points with his chin into the tent, indicating a five-foot tree caked with fake snow and swaddled in lights and blue glass ornaments. A golden angel is perched on top, a trumpet raised to its lips. It’s a nightmare. Really. Judy will fucking die.

“How much for that?” I ask the kid.

“It’s not for sale. It’s like the display.”

“Lights, decorations, everything, how much?”

The kid shrugs and goes off to consult the owner.

“Forget it, bro,” Karl says. “They’re gonna rip you off.”

I put my finger to my lips to shush him.

The kid returns and says, “Two hundred.”

Karl snorts. “Yeah, right. Let’s go.”

“We’ll take it,” I tell the kid.

“What’s up with you?” Karl asks, a shocked look on his face.

“Ho ho ho,” I reply.

I’m for tying the thing to the roof of the car, angel and all, but Karl insists upon removing the ornaments first. The kid finds an empty cardboard box, and I watch from the oil drum as the two of them gently stack the balls inside it.

“I SAW WHAT you did in the store,” Karl says on the drive home.

“So,” I reply.

“What’s the point?”

“I could ask you the same thing.”

“Well, I was stupid and drunk and on drugs.”

I feel myself blushing and hope he doesn’t notice. He does, though, I can tell by his smile when I glance over at him. “It’s just a game I play with myself,” I say.

“You ever see a shrink?”

“Should I?”

“It helped me.”

“Are you sure?”

If he answers that, I’m ready with more, but he doesn’t. He turns away from me and stares out the window at a little house with bars on its windows and a plastic Nativity scene in the yard. You don’t get a silence like this every day. I’d like to tear off a piece of it and keep it in my wallet for later.

I MADE A run for it once. It was before Judy and I were married, but we’d been living together for about a year, and I could see where things were headed. I was editing the employee newsletter for an aerospace firm at the time. Corporate propaganda interspersed with health tips, recipes, and announcements of promotions, anniversaries, and retirements. Every issue I’d set up the headlines so that the first letters of each of them read in sequence would spell out messages like FUCK THIS PLACE and KILL YOURSELF NOW. I waited to get caught, but never did.

It was a Monday afternoon in March, a day so bright and clear that the mountains looked close enough to walk to. I left work for lunch but kept driving right past Taco Bell to the freeway. West was the ocean and the end of everything, so I headed east, into the desert. Gradually the malls and gas stations fell away, the houses, the people. I found myself alone in a pitiless wasteland. It was lunar, perfect. The craggy hills in the distance stood firm against the sun and wind, but everything near me was well on its way to being worn down to dust. Here and there wiry plants clutched at the rocky ground for dear life.

I stopped the car and walked a few hundred feet off the road to a boulder that broke the flatness of the plain. I took off my clothes. The boulder was warm against my skin, almost silky, as I lay on top of it. A shy little lizard poked its head out of a crack, and a pair of hawks circled overhead. I held my breath, then exhaled slowly, and Whatever was bent almost to breaking inside me seemed to straighten itself out.

The wind picked up toward sundown, surprisingly cold. I drove on across the border into Nevada and stopped in a little town that wasn’t much more than a gas station, a motel, and a casino. “Car trouble?” the woman asked when she handed me the keys to my room, as if that was the only reason anybody would end up there. I could have kissed her.