Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

“Thanks, but I already committed.”

Emma brought her tea to the table and sat in the chair across from me. She was a nice lady, I liked her, but still I felt a little crowded. My knee wobbled, and the soles of my feet itched.

“What’s the movie about?” she asked.

“It’s a postnuclear deal, L.A. after the bomb and all that. I’m one of the zombies.”

Emma smiled, then bowed her head. She lifted the rosary hanging around her neck to her lips as she whispered a prayer over her tea. I glanced at Sandal, ready to exchange smirks, but his head was ducked, too. I waited until they’d finished to light a cigarette.

I WAS WORD processing for the gas company that week. The regular employees were out on strike, and every morning and evening we scabs were bused through an angry picket line. The strikers spat and cursed at us as we passed, their faces monstrous with rage, like those you see on the news, in footage from other countries. With rumors of guns in the throng, we rode most of the way bent double, hugging our knees, and I wondered if this was what war felt like. Afterward the bus’s windows would be glazed with snot and broken eggs that caught the sun and sparkled almost prettily.

SANDAL CROUCHED OVER a triple-beam scale placed on the coffee table, dividing a pound of marijuana into quarters and eighths. This was one of his jobs as handyman, because in addition to renting out rooms in her house, Emma also dealt small quantities of sinsemilla to a select and established clientele. Both Sandal and Bobby — sunk deep in a recliner, profoundly stoned — were still in makeup from their movie roles. Their faces glowed a purulent yellow and were riven with thick-lipped, oozy gashes.

“We looked even better on the set,” Sandal said. “With these gnarly false teeth and contact lenses.”

His elbow directed me to a stack of Polaroids he’d taken during the shoot: Skyscrapers in flames. Hordes of malformed creatures running riot. He and Bobby sharing a pint of bourbon, a severed head shrieking in the gutter between them.

“So it’s a documentary,” I joked, thinking of the picket line.

A baseball game fizzed on the big-screen television. It was an archaic projection model, and the lenses had been knocked out of alignment long before I’d moved in, so that three pitchers, red, green, and blue, occupied the mound at the same time, throwing to three overlapping batters. It helped to be high if you were going to watch it, and I wanted to see the game, so I reached for the joint Sandal offered.

How nicely the couch cradled me then, like the softest cloud. I lost track of the game, charting the snaky creep of darkness across the rug and up the wainscoting. The black tide slopped over onto the wallpaper, drowning the roses row by row, and I was right there when it reached the ceiling, the only witness as night overtook us. My head tingled with exciting plans for the future, and if I’d had a pen, I might have written them down.

AFTER THE GAME Bobby and I walked to the liquor store for a six-pack. The gang members who lived in the house up the block were gathered around a car parked at the curb, trying to install a stereo by flashlight. I whispered that perhaps we should cross the street, but Bobby refused.

“It’s my neighborhood, too,” he said.

The gangsters grew sullen as we approached. I stiffened my arms and clenched my fists. I crammed my hands into my pockets and pulled them out again. I made my face as blank as it could be. Grim stares greeted us as we drew abreast of the gangsters. Tattooed fingers tightened around wrenches and screwdrivers.

“Hey, ese, you seen a puppy? A little pit bull?” This from a fat kid sitting on the hood of the car, holding a fat, naked baby.

“Not us,” Bobby replied. “No puppy.”

“Don’t be shitting me.”

“I’m not shitting you.”

We were past them then, and gravity decreased with each step we took, as if we were hopping from planet to planet. Somewhere around Pluto everything went back to normal, and I was ashamed of being afraid. It was my neighborhood, too, after all.

The Korean man at the liquor store winced and averted his eyes when we brought the beer to the register. I understood why upon catching a glimpse of Bobby in the security mirror over the door. He was still wearing his makeup, and it was awful under the fluorescents.

“Take me to your leader,” Bobby said to the Korean, handing him our money.

The Korean examined him more closely, then laughed. “Trick or treat,” he said. “Okay, I know trick or treat.”

He called to his wife, who was watching a portable TV behind the counter. She gave a little scream when she saw Bobby and almost fell off the milk box she’d been sitting on. The Korean laughed even harder, his shoulders jumping up and down.

I SMOKED ANOTHER joint, drank a couple beers, and decided to turn in. Foster was frying eggs and bacon when I stopped by the kitchen for a bowl of ice cream to take with me to my room. He worked nights unloading trucks and claimed to be a Hells Angel. Shortly after I’d moved in, he’d accused me of stealing his radio and punched me in the mouth. Emma said she’d throw him out unless he apologized, and we’d been okay with each other since then, though I suspected it was he who was sneaking my milk.

“The Donster,” he said. “Donald Duck.”

“Foster Freeze. The bee’s knees.”

I heated a spoon by running hot water over it, then dug out a few thick curls of ice cream. Foster hissed to get my attention. He drew a pistol from the waistband of his jeans and slid it under a towel on the counter.

“That’s for you, for the bird,” he whispered. “Don’t let Emma see it, or she’ll freak.”

“Jesus, Foster.”

“It’s just a pellet gun. Like you had when you were a kid.”

The pistol felt creepy in my hand, and when I stuck it in my pants the sharp edges of it scraped my stomach.

“Watch out,” Foster said, dropping a slice of bread into the frying pan to soak up the bacon fat. “The Donald’s packing.”

I passed Bobby’s room on my way upstairs. He was talking to himself, and I put my ear to the door to listen.

“No!” he said. “No! No! You won’t get past me. You won’t get past me.”

It sounded like he was off his meds again.

THE PHOTOGRAPH I chose for target practice showed my wife and me on the beach in Mexico. Our last trip before the credit card companies cut us off. The memory of how happy I’d been then sometimes kept me awake late into the night. And her — radiant is the word people use to describe such a smile. It was a smile you believed, or I had, anyway.

I leaned the picture against my pillow and crouched at the foot of the bed. The pistol sighed sharply each time I squeezed the trigger. I blew both our heads off, then shot the beach up just for the hell of it. When I flipped the picture over, the scattering of raised perforations left by the pellets reminded me of braille. I closed my eyes and ran my fingertips across them. When the money ran out, Cathy did, too. There should have been signs. I should have seen them.

I turned out the light, and the darkness tightened around me, sticky as a spider’s web. Lying in bed, I drew circles in the air with the cherry of my cigarette while every sound I’d ever heard in my life poured through the open window at once. I chose a single thread of the clamorous snarl to concentrate on; the plashy roar of the ocean, it might have been, or teardrops striking asphalt, amplified a thousand times. My rude lullaby.

WE WERE ON our way in one morning when the strikers broke through the police cordon and began rocking the bus. Glass shattered and a woman screamed. I lifted my face off my knees to watch somebody crawl up the aisle, an Indian named Subhash. He pressed a hand to the side of his head, blood and hair between his fingers.