Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

A CHEER THAT could be heard throughout the building went up from the picket line. The strike had ended. Our supervisors thanked us for all our hard work and sent us home early, and the strikers chanted, “So long, scabs,” as we were bused out for the last time. It was a solemn ride back to the underground parking lot where we’d gathered each morning for the past month. Some of the women sniffled into great wads of Kleenex.

We’d been cut loose again, and being cut loose was never pleasant, no matter how bad the job. You always took it personally, and it made for some awfully scary grudges. According to the experts, the best strategy to avoid depression was to update your résumé and stay close to the telephone. The agency would call the next day with something else, or the next week, or the next month. It helped to have a friend there, but I didn’t.

SHELLY’S ACTING AGAIN, ACTING LIKE SHE CARES, SAYING, “I swear to God, honey, this will change our lives forever.” Reaching across the kitchen table, she burrows her fingers between mine and gives me a pout and wiggle that’s pure porno, and I have to smile back even as I’m thinking, Who is this tramp?

There are eight Polaroids spread on the table. Eight Polaroids that show a famous young actor doing things with a famous older actor. Sex things. On a bed, on a lawn, in the sparkling water of a swimming pool like the one we’ve always dreamed of owning. Shelly was at a party in the Hills last night, and she claims the photos fell right into her purse out of a book she pulled off a shelf. Somebody will pay for them, she’s sure. First we’ll try the actors, then the Star or the Enquirer or somebody like that. She figures $100,000 easy.

It’s dirty business for a Sunday morning. I’m starting my first cup of coffee, and she just got home. We spend a lot of our time like this, at opposite ends of the day. I want her to go to bed happy, but the holes in her scheme are as obvious to me as the hickey she’s tried to cover with a smear of flesh-colored makeup.

I’m working on a tactful way to tell her that she’s gone too far this time, when the kid, giddy at seeing us so calm for once in each other’s presence, snatches a Polaroid and makes a run for it. I yell and lunge, but he’s halfway to the TV, slowing to examine his prize. I go over the back of the couch like a hurdler, completely forgetting about the coffee table on the other side. It collapses with a splintery crack, and the kid’s screaming even before I land on top of him. He’s okay, though, just scared. I rub his head until he eases off into a whimper. His teary eyes reflect a couple of cartoon mice skidding across the TV screen, and he slips away to watch them.

Back in the kitchen I crumple the Polaroid and throw it on the table, where it blooms like a flower as soon as it hits. Shelly grabs it and shoves it into her purse with the others, out of my reach.

“People get killed behind this kind of shit,” I say. “Get them the fuck out of here today.”

She rolls her eyes like I’m an idiot. She was different once upon a time, or I was. Her face turns tired, her mouth hateful. “Like you’d be any help,” she says and, without even a good morning for the kid, slinks off to bed. I’m left to ponder that hickey and what to do about it. I stir my coffee and watch it swirl in the cup. If it was possible for me to dive into it and drown, I can’t say that I wouldn’t.

CULVER CITY IS south and east of everything worth anything in L.A. We’re all between jobs here or between marriages, between runs of good luck. We wait out our slumps in flaking stucco apartment buildings, count the stars on our cottage cheese ceilings. There are three different kinds of palm trees between me and the 7-Eleven, and, when the wind’s right, the faintest tang of ocean — just enough scraps of paradise to drive you nuts. We’ve been here too long now to go back, though, no matter how bad it gets. At least Shelly and I agree on that. The great state of Texas can kiss our asses. It was her dream to come out here, and I jumped at the chance to make it happen. That’s how crazy I was about her. With all the nothing I’d seen in my life up until I met her, she seemed to be an extravagant gift from a very stingy God.

I THROW THE kid in the truck and head out to see a man about some work, a Mr. Caldwell, who got my number from the sign I keep tacked to the bulletin board at the Laundromat. He sounded drunk when he called, but that doesn’t bother me. Some of the nicest bosses I’ve had have been alkies. A low chain-link fence surrounds his house, and the yard is an expanse of white rocks that crunch like ice cubes beneath my feet. The doorbell plays a church song.

Mr. Caldwell takes a long time to answer, an elderly black man in a bathrobe. I smell booze right away, but like I said, so what? I’ve woken him up, so we spend a few minutes getting straight who I am, him squinting at me over the bifocals hanging on the end of his nose.

“You got something to haul something in, right?” he asks.

“Yes, sir.” I point to my truck out on the curb. The kid is pressing his face against the window, licking the glass.

“That your little partner?”

“We’re letting Mom have the day off.”

What Mr. Caldwell wants me to haul is his dog. It’s old and blind and arthritic and hasn’t been able to get to its feet for a week now. He wants me to take it to the vet and have it put to sleep because he can’t bear to. I say I’ll do it for fifty bucks. That’s double my usual rate, but I figure I deserve it since it’s Sunday and I’ll have to explain to the kid what’s going on and everything. Mr. Caldwell says that’ll be fine and invites me in.

The dog is lying on a blanket in the middle of the living room. It’s bigger than I expected, part shepherd maybe. Its cottony eyes fidget as I move closer, and a shudder ripples from its snout to its tail. Other than that, it might be dead already. A bowl of food placed near its head is busy with flies.

“He’s been a good friend to me,” Mr. Caldwell says.

“I’ll bet,” I reply.

“Sonofabitch broke in here one night a while back, and Rowdy took ahold of his ass and didn’t let go until the cops showed up.”

“A real watchdog, huh?”

“Smart, smart, smart, too. He could count, I swear to you, and knew all the colors. I’d say, ‘Get me that red shoe,’ and he’d trot over and pick it out of a whole pile of them.”

Poor old dog, poor old man. I have to move things along, though, because who knows what the kid’s up to out in the truck. When Mr. Caldwell stops talking for a second to thumb the tears from behind his glasses, I suggest we carry the dog on the blanket, me taking one end, him the other. He stalls, offers me a drink. “I’m driving, but you go ahead,” I tell him. He pulls a pint of something from between the cushions of the couch and has a swig. I wonder if he’ll find another dog to keep him company, or whether he’s decided, no, this is it, never again, as old men sometimes do.

The dog doesn’t even stir on the way to the truck. We lift it up and over the tailgate and set it gently down. Mr. Caldwell leans in and arranges the blanket so that just the dog’s head is sticking out. He kisses his fingers and touches them to its nose. I almost tell him to keep his money when he opens his wallet, but that would be stupid. Shelly didn’t speak to me for a week once after she saw me give a bum a dollar at the supermarket. As we’re driving away, the kid stands on the seat to look out the back window at the dog.

“He’s dying,” I say. “We’re taking him to the doctor.”

“Did that man kill him?”