Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

“Oh, please,” I say.

“Bet you a million.”

I look inside at the two of them standing behind the counter, watching us.

“You’re wrong.”

“Like you know. Like you’ve spent any time working in restaurants.”

“They’re good people.”

Shelly snorts and shakes her head. “I swear to God.” She’s already walking away, dragging the kid after her. What exactly was it, I wonder, that destroyed her faith in me and everything else? This city hasn’t kept its promises, but its lies were no worse than those we left behind. I wave to the owner of the pizza place and his wife. They wave back. An ambulance screams down Venice in the same direction as the fire truck, and I shiver alone this time and picture myself dying that way.

THEY CAME IN through the front door, I suspect. One strong yank on a crowbar is all it took to bend the bolt of the flimsy lock and splinter the jamb. The apartment looks like someone has picked it up and shaken it, everything upside down and across the room from where it was when we left. Shelly waits outside with the kid while I make a quick circuit. I throw open closets and fling aside the shower curtain, but whoever it was is gone.

The TV lies faceup against the overturned couch, too heavy for them maybe, but then I notice the DVD player in the corner, and the boom box. It hits Shelly at the same time it hits me. She rushes into the bedroom and comes out crying a few seconds later.

“They found them,” she sobs. “They took them back.”

My anger at her for not getting rid of the Polaroids when I told her to is a weak spark against the happiness swelling inside me. I was so right about those pictures being nothing but trouble, I don’t even have to say it. I wrap my arms around Shelly, and she really cuts loose. Not even by pressing her face into my shoulder can she muffle the wails that climb out of her. I hold her tight to let her know that I forgive her. I kiss the top of her head.

“I was fucking out of here,” she gasps.

“It’s okay.”

“Those fuckers.”

A neighbor pushes open the useless door and gapes at the mess.

“You call the cops?” he asks.

“We’ll handle it,” I say. “Thanks.”

Everything that was in the refrigerator is slopped together on the kitchen floor with everything that was in the cupboards. The kid slides around in the mess, laughing and smearing his face with flour and ketchup. I laugh, too, because now that it’s all been wrecked, we’re free to build something new out of the pieces, and I’m the man with the plan; Shelly will surely have to grant me that.

She’s stopped crying but looks like she could start again any second. I think back to Texas, to me and a cousin parked outside a liquor store a couple towns down the highway from ours, egging each other on, pistols cocked, and how the only thing that saved us was a cop car rolling into the next space at the instant we’d decided to make our move. I remember how we tore out of there and drove straight to a reservoir and sank our guns in the muddy water. I remember bawling because I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been, and I remember praying that I never got that stupid again. I have an idea Shelly’s feeling a lot like that now.

I right the couch and sit her down, and when I put the TV back on its stand and plug it in, it works fine. I tell her to relax, I’ll whip the place into shape in no time. The kid pitches in as best he can, and we heave and ho and sweep and straighten, singing silly songs and sharing cans of root beer. He looks so much like his momma when he’s happy. Every so often I lean over the back of the couch and touch Shelly somewhere. She actually manages a smile, and not once does she push my hands away.

THE LIVING ROOM is dark when I wake up, except for the hissing glare of the empty TV screen that silhouettes the kid asleep on the floor in front of it. Shelly is gone from where she was, on the couch beside me, and I rise and walk to the bedroom, already knowing that she won’t be there either. The room is still sweet with the smell of her perfume, and I’m able to follow the scent all the way down the hall and into the courtyard before the night gobbles it up. From there laughter and a revving engine lead me to the parking lot, where I watch the Escalade that dropped her off that time bounce over the speed bumps in the driveway as it carries her away from me.

Back in the apartment, I sit at the kitchen table and smoke a couple of cigarettes. The people in the next unit are arguing about money, and the guy upstairs flushes the toilet and turns on the shower. It’s something I’m usually able to ignore, the dreary murmur of these other lives at the edges of my own, but not tonight. The kid screams himself awake when I pick him up. I quiet him and wrap him in a blanket. There’s no way to lock the ruined front door, so I just pull it shut and leave it.

I’S EASIER TO think out on the bright, straight streets, behind the wheel of the truck. With half of me busy watching for stop signs and keeping to the speed limit, the ringing in my ears fades, and I try to put this latest disappointment into perspective. I let my hopefulness get the better of me again, which is just the kind of lamebrain leap I’m always making. The women at the coffee shop know where Shelly is, and I could get it out of them by saying the kid is sick. I could drive right up to so-and-so’s fancy house and barge right into his party and tell Little Miss Starfucker exactly what I think of her sneakiness, but what good would that do? She’d laugh in my face and call me an asshole. We wouldn’t talk for a few days, until I apologized for embarrassing her in front of her friends, and then we’d be right back where we started. I’ve been running in circles like that for years now, with her just one step ahead of me, and not once did I consider the possibility that I might never catch up. I was always sure she’d wear out before I did.

THE KID IS hysterical again. He struggles to open the door of the truck, and I almost kill us both, veering into oncoming traffic as I try to stop him. I pull into the minimall to calm him down, but he’s tired and cranky and won’t let me touch him. The lights are still on in the doughnut shop, and I tell him that if he’ll be a big boy, he can have Whatever he wants. He allows me to take his hand and lead him inside.

I don’t say anything when he orders more than he can possibly eat, I just have the clerk add on a coffee and pay for it all. We sit across from each other at a little plastic table. When I ask for a bite of one of his maple bars, he shoves it back into the bag and hugs the bag to his chest. Sad music is playing on the radio, and the beginning of a thick fog smears the lights shining down on the empty parking lot. I’m reminded that there’s an ocean nearby, that we’ve come about as far as there is to go in this direction.

THE SUN IS rising when the kid awakens. He sits up next to me on the seat of the truck and sleepily watches the breakers fold into the shore as we zip along beside them, headed north. A guy once told me Oregon was a nice place to raise children. Said the trees there were older than anything we know. It sounded like something to see. Our clothes are in back, a few other things. We don’t need much. Shelly can have the rest.

She should be getting home right about now, drunk probably, a fresh hickey on her neck. The note I left was pretty basic. When it was time to put everything on paper, there wasn’t much to say. Still, I imagine her crying as she reads it. Or maybe she’ll be angry and tear it into little pieces. Not that it matters.

“I’ve got to pee-pee,” the kid says.

I pull off the freeway and swing back under it to a parking lot on the beach.

“Want to wear my sunglasses?” I ask, and the kid smiles at me with his momma’s smile as I set them on his face. We get out, and I unbutton his pants so he can do his business. There are seagulls here, surfers, a few fishermen. I walk to the crumbling edge of the asphalt, pick up a handful of sand, and fling it at the waves. The breeze blows right through me.