Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

“You fucker,” Linda wails. “I can’t believe you.”

“What you mean? I’s just joking.”

Eightball drops the bike and hurries to put his arms around her. She hugs him back. Don’t ask me why people do what they do. After Simone jumped off the freeway overpass, taking our baby girl with her, the cops brought me to the station and wondered aloud what drove her to it. I was her husband, they reasoned, I should know. I didn’t, and I still don’t, and I think that’s what pissed her off.

“We gettin’ married,” Eightball says over Linda’s shoulder. He grabs her wrist and forces her hand my way. I glimpse a ring. Linda’s face ripples like the motel pool in a downpour, translucent and impenetrable all at once.

“My mom signed the paper,” she says.

“And my daddy comin’ to sign mine tomorrow,” Eightball boasts.

“You can drive us to the place, can’t you?” Linda asks. “If I give you gas money?”

“Sure,” I say.

“First thing tomorrow morning.”

“Whenever.”

I won’t hold my breath. We’ve been through this before.

Eightball slides his hand under Linda’s thin white T-shirt, up under the black bra showing through it. He squeezes her tit and stares at me like, What the fuck are you going to do? This kid. This fucking kid. I pretend to doze off and picture him dead in the street.

“He all fucked up,” Eightball snorts.

Linda climbs back onto the handlebars, and the two of them wobble their way down Van Nuys Boulevard. When they’re good and gone, I open my eyes. Traffic whips past. There’s a loose manhole in the street that bucks and clatters whenever a car passes over it, and it’s bucking and clattering like crazy right now, as if to remind me that it’s Tuesday, three p.m., and everybody has someplace to be except me.

Stop it , I say to Simone. Please .

I wish she’d just get it over with. Hiding in palm trees and broken-down taco trucks and stray cats, she haunts this whole city, lashing out at me, dismantling my life piece by piece. My job, the house — I can’t even keep a decent pair of shoes. Two days after I buy any, they’re gone. They disappear right out of the closet. She wants me to suffer, and I have obliged, but the price of peace remains a mystery. I’ve offered to take the blame for her death and for the death of our child, but that’s not enough. I’m beginning to think she wants me to die, too.

THE BAR STILL reeks of Pine-Sol or Whatever they swab it out with before opening. The TV’s off, and Cecil is the only other customer, at the far end, intent on the newspaper crossword puzzle.

“The hell’s Jimmy?” I ask.

“In the can.”

I slip behind the bar and draw myself a Bud.

“What a ruckus at your place today,” Cecil murmurs.

“Somebody said suicide.”

“Sounds about right. I smelled it way the hell down the block. Must have been a loner, to get that ripe.”

“I don’t know. I try to keep to myself with those people. They have problems.”

Jimmy returns from the bathroom, collects for the beer. Nobody has much to say after that. I sit listening to ice melt somewhere for as long as I can, until I think I might start talking to myself. Then, feeling as brittle as improperly tempered steel, I get up and walk to the pool table.

The balls drop with a thud, and I arrange them in the rack, stripes, solids, bury the eight. Circling the table, I ignore the easy shots and try for miracles, and I’m on, I can’t miss. The incontrovertible laws of physics have been declared invalid. Balls smack into other balls and assume impossible trajectories that always end in corner pockets. What goes up doesn’t necessarily come down.

And if Simone had been given a moment like this? I wonder. Why, she’d have flown when she jumped, instead of falling. She and our baby would have sailed off that overpass and glided toward Pasadena, traffic glittering and roaring beneath them like a swift, shallow river in the evening sun. Oh, shit. Here I go again. I’ve also dreamed that I was there to catch them, and other times I’ve been able to talk her down from the guardrail; I’ve convinced her to give me the baby, then to take my hand herself. Next I’ll be Superman or something. That’s how stupid it’s getting. I’ll build a time machine or rub them down with Flubber. Whatever it takes to keep them alive. Whatever it takes to make things different from what they are.

EIGHT A.M., AND someone’s knocking at the door. I shake myself the rest of the way awake and pull on a pair of pants. Most likely it’s one of the girls from down the hall, wanting to bum a cigarette. If so, she’s out of luck. Those whores never have a kind word for me. It’s always faggot this and chickenhawk that just because I’m not interested in buying what they’re selling. I check the peephole to be sure.

A black guy wearing a purple suit leans forward to knock again.

“Wrong room,” I shout through the door.

“I’m lookin’ for Deshawn. Goes by Little D. He with a white girl, Linda, and they gettin’ married today.”

Deshawn is Eightball’s real name.

“So?” I say.

“I’m Deshawn’s daddy. He give me this number to meet him at.”

“They aren’t here.”

“But Deshawn give me this number.”

Something in his voice makes me want to help him. He sounds civilized. I open the door and step outside, join him on the walkway. The sun is high enough to catch the second floor, where we’re standing, but the first floor and the pool remain in shadow. It’ll be a while before it warms up enough for me to move down there.

“They said they’d be by, but not when,” I inform Eightball’s dad.

“You know where they stay?”

I shake my head. In addition to the purple suit, he’s wearing purple leather shoes and purple socks. By the way he keeps tugging at his clothes, constantly adjusting and straightening, it’s obvious he’s not used to being so dressed up.

“Well, then, how about where to get some coffee?” he asks.

“There’s a doughnut place. Hold on and I’ll show you.”

I have him wait outside while I put on my flip-flops and a T-shirt. It’ll be my good deed for the day, walking him over there. He’s whistling something. I press my ear to the door and catch a bit of “The Wedding March.”

EIGHTBALL’S DAD DUMPS a packet of sugar into his coffee and stirs it with his finger. The coffee is hot, but he doesn’t flinch. He raises his finger to his lips, licks it clean, and asks if I’ve accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal savior. I swear I’ve never heard as much Jesus talk in my life as I’ve heard since I hit bottom. For the sake of my daughter, I’ve held on to heaven, because I like to picture her snug among the clouds when I close my eyes at night. But that’s as far as it goes, that’s all I need of it.

“What’s it to you?” I ask Eightball’s dad.

“I just want to share the good news with you about God’s plan for your salvation,” he replies.

“Forget that, man. That’s all right.”

Eightball’s dad chuckles and taps his tie clasp, a gold crucifix. “Oh, so you that rough and tough, huh? I got you. Just let me reassure you, though, you are loved.”

I pick up a newspaper someone has dropped on the floor and pretend to read.

One of the fluorescent tubes in the ceiling has burned out, and the Cambodian who owns the shop stands on the counter to replace it. He slides the cover of the fixture out of its frame and passes it down to his teenage son, but the tube itself is jammed. His son hisses instructions at him while he struggles to remove it.

“Deshawn’s girl, she saved?” Eightball’s dad asks.

“I couldn’t say.”