Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

A KNOCK AT this hour can be nothing but trouble. I grab the knife off the coffee table and stand with my back to the wall in case they shoot through the door. But it’s the actor, the phone salesman. Greg. He knocks again even after I tell him to go away.

“I’ve got something for you.”

My stomach twists and gurgles, and I taste ammonia. I open the door maybe three inches, stop it with my foot. Greg is alone. He’s barefoot and hasn’t shaved for days.

“Come on,” he says, pushing with his shoulder. “Let me in.”

I show him the knife. I stick it in his arm, just the tip.

He backs away and touches the blood.

“You make me sick,” I say.

“You sure were singing a different tune last time, trick.”

He throws an envelope at my face. The card it contains has a naked man on it. CHEER UP, Greg has written inside. I will kill him if I ever see him again.

THE PALM TREE appears first out of the darkness, then the ocean and the sand. An alarm clock beeps somewhere, and pretty soon it’s noisy as hell as everyone in the building wakes up and starts to get ready for work. It used to give me a thrill to be part of it. I was convinced that I fit right in because I showered and dressed and ate breakfast like my neighbors. Anymore, though, all those radios tuned to all those different stations just sound messy to me. I get up from the stinking recliner where I’ve waited out the night and slam the window down.

There’s a sign above the register that says ONE DAY AT A TIME, and I guess that’s good advice, but I’ve got the creepy crawlies pretty bad this morning, and my left nostril is all stopped up. The night guy hasn’t done the candy again, which means he takes me for a chump. I smoke half a pack of cigarettes before noon. A car slams on its brakes to avoid a wino, and the screech makes me bite my tongue. The sky seethes. I don’t think I can handle rain.

A Vietnamese gangster sneaks up on me and buys a Sports Illustrated, then walks back across the street. He gets into a Jeep with another hard case, and they sit there, watching me. James keeps a starter pistol in a drawer under the register. He doesn’t believe in real guns. When Lana’s dad answers the phone, I lay it out for him: I’m on my way over, and I want Lana waiting in the front yard. The gangsters drive away. Message received. I call James and tell him I’m locking up.

The pistol rattles against the windshield if I lay it on the dash, so I move it to the passenger seat. It’s green lights all the way over there, the first time that’s happened. The sky is almost black now. People have their headlights on. The cops are in front of Lana’s house with their guns already drawn. I pull over a block away and walk toward them. The television antennas are screaming at the telephone poles. In the clipping Marty carries, there’s a picture of John Wayne sprawled dead on the floor. He looks ridiculous in his diaper and cowboy vest.

Here lies a man whose best wasn’t good enough. I bequeath my car to the parking lot attendant. Everything else, you can burn to ashes.

HE NEEDS ME TO SAY YES. IT’S AN OLDIE BUT A GOODIE: keep the affirmatives coming. I read an article, an undercover, “Secrets of a Car Salesman” thing, that had a list of ten tricks to watch out for, and that was one of them. I held on to the magazine the article was in, putting it with a bunch of other magazines containing information that would someday be of use, but when the pile got to be about four feet high, Louise said, “This is ridiculous,” and threw them all out. So now I’m at this guy’s, this Rodrigo’s, mercy.

“Do you like the color?” he asks.

“Yes,” I reply.

“Red, right?”

“Red.”

Rodrigo’s hair is slicked straight back, and he has a goatee. There’s a pack of Marlboros in the pocket of his shirt. He should stash them somewhere else, that’s my advice. If he wants to look professional. A van from a Mexican radio station is parked on the lot. They’re blasting music and handing out bumper stickers and T-shirts. I’m not sure about that either. It might scare away the white folks.

Rodrigo urges me aboard the SUV. The seat wraps itself around my body. “Special motors; they remember you,” Rodrigo says. This model has enough chrome for three regular cars. Fog lights, leather interior, six-CD changer. The dashboard gauges glow purple when I turn the key. Way up here you’d see trouble before you got to it. No more sitting in traffic, wondering.

A few other salesmen stand together outside the showroom. They’re smoking and watching two girls shake it to the music from the van. La Super Estrella. The boss comes out and says something, and the salesmen scatter. My fingertips are cold against my face when I adjust my glasses. The clouds look like skywriting that has just drifted into illegibility. I can’t find the sun.

“Let me ask you something,” Rodrigo says, putting one foot up on the running board. “If I could get you the price you wanted, would you write me a check today?”

“Come on, man,” I scoff. “You’d have to be a pimp to drive this thing. A teenage pimp.”

Rodrigo steps back and looks me over. Oh, he’d like to thump me. He’s probably on straight commission. I read an article about that, too. I apologize for wasting his time. I can’t afford a new car. Louise and I are saving for a house. I was just driving by and saw the balloons and heard the music. The Glendale Auto Mall. It seemed like a place where something was happening.

A PACK OF dogs trots through the intersection, all shapes and sizes, escapees and throwaways. The leader turns, a shaggy black beast, and gives me a look, flashing his teeth. I send him a mental message: Car, dumbass. Me run you over. The signal changes, and we continue toward LAX. Razor wire protects windowless bunkers and empty lots. It’s six in the morning. Night tilts toward day.

Louise picked up this shortcut from a shuttle driver. It’s useful at rush hour, but now — what’s the point? The freeway’s practically empty. You could keep it at seventy-five, no problem. Louise won’t let me go that way, though. We have to take the same route every time. There are her rituals, and then there are her phobias. She’s scared of birds, stairs, and electricity. No, really. She has a childhood memory of being struck by lightning. Her mother says it never happened, but Louise still uses her elbow to turn off the lights when nobody’s looking.

She’s okay with flying, though; a good thing, because her job involves a lot of it. She works for a company that publishes corporate training manuals, and two or three times a month she heads out to meet with clients in Chicago, Dallas, wherever. It’s killing her, she says, so next year she plans to quit and have a baby. Ha ha ha.

We have to stop at the same McDonald’s every time I drop her off, too. The sky is pearling as we walk across the parking lot. I recall a sunrise I saw on a beach in Hawaii. Something like that can save your life if you use it later, when you need it. A garbage truck pulls in, passing between us and the restaurant. It screams its guts out as it reaches for a Dumpster. Louise hurries into the restaurant, her hands pressed to her ears.

Everybody in line is wearing a uniform. There’s a cop, two flight attendants, a nurse, some guys in orange vests and hard hats, and a postman. It’s like a children’s book. I go to the counter while Louise finds a table. That’s how we always work it. I know her order by heart. The girl at the register has acne and a silver tooth. Her friend says something to her, and the girl asks, while handing me my change, “For real?” A button is missing from her shirt. I can see her belly.