Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

I take a deep breath and push it back out between my teeth. I didn’t realize we were that kind of people. I thought we were tougher. Adam laughs when I don’t say anything. He puts on his sunglasses. A song he likes comes on the radio, and he turns it up and yells, “This is my jam!” I have failed him.

Monday night is amateur night. Not really, but that’s what the sign says. We’re supposed to believe that there are all these horny housewives dying to take off their clothes for strangers. It’s cute in a way. Old-fashioned. Another sign says DO NOT TALK ABOUT DRUGS OR YOU WILL BE ASKED TO LEAVE. There are nicer places, but we like this one.

We sit at the rail. The only other customer is a Mexican cowboy who spends more time staring at himself in the mirrors that cover the walls than at the strippers. He’s got a beautiful pair of boots. The two girls dancing tonight take turns, three songs each. Whichever one’s not onstage when we order fetches our beers from the bartender.

Adam’s doing a thing now. Embarrassed about what happened in the car, he’s laying it on thick. He slaps me on the back, whistles and claps and throws too much money around. The dancers play along, illegally flashing their beavers and letting their nipples brush his face as he tucks bills into their G-strings and tells them he loves them. They lie, and we lie, and that’s how it goes. The cowboy leaves. He spits on the floor on his way out.

One of the girls is named Danisha. Sometimes she speaks with an English accent, and sometimes she’s Jamaican. She complains about the jukebox. “Too much ’eavy metal,” she says. When she dances, she looks me right in the eye while grinding her pussy against the pole, and she sits beside me between sets. “Buy me a drink,” she says. “The owner’s watching.” I’m having fun. This bar, this woman. It feels good to be in the middle of something.

I ask Danisha where she’s from, and she draws little circles on the inside of my thigh with her long, red fingernail as she answers. “Baby, I been all over the world. London, New York.” She keeps clicking the stud in her tongue against her teeth. Girls like her often wind up dead. Nobody claims their bodies. After an hour or so Adam gets tired of pretending. He twists his napkin into knots and frowns at his beer. “Let’s go,” he says. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

WINDOW WASHERS ARE working on the building next door. They stand on little platforms that lower from the roof like lifeboats. You couldn’t pay me enough. I wonder if they ever see anything interesting — people fucking, people fighting. Heidi taps on my door with a pen to get my attention.

“I brought doughnuts. They’re in the lunchroom if you want one.”

It’s not worth it. You never know who’ll be in there.

Donna is out today. Something about chicken pox or flu shots or chaperoning a field trip. I take her calls and sit in for her at a meeting. On my break I go down to the little store in the basement of the building and buy a lottery ticket. The girl who sells it to me wishes me luck. “Thanks,” I say, because that’s what you say.

New e-mail. A couple of ads: “See your favorite movie and TV stars in hot XXX action.” “Are you tired of working for someone else?” Adam has sent me a photo. I look over my shoulder before I open it, make sure nobody’s around. It’s a man who’s been run over by a train. Half of him lies leaking on one side of the rail, half on the other. I hate the Internet.

There’s also a letter from a girl I went to high school with. I didn’t know her well back then, but she got my address from my sister and now writes me about once a month. She lives in Alaska with her husband and a bunch of kids. The usual thing is she complains about her life, and I tell her to keep her chin up. Lately, though, she’s been fantasizing about having sex with me. Her letters make me blush. I asked her to send a picture, but she wouldn’t. Adam says this means she’s a pig.

Louise calls. She might be getting sick.

“Come home,” I say. “I’ll take care of you.”

“Probably not till Friday. It’s up in the air.”

There’s something cold in her voice. I play with the stapler on my desk, the paper clips. I don’t want to love her more than she loves me. We’ve been married six years, and I hope we make it to seven. She tells me about a dinner she had with her clients. Tapas and sangria.

“Where are you again? Seattle?” I ask.

“Denver.”

“Right, right.”

Heidi is at my door. They need me in the art department. I rush the good-byes and hang up. There is nothing for me to do but stand and walk down the hall. I’m full to bursting and empty at the same time, like the universe on paper.

I OPEN THE window and lie on the couch. Our apartment overlooks a school. A sneaky breeze clinks and clanks the chains on the swing set in the playground. It’s warm for March. About now I would usually read one of the magazines that are always piling up, but not tonight. tonight I’m not going to worry about what I’m missing. I turn off the TV. The moon climbs the palm tree across the street and sits there shining.

I’m thinking about my childhood. It used to be right there for me, but now there are so many blanks. A police helicopter flies low over the building, then circles, playing its spotlight over a house up the street. It makes a sound that I feel in my chest more than hear. I put on my flip-flops and go downstairs. One of my neighbors is standing on the porch, her hair in curlers. I didn’t know women wore curlers anymore.

“See anything?” I ask.

“I think it’s those Armenians.”

I shuffle toward the commotion. Four or five squad cars are parked in the street, doors open, light bars flashing, abandoned in a hurry. The helicopter is right overhead. Its sun gun paints the house pale blue and makes the shadows wobble, like a whole day captured in a time-lapse movie. I’m surprised that I haven’t been stopped yet. I start to cross the street to get even closer, but a cop steps out of the bushes and says, “Over here. Now!”

We are crouched behind a hedge: me, the cop, a bald-headed kid, and the kid’s two Chihuahuas. The cop closes his eyes, listening to a sputtering radio. His shotgun is pointed at the ground. I’ve seen the kid walking the dogs before. He tells me it’s a hostage situation. A man is holding a gun on his elderly parents. “They forgot his birthday,” the kid says. “It’s sad.”

I reach down to pat the dogs, and they lick my fingers. There’s some kind of flower smell in the air. The kid’s leg is touching mine. He’s shaking. Maybe he’s scared and maybe it’s crank. I’m not scared because I don’t care anymore. It’s a good feeling, like getting something over with.

Another cop joins us. He tells the first one to take us out of the area. I want something bad to happen; I dare it to. Electricity buzzes out of my balls and spirals up my throat. The Chihuahuas bounce at the ends of their leashes, pissing and sniffing, as we hurry away, bent double, and I glimpse the silhouette of someone standing in the doorway of the house with a gun to his head.

THE ALARM GOES off at seven-thirty. I spent half the night running up and down a beach, searching for a place to throw away a broken bottle. “Toss it in the water,” said dream Adam, who looked nothing like the real one. The sand sucked at my feet, and there were bruised fish rolling in the surf. I find myself on Louise’s side of the bed, my head resting on her special pillow, the only one she’ll use. I once put the case on another pillow to test her, and she knew as soon as she lay down.

Some mornings I beat the guy in the next apartment to the shower, but not today, so the water pressure’s for shit. Looking at myself in the mirror afterward, I decide to grow a mustache. I shave everything but my upper lip. There’s not a word in the paper about the standoff. I go through it page by page at the kitchen table. If that didn’t make it, what else was left out? I hate to start a day wondering.