Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

Someone has slipped Jesus flyers under the windshield wipers of all the cars in the garage. Big black clouds are piling up on the mountains to the north, but the rest of the sky is clear. The radio says rain by noon, so the wind has a lot of work to do. I stop for gas, and a homeless man asks if he can pump it. He’s not one of those funny ones. He stinks, and his pants are falling down. I give him a buck, but he can’t figure out how to work the nozzle. I tell him not to worry about it, keep the money anyway.

Donna calls me into her office. She’s wearing a denim shirt embroidered with Warner Brothers cartoon characters. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck. “Did you sign off on this?” she asks, holding out the proof for an ad I okayed for her when she was out one afternoon.

There’s an apostrophe missing in the copy: Yogurts finest hour. That’s the kind of thing I’m supposed to be concerned about. It’s difficult lately. I want to say, “Maybe you should do your own fucking job,” but I don’t. There are pictures of her children on her desk. I curse them instead.

The plaza is empty at lunch. The clouds have moved in, and the wind leans on the trees. I drop a potato chip bag, and it is carried off before I can get to it. The mirrored windows of the skyscrapers towering over me reflect the gray sky. Because of this, you almost forget the buildings are there. Birds sometimes smack right into them and fall to the ground, senseless.

I EAT SALTINES and Vienna sausages for dinner, sitting in front of the TV. I have a few drinks. The questions are difficult on the game shows tonight. The contestants sweat and lick their lips. We have surround sound. We have DVD. One day soon I’m going to bump us up to a plasma screen.

The phone rings. Someone says, “Sorry,” and hangs up. The bathroom smells like cigarette smoke. It comes in through the air shaft from the apartment downstairs. The lady with the curlers lives there with her husband. I can never remember their names. He’s on disability, and she’s a part-time dog trainer. They keep odd hours. “The kike came by today,” the husband says, his words drifting up the air shaft with the smoke. He’s talking about our landlord. “How do you feel about wood floors?”

I pause to look at a picture hanging on the wall of Louise and me standing in the snow. What makes it funny is that we’re in shorts and T-shirts. We’re wearing sandals. You take the tram in Palm Springs, and they haul you up a cable from the desert to the top of a mountain in about five minutes flat. The right time of the year, it’s eighty at the bottom and freezing on the summit.

I had to beg Louise to accompany me. We were on a weekend getaway. She shut her eyes and clutched my arm as we swung out of the station. Now and then the gondola shuddered, drawing gasps from the other passengers and causing Louise to dig her nails into me. Going from rocks and sand to icicles and hissing pines with such startling suddenness was like a dream. I was a little unsure of myself. What other amazing shit would happen?

The snack bar on top was full of kids in some kind of uniforms. Their screeches rose up and were trapped in the rafters. Louise and I hurried out to a deck in back that overlooked a hilly area where people sledded and built snowmen. Everybody was dressed for the cold but us. The snow was dirty, and rocks showed through. Big black birds sat in leafless black trees. Louise had a headache. She thought she might pass out. I asked someone to take a picture of us. I put some snow in my mouth. Louise shivered and started to cry.

I wouldn’t let her hang on to me on the way down. That was wrong. I told her it was time she got over herself. She closed her eyes and clung to the safety rail in the gondola, and I acted like I didn’t know her.

Dear Robin,

How is Alaska? How is your husband? How are the kids?

You asked last time for a sexy story. Does this count?

“You again?” Danisha said when I showed up at the bar. She was a stripper. I had to wait for her to get off work. The lock on the door to her building was broken, and the lobby smelled like a toilet. I was worried about my car, parked out front, because I didn’t want anything to happen that I’d have to explain. Danisha took my hand and pulled me up creaking stairs to her apartment. Her dress rode high on her ass, and she wasn’t wearing panties.

“Help me with this,” she said.

We worked together to turn the couch into a bed. The walls of the living room were papered with photos of rappers torn from magazines. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I pulled the bottle of tequila that I’d bought on the way over out of my pocket and took a drink. The lamp had a scarf draped over it, a piss-elegant touch. My eyelid twitched. My stomach fluttered.

“Want to get high?” Danisha asked, examining her forehead in a mirror.

I held up the bottle of tequila.

“Well, I’ma get high,” she said.

She stepped through a door and closed it behind herself. I heard a TV and voices.

This is where I get robbed

, I thought.

This is where I get killed.

I was too scared to sit down, so I walked to the window. The glass was broken. It was all over the floor.

What does she do when it rains?

I wondered. I tried to see my car but couldn’t.

“Where the fuck else am I suppose to take him?” Danisha yelled.

I couldn’t hear the answer. She appeared again in the living room with a big smile on her face. I sat beside her on the dark green sheet, and she pushed play on a boom box. It was some woman with a gravelly voice. “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she said. Danisha put a glass pipe to her lips. Her lighter had Tweety Bird on it. The smoke she exhaled wrapped around us and drew our bodies together. It tickled our noses. Danisha fell back on the mattress, and for a second I thought she’d fainted. Then she reached for me.

While I was banging away, she coughed, and her pussy tightened around my cock. After half an hour, she pushed me off her and said, “That’s it unless you got more money, honey.” I was all shriveled up anyway. I’d been faking it for a while. I walked to the window and cut my foot on the glass. I laughed, and she laughed. Then she told me I better leave. There was blood all over the place.

Remember how you said it’s dark there six months out of the year? Well, it’s dark here all the time.

P.S. Don’t write back.

KRESS RETURNS TO work. I see him walking down the hall. I see him at the Coke machine. People seem to be respecting his wishes; they stay out of his way. He’s an old guy, with one of those comb-overs that you laugh at behind his back. Someone said that he and his wife were married for thirty years. I feel bad for joking with Adam about his loss. I don’t know where we get off.

Adam’s voice mail picks up when I try his desk. The receptionist says he didn’t show up this morning and didn’t call in. I dial his apartment, but there’s no answer there either. I wave away the worry that flutters around my head. He’s a flake. Everybody says so.

Donna and I proof some copy. She smells like sour milk. A cereal accident, I bet, while she was rushing to get her kids ready for school. What do I think of Heidi? she wants to know. I say she’s doing a great job. “She is, isn’t she?” Donna murmurs, bent over the table, squinting at a photo through a loupe. I get the feeling I’ve just cut my own throat.

It’s drizzling outside. Little drops are swallowed by larger ones that race hungrily down the glass. I order a cheeseburger from the cafeteria in the basement. Louise calls. She won’t be home until Sunday night. Things are crazy there. I can’t prove she’s lying, but I’ll hire someone who can, I swear to God.