Richard Lange - Dead Boys - Stories

“You know that test you wanted to give me, the one that would tell me when I’m going to die?” I ask.

“What are you talking about?”

“In the magazine on the way to the airport.”

“What about it?

“I’m ready to take it now.”

She pauses, then laughs. “I threw it away. It was stupid.”

Later, I follow Kress into the bathroom. He locks himself into a stall, and I stand at a urinal. I wash my hands when I’m done. My new mustache looks funny in the mirror. It looks like a mistake. I open the bathroom door and close it, pretending to leave. Instead I wait, my breath stilled. Kress groans. He punches the wall. “Goddammit!” he screams.

This is grief. This, I understand.

THE TRASH SMELLS awful. There must be some chicken in there, some rotting meat. I grab the bag and carry it down to the Dumpster. It’s dark outside. The streetlights have come on, a nightly miracle. I like it when things work like that. I like knowing that the garbage man will come on Tuesday. It’s comforting.

The kid with the Chihuahuas passes by, hurrying them along before the rain starts again. He yanks their leashes when they try to drink from oily puddles.

“What happened to that guy down the street?” I ask.

He doesn’t know. I walk with him to the house, and we pause in front. It’s shut up tight. There’s no car in the driveway, no flickering TV. I cross the lawn and climb the three stairs to the porch.

“Don’t!” the kid hisses.

The welcome mat is red, white, and blue, like the flag, and a menu for a Thai place hangs from the doorknob. I peek in the window. I put my ear to the door. Nothing. I want to knock, but I don’t. The kid and the dogs are gone when I turn around.

THE ARTICLE IS called “Hideouts: 10 Places You’ll Never Want to Leave.” I can’t get through it. My eyes drift off the page every few minutes and wander around the living room. The apartment’s pops and cracks make me flinch. I add the magazine to a new pile I’ve started so I’ll know where it is when I need it.

It’s late in Denver, but I call Louise’s hotel anyway. The phone rings and rings. She never picks up. What happened to buying a house and having a baby? I want Whatever she wants from now on.

The rain is really coming down. I stand at the window and watch it bounce off the street. My foot throbs. It’s bleeding again. I must have ripped open the cut somehow. There are no Band-Aids big enough in the medicine chest.

I try Adam again. I’ve been calling every hour all day long. Finally, he answers.

“Hello?” he says.

Tears well up in my eyes and get away from me before I can blink them back. “You’re alive,” I sob. “You’re alive.”

Thank you to everyone at Little, Brown, especially Asya Muchnick and Michael Pietsch, who took a big chance.

Thank you to my agent, Timothy Wager, who found me and stuck by me.

Thank you to everyone at the publications in which some of these stories were originally published. Without you, this book would not exist.

Thank you to T. C. Boyle and Jim Boyle, who encouraged me in the beginning.

And, finally, thank you to my family and friends, who make my life the good thing that it is.

Richard Lange’s work has appeared in The Southern Review, The Iowa Review, and The Best American Mystery Stories 2004 . He lives in Los Angeles.