Jim Gavin: Middle Men: Stories

“Like Kenner’s never had a recall,” said Larry, looking bewildered and disappointed as he returned the gun to his fanny pack. “Lamrock is definitely gonna hear about this.”

“Are you fucking nuts?” said Matt.

“Calm down, everything’s fine,” said Larry. “Lamrock loves guns.”

“ Who? Who the fuck is Lamrock?”

“Come on. I’ll introduce you.”

Matt’s head dropped. He rubbed his eyes. “You said there’s beer?”

“Yeah, there’s beer.”

They went through the gates into a large pipe yard. Plumbers were milling around, eating off paper plates, talking on their Nextels. They passed through the warehouse, where workers buzzed around, racing each other on pallet jacks, and exited down the open steps of the loading dock. A big blond woman in a yellow muumuu called them over.

“I figured you’d show,” she greeted Larry, kissing him on the cheek. She had a bag full of plastic leis and ceremoniously placed one over each of their heads.

“Good to see you, Wanda,” said Larry. He introduced Matt and tugged on his shirt. “Look at this kid, all breezed out.”

“That’s a nice one,” she said.

“What happens if you don’t wear a shirt?”

“You don’t want to know,” she said.

“I’d really like to know.”

She swept her flabby arm across the scene of the luau. He saw a cracked and weedy slab of concrete sloping down to the railroad tracks, with dramatic views of the septic river and the cluster of buildings downtown. The yard was strewn with old toilets and mangled pipe. Plumbers and wholesalers stood in a buffet line, where mounds of kalua pork were piled on their plate. A bunch of guys, including Armando, were standing around lighting fireworks. Woody Blake, the waterworks man from Barstow, was showing off his pit bull.

“If you don’t have a shirt,” she said, “you can’t be in the raffle.”

Matt laughed. He wanted a beer.

“Grand prize is dinner for two at Olive Garden,” she said.

“I’ll never win that fucking raffle,” said Larry, taking his ticket.

They grabbed Coronas out of an old bathtub filled with ice and made their way to the buffet line, where Matt ran into Ron Ciavacco.

“Don’t tell Valerie I’m here,” he pleaded, adjusting his elastic pants. “She thinks I’m at the doctor.”

“Give us an order,” said Larry, “and we won’t say a word.”

“That’s extortion.”

“It’s business.”

“This your first luau?” Ron asked Matt.

“Yeah. Larry pulled a gun on Mike Melendez.”

“I heard.”

“Come on,” Larry said. “Let’s find Lamrock.”

They walked to the far end of the pipe yard, which looked like an abandoned flea market. Matt saw televisions and VCRs, washers and dryers, coffee tables, empty jewelry counters, bicycles, pianos, surfboards, and a crumbling pyramid of tires. They found him passed out in an empty Jacuzzi shell. Lamrock was a chubby little man with with a gray crew cut. He wore red swim trucks with black socks and sandals. There was a shotgun next to his head and he had a small handgun holstered on his ankle.

“So what is he?” Matt asked. “A wholesaler?”

“More of a distributor,” said Ron, tentatively. “But a contractor too, I guess. On the general side of things.”

“I’ll tell you what he is,” said Larry, holding his beer up in salute. “He’s a goddamn angel.”

• • •

After lunch, Larry offered to let Matt fire off a few rounds into the empty river. “No way,” said Matt. “I’m scared of guns.”

Lamrock eventually rose from his slumber and Larry introduced him to Matt. Lamrock raised his beer and said, “Here’s to ya.” Then he stumbled away. Later Matt saw him at the far end of the lot, aiming his shotgun at the ironwork of a distant railroad trestle. A crowd of drunk plumbers cheered him on. Matt finally wandered away from the crowd and sat down on a rusty toilet.

It was two o’clock, that bright and desolate hour. Matt couldn’t believe where he was. A year ago, when people stopped by to see his mom, they would often ask him, once they had left her room, what he was going to do “after.” It seemed like an irrelevant question, and he never had an answer. He would just walk them to the front door and return to her room. The walls were covered with family photos, a crucifix, and a framed map of Ireland. In the afternoons he opened the curtains and the glass slider, letting in the breeze and giving his mom a view of the pool. Twenty years ago, during one of the booms, the Costellos had put in the pool. It was their greatest triumph as a family. They probably should’ve saved the money to get them through the next bust, but Ellen Costello wanted her kids to have a pool. She gave her children everything she had and more, heedless of cost, and Matt knew that he owed much of his happiness to his parents’ willingness to live beyond their means.

A million things about his mom should’ve made Matt nostalgic, but for some reason the time he longed for most was the last couple months of her life. They rarely spoke about anything important, but they had never been closer. Her suffering was beyond words and Matt knew that the frail, bed-bound woman in front of him was the toughest person he would ever meet. He wanted to be with her again, in hell, shifting her pillows, changing her TPN bags, rinsing her vomit bowls. Those afternoons destroyed him and would continue to destroy him every day of his life. For this he was thankful. He needed to be destroyed.

Matt liked to think that the last thing his mom saw, before she died, was the tranquil surface of the pool.

“There you are,” he heard Larry saying. Matt looked up and saw him silhouetted against the bright sky. Larry handed him a beer. “We’re celebrating.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re quitting.”

“I am?”

Larry took a sip of beer and looked out across the river. “Just be glad you got to see the luau.”

“Thanks for bringing me.”

“You’re not a salesman.”

“I wish I was.”

“Go do something else,” said Larry, and there was mercy in his voice. “Don’t waste our time down here.”

Costello sees a lizard at the bottom of the pool. The sucker is dead, dead. Full fathom five, as they say. This lizard situation, on a Saturday, presents a major hassle. Costello stands barefoot on the diving board, bouncing a little, with an unlit Tareyton between his lips. Saturday, an extra layer of brightness, Saturday brightness, like God opening a window in the sky.

The backyard needs some work. Weeds flaming up from cracks in the concrete, all the flower pots empty, the patio cover rotten with termites. Costello pops a net onto the aluminum pole and stands at the edge of the deep end. His wife wanted the deep end extra deep, so the kids could dive. The water is green, the lizard caught in silhouette, his tail wedged underneath the filter cover. Costello scoops up a flotilla of dead june bugs, dumps them in the planter, and then goes deeper, making a play for the lizard.

Next door, Jesse Rocha starts up his hedge trimmer. He’s the same age as Costello, but semiretired. By some dull, suburban coincidence Rocha, like Costello, is also a plumbing lifer, but on the skilled side of things, repairs and remodels, three trucks and a shop. Last year, finessing his way out of a worker’s comp lawsuit, he changed the company name from Rocha Plumbing to Advanced Plumbing Specialists. “This is the great state of California,” he said. “Sunshine and litigation.”

Rocha pokes his bald head over the brown cinder-block wall, the same crumbling wall that squares off every yard in this section of Anaheim. He turns off the trimmer.