Richard Lange - Sweet Nothing

I’m up to my elbows in soapy water when David strolls in wearing boxers and a wife-beater and carrying a joint.

“Do you get stoned?” he says.

I back away from the sink, confused. I could answer his question in a couple of ways, and I want to choose the right one.

“Not in a while,” I say as I grope for a towel to dry my hands.

“I’ve got a prescription. Migraines,” he says. “But I hate to smoke alone. Come have a puff.”

“I don’t know about that,” I say, but at the same time I’m excited, like I’m in high school again, cutting shop with the cool kids to weed up under the bleachers.

“Who are you worried about?” David says. “Claire? Marjorie? Get with it, guy.”

You didn’t convince me . That’s what I want to tell David as I follow him out onto the deck. I decided on my own . That’s what I want him to understand, but no nice way to say it comes to mind.

He lights the joint with a green plastic disposable and takes a long drag. He’s about sixty, a little taller than me, a lot heavier. Not fat. Beefy. He still has muscle. He passes me the joint, then reaches up to smooth his fringe of white hair, lips pursed as he holds in the smoke. His already ruddy face flushes even redder.

I go easy, take in a lot of air, but still double over coughing.

David exhales with a loud whoosh and shakes his head. “You’re kidding, right?” he says.

My wife’s father egging me on. And just the other day I told myself that everything strange that was ever going to happen to me probably already had. David makes me hit the joint again before he’ll take it back. I feel the high in my feet first, then it begins to move up my legs.

“The Respighi tonight should be something,” David says.

We’re going to the Hollywood Bowl, a box down in front courtesy of one of Marjorie’s old sorority sisters from UCLA. I’ve only been once before, with a group of friends from a bar I used to haunt. We sat in the cheap seats and drank too much wine. The ushers kept shushing us, and Mikey B puked in the bushes on our way down the hill. I woke up embarrassed the next morning and swore again that I was going to change my life.

Respighi. Pines of Rome . With fireworks. “I’m looking forward to it,” I say to David, as if I know something about classical music.

Without consulting each other, we sit at the same time at the little table on the deck. The heat isn’t bad here, tucked away in the shade as we are, but my body is running slightly behind my brain. I know this because I think about taking my pulse for a good five seconds before my right hand actually moves over to discreetly grasp my left wrist.

I needn’t be so stealthy. David has forgotten all about me. He’s staring down at the park, at the paddleboats on the lake, humming a four-note tune over and over. My fingers locate a throb, but I have no idea how many beats per minute are normal.

“This is good stuff,” David says.

I nod, then wonder if he saw me. “Great,” I say, to make sure.

A noisy black bug flies in out of nowhere and circles us twice. David pops up out of his chair to swat at it.

“What’s that?” he says, his voice rising toward panic. “A bumblebee? A cockroach?”

The bug veers off into the bushes. David smooths his hair again and says, “Let’s go for a walk. I’m claustrophobic.”

I glance at my watch. Two p.m. I last checked at 1:55, what seems like an hour ago. A walk. Sure. We need to get things moving again.

THE LAKE IN Echo Park isn’t a real lake, but on the right days it’s as pretty as one. Today isn’t one of those days, however. Today the water lies there, black and viscous, not a sparkle, not a ripple, and McDonald’s cups and Doritos bags founder in the shallows, where a few greasy ducks make gagging sounds as they struggle to stay afloat. The tall palms scattered around the park sport more dead fronds than live ones, and the downtown skyscrapers in the distance have been eaten up by the smog.

David and I sit on a bench and suck Mexican popsicles. Watermelon, with seeds and everything. The vendor who sold them to us was a short, round man with a cowboy hat and gold bridgework. A puff of cold air escaped from his pushcart when he opened the lid, and I wanted to crawl inside and never come out.

The initial jolt of the weed has passed, and now I’m just plain stoned, so the popsicle tastes great, but I’m still paranoid that everyone knows we’re wasted. I sit up straight and make sure I don’t stare at anything too long. David obviously doesn’t have the same worries. He slouches on the bench and keeps removing his sunglasses to reveal his bloodshot blue eyes.

The park is crowded with people in search of a respite from the heat. Women push strollers, drunks snooze openmouthed on the grass, and teenage couples in black hoodies and spiked belts work joylessly at giving each other hickeys. The song blaring from the nearest radio is a ballad in Spanish about a man who misses a river.

“It’s like Tijuana down here,” David says. “Like Mexico City.”

“You’ll probably see more Guatemalans,” I say. “Salvadorans, Nicaraguans, Filipinos.”

David waves away this comment. “You know what I mean,” he says.

I do, but I enjoy busting his balls.

“Talking about Guatemala, I was there once,” he continues. “I drove an RV from Phoenix to Costa Rica back in the seventies, passed through all those Central American hellholes. The police pulled me over in Guatemala for driving without a shirt on.”

“Without a shirt?” I say.

“Apparently it’s against the law there, or at least it was that day. One of the bastards wrote $20 on a scrap of newspaper and handed it to me, and I went nuts. ‘Fuck you!’ I said. ‘I’m not giving you anything.’ I started the RV, put the pedal to the metal, and left them standing there with their dicks in their hands. Last I saw, they were laughing so hard they could barely stand up.”

I don’t say Liar, liar, but I’m thinking it. Or maybe the dude is actually crazy, pulling a stunt like that. I start laughing because I can’t think of anything else to do. David laughs too.

“I had hair down to my ass back then,” he says between guffaws.

What the hell, let the man spin a few yarns. That check of his hits the mailbox like clockwork the first of every month, and Claire and I would be sunk without it. I only worked five days in June, barely enough to pay the interest on our Visa.

I bite down on my popsicle, tear off a big chunk. A toddler breaks free from his mom and makes a bowlegged dash for the lake. Stand up , I tell myself, do something , but David is already there. He grabs the kid’s arm just as he’s about to tumble into the water and then swings him up into the air.

“Careful, Panchito,” he says.

The boy’s mother is more upset than she should be. She’s gasping for air, practically weeping, when David hands the kid back to her. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she says.

“De nada,” David replies, patting the kid on the head and returning to the bench.

He’s looking at me and wondering what kind of father I’m going to be if I couldn’t even rouse myself to stop that kid. I don’t blame him. I worry all the time that parenting is an instinct some people have and some don’t, and because my dad didn’t, I might not either. Claire tells me I’m being ridiculous, assures me that I’ll do fine, but that’s only because she’s so unsure of herself. Look around you: parents fail every day, and half the people you meet were ruined by the time they were twelve.

“Koreatown is near here, isn’t it?” David says.

“Not too far,” I say, happy to move on to something else.