Richard Lange - Sweet Nothing

I haven’t seen him or his little sister in three years. My ex and the neighbor packed them off to Salt Lake City after they were married, and there was nothing this here crackhead could do about it. I was actually kind of happy they left. The kids were getting to an age where they’d notice my shaking hands during our once-a-month lunches at Pizza Hut, my red eyes, the smell of booze on my breath.

The last straw was when Gwennie, my daughter, found a bloody syringe in the glove compartment of the car I’d borrowed to drive down to Orange County for our visit. The rig wasn’t mine, but I still had to do some fast talking about how diabetic kitties need shots just like people do. That story always got a laugh from some asshole when I shared it at meetings.

I don’t go to AA anymore, and right now I’m so glad. I grab a can of Bud out of the refrigerator. I’ll never touch drugs again, but I need my three after-work beers. They’re all I have to look forward to these days.

Troy’s got Kelly’s Heroes and asks if I want to watch it with him. Maybe it’ll take my mind off my kids. He has a fifty-five-inch TV in his room, surround sound. I sit on the floor with my back against his bed. When the movie’s over, he says he’s going to order some chicken, but I’m not hungry. I’m not tired either, so I go down to the pool.

It’s nice. A breeze is blowing through the courtyard, and birds chatter in the bamboo and banana trees that fill the lava-rock planters. The pool mirrors the square of blue sky above it, clouds floating in the water. I take a deep breath all the way from my gut and pop open my last beer of the day.

The new people spill out of their ground-floor unit with towels and sunscreen and a pitcher of something. A guy and a girl, early twenties. They moved in a couple weeks ago and have already thrown two parties the property manager had to shut down. The guy’s playing music on his phone, the kind of shit kids dance to these days.

“This gonna bother you?” he asks, pointing at the phone.

“Not me,” I say.

They’re both tall and tan and in great shape. She has blond hair and big fake boobs; he’s darker, with a tattoo of a thorny rose wrapped around one thick bicep. They look like advertisements for something you want and want and then realize you didn’t really need.

A police helicopter flies low over the complex. The girl whoops and lifts her bikini top to flash it. When she sees me watching, she yanks the top down and says, “Oops. Sorry.”

The guy waves the blue plastic pitcher and calls out, “Margarita?”

I show him my beer. “Thanks anyway.”

I can tell he’s going to sit next to me as soon as he offers the drink. He’s got a buzz on and wants to talk to someone who won’t know when he’s lying and might get some of his jokes. His girlfriend is hot, he’ll say, but just between you and me, bro, dumb as a bag of rocks.

He’s Edward, she’s Star.

“Star?” I say. “Really?”

“Her parents had high hopes,” Edward explains.

The two of them are in from Miami to test the waters. If something happens and they decide to stay, the first thing they’ll do is get out of this shit hole and buy a house in the Hills with the money Edward is due from some kind of settlement. He’s been bartending to keep busy, and Star dances at a nightclub. I give them six months out here, tops.

“What do you do?” Edward wants to know before he’s even asked my name.

Star is on the other side of the pool, where the sun is brightest, on her stomach on a chaise.

“I was a sales director,” I say. “Industrial refrigeration units.”

“If you hear of anything in entertainment, I’m available,” Edward says.

The guy’s not even listening to me. That’s okay. I sip my beer and stare at his girlfriend’s ass. I haven’t had sex since sober-living, when this Oxy fiend and I snuck off to the laundry room.

“You live with that fat guy,” Edward says.

“Troy,” I reply.

“That’s got to be weird. Does he stink?”

I had the same sort of questions in the beginning. I found Troy on Craigslist when I was looking for a place. His last roommate had skipped out suddenly, and he needed someone to make rent for the month. It was six hundred dollars for the bedroom or three hundred for the futon in the living room. I took the futon.

I’d never lived with a fat man before and wondered how it would be. He eats a lot, of course. Large pizzas, quarts of ice cream, a box of doughnuts in fifteen minutes flat. He sleeps in a sitting position, propped up on the bed with pillows, something to do with his breathing. And he snores, man. He snores like a car that’s ready to conk out. That’s the only good thing about working nights.

He wasn’t always so big. He showed me photos of himself when he was in high school, and he looked like a jock back then. He got sad, though. He came out here from Ohio to be an actor but ended up office manager for a chiropractor, and that did him in, the disappointment, after being so sure he was born to do something special. He let himself go, lost his job, and now he squeaks by on disability and the occasional check from his parents.

“Does he lay like the biggest shits you’ve ever seen?” Edward continues.

“Troy’s great,” I say.

Edward is already on to something else, the time Sean Penn showed up at the bar where he works. I let him finish the story, then go upstairs. I can tell I won’t be able to get to sleep, that I’m going to lie on the futon and listen to the afternoon pass on the other side of the blinds while thinking about my kids and how I’ve probably fucked them up for life and wishing it was like it used to be, when I could knock myself senseless with whatever was at hand.

A COUPLE OF days later the Arab woman shows up at the restaurant again, at four a.m., just like last time. There are dark circles under her green eyes, and her fingers tremble when she passes me the money for her coffee.

“How’s your daughter?” I ask.

Her response gets caught in her throat. She swallows hard, and a tiny, perfect tear slides down her cheek.

“Aww, hey, I’m sorry,” I say.

I duck under the counter and pop up beside her, but then I’m at a loss, not sure what I was planning to do. I can’t just stand there, so I pick up her coffee and guide her to a booth.

“Thank you,” she says as she sinks into the seat.

I hustle back to the counter and grab some napkins. She takes one and dabs her eyes with it.

“Sit,” she says, “please,” so I do. There’s a long silence while she pulls herself together. I look down at my knuckles, up at the buzzing fluorescent light on the ceiling. It’s uncomfortable being so close to someone else’s pain.

“My name is Zalika,” she finally says.

“Dennis,” I reply. “Nice to meet you.”

“Thank you for asking about my daughter.”

I was flirting when I did, trying to show that I remembered her, hoping for a smile.

“Unfortunately, she’s not doing well,” Zalika continues. “She was hit by a car and hurt very badly. She’s been in a coma for a week now.”

They were jaywalking across Vermont, Zalika and her twelve-year-old daughter, Amisi. Zalika made it to the curb first and reached into her purse for her ringing phone. A car came barreling out of the setting sun, out of nowhere. The driver slammed on his brakes, but it was too late. Zalika heard the first thud, as the car hit Amisi and sent her flying through the air, and the second, when Amisi crashed back to earth.

She turned and called for her daughter, her heart refusing to acknowledge what her brain already knew. Amisi! Where had she gotten to? That couldn’t be her, that tiny thing lying twisted and bloody in the gutter, arms and legs all at strange angles. Amisi!