Richard Lange - Sweet Nothing

EDWARD OFFERS ME a cigar, but I turn him down. It’s two p.m., and most of the pool is in shade. Star is floating in the last sunny patch on a blow-up raft, wailing along to a song only she can hear through her headphones.

Edward is pissed. His car got towed last night, and he doesn’t have the money to bail it out. He asks if I’ll loan him three hundred dollars. I tell him I’m broke.

“What about Fatty?” he says.

Things haven’t been going well for Edward. He was laid off from his job, his new tattoo got infected, and now the car. The dude is furious, all jacked up on resentment and indignation. His bare foot taps out a spastic beat on the cement of the pool deck, and he keeps tightening and releasing the muscles in his neck and jaw.

A jet slides across the blue rectangle of open sky above us. I finish my beer and wonder if I’ll be able to sleep today. Star pulls herself onto the lip of the pool. She throws back her head and shakes out her hair like there’s a camera on her. Edward exhales a cloud of stinking smoke. He points at Star with the red-hot cherry of his stogie and asks me, “How much do you think someone would pay to fuck that?”

MONDAY AT EIGHT a.m. I’m making breakfast sandwiches for a couple of cops and trying to figure out what to do on my night off. The big cop is teasing the little cop about something, and the little cop doesn’t want to hear it. He keeps turning away and saying, “Okay, man, okay.” They both have shaved heads and perfect white teeth.

Zalika walks into the restaurant, and I almost don’t recognize her. That I’ve never seen her in the daytime might be part of it, but she’s also carrying herself differently, back straight, head held high. She has a big smile on her face, and suddenly I’m smiling too. The cops look over their shoulders to see what could make a man light up that way.

She steps to the counter when they rush off to respond to a call. She reaches out to take my hand, and a thousand volts of something leap from her into me and sizzle up my arm into my chest.

“You won’t believe it,” she says.

“What?”

“Amisi came out of the coma an hour before they were supposed to disconnect her, and she’s breathing on her own now.”

I’m as excited as if it were one of my own kids. I let out a whoop and slap the counter.

“The doctors are amazed,” Zalika continues. “There seems to be no permanent damage.”

A few nurses walk up and stand behind Zalika, waiting to order.

“You want coffee?” I ask her.

“No, no, I’ve had too much already.” She moves aside and motions the nurses forward. “Please, go ahead.”

I make the nurses’ sandwiches, wrap them, bag them. Zalika waits patiently.

“So what happens next?” I ask when the nurses leave.

“She’s being transferred to a hospital in Glendale,” Zalika says. “It’s closer to home and has an excellent rehabilitation program. She’ll be in physical therapy for a month or so but should be able to start school with her friends in September.”

And then it hits me: she’s here to say good-bye. I keep smiling, but my mind races behind it. I picture the two of us sitting down to dinner in a quiet restaurant, me in my Goodwill jacket and tie. She leans across the table and says, “Tell me about yourself,” and where do I start? “Well, I once had to explain a bloody syringe to my nine-year-old.”

More customers pile in. A cabdriver, a couple of doctors, a Scientologist in his goofy military uniform on leave from the big blue church down the street. Zalika takes a gift-wrapped box from her purse and lays it on the counter.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“A present, for being so kind,” Zalika replies.

“Come on,” I say.

“You don’t know,” she says. “Having you to talk to was important.”

She’s a nice person, and this is what nice people do.

“Well, thanks,” I say. “Should I open it now?”

“No, no,” she says quickly. “Wait until you get home.”

She takes my hand again, squeezes it, then turns away.

“Good luck,” she says as she walks out the door.

“Good luck to you,” I reply.

I WALK HOME instead of taking the bus, which is like a crowded coffin at this time of day. The city is wide awake and all a-rumble. The Russian who owns the liquor store is hosing down the sidewalk. He smiles around his cigarette and directs the stream of water into the gutter so I can pass. A city maintenance crew is doing roadwork. The sound of the jackhammer makes my heart stutter behind my ribs. A hundred degrees by afternoon, the radio said. The start of a heat wave.

When I get back to the apartment, I sit at the little dining-room table with Zalika’s gift in front of me. Distant explosions rattle the bedroom door. Troy’s TV. I unwrap the box and open it. It’s a watch, a nice Bulova. Stainless steel, tiny diamonds sparkling around the dial. I once lived in a world where men wore watches like this, but not anymore. The jackals around here would cut my arm off for it. I’ll put it on eBay and bank the couple hundred bucks I get.

I want to show the watch to Troy, but he doesn’t answer when I knock. Maybe he’s already on his walk, left the History Channel blaring. I open the door a crack and peek in to make sure. He’s lying on his back on the bed. His mouth is wide open, his eyes too.

“Troy,” I call out. “Buddy.”

He doesn’t respond. On the TV a kamikaze plane plows into the deck of an aircraft carrier and disintegrates into smoke and flame and white-hot shrapnel.

A MASSIVE HEART attack. That’s what Troy’s parents tell me. He died in his sleep, they say, never knew what hit him. I hope that’s true.

“He was doing so great,” I say as I help his mom and dad box up his possessions. “Exercising, eating right, losing weight.”

His mom is still suffering. She has to sit down every few minutes and fight back tears. I overheard her telling her husband how disgusting this place is. Pomp and Circumstance, Troy called them. His dad once asked him not to come home for Thanksgiving because seeing him so fat would make the other guests uncomfortable.

“I hope you told him to fuck off,” I said.

Troy shrugged. “They’re a little confused,” he said.

I only knew him for four months, and if his parents had asked, I wouldn’t have been able to tell them much about his life. His favorite food was pizza. He enjoyed war movies and old TV game shows. I don’t think he was ever serious about moving to Berlin and marrying that girl, but I think he liked thinking he was. He could hold his liquor. He didn’t believe in God.

I GIVE TROY’S ghost a week to clear out before I begin to sleep in the bedroom. Just when I start to worry how I’m going to make rent, Best Buy calls. They put me in personal electronics, but inside of a month I’m in charge of the computer department. It’s enough for me to pay my bills, eat out once in a while, and give Edward and Star some gas money for their drive back to Florida.

Both my kids e-mail me on my birthday, Kyle a cartoon of five fat pink pigs farting out “Happy Birthday,” Gwennie a little note addressed to Dear Old Dad. I call their mother and update her on my situation. She’s happy to hear I’m getting my act together but still hems and haws when I ask if she’ll let me see the children if I come to Utah.

“All I’m asking is that you think about it,” I say.

“I will,” she says.

I take a beer down to the pool. The swatch of night sky overhead is a livid purple, too bright for stars. Lights are blazing inside the apartments on both floors of the complex, and all around me people are settling in after a long day. They eat dinner, watch TV, talk to friends. It feels good to be in the middle of it.