With Death Laughing Page 3

The following morning dense smog from Los Angeles crowns the nearby mountains. A sullen wind gusts through Cajon Pass into the North End, herding tumbleweeds down Fortieth Street. Birds fleeing the still-burning Devil Canyon fire fly over E Street. As icing on the cake, the heat is crucifying me in Pioneer Park. I hold the tambourine above my head and wail: “Purify the day. Give your money away.”

  To no avail—the donations bucket contains ten cents, two Percocet tabs, an insulin ampule, and one “Vote Trump” campaign button.

  My troubles don’t stop there. I have to pee so badly, I’m knock-kneed. I wish I were nearer to the downtown public library—I could use their restroom. All the homeless do.

  I keep a lookout for Dalton and Cassidy. I don’t see the assholes. No sign of Sugar Child, either. However, the Christmas lights in the windows of El Pueblo restaurant are getting strange. Every other bulb, the green ones, not the red ones, are burning out. Six in the last hour. It’s how I’m marking the passage of time. When they’re all dead, I’ll quit for the day.

  Like I’m not jittery enough, a nut job by the crosswalk—another graduate from Patton State—is watching me. I ignore him. But I keep picking up on his vibes.

  Even in this heat he has a yellow anorak zipped to his neck. A makeshift cape of damaged Christmas tree ornaments covers his shoulders. At his feet is a suitcase, a discolored red cordovan valise. The final touch is the telltale bulge under his left armpit. Isn’t that cute—I’m not the only person packing a rod on E Street.

  He sneaks glances at me, at the ratio of one glance every two minutes, a visual Morse code. The rest of the time, he’s scanning the street, nervously eyeing the gold tinsel garlands hanging from the palm trees.

  Just when I’m about to lose it—I’ve got to take a piss—SWAT sirens ping-pong between Pioneer Park and the mall. The high-pitched squeals followed by two squad cars racing toward Sixth Street. As the police blow through the intersection, the nut job reaches under his anorak. He draws a .45 semi-automatic pistol.

  The last green Christmas light fizzles out in El Pueblo. That’s my cue. Screw it. To hell with it. Enough of this foolishness. Everybody can fuck off. I’m calling it a day. I bend over to snatch the donations bucket. When I straighten up, the cops are gone. The nut job and his suitcase have vanished, too. And I’m glad, because I sincerely do not need anyone’s shit in my life right now.

  NINE

  I drag myself back to the hotel. My rooms are insanely hot, with the faintest taint of a gas leak. The wind rattles a loose windowpane; the sink faucet’s drip greets me from the kitchenette. Footsore, I enthrone myself in the wingback chair. I remove the sacramental cummerbund and place it in my lap. The pistol and tambourine are positioned on the coffee table, the querulous donations bucket is at my feet. It’s a bad night.

  □ □ □

  I’ve been out of prison two weeks. One afternoon—after Rhonda returns from visiting her parents in Barstow—I take a shower with her. The hot-water tap isn’t working too good, but the temperature in the bathroom is steamy. And her body heat can set fire to a house.

  She recently chopped off her hair, which disappoints me. I like it long. But it’s a good cut, done at a ritzy North End salon. Nicely slicked back from her white palisade forehead.

  Water streams down her lightly muscled neck to her delicate shoulder blades. Rivulets drain into her cleavage, her breasts perky, the nipples pointed at me, a bar of Dr. Bronner’s lavender soap in her right hand. I hope the water gets hotter because we pay the bill.

  “Did you miss me?” she asks.

  “Of course I missed you, baby. Did you miss me?”

  “Yeah. A whole lot.”

  “How much?”

  “Let me show you how much.”

  She falls to her knees without using her hands. It’s an acrobatic feat—the shower stall’s porcelain floor is harder than a rock. She bends forward, neck arched, a blue vein pulsing below her jawline. Nostrils flaring, she sniffs me. In one fell swoop, she inserts me in her mouth, taking me to the bristle.

  I slump against the stall’s back wall, lukewarm nozzle water pounding my skull. I’m not the most well-hung man in the world. Thankfully, she won’t gag on me.

  But I want to watch myself. I need to see what she’s doing. The sight will increase my pleasure—the beauty of her mouth, her eyes tight with beatific resolve. I look for a split second. I gurgle: “Babykins, what’s wrong with your back?”

  She disgorges me. “What do you mean?”

  Her normally smooth back is a field of irritated red bumps. I reach out and touch one. It feels hot and pebbly. “This.”

  “Oh, that? It’s a flea bite.”

  I repeat after her: “A flea bite? All over your back?”

  “Yeah, whatever. My parents have a new cat. When I was there, I slept with it one night. And I got flea bites, a billion of them. They itch like shit. It’s fucked up, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it is. Girl?”

  “What?”

  “I can’t do this now.”

  “Why not? I’m doing all the work here. Just relax. You’re always so fucking uptight.”

  “I know, I know. I’m going crazy. I can’t help it.”

  The moment has gotten too complicated. The parts that made it whole are coming apart. Like an airplane losing a wing in mid-flight.

  I shut the water off and weep.

  □ □ □

  Rhonda is gone. Weeks gone. Long gone. And yet my thoughts stray to Sugar Child. They regularly do when I’m alone and swimming in self-pity. I can still taste her kiss, the piquant tang and texture of her chapped lips. The cough-syrup flavor of her tongue. But now I must sleep; I really must. It’s been so long since I slept.

  TEN

  Last night I mistook a streetlight for the moon. I’m still feeling a little funky this afternoon—the smoke from the Devil Canyon fire is getting to me. But I blame the sun, the damn sun—it never extends a comforting shadow.

  The little girl with her dope-fiend mother approaches me in Pioneer Park. I’m surrounded by the donations bucket and a cast-off Christmas wreath I found in a garbage dumpster. The wreath, with its velvety red ribbons, albeit creased with mud, lends a festive zing to my presentation.

  The girl clutches a G.I. Joe combat doll, one of the older models. The doll is half naked, missing its pants, a look of distaste engraved on its plastic face. With her other hand, the girl tugs at her mother’s army surplus jacket.

  “Honey, let go of my coat. You’re gonna tear it.”

  The kid checks me out with an expression that’s half Jean Seberg in Saint Joan and half Marlon Brando. A facial dialectic hewn from stoic resignation about what the future has in store for her. In tandem with a fount of volcanic rage. All tied together by uncertainty.

  Her pinched face belongs to someone who’s found out way too young that an awareness of life comes from a proximity to death. In this instance, that happens to be her mother. The woman’s long brown hair is matted and unwashed. Her thin patrician features are pitted and scored with moles and wrinkles.

  The girl puts on her best tough-guy act. She torques her face into a passable television-gangster scowl. Chin up, eyes blazing. “Pastor?”

  “Yes, my daughter? What is it that you need?”

  “Can you ask god to bring us a nice Christmas?”

  I must not lie. It is a sin. Horribly so. For her sake, I will. “You bet I can. I have the know-how.”

  “You can get the job done?”

  “I’ve got the tools and the skills.”

  “How do I know you’re the real thing?”

  “Because I’ve paid my dues.”

  “You’re no perpetrator?”

  “No additives or preservatives. No MSG.”

  “For sure?”

  I level a first-class stare at the girl, fortified with all the historical consciousness I have at my disposal. A stare that transmits the essentials of my worldview. Read my eyes, child. In our time, identities are permeab
le, if not interchangeable. Yet certain truths remain inviolate. History favors the poor. Tomorrow belongs to you.

  I whinny: “I’m the real deal. The last show in town.”

  She lets out a charming giggle. We get down to business. I flip the donations bucket upside down. I lower my haunches onto the makeshift seat. I extend my right arm to her. “Let me help you make your dreams real.”

  The girl’s wee nose burns red with embarrassment. Her mother gives her an affectionate nudge. “C’mon, honey. I ain’t got all afternoon. Talk to him, will you?”

  She launches herself in one short hop and bounds onto my lap. The kid is surprisingly light. Holding her is like cradling someone who’s not completely in this world, but in some other world, too. A place where no one can go unless she invites them.

  She looks up at me, peruses the rust-brown bloodstains on my robe. She gives me the benefit of the doubt by not saying anything about them. Then she invites me into that other world of hers with a whiff of licorice-flavored breath brushing my cheek: “I’m Sally. And my mom is Crazy Diane.”

  The girl’s mother, with intuitive streetwise wisdom, has discreetly stepped beyond earshot. She’s energetically panhandling a passing tech employee for a cigarette.

  “Why is your mother called that?”

  “She smokes rocks.”

  “A lot?”

  “When she’s got money. And even when she doesn’t.”

  “And where do the two of you live?”

  “Pioneer Motel on Fifth Street.”

  “Where’s your dad?”

  “Pelican Bay.”

  I do a tally. Her father is upstate in the pen. Her mother smokes crack. They reside in an SRO motel room. No wonder the G.I. Joe doll she owns looks so rough-and-tumble. Living at the Pioneer is rugged. Cockroaches on the ceiling. No place to cook.

  “So what do you want for Christmas?”

  I know what she’ll say—she will ask for a miracle. She’ll demand a world where the refrigerator is always full. Where spaghetti simmers on the stove, an apple pie in the oven. In a pip-squeak trill, she announces: “I want my mom in rehab.”

  Crazy Diane overhears her daughter’s wish. She cackles, visibly pleased, two pink spots on her dead-white cheeks. “That would be a nice gift, sweetie.” She then crosses the sidewalk to accost an off-duty bus driver still in uniform. He’s got a pint-sized Christmas tree stashed under his left arm. She taps his hand, asking him for spare change.

  I want this moment to last forever—Sally holding her G.I. Joe doll. Her mother snickering when the bus driver says, “No, no change here.” The wind molesting the empty nickel bags on the pavement. The mad sunlight dappling El Pueblo’s windows. Ordinarily, I don’t enjoy sustained moments—steeped as they often are in mistakes, problems, and failures. But this moment is a jewel.

  I tell Sally: “I can’t promise anything. Most rehab places are overbooked. But I’ll get on the job, don’t you worry.”

  Satisfied with that response, Sally bounces off my lap and runs to her mother. She takes Crazy Diane by the hand. The saintly child and despoiled mother soldier up E Street to the mall.

  I stretch my legs. I sneeze several times. All in all, I’m tickled by my performance. Not bad for a half-assed ex-con. If I could make the day end on this note, I would. Let things rest. Let injured souls make a hegira to happiness. Let the donations bucket brim with gold. Let the tambourine jangle with merriment. Is anyone listening?

  ELEVEN

  Apparently, no one is listening.

  The second Sally and her mother disappear from sight, Dalton and Cassidy materialize by my side. They arrive out of nowhere, how plainclothes men always do, imitating the dead with their quietness. Their flannel shirttails hang loose over sagging gun belts, the wind teases their long hair.

  I soothe myself: it’s been a glorious day. These assholes are a mirage. They’re nothing but a bad dream. I’ll kill them tonight in my sleep. You wait and see. I’ll kill them good.

  Dalton begins our conversation with a sprinkling of insincere pleasantries. “Pastor, it’s great to see you again. Really great. I’m stoked.”

  I lay it on thick in the same phony spirit. “And you, my son. What a delightful occasion this is. Our renewed communion. Worthy of celebration and revelry. All is well?”

  “That’s what I want to talk to you about.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m unhappy. Things ain’t going too swift.”

  “I hate to ask. What’s the problem?”

  “Let me explain it to you.”

  Wordlessly, with a practiced flourish, Dalton reaches out, spins me around, and employs his arm like a nutcracker on my neck. Here we go. Tighten your seat belt. I’m off to the rodeo.

  Getting chokeholded, you crave two things. Maybe three. First, you want your feet on the ground. If they’re not, you’re screwed. Two, you don’t want your neck broken. Forget passing out, that’s too romantic—you just don’t want to die.

  Too bad you can’t have it both ways. Since I weigh a hundred pounds less than Dalton, my feet say goodbye to the sidewalk without the slightest hesitation.

  I dangle inches off the pavement. Dalton is cooing in my ear, “You little shit,” like he’s reciting a nursery rhyme. But I’m not a little shit. Not me.

  Please tell me this isn’t happening. That I’m imagining it. That all the hours staring into the bottom of the empty donations bucket is worth it. That when I chant, help the needy, help the poor, pleading with the world until my throat is raw, it’s for a good cause. Wasn’t I cool to that little girl Sally?

  I guess I wasn’t cool enough.

  I separate my body from my mind.

  I’m high above everything. Ahead of me is cottony white light. Isn’t that where you go when you bite the dust? I don’t want that. Not death. Not now. I switch directions. Soon enough, I find what I’m looking for. A place with no pain.

  There are three parts to the picture. Dalton scowling. Cassidy standing off to one side, uninterested. And me, chokeholded in Dalton’s meaty arms.

  Dalton hisses: “You’re an ex-con, aren’t you?”

  It’s not fair, him bringing up the past. And at this particular moment. My personal history is none of his concern—I’m jolted when he mentions Rhonda by her maiden name. The very sound of it turns my stomach.

  “Your wife was Rhonda Dukowsky, right? She’s a piece of work. You two must be quite a pair. You took a fall for her. What did it get you? A felony conviction. You stupid fucking dork.”

  One night slightly more than five years ago, Rhonda and I are drinking at La Loca, a neighborhood bar that’s been infiltrated by the new tech crowd. She and I are at a corner table with glasses of the house wine. A younger white cat barges into us, causing Rhonda to spill her drink.

  Never one to shy away from conflict, she gets in his face, telling him to buy her another glass of wine. He’s three sheets to the wind and says no. I advise him to apologize. He bursts out laughing: “You faggot.”

  Faggot. I’ve been called that more than my own name. Like the word is printed on my forehead. With people just repeating what they see. To prove they’re literate.

  When he says it again, Rhonda directs her wine glass to remap his face.

  Without any further ado, she and I scatter. It turns out her victim is a prominent tech executive. While waiting at the bar for medical attention, he tells SWAT inspectors he doesn’t remember who glassed him, Rhonda or me.

  That night the police pull us in for questioning. Right off the bat, I take the rap for Rhonda. I do it out of marital generosity. I do it on impulse, the way I do everything. At first, the cops think I’m lying. A week later I’m arrested. After a lightning-fast trial, I am sentenced to a nickel in the state pen at Muscupiabe for assault with a deadly weapon.

  Dalton pokes a finger up my nose. “Where is he, Pastor?”

  I sputter: “Who’s that?”

  “The damn Mexican that’s robbing banks.”

>   “I don’t know shit.”

  “Kiss my ass. You’re lying. You’ve seen him.”

  E Street is the epicenter of the universe—I see thousands of people each day. And I don’t judge bank robbers. I accept everyone for who they are. Because everybody is an injured soul.

  Dalton drops me onto the sidewalk. I am far away, in a place with no pain. A place where I’m second only to Superman. Fading sunlight stretches in a line across my face. Shadows do not enter the picture. Where are you, Sugar Child?

  TWELVE

  These aren’t the days I’m living for.

  Dalton terminates our chat by kicking me in the ribs. Then he and Cassidy turn around and stalk off. Dazed, I manage to roll over and sit upright. El Pueblo’s red Christmas lights silhouette me as I telegraph a message to my feet: we need to get the hell out of here.

  The growing twilight is perfumed with smog, the opalescent moon a sliver tacked in the soot-gray sky. Women and men attired in formal evening wear are passing through the Mill Street checkpoint on their way to a holiday pageant at the Orange Show grounds. I slink by the shuttered Crest Theatre, recalling the night I saw Brewster McCloud. Bud Cort starred as a kid who built a pair of wings so he could fly.

  I’m not a star. That’s painfully self-evident. Life isn’t pretty without lipstick. Yet I’ve paroled out of prison. And I have a paying job. I also entertain dreams—no matter how flimsy those dreams are, they guide me through shoals of fear and self-hatred. But getting my ass whipped by Dalton is a homicidal truth: I’m boatless in limbo.

  A letter from Blessed World awaits me at home. I rarely get mail. I’m surprised by the letter. And I don’t like surprises. I take the letter over to the wingback chair. I plop into the seat, the cushions squeaking under my bruised cheeks. Using my thumb, I tear open the envelope. Out slides a single typed page:

  this notice is to inform you that your services as a donations solicitor are no longer required by our organization. the personnel department has reviewed your file. they have determined you are morally unfit for the position you occupy. we have discovered you are a felon with a prison record. your name has been removed from the priesthood’s rolls. you have been defrocked. please come by the main office to return your uniform. you are responsible for its condition. any damages will be deducted from your wages. god bless you.