Adrift in the Sound (4 page)

FIVE

A FEW DAYS LATER
, Lizette heard a car pull up in front of the house on Franklin Street and went to Sandy’s bedroom window. She watched Rocket lean into his car and haul out his sea bag, then bounce up the walk to the Dog House and disappear inside.

“Rocket’s home,” she told Sandy, who lounged on the bed. “Wonder if he’ll notice?”

Sandy rolled onto her side, didn’t answer.

Next door, Rocket dropped his bag at the foot of the stairs and greeted the Dogs, surveyed his house and friends. The Dogs grunted at him and turned back to the TV.
Something’s different
, Rocket thought, but couldn’t put his finger on it. He sensed things had been moved while he was gone, but wasn’t sure what. He took a sniff.
Furniture polish?

In the kitchen, he found the sink empty. The cracked linoleum had green and white swirls, a pattern he hadn’t noticed before. When he tripped over a garbage bag near the back door, empty beer bottles clinked. Going into the dining room, the piano gleamed. “What the hell happened here?”

“The nut job from next door,” Bomber huffed, tucked his chin into the collar of his Army jacket. Rocket looked puzzled. “You know? Lizette? The one you told me to go get? The one you hired to clean the shitter?”

“I offered to pay her for doing the dishes.” Rocket said, looked confused. “That’s all.”

The Dogs sat in stiff silence. Finally, someone mumbled “Lizette’s a crazy lizard, man.”

Rocket glanced around. The pizza boxes and potato chip bags were gone. The floors were swept and mopped. He searched the crowd, settled on Bomber. “Where is she?”

“Next door,” Bomber said. “She wants money, man.” Then added, “Jerry the landlord came by.”

Rocket headed out and jogged up the sidewalk. At Sandy’s house, he looked into the empty living room, yelled up the stairs and heard a muffled reply. He thundered up the stairs, burst in, found Sandy stretched out on her bed, honey-blonde hair fanned across a pillow, Lizette fluttering over her.

“What’s up?” Rocket stepped to the edge of the bed and scanned Sandy’s short, shapely body. “You sick?”

“Naw, just tired.” She propped herself up. “Quit my job.”

“Bummer,” he said. “What about the rent? Did you pay it? Bomber said the landlord came by.”

“It’s cool.” She settled back into her pillows and covered her eyes. “Would you guys get out of here? You’re making me uptight. I need space. OK?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said and reached for Lizette’s elbow to usher her out, but she avoided his grasp. “You want anything?”

Sandy shook her head as they left.

After about three weeks, Rocket and Lizette had worked out a routine. They slept together sometimes, for comfort, like brother and sister because Rocket was usually too wasted to do much else. But, when he shipped out, he sent her back to Sandy’s, didn’t like her snooping around when he wasn’t there, stirring up the Dogs. While he was gone, Lizette went over and cleaned, hung out in the dining room with Fisher at the piano, sketched cross-legged under the windows, slept under the basement stairs sometimes, skipped Sandy’s place except to take baths and wash a load of clothes. For their part, the Dogs flicked cigarette butts at each other and spit in the dishes. She ignored them.

The house plants had perked up during the past few weeks, Rocket thought, as he relaxed on a day off. He liked the arrangement with Lizette, liked the smell of lavender on his sheets and the sketches she left on his dresser, the folded laundry she put on his bed, his socks actually mated, although not always matched. It felt comfortable, more like a home than a house.

But, except for Fisher, the Dogs were not OK with Lizette. They said she chirped and hummed, usually snatches of Vivaldi, according to Fisher, but as far as the Dogs were concerned, who the hell knew? The men found her several times warbling half naked in front of the dining room windows. Stinky growled, “Chick’s loosing it, man.”

She muttered things about good karma and bad chi. When startled, she squawked like a parrot and flapped her arms, other times she warbled like a canary or clicked like a dolphin.
Built like a lizard, quacks like a duck
, is how Bomber described her. They all agreed she was off her rocker, which straight-up creeped them out.

They noticed she pulled herself together when Rocket came home, stopped dolphin clicking and bird chirping so much. He didn’t see the worst of it, they said. Rocket fed her like a stray cat, leaving dishes with small amounts of food on the stove for her to find. She continued to sort of clean and water the house plants to earn her keep with Rocket. She’d sink into her hidden nest under the basement stairs when Rocket spent the night at Sandy’s.

During the day, she went on walks and collected flowers and foliage from empty lots in the neighborhood and brought them back to the Dog House, put the weedy bouquets in old jars, the floral decay eventually making the house smell like shit, the Dogs groused. Once she put a jar of yellow chrysanthemums on top of the TV and somebody knocked it off while changing the channel, almost shorted it out. They were ready to give her the heave-ho on the spot, but got it working again.

This is what finally did it for the Dogs, what pushed them over the edge. Lizette set a big, old mayonnaise jar on the counter next to the kitchen sink and used it, she explained to Gizzard, who was jonesin’ hard at the time, to develop her special plant fertilizer. The liquid was enriched with egg shells, she said, shaking the emulsion, and jostling the used tampons on the bottom. She told Gizzard, who stared at her with his Adam’s apple bobbing like a turkey, that this was how she captured the iron and minerals her body shed so she could recycle them back to Mother Earth.

He sat down hard and missed the chair, hit the floor like a satchel of rusty tools. When the Dogs heard Gizzard crash, they charged in, thinking he’d seized out. He was moaning “mayonnaise” when they helped him up. She told them the poor guy fainted while she was talking about house plants and waved toward the jar by the sink. The Dogs backed away. They huddled and decided they couldn’t take it anymore. She had to go.

So, when Rocket got back to the house, the Dogs, like always, were sitting in the living room on the mismatched sofa and upholstered chairs, unconcerned about the stuffing popping out. They’d tossed chip bags and pizza crusts on the bare floor like usual, and they’d made up their minds. They focused on the TV and ignored the Christmas tinsel Lizette had hung throughout the house in March.

Nobody said anything to Rocket now. He stood there and they ignored him. Someone got up and fussed with the scrap of tin foil pinched to the tip of one rabbit ear on the antenna to improve the TV’s reception. They all sat with folded arms. Rocket was going to be the one to put her out. They’d decided. It was his idea to bring her in. He would get rid of her, but this time for good. They’d checked with Sandy, who said she didn’t give a rip what they did with her. She agreed Lizette was out to lunch and said she didn’t want to get involved.

Rocket saw it was no use, not worth fighting the Dogs over, and drove Lizette to Pike Place Market on a rainy Friday morning, handed her the forty dollars he owed her for cleaning. She cried, asked if it meant they were breaking up, put her head against the car window, rubbed her eyes, pulled at the little gold hoop in her nose, chirped, he thought, like a broken-winged sparrow. He told her no, but didn’t have the heart to tell her they’d never actually been a couple and that he didn’t know what she was talking about. He thanked her for helping around the house, said she’d done a good job, gave her another ten dollars, reached across her and opened the passenger-side door. He watched from the car as she moved on her stilted crane legs through the crowd of shoppers before he lost sight of her. He sort of liked the skinny little bird, he thought, and almost got out of the car to call her back, thought about the Dogs, shook off the impulse, drove away.

SIX

IT SNOWED A FEW DAYS LATER
, dropped about a half foot on the city. The folks under the freeway built a fire in an old barrel and Lizette huddled with them, her hands extended to the flames to melt the numbness before she rolled up in the moving blanket she’d copped from the loading dock of a furniture warehouse down the street and slept fitfully. In the morning they found the old man everyone called “Funny Sonny” dead in his bedroll. Somebody called the cops to pick up the body. They came, took a look around at the camp, said something about vagrants, and called for a paddy wagon. They were loading people into the back when Lizette slipped away and headed back to the Dog House, nowhere else to go.

She climbed in an unlatched basement window and settled into the pile of blankets she’d ditched under the basement stairs, eventually thawed out and fell asleep to the furnace’s low humming. A commotion upstairs rattled her awake and she crawled up the dusty stairs to check it out through the door crack. Cadillac Carl, the dope dealer, had blown in and stood in the hall with two brown paper bags in his arms, frosty March air trailing him from the front door. She watched him eye the Dogs, who sat bunched in front of the TV, and pull his lips into a sly smile that cloaked a missing tooth.

Somebody wheezed, “Hey Carl,” and he tossed a nod to the room, rubbed the blood-stained gauze wrapped around his right hand. He held out the greasy bags. The Dogs leaned toward him, squinting in the blue light from the TV. He tipped his head toward the piano and set the bags on top.

“Chow fun, knuckleheads.” He broke off a hard laugh, pulled white containers out of the bags, lined them up on the piano’s sleek ebony surface, said flatly, “Belly up, boys.”

Mesmerized by the unexpected appearance of their dope dealer, the Dogs roused and waved beer bottles. Cadillac Carl opened one of the cartons and the brassy smell of garlic and broccoli escaped. All at once, as if executing a long-practiced play, swearing and laughing, the Dogs jumped up and rushed the piano, Gizzard tried to pump Carl’s bandaged hand, which he held to his chest.

Bomber clapped him on the back, said, “When’d you get out?” Not waiting for an answer, he jockeyed for position around the piano and the food.

In the excitement, no one noticed the basement door ajar, didn’t see Lizette lying on her belly at the top of the stairs, holding a wool scarf over her mouth to stuff any stray sounds. She waited, hoped there’d be something left to eat when they all finally fell asleep. Then she’d grab it and slink back under the basement stairs, eat and sleep until the coast was clear again.

“You sumbitch, Carl, why didn’t you call?” Rocket said, peering into a carton, finding only white rice, reaching for another one. “We heard the cops picked you up last night, man. Thought if you were holding, you’d be goin’ down, for sure.”

Cadillac Carl cracked wooden chop sticks apart and poked around in the steaming cartons.

“They couldn’t hold me.” He pulled a fried prawn out, held it neatly in the pincers, and bit the body in two. “Didn’t have nothin’ on me.”

He looked Rocket in the eye. “I never touched that bitch. I don’t care what she said. Don’t even know her name.”

“Sure,” Rocket said, blinking, smacking his lips.

Cadillac Carl stopped talking, put the greasy prawn on the piano, rocked back on the heels of his scuffed cowboy boots, rubbed his knuckles under the bandage with his good hand, scanned the stubbly faces. A Dog threw down a grimy knit cap on the piano to mark his place and charged for the kitchen, returned with a cracked plate. The others peeled off the rim and went to the kitchen—jerked drawers open, ran water, rattled dishes, returned with bowls and cups and twisted forks.

Cadillac Carl stepped back from the pack and let them have at it. He took a mental head count: Stinky, Bomber, Gizzard, Rocket, Slick and Rainman. Toothless Smiley. Pee Wee. Almost all here, he thought, then saw Fuzzy squeezed into a corner, eyes downcast, avoiding his gaze.

“Looks cleaned up in here. What happened?” Carl glanced around.

Somebody spat, “Lizette.”

“Where’s Lizette?” he said, checking faces. “I heard she was crashing here.”

“Doing thirty days in county for vagrancy,” Pee Wee said. The Dogs laughed. Lizette watched, anger flickering in her empty stomach.

“Not really,” Bomber said. “Rocket threw her out last week.”

“That’s a lie, douche bag,” Rocket grumped. “You guys wanted her out, said she was nuts. So, now she’s out. It wasn’t my idea. I thought she was kind of handy to have around. Cleaned the crapper, which is more than you guys do.”

Lizette choked on her scarf, almost got up from the dusty landing and stormed the piano, but fought the urge to bust in and throw broccoli beef in their stupid, junkie faces. She willed herself to stay calm and swallowed her chirps and clicks. She vowed to bide her time and find a way to get even with all of them, except Rocket.

Cadillac Carl looked the men over.
Desperate junkies ain’t good for business
, he thought, chasing a rice grain across the piano top with his chopsticks.
They do stupid things. Knock over old ladies for purses, boost cars, attack pharmacy clerks, hold up banks
. He remembered one client who went into a Washington Mutual branch downtown and wrote a stickup note on the deposit slip for his own account. The cops were waiting when he got home with his fix. They wanted to know who he bought his shit from. Cadillac Carl took a quick Mexican vacation, which turned out to be a lucky break because he hooked up with some big-time connections down there who now were his steady suppliers.

The crowd roared on the TV and a few of the Dogs went to check out the action. The Sonics scored, pulled ahead. The game paused for halftime. With curses and beers and laughter bubbling all around, they came back to the piano. Cadillac Carl explained in a sarcastic tone that the barfly, who claimed he hit her in the eye last night at the tavern, changed her story, went into the police station and told them she’d decided not to press charges after all.

“Smart,” somebody said under his breath.

“Yeah, but when’d they let you out?” Fuzzy asked, checked Cadillac’s face to see how the question went down.

Cadillac Carl studied Fuzzy’s tousled hair and bloodshot eyes, pants sagging loosely from his skinny waist. He set his jaw, narrowed his eyes to hot blue vents. Fuzzy hoisted his pants, scooped fried rice into a mug with quick spoon strokes, like he wasn’t afraid, just busy eating.

They called him Fuzzy, not for what was growing wildly on his head, but for the tangled thicket elsewhere. His fuzziness used to delight the ladies, but that was before his world narrowed to the point of a needle and all his thoughts focused on his next fix.

“Got out about five this morning,” Cadillac Carl said to the group. “After the coroner carried out the guy who OD’d in my cell. Real blabber mouth until he checked out.”

On the TV, the announcer droned,
“And, now a news break. NASA says Skylab, the nation’s first orbiting research station, is being prepared for launch. Once in place, the station will be operated by three-man crews. The value of the dollar has dropped more than ten percent and economists see a worsening recession … Officials say young voters are failing to register now that 18 year olds can go to the polls … Now, back to the game. More news at eleven.”

The front door rattled and Lucky, dragging a leg after an electrical accident when he worked for Puget Power and Light, shuffled in, puffing hard from stumping with his cane the few blocks from his mother’s house. Seeing the grub on the piano, he grabbed a bowl from the kitchen, loaded up, and dumped his chow mein on the rug. Somebody said, “Bummer!”

“Where’s Greg?” Cadillac Carl asked, checking the mess on the floor. Everyone glanced around.

“Next door, at Sandy’s.” Rocket finally said, stuffing a broccoli floret into his mouth with his fingers, crunching, swallowing hard. “Marian’s down from Orcas Island. Got here this afternoon. She’s looking for Lizette. That’s her truck outside.”

Because Lizette had scurried around the backside of the Dog House and shimmied in the basement window, she hadn’t noticed Marian’s truck out front. She felt a head-spinning urgency to talk to Marian now, thought about slithering down the dusty wooden steps and slipping out, making a run for Sandy’s house, but didn’t want to risk calling attention to herself or having to deal with Sandy, who’d pretty much given her the shaft.

Cadillac Carl leveled a look at Rocket hot enough to melt gum on the sidewalk in January. “The guy owes me, man.”

“He’s good for it, Carl … Lighten up, would ya? He’s a friend.”

“Yeah, well I’m not the Bank of fucking America.” Cadillac Carl smeared a grease smudge on the piano with his pinkie, sucked it, worried that Greg was getting dangerously strung out, too. He’d been asking for dope on credit, paying late.

“How much you need?” Rocket looked around. The Dogs stared at Carl in the sallow light, chewing suspended.

“I’ll take a hundred now, catch up with Greg for the rest later,” he said in an ominous tone. The Dogs resumed chewing after Rocket went upstairs, but didn’t say much. He came back and counted five twenties onto the piano top.

“Got a little surprise,” Cadillac Carl said to the huddle around the piano. “Dessert.”

He felt in the bottom of one of the paper bags pushed into a heap in the middle of the piano top. He pulled out a length of amber-colored rubber tubing and a small waxed paper bag with white powder. He unfolded a paper napkin to reveal a silver spoon, syringe and clean cotton balls. Stinky wheezed, “Far out, man!” and belched.

“Who’s first?” Cadillac Carl smiled, surveyed the crowd. The Dogs jostled and nipped. One by one, Cadillac Carl tied off the Dogs. They rolled up the sleeves of their old flannel shirts, took a hit, mumbled “Thanks, man,” and staggered back to the TV, plopped into their regular spots as the Sonics began the third quarter. Lizette felt the house’s energy settling, prepared to slip quietly back down the stairs and wait some more before going next door, but watched a moment longer.

Elbowed out, only Fuzzy hadn’t gotten a taste. Speaking in a low tone across the piano to Cadillac Carl, head down, he said, “My turn.” He scratched himself and wiped his nose. The whites of his eyes were yellowed. His once fuzzy blonde hair had thinned and a bald spot showed on top when he bowed before Cadillac Carl under the dim bulb.

“You burned me man,” Cadillac Carl said right out, toying with the syringe, rolling it between his fingers. “I looked for you last night at the bar. Before I got picked up. You know that … You were trying to avoid me, man.”

Carl breathed in and puffed out like a viper. “You haven’t paid up…. I don’t like being messed with.” He looked Fuzzy full in the face. Fuzzy pushed back from the piano.

“Hey man, you know, I got bills,” he said. “I got loitering tickets and court shit. If I was in jail, how would I pay you?”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you do with your money,” Carl said, stepping up to Fuzzy. “All I know is … I get mine.”

“Yeah, I know … I know,” Fuzzy said nodding like a puppet, waving down Cadillac Carl’s volume with outspread hands.

He pushed Fuzzy’s skinny arms away, “Don’t I always come by with good stuff?” Fuzzy nodded. “Can’t you count on me to be here?” Carl spoke louder, sharper.

“Sure … You’re great.” Fuzzy said and kept gesturing to turn down the sound.

One of the Dogs got up and turned up the volume on the TV. The game announcer explained the fine point of a rule after a play was whistled dead, his toupee sitting askew like a wrecked hamster.

“What’re you doing here … anyway?” Carl said.

“Come on, Carl. For chrissakes.”

“You don’t pay, you don’t come around.”

“I swear. I got the money, man.” Fuzzy’s body shook, his teeth chattered. “I’ll get it right after the game.”

“You’ll get it now!”

“I just need a taste, Carl. Come on, man. I’m sick. Just a little bit to keep me going … I feel like I’m dying, man.”

“Fuck you.”

“Let me do the cotton. It don’t cost nothin’ to do the cotton, just strain me up a little from what’s left in the cotton,” he begged and wiped his nose on the sleeve of his dirty shirt. “Keep me going, man. I’ll pay you. I swear it. I always pay you.” Fuzzy wiped pooled tears from his eyes. “Come on, man.”