Halfway House (9 page)

Then a splash destroyed the vision. A man swam down to him, grasped him by the hair and pulled him to the surface. He felt the heat of the sun on his cold skin, but nothing more. He couldn’t breathe. Even now he felt his eyes glazing over, the sky dimming as a film descended across his vision.

Dez was thrown to the rocky scrabble of the shore. The man knelt beside him and cleared Dez’s throat. He pressed his lips to Dez’s. A feeling of warmth suffused him. Then the man’s lips were gone, replaced by the sound of knocks on a faraway door and the feeling of his chest being compressed.

Wrapped in the embrace of the sun, everything went dark.

Peace.

Silence.

Tranquility.

The surf came…

A wave struck him and his eyes snapped open. The sky was a burnished gray. There was nothing but water as far as he could see. It was still, not even a wind to disturb the surface. In the distance was a glowing dot on the horizon.

He knelt on his surfboard, his butt pressed to his heels. Dipping both hands in the water he began to paddle toward the light. The water seemed heavier than normal and had a tackiness about it. When he lifted his hands from the viscous liquid, it came with him in elasticized filaments that snapped back to the water’s surface.

He considered just floating for a while, but he felt an imperative to discover what the light was and with no breeze and no tide, he’d never get there without paddling. So he lay his body upon the board and steeled himself for the alien feel of the liquid. Dipping his arms up to his elbows, he began to pull his way through the water with dramatic difference. The light drew closer. He could make out a structure. Within minutes he realized it was the halfway house on South Pacific. He’d never really given the place much notice, other than it was where he drove by every day on his way to the cove. If this was the afterlife, then why was that his destination? Where was heaven? Where was hell?

Suddenly his fingers scraped against something beneath the surface of the water. With a howl, he jerked them free, the effort almost overturning him. He examined his fingertips as if they’d reveal what he’d just touched, but they were as silent as this strange universe. It wasn’t that the mysterious thing had caused him pain; it had merely surprised him.

Tentatively he dipped his fingers back into the brine and felt around. He pushed his hand deeper until he finally felt something hard and unforgiving. It felt like a stick, but when it moved and wrapped itself around his fingers in an implausible grip, he knew it couldn’t be a stick.

It felt like a hand.

Dez jerked his arm, but it wouldn’t come free. He tried to adjust his position for better leverage, but found the position precarious as the surfboard rocked beneath him. The last thing he wanted was to land in the water and meet face-to-face with whatever was attached to the hand that was, even now, gripping him tighter and tighter.

But he couldn’t free himself from the mysterious grip. He paddled around it, hoping that like a fishing snag, there was an angle in which it would come free. Finally, with one great jerk, his hand was once again his own, but with the ponderous momentum of a nightmare, he felt himself overbalancing. His arms windmilled for a panicked moment and he hit the water, face-first and sinking.

His eyes shot open and beheld a vivid green universe of underwater carnage. Gone was the murkiness of brine, replaced by a green-hued landscape of the damned, as clear and succinct as vision at high summer noon. An army of the dead greeted him, waving with the tide like seaweed. Legs disappeared into the rocky bottom, seemingly held there like metal sunk into concrete. Some were mere skeletons. Others were decomposing, clothes reduced to rags from the ebb and flow of the water. All of them seemed to watch him, their multitudinous examination filling him with terror.

He spied his board on the surface and pushed toward it, but got no more than a foot before he felt a tug at his ankle. He pushed against the water again and felt himself held fast. Looking behind, he spied hands from a tiny form grasping his left ankle like it was a baseball bat. He pulled at his leg, but couldn’t gain any traction in the water. What was it that had him? Fear unhinged him as he realized it was the decomposing form of a child that could be no more than two years old, its feet anchored in the soil.

He flailed madly. Air escaped his lungs. He kicked at the dead child with his left foot and watched as his heel intersected with the tiny skull. Once. Twice. Three times. The grinning face fell to the side as the neck broke. What was left of a cheek rested on the child’s shoulder, but it still wouldn’t release.

Dez clawed frantically to reach the surface, his chest burning with the desire to live. But he was finally forced to inhale and let the water surge down into his lungs.

Though he was prepared to die, it never happened. He found that he didn’t need to breathe. He glanced around and saw the child receding.

Of course. He was already dead. Why did he need to breathe?

Before he reached the surface, a hand grasped him. Then another and another. Until he felt himself propelled forward as the anchored dead moved him hand over hand just beneath the waves. Soon he noticed the glow once more, a sign he was heading toward the halfway house again.

An hour passed. A day. A year. Time meant nothing to him, but eventually he came to the roots of the building—great oozing tentacles that were sunk deep in the earth. The hands released him and he floated free for a moment until a smaller, lithe tentacle shot free from the house and grasped him around the waist. Without ceremony, it slammed him into the earth nearest the house, his legs sinking past the ankles. The tentacle retracted and he found himself anchored, just as all the other dead had been anchored.

When he looked up, he saw those next to him rise from their anchorage, take two steps away to give him room, and then sink once again in the soil, letting their arms drift toward the surface. Far into the distance, the legion of dead mimicked this movement, taking two steps away toward oblivion, then sinking to their eternal anchorage.

Eventually he let his arms drift upward and felt the tug against his legs. The ebb and flow of the universe took him like a length of seaweed. He couldn’t help but feel disappointed at this destiny, and heard his own thoughts whispered on the currents of the sea as the dead resumed a conversation that had only been interrupted by his own admission into eternity.

The rocks were murder. By taking the low road around Point Fermin rather than the road above, Bobby had subjected himself to crossing tidal pools, weaving around debris and scrambling over boulders that had fallen from the cliff. He’d twisted his ankle a dozen times and was lucky he had boots on or else the joint might have been snapped in two. As it was, slogging over the uneven ground in wet leather was only slightly less miserable than doing the same thing drunk. Not that he was completely snockered, but he’d finished the bottle of Cluny in a few gulps before tossing it into Davy Jones for safe keeping. Now he rode the leading edge of a nasty buzz.

Twice he passed Mexican families diving and scrambling over the tide pools, desperate to find sea urchins to resell to the tourists farther up the coast. From Grandma to little
papito
, every member of the family worked together. If only he’d seen that familial cooperation with Kanga. Bastard didn’t even want to accept a gift from his own daughter.

Once Bobby passed the body of a seal, its head bitten clean off. Blue and green bottle flies dueled above the corpse as the waves washed red foam. Bobby’s gorge rose when the smell hit him. Uncontrollable burrito spew joined the offal and was washed to sea.

When he eventually rounded the corner at Cabrillo Beach, he felt like shit. He found outdoor showers used to hose sand off families before they returned to their cars and stood beneath one, letting the water wash away his sweat and the effects of Cluny. He gulped huge amounts, trying in vain to moisten his parched throat.

He didn’t look up until an elderly Mexican began shouting for him to move. Bobby noticed the line of children waiting to use the shower head. He realized he must look like a bum—like the homeless man he truly was. There he stood in a baseball cap, T-shirt, jeans and steel-toed boots, taking a public shower in broad daylight. He’d gotten the attention of a lifeguard who was marching purposefully toward him.

Jesus fuck. Who was Bobby becoming?

He lurched away, heading toward the street. No one gave chase except for his own embarrassment, which snapped at his heels like a dog. When he hit South Pacific Avenue, he turned right, heading down the hill. Passing Fort MacArthur, he soon found himself before the halfway house. But this time, instead of passing like he had so many times before, he stopped. About a dozen men and women meandered in front of the two-story structure, each walking his or her own complicated path. They moved around him, occasionally brushing against him; still he remained unnoticed.

Wringing hands, sobbing, swollen eyes, for a second they seemed less like rehabilitated junkies and more like funeral goers. The expressions of desperate longing on their faces sought more than a fix. Their murmuring was a beehive buzz, constant and unintelligible. The only one not moving was a young black man with
bling
on his wrist, neck and fingers, who stared resolutely into the air, his neck at a forty-five-degree angle.

Someone grabbed his wrist. “Please. Can you spare a dollar?”

“Does it look like I can?” Bobby jerked his arm free and staggered away, right into the bosom of a large Mexican woman.

“Can you help my son? He didn’t mean to do it. It wasn’t his fault.” Her heavily accented voice cracked. Her imploring eyes threatened to drag him in.

Bobby averted his gaze, lowered his head and pushed past her as nervous claustrophobia took hold. He didn’t need their problems. He had enough of his own. He crossed at the light, and then moved to the other side of the street.

Almost kitty-corner to the halfway house was a bar called The Spot, made famous by San Pedro’s
poet laureate
, Charles Bukowski. Kanga had one of his books and had tried to get Bobby to read it, but he’d have none of it. He’d seen the movie
Barfly
, and if Mickey Rourke had played the character with any accuracy, then Bukowski was an asshole.

Bobby found two wet dollars balled in his right front pocket and exchanged them for two draft beers of questionable heritage. He found a seat outside at a table and stared at the halfway house. After a few sips, he realized he was still drunk. After a few more sips, he realized he was as much an asshole as Bukowski but that he didn’t care. Kanga had hit a nerve and Bobby needed to work it out. Sadly, his social skills began and ended at brooding. His medication was alcohol.

Doctor, give me another shot, please. And make it a double.

Laurie waved goodbye to the guard at the front desk and stepped out into the cool evening. While it was ninety-five in the shade in the valley, the ocean breeze cooled San Pedro down to about seventy-five. She pulled her San Pedro High jacket tight around her shoulders and stood on the top step. She looked left and right, but didn’t see anyone hanging around.

She wasn’t too worried, just careful. No one really bothered the nurses from the Little Company of Mary Hospital. Most folks were too religious to tempt the anger of Saint Mary. Good news for her, because Third Street was the bad side of town.

Carol Sholt stepped past her. “See you tomorrow, Laurie.”

“You, too.”

Laurie watched her co-worker run for the bus. The bus stopped, the doors
sssked
open, and her friend hopped aboard.

Laurie descended the steps and headed for her car. Parking in the hospital lot was nearly impossible, so more often than not, she was forced to park on the street. Today she’d spied a perfect space beneath a magnolia tree two blocks down, and instead of playing parking lot lottery, had swooped in and taken it. She’d been happy at four in the afternoon, but now, at ten minutes past midnight, she’d wished she’d found a closer space.

In this part of San Pedro the trees grew tall and close together, creating a canopy that blocked out the sky. The thin streets were made thinner by the need to park on each side. All in all, the effect was a little claustrophobic when added to the normal fear one associated with the dark.

She passed a VW Bug with an empty surf rack and thought of her father. By now the delivery had been made. At first she’d wanted to be there, but after thinking about it, she realized that it wouldn’t have been a good idea. Bobby Boy knew her father better than most and knew the man was going to have problems accepting the gift. He was certain to think of it as a handout. In a small way, maybe it was. But so what? She was doing well. With her mother gone, and her father newly found, she should be allowed to buy him a gift, especially one he’d use all the time, every day.

 A sound stopped her. She reached out and placed her hand on the hood of a Cadillac. Still warm, the metal grounded her, made her feel safe. Sirens from far away. A fog horn from the harbor. Wind through the leaves. From somewhere nearby she heard the muffled sounds of a TV. She looked around and saw living room light filtering through the grate of a latched screen door. Inside a man slouched on a sofa, staring toward a TV out of her sight.