How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? (12 page)

Laurie didn’t have to work that day, but I had to get up early to attend a funeral service for Spike. She got up with me. We ate some fruit for breakfast, then sat in front of her altar and meditated together.

“Will you be okay?” she asked as I prepared to leave.

I had no idea what the answer was, so I just said, “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

She gave me a long kiss at the door, stroking my face with her fingers as she did. “When will I see you?”

“Don’t know. I’ll call you. Or you call me.”

“Okay.” She kissed me again. “Take it easy.”

As I walked to my car, she called after me. “Hey, Andy.”

I looked back. “Yeah?”

“You know what I said about being in love with you?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, it’s true. But here’s the deal. If you like it, then you can have it. If you don’t, then forget I said it and just be my friend, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“But you will be my friend, right?”

“Right.”

I got on 202 and headed West. The sun had just risen, and it dazzled me, glare reflecting off the dirty windshield of my car. I dug in the glove box until I found my sunglasses. I put them on, and was able to see well enough to jump from lane to lane. Morning was the worst time on the freeway—when you signaled that you were about to change lanes, the people behind you wouldn’t slow down—they’d speed up and cut you off. I sometimes theorized that I might be the only citizen of Phoenix who deliberately allowed other people to change lanes.

I took 51 North, and exited at Bethany Home. In my apartment, I was struck again by its unusual cleanliness, telling me that things weren’t the same. That gave me a pang, but not as bad as if the place had been as it was when it was Janine’s place too.

I looked in my closet for something appropriate to wear at a funeral service. I didn’t have suits or ties or anything like that. I chose black jeans and a black silk shirt, with black shoes instead of my usual combat boots or sandals. Spike wouldn’t have insisted that I look like a lawyer or a pimp, and so I wasn’t concerned with what anyone else would think.

I stripped off the clothes I was wearing. I hadn’t taken a shower at Laurie’s, and I could smell myself, a cocktail of her sweat and my own. My pubic hair was crusted with flakes of her dried come. In the heat of the day, people would be able to smell me from across a room. Out of respect for the dead, I jumped in the shower for a few minutes. I toweled myself dry as quickly as I could, then got dressed. I checked myself out in the mirror. My outfit didn’t look the way I’d hoped it would—I looked readier for a Goth club than a funeral. But it was all I had.

I got in the car and headed for Scottsdale, where the service was being held. I almost didn’t find the place—the area is a suburban maze of identical streets and houses, barely any stores. I’ve never been able to figure out why rich people create such horrible neighborhoods to live in.

There weren’t many people at the service, only about twenty. I think all of them worked for the
Republic.
Spike’s editor, Tony, got up and talked about him, called him “a great man.” Afterwards, as I was leaving, Tony came up to me.

“Andy Saunders, right?” I nodded and he shook my hand. “Good to see you. Spike talked about you a lot. You were a good friend to him.” I nodded but didn’t say anything, not because I had anything against the guy, but because I just couldn’t think of anything to say. I had my sunglasses on and he couldn’t see my eyes and I could tell that it somehow bothered him because he wouldn’t look at my face. “I was hoping you’d be here,” he told me. “Because Spike left some things you might want to take care of.”

“What things?”

“Just some junk he left in the office, mostly papers.”

“I thought the cops would have taken all that.”

He shook his head. “They went through it, but there wasn’t anything they were interested in. They’re pretty sure it was suicide. Anyway, I’m not sure what to do with the stuff. Spike had no family. I contacted his ex-wife, and she doesn’t want to know. The stuff’s just lying there in his desk, but it can’t lie there forever. I thought you might want it.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Come by the
Republic
and get it as soon as you like.”

“Okay. I’ll do it tomorrow. Or maybe the day after.”

Suicide, I thought. Suicide, for sure. He got drunk and decided to kill himself by driving a spike into his own head. For sure.

I drove to the Five and Diner and had fried chicken for lunch. Then I headed home. I’d half-expected to cry at the service, but I’d felt nothing, not even boredom. Everything—Spike, Tim, Janine, Laurie, my whole life, seemed distant, removed from me. I felt like I was acting in a movie. I seemed to be mentally and emotionally anesthetized, and I wondered how I would feel when that wore off.

It wore off overnight.

I slept until one in the afternoon. When I got up, I played the messages on my answering machine. One of them was from Janine.
“Hey, it’s me. Are you home? Pick up if you are...Well, I guess not. I’ve got some shit at your place that I need to pick up. Call me and let me know when would be a good time. I hope you’re doing okay.”

Usually, I meditate as soon as I get up, but this time I didn’t bother. I sat naked on the toilet and cried and whimpered as diarrhea dribbled out of my ass. I was sweating so much that my eyes stung. When I’d finished and had wiped my ass, I got dressed without taking a shower, even though I stank and would stink worse as the day went on.

I went to the window and opened the blind. It was so bright outside that the concrete and asphalt seemed to be shining, generating light and heat. But I was thinking of a cold and foggy day, a day Janine and I had spent in San Francisco. My band was playing at the Parasite Lounge, and Janine had come along for the trip. Instead of crashing on friends’ couches, she and I decided to splurge and get a hotel room. We booked into a Travel Lodge. It was winter, and we turned the room’s heating on full-blast. That night, after the gig, we curled up together in bed. There was condensation on the windows. Fog was rolling across the city like an army of invading ghosts. We could hear the horns of boats in the bay. I grumbled about the weather and said I’d be glad to get back to Phoenix. Janine cuddled against me and said, “I’ll keep you warm.” Later she said that she’d like to live in San Francisco, if it wasn’t so expensive that she’d actually have to get a job. In the morning, before getting on the road home, we went for a walk around the Haight district. She reached for my hand, saying, “Gimme that paw!” And I took her hand. We walked around, holding on to each other amongst it all.

Now, in hundred-degree heat, I wanted to deny the new reality, that I couldn’t hold on to her any more. It had all seemed so solid, so secure, and now I didn’t know how to accept that it had been a sham, something that was going to end. I didn’t know how to let it go. It seemed that I hadn’t really known Janine. Who I thought she was had been an illusion, but I didn’t know how to let go of it. I wanted someone who didn’t exist in my life, and who might have never really existed outside of my head. It was like Janine was only an actress who had played a fictional character. If the character wasn’t real, I didn’t know who Janine was.

I wanted her back, but I didn’t know who it was I wanted. I knew it wasn’t Janine, but who I wanted her to be, who I’d thought she was. And I knew that for the most part it wasn’t even about that person, real or imagined. It was about everything—all the things I’d been holding off by meditating and living a calm, ordered life, all the things I’d always been afraid would come back and overwhelm me. But it came together in the person I wanted Janine to be, the person and the love I didn’t have.

There were things I knew I must do. I knew I needed to consider what to do about the killer. I knew I should get a gun, but I didn’t have the money to buy one. I had barely anything in my bank account. I knew I needed to do some handyman work, and I needed to start looking for a full-time job. Now that Janine wouldn’t be paying half of the rent on my apartment, I wouldn’t be able to pay it out of my self-employed income.

The night before, I’d planned to spend the day dealing with those things. But now I just didn’t feel like it. It wasn’t that I didn’t think the killer would come after me. I was sure he would. And it wasn’t that I wanted to be broke and homeless again. But nothing seemed to have any urgency, any real imperative. My present seemed without immediacy, seemed less real than the past, the time spent with Janine. It felt as though my life with Janine was solid and real, and what was happening now was a mistake, an interruption or just a weird dream. It felt as though the unreality couldn’t last, that the mistake would be rectified or I’d wake up.

Christown Mall is in West Central Phoenix, at 15th Avenue and Bethany Home. It has a Wal-Mart, a movie theater, some cheesy gift shops that sell Southwestern “art,” and a food court with a McDonald’s, Arby’s and Chinese and Japanese places. The mall has a reputation for roughness—it’s a popular hangout for gang kids—but I’ve always kind of liked it. Janine and I used to go there a lot when she was having car trouble. There used to be a good auto shop, Christown Car Care, nearby. We’d leave the car with the mechanics and go hang out in the mall while they worked on it. We’d wander around, checking out the slogans on the T—shirts in the store windows—“I’M NOT AN ALCOHOLIC, I’M A DRUNK—ALCOHOLICS GO TO MEETINGS”, “REDNECKS FOR SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY”—or we’d sit in the food court and eat something and talk or read magazines—
Shambhala Sun
and
Men’s Health
for me,
Spin
,
Vanity Fair
and
Sassy
for her.

Now I sat at a table in the food court and tried to figure what happened, where all that went so suddenly. I ate a burger and fries and drank Dr Pepper and tried to get it.

The mall was full of families, and of kids by themselves. I saw a bunch of little kids looking at me, then talking amongst themselves, electing a spokesman. The one chosen came over to me and said, “Hey, mister.” He was about nine, Mexican, with serious eyes and a big grin. “Hey, mister, can we have your stickers?”

“What?”

“Your stickers.” He pointed to the cup that contained my drink. I looked and saw that there were some cartoon stickers on it, something to do with a competition. “Can I have them?”

“Sure,” I said, handing him the cup.

He peeled the stickers off and handed my drink back to me. “Thanks, mister.” He went back to his friends, who waved and called, “Thanks, mister.”

What do we do to them? How do they get to be me, Tim, Spike, Janine, Laurie, Mara? How did they get to be the killer? All little kids, dressed in dreams. And their little white teeth tearing at meat. I remembered a cat I owned once, when I was a teenager living in LA. I loved him and he was kind to me. But I knew that if I was smaller than him, he’d kill me after a few hours of amusing torture. And I remembered a bunch of young soldiers stubbing out cigarettes on the head of a prisoner’s cock.

I left the mall and went home. Although I’d slept late, I felt exhausted. I took my clothes off and got into bed. I know I had a lot of dreams, but I only remember one of them, because it was the one I woke from. And, although I know it was a dream, I’m not sure I believe that’s all it was.

I was lying there on the bed, and someone was standing over me. His face was bone, skeleton, with flesh hanging from it. I knew he was Death. And he bent over the bed, his face close to mine, and I thought he was going to kiss me. But he didn’t. He said,
“Nobody could want you. Even I don’t want you. Even I won’t take you.”
And I woke up sick, but convinced that the killer wouldn’t get me.

EIGHT

I took a shower, then cooked some pasta and ate it. I didn’t want to be by myself, so I called Laurie and asked what she was doing.

“I didn’t think I’d hear from you this soon,” she said.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“It depends,” she said. “What made you call?”

“I want to see you.”

“Do you? Or do you want to see Janine? Or just want to see somebody? Tell me the truth. If you lie, I’ll know. Please don’t fuck with me, Andy.”

“I don’t know.”

“That’s okay. Just as long as you’re not lying to me. I’ll tell you what. I’ve got band practice this evening. I’ll be home in a couple of hours. You think about what you want, and call me and let me know. You can come over here no matter what you want. But you have to know what you want, because I have to know. Fair enough?”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Okay. Call me later.”

I knew I didn’t want to be alone, doing nothing. But I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do. So I decided to get in my car and just drive for a while.

At around nine, I was heading North on Seventh Street. Near Glendale, I saw a woman standing at the side of the road, thumb stuck out. I’d heard this was a common device among hookers, but Seventh and Glendale is far from Van Buren. I pulled over.

“Where’re you going?” I asked her.

“Dunlap,” she said, getting in the car.

Dunlap Avenue was just a few miles North.

“I can take you there,” I said.

“What’s your name?” she asked me as I drove.

“Andy. What’s yours?”

“Anne. With an ‘e’.”

We drove for about a minute, then she said, “Do you ever date women?”

“It’s been known to happen.”

“I mean, do you ever date women for sex?”

“That’s been known to happen too.”

“Do you pay for a date?”

Hold something under my nose and beat me on the head and I might finally get it. “No,” I said.

“Would you be interested in paying for a date with me?”

“I’m broke.”

“So you couldn’t maybe lend me twenty bucks?”

“Sorry.”

“Let me out at the next corner,” she said.

I did. “Good luck,” I said as she got out of the car.

As I drove away, the pickup truck behind me flashed its lights at me. I kept on going. He followed me, and flashed his lights again. Fuck, I thought, I’m a magnet for cops even when they’re off-duty. I pulled to the side of the road.