What caused the fire? I can only hope that Julie left the house before it started, and that Wags has run off like he often does. Brief consideration of the fate of Mike’s corpse, Sarah’s suitcase and her purse, my books, stereo and CDs, my clothes, leads me to the obvious conclusion—all lost, I’m sure.
I hear the distant wail of a siren. Getting to my feet in a hurry, I run full speed, a fifty-yard dash, to my car. I back my Mazda up in a whirl of dust and race down Ballantyne Lane. The siren grows louder. I make a right turn and then a quick left onto First Street. I observe the red fire truck and pull to the side of the road as it passes. A black and white police car follows the truck with lights flashing. Sarah and her mother will be in good hands.
I continue on, and a few minutes later I’m parking my car behind a grove of pomegranate trees, in a weed-infested field near the high school. I take Mike’s pistol from my jeans, remove the cartridges from the cylinder, put them in my pocket and return the gun to my waistband. I remove my pocketknife from the glove box and pick up my mother’s diary from the passenger seat. Then I step out of the car and put on my blue flannel shirt. After taking up the ounce of pot from the trunk I walk down the street to David’s house.
David’s white Mustang is parked in the driveway, and there’s the glow of light in the garage, David’s converted bedroom. I knock on the garage door. Seconds later the door swings open and my best friend, or rather, my former best friend, sandy-haired and freckle-faced David Goldberg, stands facing me.
For a long moment there’s hardly a sound in the world beyond our labored respirations. I study David’s face with an amused yet soulful gaze. I want to communicate ... something ... forgiveness, perhaps.
David seems, like me, to be thinking about the uselessness of words, of the insurmountable condition that has arisen between us and will only become more complicated with speech. Suddenly David moves closer and we embrace warmly, break apart and then affect a brotherly handshake.
“What up, dude?” David says. “Love you.”
“Me, too, bro.”
“Weed smells good.”
“It’s for J-man. Tell you about it later. Devon is in trouble. She needs us. Liz will help; we can pick her up on the way. They’ll be looking for my car. You drive; I’ll do the rest.”
“Your call, dude.”
When we’re out of the Valley, traveling west on Highway 94 towards downtown San Diego, I begin to tell David about all that has come to pass this evening. David listens attentively. I don’t mention anything about the gun I’m carrying.
“Shut the front door, dude,” David says emphatically. And then with a grimace, he adds, “It seems unfair that they should put you or Sarah in jail for something I myself would have done.”
I feel a slight easing of the tension in my muscles. “I’ll get by,” I say. Man is the animal, I reflect, who gets accustomed even to not getting accustomed. However, without Sarah, without being able to see clearly a future with her, the world has no up or down for me—I can only float disembodied in a dark void.
“As far as Devon and I are concerned,” says David, “I figure things are over. I haven’t heard from her in a long time, and I don’t know where she’s been. But, I know we can get it back together, given the chance. I love her, dude.”
“You don’t know how lucky you are,” I say.
***
David parks his Mustang on Market Street, a few blocks east of the waterfront. The Bodyshop is located nearby, around a corner. The noise of the vibrant city, the combined effect of the rumble of traffic, the droning beat of music and the buzz of people milling about, is deafening in contrast to the usual quietness of El Cajon Valley.
“Wait here. I won’t be long,” I tell David.
Above the front door of The Bodyshop hangs a colorful neon sign: “NUDE DANCING.” I enter, my heart racing. I show the doorman my doctored driver’s license and he waves me on. I walk up to the nonalcoholic bar with smooth, sure steps. To hell with self-consciousness.
In the back of the room there’s a dancer’s cage with pink bars, raised to stage level. A stunning blonde, topless, who wears only bikini bottom and high heels dances suggestively to “When Love Comes to Town,” recorded by U2 and B.B. King, as it pumps loudly over the sound system.
I listen to the hard rock blues song as if with new ears, the music no longer a simple piece but a pure and tender enlivening of the heart. Words of Mr. Christie ring free in my memory: “The blues do to most people what milk does to a baby. The blues are what spirit is to a minister. We play the blues because our hearts have been hurt, and our souls have been disturbed. But when we play the blues, we let it be classy.”
When the tune finishes, the dancer scampers backstage, her buttocks moving like Jell-O on springs. With the ease of a dreamer, I imagine myself climbing into bed with her. Then, as the overhead lights are switched on, I squint in the sudden violence of their brightness and chastise myself for giving in so easily to the need for such a sensual fantasy.
The mood of the bar is coarse and implacably hostile, a delirious, shouting pattern of mostly male faces and voices. There are also a few animated women, feminine faces contemplating me from the bar, where they’ve arranged themselves in a restless line, exaggerating intimacy with the shark-eyed bartender, pressing on the brass rail, touching shoulders and hips.
The red-haired bartender, tall and gangly, approaches as I lean over the bar and wave a hand.
“What’ll it be?”
“Nothing, thanks. I’m looking for—”
“You have to order something, or get out.”
“Pepsi.” I’m on the brink of asking the bartender about Liz, when the lights grow dim and Britney’s “Till the World Ends” begins to pump. Liz is in the cage. She’s wearing a frilly white bikini and red high heels, with a red bandana at her throat. Her hairstyle is new, a much shorter cut. She’s become so thin that her face has contracted to its essential lines, which are strong and noble, lit by her eyes with generosity and wildness.
I move away from the bar, find an empty booth at a point of vantage and sit down. My eyes are met briefly by the eyes of a thin, dark-haired, mustachioed man of average height, wearing a pinstriped suit with bowler hat pushed back. He’s sitting in the booth next to mine. The handsome Hispanic man appears indolent and bored, grating his gold ring on the wooden table. He reminds me of a New York City pimp, the type seen in gangster movies like the classic
New Jack City
.
From my dark corner I can see Liz, but it would be difficult for her to see
me
. Watching Liz dance, I laugh with pleasure to hide my emotions. She is as I remember, beautiful as ever, a little older and harder around the eyes, and it hurts me to look at her. I had lived and breathed Liz for some time. I don’t want to remember, and I do want to remember. I was “in love” with her face and her hair, her body and her independence, but I’ve moved far beyond the time when Liz was everything that mattered. My love belongs to Sarah.
Strangely, as I watch Liz waggle her behind and slowly remove her top, her performance comes out in a shape like beauty. As a poem exists only at the moment of its being recited and has no other purpose than to create a state of mind, Liz’s performance tonight is not futile amusement, but more like poetry, an art form that encompasses the action of living creatures in its entirety. I realize that Liz’s erotic dance isn’t sinful or shameful in any way, but, rather, erotic.
When the music stops, Liz hurries backstage, covering her breasts with her arms. The lights come on.
I stand, and as I debate with myself whether or not to go backstage and speak with Liz, she enters the bar area. She sees me and, at the same time, the pimp stands and approaches her with an affected strut to his walk. The wise have only to check out the way in which this guy carries himself to know caution.
Liz sidles past the pimp and walks over to me. “What are you doing here, Daniel?” She smiles nervously. Her mouth, augmented by lipstick, seems large and moist.
I notice the blackened bruise on her cheek and wince inwardly. She doesn’t appear to be aware of the swelling and discoloration of
my
face. “I thought you might help me get Devon out of the hellhole she’s in.”
“Now?” Liz is apparently confused. “You are
so
gay. Of course I want to, but can’t you see I’m working at the moment?”
“Take a break,” I say. “It’s your sister. David is waiting in the car.”
Liz blushes, turns away.
“Forget the thing with David,” I tell her. “I’m over it.”
The pimp is now standing close to Liz. He chuckles and touches his mustache in a lordly gesture. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere, skank,” he says, matter-of-factly. He shakes his head with an air of tolerant disgust.
Liz crowds into my arms, shrinking from the pimp and covering her face with a hand as if he might strike her.
I push Liz away gently, avert my eyes and laugh brainlessly, implying the whole affair is none of my business. Then I quickly shift my feet and strike the pimp squarely in the face with all my weight behind a solid left. As the pimp stumbles into a table, I follow and punch him again with a hard right. The sound of the pimp’s head making contact with the floor produces a resounding thump, but he’s not seriously hurt. He lies on his back, open-mouthed and dazed, moaning softly with face bent sideways, like the floral leaves of a rose on a broken pedicel. I grab Liz’s hand and we make our way outside.
“What about my clothes?” Liz asks animatedly, as she shuffles up the sidewalk after me.
***
With David and Liz close behind, I walk into Madeline’s house on Sarasota Street in OB. I didn’t bother to knock. The inside is brightly lit, and the atmosphere is quiet.
CJ appears near the end of the dusty hallway, dressed in jeans and a loose shirt, barefoot. Our eyes meet, and he approaches stealthily, at a carefully centered amble. He keeps a hand behind him, hiding something, as he draws up short and grins, shows his rotted teeth. “So you came back, punk,” he says with derision.
I’m thinking I’ve come back not of my own will, but that I’ve been brought back by the same mysterious force that took me to Afghanistan, where I’d foolishly hoped for the imminent appearance of death. “Where’s Devon?” I ask complaisantly.
CJ glances over his shoulder, and then says firmly, “She’s in my bed, where I’ve been fucking her. It’s not your concern.” He looks at Liz, his eyes wild and obsessed. “Who’s the sexy babe, punk? I know she’s more than you can handle. Maybe she wants to fuck CJ. I’m hung like a horse, baby. We can get high on some real fine shit.”
I recall something I’d read in a Catalan novel of chivalry written a hundred years before
Don Quixote
, a declaration of sorts in vogue with knights of the middle ages: “Death will be equal among us, and we freely pardon any who may harm us, just as we beg the forgiveness of those we may harm.”
CJ brings his hand around from behind his back. A sharp click produces a five-inch blade. “I think it’s time for you to leave, punk,” he says venomously. “Take your boyfriend with you. The babe can stay.” He spits on the floor and suddenly, inexplicably, doubles up with laughter and slaps his own thigh.
As David and Liz back away, I stare at CJ without speaking. I stand my ground, my hands at my sides. I will take care of this myself. I notice, too, that Lori is standing at the end of the hallway, behind CJ, watching us from the kitchen.
I might have considered using Mike’s gun, but that isn’t why I’ve been carrying it, and its cylinder is empty of cartridges. Besides, if I were to pull the trigger of a loaded pistol, I would only be hurting myself and Sarah. I know that if another accident occurs, I couldn’t allow myself to live on. I’ve promised myself that I will do no violence to human life, not to another’s, and not to my own, unless I’m given no choice.
CJ straightens up and wields the slender knife threateningly, as if to frighten me into leaving. At the same time I move steadily towards him.
Down the hallway Devon comes out of CJ’s bedroom, wrapped in a white sheet to cover her nakedness. Her hair is disheveled, her face pale with sunken eyes, the look of a speed freak after a six-day binge.
“David,” she calls. “Ohhh, I miss you.”
“She doesn’t know what she wants,” says CJ, waving the knife.
As I get closer to him, I glower repugnantly at CJ, nodding my head to indicate that a moment of dreadful reckoning is at hand.
CJ whistles mockingly, and then he laughs a two-note laugh of triumph, “Huh-ho, punk! Prepare for a grisly death!”
I rush forward and kick CJ in the groin with a muddy moccasin. CJ doubles over, groaning and dropping the knife as his hands move to his crotch. I hit him hard across the face with a right hook, but CJ does not go down. Instead, he lunges wildly at me, barking and frothing at the mouth, and I feel a stinging sensation in my shoulder, as if I’ve been bitten by a rabid dog. CJ wraps his arms around my waist, and we plunge to the floor together, CJ on top.
Liz screams, “Get off, you fuck, get off!”
I manage to turn over, onto my stomach, trying to pull myself loose from CJ, while CJ tugs at my hair and beats my head with his fist. Liz goes for the knife and I sense a release of pressure as CJ lunges at her. With a glancing uppercut to Liz’s chin, CJ knocks her to the floor, and when she reaches again for the knife he kicks her hard in the ribs. I’m standing now as CJ picks up the knife and turns to face me, the wet light of murder in his wild eyes.
A spark of rage crackles in my head. No one treats Liz that way! I’ve reached a weariness of spirit that pours adrenaline into my blood and makes me capable of quick, crippling blows. CJ fights like a human flail, every sweep of his knife capable of severing in two any man or boy who obstructs it. But I dance around him, darting in again and again to strike.
Before long I send a right hook into his face and follow through with a left-handed roundhouse. With the light-footed dexterity of a cage fighter I pummel CJ with punch after lightning-quick punch to the nose and jaw, driving him back down the hallway until CJ staggers and sinks to the kitchen floor with me atop him. The knife is gone and forgotten, and in CJ’s face the anger has been replaced with fear.