Sweet Nothing (17 page)

“What could these extraterrestrials possibly want from us?” the host of
After Midnight
asks the expert. “We're like insects compared to them.”

I continue with the breakfast prep until Zalika suddenly wails and clutches her chest.

“What's wrong?” I say as I hurry over and crouch beside her.

“They're taking Amisi off the ventilator tomorrow,” she says.

We're in each other's arms then, just like that, just like when you reach out to stop someone from falling. She sobs on my shoulder, and I rub her back gently while murmuring, “I'm sorry,” again and again.

When she calms down, we sit across from each other in the booth. I hand her a napkin, and she wipes her eyes and fixes her hair.

“I'm ashamed for you to see me like this,” she says.

“I'm ashamed for you to see me like
this,
” I reply. “Is there anyone at the hospital with you? Your husband?”

Anger slides across her face like a cloud shadow passing over the desert.

“We divorced three years ago,” she says. “He took our son and moved back to Egypt. I chose to remain here, hoping it would be better for Amisi.”

“A friend, then? Do you want me to call someone?”

“Thank you, but no. That's not my way.”

I understand. We don't ask for help, people like us. We do our suffering in private, do our grieving in the dark.

“Let me get you more coffee,” I say. I go behind the counter and refill her cup, but she's up and ready to leave by the time I return to the booth.

“I'm going,” she says.

To watch her daughter slip away. To say good-bye.

“Stay strong,” I say.

She turns and waves, and the morning of another terrible day creeps up on us like a thug with a lead pipe.

“CHECK ME OUT,”
Troy says.

He stands in the doorway to the bedroom wearing a pair of jeans that's as big as three pairs of mine. He pulls on the waistband until there's a gap of about two inches between his stomach and the pants.

“I couldn't even fit in these a month ago.”

I can see it in his face too. The walking and the dieting are paying off. He's definitely slimming down.

He wants to celebrate by going to a movie. I'm not in the mood, but he hasn't been to a theater in years, and I can't say no after he offers to pay my way.

There's almost nobody in the audience at noon on a Wednesday. A gang of fidgety kids on summer vacation and the harried mommy overseeing them. A worn-out old man toting a collection of battered shopping bags who's just paying for a comfortable seat and air-conditioning, a couple hours off the street.

The armrests lift up, so Troy has plenty of room. He's excited, telling me all about the movie before the lights go down. He's been looking forward to it for months. I don't know why. It's a horror film, vampires fighting werewolves. Dumb. One of the actresses looks a lot like Zalika. She's supposed to be evil, but I root for her anyway. Of course, she dies in the end.

We stroll down Hollywood Boulevard afterward, check out the stars on the sidewalk, the handprints. Some asshole dressed like Charlie Chaplin follows Troy, imitating his lumbering gait while the tourists laugh. I want to punch him in the mouth.

EDWARD OFFERS ME
a cigar, but I turn him down. It's two p.m., and most of the pool is in shade. Star is floating in the last sunny patch on a blow-up raft, wailing along to a song only she can hear through her headphones.

Edward is pissed. His car got towed last night, and he doesn't have the money to bail it out. He asks if I'll loan him three hundred dollars. I tell him I'm broke.

“What about Fatty?” he says.

Things haven't been going well for Edward. He was laid off from his job, his new tattoo got infected, and now the car. The dude is furious, all jacked up on resentment and indignation. His bare foot taps out a spastic beat on the cement of the pool deck, and he keeps tightening and releasing the muscles in his neck and jaw.

A jet slides across the blue rectangle of open sky above us. I finish my beer and wonder if I'll be able to sleep today. Star pulls herself onto the lip of the pool. She throws back her head and shakes out her hair like there's a camera on her. Edward exhales a cloud of stinking smoke. He points at Star with the red-hot cherry of his stogie and asks me, “How much do you think someone would pay to fuck that?”

MONDAY AT EIGHT
a.m. I'm making breakfast sandwiches for a couple of cops and trying to figure out what to do on my night off. The big cop is teasing the little cop about something, and the little cop doesn't want to hear it. He keeps turning away and saying, “Okay, man, okay.” They both have shaved heads and perfect white teeth.

Zalika walks into the restaurant, and I almost don't recognize her. That I've never seen her in the daytime might be part of it, but she's also carrying herself differently, back straight, head held high. She has a big smile on her face, and suddenly I'm smiling too. The cops look over their shoulders to see what could make a man light up that way.

She steps to the counter when they rush off to respond to a call. She reaches out to take my hand, and a thousand volts of something leap from her into me and sizzle up my arm into my chest.

“You won't believe it,” she says.

“What?”

“Amisi came out of the coma an hour before they were supposed to disconnect her, and she's breathing on her own now.”

I'm as excited as if it were one of my own kids. I let out a whoop and slap the counter.

“The doctors are amazed,” Zalika continues. “There seems to be no permanent damage.”

A few nurses walk up and stand behind Zalika, waiting to order.

“You want coffee?” I ask her.

“No, no, I've had too much already.” She moves aside and motions the nurses forward. “Please, go ahead.”

I make the nurses' sandwiches, wrap them, bag them. Zalika waits patiently.

“So what happens next?” I ask when the nurses leave.

“She's being transferred to a hospital in Glendale,” Zalika says. “It's closer to home and has an excellent rehabilitation program. She'll be in physical therapy for a month or so but should be able to start school with her friends in September.”

And then it hits me: she's here to say good-bye. I keep smiling, but my mind races behind it. I picture the two of us sitting down to dinner in a quiet restaurant, me in my Goodwill jacket and tie. She leans across the table and says, “Tell me about yourself,” and where do I start? “Well, I once had to explain a bloody syringe to my nine-year-old.”

More customers pile in. A cabdriver, a couple of doctors, a Scientologist in his goofy military uniform on leave from the big blue church down the street. Zalika takes a gift-wrapped box from her purse and lays it on the counter.

“What's this?” I ask.

“A present, for being so kind,” Zalika replies.

“Come on,” I say.

“You don't know,” she says. “Having you to talk to was important.”

She's a nice person, and this is what nice people do.

“Well, thanks,” I say. “Should I open it now?”

“No, no,” she says quickly. “Wait until you get home.”

She takes my hand again, squeezes it, then turns away.

“Good luck,” she says as she walks out the door.

“Good luck to you,” I reply.

I WALK HOME
instead of taking the bus, which is like a crowded coffin at this time of day. The city is wide awake and all a-rumble. The Russian who owns the liquor store is hosing down the sidewalk. He smiles around his cigarette and directs the stream of water into the gutter so I can pass. A city maintenance crew is doing roadwork. The sound of the jackhammer makes my heart stutter behind my ribs. A hundred degrees by afternoon, the radio said. The start of a heat wave.

When I get back to the apartment, I sit at the little dining-room table with Zalika's gift in front of me. Distant explosions rattle the bedroom door. Troy's TV. I unwrap the box and open it. It's a watch, a nice Bulova. Stainless steel, tiny diamonds sparkling around the dial. I once lived in a world where men wore watches like this, but not anymore. The jackals around here would cut my arm off for it. I'll put it on eBay and bank the couple hundred bucks I get.

I want to show the watch to Troy, but he doesn't answer when I knock. Maybe he's already on his walk, left the History Channel blaring. I open the door a crack and peek in to make sure. He's lying on his back on the bed. His mouth is wide open, his eyes too.

“Troy,” I call out. “Buddy.”

He doesn't respond. On the TV a kamikaze plane plows into the deck of an aircraft carrier and disintegrates into smoke and flame and white-hot shrapnel.

A
MASSIVE HEART
attack. That's what Troy's parents tell me. He died in his sleep, they say, never knew what hit him. I hope that's true.

“He was doing so great,” I say as I help his mom and dad box up his possessions. “Exercising, eating right, losing weight.”

His mom is still suffering. She has to sit down every few minutes and fight back tears. I overheard her telling her husband how disgusting this place is. Pomp and Circumstance, Troy called them. His dad once asked him not to come home for Thanksgiving because seeing him so fat would make the other guests uncomfortable.

“I hope you told him to fuck off,” I said.

Troy shrugged. “They're a little confused,” he said.

I only knew him for four months, and if his parents had asked, I wouldn't have been able to tell them much about his life. His favorite food was pizza. He enjoyed war movies and old TV game shows. I don't think he was ever serious about moving to Berlin and marrying that girl, but I think he liked thinking he was. He could hold his liquor. He didn't believe in God.

I GIVE TROY'S
ghost a week to clear out before I begin to sleep in the bedroom. Just when I start to worry how I'm going to make rent, Best Buy calls. They put me in personal electronics, but inside of a month I'm in charge of the computer department. It's enough for me to pay my bills, eat out once in a while, and give Edward and Star some gas money for their drive back to Florida.

Both my kids e-mail me on my birthday, Kyle a cartoon of five fat pink pigs farting out “Happy Birthday,” Gwennie a little note addressed to Dear Old Dad. I call their mother and update her on my situation. She's happy to hear I'm getting my act together but still hems and haws when I ask if she'll let me see the children if I come to Utah.

“All I'm asking is that you think about it,” I say.

“I will,” she says.

I take a beer down to the pool. The swatch of night sky overhead is a livid purple, too bright for stars. Lights are blazing inside the apartments on both floors of the complex, and all around me people are settling in after a long day. They eat dinner, watch TV, talk to friends. It feels good to be in the middle of it.

One year ago tonight I was squatting in the basement of an abandoned house near Dodger Stadium with an old junkie named Tom Dirt. He'd picked up a check from the VA and managed to cash it without identification, and the money was burning a hole in his pocket. His knee was giving him trouble, so he said if I'd fly, he'd buy. I went to see my man and returned with a little tar for Tom and a fat rock for me.

We sat on a couple of filthy mattresses and got ourselves to where we needed to be by the only light we had, a few flickering candles that threw crazy shadows that kept me jumping.

Tom jerked out of a nod at one point and shouted, “Merry Christmas!”

“It's not Christmas,” I said. “It's my birthday.”

“Okay, so happy birthday,” Tom said, and coughed into his fist so long and so hard, I thought he was done for.

But he lived on, and so did I. Jesus fuck, it's a mystery, all of it. Smoke a cigarette, change the channel, stare into space. Then go to sleep, go to work, and come home again, over and over and over, until all your questions are answered or you forget you ever wondered.

PAPÁ GETS HOME FROM
work at six and tells Miguel and his little brother, Francisco, to turn off the Xbox and put on the news. Miguel glances at Francisco with raised eyebrows, like,
What's up with that?
, because the old man normally heads right for the shower to wash off the sweat and plaster dust before the family has dinner.

The newscaster is talking about a wildfire that's burning out of control east of San Diego. Papá shoos Miguel and Francisco off the couch and sits in front of the TV, leaning forward to watch intently. Mamá pokes her head in from the kitchen, a worried look on her face, and Miguel can tell she's freaked too by the change in routine.

“What's going on?” she says.

“A fire at the border,” Papá replies.

Mamá walks into the living room, a dish towel twisted in her hands. “And so?”

“Alberto and Maria are crossing tonight.”

Alberto is Miguel's cousin, Papá's nephew. Maria is his wife. They live in the village outside Durango where Papá was born, a place so small it doesn't even have a name. Papá drags the whole family down there every couple of years for a visit, trips Miguel dreads because it's hot and dirty, and the food sucks, and the only bathroom is an outhouse buzzing with flies. Alberto is cool, though. He let Miguel ride his motorcycle last time they were there and took them swimming in the river. He's only a year older than Miguel but already married, and Miguel has heard Papá say that he was thinking of coming to the U.S.

A map flashes onscreen, the location of the fire. Papá points. “El Chango's trail is right there,” he says. “He'll bring them that way.”

The sound of the front door opening makes Miguel jump. Carmen comes in from cheerleading practice and sees everyone staring at the TV. “What's going on?” she says in English.

Mamá shushes her, and Papá turns up the sound. This must be some serious shit, because nothing ever gets to the old man. All he does is work and sleep, barely saying five words most days. Miguel watches him watch TV and is suddenly a little scared.

Everybody tries to act normal at dinner. They pass around the chicken and rice and listen to Carmen and Francisco bicker. But that right there is weird; Papá would normally shut them down with a look. Instead, he's lost in thought, barely eating anything, big gristly fists clenched on either side of his plate. Miguel imitates Don Cheto, the funny guy on the radio, hoping to get a smile out of him, but no, nothing.

Later, while Miguel, Carmen, and Francisco are doing their homework at the dining-room table, Papá makes a phone call in the bedroom. When he reappears and sits on the couch, Mamá rushes in from the kitchen to ask what he found out. Miguel leans back in his chair so he can hear what they're saying.

“They left Durango last week and met with El Chango in Tijuana,” Papá says. “Everything was in order, and they were supposed to call Rosa after crossing.” He's talking about Aunt Rosa, his sister in San Diego. “She hasn't heard from them yet.”

“Maybe they turned back,” Mamá says. “Maybe
la migra
got them.”

Papá shrugs. “Maybe.”

Francisco leans over and whispers to Miguel from behind his hand: “Are they dead?”

“You're so fucking stupid,” Miguel whispers back, reaching out to flick the kid's ear.

Francisco doesn't yell or tattle or throw a fit. Even he knows this isn't a night for those kinds of antics. Instead, he gets up and walks into the living room and puts his arms around Mamá's waist and buries his face in her blouse. Miguel turns back to his homework but can't concentrate. His mind is full of hungry flames that devour the equations before he can solve them.

THE COP SHOWS
up at dawn, a stocky woman with a man's haircut. Brewer is half awake when she pounds on the door of his trailer. He's sweating in bed after a restless night, his mind drifting between past and present. His dead mother makes pancakes while “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” plays on an old radio, but at the same time he smells smoke from the fire that glows brighter on the horizon than the rising sun.

“Mr. Brewer,” the cop calls, banging again.

“Give me a minute,” Brewer growls.

He sits on the edge of the mattress. His shoulder hurts, his knees, and pulling on a pair of jeans is all kinds of painful. He shakes a Marlboro from the pack on the nightstand and puts a match to it as he limps to the door.

“Morning,” the cop says when he opens up. She's the same one who came by yesterday talking about mandatory evacuations, but Brewer knows the law: they can't force him to go; all they can do is warn him. This land, ten acres of scrub hard by the border, is the only thing his dad left him, the only thing he has left, so he's decided to make a stand.

“You're up bright and early,” he says to the cop.

“I was worried about you,” she replies. “The fire's less than a mile west of here now and burning this way. I thought I could talk you into packing some stuff, and I'll lead you out.”

Brewer steps into the yard to see for himself the smoke rising over the hills and rolling slowly toward him. The sight dries his mouth and sets his hands to trembling, but he has to trust that the preparations he's made will enable him to ride out the blaze. He's cut back the chaparral to create a firebreak around the trailer, sprayed retardant on the remaining shrubs, and hooked up heavy-duty hoses to all his spigots.

“I'll be fine,” he says to the cop.

“This is the last time I'll be passing by, and the fire crews are pulling back to the 94, so they won't be coming either,” she says. “You'll be on your own.”

I've always been on my own,
he wants to tell her, but that'll just sound dramatic. Cassius, the skinny stray that showed up a few years ago and never left, trots out of the trailer and sniffs the air, then walks over and stares up at Brewer with a worried look. The mutt was old when he arrived and is even older now, with white hair on his muzzle and a milky cataract in one eye.

Brewer reaches down to scratch the animal's ears and asks the cop, “Will you take my dog?”

“Can't,” she says. “It's against regulations.”

“Well, you might as well be on your way, then. Someone must need you somewhere.”

The cop heads back to her truck but stops before reaching it and turns like she's going to try once more to get Brewer to leave. As soon as she opens her mouth to speak, she inhales a bit of floating ash and begins to cough. After a couple of attempts to say what she was going to say, she gives up, throws Brewer a little wave, and, still coughing, climbs into her truck and drives away.

Brewer smiles to himself. She's actually not bad for a cop. Big old bull dyke looks like she might even be able to hold her own in a fight.

The wind has come up, and ash swirls in the air like a light snow, dusting the hood of Brewer's pickup, the leaves of the rosebush, the surface of the water in the dog's bowl. Brewer can see flames now, for the first time, bright orange banners fluttering through the smoke.

He walks into the trailer and retrieves
The Complete Works of William Shakespeare
from the table in the dining nook, the same battered copy he's hauled around most of his life, ever since he realized there was more truth in one of those plays than in the entire Holy Bible. Most of his days still start with a cup of coffee and the book, him opening it at random in search of some bit of wisdom to chew on, so it'll be the only thing he takes with him if he winds up running.

He carries the book out to the truck, then ties a bandanna around his nose and mouth, pulls on a pair of ski goggles, and picks up a hoe. Cassius follows him to the firebreak, a ten-foot-wide strip Brewer has scraped down to dirt, a kind of moat surrounding the trailer. The dog lolls in a patch of shade while Brewer attacks a manzanita bush, widening the break even more. His hands are already covered with blisters from the work he's done over the past twenty-four hours, and his back is killing him, but he can't just sit and wait for the fire to get here. He's let too many things run him over like that in the past.

When he pauses to empty the sweat pooled inside his goggles, he notices that the flames have moved closer and that the smoke has gone from black to pink as the sun has risen. A fire department plane on its way to drop the load of water it has in its belly onto the blaze roars low overhead, and Cassius sends up a pitiful howl.

“What are you bawling about?” Brewer yells at the dog, then blows his nose into his bandanna. The snot comes out black, and when he spits, that's black too.

MIGUEL WATCHES MAMÁ
while he eats his Froot Loops. She's making bacon-and-egg burritos for him and Papá to take with them. Papá sits across the table, sipping a cup of milky coffee. The old man shook Miguel awake half an hour ago and told him to get dressed, they were going to look for Alberto and Maria.

“What about school?” Miguel asked, but all Papá said was “Don't wake your brother.”

The old man is bringing him along to translate. After all these years, he understands English pretty well but still can't speak it. Hearing him try embarrasses Miguel. At Home Depot or the DMV or on parent-teacher night Miguel bites his tongue when the old man struggles to put together a few awkward sentences, then steps in and talks over him at the first sign of confusion on the face of whomever he's addressing.

“You have to let him try,” Mamá always says afterward. “How else will he learn?”

“It's easier if I do it,” Miguel replies. “People don't have all day.”

Mamá wraps the burritos in aluminum foil and slides them into a plastic grocery bag. Papá looks up from his coffee and smiles at her.

“Don't worry,” he says.

She shakes her head in reply, tight-lipped, her eyes puffy. Miguel realizes she's been crying.

“I'll take good care of your baby,” Papá continues. “I promise.”

A bit worried himself, Miguel asks Papá how he plans to find Alberto and Maria.

“You just do as I say,” the old man snaps.

When Papá comes to a decision, he sticks to it no matter what, putting all his pride behind it, and this stubbornness makes Miguel uneasy. He remembers the time the old man took him and Francisco fishing in a friend's boat. They motored far out into the ocean, and the weather suddenly turned bad. Dark clouds crashed into one another overhead, and the tiny boat was rocked by wind-whipped waves. The frightened boys began to cry and begged Papá to turn back.

“Don't you trust your father?” he shouted. “I know what I'm doing.”

He didn't, not at all, and they ended up running out of fuel and nearly capsizing before another boat picked them up. To this day the old man won't admit they were in any danger. When he tells the story, it's only to joke about how scared the boys were. But he was scared too. Miguel saw it in his eyes when the engine stopped and when the lightning flashed, and he heard it in his voice as he recited a prayer under his breath.

When Miguel walks out the front door of the house a few minutes later, Papá is checking the oil in his truck in preparation for the trip. “Did you bring a coat?” the old man says.

Miguel holds up his letterman's jacket. He's doing varsity track this year and is close to breaking the school record in long jump. A couple more inches, one good trip off the board, and he'll have it. Mosco, the family's Chihuahua, barks at him and bounces around his legs.

“Don't let him out,” Mamá calls through the bars covering the living-room window. The yellow stucco on the house is crisscrossed with gray patches where Papá has repaired cracks. He keeps saying he's going to repaint but never finds the time. Mamá has had enough of his promises and calls the house the Pride of El Monte just to piss him off.

Miguel holds the dog back with his foot while he steps through the gate in the waist-high chain-link fence, then quickly yanks his shoe away and slams the gate shut. He walks to the truck and climbs in on the passenger side. The burritos on the seat beside him give off a greasy smell that fills the cab.

He's going to miss a history quiz and track practice today, but what's most fucked is that he was supposed to cut sixth period and sneak with Michelle to her cousin's apartment, where she swore she'd finally give it up after a whole month of dry-humping and hand jobs. It'd be his first time getting laid, something he's been thinking about since he was, like, twelve. And Michelle is fine, too, not like Lydia, that beast his homey Rigo got with last year and still brags about. Fucking Papá is going to ruin everything.

The old man slides behind the wheel and starts the truck. He raises his hand to Mamá, and she raises hers to him. Miguel puts in his earbuds and turns on his music. As soon as they graduate, he and Rigo are moving to Tucson to work as trainers at Rigo's uncle's gym. Michelle might come too. He can't wait.

He sleeps most of the way down to Tijuana and even when he's awake pretends he isn't so that he doesn't have to talk to the old man. They park on the American side of the border in a dirt lot next to a currency-exchange place. Papá hands him one of the burritos and unwraps another for himself, and they eat sitting on the tailgate of the truck. A battered train rolls past, its boxcars covered with graffiti, both Spanish and English:
El Solitario, Led Zeppelin, Kim is the shit.

The walk to the crossing is a short one, past the McDonald's and the trolley stop, up and over a bridge spanning the freeway. Soon Miguel is pushing through the turnstile in the tall iron fence separating the two countries, and, just like that, the cars are dustier, the pigeons rattier, the music louder.

Papá goes to a taxi stand and negotiates with a driver, a fat dude in a cowboy hat. Miguel has trouble keeping up with what's being said. His Spanish has never been very good, and he forgets a little more each year. The driver leads them to an empty cab, and the old man sits in front and tells Miguel to get in back. The fat dude climbs in and taps his horn twice at the other drivers lounging at the stand before squeezing into the traffic headed into town.