The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death (17 page)

—Kind of a perpetual motion machine of familial alienation, then?

She slid her eyes at me.

—That was clever.

I rubbed my eyes.

—Yeah, clever, that's me, always doing clever stuff. That's why I'm in this van at the moment with a load of someone else's bloody sheets and all.

She went in her pockets again and came out with a pair of big black plastic film star sunglasses.

—I said it was clever, not smart.

—True.

She took off her regular narrow black-framed glasses and slid the sunglasses on.

—Anyway, Mom just worked and worked to get Jaime what he wanted, which meant she was never around to look at him, which is what
she
wanted. Until he turned eighteen.

—Then what?

—She kicked him out. Of course. If behavioral scientists had designed a scenario meant to create an adult utterly unequipped to provide for themselves and emotionally cope with the world, they could not have done a better job than my mom did with Jaime. And, to make it more interesting, when she set him loose, she did it in Hollywood.

The lights of a jumbo jet cruised over the freeway on approach to LAX. Inglewood sprawled low and wild to the east, endless stucco blocks of small houses with barred windows and dead lawns.

—It's a tough little town, ain't it.

She shrugged.

—It's designed to fuck the weak is all.

—And how'd you avoid the mommy treatment?

She leaned forward and adjusted the heater.

—Dad divorced her when I was three. Seeing as she didn't want to have the responsibilities of actually raising kids, it wasn't much of a challenge for him to get custody. And by then I'd already started loathing her pretty well. I mean, Dad didn't have to run her down at all to make me not want to see her. Not that he would have done that. Still, holidays, occasional weekends, he'd pack me up and drive me over to the valley. It sucked, but it got better when I was five and she had Jaime. He was cute. And fun.

—Till he grew up and turned into a prick.

—Like I said, he had help.

—We all get help, that doesn't mean we all end up cutting guys up in motel rooms after a drug deal turns sour.

She fingered her sunglasses lower on her nose and gave me a look over the tops of the lenses.

—My, how very hard-boiled of you.

—I'm just saying.

She pushed the sunglasses back into place.

—I know what you're saying. And you're mostly right. He's definitely defective. But he's my brother. So I. You know.

—Sure.

—Anyway, it wasn't a drug deal.

—No? Stocks then? Commodities futures?

—I don't know. I mean, he does deal some stuff. Weed and ecstasy mostly. Works craft services and deals to the P.A.s and the extras. That knife, he was on set for a John Woo movie, one of the prop guys traded the knife for a few hits of X. He loves that knife. Anyway, whatever he's up to, it's not drugs. Jaime always gets into something crazy. Usually it's something having to do with movies. I don't think so this time. But movies is what it usually is. He's going to get the rights to some Hungarian sci-fi movie. He's going to manage the movie career of a Balinese pop star who's the Madonna of Indonesia. He's going to negotiate U.S. distribution for a Canadian production company that specializes in remaking Paraguayan classics. That kind of thing. Movies. He got it from my mom.

I slid into the interchange lane for the 10 West, thinking about L.L. and the movie game, and what it does to people.

She pointed at the sign for the 10.

—Where are you going?

—Take the 10 out to the PCH and up to Malibu.

She sat up and reached toward the wheel.

—No, no, don't, just. Just go.

She grabbed the wheel and shoved it to the left, sending us veering in front of a barreling SUV.

I slapped her hand.

—Hey! Hey!

The SUV cut around us, horn sounding.

She took her hand from the wheel as the exit to the 10 slipped away behind us.

—Sorry.

She put her face in her hands.

—Sorry.

She took it out and looked at me.

—I don't want to go west right now. I don't want to go home. I want. Oh fuck.

Tears were leaking out from under the lenses of the sunglasses.

—Shit, Web. Shit. My dad.

I nodded.

—Yeah, no problem.
Shit.
I get it.

I stayed with the 405, looking ahead to where it would climb through the Santa Monicas and meet the 101 on the other side.

—I got a place to go.

She pushed her fingers up under her sunglasses and wiped her eyes.

—Thanks.

I drove, thinking about families. Not my favorite pastime, but one I seem incapable of avoiding. I glanced at her from time to time, black hair pulled back, light olive skin flushed, muscles of her long neck taut as she bent to lean her head against the window, the sky lightening beyond her above the rim of the San Gabriels. And all that shit.

I thought to distract her from her sadness, strike a chord of shared experience. You know, cheer a girl up.

—So. Your mom's in the biz? So's my dad. Or he was. Screenwriter. What's your mom do?

She rolled her head around, pointed the big lenses at me, rolled back against the glass.

—She was a porn star. So I guess we both have parents who were whores.

I drove some more. Choosing wisely, I think, not to talk anymore.

—I suppose it was naïve of me to think you were going to take me to your place and tuck me into your bed while you slept protectively on the floor, wasn't it?

I watched her as she flipped through Po Sin's binder of before-and-after photos from various job sites, sunglasses still over her eyes.

—I thought this might be more romantic.

She froze on a picture of a shotgun suicide, turned the page to a picture of the same room after it had been cleaned.

—You could play that game with these, you know:
What's the difference between the pictures?

She flipped back and forth between the two shots, the one featuring
glossy pink bits that looked almost like strange candy, and the one of a scrupulously clean livingroom stripped of odd bits and pieces. Pointing to where a sofa cushion had been removed, the shade from a lamp, a square cut from the carpet, a blank spot on the wall where a piece of needlepoint used to be.

She closed the binder.

—Looking in his bedroom. No mattress. This lap blanket he used to cover his feet with when he sat up at night working in bed. He'd sit on top of the covers in a robe and drape it over his bare feet, you know. That's gone. And he always, always had a handkerchief folded on the nightstand. That's not there. Just things, they tell you someone's gone. And they're not coming back.

She put the binder back in its place on the office desk and spun around a couple times in Po Sin's chair.

—So, Web.

I sat on the bed.

—So, Soledad.

She put her feet down and stopped spinning.

—Do we have to do it this way?

—Which is to say?

She got up, took off her jacket, draped it over the chair, and walked over to the bed, where I sat scooted into the corner of the room, my back against the wall.

—Which is to say do we have to tease this out with all kinds
of will we or won't we?

She put a hand to the wall and lifted one foot and unlaced her sneaker and kicked it off.

—I hate that shit.

She did the same with the other shoe.

—I mean.

She reached under the skirt of her dress, the same black knit knee-length she'd been wearing at the Malibu house, and pushed her black leggings down, stepping first on one toe to pull her foot free, and then on the other, kicking the leggings away, her light blue panties nestled inside them.

—I mean, can't we just fuck?

She took hold of the waist of her dress and peeled it over her head and
dropped it, standing flat-chested and braless, naked except for her sunglasses.

—Fuck and get it over with?

I could see part of a Quonset hut out the window behind her, a bit of sky turning blue, old-growth palm trees arching up from the streets, brown rocket trails detonating into green tufts. It was chilly in the office. Goose pimples on her stomach.

I quickly sorted and discarded several responses, none of them delicate enough for this circumstance; a wounded and emotionally vulnerable young woman naked and throwing herself at me in my place of employ.

Finally knowing what to say.

—So romance isn't dead after all?

She smiled, put her knees on the edge of the bed, edged close to me, reached out and poked the wound on my forehead.

—Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, Web.

I winced.

—I'm not looking at your mouth.

She took hold of my hoodie and pulled it over my head, not bothering to unzip it.

—Wise man.

I watched her hands as they undid the buttons down the front of my shirt.

—I don't know when Po Sin will be here.

She took me by the collar of my T and pulled me forward and pushed the Mobil shirt down my arms.

—I don't care.

I lifted my arms and let her pull the T off.

—And, you know, all joking aside, my balls still really hurt.

She tossed the T over her shoulder and it landed on top of her dress.

—I'll be gentle.

She reached for my belt.

So.

She wanted to fuck. And get it over with. Who was I to say no?

A very little later, while she was on top of me, not being gentle at all, the earth moved. It was only a small earthquake, but it made us both laugh.
And, finally, I reached up and took the sunglasses off her face, and I could see her eyes, so very red from all the crying.

And a little later after that, she had them back on.

—He hated my smoking.

I held the lit cigarette for her as she pulled her leggings up.

—He smoked like a chimney when I was a kid.

She picked up the Mobil shirt from the floor and put it on and took the smoke from me.

—Thanks.

She put it in her mouth and started buttoning the shirt.

—But he stopped and was one of those classic ex-smokers. A pain in the ass.

She found one of her shoes and sat back on the edge of the bed.

—I mean, I don't even smoke that much. And when I smoke at the house I only do it on the deck or in my room.

She put her right foot in the shoe and started lacing it up.

—Anyway, I was there, this was during a Christmas break when I was in college, a few years back, four or five. Before I graduated and didn't know what the hell to do with a degree in art history and moved back home.

She bent and looked for the other shoe.

—There it is.

She pulled it from beneath the bed and put it on.

—So I was at home, on break, and we'd stayed up together watching
It's a Wonderful Life
or something, and I'd been smoking a lot because we were having some Christmas cheer together. I was standing with the door to the deck open, blowing smoke outside. After he went to bed, I stayed up to watch something else.
White Christmas'?
I don't know. But I cheated and snuck a cigarette inside. Didn't finish it though.

She turned, facing me, left foot tucked under her right thigh.

—And I was a little loaded so I forgot to put the ashtray back out on the deck. And in the morning.

She leaned and snagged her jacket from the back of the chair and reached into an inside pocket and came out with a small journal.

—In the morning I came down and found this.

She opened the journal and flipped some pages and pulled out and unfolded a deeply creased sheet of notepaper.

She handed it to me.

I handed it back, and found my T on the floor and pulled it on.

—Did you crawl into a closet and bang your head against the wall?

She stood and went to the door to the bathroom.

—No. I laughed. He didn't mean it to be funny. Which made it funnier. Which was kind of his style.

She fiddled with one of the buttons on the old blue gas station shirt that hung to tops of her thighs.

—I keep thinking there's a good laugh in his suicide somewhere. But I haven't found it yet.

She ducked into the bathroom, the taps ran, she came out with her cigarette doused and pitched it in the overflowing wastebasket by the desk.

—I think I need to go.

—OK. Let me get my shit together and I'll give you a ride.

I started looking in the blankets for my jeans and underwear.

She shook her head.

—No. I want to walk a little.

I found my BVDs and pulled them on, taking particular care as I snugged them into place.

—Pretty long walk to Malibu.

She looked out the window, balled her dress tightly and stuffed it into one of the large outer pockets of her jacket.

—I can catch the bus in Sherman Oaks and over the hills and out to Santa Monica. The coast bus from there. I'm not, as you may have noticed, in a hurry to be home.

I sat with my jeans in my lap.

—Sure, but the bus sucks.

She shrugged.

—I like the bus. I like to watch the sides of the road.

I looked at the floor, trying to keep a lid on something that didn't seem to want to cooperate at that moment of exhaustion and postcoital confusion.

—I don't like buses.

—Don't like riding them?

That was a tricky question.

—No. I mean, yeah. I don't like riding them. But I also just kind of don't like them.

—Have you always felt this hostility toward public transportation?