The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death (23 page)

—Is it possible, my friend, that your coping mechanisms have been over-compensating for the shit that happened on that bus?

The young man in the window responded.

—What shit are you speaking of?

I continued the dialogue.

—That shit where a little girl from your class was hit by a stray bullet and died in your arms and you were covered in her blood.

He shrugged.

—Oh. That.

I put my hands on my hips.

—See, that's what I'm talking about, that nonchalance about the whole thing, and also just kind of being a dick to everyone, that's not the way people react to traumatic situations.

He was unimpressed.

—It's not? You know of another reaction? You've experienced another reaction? Man, as far as you know, this is totally normal. This may be the most normal thing you've ever done in your life.

I jabbed my finger at him.

—Fuck you! That's fucked up. I'm trying to really talk about this for a change and you're being all.

—What? I'm being all what?

I froze, looked at my reflection for a long and deeply disturbing minute.

I shook my head.

—Man, I am not even having this conversation with you right now.

And I climbed off the ladder and laid myself spread eagle on the floor and stared at the flawlessly clean ceiling, and I think I may have cried for the first time in a year, but I'm not entirely sure because a huge mass of
sleep loomed and got its arms round my middle and dragged down and I was gone.

Mumbling as my eye slammed shut.

—Fucking almonds.

—I appreciate you cleaning up, you know.

I opened my eyes and found the daylight the pillowcases were meant to keep at bay was shooting me in the face.

—But it's not really going to change anything.

I looked at Chev, sitting on the edge of his lounger, rubbing his eyes.

I pushed myself up on my elbows.

—I'm sorry about the money, man.

He flopped back in the chair and let out all the air in his lungs.

—See, that's the point right there.

I shaded my eyes from the sun.

—I didn't even know he gave it to me, Chev.

He shook his head.

—Fuck the money. That is not the point. You missing the point is the point. I get the money thing, I get you going to see him. He's your dad. I understand that more than you do. Jesus, man, I saw him like six months ago.

I sat up.

—What?

—When you didn't stop acting all fucked up after a few months, I went and saw L.L.

—Chev.

—I didn't know what to do, you know? Thea was like,
He'll heal in time.
People I talked to, the grief counselor at the hospital, they all said you needed to confront what had happened, talk about it in a supportive environment. Well, I knew sure as fuck that wasn't gonna happen. I read these books on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, they described you pretty smack-on. I mean.

He laughed.

—Dude, you could be the poster boy for PTSD.

He untwisted the sleeve of his black T, where he'd tucked his pack of smokes.

—But knowing what the situation was, that didn't help me to figure out how to help.

I was still wearing the cleaning gloves. I pulled them off.

—I didn't know you were doing all that.

—I know you
didn't.
You didn't have a clue.

He lit his cigarette and blew smoke.

—Web, it wasn't just me, it was everyone you know. At first, anyway. We were all running around trying to figure out how to get your shit together. The guys from the tattoo shop, teachers from the school, Po Sin, some other parents from over there. But you were so, man, acting like such a dick. People just got tired. They didn't know how to deal and got frustrated. It was tiring, man. Jesus, it
is
tiring.

He looked around for an ashtray, couldn't find one, flicked on the carpet.

—So. I went and saw L.L.

—Man. I.

He held up a hand.

—No. Don't. Now is not the time. I mean. I went over to Chez Jay, took a look at him, man, I started to cry. And. You know, not because I was pissed. It was, man, it was so fucking good to see him, you know.

He clenched his teeth.

—And that hurt like a son of a bitch. Let me tell you it did. Talk about feeling guilty. Anyway. He turned around, saw me. Know what he said?

I nodded.

—The wrong thing.

He took a long drag.

—You got that right. Said,
Ah, Chev, come to see me after all these years. What's gone amiss, son, lost the strength of your convictions?

I closed my eyes, tried to imagine he was mistaken about what my father had said, knew he was not.

I opened my eyes.

—Did you hit him?

Smoke drifted from his nostrils.

—No. I walked out. Because right there, man, in that moment, I ceased to care anymore.

He leaned forward, elbows on knees.

—The man had finally, after the, after the accident, after the shit he told
us, he had finally, in that moment when something could have been done, he had finally gone too far. Man, I didn't even know there was road left to travel on that route, but he found it and drove it and that was the end of the line for me. I didn't hit him. I did not want to hit him. I just wanted gone. I walked out.

—Good.

He nodded.

—Yeah. Good. But here's the thing, man, the point.

He looked at the floor, shook his head, looked back up at me.

—Like fucking father, Web, like fucking son.

I opened my mouth.

He closed it.

—No. Wait. Listen.

I listened.

—He wasn't
always
like that. He was always a son of a bitch, always talked shit, but he wasn't always
mean.
That didn't really start till after the accident. He didn't really start forcing everyone out of his life until after the accident.

He scratched his shoulder.

—If that rings any bells.

He got up.

—So it's not about the money. Or about you seeing L.L. If my dad were still around, no matter if he'd turned out to be the biggest bastard ever, I'd want to check on him every now and then. It's not even about you hurting my new girl's feelings so bad that she doesn't want to come here and I had to go to her place and sneak in and out of her bedroom because her folks would freak out if they knew her new boyfriend was a twenty-nine-year-old rocker with a tattoo parlor.

He walked to the hallway, stopped.

—It's about you not trying to get better. It's about everyone else trying so hard that they wear themselves out and can't try anymore, and you just letting them beat themselves against you while you act like nothing fucking happened. Acting like you're no different. Like you haven't changed at all.

He turned from me.

—Web, it's about
me
getting tired, man. It's about, I, man, it's about I feel like I'm on that same road I was on with L.L., about thinking we're almost out of blacktop. And you just keeping the pedal to the metal, and not even trying to put on the brakes.

He put a hand on top of his head.

—And I hate that feeling, man.

He walked into his bedroom.

—I hate it.

And he closed the door.

Me, I sat on the kitchen floor and thought about how it was a good thing I'd cleaned up as well as I did. Because if Chev had known a man was killed in his apartment last night, the shit would really have hit the fan.

Then I got up, cleaned myself up a little, put on some clothes, got the keys to the Apache from Chev's jacket, and went out to go talk to a man about why the girl I'd fallen for, and, you know, already thoroughly alienated, had been kidnapped.

—Cut you bad, cut you like Rambo cuts a redneck.

—Yeah, sure, I know. To avoid that, I'll stay over here.

—Cut you like I cut that other motherfucker.

I sat on the stripped mattress.

—Yeah, about him, you may find that it's in your best interest not to brag overmuch about how you cut him.

Jaime emptied his nip bottle of Malibu and added the empty to the vast array of them heaped at his feet. To judge by the population density around his chair, and by the paths worn through them between the chair and the door and the bathroom, he'd apparently done little since I last saw him other than drink Malibu, void his bladder to make room for more, and stumble to the liquor store on the corner for fresh supplies. He'd most certainly not had the maid in during any of his sojourns out.

He felt in the plastic bag in his lap, found it lacking, turned it inside out, found it still lacking, and dropped it on the floor.

—Well how the fuck ’bout that. Ain't that a bitch?

He pawed in his pockets and found the twenty I'd just given him in order to persuade him to let me into the room.

—Need to go hit the store. Back in a sec.

He stood with the great care and instability of the tragically inebriated. I watched him take a step and place his foot squarely on a couple empty bottles that rolled from beneath him, and let gravity take it from there.

—Ow! Fuck! That hurts.

I got off the bed and walked over and held out a hand.

—C'mon.

He took my hand and I pulled him halfway up and let go and watched Newtonian physics at work again.

—Ow! Fuck!

—Sorry. My bad.

I stuck out my hand. He took it. I pulled and let go.

With anticipated results.

—Ow!

—Whoops.

I stuck out my hand. He eyed it. And decided, I imagine, that based on
a model of the universe drawn from the Hollywood catalogue, no one could be so cruel as to intentionally abuse a poor drunk in such a manner.

I proved him wrong.

—Ow!

I held out my hand.

He slapped at it. Missed.

—Fuck you. Fuckin'.

He got to all fours, crawled to his chair and climbed back aboard, where he knew he'd be safe.

—Cut you bad, motherfucker.

I bent over and picked up the knife that had fallen from his back pocket.

—You might want this.

I tossed it on his lap.

He looked at it.

—Right. Thanks.

He picked up the plastic bag from the floor and stuck his hand inside.

—How the fuck ’bout that.

He dropped the empty bag.

—Fuckin' tragedy that is.

He pushed himself up, the knife falling to the floor.

—Gonna go hit the store.

I put a finger in his chest and pushed and he dropped back in the chair.

—Jaime, that guy you cut. Talbot.

—Yeah, weakass Talbot, cut him bad.

—What did you steal from Talbot and his friend?

He squinted.

—Fuck you talking ’bout? Didn't steal shit. 'M a producer. I facilitate the vision of the talent. Bring it together with the money.

I kicked some bottles aside and picked up something from the floor and held between my thumb and forefinger and showed it to him.

—What about this?

He looked at it, looked hard.

—Fuckin' almond.

—Right the first time. What can you tell me about it?

He grinned, winked.

—'Sa nut.

I nodded.

—Yeah. Dead on. But a little outside the point. What I'm getting at here, Jaime, is why would someone kidnap your sister and, just out of pique as far as I can gather, kill Talbot over some nuts?

—I didn't kill Talbot. Jus' cut his ass up.

—Sure, cut him bad. Cut him like he was a Turkish prisoner in
Midnight Express.
But his buddy or boss or whatever, the guy who looks like Sam Elliot without the moustache, he killed him.

His eyes flicked back and forth a couple times, looking for connections between things that seemed impossible to unite.

—Killed him? Harris killed Talbot?

—Is Harris a tall cowboy with a big gun?

—Yeah.

—Then I'm going to go out on a limb and say that yes, he is the one who killed Talbot.

He rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand.

—Damn. That's. Damn. That's fucked up.

—Yeah. Especially when you take into account that he beat him to death with my telephone.

His face scrunched, he opened and closed his mouth a few times, he stuck out his tongue.

I recognized certain signs I'd seen many times in college, and took a big step back as he bent over the side of the chair and heaved a half gallon of Malibu rum onto the floor.

I edged from the puddle.

—Think it's bad to think about, you should have seen it.

He shook his head.

—No, no, man, ain't that bothers me. Just.

He spat.

—It's just that Harris is Talbot's uncle that's so fucked up.

He flopped back in the chair, wiped pinkish vomit from his chin, and threw up in his lap.

I went for towels, assuming we'd have to shoot this again.

—Almonds, Jaime.

He swallowed the last of the water from the glass I'd gotten for him, and held out the empty.

—They stole ’em.

I took the glass and passed him a damp towel. The only towel left in the room that wasn't draped over the huge pool of rum puke.