Dead Boys: Stories

Fuzzyland

BIG MIKE INSISTS I TRY ON HIS RING. I TELL HIM THAT’S okay, but he’s a pushy bastard. He bought it in Reno or won it, which makes it lucky or something. I wasn’t listening; the guy’s stories go nowhere. He wears the ring on his pinky, but it slips easily over my thumb. He laughs to see that and piles lox onto a bagel.

“You’re going to miss me,” he says to the waitress.

Upon his retirement next month, I’ll inherit some of his accounts. It’s supposed to be an honor. This deli, for example. I’ll be stopping in once a month for the rest of my life, pushing flatware and dishes and, say, did I mention our special on toothpicks? Unless I screw up, that is. Which happens. Ask any salesman. Buy him a drink. Greek tragedies, man. One word too many, one wayward glance, and we are up shit creek.

The owner slides into our booth. My read is he’s a little skittish coming out of the box. His hand is soaking wet when Mike makes the introduction. I’m cool, though. I don’t grab a napkin or go for my pant leg. He and Mike pick up where they left off last time, and I put it on automatic. Not that I’m missing anything: golf, golf, golf. It’s a gift knowing when to smile or nod or raise my eyebrows without really having to listen, but I worry sometimes that it makes me lazy.

There ’s a movie star at the next table, some second stringer whose name I’ll never recall. My wife’s the one who’s great with that stuff. The waitress gets the giggles pouring him coffee, and he smiles. She must be new in town. The flickering of the overhead light is killing me, the silverware clatters. I don’t like where my mind’s at. A bomb goes off in my stomach, and everything in it climbs back into my throat. I’m thinking about the movie star’s money. With money like that you could hire people — a whole squad of detectives, bounty hunters, hit men.

“What do you say?” Mike asks me, darting his eyes at the owner, then giving me a look like it’s time I jumped in.

“They raped my little sister,” I reply.

“Whoa. Jesus.”

That’s not what I meant to say, but now that it’s out — “Some motherfucker. Last night. Down in San Diego.”

Rule number one is you do not bring real life into the sales environment; it’s not about you. I know that, and I’m sorry, but I am going crazy here.

THE BEE MAN interrupts me while I’m shining shoes. Every pair I own, and all of Liz’s, too, are laid out on the dining room table. I woke up with a wild hair this morning, and I’ve been at it since dawn. My fingers are black with polish. I’m so far gone, the doorbell gives me a heart attack.

The bee man’s name is Zeus. His head is shaved, and he has a lightning bolt tattooed on his scalp, above his right ear.

“They let city employees do that?” I ask as I lead him down the side of the house to the backyard.

“We’re contract workers. We don’t have to wear uniforms either,” he says. That explains the Lakers jersey.

The hive is in the avocado tree. I discovered it last week when I heard buzzing while watering the lawn. The gardener quit, so I’ve been doing all kinds of extra stuff around here. Bees were so thick on the trunk, they looked like one big thing rather than a lot of little ones. They shivered in unison, and their wings caught the sun. I didn’t get too close. We have the killer variety now, up from Mexico. They stung an old guy to death in Riverside last year, and, I think, a dog.

“Whoa,” Zeus says.

“Are they Africanized?”

“Can’t tell. The killers look pretty much like the others, except for they’re more aggressive. I’ll send a few to the lab when I’m done.”

I thought I read in the paper that they relocated the hives to somewhere they’d be useful, but Zeus tells me that’s too much trouble anymore. He has a foam that’ll smother the whole colony, queen and all, in nothing flat. No sooner are these words out of his mouth than a bee lands on his arm and stings him.

“Hijo de puta,” he says as he and I hurry away. “Those bitches are gonna pay for that.”

LIZ IS DRINKING coffee in the breakfast nook. She uses both hands to lift the cup, wincing as it touches her lips. Her eyes are red and puffy. Neither of us slept much last night. It’s been that way since we heard about my sister a few days ago. Guys laugh when I say Liz is my best friend. They think I’m pulling something high and mighty. Only Jesus freaks love their wives.

“Maybe it’s time for a new mattress,” I say.

She yawns and shrugs. “Maybe.”

“The guy’s here to kill the bees.”

“What’s that, lightning on his head?”

I have to eat something, so I scramble a couple of eggs and toast some bread. I smear mayonnaise on the toast and make a sandwich with the eggs. Liz has an apple and a slice of cheese. I get about three bites down before the phone rings.

It’s my sister, Tracy, and she’s crying. In our first conversations following the assault she was all facts and figures. Yes, it was horrible; yes, she was pretty banged up; no, the cops hadn’t caught her attacker; no, there was no need to drive down, she already had a friend staying with her. This morning, though, she’s a wreck. She can’t get two words out without battling a sob.

Her ex-husband is up to no good, she says, using the attack as an excuse to press for temporary custody of their daughters. Her attorney has assured her it’ll never fly, but she’s worried all the same. She keeps apologizing for bothering me, which begins to piss me off. I throw the rest of my sandwich into the trash and pour myself another cup of coffee.

“We’re on our way,” I say.

“It’s hard, all of this. I can handle it, but it’s hard.”

“Shouldn’t take us a couple of hours, depending on traffic.”

After I hang up, I grab the sponge and start washing dishes. It’s one of those days when normal things feel strange. The soap smells bubblegummy, but when I get some in my eye, it hurts like hell. The window over the sink faces the avocado tree, where Zeus, wearing a beekeeper getup now, is spraying with what looks like a fire extinguisher. The hive is soon covered with thick white foam. Liz comes up behind me and yanks on the waistband of my sweats.

“I’ll drive,” she says.

“I saw an actor at Canter’s the other day. Big guy, dark hair. He was in Private Ryan and that Denzel Washington movie. Went out with Heidi Fleiss.”

“Oh, I know. Tom. . Tom. .”

She screws up her face and stares at the ceiling, folding and unfolding the dish towel. The grass is dying out back, even though I have watered and fertilized. A few bees trail after Zeus as he carries the foam dispenser to his truck. One of them veers off and begins bashing its brains out against the kitchen window with a fury that is truly humbling.

THE FREEWAY IS clear until we get into Santa Ana, a few miles past Disneyland, then it locks up. I punch over to the traffic report. Whichever lane Liz chooses stops moving as soon as she weasels her way into it. She keeps humming three notes of a song she has stuck in her head. My mouth goes dry when I spot flashing lights.

“There’s an exit right here,” Liz says.

“I’m okay,” I reply.

Car wrecks twist me all around. My parents died in one ten years ago now, out there in the desert, on their way back from Laughlin. Big rig, head-on, whatnot. It was an awful mess. My sister lost it. She’d just graduated from high school. She was arrested twice for shoplifting in one week. The second conviction got her a month in jail. I intended to visit, but I was working twelve-hour days selling time on an AM oldies station where the general manager told everyone I was gay when he caught me crying at my desk shortly after my parents’ funeral.

When Tracy was released, she moved to a marijuana plantation in Hawaii. I still have the one letter she sent. In it she asks for money to buy cough syrup and says she’s learning to thread flowers into leis. She spends half a page describing a sunset. There’s dirt on the envelope. The stamp has a picture of a fish. It made me angry back then, but envy can be like that.

I try to keep my eyes closed until we’re past the accident, but the part of me that thinks that’s silly makes me look. A truck hauling oranges has overturned, the fruit spilling out across the freeway. Two lanes are still open, and traffic crawls past, crushing the load into bright, fragrant pulp. The truck’s driver, uninjured, stands with a highway patrolman. The driver keeps slapping his forehead with the palm of his hand and stomping his feet. The patrolman lights a flare.

Things clear up after that. We zip through Irvine and Capistrano and right past the nuclear plant at San Onofre, which looks like two big tits pointing at the sky. The ocean lolls flat and glassy all the way to the horizon, sparking where the sun touches it. At Camp Pendleton, the marines are on maneuvers. Tanks race back and forth on both sides of the freeway, and the dust they kick up rolls across the road like a thick fog. The radio fades out, and when the signal returns, it’s in Spanish.

We stop in Oceanside for a hamburger. The place is crawling with jarheads who look pretty badass with their muscles and regulation haircuts, but then I see the acne and peach fuzz and realize they’re boys, mostly, having what will likely turn out to be the time of their lives. I convince Liz that we deserve a beer, so we step into a bar next to the diner. The walls are covered with USMC this and USMC that, pennants and flags, and Metallica blasts out of the jukebox. It’s not yet noon, but a few grunts are already at it. I have the bartender send them another pitcher on me. They raise their mugs and shout, “To the corps.” I can’t figure out what it is that I hate about them.

A FIRE ENGINE forces us to the side of the road as soon as we get off the freeway at Tracy’s exit. I see smoke in the distance. The condo development she lives in rambles across a dry hillside north of San Diego, block after block of identical town houses with Cape Cod accents. The wiry grass and twisted, oily shrubs that pick up where the roads dead-end and the sprinkler systems peter out are just waiting for an excuse to burst into flame. There have been a number of close calls since Tracy moved in. Only last year a blaze was stopped at the edge of the development by a miraculous change in wind direction.

We get lost on our way up to her place. There’s a system to the streets, but I haven’t been here enough times to figure it out. The neighborhood watch signs are no help, and the jogger who gives us a dirty look, well, better that than gangbangers. They keep a tight rein here. The association once sent Tracy a letter ordering her to remove an umbrella that shaded the table on her patio because it violated some sort of bylaw. I’d go nuts, but Tracy says it’s a good place to raise kids. A lucky turn brings us to her unit, and we pull into a parking space labeled VISITOR.

Her youngest, Cassie, opens the door at my knock. She’s four, a shy, careful girl.

“Hello, baby,” I say.

Her eyes widen, and she runs to hide behind her mother in the kitchen.

“Cassie,” Tracy scolds. “It’s Uncle Jack and Auntie Liz. You remember.”

Cassie buries her face in her mother’s thigh. Her older sister, Kendra, who’s eight, doesn’t look up from the coloring book she’s working on.

It’s been almost a week since Tracy was attacked, and she still has an ugly greenish bruise on her cheek and broken blood vessels in one eye. She herds us into the living room, asking what we want to drink. The place smells like food, something familiar. “Cabbage rolls,” Tracy says. “You loved Mom’s.”

“So how are you?” I ask. That’s broad enough in front of the kids.

“Better every day, which is how it goes, they say. There are experts and things, counselors. It’s amazing.”

“You see it on TV, on those shows. I bet it helps. I mean, does it?”

“Oh, yeah. Sure. Time’s the main thing, though.”

“Come sit with me,” Liz says to Cassie. She’s trying to draw her out of Tracy’s lap, give Mommy a break.

“No,” Cassie whines as she wraps her arms tighter around Tracy’s neck.

My beer tastes funny. I hold the can to my ear and shake it. This big brother business is new to me. Tracy and I have never been close. We were in different worlds as kids, and since our parents died we’ve seen each other maybe twice a year. She came back from Hawaii, settled in San Diego, and met Tony. They married in Vegas without telling anyone. Whew! I thought. I’m finally off the hook.

But Tony’s been gone six months now. Tracy used star 69 to catch him cheating. He was that stupid, or maybe he wanted to be caught. I notice that some of the furniture is different, new but cheaper. The couch used to be leather. Tony took his share when he left. Everything had to be negotiated. Tracy got to keep the kids’ beds, and he got the TV, a guy who makes a hundred grand a year. It’s been downhill since then. Battle after battle.

“You owe me a hug,” I say to Kendra. “I sent you that postcard from Florida.”

Exasperated, she slaps down her crayon and marches over. We scared the hell out of her when she was younger, showing up one Halloween dressed in a cow costume, Liz in the front half, me in back. She’ll never trust me again.

She grimaces when I pull her up onto the couch. “What’s the deal?” I ask.

“What?”

“What’s shaking? What’s new? How’s school?”

“It’s okay, but my teacher’s too old. She screamed at us the other day, like, ‘Shut up! Shut up!’ ” She has to scream, too, to show me how it went.

“Kendra!” Tracy says.

Cassie sees her sister getting attention and decides that she wants some. She leaves her mother to pick up a stuffed pig, which she brings to Liz, who soon has both girls laughing by giving the pig a lisp and making it beg for marshmallows and ketchup. There’s a creepy picture of an angel on the wall. I ask Tracy what that’s about. We weren’t raised religious. We weren’t raised anything at all.

“It was Kendra’s idea. We saw it at the mall, and she was like, ‘Mommy, Mommy, we need that.’ ” Tracy shrugs and shakes her head. Her fingers go to the bruise on her cheek. She taps it rhythmically.

“Angels, huh,” I say to Kendra.

“They watch us all the time and keep us safe.”

“Who taught you that?”

“Leave me alone,” she snaps.

I walk into the kitchen with my empty beer can. Everything shines like it’s brand-new. Our mother would wake up at four in the morning sometimes and pull every pot and pan we owned out of the cupboards and wash them. Dad called it her therapy, but that’s bullshit. She’d be cursing under her breath as she scrubbed, and her eyes were full of rage.

Something is burning. I smell it. The fire must be closer than it seemed. I press my face to the window, trying to see the sky, while the girls laugh at another of Auntie Liz’s jokes.

ASH DRIFTS DOWN like the lightest of snowfalls, disappearing as soon as it touches the ground. It sticks to the hood of a black Explorer, and more floats on the surface of the development’s swimming pool, where the girls are splashing with Liz. The sun forces woozy red light through the smoke, and it feels later than it is.

I tug at the crotch of my borrowed bathing suit, one thing Tony left behind. My sister sits beside me in a chaise, fully clothed, to hide more bruises, I bet. The rapist got her as she was leaving a restaurant. That’s all she told me. In a parking garage. That’s all I know. “I’m lucky he didn’t kill me,” she said afterward. Her hand shakes when she adjusts her sunglasses; the pages of her magazine rattle.

“Come swim with us, Uncle Jack,” Kendra calls. She can paddle across the deep end by herself, while Cassie, wearing inflatable water wings, sits on the stairs, in up to her waist. I make a big production of gearing up for my cannonball, stopping short a number of times until they are screaming for me to jump, jump, jump.

We play Marco Polo and shark attack. I teach Kendra to dive off my shoulders, and she begs to do it again and again. Cassie, on the other hand, won’t let me touch her. Liz bounces her up and down and drags her around making motorboat noises, but every time I approach, she has a fit and scrambles to get away. “You’re so big,” Liz says, but I don’t know. I’m not sure that’s it.

A man unlocks the gate in the fence that surrounds the pool, and a little blond girl about Kendra’s age squeezes past him and runs to the water, where she drops to all fours and dips in her hand.

“It’s warm enough,” she shouts to the man, who smiles and waves at Tracy.

“Hey, whassup,” Tracy says.

She bends her legs so that he can sit on the end of her chaise. His hair is spiked with something greasy, and his T-shirt advertises a bar. I dive down to walk on my hands. When I come up, they are laughing together. He reaches into the pocket of his baggy shorts, and I swear I see him give Tracy money.

“Where are you going?” Liz asks as I paddle to the ladder.

“I want to swim, Daddy,” the blond girl yells.

“Not right now,” the man answers without looking at her. He stands at my approach, smiles. A salesman. Maybe not for a living, but I’ve got him pegged. We shake hands professionally.

“The big brother,” he crows, jokey jokey. My sister should be more careful.

“Philip’s going to paint my place,” Tracy says. “All I have to pay for is the materials.”

“Unless we get burned out,” he says.

She frowns and puts a finger to her lips, nodding toward the kids.

I scrub my hair with a towel and find that I’m sucking in my gut. It’s sick. A flock of birds scatters across the smoky sky like a handful of gravel.

“You live in L.A.?” Philip says to me. “I’m sorry.”

A real tough guy, going for the dig right off the bat.

“I like the action,” I reply.

“I was down there for a while. Too crazy.”

“You have to know your way around.”

I adjust my chair, sit. Philip fingers the soul patch under his lower lip. I’m staring at him, he’s staring at me. It could go either way.

“I. Want. To. Swim. Now,” Philip’s daughter wails.

“Your mother’ll be here any minute.”

The girl begins to cry. She stretches out facedown on the pool deck and cuts loose.

“Go to it, Daddy,” Tracy says, giving Philip a playful kick.

He stands and rubs his eyes. “This fucking smoke.”

“Nice meeting you,” I say with a slight lift of my chin.

He walks over to his daughter and peels her off the concrete. She screams even louder. He has to carry her through the gate.

“He know what happened?” I ask Tracy.

“What do you mean?”

I stare at her over the top of my sunglasses. After a few seconds she says, “I told him I was in a car wreck.”

“So he’s not like a friend friend?”

“Hey, really, okay?” she warns.

I throw up my hands to say forget it. She’s right. I don’t know what I’m doing, all of a sudden muscling into her life. The girls are calling for me again. I run to the edge of the pool and dive in, determined to get Cassie to play sea horse with me.

THE KIDS TURN up their noses at the cabbage rolls, so Tracy boils a couple of hot dogs for them. She’s more accommodating than our parents were. Seems like a terrible waste of time now, the battles fought over liver and broccoli and pickled beets. And what about when Dad tried to force a lamb chop past my teeth, his other hand gripping my throat? Somehow that became a funny story, one retold at every family gathering to much laughter. Nobody ever noticed that I would leave the room so cramped with anger that it hurt to breathe.

Tracy pushes food from one side of her plate to the other as she talks about her job. She manages a Supercuts in a nasty part of town. The owner is buying a new franchise in Poway, and she once promised Tracy that when she did, Tracy could go into partnership with her. Now, though, the woman is hemming and hawing. The deal is off.

“I turned that shop around. She used me,” Tracy says.

“Tough it out,” I advise. “Regroup, then sell yourself to her. You have to be undeniable.”

“Jack, I quit two weeks ago. I’m not going to take that kind of crap.”

“Well, well,” I say. “Man.”

“Sounds like it was time to move on,” Liz interjects.

“What I’d like to do is open my own shop.”

It’s not that I don’t understand her disappointment. I made it to sales manager once at a Toyota dealership, but they put me back out on the lot after less than a month, saying I wasn’t cutthroat enough. The owner’s son took my place, and it just about killed me to keep going in every day. We had debts, though. We were in way over our heads. It was a shameful time, but I didn’t crack. Two months later Sonny Boy went off to rehab, and I was back on top. A good couple of years rolled by after that.

While Liz and the girls clear the table, I follow Tracy onto the patio. She closes the sliding glass door and retrieves a pack of More menthols from its hiding place inside a birdhouse. Placing the elbow of her smoking arm into the palm of her other hand, she stands with her back to the door so the girls can’t see her take a drag. It’s a pose I remember from when we were kids, a skating rink pose. That’s where she and her dirtbag crew hung out before they were old enough to drive. Barely thirteen, and rumor had it she was already screwing some high school cokehead. Guys called her a whore to my face.

The backyard is tiny, maybe fifteen by fifteen, no grass at all. A shoulder-high fence separates it from the neighbors’ yards on all three sides. I can see right into the next unit: a Chinese guy on his couch, watching TV. The sound of a Padres game curls through his screen door. I tried to talk Tony out of buying this place, but he wouldn’t listen. His deal was always that I was too negative. Now Tracy is stuck with thin walls and noisy plumbing.

“You guys are still the happy couple,” Tracy says. “Obviously.”

“Most of the time, sure.”

“The good part is you don’t seem a thing like Mom and Dad.”

“We got lucky, I guess.”

Tracy’s shoulders jerk. She turns her head and spits vomit into a potted plant. I’m not sure what to do. It would frighten her if I took her into my arms. We’re not that kind of people. I’m sorry, but we’re not. She wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and hits her cigarette again, then walks past me to stand against the fence, looking into the neighbor’s yard so that I can’t see her face. A gritty layer of ash covers everything now, and more is sifting down. The smell of smoke is stronger than ever.

“I still have some of the insurance money from the accident,” I say. “What if you take it? You should get that shop going as soon as possible.”

“Everything’s up in the air,” Tracy replies. “Maybe I’ll go back to school.”

“Use it for that, then.”

“You’ve got it all figured out, huh?”

“Hey. .”

“It’s funny, that’s all.”

She kneels to drink from a hose attached to a faucet at the edge of the patio. After the rape, she drove herself to the hospital. Nobody else in the family had that kind of fortitude. Our dad was a notorious hypochondriac.

Carrie slides the door open with great effort and says, “Mommy, what are you doing?”

“Watering the flowers,” Tracy replies.

WE PLAY UNO and Candyland with the girls, and then it’s bedtime. Sundays are their father’s, and he’s picking them up early in the morning. Liz manages to get them upstairs without too much whining on the promise of a story. Tracy gathers the toys scattered about and tosses them into a wooden chest in the corner of the room while I go to the refrigerator for another beer.

“They love their Auntie Liz,” Tracy says.

I hope she means that in a nice way. I think she does.

There’s a knock at the door. Tracy looks worried, so I stand behind her as she answers. The police officer on the porch gives us an official smile.

“Mr. and Mrs. Milano?”

“Ms. Milano. He’s my brother.”

The cop scribbles on his clipboard. “Okay, well, we’re out warning residents that they may be asked to evacuate if this fire swings around,” he says.

“Oh God,” Tracy sighs.

“Right now things are looking good, but you should be prepared just in case.”

“God fucking dammit.”

When the cop leaves, Tracy turns on the TV, but there are no special reports or live coverage. Liz comes downstairs, and I fill her in. She asks Tracy what she wants to pack, and Tracy says, “Nothing. None of it means anything to me.” It’s embarrassing to hear her talk like that. Liz treats the comment as a joke, though, and soon the two of them are placing photo albums in a plastic trash bag.

I decide to venture toward the fire line to see if I can get more information. Liz insists on coming along. We drive down out of the condos to pick up a frontage road paralleling the freeway. There’s an orange glow on the horizon, and we make for that. A new squeak in the car gets on my nerves. I feel around the dash, desperate to locate it, and things get a little out of control. I almost hit a guardrail because I’m not watching where I’m going.

“Dammit, Jack, pay attention,” Liz snaps. “Are you drunk?”

The road we’re on descends into a dark, narrow canyon dotted with houses, the lights of which wink frantic messages through the trees. We hit bottom, then climb up the other side. As we crest the hill, the source of the glow is revealed to be a monstrous driving range lit by mercury vapor lamps. The golfers lined up at the tees swing mechanically. There is ash falling here, too, and the stink of smoke, but nobody’s worried.

We pull over at a spot above the range and get out of the car to watch. It feels like something teenagers might do. Balls soar through the air and bounce in the dead grass. Liz drapes my arm across her shoulders. She really is great with those kids.

“Are you sure you don’t want a baby?” I ask.

I watch her face. Nothing is going to get past me. When she wants to be blank, though, she’s so blank. “I’ve got you,” she says.

“No, really.”

“Let’s keep it simple. That’s what I like about us.”

We made a decision a few years ago. Her childhood wasn’t the greatest either. A gust of wind rattles the leaves of the eucalyptus trees behind us, and the shadows of the branches look like people fighting in the street. When I close my eyes for a second, my blood does something scary on its way through my heart.

TOMMY BORCHARDT HANGED himself in his garage after they gave half his accounts to a new hire. No note, no nothing. Three kids. That’s what I wake up thinking about after tossing and turning all night, waiting for another knock at the door.

We’re in the girls’ room, in their little beds. They’re sleeping with Tracy. On a shelf near the ceiling, beyond the kids’ reach, sits a collection of porcelain dolls. The sun shining through the window lights up their eyes and peeks up their frilly dresses. Their hair looks so real, I finally have to stand and touch it. Liz coughs and rolls over. Her clothes are folded neatly on the floor. She was in a rock band in high school. I wish I could have seen that.

Downstairs, I find some news on TV and learn that the fire has changed course and is headed away from any structures. They believe it was started by lightning. Tracy’s coffeemaker is different from ours, but I figure it out. It’s fun to poke around in her cupboard and see what kind of canned goods she buys.

The kids sneak up on me. I turn, and there they are. I ask if they want me to fix them breakfast, but Kendra says that’s her job. She stands on a stool to reach the counter and pours two bowls of cereal. I still remember learning to cook bacon. As far as I was concerned, I was ready to live on my own after that. Kendra slices a banana with a butter knife. She won’t even let me get the milk out of the refrigerator for her. Tracy shouts at them to hurry and eat, their dad will be waiting.

“Is it fun at your dad’s?” I ask as they sit at the table, shoveling Cheerios.

“It’s okay,” Kendra says, like that’s what she’s been told to say.

“We have bikes over there,” Cassie adds.

HUNDREDS OF PIGEONS have occupied the shopping center parking lot where Tracy meets Tony to hand off the kids. They perch on the streetlamps and telephone poles and march about pecking at garbage. Everything is streaked with their shit. When a car approaches, the birds wait until the last possible second to scoot out of its way. Tracy and Tony meet here because it’s equidistant from both their places. He won’t drive any farther than he’s required to by the court.

I had to beg Tracy to let me come with her. She’s worried that I’ll start something. I like that, that she’s worried, but I assure her that I’ll hold my tongue. My hope is that when Tony sees me, he’ll figure that she’s pulled together some support and back off his custody demands. He’s a hardhead, though. We almost came to blows once over who was going to pick up a check at dinner.

The girls wait like little diplomats, wise in their silence. Carrie, strapped into her car seat, reaches out to touch the window of the minivan. Five minutes pass with just the radio playing. I watch the pigeons, the people pushing their carts out of the supermarket and filling their trunks with groceries. A cloud wanders across the sky, and I track the progress of its shadow.

After ten minutes I ask, “Is this normal?”

“He’s very busy,” Tracy replies, sarcastic.

There’s a candy store next to the market. It’s just opening up.

“Take the kids in there,” I say. “You guys want candy? Take them in there and buy them something. Here’s some money. I’ll keep an eye out for him.”

The girls are imbued with new energy. They screech and bicker and fight for the handle that slides open the side of the van.

“Look what you started,” Tracy says.

I shrug as she flips down the sun visor and checks herself in the mirror there. The girls, already outside, practice tightrope walking on the yellow lines painted on the asphalt.

“Calm down,” Tracy yells. “You want to get hit by a car just for some candy?”

Tony pulls up next to the van shortly after they enter the store. He’s driving a new Volvo. He squints when he sees me, then gives a lazy wave. I’m all smiles as I hop out and walk around to his open window. He grew up on the East Coast somewhere and moved to California after college. Tracy cut his hair, that’s how they met. He works in computers. I rest my palms on the roof of his car and bend over to talk to him.

“Yo, Adrian,” I say. I used to kid him that he sounded like Rocky.

“Jack.”

“They should just be a minute. The girls were getting cranky, waiting so long.”

Tony lights a cigarette. The ashtray is overflowing with butts. Don’t you sometimes see a chick and just want to tie her up and slap her around? He asked me that once while he was still married to Tracy. We were camping in Yosemite, all of us. The women and kids had gone to bed. I remember looking up at the stars and down at the fire and thinking, Whoops! He pushes his sunglasses up on his nose and flicks ash out the window, between me and the car door.

“How’s Liz?” he asks. “Good, I hope.”

“You know us. Slow and steady.”

“Are you still selling, what, restaurant stuff?”

“Why do you have to be that way, showing up late and everything?”

“Did she tell you to say that?”

I check to make sure Tracy and the kids are still in the store before continuing.

“She was raped, man, and you’re coming at her with lawyers? Have a little compassion. Act like a human being.”

“I said, did she tell you to talk to me?”

“I’m her brother. I took it upon myself.”

I meant to approach this a bit more obliquely. Three years ago, two, I’d have had him eating from my hand, but these days I feel like all the juice has been drained out of me. We stare at each other for a second, then look away at the same time.

“She was wasted,” he says. “Ask her. She was coming out of a bar. She barely remembers. Read the police report. There are doubts.”

My vision flickers and blurs. I feel like I’ve been poisoned. Kendra runs out of the store toward us, followed by Cassie. I push myself away from the car and search the ground for something — a stick, a rock. The pigeons make horrible fluttering noises in their throats.

“Hi, Daddy,” the girls sing. They climb into Tony’s car. Tracy watches from the store, half in and half out. I wish I was a gun. I wish I was a bullet. The girls wave bye-bye as Tony drives off.

“Can you believe that a-hole has a Volvo, and I’m driving this piece of shit?” Tracy says.

“He shouldn’t smoke in front of the kids,” I reply.

We pass an accident on the way back to her place, just a fender bender, but still my thoughts go to our parents. When they died I was almost to the point where I could see them as people. With a little more time I might even have started loving them again. What did they stand for? What secrets did they take with them? It was the first great loss of my life.

TRACY WANTS TO treat us to lunch in Tijuana. We’ll ride the trolley down and walk over the border to a steak house that was written up in the newspaper. That’s fine with me. Let’s keep moving. What Tony said about her is trying to take root, and I won’t have it. She’s my sister, see, and what she says goes. I don’t want to be one of those people who need to get to the bottom of things.

We drive to the station. The crowd that boards the trolley with us is made up primarily of tourists, but there are also a few Mexicans headed for Sunday visits. They carry shopping bags, and their children sit quietly beside them. Tracy and Liz find two seats together. I’m at the far end of the car, in the middle of a French family.

We skirt the harbor, rocking past gray destroyers big as buildings. Then the tracks turn inland, and it’s the back side of trailer parks and self-storage places. The faded pennants corralling a used car lot flap maniacally, and there’s always a McDonald’s lurking on the horizon. Liz and Tracy are talking to each other — something light, if their smiles are any indication. I wave, trying to get their attention, but it’s no use.

The young son in the French family decides to sing. He’s wearing a Disneyland T-shirt. The song is in French, but there are little fart sounds in it that make his sister laugh. His mom says something snippy to him, but he ignores her. Dad steps in, giving the kid a shot with his elbow that jolts him into silence. There’s a faded tattoo on Dad’s forearm. Whatever it is has teeth, that’s about all I can make out.

TO CROSS INTO Mexico, we walk over the freeway on a bridge and pass through a turnstile. I did this once before, in high school, me and a couple of buddies. If you were tall enough to see over the bar, you could get a drink. That was the joke. I remember a stripper in a gorilla suit. Tacos were a quarter. The only problem was that the cops were always shaking someone down. The system is rotten here. You have to watch where you’re going.

Tracy’s got things wired, though. Apparently she’s down here all the time. It’s fun, she says. She leads us to a taxi, and we head into town, passing ramshackle body shops and upholstery shops and something dead squished flat. Dirt roads scurry off into the hills, where entire neighborhoods are built out of old garage doors and corrugated tin. The smell of burning rubber sneaks in now and then and tickles the back of my throat.

Calle Revolución is still the main drag, a disco on every corner. It looks tired during the day, like Bourbon Street or downtown Vegas. Hungover, sad, and a little embarrassed. It’s a town that needs neon. We step out of the cab, and Tracy laughs with the driver as she pays him off. I didn’t know she spoke Spanish.

I want a drink. The place we go into is painted bright green. Coco Loco. They sell bumper stickers and T-shirts. We get a table on the second-floor terrace, overlooking the street. Music is blasting inside, and lights flash, but the dance floor is empty except for a hippie chick deep into her own thing. The waiter is all over us as soon as we sit down.

I order tequila and a beer; Tracy and Liz get margaritas. Some poor guy in a ridiculous sombrero cha-chas around with a bottle of mescal in one hand and a bottle of Sprite in the other. For a couple of bucks he pours a little of each into your mouth and shakes your head, all the while blowing on a whistle. The sound of it makes my stomach jump. I’m startled every time. When my tequila arrives, I drink it down and guzzle half the beer.

“You guys wait here,” Tracy says. “I have to run an errand.”

“In Tijuana?”

“Tylenol with codeine, for a friend who hurt her leg. They sell it in the pharmacies.”

“Wait a minute, Trace —”

“It’s cool. I’ll be right back.”

She’s gone before I can figure out how to stop her.

Everybody around us is a little shady. It hits me all of a sudden. Not quite criminal, but open to suggestion. A man wearing mirrored sunglasses and smoking a cigar gets up from his chair and leans over the railing to signal someone in the street. His partner is having his shoes shined by a kid with the crookedest teeth I’ve ever seen. The sombrero guy blows his whistle again, and a big black raven lights on the roof and cocks his head to stare down at us.

LIZ INSISTS THAT Tony is full of shit when I tell her what he said in the parking lot. I lean in close and speak quietly so no one else can hear. She says that men always cast aspersions on rape victims, even the cops. “You should know better,” she says.

“I didn’t mean anything like that.”

“I hope not.”

“She can do Whatever the fuck she wants. Get her head chopped off, Whatever.”

“That’s nice. That’s just lovely.”

It’s the alcohol. It makes me pissy sometimes. Liz doesn’t know the worst of it. Like the time I went out for a few with one of my bosses and ended up on top of him with my hands around his throat. He didn’t press charges, but he also wasn’t going to be signing any more checks for me. To Liz it was just another layoff. Quite a few of my messes have been of my own making. I’m man enough to admit it.

The bathroom is nasty, and there is nothing to dry my hands with. My anger at Tracy rises. She’s been gone almost an hour. “Hey,” I yell to a busboy from the bathroom door. “You need towels in here.” He brings me some napkins. I have to walk across the dance floor to get back to the terrace. A kid bumps me and gives me his whole life like a disease. I see it all from beginning to end. “Fly, fly, flyyyyy,” the music yowls. “Fly, fly, flyyyyyy.”

THEY STILL HAVE those donkeys painted like zebras down on the street, hitched to little wagons. I remember them from last time. You climb up on the seat, and they put a sombrero on your head that says KISS ME or CISCO and take a picture with some kind of ancient camera. Liz and I hug. We look like honeymooners in the photo, or cheaters.

There are those kids, too, the ones selling Chiclets and silver rings that turn your fingers green. Or sometimes they aren’t selling anything. They just hold out their hands. Barefoot and dirty — babies, really. So many that after a while you don’t see them anymore, but they’re still there, like the saddest thing that ever happened to you.

Liz and I stand on the sidewalk in front of the bar, waiting. The power lines overhead, tangled and frayed, slice the sky into wild shapes. Boys cruise past in fancy cars, the songs on their stereos speaking for them. The barker for the strip club next door invites us in for a happy hour special, two for one. It’s all a little too loud, a little too sharp. I’m about to suggest we have another drink when Tracy floats up to us like a ghost.

“You know, Trace, fuck,” I say.

“What a hassle. Sorry.”

A hot wind scours the street, flinging dust into our eyes.

THE RESTAURANT IS on a side street, a couple blocks away. We don’t say anything during the short walk. Men in cowboy hats cook steaks on an iron grill out front, and we pass through a cloud of greasy smoke to join the other gringos inside. It’s that kind of place. I order the special, a sirloin stuffed with guacamole.

Tracy pretends to be interested in what Liz is saying, something about Cassie and Kendra, but her restless fingers and darting eyes give her away. When she turns to call for another bottle of water, Liz shoots me a quizzical look. I shake my head and drink my beer. The booze has deadened my taste buds so that I can’t enjoy my steak. Tracy cuts into hers but doesn’t eat a bite. The waiter asks if anything is wrong.

We go back to Revolución to get a cab. The sidewalks are crazy, tilting this way and that and sometimes disappearing completely. You step off the curb, and suddenly it’s three feet down to the pavement. Tracy begins to cry. She doesn’t hide it. She walks in and out of the purple afternoon shadows of the buildings, dragging on a cigarette, tears shining.

“Must be one of those days,” she says when I ask what’s wrong.

We leave it at that.

She cleans herself up in the cab, staring into a little round mirror, before we join the long line of people waiting to pass through customs. We stand shoulder to shoulder with strangers, and the fluorescent lights make everyone look guilty of something. There are no secrets in this room. Every word echoes, and I can smell the sweat of the guy in front of me. Four or five officers are checking IDs. They ask people how long they’ve been down and what they’ve brought back with them. When it’s my turn, a fat blond woman glances down at my license, matches my face to the picture, and waves me through. We’re all waved right through.

Tracy’s mood brightens immediately. In fact, she laughs and laughs as we leave the building and board the trolley. Everything’s funny to her, everything’s great. The train is less crowded this time. We each get our own row of seats. Just some marines at the other end of the car, talking about whores. “Oh, this little bitch, she went to town,” one of them groans.

Tracy reaches into her purse and takes out a bottle of pills, opens it and pops one into her mouth. She smiles when she catches me watching her.

The trolley clicks and clacks like it’s made of bones. I stretch out, put my feet up. The reflection of my face is wrapped around a stainless steel pole dulled by a day’s worth of fingerprints. Tracy dozes off, head lolling. Liz, too. I watch the sun set through rattling windows, and all the red that comes with it.

The trolley lurches, and Tracy’s purse tips over. It’s one of those big bags you carry over your shoulder. A half-dozen bottles of pills spill out and roll noisily across the floor. I chase them down, mortified. Tracy opens one eye. I spread the bag wide. It’s full of pills, maybe twenty bottles, all with Spanish labels.

“You’ve got kids,” I whisper. “Beautiful kids.”

“That’s right.” She grabs the bag away from me and hugs it to her chest.

“Tracy.”

“Look, I didn’t ask you to show up; I just didn’t say no.”

“I wanted to help.”

“I fully realize that.”

I try to talk to her some more, but she pretends to be asleep. Nothing I say means anything anyway, because she thinks I’ve had it easy. Liz is suddenly beside me. She takes my hand in both of hers. The jarheads are rapping. Bitch. Skeez. Muthafucka. I could kill them. I could.

WE CAN SEE the fire from the freeway. The entire hillside is ablaze. Tracy’s condo is up there somewhere. Flames claw at the night sky, and smoke blots out the stars. I don’t even know how you’d begin to fight a thing like that. Maybe that’s what the helicopters are for. They circle and dip, lights flashing.

Tracy is still asleep. She could barely walk from the trolley to the car but wouldn’t let us touch her. “Stop laughing,” she yelled, so messed up she was imagining things. She’s curled up on the backseat now, her arms protecting her head. We decide not to wake her until we’re sure of something.

The police at the roadblock can’t tell us much. The wind picked up, and everything went to shit. The gymnasium of a nearby high school has been pressed into service as a shelter. We are to go there and wait for more information. A fire truck arrives, and they pull aside the barricades to let it through.

“How bad are we looking?” I ask a cop.

He ignores me.

I back the car up and turn around, and Liz guides me to the school. We pass a carnival on the way, in the parking lot of a church. A Ferris wheel, a merry-go-round, a few games. People wander from ride to ride, booth to booth, swiping at the ash that tickles their noses. A beer sign sputters in the window of a pizza parlor. A kid in a white shirt and black vest sweeps the sidewalk in front of the multiplex. His friend makes him laugh. A mile away everything is burning.

My stomach is cramped by the time we get to the school. I can see into the gym from where I park. Cots are lined up beneath posters shouting GO TIGERS!!! Two women sit at a table near the door, signing people in, and farther away, in the shadows by the drinking fountains, a group of men stand and smoke. That’s about it. Most people have somewhere better to go. Tony must have told Kendra about angels. What a thing to put into a kid’s mind.

A news crew is interviewing a girl who just arrived. She’s carrying a knapsack and a cardboard box full of china. They shine a light in her face and ask about what she lost and where she’ll go. She says something about her cat. She had to leave it behind.

I close my eyes and bring my fists to my temples. I have to be at work early for a meeting. I can see Big Mike sliding out of his Caddy, squeezing his gut past the steering wheel. He’s my mentor, he likes to say. He’s been married four times. He gets winded walking to the john. There’s nothing lucky about him.

“I want a baby,” I say. The words just get away from me.

“Jack,” Liz says. I’m afraid to open my eyes to look at her. Tracy giggles in the backseat, and we both turn. She reaches up to scratch her face and grins in her sleep.