A misfired crust hits me in the arm. I mutter, “Fuck you, Larry.”
Skeet leans in closer. “Lana’n me got some twenty-fives.” When he sees I don’t know what he’s talking about, Skeet’s eyes get big and round. “Some tabs? I could sell you one if you wanna trip, yo.”
“No thanks, Skeet. And you shouldn’t either.”
He laughs. “Right.” Silly Dr. Slippers. “So, you just chillin’, then?”
I nod. Yes. I am.
Then the door opens and I come off the wall, but it’s not Jamie. It’s two other guys, and at first I can’t place the lumpy kid in the baseball cap until I see he’s chattering on a cell phone and it’s actually his voice that is familiar, “Yeah, I’m here. Fuckin’ lame-ass party though.” and I remember—it’s Chet. Monte’s little brother.
A crust flies. “Fuck you, Larry!”
“Man, this party totally blows,” Chet says into his phone. “Ugly chicks. Lame-ass party.”
And I have to agree with Jamie’s earlier assessment; Chet is an asshole. The last party I came to here, there were no girls at all. We didn’t even get to come inside. You want to call that a lame-ass party, fine. But this is Halloween at the Playboy Mansion compared to that.
A couple of minutes and two flying crusts later, the door opens again and this time it is Jamie. And he’s with Bea. And they’re each carrying two cases of beer. In her mouth, Bea has the largest collection of car keys and key rings I’ve ever seen not on a janitor. She opens her mouth and drops this four-pound key-contraption on a table.
“Beer’s here,” Bea says and then she sees me and smiles. “Hey, you.”
I come off my wall. I am strangely…so happy to see them both.
Bea takes off a heavy coat. She’s wearing a clingy, old vintage dress that comes to her impossibly high knees. The silky material brushes my arm as she leans in and nods toward the party. “You see any sensitive poet boys here?” Then she brushes my cheek with her lips—small swoon—and walks away, grabbing a slice of pizza and joining a cluster in mid-smoke.
I try to catch Jamie’s attention but he’s going from cluster to cluster collecting for beer. Then Jamie says, “The fuck’s he doin’ here?” and for a second I think he’s talking about me—
—until Chet closes his phone, steps into Jamie’s face and says, “You gonna tell me where I can and can’t go, bitch?”
“Go wherever you want long as I ain’t there.”
I tense for a fight, but Chet scoffs and walks away, trying to maintain some upper hand in full retreat. He joins Bea in her cluster of smokers, shooting me a dark look on his way past, and Bea breaks my heart a little by kissing Chet on the mouth.
Jamie sidles up to me then, leans against my wall. “Hate that guy,” he says.
Before I can start my nonviolence lecture, from the cluster of smokers comes Chet’s amped-up voice—“’Cause I think that dude’s a fuckin’ cop, that’s why.”
And I think my heart might stop and I wonder if people can tell just by looking at me. I ease the hand with the dark watch behind my back. And when I look up—
—Jamie is in Chet’s face—and that’s when everything becomes—wrong. You forget the sound of a fist hitting a head—it’s not that deep satisfying thwump of a movie punch but a pitiful sound, a wincing red chuupp, and when someone really connects sharply—you can just hear the underneath knock of bone—and here’s the thing: it’s an awful sound. Jamie lands two quick deep shots to Chet’s soft face and then Chet hits him back and their feet chirp on the linoleum as the clusters of smokers merge like joining cells into a semicircle, and in the center these two young men flail, jab, whirl, and the circle yells and a pizza box flies and maybe three more punches land before I step toward them and people are yelling—“Chill, motherfuckers!”—just as I reach out to help, but the closest thing to me is one of Jamie’s pinwheeling arms, so I grab it—forgetting that you always grab for the other guy, because I get a piece of one of Jamie’s arms and this only allows Chet to connect with a bone-deep fist to Jamie’s eye and temple and Jamie’s knees crumple, and I feel so bad that I step in and push Chet in his lumpy chest and he swings at me as he falls back—just grazes my chin but that completely pisses me off—so I swing wildly and miss, and someone yells “Old dude’s freakin’!” and I suppose I am freaking because I rush Chet, hit him full in the chest and we go down together, air escaping his puffy coat as we fall on that fetid carpet of pizza crusts, cigarette butts and roach ends, and I bring my knee into his gut and we’re all flying arms and grunts and that’s when the air goes out of the fight like the air in Chet’s ski coat—and out of the room too, because once a boxing match becomes a wrestling match it gets boring and even a little embarrassing, gay, the fellas would say, and while we snuffle on the ground for a few seconds more, like hogs (side-note: Chet smells like ass), this fight’s done. Jamie and Skeet pull me off, but Chet leaps to his feet and wants to keep fighting. “Come on, motherfuckers! I’ll take all-a-y’all on!” but then he realizes he’s lost something and he pats himself down. “Where the fuck’s my phone? Who took my phone? You got ten seconds to give that shit back or I go out to my fuckin’ car.”
And here’s the thing: I have a pretty good idea what Chet means. (I picture him holding it sideways, like they do in rap videos.) Of course, even when you try to make the right move, another board teeters—two minutes ago I was a forty-six-year-old unemployed narc hanging out with potheads, waiting to go to Weedland; now I’m an unemployed narc—who has gotten into a fight with a guy threatening to go to his car and get his gun.
There are these lakes in Northern Idaho that are supposed to be bottomless; the Navy used to do submarine training there. They’d think they had found the bottom and then a submarine would find a deeper hole. Of course, the lakes weren’t bottomless. In fact, it turns out nothing is bottomless—except the trouble I get into.
But here’s the strange thing about the fight. Once it’s over, no one says a word about it. The party just goes back to its earlier rhythms—Larry goes back to killing zombies and Bea goes back to kissing people and the other kids go back to drinking bad beer and smoking good weed and throwing pizza crusts and Chet even finds his phone under the couch and then he and his buddy decide to leave—“Lame-ass party”—the door closing behind them—and I try to imagine a party with my friends—say, the old newspaper Christmas party in the company cafeteria—erupting in a fistfight and then just returning to normal five minutes later.
“Sorry about that,” Jamie says. A bruise is forming above his eye.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I shouldn’t have grabbed your arm. You were doing just fine.”
Jamie touches his eye. “You ever feel like you’re outgrowing your own fuckin’ life?”
There’s my writer.
Jamie looks at his hand, sees no blood, and shrugs. “Should we roll?”
Bea sees us leaving and asks if she can walk out with us. And while Jamie goes around collecting for the weed he’s about to buy, I step on to the cold porch with beautiful blond, blue-eyed Bea, who buttons her heavy overcoat, lights a filtered cigarette and blows slow death at me. “I hate that homoerotic testosterone crap,” she says in released smoke and steam. “They should just fuck and get it over with.”
We are a foot apart on this landing. I stare past her, over the railing of the apartment landing toward the lights of another apartment building just across the street—they are stacked in this part of town like egg cartons in a grocery store. These kids at this party were born in egg cartons, have spent their lives in egg cartons…and I’m fooling myself if I think it’s any different in my bigger egg carton.
“Hey. You okay?” Bea asks.
And that’s when I have an epiphany, a real, old-fashioned, religious-style epiphany. And my epiphany is this: there are no such things as epiphanies—no moments of revelation, no great reversals of motive and fortune. No stands, no redemptions, no October surprises; everything is inevitable because the
world exists exactly as it always has in this moment: the Rahjiv who mops a spilled Slurpee in the tight aisle of a 7/11 is the same Rahjiv who peels back the hair on a cracked skull in a Mumbai ER; my senile old father holds his remote and my five-year-old hand as Lisa talks to her boyfriend in the same bed where she curls up behind me when my mother dies (even as she tells me, It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay). Creeks flow and run dry, and the last free board teeters and all you can do is reach for it—all you can do is all you can do.
I was going to wait until after Weedland, but I might not see this girl again. So I reach over. Gently take her by the arm. “Listen to me, Bea. You have to get away from Dave…he’s killed people. Do you understand me? Dave’s not even his real name. It’s an alias. You have to get away from him. This is all coming apart.”
She stares at me as if I’m nuts; I stupidly show her my watch: “I got picked up by the police…” Still, I get that uncomprehending look from her—“I’m probably going to jail…but if I can keep anything bad from happening to you—I don’t know…”
“You ready, Slippers?” Jamie interrupts, comes out onto the landing.
“Yeah,” I say, and I let go of Bea’s arm.
And so Jamie and I start down the landing, on our way to Weedland. But I stop after a few steps and my eyes are drawn back up to the landing and that’s where I see her, watching me, mouth slightly open—a distant, implacable look in her blue eyes, not at all what I expected—not gratitude, but something else—as the world teeters.
CHAPTER 27
Transcript, 36-Ounce Buy, Operation Homeland 11.15.08: 23:31—
Monte: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
CI OH-2: Monte, I—
Monte: Good timing, I just finished bagging it.
CI OH-2: No, listen—
Monte: Each of these zips is a quarter. Eight is two pounds, ninth makes two-and-a-quarter, minus what you already got. So, do you want to weigh ’em or—
CI OH-2: Would you listen to me, Monte? I’m trying to tell you: I don’t want this anymore. I’m quitting. I want my money back. I’m—
Monte: That’s funny, Slippers. So you give any more thought to buying this place?
CI OH-2: No, I told you. I’m out.
Monte: I thought you was looking into one-a-them (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
CI OH-2: Consortium, Monte. The word is consortium. Now listen carefully to me. That’s not happening. You can’t sell this place. You need to just walk away while you still can. Give me back my money and quit…you too, Jamie—
Monte: That’s why I need you to buy me out so I can—
CI OH-2: No, you don’t understand—
Monte: I know what you’re saying, Slippers. I knew that shit was high. It was Dave’s idea, starting at four. I wanted to start at three, end up around two-eight, right? So how about that? Two-eight? That sound better?
CI OH-2: Listen carefully, Monte. I am done. I just want my money back.
Monte: What the fuck you—money back?
CI OH-2: This whole thing…the cops…they (UNINTELLIGIBLE)…you guys…Jamie, you need to get fifty miles away from here. Away from Dave. He’s—
CI OH-1: Come on, Slippers. Stop talking shit—
Monte: What the fuck is he (UNINTELLIGIBLE)
CI OH-1: Nah, don’t listen to that shit, Monte. Dude’s just freaking out is all. Slippers all paranoid and shit—
CI OH-2:—see this watch?
CI OH-1: Come on, Slippers. You’ll feel better out in the car.
Get your shit and let’s go.
Monte: Wait, I want to know what he means—
CI OH-1: What he means? Dude don’t mean shit. He’s just freakin’. I told you—
CI OH-2: No, listen to me—
CI OH-1: Shut the fuck up, Slippers! Get your weed and let’s go.
(UNINTELLIGIBLE YELLING, A DOOR SLAMS.)
Monte: What are you doing here? We’re moving this shit.
Eddie: Ask him what the fuck I’m doing here.
CI OH-2: (Unintelligible)
Eddie: What have you done, you snitch fuck?
(UNINTELLIGIBLE YELLING)
Eddie: What the fuck are you smiling about?
CI OH-2: I was just thinking—who would win in a fight,
Godzilla or a tyrannosaurus?
Monte: Is it a real tyrannosaurus?
CI OH-1: That’s easy, yo. Godzilla…’cause of the lasers an’ shit.
Eddie: You think this is fuckin’ funny?
(UNINTELLIGIBLE)
CHAPTER 28
Eddie’s Anger—A Limerick
THERE HERE ONCE WAS AN Eddie named Dave
Whose deep loathing he heartily gave:
“What am I supposed to do
with a snitch prick like you?”
As his own ass he endeavored to save.
Fear leads to the lowest of poetical forms. And it’s fear that I feel right now, fifty meggies of it, as Eddie/Dave looms over me, his face red with rage. I’ve probably been punched all of twice in my life until tonight. I’ve already matched that, and tonight’s not even over.
I’m lying on the foot-worn carpet of Monte’s living room, between a La-Z-Boy and the World Book Encyclopedia set—I glance over and see that S and T are switched and fight the urge to switch the books back; I remain curled up, covering my swelling eye as Dave looms over me in his seething rage.
“I’m sorry, Dave. I didn’t—”
“You’re fuckin’ sorry?” Dave turns to Monte. “He’s sorry.”
“For what?” Monte asks innocently, miles behind still.
“I know,” I mutter. “What kind of man was I?”
“What’s that mean?”
I start to sit up. “Rhetorical question.”
Eddie/Dave kicks me in the side and I feel the air go out of me and I fall again.
“What…fuckin’ rhetorical question? What the—Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
Jamie stands beside Dave, arms at his sides, strangely subdued. I sort of thought he might help me, but maybe not. For his part, Monte is red faced and sweating, eyes going back and forth from Dave to Jamie to me. He looks like he’s going to explode in his parka—like a burrito left too long in a microwave. “W-will someone please tell me what’s going on?”
What’s going on? Okay. Well, Monte—(1) Apparently Bea has called Dave and told him that I warned her to get away. That’s something you can never judge—another person’s loyalty. (And maybe I’m just weak for tall and blond, but I’m not that disappointed in Bea. After all, she did know Dave first, and there is a certain chronology to loyalty.) And (2) Dave has driven out here, smacked me in the face and, now, seems to want to kick me to death.
Then, with my side aching and with Monte’s what’s going on still in the air, and because the shit apparently isn’t deep enough yet, the front door flies open again—and I think once again of Monte’s living room as the set of a play, because, in a hot stampede of rash fat, in comes the character of Chet. As played by Chet.
“I fuckin’ told you!” Chet yells; for the moment he seems most furious with Dave.
So here we all are, in Weedland: me, Monte, Jamie and both of the guys who’ve punched me today, in a less-than-circular circle, me on the floor of the living room of a four-million-dollar grow farm, surrounded by my angry colleagues (at least one of whom I suspect carries a gun in his car), these four guys who now understand that Slippers is a snitch.
Or three of them understand: “Will someone tell me what’s going on?” Monte asks.
Chet ignores his brother. “What do we do?” he asks Dave.
Then Chet and Eddie/Dave make dark eye contact and I see, maybe for the first time, that this can get worse, and I think of Lt. Reese and his well-timed aint’s—he ain’t stupid—and the lump in the photograph that he showed me—it ain’t a pile of leaves—and all of my cute, sleep-deprived faux-brave responses just leak right out of me—Godzillas and limericks and What-kind-of-man—and all that’s left is fear, mo
re fear than I thought was possible—like a heightened version of the terror you feel during a rough landing on a jet…and then, this unwieldy thought: I desperately want to see my kids again. And Lisa.
Lying on the floor, curled up—this is why I no longer believe in epiphanies, in profound revelations, because how stupid is the one I’m having: I don’t want to die? How inane, “realizing” the thing you always knew, from your first breath, that you’d prefer to live, to see the people you love? What sort of pointless realization is that?
“I told you not to trust these fuckers!” Chet says again.
“Don’t look at me,” says Jamie, hands in the air.
“You’re the one who brought him here!” Chet says.
“How was I supposed to know?”
And this is when Monte finally arrives at the party. “Wait. Is Slippers a cop?” His cheeks fill with blood and he looks over at Jamie. “Jamie?”
Jamie simply shrugs, looks at his shoes.
“You’re so stupid, Monte,” Chet says. “He’s not a cop. He’s a fuckin’ narc.”
Then poor Monte doubles over and retches, and this might be the most remarkable thing in a remarkable day—that, in that vast gut of his, Monte apparently has nothing but stomach acid, because he heaves and heaves, but nothing comes out except bile and an acrid smell, which joins with the other smells—faint whiff of weed, musty house and a lot of scared-boy sweat—to make me feel like I might get sick too.
Bent over, his hands on his knees, Monte looks up at Jamie. “Did you know about this?” Jamie just stares.
“He didn’t know,” I say.
“Now look what you’ve done,” Dave says to me, and he helps Monte to the bathroom, calling over his shoulder to Chet. “Put this fucker downstairs while I figure out what to do.”
That word…put…seems so much harsher than: Take him downstairs.