Fuzzyland : Part 8

Dead Boys: Stories
by Richard Lange

(Page 8 of 9)

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 fl ash, 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 what ever the fuck she wants. Get her head chopped off, what ever."

"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.

Copyright © 2007 by Richard Lange

About the Author

Richard Lange was born in Oakland, CA, in 1961 and spent his childhood in various small towns in California's Central Valley. He moved to Los Angeles at 17 to attend film school at the University of Southern California. While there, he took fiction writing courses taught by T.C. Boyle and was awarded the Ed Moses Fiction Writing Grant two years running. He also worked 32 hours a week at a supermarket in order to pay for costs his scholarship didn't cover and feels that he learned as much there as he did in school.