"You"—he's crying—"define it."
"We've already been there," I tell him. "We've already seen it."
"Who's . . . we?" He chokes.
"Legion."
11
THE FIFTH WHEEL
"Are we gonna kill the kid?" Peter asks, looking jumpy and nervous, rubbing his arms, his eyes wide, a huge belly sticking out beneath a BRYAN METRO T-shirt and he's sitting in a ripped-up green armchair in front of the TV, watching cartoons.
Mary lays on the mattress in the other room, strung out, wasted, listening to Rick Springfield or some other asshole on the radio, and I'm feeling pretty sick and trying to roll this joint and I try to pretend that Peter didn't say anything, but he asks it again.
"I don't know if you're asking me or Mary or one of the fucking Flintstones on the fucking TV, man, but don't ask it again," I say.
"We gonna kill the kid?" he asks.
I stop trying to roll the joint—the rolling papers are too wet and dissolving all over my fingers—and Mary moans some name. The kid has been tied up in the bathtub for something like four days now and everyone's a little nervous.
"I'm getting itchy," Peter says.
"You said it was going to be really easy," I say. "You said everything was going to be cool. That it was all working out, man."
"I fucked up." He shrugs. "I know it." He looks away from the cartoons. "And I know you know it."
"You get a medal, m-man."
"Mary doesn't know anything." Peter sighs. "That girl never knew a damn thing."
"So you know that I know that you fucked up in, like, a real big way?" I'm asking. "Huh—is that it?"
He starts laughing. "We gonna kill the kid?" and Mary starts laughing with him and I'm wiping my hands listening to them.
Peter gets hold of me from some dealer I used to work for and he calls for me from Barstow. Peter is in Barstow with an Indian he picked up near a slot machine in Reno. The dealer gives me the number of a hotel out in the desert and I call Peter up and he tells me that he's coming down to L.A. and that he and the Indian need a place to hang out for a couple of days. I have not seen Peter in three years, since a fire we both started got out of control. I whisper to him, over the phone, "I know you're fucked up, dude," and he says, back over the line, "Yeah, sure, let me come on down."
"I don't want you to do what I fucking think you're going to do," I say, my face in my hands. "I want you to stay a night and move on."
"You want to know something?" he asks.
I can't say anything.
"It's not going to happen like that," he says.
Peter and Mary, who isn't even an Indian, come out to L.A. and they find me in a place out in Van Nuys around midnight and Peter comes in and grabs me and says, "Tommy, dude, how's it hanging, buddy?" and I stand there shaking and say, "Hi, Peter," and he's fat, three hundred, four hundred pounds, and his hair is long and blond and greasy and he's wearing a green T-shirt, sauce all over his face, marks all up and down his arms, and I get pissed.
"Peter?" I ask. "What the fuck are you doing?"
"Oh, man," he says. "So what? It's cool." His eyes are wide and weird and he's creeping me out.
"Where's the chick?" I ask.
"Out in the van," he says.
I wait and Peter just stands there.
"Out in the van? Is that right?" I ask.
"Yeah," Peter says. "Out in the van."
"I guess I'm expecting you to move or something," I say. "Like, maybe, get the girl?"
He doesn't. He just stands there.
"The girl's in the van?" I say.
"That's right," he says.
I'm getting pissed. "Why don't you bring the cunt out here, you fat fuck?"
But he doesn't.
"Well, man." I sigh. "Let's see her."
"Who?" he asks. "Who, man?"
"Who do you think I mean?"
He finally says, "Oh yeah. Mary. Sure."
This girl is all passed out in the back of the van and she's tan and dark with long blond hair, skinny because of drugs but in a good way and cute. She sleeps on the mattress the first night in my room and I sleep on the couch and Peter sits in the armchair watching late-night TV shows and I think he goes out once or twice for some food but I'm tired and pissed off and ignoring the situation.
The next morning Peter asks me for money.
"That's a lot of money," I say.
"What's that mean?" he asks.
"That you're out of your fucking mind," I say. "That I don't have any money."
"Nothing?" he asks. He starts to giggle.
"You're taking this pretty good," I point out.
"I need to pay off some guy out here."
"Sorry, dude," I say. "I just don't have it."
He doesn't say too much, just goes back into the dark room with Mary, and I go to the car wash in Reseda that I work at when I'm not doing anything else.
I come home after a fairly crappy day and Peter is in the armchair and Mary is still in the back room listening to the radio and I notice these two little shoes on the table next to the TV and I ask Peter, "Where did you get those two little shoes, man?"
Peter is wasted, out of it, a dumb scary grin on his balloon face, staring at cartoons, and I'm staring at the shoes and I hear something far off crying, bumping around somewhere, a humming from behind the bathroom door.
"Is this a . . . joke?" I ask him. "I mean, because I know what a fucked-up guy you are, dude, and I know that this isn't a joke and, man, oh shit."
I open the door to the bathroom and see the kid, young, white, blond, maybe ten or eleven, wearing a shirt with a tiny horse on it, faded designer jeans, his hands tied up behind his back with a cord and his feet bound by rope and Peter has stuck something in the kid's mouth and put duct tape over it and the kid's eyes are wide and he's crying, kicking at the sides of the bathtub that Peter stuck him in and I slam the door to the bathroom and run over to Peter and grab his shoulders and start shouting into his face, "What the fuck you think you're doing shithead what the fuck have you done you fucking shithead?"
Peter is staring calmly into the TV screen.
"He'll bring us money," he mumbles, trying to brush me away.
I'm squeezing his fat-beefy shoulders harder and keep shouting "Why?" and I panic and it causes me to swing a fist at him, hitting Peter hard across the head and he doesn't move. He starts laughing, the sounds coming out of his mouth don't make sense, can't be connected to anything else I've ever heard.
I punch his head harder and sometime after the sixth blow he grabs my arm, twisting it so hard I think it will snap in two, and I fall slowly to the floor, one knee at a time, and Peter keeps twisting harder and he's not smiling anymore and he growls, low and slowly, four words: "Shut—the—fuck—up."
He yanks my arm up, giving it one more hard twist, and I fall back, holding my arm, and just sit there for a long time until I finally get up and try to drink a beer and lay on the couch and my arm is sore and the kid stops making noises after a while.
I find out that the kid is skateboarding at the parking lot of the Galleria that Peter and Mary scoped out all morning long and Peter says they "made sure no one was looking" and Mary (this is the part I have the hardest time picturing, because I cannot imagine her in motion) drives up to the kid as he's tying a shoelace and Peter opens the back door of the van and very simply, without any effort, lifts the kid up and calmly shoves him into the back of the van and Mary drives back here and Peter tells me that even though he was going to sell the kid to a vampire he knows who lives over in West Hollywood, he'd rather deal with the kid's parents instead and that the money we receive will go to paying off a fag named Spin and then we'll head for Las Vegas or Wyoming and I am so freaked out that I cannot say anything and I have no idea where Wyoming is and Peter has to show me in a book, on a map, a purple state that seems far away.
"Things do not work out like that," I tell him.
"Man, your problem, the thing that screw
s you up, is that you don't relax, man, you don't lay back."
"Is that right, man?"
"It's bad for you. It'll be bad for you, dude," Peter says. "You've got to learn to flow, to float. To mellow out."
Three days will pass and Peter will watch cartoons and he will forget about the kid laying in the bathtub and he will pretend, along with Mary, that there never was a kid and I will try to keep cool, pretending to know what they are going to do, what will be accomplished, even though I have no idea what will happen.
I go to the car wash because I wake up and Peter will be heating a spoon in front of the TV and Mary will stagger in, thin and tan, and Peter will make jokes while shooting her up and then he will do himself and before the car wash I smoke pot and watch cartoons with Peter and Mary goes back to the mattress and sometimes I can hear the kid kicking against the tub, freaking out in there. We play the radio loud, praying the kid will stop, and I piss in the sink in the kitchen or go to the Mobil station across the street to shit and I don't ask Peter or Mary if they feed the kid. I will come home from the car wash and see empty Winchell boxes and McDonald bags but don't know if they ate the food or if they gave it to the kid and the kid moves around in the tub late at night and even with the TV on and the radio playing you can hear him, driving you to hope that someone outside will hear, but when I go outside you can't hear anything.
"Just to you," Peter says. "Just to you, man."
"Just to me fucking what?"
"I can't hear anything," Peter says.
"You're . . . lying," I say.
"Hey, Mary," he calls out. "You hear anything?"
"Don't ask her, man," I say. "She's . . . fucked up, man."
"That's why you're going to do something about it," he says.
"Oh shit, man," I groan. "This is all your fault, man."
"Coming to L.A. is my fault?" he asks.
"Just getting the kid like that."
"That's why you're going to do something about it."
On the fourth day Peter realizes something.
"I don't know what you mean when you say that," I tell him, near tears, after he explains a plan.
"We gonna kill the kid?" he repeats, but it's really no longer a question.
I get up late the next morning and Peter and Mary are in the back room passed out on the mattress and the TV is on and animated balls, blue and fuzzy and with faces, chase each other around with big hammers and pickaxes and the sound is turned down low so you can imagine what they are saying to each other and when I'm in the kitchen I open a beer and piss in the sink and actually put part of what's left of an old Big Mac laying on the counter into my mouth, chewing, swallowing, and I put on a pair of new overalls and am about to leave when I see that the bathroom door is open a little and I walk over, carefully, afraid that maybe Peter did something to the kid again, last night, but finally I can't even check, so I just close the door quickly and drive my car out to Reseda, to the car wash, because two nights ago I went in, high, and the kid was on his stomach, his pants bunched up around his bound ankles, and his backside was dirty with blood and I left and the next time I see the kid he's cleaned up, dressed, someone even brushed his hair, still tied up with a sock in his mouth, freaked out, his eyes redder than mine.
I get to the car wash late and someone Jewish yells at me and I don't say anything back, just walk into a long dark tunnel and out, the other end, where I dry a car with a guy named Asylum who thinks of himself as a "real goof" and everyone in the Valley wants their car washed today and I keep drying the cars, not caring how hot it is, not looking at anybody or talking to anyone, except Asylum.
"I'm not even, like, worried anymore," I tell him. "You know? Or suspicious or anything."
"You, like, just don't give a shit anymore?" Asvlum asks. "Is that it? Am I clear on this?"
"Yeah," I say. "I just do not care."
I finish drying a car and I'm waiting for the next one to come out of the tunnel and I notice a little kid standing next to me. He's in a school uniform, watching the cars coming out of the tunnel, and I'm slowly aching with paranoia. A car comes off the belt and Asylum steers it over to me.
"That's my mom's car," the kid says.
"Yeah?" I say. "So fucking what?"
I start drying a Volvo station wagon with the kid still standing there.
"I'm getting angry," I tell the kid. "I don't like you looking at me."
"Why?" he asks.
"Because I want to kick you in the head or something, y'know?" I say, squinting up at smog.
"Why?" he asks.
"I'm pretending that I don't notice you talking to me," I say, hoping he will go away.
"Why?"
"You're a little fucker who is asking me a stupid question like it's important," I point out.
"Don't you think it's important?" the kid asks.
"You talking to me?" I ask the kid.
He nods his head proudly.
"I don't know why you need to ask me this, man, I just don't know." I sigh. "It's a stupid question."
"What's 'need'?" the kid asks.
"Stupid, stupid, stupid," I mutter.
"Why is it stupid?"
"It's needless, you fuckin' little retard."
"What's needless?"
Fed up, I make a move toward the kid. "Get outta here, you little fuck." The kid laughs and walks over to a woman drinking Tab and staring at a Gucci purse and I dry the Volvo fast and Asylum tells me about a girl he fucked last night who looked like a combination bat and large spider and I finally open the door for the woman with the Tab and the kid and suddenly it's so hot I have to wipe sweat from my face with a smelly hand and the kid keeps looking at me as she drives off.
Peter goes out around ten because he has to do some business and says he'll be back at midnight. I try watching some TV but the kid starts moving around and I get freaked out so I go into my room where Mary is laying on the mattress, the lights off, the room dark, with the windows open but still hot and I look over at her and ask if she wants to split a joint.
She doesn't say anything, just moves her head real slowly.
I start to leave, when Mary says, "Hey, man . . . stay . . . why don't you . . . stay?"
I look at her. "Do you want to know what I'm thinking?"
Her mouth moves, eyes rolled up. ". . . No."
"I'm thinking, man, this girl is so fucked up," I tell her. "I'm thinking any girl who hangs out with Peter is so fucked up."
"What else are you thinking?" she whispers.
"I don't know." I shrug. "I'm . . . horny." Pause. "Peter won't be home until—when? Midnight?"
"And . . . what else?"
"Shit, why not stick around and see what happens."
"You . . ." she swallows. "Don't . . . want to see that."
I sit down on the mattress next to her and she tries to sit up but settles for leaning against the wall and asks me about my day at work.
"What are you talking about?" I ask. "You want to know about my day at the car wash?"
"What . . . happened?" She breathes in.
"There's a car wash," I tell her. "There was a freaky little kid. It was all really interesting. Maybe the most interesting day of my life." I'm tired and the joint I light goes out too soon and I reach over her and take matches that are next to a spoon and a dirty plastic bag on the other side of the mattress and light the joint and ask her how she met up with Peter.
She doesn't say anything for a long time and I can't say I'm surprised. When she does it's in a low soft voice that I can barely hear and I lean in closer and she mumbles something and I have to ask her what she's saying, her breath smelling like something almost dead. From the radio the Eagles are singing "Take It Easy" and I'm trying to hum along.
"Peter did some . . . bad stuff out . . . in the desert . . ."
"Yeah?" I ask. "I, like, don't fucking doubt it." Another toke and then, "Like what?"
She nods like she's grateful I've asked.
"We met a g
uy in Carson . . . and he turned us on to some real heavy . . . shit." She starts licking her lips and I'm getting sad. "And . . . we hung out with him . . . for a little while . . . and the guy was real nice and once when Peter went out to get some donuts . . . he went out to get some donuts . . . and this guy and I started fooling around. It was nice. . . ." She's so far off, so druggy, that I get turned on and she stops and looks at me to make sure I'm here, listening to this. "Peter walked in . . ."
My hand is on her knee and it looks like she doesn't care and I nod again.
"You know what he did?" she asks.
"Who? Peter?" I ask. "What?"
"Guess." She giggles.
I pause a long time before guessing, "He ate . . . the donuts?"
"He took the guy out to the desert."
"Yeah?" I move my hand up to her thigh, which is bony and hard and covered with dust, and I'm moving my hand across it, wiping flakes off.
"Yeah . . . and he shot him in the eye."
"Wow," I say. "I know Peter's done shit like that. So I'm not too surprised or anything."
"Then he starts screaming at me and he pulled the guy's pants down and he got out this knife and cut the guy's . . . thing off and . . ." Mary stops, starts giggling, and I start to giggle too. "And he threw it at me and said, Is that what you want, whore, is that it?" She's laughing hysterically and I'm laughing too and we keep laughing for what seems like a long time and once she stops she starts crying, real hard, choking and coughing up stuff, and I take my hand off her leg. "This is all we will ever talk about," she sobs.
I try to fuck her anyway but she's so tight and dry and high that I get sore so I give up for a little while. But I'm still pretty horny so I try to make her blow me but she falls asleep and I try to pick her up, lean her back against the wall and fuck her in the mouth but that doesn't work and I end up jerking off but I can't even come.
I wake up because someone is banging on the door. It's late and the sun is high and coming through the window, hitting me full in the face, and I get up and look around and don't see Peter or Mary anywhere and I get up thinking maybe it's them at the door and I walk over and open it up, tired, groggy, and it's a young tan guy with blond hair, blow-dried, in pretty good shape, a tank top, boat shoes, baggy shorts, Vuarnets, and he's standing there looking at me like he's all the things I want.