Boys

  SALUD!

  After exhaling some burning fumes and wiping my mouth, I said, "Who all lives here?"

  "Just me," Warren said. "Well, I have some people staying here with me. These two dopes." He pointed at Paul and Fred. They smirked the way I imagined two goblins possessing some secret that would obliterate the universe would smirk, sinister and passive-aggressive at the same time. "But this is MY house. I don't have any roommates but I do let friends stay here, if they want. Want a hit from the freezer bong?"

  "What's that?" I said, puzzled.

  Warren looked at Paul and tilted his head toward the refrigerator. Paul walked over and opened the freezer top to reveal a series of hoses and chemistry lab tubes and glassware, not one single frozen dinner or tub of ice cream inside. On the outside of the refrigerator was a hose that was coiled up on a hook. Closing the door, he unraveled the hose and brought it to us. After he placed the hose in my hand, he walked back to the refrigerator and stood by the right side of it, the water chamber and weed bowl section of a bong protruding from the side. He stood there holding a Bic Lighter in his hand, ready to ignite it.

  "I converted my freezer into a bong. When you're ready, he'll light the bowl and you suck on the hose." The look on Warren's face alone sent warning signals through every nerve in my body. Red alert was in full effect! I set the hose in Warren's hand. Disappointed, he said, "Are you sure?"

  "Yeah, man. I'll stick to whiskey or beer for now."

  "Ok, OK. But don't say I didn't offer. You?" he said, looking at Laura Ann. She politely shook her head. Smart girl. "Man, rejected twice in such a short time. Maybe later." He handed the hose back to Paul, who reluctantly coiled it back on the fridge.

  "How can you afford this place working at the P.W.?" I said. "We don't make THIS much money."

  "Ha! I couldn't afford this place on what we make at the P.W. Shit! I just work there to make friends. I actually don't even need to work."

  "Why's that?" Laura Ann said, curious.

  "Well, I don't want this getting around but... I inherited some money a few years ago. My parents died in a plane crash and I inherited their estate. I also got a settlement from a class-action lawsuit. I was rich overnight!"

  "So, if you're rich, then why work at the P.W.?" I said, pushing my shot glass forward. He filled the two glasses up again.

  "Like I said, man, to make friends. I got lonely. Just don't tell anyone else, OK?"

  "Why not?"

  "Because I don't want to be treated differently."

  "But you just told us."

  "That's because I'm high as a kite!" He cackled.

  "If you're so rich, then why do you mooch off everyone?" Laura Ann said. I looked at her, proud of her moxy. It was a very important question, after all.

  "The rich don't stay rich by spending their money when they can get things for free. Am I right?" he said.

  "I wouldn't know. I'm not rich," she said.

  "Cam down, calm down," he said, raising his hands as if to surrender. "I realized that I've asked a lot of people at the P.W. which is why I threw this party--to give back to everyone. So drink up. Hang out. Enjoy the view on the back patio. It really is spectacular, even at night."

  "OK," she said.

  "Thanks Warren," I said, lifting my chin as if to accept his surrender. "Let's go check it out." Laura Ann and me made our way out back.

  Outside, that's where the party was really happening. The back patio was at least 50 feet wide and 25 feet deep with dozens of party-goers drinking beer, smoking cigarettes and joints, circling the kegs like frontiersman protecting their last rations, talking, dancing a bit. It was a miracle the wood deck could support so many folks. I could feel everything through the wood planks, every stomp and every shuffle of someone's feet. I pulled Laura Ann's hand and led her around the perimeter of the deck to the railing. Once there, a spectacular night view stretched all the way around us and we could see for miles and miles. Even at night, the view was something to behold, hill after rolling hill speckled with various colored lights from homes and businesses and schools and country clubs and whatever. Holding the rail with both hands, I leaned my head over to look down. The deck was jutting out from the top of the hill. There was a least a 50 foot drop before the hill slid into darkness beneath us. A cool breeze hit our faces as we looked down.

  "That's an amazing view," I said.

  "No shit," she said. "Must be nice to have a pile of money just drop in your lap."

  "Well, his parents did die, you know?" I said, sarcastically.

  "Everyone's parents will die. Might as well get some money out of it." I was caught off-guard by her comment, which she tossed out like a grenade but refused to take cover. I didn't expect such a bitter comment to come out of her mouth but there it was. She quickly realized the unattractiveness of saying such things out-loud and quickly recanted. "I'm sorry. That was an ugly thing to say."

  "It's OK. No worries."

  "My parents died too in a freak accident. A drunk driver plowed into them when they were driving home from a charity event. When the police came to our house, they first told the babysitter who then had the difficult job of telling me and my little brother. We were crushed."

  "Oh no!" I said, feeling extremely guilty that my parents were still alive and only lived a couple of hours away, even though I hadn't seen them in quite a while. At least, if I wanted to, I could hop in the car and go visit them on a whim. Laura Ann didn't have that choice. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know that about you."

  "It's OK, really. It was a long, long time ago. But I didn't get any money out of it. Warren can gloat all he wants but I'd rather just have my parents back than have a lot of money. It's kinda pathetic that he's bragging about it like that."

  "Yeah."

  "I mean, it's just so insensitive--Hey! There's Levonne." she said, craning her neck to see him. "He's coming over here and he looks pissed!"

  I turned around to find Levonne, mad as hell with a look on his face like he was going to demolish me, as he grabbed me by my shirt and pulled me close to his face. The whites of his eyes weren't white at all but red and sinewy with lines crisscrossing on them like miniature highways to hell. And his breath--hot and dense and rank with anger--hit my face hard.

  "Why you givin' food to bums, nigga?!" he said. Boy, was he pissed, really pissed. I could tell. I felt some droplets of urine hit my inner thigh. "You takin' shit that's not yours?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I said. I lied. I knew exactly what he was talking about but I wasn't going to give up the ghost like that.

  "Oh yeah?" He pulled me even closer, even tighter in his grip, his stinky breath enveloping my head like a toxic fog. "After you split, I went out back to check that ya did yo' job correct and some dirty bum came frontin', asking me for food and shit, saying you gave him food. And I was like, 'Oh yeah?! Who been givin' ya food?' And he said some scrawny white boy who I can only surmise was yo' ass!"

  "I didn't--" I was having a hard time breathing, the way he was holding me to him. I gagged a little.

  "Hey! Let him go, goddamn it!" Laura Ann said, yelling and trying to release his grip but he was too big and too strong. He didn't let go no matter how hard she tried to tap on him with her fists.

  "Then, then, that dirty motha'fucker tells me you been stealing food, not tossin' the shit like ya suppose ta, like I told ya. He said he been watchin' yo ass in the alley. Is this true?!"

  "Wha?!" He was pulling me so hard that I was about to confess, just about to let it slip and tell him the truth, tell him I did it all, that I gave the bum some food and that I took the rest cause I was poor and hungry and felt slighted by the P.W. and how it was just going to be garbage anyway and who gave a fuck about the discarded feast. Really? Who gave a fuck, anyway, dude?!

  But, in the way that most melees mysteriously happen, a flurry of fists appeared before my eyes in a blurred whirlwind with grunts and spit and the sound of flesh absorbing punches and the next thing I knew,
I hit the deck with my face and I heard Alfonso's voice, a deep, angry growl of a voice. I looked up to find my friend on top of Levonne, pummeling his face, hard and fast and relentless. Levonne somehow rolled out from underneath Alfonso and jumped to his feet, his fists at his waist, his hair a mess, his left eye swollen and puffy and wet. It happened so fast that the rest of the people didn't notice until it was over. The party-goers closed in as Alfonso and Levonne squared off, giving each other death stares, their chests heaving in and out. Levonne looked even more pissed than before but haggard, off balance. He wiped his mouth with his hand.

  "You motha'fuckers are fucked! That's all I gots ta say." He turned around and walked back into the house.

  Alfonso turned to me, placing both of his hands on my shoulders, looked me straight in the eye, then he said, "You all right, homie?"

  "Yeah, I'm all right," I said, shaken up.

  "Glad I was coming back here or you would'a been destroyed. He was pissed. What was his problem?"

  The party-goers dissipated without the promise of a fight on the patio deck. Something warm and wet appeared on my upper lip.

  "Your nose is bleeding," Laura Ann said, dabbing the blood with a napkin. I liked the attention she was giving me.

  "He said that bum from the alley told him that I was giving him food and taking food home. He was mad cause I didn't follow his directions."

  "Fuck Levonne! Who is going to believe his fat ass anyway? What's he going to do? Tell the G.M. that a dirty bum told him some shit about you? Please!"

  "I agree with Alf," she said, smiling at me. "I doubt Dan would believe that story."

  "Yeah, I guess," I said. "Maybe."

  "To be safe, maybe we should get rid of the food we took, take it over to Sarah's house or something," Alfonso said. "Get rid of the evidence and all." We all looked at each other and with a nod of our heads, confirmed that plan. It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. "We'll reconvene in the morning but for now..." He put his hand on Laura Ann's shoulder. "You should go talk to your friend. She's crying."

  "What?!" she said, stunned.

  "Your roommate. She's out front crying."

  "Oh my god! OK, I'll go check on her." She quickly left to find her roommate Con.

  "Want a beer?" Alfonso said.

  "Duh."

  We approached one of the kegs and as the surrounding people saw us come close, they slowly eased away, like the sea of nerds in the movie Sixteen Candles parting for their young, cool messiah. The sight of Alfonso pummeling a dude as massive as Levonne must have made an impression on these people. The last thing anyone wants to go through at a party is an ass-whooping. It seemed Alfonso now had VIP status to the beer keg. Some meek dude handed him two plastic cups and Alfonso poured us two, cold beers.

  "So, why was Laura Ann's roommate crying?" I said, sipping some beer.

  "Man, I don't even know where to start."

  "Oh, this sounds good!"

  "Nah, it's not like that. We just started talking and we sat down out front then she started telling me about her boyfriend, what happened between them, and that they broke up earlier today. She just kept going on and on about it. I figured if I was nice and offered a strong shoulder for her to cry on that maybe, just maybe, I might get laid. But she was really hung up on this dude. She started crying and telling me she wanted to go home and call him so she asked me to find Laura Ann. I didn't expect to save your ass from an angry cook, though!" We both laughed. It sounded funnier than it really was. "So, that's what happened."

  "That's not as fun as I was hoping it would be."

  "True. True."

  My nose finally stopped dripping blood and I sipped some more beer, stunned at the events that just happened, when Laura Ann appeared in front of us, a small box under her arm. It was a box I had seen before. It was mine. She handed it to me.

  "I just wanted to give this back to you before I took my roommate home. I read it."

  "All of it?" I said, confused, taking the box containing my book from her.

  "Yep, all of it. It's good, I think. Literature was not my best subject in school but I liked it. That must mean something."

  "It does," I said.

  She placed her hands on my shoulders and planted a kiss on my cheek then left just as quickly as she came. I looked at Alfonso and he looked at me and we knew it was time to go. We left the party-goers behind, walked through the kitchen, past Warren and Paul and Fred who were playing another furious game of Quarters, the three arguing over the nuances of the game rules, past a couple making out on the sectional couch to the slinky sounds of Parliament-Funkadelic, out the front door then out into the street. We walked along the side of the street, hugging the curb, the small box tucked under my arm like a football. As we walked, searching for the place where I left my Civic, some headlights appeared in front of us down the street, the shape and color of an older model American car. We didn't think much of it until its engine roared and the car began approaching us. As it came close, it turned toward us and wobbled on its tires, rubber screeching across the asphalt. A husky arm extended out the side window, as if it was going to grab us, but it swatted at the box under my arm, sending it tumbling through the air and down in front of the car. And in a split second, the car ran over the box, the ream of paper inside exploding into hundreds of flipping sheets and cardboard shrapnel and dust. Some of the papers scattered in Warren's yard but the majority swirled in the car's smoky wake, following the car in a desperate attempt to coalesce before breaking my heart. I stood there in the middle of the street, watching what I only imagined was Levonne's car vanish into the darkness as months and months of my hard work floated and darted and tumbled into oblivion. I was flabbergasted.

  "Oh shit!" Alfonso said.

  Yep. Shit.

  A Life Changer

  On the counter in my kitchen, Mr. Whiskers inspected the frozen trays of Italian food, sniffing their frosty sides, then sliding the moisture off his nose with his paw. We had collected quite a bit of food from the P.W. and now it was time to get rid of it--the existence of this damning evidence would be lethal to our state of employment, for sure. Alfonso sat on the couch, talking on the phone to Sarah--the big dufus twirling the phone cord around his forefinger like a 16 year old girl preening on her bed--explaining to her that we had a surprise and that we wanted to stop by and bring her and Arthur some lunch. From what I could tell from Alfonso's demeanor and by what he was saying to her, it seemed she was pleased about that proposition.

  But in the midst of what I was doing in the kitchen, all I could think about was my novel, blown to smithereens under the wheel of Levonne's car the night before. I imagined the papers scattered across the Hill Country on the outskirts of Warren's property, squirrels making nests with pages of my literature, birds shredding the soliloquies of my characters and stuffing them between twigs and leaves, and other various forest creatures whizzing and shitting on the rest of the loose pages of my literary dreams. It was pretty goddamn depressing, if you asked me. I started to realize that if I was going to follow my dream of becoming a writer, then I was going to have to be a little more protective of my dream and not do stupid things like give the entire first draft to a girl I was crushing on, in an ill-advised attempt to impress her. I didn't imagine Kurt Vonnegut ever doing such a thing to impress a girl (not that I know of, but who knows).

  Fortunately, I had the first draft stored electronically on floppy disks, saved in pieces on various, 3 1/2-inch colored ones of the Memorex variety, labeled in pen or pencil or even crayon. The problem was, I was terrible at organizing all the various pieces of my novel; the compilation of the printed pages was my only organizational method. I knew there was going to be a few weeks' worth of sleuthing to restore a printed copy of my novel. I wasn't looking forward to that bullshit.

  After a few more minutes of chit-chatting on the phone, Alfonso hung up then stood up from the couch and lurched over next to the bar in front of the kitchen. He inspected the food
on the counter, his chin propped up by his arm, then said, "Sarah is cool with us stopping by for lunch."

  "Yeah?" I said, closing the refrigerator after pulling out the last tray of food. The fridge was empty except for a 16oz can of Lone Star beer and a bottle of generic ketchup, both in the door next to each other like two strangers waiting for a commuter train at a deserted station. "We have a lot of food. Is it weird that we're taking them all this food?"

  "Nah, they'll love it. It's the charitable thing to do."

  "You think so?"

  "Fuck yeah! Who wouldn't want a ton of free food?"

  "I guess so." I was worried that it would seem very suspicious but maybe Alfonso was right, maybe it was the nice thing to do. Before I could ponder it too long, we heard the toilet flush in the bathroom and beautiful Laura Ann came into the kitchen, wearing a rumpled sweat shirt with holes in it and ragged jeans, a look of curiosity on her face.

  "Did I miss something?" she said.

  "Nah," I said. "Let's load up the car."

  The three of us loaded up the trunk of my Civic with fifteen trays of food and, after petting Mr. Whiskers and locking the door to my apartment, we were off to Sarah's house. On the ride there, we listened to Ice-T's 6 in the Mornin'. Alfonso and I knew all of the words: 6 in the mornin' police at my door / Fresh Adidas squeak across the bathroom floor. It was a song about a street hustler who narrowly escapes being arrested by the police and I couldn't help but see the irony in it. Were we criminals, too? Or were we like Robin Hood, just assisting in the redistribution of things? I didn't know. But, for the first time in my young life, I felt a rush of adrenaline I had never felt before and I liked it. It felt like anything could happen. Laura Ann got a kick out of the fact that a small white guy and a big Mexican guy in a beat-up Honda Civic were rapping along to a gangster rap song. She eventually joined in, rapping 'Word!' in unison with us and Ice-T when he was ready to continue his story after the break from the DJ.

  It didn't take long to get to Sarah's house and we found a place to park out front. The three of us unloaded the trunk, carrying a few trays each but leaving some behind, and we made our way to the door. Sarah must have been on the lookout cause she opened it before we could ring the doorbell.