Golden States

  “Thanks,” Billy said. He put it carelessly in his jacket pocket.

  “You’re welcome,” David said. This one, too, was a failure, but not as bad as the gorilla. It was hard to predict.

  “Janet came home last night,” David said. “She decided not to marry that guy.”

  “Bet he’s got a little dick,” Billy said, holding his thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

  “I don’t know,” David said. “She didn’t say what was wrong, or anything.”

  “Bet he hasn’t got any dick at all.”

  “Well, I don’t know—” David felt at a loss. Billy had made up a new way of talking, without explaining how it worked.

  Billy started punching the air, doing a little fighting dance that turned him around in circles. “No dick at all,” he said, punching away.

  “She’s going to be a doctor instead,” David said.

  “You got no dick either.” Billy punched in David’s direction.

  “I do too.” When Billy got pulled into himself this way, David might as well have been talking to a whirlwind. His words blew off like dust and leaves.

  “I do too,” David repeated, just to give himself the satisfaction.

  When Billy calmed down, David asked him what he wantedto do. “Punch somebody,” he said. He punched himself in the mouth.

  “Shall we go into town and do a bit of sleuthing?” David asked.

  “I’m sick of that. We’re too old for that.”

  “Oh. Okay. Well, do you want to go into town anyway?”

  “Yeah.”

  They walked together through the serpentine streets of David’s development, Billy stomping into puddles as if to kill them. David walked some feet away, so as not to get splashed, and Billy had to shout in order to tell him the story of how a graveyard in Pocoima had flooded, dredging coffins up out of the ground and floating them down the street like boats. David pretended to believe him, because it was easier than arguing.

  They reached the Plaza, which stood like an island city in the middle of its own flooded parking lot. It was buttressed at either end by a Sears and a Penney’s, twin buildings of salmon-colored brick, and between them were arcaded walkways lined with lesser stores. David and Billy crossed the parking lot and walked into the arcade, shoulders loose, hands sunk deep in their pockets. David tossed his head to flick the hair out of his eyes, an involuntary gesture he feared might be girlish. He tried to imagine Billy doing it, and couldn’t, though Billy’s hair was identical to his, a great swoop that extended from a high side part to the opposite ear. David’s was always coming untucked from behind his ear and hanging down over his face with an annoying, slothlike life of its own.

  The two of them walked the Plaza, checking it out. Things were quiet, mostly mothers out shopping with their kids. The rain had soaked everything. The wood slat benches were dark as maple syrup and the juniper bushes, planted in boxes full of cedar chips, looked drowned. The concrete was covered with the fat limp bodies of worms, some of them big as cigars. A little girl walked on tiptoe among them, screaming.

  “I say, bit of a quiet here, eh?” David said, then remembered Billy didn’t want to play Mystery anymore.

  “Yeah,” Billy said. He shouldered an imaginary rifle and shot the little girl, making soft hissing noises with his teeth, like candles being dropped into water. The little girl hopped and shrieked over the worms.

  “What do you want to do?” David asked in a deeper voice.

  “Kill our enemies,” Billy said. He kept the little girl in the sights of his rifle. “We can climb up on the roof of the Penney’s and get them in the parking lot.”

  “How would we get on the roof?”

  Billy shot the little girl again, and she sensed it. She stopped jumping around and stared at him. David could imagine what she saw, a miniature soldier standing in combat position, feet planted wide, invisible weapon raised. The little girl stared, not so much afraid as dumbfounded.

  “Let’s go goof on the people at the Rexall,” David said.

  “Okay,” Billy said. He shot the girl one more time. She watched him incredulously, her head cocked like a bird’s.

  David and Billy walked to the Rexall and went inside, passing through a stainless-steel turnstile which permitted entry but no exit. The Rexall was full of hard white light, its ceiling lined with luminous panels which gave out a constant faint electrical crackle.

  “See any suspicious characters lurking about?” David said, and bit his tongue. In the thin, rubber-scented air of the store he was suddenly aware of Billy’s particular smell, a mix of cut grass and gasoline.

  “Fuck me,” Billy said. “Suspicious characters everywhere.”

  “How about if we split up and meet halfway? You take the right side, I’ll take the left.”

  “Okay.”

  “Meet in the shampoo aisle in ten minutes with a full report.”

  Billy sneered and started off down his designated aisle. David went to the opposite end of the store. Dead, it was dead today. An old lady browsed the laxatives, which was funny but not good enough to follow up on. A woman in curlers hollered at her baby in a grousing, usual way. David strolled the aisles, looking for someone to be interested in.

  When he reached the fourth aisle, he saw a woman who had possibilities. She was thirty or so, with livid yellow hair that had probably been dyed. She wore a red coat, and stood with her weight on one hip, tapping her chin with a long red fingernail. She was looking over a shelf full of rat poisons. David kept on walking, and when he was down the aisle and out of the woman’s sight he hurried to find Billy.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “What’s going on?” Billy said. He stood in the middle of the housewares aisle with his arms pressed in close to his body, huddled into himself as if he was trying to shrink.

  “I believe I’ve found a woman in a bad predicament,” David said. He couldn’t help talking in the accent. Any other way of speaking to Billy felt puny and wrong.

  “So?”

  “She is plainly suicidal. I’d suggest we put a tail on her.” “Hey, forget about that shit.”

  “What?”

  Billy glanced behind, and then leaned in toward David, exhaling a waft of his own odor. His eyes trembled, seemed to be filling with tears. “I’ve got an Imperial yo-yo in my pocket,” he whispered.

  “Come on,” David said in a lowered voice. “Let’s not steal.” “The hell you say. I’m going back for another yo-yo.”

  “What do you need two of them for?”

  “It’s easy. There’s nobody around.”

  “I don’t want to steal.”

  “Then don’t. Faggot.”

  “Okay, I won’t.”

  “Okay. See you, faggot.”

  David turned and walked away, back down the aisle. As he went his hair flopped down over his eyes and he tossed it back automatically, with the same questionable flip of his head. His face burned, and for the remainder of the distance he had some trouble walking. Suddenly his walk felt wrong, and he tried to change it, putting more flex into his knees and turning his toes farther out. It had a certain cowboy quality and struck him as a success.

  He checked for the woman at the display of rat poison, but she was no longer there. The shelf before which she’d stood was lined with small yellow boxes, and on each box was a cartoon of a rat laid out on his back, with X’s for eyes, and a lily clutched between its claws. He picked up a box and turned it over. On the back side was a black skull and crossbones, with a warning against human consumption. He returned the box to the shelf and set off looking for the woman.

  He found her two aisles farther down, contemplating the bath salts. This time, he could get a better look at her face. She had once been pretty. She had the high expectant forehead and shallow chin of a cheerleader. Her face was pitted and ravaged, though, the eyes outlined in black, her bleached hair pulled down in jagged bangs to her brows. She checked over the bath salts with sour efficiency, and held a box of the
poison in her hand. As David passed he saw part of the black skull, grinning, from between her glossy red fingernails.

  He went and stood by the check-out counter, waiting for her. He took a True Detective from the rack and leafed through it. “Woman Held Prisoner Seven Weeks in Bedroom.” The grainy photograph showed a puffy-faced woman with a trench coat thrown over her shoulders, weeping in the arms of a rescuing officer, being led from a cottage as cheerful looking as the yellow box of rat poison, with flowered curtains visible in one window.

  The girl at the cash register was called Wendy, according to the badge she wore on her blue Rexall smock. David sawher there nearly every day. She might have been fifteen, sixteen at most, and he could tell from the way her thin pale hands darted and trembled that she was in some kind of trouble. Something in the way her fingers hovered over the buttons of the register, nervous as hummingbirds, and in the quick practiced smile that faded the instant a customer’s back was turned. She had a helmet of perfect hair that came to two hooklike curls, one on each cheek. Every day David came to the Plaza, he bought a pack of Teaberry gum, and every day she rang up his purchase, handed over the change, and dropped a length of cash-register receipt on the counter.

  He stood by the register waiting for the woman with the poison, his eyes skating back and forth between Wendy and the story of the woman who’d been kept prisoner (by her husband, a fat hairless man in a Hawaiian shirt, handcuffed, flanked by detectives). Wendy rang up a pair of tweezers for an old man, slipped them into a waxed paper bag, smiled cheerlessly. David turned the pages of True Detective. “Dead Baby Found in Bus Locker.” An attendant had heard faint cries, but thought it must be rats. A stupid, lazy man. He could have been a hero.

  The woman with the poison stepped up to the register. David slid the True Detective back into the rack, picked up a pack of gum, and stood behind her. She smelled of magnolia, a slightly fermented odor. In addition to the poison she was buying bath salts, hair spray, and a package of cocktail napkins. She paid with a twenty-dollar bill. She scowled over her own purchases as Wendy counted out the change and said, “Thank you, come again.” Wendy tucked the articles into a bag, and the woman left the store.

  David paid hurriedly for his gum. Wendy took his money, smiled, tossed the receipt on the counter. He flipped the gum in his palm, dropped it, picked it up again, and took off after the woman with the poison.

  She was walking down the arcade at a fast clip, arms swinging tightly at her sides. David trailed along, keeping himself agood twenty paces behind. When she stopped before the Stride-Rite store, he lingered over a window one shop down, a family of cavorting mannequins done up in snowsuits, their immobile faces haloed with spiky fur, the soles of their boots buried in fake snow that had a wicked crystalline gleam to it. like shaved glass.

  When the woman moved on. David moved on too. He paused in front of the shoe store, positioning himself just where she’d stood, trying to see what she’d seen. The window was full of shoes, lined up on graduated green-felt risers like the feet of a chorus. He wondered w hat exactly had caught her eye. Maybe when she was younger, she’d worn shoes similar to a pair here. There on the highest platform stood a pair of delicate white high-heel shoes, similar to the ones she had on but airier, the toes cut out into vees and lined with a band of silver, the backs held to the ankle by thin straps. He could imagine the woman in her youth, going to parties, dancing and laughing, walking home barefoot after midnight across damp front lawns with her head on a boy s shoulder and the shoes dangling from her hand. He followed her on down the arcade, tow ard the parking lot. watching her shoes click smartly along on the concrete. He began to wonder if maybe she could be saved.

  Under her makeup and bleached hair she was still pretty in an eroded way. The damage could be scrubbed aw ay with soap and hot water. She might just have needed a friend, someone to talk to at night He could imagine himself sitting with her at a kitchen table, after she’d washed her makeup off. strands of damp hair plastered to her rosy skin. He’d nod judiciously as she talked and talked, the bitterness slipping off her like twine from a package. His nostrils seemed to fill with brine. He walked faster, willing something to happen. The woman had stepped out into the parking lot. skirting the puddles. She pulled car keys from her purse. David stopped at the sidewalk, to gather himself. The woman looked back over her shoulder.

  She noticed him. Her hard eyes flicked over his face, and she kept on walking. She unlocked the door of an immaculate white Pinto. David stood pretending to look for somebody who was late picking him up. He tapped his foot and crossed his arms impatiently. The woman backed her car out and pulled away.

  David lingered for a while, still tapping his foot, waiting for no one, until the worst of the embarrassment had worn off. Then he went back to the Rexall to pick up Billy.

  As he approached he saw there was a commotion going on in front. He had hoped so long for an incident, any incident, that he was a moment in actually seeing it. The scene would not assemble itself. A bald man in a brown suit had Billy by the shoulders and was shaking him in an urgent way, as if trying to rouse him from sleep. Billy’s head waggled loosely on his shoulders, his arms hung at his sides. A guard in a blue uniform so dark and new it looked black was jogging up from the far end of the arcade, his neck stiff and his knees pumping. David thought at first that Billy was hurt, then realized he’d been caught stealing.

  The guard reached Billy well before David did. As David drew closer he could hear the bald man saying, “—learn a thing or two. People work hard for their money around here, and we don’t appreciate it when other people—” Billy had gone limp, his eyes clouded and his jaw loose. David stood to the side of him, just beyond his line of vision.

  “Got a little trouble here?” the guard asked.

  “Gentleman seems to think he’s entitled to what other people have to pay for,” the bald man said.

  “Well, well. Is that right?” the guard said to Billy. Billy looked at him stupidly, as if he were speaking a foreign language. It seemed to David that this was Billy’s punishment for being rude and selfish. This is what you get, he thought.

  “Well, let’s just see,” the guard said. He squatted and dipped his hand into the pocket of Billy’s fatigue jacket. He pulled out a yo-yo, which he handed proudly to the bald man. To accept it the man had to release one of Billy’s shoulders, and David thought for a moment Billy would crumple to the ground. Several other people had gathered to watch, middle-aged women and a toddler in red overalls who stared with such open-mouthed rapture that a thread of saliva dropped from his lower lip and dangled an inch above his knees. The guard produced another yo-yo, and another. He held each one aloft for a moment, before the eyes of the spectators, like a grim magician. David heard one of the women make a clucking noise with her tongue. She had a beehive of white hair, and carried a purse decorated with straw bananas. The saliva bead quivered at the kid’s knees. David was waiting for it to gather a bit more weight and hit the kid’s miniature tennis shoe.

  The guard continued to explore Billy’s pockets. He offered up for the crowd’s consideration a packet of batteries, a mother-of-pearl switch plate edged in brass, a roll of black electrician’s tape, and a night-light done up like Popeye, with a yellow plastic pipe protruding from the blank pink ridge of the jaw. David thought, with a certain shock, of how Billy would have sneered at those things if they’d been gifts.

  The guard’s face was mottled gray, etched with lines so deep they seemed to touch bone, and with the appearance of each new article he mugged a little more for the audience, his small eyes rolling and his brows creeping up toward the shelf of his hair. Billy must have gone into a frenzy of stealing, so exalted by the easiness of it he took anything that fit his pockets. The bald man’s square red hand remained planted on Billy’s shoulder, and Billy’s head lolled to one side.

  David glanced over at the glass door of the Rexall and saw Wendy, her cash register abandoned, watching the arrest. She stood hug
ging herself, and she watched the conjuring of Billy’s thefts with pleased fascination.

  The last thing the guard pulled out was the horseshoe crab. He turned it over doubtfully in his hand, decided it wasn’t merchandise, and slipped it back into Billy’s pocket. He said tothe bald man, “I’ll take him in and call his parents. Can you come along?” “You bet I can,” the man replied zestfully, as though he were agreeing to a swim on a hot day. He held Billy’s loot cradled in his free arm.

  The two men collared Billy and turned him. He stumbled, as if his shoes were too big for him. When the guard steered him around he faced David for the first time. Billy looked at David with blank, terrified eyes.

  “Wait a minute,” David said in the direction of the guard, but it was weak and useless as throwing sand. The guard seemed not to hear him at all. Billy’s upper lip curled back from his teeth, so David could see the full length of his serrated incisors, poking from his purplish gums. Billy hoisted the imaginary rifle, aimed it at David’s head, and shot. Pshiew, the sputtering sound of the bullet. David felt it, a nervous raw tickle in the center of his forehead. The guard prodded Billy along, and for a moment the guard looked like everything good in the world—order, strength, the rescue of the innocent. Billy let himself be led away. He walked with surer steps, as if he had found the inspiration he needed. David watched him go, two heads shorter than his captors, marching heroically off to the enemy camp.

  When they had gone, the woman with the beehive said, “I hope they throw the book at him.” Another made the clucking sound with her tongue. A third woman picked up the toddler and carried him off in the crook of her arm. David looked over at Wendy, who was returning to work. In seconds the episode was erased, the witnesses disbanded.

  He walked back home. The sky was rising but still white, a deep empty bowl. A bird sliced by overhead, its wings stationary, like an iron cutout riding a wire. Why did he shoot me? David thought. He wondered if he should have done something more to help Billy. But what could he have done? How did he slip over into the wrong?