Lawn Boy

  My work station is the only one with a window. The other two employees, both long-term temps, are conscripted to the corner of the warehouse under the central heating unit. As far as I can tell, neither one of them speaks or goes to the bathroom. I’d put them both in their midthirties, a pale, weak-eyed tandem, slump shouldered and indistinct. I call them Thing One and Thing Two. They work always with their heads down, moving with a mechanized efficiency, the trebly blare of their earbuds a constant.

  Every afternoon as I piece together bobbleheads, I watch the coffee roasters convene on the lawn and eat their lunches, which they invariably procure at the charcuterie slash deli, sandwiches wrapped in butcher paper. They’re all guys around my age, all scrawny as hell. They wear big beards and skinny jeans and boots and T-shirts that are too small. The T-shirts are always something random: DICK’S TOWING SERVICE, PETE’S AUTO BODY, BUSY BEAVER SEPTIC CLEANING. Usually, they sit in a circle staring holes in their phones for a half hour, but sometimes they talk to each other in a lazy, impassive way. Eventually, I get bored watching them and start thinking of other stuff. Like what I’m going to do with all this money. Not only am I making five bucks an hour more than I was with Lacy, I get a solid forty-hour week with overtime possibilities—at time and a half! Let me do the math for you: that’s $25.50 an hour—cha-ching! And no picking up dog shit!

  Sometimes, though, as I’m looking out the window at the business park, my fingers employed thoughtlessly, I get a little wistful for landscaping. I miss the fresh air. I miss the satisfaction of pruning hedges and raking out flower beds. Hell, even deadheading rhodies. Don’t even get me started on topiary. If Copper Top were my account, I’d tidy up those edges in front of the yoga studio and contain that unruly salal around the front entrance. I’d also get that laurel hedge in shape and cut back that ivy before it took over the southeast corner. Whoever installed the sprinkler system left a few blind spots, which are beginning to turn brown. That row of arborvitae along the back edge would make a nice Greek colonnade. Everywhere I look, I see room for improvement, and I wish I could do something about it.

  But forget all that, I’ve got key chains to assemble, paychecks to cash.

  On Friday, at the end of my first week, I decided to buy lunch at Provence, the charcuterie slash deli. Freddy and Nate had eaten all but one slice of the ham I’d left in the fridge, and it’s the Buddig brand, so one slice is about as thick as a skin graft. I took one look at the Provence menu and was about to walk out. Thirteen bucks for a BLT, and it didn’t even come with chips and a Sprite! They didn’t even have Sprite! I would’ve bolted right then and made a run to Mickey D’s, but the coffee roasters were in there with their pet beards, and I didn’t want to look like a cheapskate.

  “Cool shirt,” one of them said flatly.

  I had to look down to see what I was wearing: TIDE’S INN, SUQUAMISH, WASHINGTON, a T-shirt my mom gave me.

  “My mom works there,” I said.

  “No way.” He actually sounded mildly impressed.

  “Dive bars are cool,” observed one of his friends, with all the passion of a tollbooth operator.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

  I lunched with them on the lawn, eating my thirteen-dollar sandwich deliberately and feeling a little self-conscious that I didn’t have a beard. I had to admit, the sandwich was pretty damn good. The three of them kept asking me questions about Suquamish. Was I Indian? Was it crazy on the Fourth of July? I felt like an exchange student. Since they were so interested, I told them how my truck broke down and how I said the hell with it and how I just pried off the VIN and let it get impounded. Why didn’t I just buy another truck, they wanted to know. I told them it was a long story. I told them about the stolen mower, too. Why didn’t I just get a new mower, they wanted to know. Their solution to everything was to get another one, as though such a thing were a given. I guess maybe I didn’t have much in common with those guys.

  I feel pretty safe in saying my boss, Chaz, has a bit of a drinking problem. Because after work that day, he had me follow him out to his BMW and breathe into his blow-and-go so the engine would start.

  “Get in, I’ll give you a lift,” he said.

  “You sure?”

  “No problemo, amigo.”

  Man, his car was quiet. No tapping or dinging or choking. And boy, could it accelerate. For a guy on DUI probation, a guy who clearly had liquor on his breath, Chaz wasn’t what you’d call a cautious driver. He consistently drove ten over the speed limit, even in school zones.

  “Muñoz, that Mexican?”

  “Californian,” I said.

  “Ha. Good one. I like that.”

  He reached across to the passenger’s side, popped the glove box, and fished out a plastic minibar vodka.

  “Sorry, bud, no tequila. You want one of these?”

  “Nah, I’m cool.”

  With one hand, he unscrewed the cap and tipped the bottle my way. “To free enterprise,” he said.

  Tossing back the vodka, he threw the empty bottle out the window and smacked his lips.

  “I like your style, Muñoz. You keep your nose to the grindstone.”

  “I do?”

  “Sure. But not too much, not like those other two. You don’t want to work too hard in this world, or it’ll make you cynical in no time flat.”

  “It will?”

  “You’ve got a nose for opportunity.”

  “I do?”

  “Sure you do. And that’s what it takes to get on in this world.”

  Thus began his ten-minute soliloquy on entrepreneurship. Old Chaz had a lot more irons in the fire than just glow-in-the-dark key chains and the like. I could barely keep up. It seemed that Chaz Unlimited Limited was only the flagship. There was Chazy Chaz LLC, Chaz in Charge LLC, and All That Chaz LLC. He admitted to having no liquid assets at the moment but contracts up the yin-yang.

  “Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors,” he explained.

  The thing about never having any money your whole life is that you have no way of learning about money. It’s like learning to play Yahtzee with no dice. If I understood Chaz right, everything I knew about finance was ass backward. Apparently, you don’t want to pay your bills on time; in fact, you don’t want to pay them until someone puts a gun to your head. If you can avoid paying them at all, that’s the best scenario. And here I’d been worried about late notices all these years. Oh, and it turns out that debt is actually a good thing. You want to owe the bank money.

  “If you’ve got the bank’s money, you own the bank, see?”

  That was a real eye-opener. I can’t say for certain how scrupulous Chaz is, but he’s paying me more money than I’ve ever made in my life, so I’m willing to listen and learn. Not only that, he hinted at better opportunities.

  “I’m cooking up a new venture called Razmachaz. I might need a point man.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “Import and distribution. We’ll get into the particulars once I get all my ducks in line. Think Mexico. That is, if you’re interested.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Sounds good. Go ahead and hang a left here.”

  He leaned over to the glove box as he took the turn, groping around for another mini. I’m not sure why, but I didn’t care if Chaz saw where I lived. I guess he didn’t seem like the judgmental type. Plus he was kind of sloppy, anyway, a few days’ unshaven, slacks rumpled. Really not my idea of a successful guy, if you want to know the truth. Take away the BMW, and he could’ve been working at the Masi.

  “It’s the gray one up here on the right.” I said.

  “Got it.”

  “Thanks again for the lift.”

  “No problemo, amigo,” he said, coasting up to where the curb should’ve been. “Nice place.”

  As he pulled away, he threw the minibottle out the window. It bounced a few times before it rolled into my neighbor Dale’s unruly yard, where it would never be noticed.

  The Social Thing

  Despe
rate to acquire new friends, I soon started taking lunch regularly with the coffee roasters out on the lawn, even though I hated them. No more thirteen-dollar sandwiches, though. Even if I could afford them now, it was the principle of the thing. The roasters—Dallas, Austin, and Houston—not only ordered overpriced sandwiches, they ordered frilly sides, like saffron deviled eggs and pickled watermelon rind, and they washed it down with three-dollar bubbly water. They looked at my ham sandwich the same way the Mexicans used to look at it, with a sort of thinly veiled contempt.

  “You know that’s not even ham, right?”

  “Says ham right on the package.”

  They’d snigger, which was the closest I’d ever seen them get to actual mirth. Austin almost seemed to have a personality. When I told him I was a topiary artist, he seemed impressed, albeit in a not-very-demonstrative way. I told him about my mushrooms and my pom-poms and my hot-dog-eating elf, and of course my merman, though I didn’t mention the erection.

  “You should come check it out,” I said.

  And to my surprise, he actually consented to have a look. So, after work, Austin hooked his fixed-gear bicycle onto the front of the metro bus, and we made for Suquamish. It felt strange riding the bus and not reading a book. I was accustomed to having some dead guy to keep me company or at least some MFA grad, who was in love with sentences. Instead, I had Austin, who mostly checked his Facebook page while I looked out the window, thinking I should have offered him the window seat.

  “You read?” I said.

  “What, like books?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Not really. You?”

  “Yeah, quite a bit.”

  “You must have a lot of time on your hands.”

  I guess I was a little nervous. Not that I was trying to impress the guy, but when had I ever invited somebody I hardly knew to my house? I wouldn’t even let Remy see where I lived. But I figured since Austin liked dive bars, maybe his tastes extended to squalor in general, in which case he might like the res or our house.

  He was visibly unimpressed by our humble abode, averting his eyes as we walked past the moss-encrusted Festiva, the tarpaulin-draped swamp cooler, and the bevy of broken shit strewn willy-nilly under the sagging canopy—everything from engine parts to empty bleach bottles. He seemed particularly uneasy about leaving his bike out front. And of course I couldn’t blame him.

  Freddy had his fat taco parked on the sofa next to Nate, watching Wreck-It Ralph with his Gibson knockoff bass propped in his lap. It had to be getting on my mom’s nerves having him around, the way he was always in the house, eating Cheetos in his underwear. But now that I’m employed, the writing is on the wall for Freddy.

  “Freddy, this is Austin.”

  Freddy played a couple farty notes on his bass before giving Austin a stony-eyed once-over.

  “Boy, how come you wearin’ your sister’s pants?”

  Austin glanced over his shoulder to make sure Freddy wasn’t talking to someone behind him. “Uh, hey.”

  “Don’t look like no lumberjack to me. Why you wearin’ all that facial hair, boy—that to keep you warm?”

  “Um . . .” Austin appealed to me with his eyes.

  “Ever swung an ax?”

  “Don’t mind Freddy,” I said. “And that’s my brother, Nate.”

  “Hey,” said Austin.

  Nate belched under his breath, never taking his eyes off the screen.

  “Don’t mind him, either. C’mon, I’ll show you my merman. You want some grape soda or anything?”

  “I’m good.”

  “Stay out of my grape soda,” Freddy called after us.

  I took Austin out back and showed him my work. The pom-poms were a little rough around the edges, and my merman was a bit shaggy from neglect, but as far as I could tell, Austin was mildly impressed.

  “I’m thinking of adding a little school of sucker fish near the bottom of the merman,” I told him. “You know, like circling suggestively around him or something.”

  “So, like, this is ironic, right?”

  “What, you mean because mermen don’t really get erections?”

  He sniggered at that, shaking his head bemusedly, while running his fingers lazily through his beard. I was hoping he’d have more questions about my merman, but he only fished out his phone and checked Facebook again.

  “You sure you don’t want some grape soda?”

  “Nah.”

  “Let’s walk down to the Tide’s Inn,” I said. “It’s a dive—one of the diviest, actually.”

  He checked the clock on his phone and petted his beard some more. “Nah, I gotta hit the road here pretty quick.”

  “You want a bong toke?”

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “We could walk down to the pier. You like fireworks?”

  “Not really.”

  Austin was a tough nut to crack. His curiosity didn’t seem to run very deep. But I’d be lying if I said my heart didn’t sink a little when he left ten minutes later, following a few more stilted exchanges.

  I’ve never been much good at the social thing. And that’s actually rare for siblings of special-needs children. We usually have to develop strong social skills in order to help our siblings navigate a world that is generally unprepared to accommodate them. I was pretty good in that respect. I made sure Nate didn’t get arrested when he dropped trou in the middle of a traffic island. I made sure he didn’t shoplift or smoke cigarettes or do any of the other stupid things I did. I acted as his liaison and translator and diplomat. I read to him, I made sure he ate, I made sure he dressed warm. You’d have to call me a good brother. But in every other respect, I was a dud socially. How else would I end up with a best friend like Nick?

  TMI

  On Saturday night, Nick swung by and picked me up in his beloved Honda, House of Pain rattling the windows as he pulled up to the trailer. His love for bad hip-hop, like his love of that stupid Accord, is every bit as irrational as his fear of Mexicans and gays. He’s already sunk a ridiculous amount of money into that car. Nothing on the damn thing is stock. The muffler belongs on a drag racer. The spoiler belongs on a Formula 1. The LED hubcaps spin to no discernible purpose.

  At Tequila’s, we got in a round of darts, in which he beat me handily—as usual. I’d lost what little dart mojo I’d ever had, but I didn’t care. Though it was the first time I’d been there in weeks, I was sick of Tequila’s, weary of the jukebox, tired of smelling the bathroom, sick of the ubiquitous neon and the endless repetition of SportsCenter, and most of all, done with the nagging hope that somehow tonight would be different, that something or someone would magically walk into my life, because I was in the right place. As though Tequila’s in Poulsbo could ever be the right place.

  “So, what’s new?” he wanted to know. “How’s the new gig?”

  “Repetitive,” I said.

  “Well, that’s the idea of a job, Michael. The minute it stops repeating itself, you’re out on your ass.”

  “I guess so.”

  “Hey man, I might be able to score us some tickets this season—fifty-yard line, yo. Some big-shot contractor with like four different trucks says if I hook him up on some all-season Toyos, he’ll give me a pair of tickets to the game of my choice. What do you think, Cardinals? I love watching Arians lose his shit.”

  “Just not the Rams,” I said.

  “Hell no,” he said, taking a healthy pull on his beer. “Oh, hey, I got a joke. What’s the difference between a fag and a refrigerator?”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “A refrigerator doesn’t fart when you pull out the meat.”

  “Nick, I said I didn’t want to know.”

  “What is it with you?”

  “What about you? Why are you always bashing people? Mexicans, fags, lesbians, I don’t get why they offend you so much. What did a Mexican or a fag ever do to you?”

  Nick doesn’t answer, just sips his beer irritably.

  “Seriously, I just
don’t get it, Nick. You don’t even have a reason.”

  “Duh, Michael. Look around. They’re taking all our jobs. They don’t pay taxes.”

  “Fags don’t pay taxes?”

  “No, dumbshit, illegals. And for your information, they’re not normal.”

  “Mexicans?”

  “No, fags.”

  “What’s normal, then, Nick? Tell me that. Your porn habit? The way you talk about women?”

  “Oh, like you don’t watch porn?”

  “Actually, no.”

  “You’re a liar.”

  “What if I told you I touched another guy’s dick?” I said.

  “Pfff.” Nick waved me off and turned his attention back to his beer.

  “What if I told you I sucked it?”

  “Will you please just shut up already?”

  “I’m dead serious, Nick.”

  “Well, I’d say you were a fag.”

  “I was ten years old, but it’s true. I put Doug Goble’s dick in my mouth.”

  “The real-estate guy?”

  “Yeah.”

  Nick looked around frantically. “What the fuck are you talking about, Michael?”

  “I was in fourth grade. It was no big deal.”

  Cringing, Nick held his hands out in front of him in a yield gesture. “Stop.”

  “He sucked mine, too.”

  “Stop! Why are you telling me this?”

  “And you know what?” I said. “It wasn’t terrible.”

  All the air went out of Nick, and he looked at me dully, his face a prairie of blankness.

  “This is a joke, right?”

  “No, Nick, it’s not a joke.”

  “So you’re saying you’re a fag?”

  “I doubt that. It’s been twelve years since I touched a dick. But that’s not the point.”

  Nick looked genuinely troubled. Averting his eyes to his beer, he looked just about as thoughtful as I’ve ever seen him look.

  “So, wait,” he said. “You’re not, like . . . in love with me, are you?”

  I swear, I almost punched him. “Fuck no. How could I—or any other guy—possibly be in love with you?”