“Oh come on, seeing somebody get shot? You should talk to Harvey McGinnis.”
“You’re not the first person to suggest that.”
“So?”
“I don’t need a shrink.”
“That’s what Patty McCormack said in
She sips coffee. I have no interest in mine.
“Have you been swimming?”
“No.”
“At least go swimming.”
“It’s hard enough just to get out of bed.” I stand. “Thanks for the java.”
Big sister Barbara says, “This isn’t good.”
“I’ll get through it.”
Diligently I continue to work through the pile of bank robbery reports, taking refuge in the drone of it. I meet Donnato’s new partner, Joe Positano, one of those wound-up gung-ho jocks with a nerdy square face and ultrashort hair who thinks he’s going to save the world. I thought I’d be jealous but every time he and Donnato leave the office it’s a relief, until finally Donnato corners me at the front desk.
“You’ve been acting like this is some kind of a high school flirtation.”
“That’s ridiculous.” I squeeze past him. “Excuse me, I have to buy a Barbie doll.”
He wraps his fingers around my neck in a relatively playful way and tugs me out the side door as if I were a wriggling puppy.
But when we’re alone in the echoing stairwell the fun ends. We don’t kiss, we don’t even come close, in fact stand as far apart as possible, as if the air separating us had suddenly taken on the density of the atmosphere of Jupiter.
“I’m leaving Rochelle. We’ve been talking about it for a long time.”
“Oh Jesus, Mike.”
“It’s going to be shit, pure shit for the kids.”
He draws a sleeve across his eyes. Now mine are wet.
“Don’t do this for me.”
“Who said it had anything to do with you?”
I move farther away, so my back is against the rough cinder-block wall.
“I told you, I can’t. Whether you’re married or not.”
A strange indoor wind is blowing up the stairwell creating an unsettling moan.
“So everything that’s been going on is just — nothing.”
Aching, “Not at all.”
“Then what?”
He has asked but now averts his eyes, undefended.
“I don’t believe it’s possible.”
“What isn’t?” He gives a small laugh. “Happiness? Trust? The future of the world? What?”
Then he sees only silence.
“Got it,” he says finally.
I believe the best course of action is to leave it as it is.
“If any of this between you and Rochelle was my fault, I am truly sorry.”
I hurry down the stairs.
• • •
The alkies and I are all lined up in Thrifty’s on Santa Monica Boulevard in North Hollywood. They’re buying $3.95 pints of gin to get them through the night and I’m holding a pack of little plastic infantrymen for Cristobal and a Barbie doll for Teresa, wishing I had the body chemistry to be able to get sloshed and like it. There’s a constant pain in my chest, as if someone had buried a pickax in there, and during the most banal conversations, like this exchange with Hugo the checkout guy (“Here you go.” “Thanks”), tears leak unaccountably from my eyes.
I make it through the gauntlet of street beggars blocking the way to the car and slam the door, as if to keep the vapor of their destitution out. Starting the engine, I make a resolution to leave all this behind. When I see Teresa and Cristobal I want to be upbeat, a role model, the one who shows them the positive side, the satisfactions and achievements of working hard in this society.
Nobody answers the intercom but the lock on the lobby door is broken, so I pass under the organ-pipe sculpture up the metal stairs. It is six thirty at night and I’m hoping Mrs. Gutierrez is at home serving a nutritious dinner, thereby not occasioning a call to Children and Family Services, but the pounding music that grows louder as I approach is stirring up an uneasy feeling.
After I knock and give it a few good kicks, the door is finally opened by a belligerent, overweight teenage boy wearing a Hawaiian shirt and smoking a cigarette.
“What’s going on?” he demands.
“I’m looking for Mrs. Gutierrez.”
“She don’t live here.”
I block him from closing the door.
“What the fuck?”
I badge him. “FBI. Can I come in?”
There are five or six other boys sprawled around the floor playing a video game, surrounded by cigarette smoke blended with who knows what else. They look at me and their eyes slide sideways and they joke to one another in Spanish. I take an aggressive posture and keep close to the door.
“Where’s the woman who lived here?”
“I told you, lady. She moved away.”
“Whose apartment is this? Where are the adults?”
“It’s my place,” says the smallest one, wearing red mirror sunglasses and working the controls. “Actually, my mom’s. She’s at work. The lady who lived here went back to El Salvador.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“Sure.”
He gets up and swaggers toward me as the others whistle and hoot, challenging him. I don’t like the building sense of dare and the ear-piercing mix of technopop and video chirp is making me nuts.
“Do me a favor, take off the shades.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I want to see if you’re straight.”
Tough guy: “I’m straight.”
He removes the glasses, revealing himself to be about twelve years old.
“It’s very important that you tell me exactly what happened to Mrs. Gutierrez and the children.”
“Nothing happened. We live across the hall, she’s friendly with my mom. One day she says she’s going to El Salvador because she’s taking some kids back to their parents or something—”
“To the grandmother?”
“Yeah, the grandmother. So we got the apartment and all the stuff in it for a hundred bucks.”
The volcano paintings are still on the walls. The card table with its display of beer bottles intact. Teresa and Cristobal are gone, erased.
I notice the laminated picture of El Nino de Atocha in the kitchen leaning up against the yellow tiles.
“She left that, too?”
“I guess.”
“You want it?”
He shrugs. I take the picture and two stumps of votive candles.
“Keep the music down.”
• • •
