The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death

Asshole.

He looked at his sister.

– Sol?

She went to the closet and got a jacket and pulled it on.

– Don't look at me, Jaime.

He jabbed the knife at the air.

– Dude's threatening your brother. Gonna let that happen?

She walked to the wastebasket.

– Still willing to get rid of this stuff?

I hefted the lamp.

– Yeah. Sure.

She picked up the wastebasket.

– Can I come with?

– Sure.

She came to my side of the room and picked up the cleaning carrier.

– Let's go.

I followed her to the door, eyes on Jaime, the lamp held out.

– It won't cost much, they're crap sheets.

He dropped his arms to his sides, knife dangling from his fingers.

– Fuck do you know? Didn't even clean up the almonds, asshole. Fucking don't call me, I'll call you, fucker.

And I backed from the room, pausing to set the lamp inside the door before I closed it and ran for the van, taking the carrier from Soledad, she taking my hand, running along with me. Laughing.

ONLY A SMALL EARTHQUAKE

– How'd you get out here?

– Taxi.

I took my eyes from the road.

– You took a taxi from Malibu to Carson?

She kept her eyes closed.

– Yeah. They say when you've had a loss in the family, a sudden and unexpected loss, they say driving is a bad idea.

– Why's that?

– Because you're distracted, I guess. I mean, I don't know by what. Unless they mean the memory of finding your dad with his head blown all over the room.

She opened her eyes, shook her head, pinched her cheek.

– I think I'm going to have to learn not to be so flippant about that. I'm not handling it as well as I thought I could.

– So the taxi was probably a good call.

– Probably. Of course, the driver no doubt assumed I was coming down here for a late-night hookup with some rough trade I'd been chatting with online. But I'll live with the dim opinion of my cabby this once.

– We should all be so well adjusted.

She waved a hand.

– Well, well adjusted, let's not get carried away.

I smiled.

– Yeah, especially as your brother seems to have the market cornered on that particular quality.

– He's really just my half brother.

– Yeah, same mom, I got that.

She stopped inspecting the glories advertised on the massive illuminated signs looming over the 405 North mega car lots of Torrance, and looked at me.

– How'd you get that?

I hit my blinker and changed lanes to get out from behind a Pinto stuffed with the amassed possessions of its owner; boxes and bags heaped from the floorboards to the headliner and smashed against the windows, leaving just enough space for the driver, one of the rolling homeless of L.A. I glanced at him, talking endlessly to himself, as we passed.

I looked back at the road ahead.

– He kept saying your dad. I just assumed that meant you had different dads is all.

She looked back at the signs.

– Oooh, Detective Web at work. Did you suss out any more family secrets?

– Just that the black sheep of the family back there is also a fucking moron.

– Hardly a secret, that one.

– Yeah, he does rather wear it on his sleeve.

She began going through the pockets of her jacket, searching.

– He's actually kind of OK. Or he was, anyway. When we were kids. Just spoiled mostly. And starved for attention.

– Interesting combination.

She came up with a hair bungee from her pockets and began to pull her hair into a ponytail.

– Well, my mom is an interesting woman with strange abilities. Especially when it comes to screwing with her kids’ heads.

I adjusted the shoulder strap of my seatbelt where it snugged too tight across my neck.

– Yeah, moms are tricky that way.

She got her hair where she wanted it, a couple wild curls poking loose, and settled back into her seat.

– Our mom is a little more than tricky. Her special talent with Jaime was to give him anything and everything he asked for. This being the easiest way she knew to keep him occupied, and keep her from having to actually deal with him as, I don't know, a human being. Jaime's response was to ask for more and more extravagant toys, trips, parties, whatever he thought would force her to deal with him, I guess.

– How'd that work out for him?

– Well, I didn't witness much of it, not wanting to be around her myself, but the way I put it together, the more he asked for, the more she worked to make the money to see he got it, the more he got, the more he asked for, and the more she worked… and so on.

– Kind of a perpetual motion machine of familial alienation, then?

She slid her eyes at me.

– That was clever.

I rubbed my eyes.

– Yeah, clever, that's me, always doing clever stuff. That's why I'm in this van at the moment with a load of someone else's bloody sheets and all.

She went in her pockets again and came out with a pair of big black plastic film star sunglasses.

– I said it was clever, not smart.

– True.

She took off her regular narrow black-framed glasses and slid the sunglasses on.

– Anyway, Mom just worked and worked to get Jaime what he wanted, which meant she was never around to look at him, which is what she wanted. Until he turned eighteen.

– Then what?

– She kicked him out. Of course. If behavioral scientists had designed a scenario meant to create an adult utterly unequipped to provide for themselves and emotionally cope with the world, they could not have done a better job than my mom did with Jaime. And, to make it more interesting, when she set him loose, she did it in