Round Rock (23 page)

Back at the house, Sam was watching a news program. During a commercial, he stood up. “Want a beer?”

“No, thanks.”

“Can’t you drink beer?” he called from the kitchen.

“It’s got alcohol, Sam.”

Lewis had forgotten how much avid drinkers despise those who refuse their hospitality. Back in his own drinking days, Lewis always took any trace of abstention personally; anything short of whole-hog swilling, in fact, was the equivalent of a moral rebuke.

Sam returned with a fresh drink. “So tell me about you and Amanda,” he said.

“What’s to tell?”

“She turned on you.”

“You could say that.”

“You ball her?”

“Sam.”

“She turns on everyone she balls.”

“I didn’t ball her.”

“You can tell me. I don’t care.”

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“I wouldn’t get mad. I already know you balled her.”

“Can we change the subject, Sam?”

“I won’t throw you out. I’m just trying to get the complete picture of my fucked-in-the-ass marriage.”

Delving any further into such a sensitive and personal matter with a drunk person didn’t seem wise—or avoidable. Without another word, Lewis went to bed. It was eight-thirty. The small office smelled of burnt dust. He raised the blinds, intending to open the window. Long arms of ivy had snaked in behind the screen and across the glass as if desperate to get inside. The window itself was painted shut. He lay on top of his sleeping bag in his underwear and slid into a sticky sleep, a pit of dreams swarming with police, glass elevators, and an old lady in a blue dress who gave tours of Hell. He woke to the telltale clink-glug-splash of Sam making a scotch-and-water; by the digital clock it was 4:04 in the morning. Pulling on pants, rolling his clothes and books into the sleeping bag, Lewis waited until the kitchen was silent and carried everything down to the Fairlane. In a black sky, stars glinted dully like chips of cloudy ice. The weather had shifted and Lewis was chilled. The Fairlane’s heater spewed the dry
citrus smell of the Santa Bernita Valley. He stopped for gas in Pacoima and pulled on a clean T-shirt. In forty minutes, he was in Rito. He decided against stopping at the Mills and drove directly to Round Rock.

All I want to do is kiss him,
Libby wrote.
He’s such a good, patient kisser. He came to my bedroom last night under the pretext of seeing the upstairs of Billie’s house. (Billie said, I’ll just stay downstairs and read a big, fat book,
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
) We started kissing and unbuttoning a few things. He was very sweet, checking with me each step of the way. I was practically dragging him on, then he put a hand on my bare breast and the panic hit like someone was standing over us screaming:
Toying with this poor sad man—What the hell are you doing?

I said, Maybe this is too much too fast.

Red removed his hand. Fastened my bra and buttoned my shirt.

I need to stick to kissing for a while, I said.

I can live with that, he said.

Red’s body is so expansive and meaty after Lewis’s skin and bones—an armchair versus a wooden folding chair. I know I shouldn’t make comparisons, but just Thursday, three days ago, I was in Lewis’s bed.

Red said, I’m not in any hurry. Two months, six months, whatever you need.

Six months! I said, One month seems like an eternity, considering how much I already like to kiss you.

Red laughed. I think we both need to get used to this idea.

A month, we decided then, for just kissing. A month minimum. After a month, says Red, we can renegotiate.

R
ED MADE
a late-night call to Doc Perrin. “I’ve done something I think you should know about,” he said.

“You’re interrupting Koppel,” said Perrin. “This better be good.”

Overcome by muteness, Red listened to emphysemic squeaks followed by a lengthy sigh.

“Let me guess,” growled Perrin. “You bought yourself a puppy.”

R
ED RAY
! Same shell-pink skin, cornflake freckles. Same barrel chest hauling a gut. “Hey, Redsy!” Lewis, crouching in front of a small fire in the office’s hearth, looked up and grinned. “How ya doing?”

“Thank God it’s you,” said Red. “I smelled the smoke….” He put a hand on his heart and nodded to the flames. “Guess I’m a little jumpy after Libby’s fire.”

As Lewis watched, the friendliness in Red’s face receded. “What?” he said.

“You tell me.”

“I went to L.A. for a couple days. Now I’m back.”

Red waited, hovering.

“I didn’t drink if that’s what you’re so worried about.”

“It crossed my mind.”

“I even went to an AA meeting. Jesus, you should’ve seen it. Rock ’n’ roll. Fashion-model city. Everybody in black leather. I kept spotting people I thought I knew, only they were famous actors.”

Red continued to gaze dispassionately at him.

“What, I can’t take a couple days off?”

Patient and merciless, Red loomed over him, and Lewis, suddenly uneasy, stood and walked around the desk. “Okay, I know I fucked up. And I’m sorry. I had to blow Libby off. We were breaking up. I couldn’t go running to her like nothing was wrong. That would’ve only got her hopes up, don’t you see?”

“What happens between you and Libby is your business.”

“That’s not what you said the other day! You practically guilt-tripped me over there! I couldn’t handle the disapproval.”

“Are you going to leave every time I disapprove of something?”

“I came back, didn’t I?” Lewis was plaintive. “You’re yelling at me now, and I’m staying put.”

“I’m not yelling, Lewis.”

Lewis picked up a stick of orangewood and poked at the fire, which collapsed. “Okay, okay. But I learned my lesson. I can’t go back there. My philosophy professor drank around the clock. I mean, what can you say when someone thinks two doubles an hour is moderate?”

“When you take off like that,” Red said evenly, “you leave everyone in the lurch. It’s one thing that there was no coffee at the union
hall meeting Friday night. But then, people wanted to know: Where’s Lewis? Is he okay? Is he coming back? We were pretty damn worried about you.”

“Why do you think I came back? I felt like shit, too. I’ll make amends to the meeting and everybody. What more do you want?”

When Red frowned, Lewis prepared for the worst: would Red tell him to move back to the Blue House, start all over again as a lowly resident?

“I want you to take things in order, Lewis,” Red said finally. “Amends are made
after
an inventory.”

“
Yeah?
”

“I want you to write your inventory, the way I assigned it to you. I’ll give you one month.” He walked behind the desk to lift a page of the master calendar. “If you don’t have it done by Tuesday, October twelfth, I’ll have to let you go.”

Lewis gave a short cough of laughter, and didn’t point out that this was actually five weeks. “I can’t believe you’re still hounding me about that dumb inventory. You want it that bad, Redsy? You got it.”

T
HE
O
LD
B
ASTARDS
C
LUB
, a local group of alcoholism and recovery professionals, was formed four years earlier in response to a crisis at Round Rock Farm. Doc Perrin had called the meeting to rally support for Red Ray. Staff members from Social Model Detox, the Alcohol Hot Line, and the AA Central Office gathered at the union hall in Buchanan.

Red had spoken first that night. He was exhausted, he said. The last suicide at the farm had taken the starch out of his sails. This was a great guy, well liked, who’d borrowed Red’s shotgun to shoot a rattlesnake in the vegetable garden and then blew his brains out in the groves. Red was fed up and furious. And he couldn’t even remember the last time he’d told anybody what was really bothering him; at the Blue House meetings, he shared only strength and hope with the newcomers. He’d been ignoring his own recovery, kept mum about his own problems, and now everything had reached such a pitch.

His outburst broke the ice, and for the rest of the night, all the sober-forever do-gooders talked about
their
troubles: wanting to drink, hating God, their difficulties with forming strong human attachments. Such mutual discovery made everyone unreasonably
happy. The meeting didn’t break up until after midnight, and only then after everyone had agreed to meet again. They’d done so ever since, as the Old Bastards Club, on the first Monday of every month.

Tonight, Julie Swaggart led the meeting. Her new recovery house was doing well; she’d instituted yoga classes, group meditation, bake sales.

Red braced his forehead against his hand, averting his eyes. He was glad Julie was thriving, and he should ask her about the yoga. But he couldn’t stop worrying—about Libby and Lewis, and mostly about his own inappropriate behavior.

When he’d told her Lewis was back, Libby couldn’t speak, her face so wan that it frightened him.

“Give me your hand,” she’d said. “Say I don’t have to give you up.”

“You don’t have to give me up. Unless you want to.”

She held his hand to her face. “Did you tell him about us?”

“The opportunity didn’t come up. And even if it had, I wanted to talk to you first. I don’t think
we’re
sure what’s happening here.”

“We don’t owe him any explanations.”

“We should say something eventually,” Red said. “I’m not going to force anything, though. It’s too fresh.”

Now, in the Old Bastards meeting, he faced one irrefutable fact: when you sponsor a man, you don’t move in on his girlfriend.

Red’s angst did not pass unnoticed. At the break, Doc Perrin seized his arm—“Okay, lover boy. Outside”—and escorted him to the front steps. The fog was thick, the street lamps haloed in purple. “Spill your beans,” Perrin said.

“The boyfriend’s home.”

“And the girlfriend scampered back?”

“No, no, not yet.”

“Smart gal. So what’s the problem?”

“I’m his sponsor, for God’s sake,” Red finally got to say it, and to someone who understood that bond. “And I finessed his girl.”

“Does she want him back?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Does he want her back?” asked Perrin.

“If so, he hasn’t said anything about it.”

“You sleeping with her?”

“No.”

“You proposed marriage yet?”

“Of course not.”

“What the hell have you done that’s so goddamn momentous?”

“Kissed.”

“
Kissed
?”

“And agreed to something, I suppose.”

“Agreed to what, exactly?”

Red winced at the thought of describing what was still unspoken with Libby. “To try … I don’t know … to love each other.”

“Ahh. And it’s gotta be this kid’s ex-girlfriend?”

Miserable, staring at the ground, Red couldn’t deny it.

“Congratulations,” Perrin said. “I been waiting ten, eleven years for you to become human. Hallelujah! Welcome to life, in all its messy, tangled splendor.” The old doctor threw a bony arm across Red’s back and planted a sloppy kiss on Red’s cheek.

“Feh,” said Red. After all these long, lonely years, why was everyone kissing him
now
?

S
UMMER
mustered a final blast, vanquishing the early autumn chill with a heatwave of almost unendurable dryness and clarity. The air trembled like a dog trying to behave. Heat ignited the aroma of sage in the chaparral, the spicy, slightly rotten citrus dust in the orchards. Throughout the valley, people complained of bad sinuses, itchy eyes, and extended sneezing attacks.

David Ibañez was in town again, staying with his uncle. Both he and Rafael suffered from terrible hay fever and nursed cups of a naturally decongesting tea made from the mahuang plant, brewing more tea for anyone else who needed some. David had brought the mahuang seeds from an herbalist in Shanghai, and Rafael kept a good crop of the low, scrubby bush in his yard at all times. He said it was the best hay fever treatment he knew, and whenever Santa Ana weather kicked in, he was the most popular man in the valley.

David’s aunt Gloria was actually fond of this dry weather, since it reminded her of meeting Rafael. She was fifteen and living in L.A., in Lincoln Heights, when she’d fallen in love with an older man. After her sisters saw this man with another woman, her parents forbade her
ever to speak to him again. Heartbroken, she couldn’t get out of bed, and wept for weeks, until her parents finally sent her to the country, to her aunt’s house on the Sally Morrot ranch. Rafael Flores lived in the next bungalow. He was eighteen, and
no muy feo,
said Gloria; but it was summer and there were Santa Anas, as now, and he was sneezing day and night. He sounded, she said, like a drowning man crying for help. And she could hear him snoring all night long. Although everyone was hoping the two of them would fall in love, Gloria said that wouldn’t happen until chickens could fly and vests grow sleeves. “But then,” she said, “it rained—in the middle of August, if you can believe it!—and Rafael stopped sneezing and he stopped snoring, and when I lay in bed at night, the world seemed far too silent and empty.”

L
EWIS
woke in the mornings with a sore throat, his aching face tender to the touch. Yet he was champing to get to work, continue the long slow crawl back into Red’s good graces. In a sense, it was a relief to have relinquished the favored-son status and all its attendant pressures. Red was holding back—no more meals together, no more late-night chats—until the inventory materialized, and who could blame him? Lewis himself knew it was a crap shoot.

First of all, Lewis had trouble with the categories: Fears, Resentments, Money, Sex, and Secrets had too much overlap. Working at Karmachanics, for example, he’d changed spark-plug wires and charged for engine work—did that fall under Secrets or Money? The majority of his Secrets also could be listed under Sex. It was all too confusing! Then, when he sat down to write, all he truly confronted was throbbing sinuses.

T
HE WINDS
started up and blew all night. Old limbs fell from trees, and thousands of ripe grapefruit bounced on the ground, a ponderous, yellow hail. In front of the Blue House, fronds hurtled like kamikaze pilots from the sixty-foot palms. By day, the world was a shambles and preternaturally quiet, the sky a dry, blue ache.