The Surf Guru (25 page)

“Thanks for the roses,” she said. “And thanks for driving Trace this morning.”

“Aren't you going to open the card?” I said, pointing. It was tucked between the stems, announcing itself whitely.

“How did I miss that?” she said. She plucked it out. She used her palm to hide the blue heart and the ink on the card.

I watched her read, thinking,
Please don't bullshit me, please
.

She looked up when she was done. Her eyes were blue-gray and revealed nothing. “Oh,” she said. “They're from my dad.” The top of her robe had come open, showing a triangle of smooth, pale skin. With one hand she guided it closed again.

Ringo started to whine. That dog understood things. I got up and brought him a chew toy, a length of thick rope with a knot tied in the middle. He gummed it and looked satisfied.

As I was sitting back down, Mo took hold of my wrist and steered me into the loveseat next to her, smiling like nothing was wrong, like a girl wasn't dead, like Trace wasn't maybe blind by now, like she and I weren't sitting together on a couch where she'd probably screwed a guy named Archer.

“So,” she said, “are you going to tell me why your fingers are black?”

“I have been implicated in many things today,” I said. “Today I feel cursed.”

“You should try turpentine.”

“You're changing the subject.”

“No, I'm not. Not if the subject is all this paint on you, which it is.”

“The subject,” I said, “is Archer.”

Mo was quiet.

“Archer,” I reminded her. “I'd describe him for you, but I don't know who the fuck he is.”

She turned her head away slightly and bathwater glistened in the wings of her nose, and I thought she was going to say something to make things better. But she didn't. “That was pretty manipulative,” she said, “not telling me you knew.”

“I didn't know what I knew,” I said.

Across the room, Ringo struggled to his feet and slowly padded into the kitchen. It was a good thing that nothing was chasing him.

“You have to let me tell Trace myself,” she said.

“Maybe,” I said. I've never been good at thinking on my feet.

“It's very complicated,” she said.

“It's not complicated at all,” I said. “There are rules. You play by them.”

“Don't lecture me about relationships, Phil. I know you. I've seen you alone for years, and I've seen you with Katie, which was even worse.”

Outside, an ice cream truck tunefully drove by. I didn't know they even had those anymore.

“Please let me tell him,” she said. “Today's not the day. He's having his surgery, and it's been a tough day for me, too. I saw a girl die this morning, Phil. I spent all day trying to get twenty-five more girls not to die any quicker. I'm tired.”

“Tell me about her,” I said. “The girl who died.” I was out of other things to say.

So she told me. She told me about how the girl's father had started molesting her when she was eight, how he liked to go to titty bars and teach her the dancers' moves when he came home, how the mother was a boozy mess, how the girl had quit eating and gone to the hospital near death, all bony and jagged, covered in fuzz like a duckling. How the girl had been getting better in rehab, until this.

“That's the worst thing I've ever heard,” I said.

Mo's cheeks had lost their bathtub glow. I could see how exhausted she was. I pulled her into me, and she hugged back, and I said maybe I didn't have to tell Trace today. I could have sat there forever, basking in her aura of bath oils and gratitude.
You know me
, I thought.
You know my face.

And this is what I thought about as I nuzzled into her neck: I thought about easing my hand under the collar of her robe and rubbing the back of her neck, and then tracing small circles all the way around to the exposed skin at her throat, and how everything would be quiet except for breathing. I thought about sliding my hand down to her chest and underneath the robe. I thought about kissing her, our faces so close I wouldn't be able to see the seven freckles. I thought about all those things. But when I put my hand on the back of her neck, she said, “Don't. Phil? Don't.” And I said, “I wasn't,” but she had felt it somehow—in my fingers, maybe. So I put one hand back on her shoulder, and the other on the arm of the sofa, and we sat. Then I thought about Trace, and I thought about how sometimes loyalty is the one thing keeping you from dropping to your knees and howling like a poisoned animal in all your aloneness.

There was a lazy jingle of dog tags from the kitchen, and Ringo reappeared, tottering over to us. He put his front paws on Mo's knees and tried to lift himself into her lap. His rear trembled with effort. Mo pulled away from me and helped the big dog up. She poked her head into the cone and let him lick her face. “You're a good dog, Ringo,” she said. “That's my baby.” She stood up with the dog in her arms. I was surprised she could carry him. “He needs to go outside,” she said. She was fumbling with the back door when the phone rang, and she asked me to get it. I answered and got Trace's voice in my ear.

“Phil? Did I call you? I meant to call Mo.” He sounded half-asleep and confused.

“I'm at Mo's,” I said. “I had a delivery nearby.”

He didn't question. “I'm ready to go,” he said. “It went well. They tell me it's art.” Which turned out not to be true. Even though they kept the socket from collapsing in on itself, his eye would always look half-closed and droopy.

“You sure you want me to get you? I'm still driving the van.”

“That fucking van,” he said. “Let's drive that thing to Mexico, the three of us. We'll sell it down there and party with the money. We'll all learn how to surf. We'll find you a señorita who will let you sip tequila from her navel.”

“I doubt Mo's up for that,” I said. “She seems pretty tired.”

“Let her rest, then. And get here quick. This place is full of dying people.”

I joined Mo outside. The lawn was a hearty chemical green that matched her robe. The dog was in some tall grass along the fence, whimpering, straining to squeeze out some relief. I told her I was heading out to pick up Trace.

“You're going to bring him straight back here, right?” she said, and I told her yes, I would.

“Why don't you take the roses with you,” she said. “You can do something good with them. Surprise someone.”

On the way to the hospital, I stopped at a red light and saw a little boy in overalls in the car next to me. He looked at Smiley's face with its demon grin and burst into tears. Who could blame him?

 

 

Trace was standing in front of the glass doors when I pulled up. His eye was covered in gauze. He got into the van slowly, like an old man.

“Your hands,” he said.

“Tell me about it,” I said.

He pulled down the sun visor and looked in the mirror. He fingered the bandages. “Want to see what it looks like?” he said. “I do.”

“I think you should keep that on,” I said. “It's probably holding something in place.”

He flipped the visor back up. I put the van in gear, but Trace held up his hand and told me to hang on. He reached into his shirt and pulled out two surgical masks. He handed one to me. “Put it on,” he said. “So no one will know it's us in this ridiculous fucking van.”

“I have to do a delivery,” I said. “I have to bring some guy black roses.”

“All the more reason,” he said.

So we put on the masks. All you could see of his face was the one good eye. “Let's get some smoke first,” Trace said. “I'm an eye patient. It's medicinal.” The mask tented and pocketed around his mouth as he spoke.

I drove us to Galactic Mary's house, and I handed Trace the twenty I'd gotten from the rich old lady with the Jesus pamphlet. He went in, still a little wobbly, and came back out with a bag. We smoked in the van. I drove fast into town, racing the high, but Mary's stuff hit fast and hard. It was good. It was just the thing.

My mind was liquid by the time we got to the art-supply store where Chip worked. I opened the back of the van and saw both sets of roses, the vase of red and the box of black. I could have taken in the red ones instead, but I knew that wouldn't solve Chip's problems.

Trace got out of the van. “I'm coming with you,” he said. “I want to see what happens when this poor bastard's heart breaks.”

We walked into the store together. There was a balding guy in a starched white shirt at the counter. “I have flowers for Chip,” I said.

“Chip works in framing,” he said. “I'll call him.” He switched on an intercom and said, “Hey, everyone come up front. Chip's getting flowers.”

“You didn't need to call everyone,” I said.

“What's with the masks?” the guy asked.

“There's something going around,” Trace said.

People gathered around the counter: a few girls my age, a few middle-aged women in floral-print dresses, some guys who were probably musicians by night. A spaniel-faced guy in a skinny tie walked up to me. “I'm Chip,” he said. I pictured him and the orange girl together on a beach, contentedly sipping rum drinks. It seemed possible. I thought about pulling the box away, I swear I did, but Chip had his hands on it, firmly, hopefully. I tried to whisper that he should open it in private, but he couldn't hear me because of the mask and because his coworkers were chanting his name.

I turned to go, but Trace grabbed my arm.

“Chip and Alice,” somebody sang. “Sitting in a tree.”

Chip opened the box, and there they were. All twelve of them, black as Bibles. Everyone shut up. A few people noticed my hands. Chip stood there with his mouth open. I felt grateful not to be him. I may have laughed, from relief.

“What's wrong with you?” the bald guy said to me. “Why would you do this to someone?”

Before I could say anything, Trace put his finger in the guy's chest and said, “Don't shoot the messenger, fucko.”

I watched Chip. Understanding crept into his face in a deepening red. “I think,” he said quietly, still looking at the roses, “I think you guys should get the hell out of here.”

I led Trace away. Someone called us assholes.

“Hey,” Trace said as we pulled away from the curb. “That guy stiffed you on the tip.”

“Plenty of people don't tip me,” I said. “This guy had a reason not to.”

“It's a matter of respect for the working man,” he said. “You have mouths to feed.”

“I have mouths?”

“I'm kind of hungry,” he said. His good eye crinkled up. Under the mask, he was smiling.

“To the diner, then,” I said. “My treat, I guess.”

“Ah, don't worry about it,” he said. “Right now I should be with Mo. She and I both had to stare down Death today.”

We were on an overpass, and beneath us cars flew brightly down the parkway. I said, “We could be in Mexico in three days if we headed south right now.”

He lit the pipe again, passed it to me. “We can't go without Mo. Especially since she's the only one who knows Spanish.”

I exhaled. “Do you know anyone named Archer?” I asked.

“Don't think so. Who's that?”

“It's just a name I heard,” I said, and I thought,
Just a name, just one name standing in for all the men who are better than you and me
.

Mo was sitting on her front steps, dressed, waiting and smoking. Trace thanked me and got out. I was going to tell him to take Archer's roses and give them to her, but I decided Mo was right: I ought to use them myself. I deserved to.

I watched as Trace hugged her. She touched his bandage gently, and he said something I couldn't make out and they laughed. I honked as I pulled away from the curb, and they waved at me.

 

 

This was my plan for the roses: I would go back to Smiley's and get Alice the orange girl's address out of the files. I would bring her the red roses and show her that her bad luck had boomeranged into good.

I drove to the store and parked the van in front, because Smiley bolted the back door after hours. I unlocked the front door and stepped in over the electric eye that triggered “Edelweiss.” The light was on in the back room. I heard a clatter and a yelp, and I ran to the doorway. I saw Smiley on top of Charlotte on the workbench, pumping away. They were naked. They looked pale and waxy under the fluorescent light.

Smiley stopped and looked at me, a smirk creeping up from the corner of his mouth. Charlotte tilted her head back over the edge of the bench and looked at me upside down. Her blond hair reached almost to the floor, where clothes and scissors and ribbon rolls and stems of baby's breath were scattered around. I could still smell paint fumes, faintly.

“I'll just go now,” I said.

“Bright and early tomorrow,” Smiley said. “No more of this late shit, okay?”

“No more,” I said. “I swear.”

“
Hasta,
then.”

“Good-bye,” said upside-down Charlotte.