Train Wreck Girl (18 page)

The stiff was at a condo in Cape Canaveral. I knew the building well. I'd helped build it more than ten years earlier. It was one of the first jobs that I actually welded on.

We took the gurney to the elevator and rode up. I told Bart, “It's weird. I don't think I've ever been inside something I built. Not when it was finished.”

“Really?” Bart said. He couldn't care less.

Probably because of this, I said, “It's weird to think that, if that weld I laid down ten years ago isn't still holding, this elevator shaft could crumble below us.” I smiled. “It'd be an ironic way to die, huh?”

“Sure would,” Bart said. This kind of shit didn't creep him out at all, I guess. We just rode up to the dead guy's floor.

There were a few cops still hanging around the dead guy's condo. Two of them were outside on the balcony, watching the moonlight shine down on the ocean. One cop was inside. It was Dante Jones. We all said our hellos. He pointed to the recliner in front of the TV. “There's your man,” he said.

“Who found the body?” Bart asked.

“His wife,” Dante said. “We got her out of here a while ago. She's with the neighbors.”

Bart nodded. I walked over to the corpse. I hadn't noticed at first because his back was toward me, but when I walked around in front of the recliner and caught a glance of the guy, I kinda laughed. “Oh, Jesus,” I said.

Bart came around and stood next to me. He pointed at the dead guy and said to Dante, “Did you guys do this to him?”

Dante was all grin. “He did it to himself.”

“For fuck's sake,” Bart said.

“You don't know how right you are,” Dante said. Because the dead guy was sitting in his recliner, facing the television, with his pajama pants down around his ankles. He still had an erection and his hand was holding on tight.

Bart said the obvious. “Went down beating off, huh?”

“You could be a detective,” Dante said.

Bart pointed at the VCR over the television. “Looks like someone already took the porn. Evidence, huh?”

“How the fuck can you tell?” Dante asked.

“I have the same VCR at home. There's a little thing that lights up when a tape is in.”

“Damn,” Dante said. “Maybe you could be a detective.”

“Did you steal the tape?” I asked Dante.

“Fuck, no. I don't want to watch white people fuck.”

I looked at Dante. He was smiling, but I could tell he was serious. The other two cops came in from the balcony. Dante introduced us. The two cops hung out. As Bart and I wrestled with the corpse, I caught occasional glances of the two cops, standing there, grinning, laughing. Telling jokes about the guy who died beating off, but stealing the dead guy's porno so they could beat off to it. It's a strange world we live in.

As I pulled the van out onto A1A, Bart said, “Hell of a way to go, isn't it?” This was our little ritual. We always talked about the corpse and the way the dead person went down. These conversations were my doing. Obviously, death spent a lot of time on my mind. Whenever I went to pick up a stiff, I'd check out the room and try to figure out what they'd been doing right at the end: what their last meal had been, if I could tell, if the dishes were still in the sink. Or I'd look to see how much dirty laundry they had amassed before dying. Weird little things like that. I was most interested in what they'd been reading in the end. I'd heard somewhere that Elvis went down reading
Another Roadside Attraction
by Tom Robbins. Not a bad last book, I figured. And, since we were in Florida, a lot of the old guy's had copies of Carl Hiaasen or Randy Wayne White books on their nightstand. For some reason, those books depressed me. I don't know why. I hadn't read anything by either of those guys. Sometimes I'd flip through them while Bart steadied the gurney, but that was about it. The last book Libra read was
Kitchen
by Banana Yoshimoto. I remembered because she was really digging it. She kept saying to me, “You gotta read this when I'm done.” I tried a few times, but I couldn't get through it. Not that it's not a good book. What I read was pretty great. It's just too painful for me to read. I hope Libra got a chance to finish it, though.

Bart wasn't interested in this stuff. Instead, he and I talked about the means of death. It was like we were trying to figure out the best way to die. The best ways not to die were easy. You don't want to go out in a crash of any kind: motorcycle, car, plane. You don't want something to hit you and kill you: a train, a car, the sidewalk. Or, basically, you don't want any accident or violent death. If your body is working fine and some outside force takes you down, that's the worst. We agreed about that. The best way to die was still a mystery, though. That's what we debated.

I said, “I don't know. I guess it's not so bad.”

Bart looked at me. “Are you kidding me? How embarrassing would it be to die jerking off? You wouldn't be ashamed?”

“I'd be dead,” I said. “Look at this guy in the back. Does he look embarrassed?”

“What about his wife, though?”

“What about her? She had to know it was going on. She found the body by midnight, which means she wakes up in the middle of the night sometimes and goes out into the living room to check on her husband. And he dropped his pants all the way down to his ankles and watched a porn with his wife in the other room. She had to know what was up. And if she was really so embarrassed, why didn't she take his hand off his dick?”

“I guess,” Bart said. “I'd just like to have a little more dignity. I'd like to think a bunch of people aren't standing over me, making jokes when I'm dead.”

By now, I was driving down State Road 528 over the Banana River. The moon was a day away from full, and you could see the lights of the Space Center up north. The VAB all lit up. The islands in the Banana River. The water sitting still and flat as glass. I'd actually been thinking about the dead guy from the moment I saw him sitting there, hanging onto his last dead erection. Because I kinda envied the guy. He had a steady, long term relationship with a woman. He had furniture that wasn't fancy, but it all matched and it obviously hadn't been pulled off of a curb somewhere. He had a decent pad with a balcony that overlooked the ocean. He was obviously retired. I thought, shit, if I could get to that point: where I wake up in the morning next to a woman I love enough to swear I'll spend the rest of my life with her, and I don't have to go to work that day, and I could walk out onto my balcony and look at the beach and the waves rolling in and read a book and hang out and do whatever the fuck I want, I'd take it. I'd probably even be happy about it. I wouldn't necessarily want to go out with my dick in my hand, but shit, that old guy was probably eighty years old. If I could still get it up at that age, if I was still beating off to pornos at eighty, well, what the hell? I guess it ain't so bad at all.

I told Bart all this. I said, “The thing is, it's not what you're doing in the end. It's what you do leading up to the end that's important.”

“I guess,” Bart said. He shook his head. “I'd still like to go out cooler than that old guy.”

“Yeah, me too,” I said.

But that old man had me thinking again. Because I'd been taking care of all the shit from my past. I'd dealt with Sophie and I'd been doing my best to deal with Brother Joe's death and Taylor was surfing with me again and all that. I'd even gotten rid of the Samoan and the wheelchair dude. And it felt good to face all that stuff head on. But I hadn't gotten very far on my original question. I still hadn't figured out what I was gonna do with my life now that I realized that living fast wasn't leading to dying young.

You've been waiting for hurricanes. Keeping your fingers crossed. Hurricane swells are the best thing about living in Florida. You remember some of the best days of your life by the names of the storms: when Hurricane Fran blew in so big that you couldn't even paddle out in Cocoa Beach. You had to go down to Cape Canaveral, where the waves are always smaller, just to catch something a mortal man could ride. Even then, only veterans of a lifetime of storm swells made it out to the line-up. You had the waves all to yourselves. And there was that hour of perfection back in 1995, when Tropical Storm Chantal was directly east of Cocoa Beach, sucking in a great big offshore wind, standing up the most perfect waves you'd ridden up to that point in your life.

Storms like this are what you live for. They usually start coming in by June. This year, you have to wait until August for the first big storm. It's a hurricane. Meteorologists have named it Alberto. Alberto is your new best friend.

You don't call Taylor to surf with you. You're not sure if she's ready to ride a hurricane. Besides, sometimes you have to do things just for you.

You take your shortboard, obviously. The longboard is new and it's fun on small days, but you can't take a longboard out into Alberto. You also ride your bike down to 16
^th
Street South. The waves are better there. They break over a little sandbar. If you position yourself right, you can find the spot where the wave will peak like an A-frame and you can go left or right on it. It makes you feel like a kid, this bike ride with your board tucked under your arm and the wind blowing you around.

The beach is packed when you get there. Every kook in the county comes out for the first hurricane swell. Dozens of surfers look out at the waves. They're big. And they're breaking way outside, twenty or thirty yards east of the sandbar. When the waves hit the sandbar, they close out. It's nothing but walls of white water from the sandbar to shore. This is enough to get your heart pumping. The adrenaline drips into your bloodstream. You let out a deep breath. Fucking A.

There are definitely more surfers on shore than in the water. Most of those in the water are struggling in the whitewash, just trying to get to the line-up. Most of those surfers won't make it out. You're pretty confident that you'll make it out. This is where you're from. This is who you are. Hurricane swells are in your blood. You strap on your leash and walk down to the water.

At first, you think about timing it. If you can start your paddle out between sets, it may be easier. But it doesn't look like the waves are breaking in sets. It looks like one wave after another. A tough paddle out regardless. So you just go for it.

It's not easy. One wave after another hits you. Sometimes as many as ten or twelve waves in a row. You have to duck dive so much that you hardly have time to paddle. Even when you are paddling, there's so much power pushing you back to shore that you feel like you're not gonna make it. You're breathing heavy by the time you're ten yards from shore. The ocean doesn't relent. It seems to be telling you, “This is serious shit. Go back in.” But you're not gonna do that.

Now and then, there is a break between waves. Surfers who don't know better pause to catch their breath during these breaks. Not you. You know better. As soon as there's calm water between waves, you paddle faster and harder. All you think is: go, go, go.

The waves keep getting bigger the farther out you go. They get meaner. There's a lot of power out here. You have to duck deeper and deeper with each wave. You stay under water longer. You go through spells when you think, I'd really like to breathe, now. Then you think: go, go, go.

It takes almost twenty minutes to get out to where the waves break. You're pretty winded by the time you get there. You sit on your board and look at your watch. Don't do anything for one minute, you tell yourself. Catch your breath. You're out here, now. There's no hurry.

While you're taking these deep breaths, you notice that there's only about a dozen surfers in the line-up. There's plenty of room out here. Plenty of waves for everyone.

Your mind starts drifting immediately. You're thinking in metaphors. It feels like the last several months have been one long paddle out in a hurricane swell. You kept getting hit by storm wave after storm wave. As soon as you surface from one, another one hit you. You started with Brother Joe. You had to deal with that, so you ducked. As soon as you surfaced, Libra was dead, so you ducked. As soon as you surfaced, Sophie was back, so you ducked. Then Taylor, so you ducked. Then Libra again and Sophie again and everything. And you never caught your breath during the calm spells. You paddled like mad the whole time. And now you're out where the waves break. All of that white water is behind you.

A minute passes. You've caught your breath. You've watched other surfers ride waves that were well over head high. You've seen the long left lines. This is the shit you live for. You're ready. A set starts to roll in. It's coming right for you. You turn your board toward shore and go for it.

When I finally got to the place in my life where the waves break, there was an art exhibit. It was a solo show. Mine. A few artists showed up early and asked me how I'd managed to get a solo show. Hell, I didn't even know what they were talking about. I didn't even know it was a big deal until I saw the envy in their eyes.

It was a big deal, though. Helen and her ex-husband Jonathan had worked hard on it. They got the newspaper to interview me. They caused a buzz in a scene that I didn't know existed in Cocoa Beach. The owner of the art gallery took me seriously. She talked to me like I was important, not just some old barnacle who welds a bunch of shit out of metal and picks up dead bodies at night. She bought a couple of cases of wine and snacks for everyone. When I first showed up at the exhibit, about a half hour early to help set up, she offered me a glass of wine. I asked if she had beer. She said, “No, but I'll get some.” And she left for the store right away. It was crazy.

A few minutes after the actual event started, Lester showed up. I knew it was a big deal when he showed up. Wearing a button-down shirt, no less. I hadn't seen him since the next door drunks moved out of that apartment next to me. That was about five years earlier. He walked up to me and said, “Look at you. Big time.”

I guess he was talking about the exhibit, because I wasn't looking big time. I didn't even have the right clothes to wear that night. I had on jeans and one of Brother Joe's old bowling shirts. It said, “Central Florida Soil and Sod,” on the back, but it looked nice enough from the front. I figured that, if I just kept my back close to walls, I'd look fine. I said to Lester, “I've got some golf clubs in back, if you get the itch later.”

Lester smiled like he had the itch now. He pulled a beer out of his pocket.

I pointed to the table with all the snacks. “There's free beer over there,” I said.

Lester dismissed it with a wave of his hand. He said, “So what the fuck? I read about you in the paper and everything. Turning junk into art. That's pretty cool.”

“Thanks,” I said. “It was mostly Bart and Helen, though.” I told Lester that Bart had coached me on how to be interviewed. He'd learned all that stuff when he was a college hoops star. He told me that all news is basically a sales pitch, so you want to keep things simple. Make one point again and again. And Helen had told me to focus on the fact that I used to be an iron worker, and that where most people see trash, I see possibilities. That my goal was to take the trash and turn it into art. Bart told me to really focus on only that one point. I could say that I was welding the detritus of my life, or trying to transform junk into beauty, but the point I really wanted to get across was that I was making trash into art. I saw what Bart was saying: white trash kid becomes an artist. Learns big words. Makes Horatio Alger proud. I could sell that. It seemed like the least I could do, after all the work Helen and Jonathan had put into this exhibit. But I didn't want to try to suck Lester into the sales pitch. I was just happy to see him. So I told him all that back story.

He said, “Keep that to yourself. The story's better if I don't know it.”

Actually, it was stories I wanted to hear, so I asked Lester what had become of his whole sick crew. Lester had stories. He told me a couple of them, about Sally and Swoboda and Alex and all the next door drunks. He said Sally might stop by later, but I knew that, if she didn't catch a ride with Lester, she probably wasn't coming. It wasn't too important, though, because Jonathan and the gallery owner wanted to introduce me to so many people that I hardly had a chance to talk to Lester or anyone else. Luckily, Lester found Bart and they had a chance to bullshit.

Jonathan and the gallery owner wanted to introduce me to the people who were buying my stuff. They all asked the same questions: how'd you get to be an artist? This must be a big deal for you, a solo show? Who influenced you? What inspires you? What's the main point you're trying to communicate?

I kept my answers simple and consistent: I guess I've always been creative; it's a huge deal to me; modernists, surrealists, Pacific Islanders; friends like Helen; look beyond the trash. Look for possibilities.

I guess it was all true, but it felt like a sales pitch. I'd been coached by Bart and Helen. I felt like I didn't know shit, so I did my best to bluff a good game.

Taylor and Rosalie stopped by. Rosalie's husband was with them. Seeing him didn't ring any bells. I didn't remember him from high school at all. I acted like I knew him, though, because I felt guilty for sleeping with his wife. Because I appreciated that he raised my daughter. I shook his hand and smiled and he said, “I remember when you were the best surfer in town. Remember when you beat Benji Clarke in that one Easter contest?” I acted like I didn't remember at all. Like I didn't eat that shit up every time someone said something about it. Like I hadn't quit surfing contests right after beating Benji because I knew I'd gotten lucky once and it wouldn't happen again.

Taylor said, “I can't believe people came out to see all this junk.”

Rosalie scolded her and apologized to me.

But there was no need. She didn't have to apologize to me about how my own daughter acted. Besides, a little part of me agreed with Taylor.

Taylor said, “Thanks for taking me out in that last hurricane.”

I was glad to see a little sarcasm from her. She was Rosalie's and my offspring, after all. If she wasn't a little bit of a shit, I would've been suspicious. I said, “Don't worry. Hurricane Debby might do something for us.”

Because there was another storm building down in the Caribbean. It didn't look like it was gonna come up north far enough, but we'd get some decent waves. Not full-on hurricane swell waves, but something big and something Taylor could handle. And she lightened up toward me as soon as I made that promise.

As I was talking to Taylor, Sal walked through the door. Flagstaff Sal. My old buddy the mechanic. At first, I didn't believe my eyes. But it was him. I'd recognize that brown buffalo anywhere. Taylor told me about going down to 3
^rd
Street North during that last hurricane swell and watching all the surfers. I tried to listen, but I couldn't take my eyes off of Sal. He circled the room, waved to me, and left. I shook my head, tried to rattle my brain. Was it a ghost?

Sister Janie and Powell showed up. They took a long walk around the exhibit. By this time, a lot of the pieces had sold. The sculptures were still on display. The gallery would keep the stuff out for three weeks, whether it sold or not. But, by this time, more than half of it had little red “sold” stickers next to the title. I think this impressed Janie and Powell more than the stuff I'd welded.

I was talking to a lady who'd bought the piece that, in my head, was the rip-off of Picasso's hookers. She was happy as could be and I was happy, too. Janie leaned in between us. She touched my arm and said, “You did good, Knucklehead.”

“Thanks,” I said.

Janie pursed her lips like she wanted to smile, but she didn't quite pull it off. Powell shook my hand and said, “Congratulations,” and the two of them left.

They didn't buy anything. I was kinda glad about that.

When the rush of people died down, I snuck over to chat with Helen a little. She was leaning up against an empty, white pedestal. Her ex-husband and another guy were standing by her. I said hello to them. Jonathan said, “Danny, I want you to meet my boyfriend, Tim.”

The other guy stuck out his hand. I shook it. “Nice to meet you, Tim.”

“Don't look so surprised,” Helen said.

Though I didn't think I looked surprised because I wasn't surprised. I suspected that about Jonathan all along. And I'd noticed the way he and Tim had been hanging out earlier. I ignored the comment and said to Jonathan, “I really appreciate all of this. It's, uh…” But I couldn't think of what it was.

Jonathan said, “Fucking strange.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it is.”

Tim told me about his first art show. Jonathan said that it had sold out on its opening night. Tim tried to downplay that. He was a humble guy. And my show was doing pretty well, but it wasn't gonna sell out. I didn't really care, anyway. All this welding was just something I did. Therapy or something. A way to stay sane. Or at least as sane as I could be. I didn't expect anything to come out of it. Every time anyone tried to compliment me, I reminded myself who I am: a white trash kid from Woodland Avenue. A protégé of Brother Joe's with a head full of machete monkeys and the world on a toilet. I didn't tell Tim and Jonathan this. I just chatted with them until their wine ran out and they went for a refill.

At this point, I said to Helen, “Thanks for doing all this.”

“I get half,” Helen said.

“Really, you can have it all,” I said. “You earned it.”

“I don't want it all,” Helen said. “I want half.”

“Okay.”

Helen had been like this toward me lately. I think it had something to do with Libra. I think that, when I told Helen about freaking out and leaving Libra on the tracks, Helen was done with me at that point. Or maybe not entirely done. But just disgusted with me and thinking that, if things had gone differently, it could've been her on the tracks. That I would've left her again.

I couldn't blame her. And the truth was, I'd actually given up on trying to date her again. I didn't even want to sleep with her anymore. Not really. I just wanted her to stay the person who believed in me a little. So I told her that, in my own roundabout way. I told her, “I don't think anyone but you would've thought to put all this shit in a gallery. Thanks.”

“Quit calling it shit,” she said. And: “Look who just walked in.”

I looked over at the door. Sophie was standing there. By herself. She was a little sweaty and most of her hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She'd changed clothes since work, but I could tell that she'd come straight from the Bistro. She didn't seem to notice Helen and me staring at her. She just walked along, looking at each sculpture.

Sophie took a long time with each one. She'd run her hand above it, like she wanted to touch it, but she never did. The art gallery owner walked over to her and said something. Sophie spoke with her. I watched. Helen said, “I think she's gonna buy something.”

“It's that Miro rip-off,” I said.

“Quit calling things a rip-off. That looks nothing like a Joan Miro painting,” Helen said.

But it did. I'd made a little wire-mesh dog standing on a hill made out of a piece of an old quarter panel. And there was a ladder going nowhere. And at the top of the ladder, I'd fashioned an arm from an antique mobile, and hung a half moon off of it. Sophie reached out for the moon. The gallery owner said something. Sophie shook her head. The owner nodded. Sophie reached out and touched the moon. She smiled.

“She's gonna buy it,” Helen said.

“I don't think so,” I said. But sure enough, Sophie pulled out a checkbook from her purse and wrote a check for the gallery owner.

“Holy shit,” Helen said.

I nodded. Jonathan and Tim came back. “What are we looking at?” Tim asked.

“Danny's ex-girlfriend just bought something,” Helen said. She looked at Jonathan. “It's Sophie.”

Jonathan's eyes got big. “Crazy Sophie? Where? Which one?”

“Shhh,” Helen said.

And I didn't like the whole gossipy aspect of this. I didn't like people staring at Sophie like she was a sideshow or something. Sure, she had her faults. She'd made some mistakes like the rest of us. And maybe one of her mistakes went over the line. Once. But everyone lived. I lived. I'm stronger for it. Sophie's better for it. She paid my medical bills. I couldn't hold a grudge forever. And, to tell the truth, when Sophie took me to dinner that night, and we ate sushi and she just kept talking and I could see all that light in her eyes and her mouth would half-smile when she thought of something funny to tell me and her fingers fidgeted with the napkin ring like she was still nervous to hang out with me, like it was a first date again and she was doing all she could to show her best side. I tried to be aloof that night. I tried to stand back. I did stand back, but in my mind, boy, don't you know I was thinking about sleeping with her. Don't you know I remembered exactly how it all felt when we were both spent and naked and she lay on top of me, sweating, catching her breath. Or how she looked in the morning when I woke up before her and she slept next to me with her chest rising and falling in little short breaths.

So I didn't like to hear Helen and Jonathan and Tim all saying shit about her. I didn't like that dirty look that Bart was casting across the room at her. There was nothing wrong with Sophie being there. She was just trying to support me. She was trying to make things right. And, really, was anything so bad that we couldn't make it right?

I excused myself from Helen and Tim and Jonathan and walked across the art gallery. All around me was metal that I'd welded. Trash that I'd made into something that meant something to people. It meant something to me. And in front of me was Sophie: disheveled from work and a few hundred dollars poorer. She looked up at me then, with those root beer eyes. I went to her. Maybe I was right back to making the same mistakes. I didn't care. I'm still Danny McGregor. And there's no point in paddling out into a hurricane swell if you're not gonna ride the hurricane waves.