Cyndra
Won’t Get Out of the Truck
If she had known how completely crazy J.B. was, even
before he shipped over to Iraq, she would not have married him. Even if she had
been seventeen and him twenty-one with pale blue eyes, with shoulders that
wouldn’t quit, with a manner of kissing that said “I completely respect you
girl, and I completely want you.”
But it was too late to take it back. There was Kelli
who was two and cute as a puppy; and there was L’il J.B. who was too little for
anybody to tell whether he was going to be cute or not. Kelli was at her mom’s.
L’il J.B. was attached to Cyndra’s left boob on which he was sucking as if his
life depended on it. Which it did. Which was why it was too late to take back
that dumb second when she had looked up into J.B.’s eyes and said, “I do. I
surely do.”
Cyndra and L’il J.B. were in the front seat of
J.B.’s King Cab on a Sunday afternoon in June. The air conditioner was blasting and Cyndra was squinting
into the dashboard t.v. She could
barely make out the picture because the truck was parked smack dab in middle of
the Mojave Desert and the glare was like hell. J.B. was not in sight, but
Cyndra could hear the bad boy roar of his dirt bike, even though the windows
were closed and she had her earbud in so she could listen to a duet between
Faith Hill and Tim Mcgraw that was causing her to sob and drip tears on L’il
J.B.’s tiny bald head.
She and L’il had been stuck in the King Cab for two
hours. J.B. would zoom up every hour or so and say, “How ya doin’, baby? I’ll just
do this one last run and we’ll head in for pizza and home and who knows what.”
As if. As if all she needed was another baby boy
nuzzling her boobs. As if by then he’d have sobered up enough to be able to do
the deed. The t.v. flickered and went black. Her cell battery was dead due to
her listening for an hour to her sister Tyra bitch about how there was nothing
to do in this totally boring place. Which meant now there really was nothing to
do. Nothing.
She had a pile of her mom’s magazines next to her on
the seat because she had planned to leave them at her sister’s salon. She
glanced down at the top one. "How to welcome your soldier hubby
Home." Right. There would be---she didn't have to look---a recipe for The
Most Outrageous Triple Chocolate Torte and tips on how to lose weight. For your
soldier hubby. Both of them so stupidly hopeless, the cake which J.B. would not
eat because he would have slammed eight Dos Eq longnecks during dinner; and
gorgeous skinny her if she was ever gorgeous skinny her again, because if J.B.
did actually touch her, it would have everything to do with his boner, and
nothing to do with want or respect.
Her sister's salon? Three stations and an ex-biker
chick who called herself an aesthatician coming in about once every six months
to do some old lady’s toenails. Tyra herself was the sister from hell. No
details thanks, except for how the bitch had managed to steal away Cyndra’s
first boyfriend when they were teenage chicks. And, Cyndra all perfect boobs
and butt and heart-shaped face and Tyra, the Tyrant ha ha, 200 lbs. with boobs
that would be hanging to her knees by the time she was 23. Yeah, and now Cyndra
was pushing 190.
L’il’s mouth had fallen away from her breast. She
set him on the magazines and pulled down her blouse. She was a mess. She was a
slobby mess. Once she would have wiped off the milk and tucked herself into the
nursing bra. Now she didn’t even wear the nursing bra. She looked down at her
top and saw the tiny star of wet spreading out.
If it weren’t for the air-conditioner she
would...what...she would who knows. The last time J.B. had cruised up to the
truck he had smelled like a brewery. He'd taken a 12-pack out with him strapped
to the back of the bike. He was drinking every day, sometimes he'd already
popped a few on the drive back from the Marine Base. And it seemed like the
only time he ever wanted to fool around was in the morning when he had a
hang-over woodie. Cyndra could not figure out why guys had to give such ugly
names to the act of love.
Suddenly she had one of those lousy memories, the
ones that made her skin crawl, the ones that she thought had gone away when she
was first in love with J.B. Back then when he put his arms around her, she knew
she had escaped her past. Everything was new. Everything was magic. Like normal
people. Like normal love. Not like her mom and dad. And there it was - the
friggin' memory - her dad's voice in her ears, even louder than it had been
back in the trailer. Her mom was crying, not mad crying, but pitiful crying.
And her dad was saying those ugly words. Who puts a roof over your head? Who
puts clothes on the god-damned kids? Who deserves a little pussy now and then –
not twice a year?
Cyndra cranked the volume on the I-pod. There was a
new singer, a woman singing quietly with only a guitar behind her. She had no
idea who it was. She'd downloaded a mix from a website. Cyndra had never heard
it before, but the song was about making mistakes and running away and Cyndra
wondered if it had been written for her.
She thought about just starting the truck and
driving off, but she knew J.B. usually rode the damn bike till he was running
on vapor. Pissed-off as she was, she didn't want to kill him, which is what
pushing a dead dirt bike back to where he could hitch into 29 Palms in hundred
and ten degree heat would do. She checked the gas gauge in the truck. There was
a good half tank left. But she turned down the air conditioning just to play it
safe.
Seemed like that was all she ever did now - play it
safe. Make sure J.B. and the kids ate more or less right. Try to watch her
weight while she felt so empty all the time. Listen to her sister bitch about
the salon - how Gennifer was a bitch and Margo was a bitch and D'wanne was
nothing but a bitchy faggot - and never tell her sister what she really
thought, that Tyra was the real bitch. And why couldn't she just tell her
that? Because sometimes, if Cyndra
was realllly understanding, Tyra would offer to babysit and Cyndra could take a
long luke-warm shower, go out on the patio in her wet t-shirt dress and sit in
peace while the hot air evaporated the water from the dress and her skin, and
she could pretend it was March in Phoenix, Arizona where she and J.B. had gone
for their honeymoon. The air had been perfect. Soft little night breezes. If
she closed her eyes the evaporation felt like that kind of heaven - or maybe
even J.B.'s fingers all delicate on her face.
What had happened to wild Cyndra? What had happened
to the girl who didn't hardly drink or smoke pot, but who would walk away from
the Luna Mesa Full Moon keggers on the BLM land, out into a silver desert where
if she lined herself up just right with the big fat moon, her shadow would walk
ahead of her? Or the girl who would run into the heart of a thunderstorm when
one slammed in, like a miracle you could be terrified of and love how your
heart pounded in your chest? What had happened to the girl who was going to be
the first person in her family to go to college - right over at Copper Mountain
College where she wasn't going to get some dumb girl degree, but major in
computer programming?
Gone. Vanished in the instant it took for her to
welcome J.B. into her body and whisper, "I'm going to drive you crazy, bad
boy." Ten million years ago.
L'il J.B. snorted, whimpered and clutched his tiny
hands in the air. Cyndra pulled him up to her breast and plugged him in. She
heard the giant mosquito whine of the dirt bike. There had better be something
new pretty damn soon.
"So how long were you stuck out there?"
Tyra said. She had her "snooping for gossip but pretending she really
cared" tone in her voice.
"Six hours all told." Cyndra shrugged.
"It wasn't a big deal. At least I had my music. And I could just think for
a while without somebody nagging me about something or other."
"You need a break," Tyra said. She’d got
her gossip so she could afford to be charitable. "I sure do," Cyndra
said. She figured Tyra was going to offer to watch the kids for an hour so she
could take her bath and sit on the patio.
"I've got a surprise," Tyra said. "Tell
J.B., you and me are going down into Palm Springs to get some stuff at Target.
Call him so he doesn't get shit-faced on the way home from work. He can watch
the kids. He owes you. You deserve to have some fun."
Cyndra thought of the heat in Palm Springs and the
old people who all looked like they had never made a mistake in their lives.
Plus a hundred and fifty bucks had disappeared from their savings and she
didn't want to spend money. "We're almost broke till the end of the
month," she said.
Tyra laughed. "You don't need money, baby
sister. And we’re not really going to Target. I hit it big over at Morongo last night and I've got five
hundred bucks free money and a postcard from one of those fancy Palm Springs
casinos that's good for two buffets, free drinks and fifty dollars in free slot
play. We're gonna get wild."
"Play it safe" was hovering in Cyndra's
mind like Casper the Cautious Ghost. It smiled it's cutesy-poo smile. She
wanted to strangle it. Cyndra straightened her shoulders, looked her sister in
the eye and said, "Pick me up at 7."
"You won't regret it," Tyra said. "I
left out the best part. I got tickets for Tim McGraw. He's playing there
tonight."
"Without Faith?"
"Without Faith. It's some kind of benefit
dealie. You put on that sparkly black dress, you know, the one cut down to your
knees and we just might have to get ourselves in the front row and when you
stand up to cheer, stick your chest out and he's gonna' tell Faith 'bye-bye,
baby!'"
"Like I said, pick me up at 7."
"See you later, mamagator."
On cue, L'il J.B. hollered from his crib in the
kids' room. Kelli raced in from the dusty patio and grabbed Cyndra around the
legs. "Let me go, babygirl, I gotta feed your brother." Kelli clung
tighter. Cyndra pried her away and crouched down next to her. "I'm sorry,
sugar," she said. "Let's get you an ice cream and then you come help
me get him up and you can sit next to me while I feed him and you can have your
ice cream. L'il's gonna be all jealous of you."
Cyndra never knew if Kelli really understood what
she was saying to her. She just tried to keep her voice all momsy and loving.
Kelli reached up and patted her face. "O.k. then, good girl," Cyndra
said, "let's get going."
It was mid-afternoon by the time Cyndra got L'il
back to sleep, the ice cream off Kelli and the couch, Kelli down for a nap and
herself charged up enough to call J.B. He didn't answer. He'd always been like
that - blah blah no woman's gonna be the boss of me blah blah. She left a
message, dug through the back of the walk-in closet and found the black dress.
She hung it in the bathroom with the shower on to steam a few wrinkles out.
When she tried it on, the zipper almost didn't close. She sucked in her breath
till it hurt and felt the zipper close. There would be no more ice cream bars.
None.
When J.B. finally called his voice was all puffed-up
and important. "What's up? I got a short minute." Cyndra rolled her
eyes. She was so over almost everything about him. "Honey," she said,
her words racing to get everything in before he could say no, "I was
hoping you could come straight home tonight. Tyra's gotta see a doctor down in
Palm Springs and she's scared. I told her I'd see if you'd be willing to watch
the kids so I could keep her company...see that way, she owes us and maybe you
and me can get a little alone time on the weekend while she watches the kids
back as a favor. You know, we haven't had any alone time in too long."
J.B. laughed. His voice softened. "You mean
special alone time? Real special my-girl knows-what-I like alone time?"
Cyndra grabbed an ice cream bar from the freezer.
She did it quiet so he'd never know. "Uh huh," she said, "real
real special alone time." She took the phone away and ripped the wrapper
from the ice cream bar with her teeth.
"I can come right home," J.B. said.
"You bet I can. You got yourself a deal."
Cyndra bit off the first inch of the ice cream bar
and damn near swallowed it whole. "That's real sweet of you, baby,"
she said. "Bye bye."
She still couldn't believe it had been so easy. J.B.
had screeched into the drive, shoved open the door and stopped dead in his
tracks. "Damn," he'd said, "you look good. You look damn hot.
You gotta promise me you'll wear that dress when we have our real special time
alone." Cyndra hadn't said anything. She'd just walked up to him real
slow, pressed up against him for a second, backed away and grinned. Tyra had
pulled up, beeped the horn and Cyndra was gone gone gone.
And now, right this minute, she was sitting on the
most comfortable chair she'd maybe ever sat in. It had a seat that seemed to be
made just for her butt, a nice high back and it was exactly the right distance
from the glowing rainbow screen of a Cleopatra slot machine. She'd just bet
forty nickles and three golden tiger things had bounced down in front of her
and there was music playing and a bunch of free spins about to happen at THREE
TIMES THE NORMAL WIN and her damn sister was tugging on her sleeve, saying
"Come on, we gotta get to the seafood buffet while the crab claws are
still there...plus Tim's on in forty-five minutes. Come on!"
"Wait up," Cyndra said, "just give me
two more minutes..."
It should have been easy. It looked easy when Cyndra
did it. Taking care of two kids, a baby and a toddler, not like the seven kids
in his family, plus he kinda liked both of them. But, L'il J.B. was yowling and
Kelli was tugging on his t-shirt, whining dadeee dadeeee dadeeeeeeeee and he
hadn't had a beer since the stashed one in his office at the Base. Which had
been two hours ago, two hours that felt like two centuries. J.B. was not a
happy boy.
He'd fed L'il J.B. He'd settled Kelli in front of
the t.v. with a bowl of spaghetti-O's which was one of the three things she
would eat. He'd even nuked the bowl of tuna casserole Cyndra had left in the
fridge and made himself eat it. He wasn't used to solid food this early in the
evening. He'd usually go for the three basic Food Groups: beer, beer and more
beer. J.B. thought about putting the kids in their car seats and heading into
Ranch Foods in 29 for a case of Food Group, but it was 100 and fuck and he
couldn't figure out what he'd do with the kids while he ran into the store. He
wasn't scared of much, but thinking of kids cooking in a car in the Mojave heat
made him want to go back to being a hard-shell Baptist.
J.B. picked up L'il J.B. and held him close to his
chest with the kid's head on his shoulder. He'd seen Cyndra do that. "Hey,
Mini-me," J.B. said. "Give us one of those big guy belches."
L'il kept yowling. There was a stink in the air. J.B. patted his baby's butt.
Yep. J.B. sank down onto the couch, hollered and jumped up. He'd landed on one
of Kelli's friggin' Barbie Dolls - and a half-eaten bag of pork rinds. He held
L'il out in front of him. "O.k., you little booger, I know what we'll do.
We'll call mom!"
Kelli hadn't let go of J.B.'s shirt the whole time
he'd been standing and sitting and jumping up. "Momeeeeee," she
whined, "I want my momeeeeee."
"You and me both," J.B. said. That instant
he saw Cyndra's cell phone lying on the kitchen countertop. "What the
fuck! You sneaky bitch. Sorry, Kelli, daddy said a bad word - make that two bad
words." He swiped the Barbie doll onto the floor. Kelli shrieked. J.B.
dropped down onto the couch with his daughter attached to his shirt. He tried
to think of how hot Cyndra had looked as she went out the door. All it did was
piss him off. That's how she'd hooked him. That's how he'd landed in Marine
housing in the middle of hell, drier than the sand around him, with a
piss-stinking baby and a sobbing little girl for company. "I'll never have
sex again," he said to his kids. They just kept stinking and sobbing.
Cyndra vaguely remembered something about how they
were going to see Tim McGraw and eat crab legs and celebrate Girls Night Out.
It seemed like a dream she'd had a million years ago. Her life seemed like a
nightmare she'd been living even longer.
People said gambling was self-destruction. If sitting in front of a
friendly slot machine drinking from a bottomless glass of diet pop and vodka
was self-destruction, it suited her just fine. People ought to try living in a cheap shit two bedroom
apartment with three whiny kids, your husband being one of them, in the middle
of a scorched-out Marine base, if they wanted to know real self-destruction.
Tyra appeared at her side now and then. Each time
they were both more loaded. The last time she'd showed up she'd just laughed
and plunked herself down next to Cyndra. "Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join
'em." She shoved a twenty
into her machine. "Look," she said, "it's all cool and
spiritual." Cyndra glanced over. There were Aztec pyramids and heathen
gods. Tyra drove her nuts with all her back-dated New Age bullshit. And then,
two moons and three suns popped up on the screen, Tyra shrieked, “Fifty free
games!!” Cyndra watched the
credits rocketing up and figured maybe there was something to the ancient
Indian powers.
"I just love this," she said. She and Tyra
watched the bonus round spin gloriously. "You know," Tyra said,
"when you get the little thingies that say you hit the Bonus round, it's
just like the seconds right before a guy you want to kiss comes forward to kiss
you. You just know all you gotta do is sit back and EN-joy!"
The three golden lions dropped into place on
Cyndra's screen. Bonus round! She remembered the first time J.B. had kissed
her, and watched the memory wash away in a rising flood of credits - at a
nickle a credit! "I don't ever want to go home," she said. "This
is the most fun I've ever had."
Tyra stared at her slot screen. "That says a
lot for romance, doesn't it?"
It had to stop. It flat out had to stop. Yes, the
kids were finally asleep. Yes, J.B. had logged into his favorite Girls Gone
Wild site. Yes, he'd had two nice intimate experiences with the girls. Yes, for
once Cyndra wasn't nagging him about something. But, it was 1:30 a.m. and no
Cyndra. More important, he hadn't had a drink since the last hit of Nyquil,
which had finished off the bottle. The crappy supermarket stopped selling booze
at 2 a.m., meaning that if Cyndra didn't get her butt home in the next ten
minutes, there was no time to head into town for a beer or twelve.
1:31.59. 1:32. 1:32.01. J.B. logged off and checked
on the kids. They were both sound asleep. He considered the deep crap he'd be
in if he left to buy some beer and Tyra brought Cyndra back and they both
walked in to find the kids alone. It wasn't like he'd never been in deep crap
before. But Tyra had a voice like a chainsaw and as ragged as his last nerve
was, he didn't need that.
He stepped out into the backyard. He loved that damn
Mojave sky. He hated all the rest of the friggin' desert, but he loved the big
black above him, the way the stars looked like diamonds, the way the flares
from the bombing runs to the north burst orange like alien spaceships. Without
thinking, he locked the back and front doors, climbed in the truck and headed
into town. The kids would be o.k. He'd be a hot fifteen minutes to the store,
five minutes grabbing a couple six packs and 15 hot minutes driving back. No
way any tragedy would happen. Especially since he'd busted his ass at the job
all day and been a real sweetheart about Cyndra taking off.
Cyndra slid the card into the ATM. The message
flashed. "Funds unavailable." Tyra looked over her shoulder.
"You hit your daily limit, sistuh. What is it?"
"Five hundred bucks," Cyndra said. She
stared down at the card. "WTF do I do now?"
"You borrow a few bucks from me," Tyra
said cheerfully. "And we just hunker down for a little longer."
“But, what if…?”
“No “what if”, you been losing so long on that
machine, it’s gotta hit.”
The beer run had gone smooth. Market open, the cute
Philippina chick at the register. J.B. popped a brew as soon as he'd cleared
town. That big sky was grinning down at him. Desert wind poured through the
truck windows. He slid a Merle Haggard CD in the player and cranked it up. Life
was sweet again. Then he saw the flashing red and blue lights.
J.B. checked his speed. Five miles over the limit.
He grabbed a rag off the seat, shoved it into the beer and dropped the can on
the floor. He saw the future like you were supposed to do when you were
drowning. The cop's face in the window. The faint whiff of brew in the air. The
bust. Cyndra and Tyra storming into the house. The end of his life - as crummy
as it too often was. Merle was singing The way I am don't fit my shackles. Merle, J.B. hissed, what do I do
now?
“I’m going out to the car,” Cyndra said. Tyra looked
up. Her eyes were like Night of the Living Dead. “Huh?” she said. Cyndra slowly
stood up. Her feet were numb, her legs shaky and there was a hot-cold lump in
her stomach. “I’m going out to the car. I don’t have any credits left and I
think I might have died in front of that machine and this is the after-life.”
“Whoa,” Tyra said. “You are such a Drama Queen. Take
this.” She handed Cyndra a handful of twenties. “Sit down! You’re not leaving
me here. Besides, it’s still body temperature out there and if you open the
windows, the midges from the pool will eat you alive.”
Cyndra couldn’t remember the last time Tyra, or
anybody else, had given a flying fuck about her comfort. “O.k.,” she said, “but
it’s 3 a.m. and I can’t feel my legs and I think I gotta pee, so I’m going to
go to the john. Save my machine.” Tyra tilted Cyndra’s chair up against the
machine. “Woo hoo,” she said, “I just hit another bonus."
There was nobody in the Ladies’. Cyndra sat in the
Handicapped stall. She felt handicapped and all of a sudden she felt like she never wanted
to be closed in anywhere every again. She opened the stall door and rested her
head against the tile wall. It felt sweetly cool and when she peed, she decided
that peeing when you were about to explode was possibly the best feeling in the
world – except maybe seeing the five gold pyramids drop into place on the slot
screen. Which they had. About six hundred bucks ago. Which they might again. As the drink girl had said when she brought the last round
of free pop and vodka, “If you don’t play, you can’t win!”
“I’m dead meat.” J.B. realized he’d said it out
loud. Who the fuck was he talking to? The sky? His pal, the open 12-pack on the
seat? It sure wasn’t god, not the god of his childhood, not the god he’d
stopped talking to when the IED took out Jackson and Martinez and Mr. Strak,
Christopher Morgan Benson, the Third, himself.
Something was listening. The blue-red dazzle zoomed
by. He watched the cop’s tail-lights fade into the dark. He wondered if you
could have a heart attack at 23 even if you were nothing but muscle and beer.
“Thank you, Jesus,” he said to the god he didn’t believe in and headed home.
“Hey.” The voice was familiar. “Hey. Wake up.”
Cyndra jolted out of a dream of spotlights and sequins. Her head rested against
her machine. Tyra shook her again.
“We’ve got to go. It’s four a.m.”
“Holy shit, we won’t be back till morning, Cyndra
said. “J.B.’s gonna kill me.”
“Undoubtless,” Tyra said. “Has he called you even
once?”
“The phone’s on the kitchen counter. I left it there
on purpose.”
“No worries. I got it figured out. Come on, let’s
get outta here.”
Cyndra checked around the machine. There was nothing
there. All she’d left behind was eight hundred and sixty-five bucks. She patted
the machine. She’d seen other players do that. “I’ll be back,” she said. “I
don’t get mad. I get even.”
“Dad-DY! Dad-DY! Wake up. Little phone ringing.”
J.B. pulled the pillow over his head. Tiny evil
fingers poked his stomach. Poked again. It wasn’t the dream he’d been having
that had been a whole lot like some Hobbit-nightmare. It was his real life. “DAD-DY!! Mommy’s on the phone.” J.B. peeked out from
under the pillow. “Ha ha,” Kelli giggled, “Daddy play hide a seek. Here.” She
handed J.B. Cyndra’s cell.
“What?” he said.
“Oh hi, Cyndra, gee I’m glad you’re o.k., honey.
Glad nothing happened,” Cyndra said. “Weren’t you even worried?”
“Worried about what?” J.B. checked the clock. 6:10.
“Where the fuck are you?”
“We’re o.k. Tyra’s tire went flat out in the middle
of who knows where. She had to take a short-cut home which just happened to go
by this guy she like’s house up on the mesa. Of course he wasn’t home so then
we got lost. There wasn’t any phone reception. We’ve been sitting in the car
waiting for somebody to come along since about ten. Finally, some old rancher
drove up on his ATV.”
“Jesus,” J.B. yelled. “Can you just cut to the
chase?”
“No yell, Daddy. No say bad word.” Kelli climbed up
on the bed and snuggled next to him.
“I’ll be home in a half hour. Can you get the kids
breakfast?”
J.B. pressed the cool phone against his forehead. It
was already ninety in the bedroom. He felt like he’d been boiled. The cool spot
on his forehead felt like rapidly fading hope.
“Yep,” he said.
“You’re not mad?” Cyndra’s voice went little girl.
“Nope.”
They said goodbye. “How the fuck,” he said to Kelli,
“could I be mad when now I’ve got time to clean up the living-room and haul the
bottles out to the desert?”
“No say bad word,” Kelli said.
Tyra pulled into the driveway and leaned her head on
the steering wheel. “Oh! My! God! That was soooooo much fun. Just leave me here
for a few minutes. I’m not going home. I gotta get to the spa by 8 and set out
my stuff.” Cyndra picked up her purse from the floor and grinned. “We have to
go back, you know that? I told my machine I don’t get mad, I get even.”
“As if!” Tyra said. “As if we wouldn’t go back
again. I’ve still got food comps and a room comp, so next time if we perhaps
underestimate our enthusiasm and all of a sudden it’s 3 a.m., we’ll just crash
in our room.”
“If we make it to the room,” Cyndra said. “I could
play slots forever. I think I just found a reason to go on living in this
hellhole.” She opened the door and stood. The sun was already cooking all
living anything out of the air. “Want me to leave the door open?” Tyra sat up.
“Naw, I’ll head out. I’m o.k.”
J.B.’s truck was gone. Cyndra let herself into the
apartment. It was such a shack. You walked right into the
living-room/dining-room/kitchenette and if you moved too fast, you were then
heading out the back door into the patio which was dirt, more dirt and one
shriveled creosote bush. There were two beer cans under the coffee table – “Heh
heh, should call this a beer table!” was one of J.B.’s favorite jokes. A
crushed bag of Doritos poked out from one of the couch cushions. There was, of
course, no coffee brewing in the maker. There were no kids. There was a note on
the kitchen counter.
Welcome
home, party girl. I took the kids to Sally’s. She doesn’t have to go to work
till 1:00. Try to get your fat butt over there before she leaves.
Cyndra laughed. Once upon a time,
once upon a verrrrry long ago time, like yesterday, the note would have hurt
her. No more. She made a pot of coffee and heated up a couple waffles. Then she
sat at the breakfast bar in her fancy dress, drank three cups of coffee and ate
a whole box of waffles – with butter AND maple syrup. “I’ve got my own thing
now,” she said to the empty apartment. “Nobody’s the boss of me anymore.”
A month later, somebody decided to be the boss of J.B. He had stashed a four long-necks in the
locked drawer in his desk for emergencies. Monday had seemed to be the start of a week of boring and
stupid. He figured that qualified
as an emergency. He tucked the
beer into his duffle bag, went into the john, locked the stall door and slammed
down the brews. They barely wet
his brain cells. No matter, there
was a 12-pack in the fridge at home.
He didn’t really want to go home, but Cyndra had some dumb
mommies’ meeting so he figured he’d better be a good boy. He signed out and headed for the gate
to drive home. The guard at the
gate looked at him funny when he pulled up. J.B. smiled.
The guard smiled.
The guard asked to
see his ID card, nodded and said politely, "You been drinking
tonight?" Before J.B. could
answer, the sentry told him to pull his car over to the search lane. “Please get out. We’re going to take a little test
here.”
J.B. knew better than to do anything but shut up and wait. The sentry made a call. Ten seconds or ten years later, another
MP arrived and put him through the Sobriety Test. The guy shook his head, “Sorry pal, gotta cuff and stuff ya.” The MP van pulled up and J.B. was on
his way to a holding cell.
It had happened to him.
Not him. Not lucky J.B.
who’d skated when his buddies had gotten nailed. Later, after the Sergeant Major had showed up and the real
shit-storm had started, after he’d been given his one call, after Cyndra had
said, “Fuck you, you can rot in jail.”, and he knew there was a bigger
shit-storm ahead, he had a little chat with God. “You win. Get
me out of this, pal, and I’ll stop drinking for a while.”
It was a late Sunday afternoon. J.B. was slouched down in the couch, channel surfing. “Shit. Crap.
Shit. More crap. Why the fuck did we even bother to get
cable?” Cyndra heard him through
the screen door. She sat on the
back-stoop. The kids were in bed
and she was watching heat lightning flicker in the west.
J.B. groused on.
Cyndra dug her toes into the cooling sand. She almost wished he was still drinking. Sober, he was more evil than ever in
that feeling-sorry-for-himself that guys were so good at, as though she could
fix it, as though it was her fault.
Her cell jingled. She
checked the number. Friggin’ Tyra. She got ready for a bitch bitch bitch
session.
“Hey, sister. I got
some interesting news and I got an idea.”
Cyndra knew the interesting news would start off with ‘I think I
met a man.’ and the idea would require Cyndra to meet Tyra some friggin’ where
which would involve leaving the cooling air of the backstep and the almost
hypnotic ripple of the lightning over the mountains.
“Yeah?”
“So I think I met a man.”
Tyra paused to let the full impact sink in. There weren’t many single guys in 29 and, over full-figured
as she was, what ones there were weren’t interested or even desperate for a
blow job.
“Yeah?”
“Come on, don’t be a bitch.
I’ll tell you all about him while we drive down to Palm Springs for a
little shopping.”
“Shopping? I’m
broke.”
“You know what to do.
Go on a jacket safari. I’ll
spot you forty bucks. That’ll give
you enough to play for a while.
Then, you’ll hit and have your stake.”
Cyndra’s mouth went dry.
Her heart jumped. “You
know, I gotta watch it. There’s
J.B.’s fine and plus he has to have money for his alcoholic meetings even
though they don’t charge anything.”
“Get off the phone, off your butt and start going through your
jacket pockets. Tell J.B. to get
his ass off the couch – I know he’s there, I can hear the stations
switching. Look down between the
couch pillows and tell him to give you twenty bucks. He’s all guilty now.
You got some leverage.”
“I’ve got a jar of nickels and dimes. Let’s stop at Von’s on the way over. I’ll run them through the Coinstar.”
“Fine. Get moving,”
Tyra said. Cyndra knew just how
she felt. There was nothing better
than strolling out of the Mojave inferno into that cool smoky air and hunkering
down for that first beautiful bet.
“Yes, ma’am. But
first, is the guy married?”
“What guy?”
“For chrissakes, Tyra, your new punch.”
O.k. He’d been sober
for five whole months. Cyndra was
gone off with Tyra for one of their Palm Springs runs. She’d come back with some useless crap
from Target and be all relaxed and cheerful. But, what about him?
What was J.B. supposed to do?
Kelli climbed up in his lap and smeared pbj all down the front of
his t-shirt. L’il whimpered in the
bedroom. It was seven p.m. and
nothing but bad t.v. and whiny kids lay ahead of him. What possible harm could come from a couple beers? His brother owed him a baby-sit and
there was the twenty bucks he’d stashed underneath the creosote bush.
“Honey?” he said.
Kelli pouted. “You go out,
daddy?” Christ, she was already
turning into her mother. She had
the same belly on her. “How about
you go over to Uncle Fred’s and play with Amber and Shayla?” Kelli slid down off his lap. “I put on my dress-up, okay?”
“Sure, honey,” J.B. said.
“You do whatever you want to do.”
Cyndra thought she would go crazy
right in Von’s. Once you decided
to play, you wanted to be walking in the casino door that second. The line at the Coinstar machine was
damn near out the door. A
half-starved couple pushed a shopping cart with a little boy in the toddler
seat. The sides of his head were shaved. His Mohawk had been dyed
orange-red. A four hundred-pound woman in a tropical print muu-muu rolled
her motorized cart up to the kid. She ran her hand over the top of his
hair. The kid giggled. The gotta-get-some-soon anger on his parents’
faces did not lift. Three teen-agers with skin the color of skim milk
slouched in behind the fat lady.
They were your standard Morongo Basin tweakers, all gothed out and
pitiful.
Actually everybody must have been
on vikes. You couldn’t have moved
slower without being dead. People
dumped coins into the machine out of a knit cap, a nickle slot bucket, plastic
baggies, a back-pack with a faded Cardinals logo. Some of the nickels and pennies went in the machine, some
fell on the floor which meant the person had to take forever to pick them up.
Cyndra knew the story.
The weekend was almost over. The money was all the way over. The
kids were hungry. You were thirsty. The jacket-pocket safari
yielded enough loose change to make the trip to Coinstar worth it. A couple quarts of Old Mil, a box of
mac and cheese for the kids, maybe a box of ice-cream bars for a treat. You’d pulled Sunday night out of the
crapper and, who knew, the next week might get better.
Dawn gleamed in the duct-taped window of the Midnight
Mission. J.B. opened one eye,
moaned and rolled away from the glare.
There were voices near him.
Chick voices.
“Omygod, that’s Cyndra’s hubby.”
“Is he dead?”
“I don’t think so, but the way he smells he might be.”
J.B. curled himself in to a ball. His shorts were wet and there was burrito-puke down the
front of his t-shirt.”
“He’s alive.”
“We should say his name, see if he’s conscious. What’s his name?”
“Hey, numbnuts,” she nudged him with her foot. “Numbnuts, you conscious?”
“Numbnuts? That’s his
name?”
“That’s what Cyndra calls him.”
J.B. wondered if he could exert ninja control and stop his
breathing long enough to die – or at least look like he had. He held his breath and heard a third
voice.
“Move along ladies.
There’s nothing to see here.”
It was the creep cop, Arlington. The wimpy punk the guys called Darlington.
“Exhale pal,” the cop said.
“Then suck it up. You’re
one more step on the slippery road to the end of your glorious military
career.”
Cyndra was hot. She
couldn’t lose. Sun Moon handed
over five hundred bucks. Cleopatra
told her she was a rascal and gave her three hundred. Tiki Torch was being a little coy, but then she jumped her
bet to Max and watched the credits take off. She almost missed the cell ring. “Oh shit,” she muttered to Tyra, “it’s J.B. I gotta take it in the Ladies Room.”
She looked at herself in the john mirror. Her face was flushed, her eyes
glittering like a speed freak. She
hit Answer.
“Babe,” J.B. said. “I
got bad news.”
“The kids?” She
leaned on the counter and closed her eyes.
“Nope. They’re
fine. They’re at Fred’s.”
“What are they doing at Fred’s? Hang on, what time is it?”
“It’s seven a.m.
They’re at Fred’s because I needed a break. And, where the fuck are you?”
“Nope,” Cyndra said, “you’re not putting it on me. What happened?”
“Look,” J.B. said, “I can’t talk long.”
Cyndra heard a metal door clank somewhere behind J.B. “You’re in jail, goddamn it,” she
said. “This is your one phone
call, right? Tough shit, pal. You can just sit there. You ought to be getting pretty good at
it.”
“What?”
“What what?” Cyndra said, “I’ll be home in forty-five minutes and
pick up the kids. You figure this
one out.”
J.B. leaned his head against the cell wall. He tried not to think about whatever
speckled it. He knew he should
have talked different. Said a
little lovey stuff, said he was sorry, said he was going to up the alcoholic
meetings. He’d been a dumb fuck to
think Cyndra was going to buy his bad boy talk. He’d been an even dumber fuck to think a couple beers
would have nicely taken the edge off things.
It had been better lying on the scummy sidewalk in front of the
mission. At least, the stink had
been his own. J.B. tried to inch
away from the guy who had taken a dump in his pants. The guy grabbed J.B.’s ankle. “Motherfucker.
Jive-ass racist motherfucker.
You too good to sit next to a Af-ri-can A-mer-i-can?”
J.B. sat tight and kept his mouth shut for once. It has been supposed to be a short
relaxing evening and here he was sitting on the concrete floor of the 29 Palms
men’s holding cell, stinking of piss and in the grip of a big-ass nigger with
only two front teeth.
“Thass better,” the guy said and fell asleep, his huge fingers
still tight around J.B.’s ankle.
Where the fuck was Cyndra?
She’d come down to bail him out.
She had to. He figured it
was later in the morning. They’d
taken his watch and none of the other guys in the cell had a watch – not
because the cops had taken them, but because the guys were either nuts or
sleeping on newspapers homeless.
J.B. bowed his head and tried to rest his forehead on his
knees. “Do not move,
motherfucker.” The Af-ri-can
A-mer-I can didn’t so much as open his eyes. J.B. heard footsteps outside the door.
“Bartlett.” It was
Darlington. “I got somebody here
to see you.”
J.B. wondered if he could swallow his tongue and choke to death
before the footsteps got any closer.
It was his C.O. In ten
seconds he was going to be pinned by the anti-bullshit stare of the man who was
about to screw up his entire life.
The Mexican leaning against the toilet looked up. “Ai, pendejo, you screwed the
chihuahua, brother.”
J.B. dropped to the floor and sat. “I truly did, my friend. You got that right.”
Cyndra tucked L’il into her shoulder and stepped out into the
patio. “Kelli, you get on out here
right now.” The sun had finally
dropped to just above the mountains.
The house threw a blue shadow over the sand, over the pile of Barbie
doll parts, the deflated wading pool and the busted gas grill. Cyndra hooked a plastic chair with her
foot and pulled it into the shade.
“C’mon baby, come sit with me and L’il. Mama’s tired.
She didn’t get any sleep last night.”
“Don’t want to. Want
my daddy. Where’s my daddy? Where’s my funny daddy?” Cyndra pulled down one side of tank top
and plugged L’il in. Kelli
sniffed. “Don’t start,” Cyndra
said. Kelli thumped down on the
steps. “I want my dadddddddy.”
Cyndra pulled her cigarettes and lighter out of her shorts’ pocket
and one-handed lit a smoke.
“Daddy’s o.k.” she said.
“He’s nice and safe.” I bet
he’s thinking about you.”
Kelli butt-scooted down the steps, crawled to Cyndra and grabbed
her leg. L’il snuffled. The blue shadow stretched out toward
the wire fence. Blue. Dress blues. What a crazy thought.
How am I going to get out of here?
And if I can’t, what are we going to do if J.B. has gotten himself
booted out?
L’il’s mouth fell away from her nipple. She wiped his mouth and buttoned herself up. “Kelli,” she said, “How’d you like to
go back over to your uncle’s again?”
Kelli perked up.
“Babygirl,” Cyndra said, “here’s an important true thing: when the going gets tough, the tough go
gambling.”
She called Tyra. No
answer. “Well then, I’m going on a
solo trip. Just me and my good
luck.”
It was six by the time Cyndra pulled into the casino parking
lot. She felt strange without
Tyra, a little like one of the lonely old ladies they’d see there every time,
always by themselves, never talking to anybody, tapping and rubbing the screens
of their slots for luck . Plus,
there was a weird light over everything.
The sun was copper. Dust
had blown up from the Anza Borrego, the guy on the radio has said. A crazy storm out of nowhere. Palm Springs was coated with grit, cars
in the parking lot sand-blasted, the high rollers on their cells, probably to their
insurance agents.
Cyndra headed for the gleaming casino doors. The big Indian security guard stood in
front of them, his arms spread wide.
“No. No entry,” he
said. Cyndra paused. “Not you, lady,” he said. A lean-muscled woman in a tank top and
shorts sat on one of the big fake boulders.
“Fuck you, chief,” she said.
“You gotta let her in. And
when you let her in, I’ll be past you slicker then snot.” She turned to Cyndra. “Chief here 86-ed me. Just because I took a forty-two cent
pay-out slip that was on the floor under Wheel of Fortune.”
“We’ve got our rules,” the security guard said. “Not just for you, Mickey, for
everybody.”
Cyndra shivered.
She’d never seen anything mean like this. The waitresses and pay-out guys were always friendly. She wondered if it was bad juju. Maybe a sign this wasn’t the night to
play. She started to go back to
the car. “Come on in,” the guard
said, “me and Mickey go through this about every day.”
Mickey looked up at Cyndra.
“Yeah, honey. Don’t mind
us. Besides, I left five hundred
bucks in Sun Moon for you. I seen
you playing it last night.”
The five hundred bucks never showed up. Neither did any of the thousand Cyndra slid into Sun Moon,
into Magic Mermaid, into Cleopatra and, finally, in a suicidal gesture of
optimism, into the five dollar machines.
It was 3 a.m. by the time the ATM told her that she’d exceeded her daily
limit. She thought about using her cards without a PIN, but the money guys
charged ten bucks a hundred for that privilege. She might have been a loser, but she wasn’t a fool.
The parking lot was nearly empty. A skinny moon glided down toward the mountains. The lights
of the casino and Palm Springs shone up into the sky like a reverse Milky Way
and washed out the stars. Cyndra
leaned on the truck. She didn’t
feel so good. The thousand bucks
was a hole in her gut. By the time
the ATM machine had 86-ed her, she hadn’t had a decent hit in four hours. She’d had to make herself keep punching
the Max Bet button.
She climbed into the truck and fanned the five last ATM receipts
out on the front seat. There must
have been something wrong with her eyes or the machine. The balances didn’t seem right. They were way too low. She tried to remember how many times
she and Tyra had gambled. Twenty,
maybe, forty - could have been since they were heading down the hill a couple
or three times a week.
She turned on the truck and checked the dashboard dials. There was just enough gas to get back
up the hill and over to 29. Damn
good thing. Her eyes felt
sandpapered. She couldn’t figure
out why she wasn’t hungry. The
last thing she’d eaten had been a bag of Doritos driving out of Yucca
Valley. Even more, she couldn’t
figure out why she wasn’t worried about J.B. The only thing she was a little worried about was where
she’d get the money for her next gambling run.
Cyndra didn’t see one other car between the turn-off from Palm
Springs till she crested the top of the long hill into Morongo Valley. She hadn’t played any music, just let
the soft air blowing through the window calm her down a little. Driving alone always did that. Even when she was a teen-ager.
29 was quiet, Ranch Market closed for the night. It seemed like a year since she’d
driven west through town. She
pulled into her driveway, walked slowly to the front stoop and sat down. She
wasn’t ready to go in. The house would
be an oven still and maybe sitting under the huge uncaring sky would make her
feel better. It wouldn’t give her
shit about all the money she lost.
It wouldn’t tell her she was a loser.
The stars glittered.
There was nothing out here to wash them out. She kicked off her
flip-flops and dug her toes into the sand. If J.B. saw her he’d call her a fool. “There’s rattlers out here and
scorpions and those frickin’ camel spiders. You get bit and that’s it. You lose your foot, it all turns black.” For the hundredth time he’d tell her
how they had those camel spiders in Iraq, how he and the guys would put two
camel spiders in a box and bet on them.
Guess we’re both gamblers, Cyndra thought. Guess I got my thing now.
Meeting 12, only 168 meetings to go. Some spaced-out chick was having her first sober birthday so
there was cake and everybody was going to have to sing. J.B. slouched down next to his sponsor,
Jackson and pulled his hat over his eyes.
Jackson poked him. “Sit up
straight and take your hat off, friend.
You can at least look like you want to be here.”
J.B. did what he was told.
“Good,” Jackson said, “you’re making progress.” J.B. had to kind of admire the
guy. He was career Marine, with a
scrumptious wife – even if she was at least forty, and some kids who actually
liked him. Jackson had arrived in
the alcoholic rooms by way of a lost two months in San Diego.
He’d told his story at J.B.’s first meeting. “So finally one morning I woke up in
somebody’s backyard with a bottle of Captain Morgan’s between my legs. There was an inch of rum sitting right
there, waiting for me to start the day.
I was broke. I stunk. I looked at the booze and knew there
wasn’t enough to fix my head. I
poured it out on the lawn.” People
in the meeting had groaned. “Oh
yeah,” Jackson said, “you better believe I regretted it the second I saw it
soak into the grass. But I
knew. That was it. I got my ass out of that stranger’s
backyard and called AA. That was
seven years ago and I’m still here.”
The first time J.B. heard the story, he’d thought I’m not that
bad. Maybe I can just do this kind
of casually. Then after the
meeting, Jackson had told him that he’d had a chat with the CO and they were willing
to give J.B. this last – as in final – big break. 180 meetings in 180 days, twice a week talks with a rehab
counselor and daily phone calls to Jackson. Then, maybe, just maybe, J.B. could still wear the green.
The door opened.
Blast furnace air seared the room.
A big guy was silhouetted against the last glare of the setting
sun. The guy stepped in. J.B. froze. It was the Af-ri-can Am-er-i-can from the jail. J.B. started to slide down in his
seat. Jackson poked him in the
ribs. J.B. scribbled on a meeting
list, “Jackson, that guy is gonna kill me. I gotta get out of here.” Jackson grinned and whispered, “At least you got another
hour to live.”
J.B. was off at his meeting.
He was always off at his meetings.
Cyndra put the kids to bed and turned on the t.v. There was nothing. She checked her email. Nothing. Cell.
Nothing. It was too hot to
sit outside and she’d already had three showers. She checked the freezer. Even the box of ice cream sandwiches didn’t look good.
It had been twelve days since she’d crawled up the hill with a
thousand dollar hole in her gut.
The ATM had not been broken.
There was nothing
left in the credit cards and only enough in the credit union to cover the
bills. Cyndra logged on to a free
slot game. It held her for about
three minutes. She slammed the
mouse on the desk. I’ve got one
thing in my life that makes me happy and now I can’t even do that.
She saw the future slogging ahead of her. J.B. would come home. At worst he’d be cranky. At best – and it was hardly best – he’d
tell her some corny thing he’d heard in his meeting. He’d flop on the couch and watch t.v. till he fell
asleep. L’il would whimper. She’d plug him in. Maybe she’d take her fourth shower and
sit on the back stoop. The worse
part was that tomorrow would be exactly the same.
“When the going gets tough…” she muttered, picked up the phone and
called Tyra.
“Hey, baby sister,” Tyra said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing much. J.B.’s
at his meeting, the kids are asleep, I’m about to climb out of my skin.”
“What’s wrong? Is
your big baby being himself??
“There’s that, but mostly I just need a little break. Want to run down the hill?”
There was a long pause.
“What?”
“I gotta slow down a little,” Tyra said. “Business hasn’t been great. You know so many folks are losing their jobs and things
won’t pick up till the winter tourons get here.”
Cyndra hadn’t heard Tyra be this serious ever.
“Yeah, but we can win a few bucks. That’ll help.”
There was another long pause. “Girl, when was the last time you made a few bucks down
there? I hate to say it, but seems
like whatever juju we had going for us is jujued out.”
“What is wrong with you, Tyra? Is that new guy making you be all practical and boring?”
“He’s long gone,” Tyra said, “I’m just watching what’s happening
around here, all these people out of work, losing their houses, one of the
girls works at the salon is sleeping in her car. I will not let that happen to me. You don’t know how it is. You got J.B.”
They both laughed.
Cyndra remembered one of her dad’s sayings. “He’s about as useful as tits on a boar hog,” she said.
“Less,” Tyra said.
“You want me to come over?”
“Well, actually,” Cyndra said, “how about if I borrow a couple
hundred bucks and go down by myself?
I can stretch that out a good long while. I’ll hit, come right back home and pay you off.”
It seemed to be the night for long silences.
“I can’t do that,” Tyra said. “I’m sorry. I
just can’t do that.”
“I get it,” Cyndra said, “But I guess you can be a bitch.”
“How many years you been waiting to say that, Baby Sister? ‘Cause you said it now and all I want
to say is ‘Goodbye.’ Tyra hung
up. Cyndra stared at the
phone. She felt like her one single
lousy life-line had been cut.
She thought about calling Tyra back, but she knew how her sister
was. There was going to be a long
cold-ass silence for a while. With
Tyra, it was one thing for her to say all kinds of shit, but if somebody dished
it out, she was all the princess and the pea.
There was only one thing to do. Modern times, you couldn’t just write a bum check. Computers had ruined everything. Cyndra opened the freezer and stared at
the ice cream sandwiches. They
weren’t going to do the trick, but they were going to have to do.
J.B. was on closing coffee duty. He dumped the old coffee in the sink, put the creamer, sugar,
cups and spoons in the file cabinet they used for storage. Jackson would turn off the lights and
lock the door. J.B. walked out
into the soft desert night. He
didn’t feel too bad. The big Black
guy had left right at the end of the meeting. With any luck, the van from the treatment center had picked
him up.
As usual these days, there was no luck. The big guy sat on the low wall at the back of the
church. He saw J.B. and stood
up. “’Scuse me, whiteboy. Can I have a word with you?”
J.B. considered walking calmly toward Jackson’s car or back into
the meeting room. He looked away
from the guy. “I know you,” the
guy said. “You was in the joint
with me, right?”
J.B. thought of the old movie he and Cyndra had found one night on
the late night channel. Dustin
Hoffman. An old Indian guy. J.B. had liked the part where Dustin
Hoffman had to sleep with three Indian chicks. What was it the old guy had said? “It is a good day to die.”
“Yeah,” J.B. said and walked toward the guy. “I was there. What’s up?” He
hoped he sounded kind of casual and serene.
“You here?” the guy said, “at this alcoholics meeting CO, right?”
“You’re a Marine?” J.B said.
“You mean CO like commanding officer?”
“Naw, motherfucker. I
mean court ordered. Whoa, sorry
about that motherfucker. I didn’t mean no disrespect.”
“No disrespect taken,” J.B. said. “Yeah, I’m CO.
I gotta do 180 meetings in 180 days or I get kicked out of the Corps.”
“Whoa, you a Marine?”
“For now.”
“I just wanted to say something to you, brother. I’m here for now, see. These alcoholic people are good folks
mostly. But, I know I’ll drink
again. That’s just how I am. But, when I seen you in the meeting, I
just wanted to tell you I’m sorry for my foolishness when we was in the
joint. See, I was…” He stopped and grinned.
J.B. laughed. “You
were drunk, right?”
“You got it, whiteboy.
And God willing, I’ll be
drunk again.”
Jackson locked the door and walked toward them. “Good to see you at the meeting,
Roland,” he said. “You need a
sponsor, give me a call. J.B.’s
got my phone number.”
“Thanks,” Roland said, “I was just telling J.B. here about my
situation. I’ll be honest with
you. I did the crime. I’ll do the time. But then, I suspect I’ll be in the
wind.”
“I know how that is,” Jackson said. “See you tomorrow night.”
He and J.B. walked to Jackson’s truck. “No real harm in that man,” Jackson said. J.B. nodded. He wondered what it was like to be as mellow as
Jackson. He wondered if he had
real harm in him. He wasn’t going
to know for a long time.
Jackson took J.B. out for coffee, then drove him home. The house was dark. J.B. wondered if Cyndra and Tyra had
headed down for one of their shopping trips. He unlocked the front door and walked into the
living-room. Cyndra sat on the
couch in the dark. It didn’t look
good. He had something he had to
tell her she wasn’t going to like and it wasn’t going to help that she was
either feeling sorry for herself or ready to make him sorry.
“You okay, baby?” he said.
He turned on the light and opened the blinds.
“I hate that glare,” Cyndra said. “Why’d you do that?
It was all nice and peaceful in here.” She launched off the couch and stood in front of him with
her hands on her hips. “How come
everything’s got to be the way you want it to be? You could have asked me if I wanted the light on.”
J.B. ducked his head and glanced away. She knew that look.
It pushed her buttons every time – her pissed-off buttons and her poor
baby buttons. It was the
Don’t-get-mad-at-me look a little boy gives his mom when he knows he has to say
what he doesn’t want to say and he knows it is going to send her postal.
“What.”
J.B.
flinched. She was already
mad. Whenever she said “What” flat
like that, he was in for days of one word sentences and nights of nothing at all.
“Well,
sweetpea…”
Cyndra
narrowed her ice-blue eyes.
“O.k. O.k., I shouldn’t of called you
sweetpea. I’m sorry. Jeeze, baby, oh fuck I didn’t mean
baby…”
She
folded her arms across her chest.
Everything went quiet, real quiet for about ten thousand years. J.B. wished that for once in his
sorry–ass married, Daddy life, that one of the kids would wake up and holler.
Cyndra
nodded. She had a cold smile on
her face. “What.”
“My
shrink says it would be a good idea if you came to a session with me.”
Cyndra
laughed. “What fuckin’ for?”
Bad
as waking up in jail covered in puke had been; bad as knowing he was one
fuck-up away from being booted out of the Corps, bad as dry hour after loooong
dry hour was, that moment standing in front of his wife who had turned into
Cruella De Ville was worse. Plus
if he came back and said no way was Cyndra coming in, the doc was going to go off into one of her endless spiels about
how the alcoholic (“and addict of course, Mr. Randall”) was only the symptom of
a “broken family”. And she was
going to want to visit “the family” in its “natural setting” which would most
definitely hang him up to dry even more.
He could see them – all those quotation marks around the words the doc
used when she was being professional.
She needed a professional.
“I
said,” Cyndra said, “what fuckin’ for?”
J.B.
needed a beer. He needed a case of
beer. He needed a case of beer and
his truck and the road running east back to West Texas. He was ready to dump the Marines and
get the fuck out of 29. The only
problem was that Cyndra had the truck keys and the nearest beer was a two mile
walk away.
“The
doc says,” he muttered. “it’s our
whole family is broken.”
There
was a long silence more terrible than the last long silence.
“That
fuckin’ snotty cow,” Cyndra said.
“We’ll see what’s broken.
I’m calling the bitch right now.”
J.B.
just stood there looking past her toward the window.
She
poked him in the chest. “Are you
listening to me? Hey! What are you looking at?” She turned and looked out the
living-room window. “What’s out
there? I don’t see anything. Are you tripping? Did Chaz sneak you some dope or
something?”
J.B.
watched the tops of the mountains outside the window turn pink.
“What’s
that color?” he said. “How can a
mountain be pink? How come I never
saw that before. I don’t know,
babe, you were talking and all of a sudden those mountains were pink.”
“For
chrissakes, J.B., it’s just the sun going down. It’s a reflection or something. Don’t change the subject, Nature Boy.”
J.B.
watched the pink turn to gold. He
wanted to tell Cyndra he hadn’t meant to change the subject. He wanted to tell her that the mountain
and that glow were nothing he could remember ever seeing.
But
her mouth was set in a straight line, so he said, “I’m sorry. I’m a little weird these days. I don’t know. Things look different sometimes. Sharper, maybe.
Colors or something.”
Cyndra
sat down on the coffee table and hugged her knees. “Weird these days?” she said. “The only weird thing these days is you’re not drinking or
smoking dope and we are supposed to be happier, right? We’re supposed to be getting to know
each other again, right? We’re supposed
to be getting back to normal. But
how can we get back to normal if there wasn’t any normal to begin with?”
She
looked up at him. “What are you
grinning about? What’s that stupid
look on your face? Seriously, are
you high? Stop it, I’m scared.”
The
grin seemed to have taken over J.B.’s face. It wasn’t a doofus grin or the grin of a kid getting
caught. He didn’t know what it
was. Then, he laughed.
“Nothing
normal to begin with…you got that right.
Remember the time we left that kegger and were fooling around out in the
Joshua trees and the lizard climbed up on my bare ass and fell off ‘cause I was
going at it so hard?”
“Oh shit,” Cyndra said and snorted. She ducked her head so her hair fell
over one eye. “This is crazy. What are we going to do, honey? This is a straight-up fucking mess and
now all I want to do is laugh. Or
something. I miss you so much.”
J.B.
crouched next to her. She grabbed
his hand. They giggled as though
they were stoned to the eyebrows.
She started to laugh and cry, her face wet with tears.
“Oh
my god,” Cyndra said, “there’s nothing we can do. It’s like we fell down one of those mine shafts and there’s
no light and nobody knows where we are and we gotta get out because if we
don’t, Kelli and L’il will be orphans.
Plus we’ll be dead.”
J.B.
leaned in and put his head in her lap.
He was laughing so hard he couldn’t breathe. She set her hand on his head. He couldn’t remember the last time she’d done that.
“Plus,”
Cyndra said. Her voice was a
little girl’s. “I got to tell you
something. You are going to be so
mad. Baby, you’re not the only fuck-up
here.”
J.B.’s
heart jumped. He wiped his eyes on
her shorts and looked up. “Who is
it?” he said. “Who is it? I’ll rip his package off.”
Cyndra
leaned her head back on the couch and closed her eyes. “It’s not a he, or a she, or a
them. It’s the five thousand
dollars we had in the Credit Union Golden Days Vacation Plan.”
J.B.
sat up. “What the are you talking
about? You gave the money to your
boyfriend?”
“I
told you – there’s no boyfriend. I
gave the money to the Indians.”
“What
Indians?”
“The
Palm Springs Indians, whoever they are.”
“The
shopping trips,” J.B. said. “Your
bitch sister, Tyra. She dragged
you down there to the casino. Five
thousand? All five thousand?”
“More. You know our credit cards?”
“We
have credit cards?” J. B. said.
He’d never used a credit card in his life.
Cyndra
laughed. “That’s what you get for
making your wife handle the money just like your mom did for your deadbeat
dad. Yes, we have. We had credit cards. They’re corpses now. No use at all.”
“You
maxed them out, right?”
“Chase,
$5000; Citi, $2500., BOA, $3000., credit union, $5000. Gone. Dead. All we’ve
got is your paycheck.”
“And
me,” J.B. said, “right on the edge of being let go from the one thing I know
how to do good.”
“Drinking?”
“The
Corps.”
J.B. stared
down into the cup of alky coffee.
He’d never been able to figure out why the coffee at the meetings tasted
like shirt and even more, why he kept drinking it. It was meeting 150. The white-haired dinosaur in the Pilot truck hat had
been talking for at least six months.
Everybody else was trying to look as though they were listening. J.B. checked out the tits on the
newbie. Either it was colder in
the room than he thought or she’d caught his stare and was attracted to
him. Man, he loved those clingy
tank top things.
Finally,
the old guy reached the obligatory last two sentences of his monologue: “So, when people ask me how the 12
Steps work, what do I say? I say,
‘Just fine.’” J.B. saw Motormouth
Mona winding up to talk. He jumped
in.
“My
wife is driving me crazy. You know
how it says, ‘…became powerless over alcohol and my life became
unmanageable.’? Well, it should
say blah blah, my wife became unmanageable.”
He
saw a couple of the middle-aged guys roll their eyes, but he didn’t care. He had to get it out. If he didn’t, he was going on the drunk
of all drunks. And, it would be
one thing to lose the Marines, but a total nuther to lose Cyndra and the kids.
“No,
seriously,” he said. “I’m gonna
drink if I don’t get this out.”
The
older hippie chick was looking at him.
She drove him nuts. She was
always so fucking calm and she had a way of looking into his eyes as though she
could see right down to the bullshit.
He’d tried to flirt with her once and she’d just laughed. He’d figured he’d soften her up, but no
damn deal.
“So. I am bored to death with my wife. We never have any fun. It was different when I was drinking. Then it didn’t matter. But now? On top of being a chick – sorry, ladies – she’s gotten all Alanon
plus she stopped gambling so she’s all the time yacking about understanding
what I’m going through being almost a year sober. I
am sorry. Only an alcoholic understands what it’s
like being a year sober.”
The
hippie chick grinned.
“So,
here’s an example. My wife doesn’t
like to do anything I like to do.
I flat-out love to dune-ride.
You know, nature and all that.
Right before I got popped the first time, I took her out so we could be
together dune-riding. At the last
minute, she decides she can’t take the baby to the sitter, so she brings him
along.
“We
were out near Cadiz. It was sure
enough hot, but I figured maybe I could rig some shade and she and the baby
could just chill out, drink some pop, wave at me now and let me show her some
of the fancy tricks I know.
“Oh
no. I get out and haul my bike
outta the back of the truck. Next
thing I know, my wife has rolled up the windows, turned on the air-conditioning
and is sitting there with the baby in her lap. ‘Hey,’ I yell, ‘open the window.’ She flips me off and locks the doors.
“So
I take off. I’m so pissed-off that
it isn’t that much fun. I come
back every half hour maybe, try to get her to open the windows so we can talk,
but do you think she’ll even try.
We’re out there probably three hours. Each time I come back and take off again I get madder. Finally, I’m so mad it is fun. Like I’m doing my thing no matter what.
“See? See what I’m trying to tell you? It’s like my wife, my wife Cyndra just won’t get out of the
truck. She never gets out of the
truck, not when she’s in the truck, not when she’s outside of the truck.”
The
older hippie chick actually laughed.
J.B. said, “What?” The
chick shook her head.
Steve, the 12 Step Nazi said, “No cross talk.”. J.B. felt like he was drowning. If they didn’t get it here, who the
fuck was ever going to get it?
“Wait,”
J.B. said, “give me a minute more.”
He looked down at the table.
For some reason, he wondered how come his hands looked so young compared
to everybody else’s. “See, I love
the girl to death, but…”
Mona
nodded, “But she just won’t get out of the truck.”
Jackson,
looked at J.B. and raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah,” J.B. said, “I’m done.
Thanks for letting me share.”
Jackson closed the meeting.
They held hands and prayed.
J.B. was still on coffee clean-up, so he unplugged the pot and started
to dump the left-overs in the sink.
The older hippie chick put the creamer and sugar away. “You want to know why I laughed?” she
said. J.B. ducked his head. He didn’t want her to see he was
embarrassed.
“Global
warming,” she said. “All I could
think of was how when you were out there and Cyndra had the truck running,
massive chunks of ozone were hanging over your heads.”
“Oh
jeeze,” J.B. said, “don’t start.”
She
grinned. “Just another
perspective, friend.”
So here Cyndra was, J.B. was in his
alcoholics meeting, her and L’il in her sister’s old Neon. J.B.’s truck had been repoed. It seemed like a thousand years since
J.B. had driven the truck into the driveway and called her out to take a
picture of him and it.
“Things
are going to be different, honey,” J.B. had said, kissed her cheek and climbed
out of the passenger side of the Neon.
“Pretty pony,” he’d said and patted the front fender. She’d wished he touched her like that
and she’d taken the picture.
Maybe
it wasn’t a thousand years since then, maybe it was a million. She thought of J.B. rubbing her back
the night before and smiled.
Things were still tricky, but they could have been worse. It had been almost five months since
she’d driven up the hill with that black hole in her gut. They were crawling out of debt. And, it was August which meant the
Season of Hell was almost over.
L’il was asleep in his
carseat. The windows front and
back were open. You could smell
rain in the air though the thunderstorm was miles away. Kenny Chesney was going full blast on
the old car stereo. Cyndra watched
lightning flicker behind the far clouds to the East. Twice she saw ghost eyes in the cool shimmer.
Two
of the older ladies in the alcoholics club walked out the door. The light behind them was yellow. They were just like black paper
cut-outs, but Cyndra could hear their voices. She knew who they were a little bit – Mona who had to tell
you every little detail of everything, and the old lady who still dressed like
it was the Summer of Love.
The
hippie senior hugged her friend.
“...what’s that music?” The
words came right in between “Keg in the Closet” and “What I Need to Do” which
seemed like a miracle to Cyndra.
She’d made the tape the old-fashioned way after the truck with the big
sound system had to be sold and her sister took both her and J.B.’s IPods in
trade for what Cyndra owed her. Of
course, the tape was called “What I Need to Do” and of course it was songs from
Kenny LIVE. Those songs again.
She’d never told J.B., but Kenny looked almost like a twin of him. Even more now.
The
ladies went their separate ways.
The hippie senior headed for her old truck, stopped in the middle of the
street, looked up at the sky and walked straight toward Cyndra.
Cyndra’s
jaw went tight like it did when she figured she was in trouble. She thought about scooting down but the
lady was too fast. “Hey,” the lady
said, “it’s you. J.B.’s lady.”
“Yep,”
Cyndra said, “It’s me.”
“I
loved hearing that music, especially on a night like this. You know. How the air is getting cooler, that moon up there. Kenny makes it like a movie almost.”
Cyndra
felt her jaw relax.
“Hope
you don’t mind,” the lady said. “I
can’t remember your name.”
“That’s
o.k. It’s Cyndra.”
“I’m
Liz.”
They
were quiet for a second.
“I’m
just watching that,” Cyndra said.
She pointed toward the lightning.
Liz
smiled. “I love that too.”
“I’ve
seen a couple faces already up there, like ghosty faces.” Cyndra almost put her hand over her
mouth like she’d said a little too much.
“In
the lightning?” the lady said.
“Yeah. Like ghosts. And how the clouds make a veil or maybe hair.”
The
woman and Cyndra looked away from each other. Not impolite or embarrassed but because the lightning was
out there and they had to see what came next.
“You
know,” Cyndra said, “most people never get to see stuff like that. Really see it.”
“We’re
pretty lucky,” the woman said.
“Back up northeast where I was born, we could see the northern
lights. You know those?”
Cyndra
didn’t know but she figured she’d keep her mouth shut and wait.
“All
green and pink,” the lady said.
“You ever seen them?”
“Nope,”
Cyndra said. She watched the
lightning and imagined if the colors went from silver to green and pink.
“You
can find those northern lights on the internet,” the lady said.
“We
don’t have one of those,” Cyndra said.
“We did, but we had some financial troubles and had to cancel it.”
“Well
then,” the lady said, “this is even better. Mind if I sit with you till your man comes out?”
“Sure,”
Cyndra said and laughed. “I bet he
was talking about how I won’t ever get out of the truck, right?” She climbed out and opened the stuck
passenger door. Liz laughed.
“You
know,” she said, “what we say there and what we hear there…”
“I
do know,” Cyndra said. The woman
settled into the passenger seat.
“Here’s the deal,” Cyndra said, “he might not have told you but I got so
far out of the truck I almost didn’t find my way back. I go to a different kind of meeting
now.”
“Your old man just came out the door,”
the woman said, “can we keep that story for later?”
“You
want to meet up some time?”
“I
do.” Liz took out her phone. “Give me your number. I’ll call. I promise I’ll call.”
Cyndra
watched J.B. walk toward the car.
His shoulders were squared as always. He still had his grampa's cocky walk. He saw her and
waved.
“720-634-9951,” Cyndra said.
Liz stepped out of the car. She and
J.B. high-fived in front of the Neon. J.B. climbed in the passenger seat
and leaned out the passenger window. “Hey,” he hollered to Liz, “I’ll
tell my wife about that global warming, okay?”