South of Bixby Bridge Read online

  Then his features scrunch together again. He leans forward in his chair, lowers his voice. He says,

  You wouldn’t cut me off. You don’t mean that. Whataya mean you’re here? Here now? At my office? Okay, sure—give me a minute.

  Mr. Feldman drops the phone back in its cradle. He looks dazed for a moment and then he sees me sitting across from him. He jumps to his feet, stubs out his cigar. He says,

  Sorry, kid. You’re not a fit for us here.

  I was thinking he scheduled the call from his receptionist just to end the interview, but he looks like he just hung up the phone with a ghost. There’s no use arguing so I stand and head to the door.

  Take your résumé there with you, he says.

  I can’t believe he wants me to pick up his trash after he treated me so rude. I want to tell him to fuck off but I’ve lost any will to fight and instead I veer past the door and lean over to pick up my useless education and job history printed on dollar-50 paper where it lies crumpled in a ball on the floor.

  I reach for my résumé.

  Before I can grab it, a red boot steps on top of it. And not just any red boot, but a red Michael Anthony crocodile cowboy boot I saw in a Robb Report for 9,000 bucks.

  I look up.

  The owner of the boot is staring down at me. His pale features are chiseled and perfect but something about the way they arrange around his intense, dark eyes is more unsettling than attractive. His thick black hair is just messy enough to be stylish. A coffee-colored suede jacket hangs loose on his shoulders over a seafoam silk shirt with oyster-shell buttons. The shirt hangs untucked and he wears faded blue jeans. He’s trying hard to look casual, but the custom boots give away his wealth.

  I pull my hand away.

  I stand up.

  We lock eyes.

  He’s not quite as tall as I am, and not as broad, but he has a heavy presence. He’s holding the office door open and fresh air blows in from the lobby carrying the scent of his Clive Christian cologne with it. He doesn’t say anything, he just holds my stare.

  After several seconds, I look away from his eyes and down at his red 4,500 dollar boot parked on top of my crumpled dollar-50 résumé. I say,

  Excuse me, sir.

  Then I brush past him through the open door.

  10 Second Chances

  I sit on a metal bench and look up at the skyscrapers piercing the gray fog overhead, fog so thick I can’t see the building tops. The streets are sober and silent. I’ve been turned down and stepped on everywhere. There’s nowhere left to go. I reach in my pocket and count the last of my money—seven bucks and change, not even enough for a box of rat poison.

  A gilded monument clock in front of my bench chimes noon, the fog lifts away revealing blue skies above and white puffs of clouds floating by, the gray streets fill with yellow, and then as if a lever has been pulled from the bottom of a grain silo, people spill out from the buildings.

  Office women in skirts and silk blouses carry sack lunches to the park. Stuffed suits rush by on their way to expensive martini lunches. Young salesmen plead and persuade into cell phones. Pigeons flock around a woman tossing them crusts. A group of small children trots by following their young teacher and clinging to a bright orange rope.

  In a trance, I watch the minute hand race around the hour and the people race around my bench and when the big clock chimes one, the people retrace their steps and then crowd back into the office towers, the fog rolls back off the bay and closes the sky again, and the yellow drains from streets.

  I sit on my bench alone with the pigeons and a discarded sandwich wrapper blowing over my feet and along the pavement.

  DRIVING ALONG THE RAGGED EDGE of the city, down a street lined with cheap car lots and corner markets with bars in the windows, I look down at my fuel gauge—empty. I pass a shabby building with a fenced lot of cars and an enormous letter board that reads WE LEND MONEY. I pull to the curb and park. The pawnshop sign says SECOND CHANCES.

  ~~~

  When I was losing my house, I started selling things. I advertised my Land Rover but I owed too much and the bank did me the courtesy of picking it up. I sold my motorcycle and my hi-fi system. I sold the refrigerator. I sold everything that wasn’t bolted down, everything except my mother’s Porsche.

  After my overdose, Barbara stopped by my house on our way to the airport and I stuffed a duffel with clothes. The only sentimental thing I took was my grandmother’s wedding ring. My mom started wearing Grandma’s ring when my dad sold hers. Near the end, it wouldn’t stay on her finger any longer so Mom gave me the ring. I was planning to use it when I proposed to Stephanie.

  ~~~

  I step inside Second Chances. It’s small, cramped. Pawned goods hang from the wall, line shelves, and fill a glass display case. Behind the counter, an obese female pawnbroker reads celebrity diets in a Star magazine while eating from a loaf of Wonder Bread and an open jar of peanut butter. Light shines through the frosted windows highlighting blonde whiskers above her smacking lips and orange makeup sinks into her gaping pores. She smiles up at me with small yellow teeth. Well, well, she says, look at you—you tall drink of milk.

  I lay my grandmother’s ring on the counter.

  The pawnbroker pinches the ring with flabby fingers and holds it in front of fleshy, fake-lashed eyes. She drops it back. Stone’s too small, she says, not interested.

  What are you talking about? Look—

  I’ll pay ya 50 for it, she says.

  Fifty won’t do nothing.

  She points to a display case full of rings. I’ve got me too many broken heart rings, kiddo, she says. It’s a sad world.

  But I need some money.

  She reaches across the counter and pinches my cheek. I’ve got me some friends over in the Castro, she says. They’ll put those cute little dimples of yours to work if you need some money, honey.

  I’m not a hustler.

  Well unless you got something else to pledge, beat it!

  She dips her knife into the jar of peanut butter and spreads it thick on a fresh piece of white bread. My eyes get wet again. My throat aches. It hurts when I swallow and say,

  How much for a 1983 Porsche convertible?

  IT’S DUSK WHEN I hop off the city bus. Across the street, the blood-red VACANCY sign blinks on. Here I’m standing right where I parked when I first got to the city, across from the La Hacienda Motel. It seems a lot longer than a week ago.

  The attendant is old and bald and he looks like he’d have a South American accent if he spoke, but he only grunts and points to the list of rules as he hands me the rusted box-end wrench that acts as a chain to the room key.

  I climb the stairs to the second floor. I pass a room sealed off with yellow crime-scene tape. I’m guessing some sorry dick had enough shit and swallowed his pistol. This is that kind of place. I wonder if he came here so his family wouldn’t find the mess.

  I turn the key in the lock of room 36 and swing the door open. The air conditioner in the window throbs cold air into the dark room—it smells like a meat locker. I pull its plug—the AC sputters to a stop. I flip the light switch—a single lamp with a crooked shade turns on. I toss my duffel on the floor and walk to the window, part the curtains and look out at the blood-red sign flickering in the dark.

  I pull the thick wad of cash from my pocket—six grand. That’s what my mother’s memory is worth. The Porsche must have a book value three times that much. The pawnbroker wrote it up as a loan but I know I’ll never get my mother’s white Porsche back.

  ~~~

  My mom didn’t say it, but I think she knew her cancer was back when she gave me her Porsche. I won a partial scholarship to Sac State but I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave Mom alone with Dad. Sure, he quit hitting her when I got big enough to intervene, but Mom had been sick on and off for a long time and instead of Dad caring for her, she still catered to his drunken ass.

  The morning after I told her I wasn’t going to university, I woke up
to Mom sitting at the foot of my bed humming the Judy Garland song “Smile.” I asked her if everything was okay. She said she had a feeling it would be. Then she asked if I knew how much she loved those robins that dart around our yard each spring. She said as much as she loved them it was okay that they flew away each fall because they always came back to sing again. Then she kissed me on the forehead and handed me the keys to her Porsche.

  And I came back again, the very next spring. But not to sing. I came back to watch her die and say my goodbye.

  ~~~

  I walk to the bed, pull the sheets back and check the edges of the thin mattress for bedbugs. Then I flop on my back and stretch out. The hard mattress reminds me of my treatment center bed but it feels like heaven after a week sleeping in my car. The white popcorn ceiling is stained and I try to find patterns in it. I’ve been here three minutes and I’m bored.

  I spread the cash on my chest, pull the pile of bills to my nose, and inhale the musty odor of American money. I read somewhere that over half the dollar bills in circulation have cocaine residue on them. I can’t go back to the coke but maybe all that BS they fed me in treatment about a drug is a drug is a drug was just that—bullshit!

  ~~~

  Mr. Shaw always rattled off pithy little sobriety sayings—cute sayings like ‘‘One Day at a Time’’ and ‘‘Easy Does It.’’ He had a saying for everything. He talked about the steps too. I remember in one of our private sessions I told him that 12-step stuff was great for people who need it, people who can’t stop drinking on their own. Mr. Shaw said I was comparing my insides to everyone else’s outsides. Then he asked me if I thought I was unique. When I didn’t answer because I didn’t know, Mr. Shaw took a deep breath and when he let it out again he said, Do you think you’re alcoholic, Trevor?

  His question hit me like a bullet. Nobody had ever asked it and I didn’t know how to answer it. I thought I was coming to rehab to learn how to drink normal, or maybe learn to abstain, but me an alcoholic? The way I saw it, three types of people filled the treatment center beds—

  The young, but already repeat offenders trying to beat drug court who treat rehab like it’s the new black—mostly a bunch of spoiled indigo children whose New Age parents fucked them up into thinking they were so special that they went out and bashed their self-righteous heads against the real world until there was nothing left of themselves and still, that nothing is all they think about.

  Then there are the placaters who are just getting off the streets and spinning dry so they can go back out and run again—guys who have no real interest in getting sober—guys looking to cruise through their 28 days so they kiss ass and tell the counselors everything they want to hear and the counselors lap it up.

  Then there are the real alcoholics. Alkies are usually older and hard-worn—their lives pissed-down barroom drains. Alkies come to rehab to stop the bleeding. They’re losing things—losing jobs, losing wives, losing their health.

  One old alky broke my heart when he told us in group that he went to the hospital with jaundice and came out with a diagnosis of late-stage pancreatic cancer, the symptoms of which he missed because he was drunk every day of his adult life. One of the indigo kids asked him why the fuck he was bothering with rehab if he was going to die soon anyway. A flood of tears burst from the alky’s eyes. The group got quiet. One of the placaters punched the indigo in the shoulder. And when the old alky’s weeping slowed enough for him to speak, he told us he came to rehab because he hoped to stay sober the short time he had left so his daughter might speak to him again so he could tell her goodbye.

  Now, nobody ever told me I was special and I’m no indigo child, and sure, I’ve lost a job and a house and a girlfriend, but I’m young and I have my health and a hungry mind that learns from my mistakes so I’m no alky either, and I’m certain I’m no placater because I have no intention of ever going back to treatment and I don’t give a shit what the counselors think about me, so when Mr. Shaw asked me if I thought I was alcoholic, I looked him square in the eye and said,

  No, I don’t.

  Mr. Shaw’s response was to stare at me across his desk tapping his pencil on a yellow legal pad. The tap-tap-tapping silence made me nervous so I jumped to fill it with an explanation. I’ve been here for three weeks now, I said. I haven’t had a drop. I’m not craving. Booze or drugs. So my trouble was just a phase.

  Mr. Shaw smiled and shook his head. You know, Trevor, he said, even if you squeeze all the rum out of a fruitcake, you’re still left with a fruitcake.

  And he might be right for most of those guys in rehab but not me. I am unique. My problems are unique. If anybody had to go through the shit I’ve been through, they’d drink too. I don’t drink because I need to—I drink because I want to. It helps me forget. Forgetting is relief. And everybody needs a little relief.

  ~~~

  The thud of something slamming against the floor above me shakes the cheap acoustic ceiling and a piece of popcorn falls free and tumbles down drifting toward the bed. In the time it takes it to land, I make my decision.

  THREE BLOCKS from the motel, I find a place—no windows, a thick green door, red-neon sign that reads BAR.

  Inside, the usual dive-bar suspects lean hopeless over drinks. A bucket sitting on the bar counter reads SMOKING FINE DONATION—25 CENTS A CIGARETTE. The bucket is full of quarters and the bar is full of smoke.

  A thin, veiny bartender tattooed everywhere except his eyelids blinks at me and says, What’ll it be?

  I take a deep breath and let it out. I say,

  Double vodka straight.

  The tattooed bartender tosses a coaster on the bar in front of me—a cutout from a porn magazine wrapped in clear tape. He sets a jam jar on top of the coaster and fills the jar with well vodka. The clear liquor magnifies the dismembered tits on the coaster.

  The bartender says,

  Rough day?

  So this is how it happens—just like this. No fireworks, no thunder, no lightning. Nobody screaming, Don’t do it! Just a jam jar full of cheap vodka served up on a pair of headless breasts with no questions asked. Mr. Shaw always said to think through the drink so I try, but all I can think about is how good it will feel to get that vodka in me. Mr. Shaw said to pray, but that makes me think of my dad and he and his God can go to hell. Mr. Shaw said to pick up the phone before I picked up a drink, but whom would I call?

  I don’t realize I’m clutching the bar until the bartender knocks his knuckles in front of me. He says,

  Eight bucks, buddy!

  Is there a phone in here?

  The bartender points to a dark pay phone in the back of the bar. When he turns his head to another customer, I grab a fistful of quarters from the smoking bucket and head for the phone leaving my vodka untouched.

  I dig the treatment center’s card from my pocket, put the heavy black receiver to my ear and dial the toll-free number.

  A faint female voice answers on the fifth ring—

  Brave Ascent Recovery Center.

  I need to speak with a counselor.

  What’s your name, sir?

  Trevor Roberts.

  And who are you with?

  Who am I with? I only lived there for a month.

  I’m just the night operator, sir.

  Won’t you just get me a counselor?

  I said I’m just the operator, sir.

  How about Mr. Shaw? Is Mr. Shaw there?

  I can take a message.

  What kind of bullshit is this? It’s like calling the suicide hotline and being put on hold. I crumple the card and drop it in the corner.

  Hello? Sir? Do you have a message?

  I hang up. Pumping in quarters, I dial Stephanie’s cell phone. It rings three times then goes to voicemail—

  Hi! You’ve reached Stephanie. You know what—

  I hang up and head back to my vodka.

  The pay phone rings behind me. I rush to answer it, catch it off the cradle and put the receiver to my ear again—Stephani
e!

  Hello. Trevor? It’s Barbara.

  Oh. Hi, Barb. How’d you—

  We saw the city number on Steph’s cell screen and I knew it was you. Trevor! Are you okay? Where are you staying?

  I’m fine, really. Everything is fine. It’s just been tough you know—job hunting. Is Stephanie there?

  Trevor, you have to be patient.

  Okay, I get it, Barb. I need to prove I’ve changed.

  Silence on the line. Barbara sighs. She says,

  I’ve been praying for you.

  I grip the receiver tighter and change the subject. Anyway, I say, it’s nice to hear your voice. I’m glad you called back.

  I got a call for you this afternoon from—let’s see—hold on—here it is—Valombrosa Capital. They said they could see you about a job Friday. Friday at two. Oh, that’s tomorrow.

  Valombrosa Capital?

  That’s it, yes.

  It doesn’t sound familiar.

  Do you need the address? It’s on California.

  I’ll find it. Two o’clock?

  Two o’clock.

  Thanks, Barb.

  Oh, booger me, I nearly forgot, she says. Jared called for you.

  Shit!

  What’s wrong?

  Nothing. Did Jared leave his number? Hold on a sec.

  I can’t reach the card that I dropped in the corner so I search my pockets and pull out the photo of the boy, the photo Evelyn left for me on the train. Using the pen attached to the phone book by a chain, I write Jared’s number on the backside of the photo.

  Thanks, Barb. Thanks really. You’ve been a lifesaver.

  Before she’ll hang up, Barbara makes me promise to call her after my interview tomorrow. Then she tells me to make sure I’m eating. I thank her again and set the phone back in its cradle.

  I return to the bar and push the jar of vodka back to the bartender. I say,

  You got coffee?

  Does this look like Starbucks to you? he says holding out his tattooed hand. Eight bucks for the vodka.