Billy had been in the C store for ten minutes without buying anything or even picking something up as though considering its purchase, and the clerk was giving him the stink eye. He looked like a shoplifter, he knew, because he’d been caught all seven times he’d tried it, even though every single time he’d been sure he had the secret down. He’d managed to avoid conviction on six of those, and had skated with a year’s probation on the seventh for a pack of Bubblicious Lightning Lemonade with LeBron James’s face on the package. It was funny thinking about that now, because it would be weeks at the very least before he’d be able to chew gum.
“You need help finding whatever it is you’re looking for?” the clerk asked in a deep, slow monotone from behind the register. He was well over six feet tall with a shiny gray face, and when he leaned over the counter he was an imposing sight, a little scary, even, Billy thought.
“Nah, I’m good,” he said as best he could with his jaw wired shut. The fact was he was high enough on Vicodin the emergency room docs had given him that he couldn’t remember what he’d gone out looking for.
“What’s the matter with your voice?”
“What’s the matter with yours,” he tried to say, but he knew it had come out as gibberish.
“Dude, are you high right now?”
“Nuh-uh,” he managed, and to illustrate he opened his lips wide to show the scaffolding in his mouth.
“Wow, sorry, man, that fucking sucks. Hey, are you Magda’s boyfriend?”
That stopped him for a moment. This guy knew Magda? He nodded.
“Seen you on the street with her a time or two. I used to take my cat there when I was in Ojai.”
Billy nodded.
“I was surprised to see her in Moorpark. Tell her Big Lester’s still got that three-legged Siamese, would you?”
He nodded and picked a canned strawberry kiwi smoothie from the refrigerator case. He didn’t want to listen to this creep talk about Magda. He still had thirty-two bucks and change left over from the trip to Needles, so he bought a couple of five-dollar bingo scratchers as well.
Twenty minutes later, he was sitting at Magda’s kitchen table drinking the smoothie through a kid’s bendy straw and grooving on the Vicodin—he’d taken a second, because he really fucking hurt and also because he liked the way it felt—and wondering whether he’d won or not on the scratchers. He’d never played bingo before, and he couldn’t make heads or tails of the explanation on the back of the card. It had taken him a good half an hour to get done scratching all the numbers and marking the appropriate boxes, and he’d found it fairly diverting, though without the opioids he would have been frustrated to the point of scratching his own eyes out. The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers were on the TV with the sound off, and the set was old and broken, so the colors weren’t right, but that was okay.
After the question of the scratchers, his attention was mostly on a dope-addled plan to get Magda to let him move in with her, because his old place on Ventura Avenue wasn’t safe anymore, not with that nutty lawyer knowing where it was and how thin the door was and shit. Plus, what was the use of paying two rents?
Downstairs a car honked, the sound followed by that of a collision, and he rose slowly and made his uncertain way to the window. A Buick had just T-boned a gardener’s pickup in the middle of the intersection, pretty much demolishing the bed right behind the cab. The Buick driver stepped out, old and white, and addressed the truck driver, middle-aged and Chicano. The old man was pointing and screaming as if he weren’t the one who’d broadsided the other guy and the truck driver just stood there looking at the contorted metal and shaking his head. Billy unlatched the window and raised it to listen, and he had a good laugh until the cops got there. Out of instinct and long habit, he pulled his head back inside and lowered the sash, but he kept watching and got another laugh when the old man got the ticket, still yelling and pointing at the truck driver.
He laid down for a while on Magda’s couch, and his brain filled with a happy memory of doing it indoors with her for the first time on that very couch back when she still lived in Ojai down the street from her nasty old hippie mother. Its upholstery was frayed and its stuffing lumpy, but he felt as comfortable there at that moment as he ever had in any bed or beanbag chair. Maybe it was the Vicodin. He could give up crank for this stuff, he thought, but he was afraid of getting addicted. Maybe he could use the two to take the edge off each other, though.
He scratched at a loose section of fabric, took hold of a little thread and twisted it around until it unraveled itself and got straight. He was going to get Magda a new couch someday. A nice one with leather instead of cloth, but they’d keep this one for old times’ sake. He started thinking again about the five grand the psycho lawyer owed him. It was hard having something like that dangling in front of you and then having it snatched away, like teasing a cat with a piece of meat you don’t really intend to let him have.
He thought about his cats. They were probably worried about whether he was okay or not. Poor kitties. He got sad thinking about them, wondering who’d feed them.
He was back at the table, working on the smoothie when Magda got home and slammed the door.
“Have you seriously been sitting there at that table since I went to work this morning?”
He shook his head and explained to the best of his ability that he’d been down to the convenience store and also to the window and on the couch, too.
“And watching kiddie TV. Nice and productive.”
“I got a broken jaw,” he said as best he could.
“I know, but this is why I don’t want you hanging here when I’m gone. You make yourself too much at home. If you had a job it’d keep you busy, at least.”
“Sorry,” he said, feeling bad about his sibilant “s.”
She drew up behind him and embraced him. “I’m sorry, baby. I had a rough day. That Dr. Perkins is a real sack of shit. I’m halfway ready to bail on that job.”
This sent a shiver of panic through him. He’d never had a girlfriend with a steady job before, and that was a large part of the attraction here. Not so much the fact that she had disposable income—she didn’t spend it on him, anyway—but the idea that she was a productive member of society. If she was willing to pair off with him, maybe that meant he had a shot of getting there someday himself.
Then something amazing happened, at least by his standards. He remembered the message! He’d walked home stewing about the C store clerk’s mentioning Magda, and when he got inside he’d written it down, imagining that if he didn’t deliver it the man might use the fact against him somehow.
“Hey, I got something to tell you about the guy in the store.” He looked down at his loopier-than-usual scrawl. “Wesley still has the three-headed Chinese.”
“Jesus, Billy, how fucking high are you, anyway?” She started rolling a joint. “Today, Dr. Ma was examining this old black lab with arthritic knees and Perkins came over and told her right in front of a client how her diagnosis was wrong, which it wasn’t, because she’s a way better vet than Perkins ever was. I think he’s drinking over lunchtime. And he leers at women clients, especially the young ones.”
Billy nodded and made a sympathetic sound of encouragement.
“So did you see that crash downstairs? Looks like a pretty good one.”
His face brightened and he nodded.
She lit up and took a long drag, after which Billy reached for the joint. She pulled it out of his reach. “Nuh-uh, not while you’re on the pain meds.” The look on his face must have been even sadder than he felt, because she immediately relented and handed it to him.
He took a hit and handed it back to her and tried to explain how discombobulated he was over the whole business of the five thousand dollars. She got up and once again embraced him from behind. “Poor, sweet baby,” she murmured, blowing smoke into his ear.
Between the mandibular gear and the opioids, he had a hard time getting started, but he managed to make his case to Magda that he wasn’t safe in his old apartment, but instead of coming to his intended conclusion that the only answer was to allow him to move in with her, her instinct was to confront the problem head-on.
“I hate seeing what he did to you. We can’t just let that asshole beat you up and steal your money.”
He shrugged and said, or tried to say, “What else I got?”
“How about we put a scare into him, what do you say?”