SIX

Our Relationship Is Teething

“Can I help you, Maevie?” Her mother’s voice came softly through the flimsy door.

“No, I’ll do it myself.” She had locked herself into the upstairs bathroom and was on her knees beside the toilet with her jeans down and her shirt off. The illustrated instructions they’d given her were taped on the wall in front of her. The transparent bag that dangled from her side was almost full and pretty much the color she expected, somewhere between light brown and gray, the color, in fact, of liquid shit.

You can get used to anything, she told herself. There was a clip on the bottom of the bag which she slid off gingerly and let the contents drain noisily into the toilet. That’s an interesting smell, she thought, wrinkling her nose. It was more like cowshit than human for some reason. She reclipped the bag and could have left off there, but she wanted to see everything.

Making a face, both at the general tenderness she felt and the idea of what she was doing, she peeled the bag gently off and saw her new stoma for the first time. After cleaning it up with a wet rag and being surprised that there was almost no sensation in the thing—it looked like a big wrinkly nipple that had drifted preposterously across her body to the wrong place. There was a kind of medical gasket around it, where she would reattach the bag.

“Jesus,” she said. “All right, if you and I are going to be together for a while, you need a name. Squirt popped into her head, but it was too cute, and she dropped it immediately. She thought of an old boyfriend who was snubbing her, but Dick wasn’t a very good idea either. She’d just read The Tin Drum and decided Oskar would be perfect. “Okay, Oskar, you and me are going to get along. You can refuse to talk and you can beat your little drum whenever you see something you don’t like.”

Oskar chose that moment to fart loudly, and a foul smell emanated through the bathroom.

Maeve shut her eyes, counted to ten, and began doing up the bag again.

“Hey, Beto.”

“Qué hubo, Thumb?”

Beto Alvarez was in his messy office in the Centro, his feet up on the beat-up old steel desk, reading a book, with all the kids out front playing ping-pong or caroms or chess. The clatter and roar of so much play was audible even down the long corridor. Thumb sat down on a rickety folding chair.

“Aquí nomás. I’m reading that textbook, like you said, I got up to the Hayes-something deal, in the South.”

“Tilden.”

“Yeah, that’s it. Where they fucked over the niggers, huh?”

Beto brought his feet to the floor and sat up straight in that earnest way he always had.

“Do me a favor, Thumb. Say blacks. You may not be thinking beyond the barrio right now, but if all of us people of color stay off in our own vecinos and dis each other all the time—you know, it’s always niggers and gooks and japs and we’re greasers or spics, that’s us, esse—we gonna stay weak. Those Bushes and their friends gonna do a Hayes-Tilden on us all over again.”

“Seems like they doin’ it to us already, carnal.”

Beto got that crafty look in his eye. “So tell me how they’re doin’ it, Thumb. How are the rich gabachos screwing you right now?”

“I don’t know—they send the big blue gang to beat on us. They keep all the good stuff and the good jobs for theirself.”

“You all ready to take a job programming computers? Maybe put on a white coat and cure somebody’s disease?”

“Man.”

“Do you remember Chairman Mao?”

“He was that fat Chinese Communist guy.”

“Simón, good. I’m not saying he was the greatest. Dude had a lot of problems, but he said some good things. One was, ‘No investigation, no right to speak.’ When you’re ready to tell a bunch of those angry kids out there exactly what they need to do to change things, then you’re ready. Knowledge is power, my friend. You can’t have too much knowledge.”

“Chingao, I’ll keep reading on that book, and you keep ranking on me, just like this, and if I don’t beat you to death first or shoot you in the cojones, we get over.”

Beto looked like he wanted to laugh but decided against it. He just fastened his eyes on Thumb, keeping his gaze fixed in a benign deadpan.

Finally Thumb grinned. “I got a favor to ask,” he said softly.

“Uh-huh.”

Thumb produced a small box, the size of a book, wrapped round and round with silver duct tape. “Don’t ask me no questions and keep this for me.”

Beto examined it skeptically. “Promise me this isn’t yesca or coca. No drogas.”

“I swear on mi madre. Absolutamente no es drogas.”

Beto reached out and took it, weighing it for a moment in his hand. “It’s heavy, man.”

“Carnal, if you’re going to X-ray it or shit, just give it back. It’s a favor to see if you really trust me and I can trust you.”

“Qué pues. I probably shouldn’t do this, but you’ve got a lot of potentials. Okay. Consider it our secret.”

“Viva la raza.”

“Si, man. Viva el pueblo.”

“We don’t hire a lot of guys here, not unless you can really hold your wood.”

Jack Liffey knew exactly what he meant, but why give him the satisfaction? “Oak or mahogany?”

“Very funny.”

Jack Liffey wasn’t sure what he’d expected—probably a fat old man in suspenders smoking a cigar—but it was practically a kid sitting at the little card table in an inner room. He had a bad complexion with lumps everywhere, a spot band-aid over what was probably a recently popped zit on the side of his nose. A long sideboard made up of industrial shelving beside him held cardboard banker’s boxes and upright magazine files full of papers plus a very old computer with a small greenish monitor. It looked like the whole business could be cleared out in about five minutes, or just abandoned if it came to that.

“Hell, at my age I’m lucky when I get it up at all,” Jack Liffey said. He set his business card down in front of the kid. The card was becoming embarrassing. An old girlfriend who’d run a print shop had made a thousand up for him years ago and not only did it have a big eyeball on it, like something in the movies, he had to write in his new phone number by hand. “I’m looking for a runaway girl. If you’d be kind enough to look in your files.”

The office of Intercontinental Talent was up a metal staircase only a little fancier than a fire escape, on a short dead-end street in an industrial area of Van Nuys. Still, the sign on the door had looked respectable enough. There had been no receptionist in the empty waiting room, just a few bus station benches and a big sign: Models: First fill out the form, THEN “ring” the bell and wait. He could identify no particular reason that irony should attach to the verb, which referred to an ordinary pushbutton like a doorbell—and he assumed it was just another instance of the indiscriminate proliferation of quotation marks like “fresh” fish and “gourmet” salads that had crept onto menus everywhere.

The only wall art facing the plastic benches was a fairly demure poster of a large-breasted woman in a cocktail gown receiving a statuette. It wasn’t one of the awards he knew—the Oscar or the Golden Globes. Maybe something the porn industry had invented to mimic the mainstream awards. The Randy or the Roger.

“What’s this lost girl’s name?” the kid at the card table asked him.

“Luisa Wilson. She’s a Native American about eighteen. She’d have been in here in the last two weeks.”

“About eighteen, like, doesn’t cut it in this biz, bro. Sticky, the underage thing. Remember the whole Traci Lords thing.”

“She’s eighteen, no worries. Long dark hair. Very striking.”

He shook his head. “Nah. They’re all striking, believe me, but that one ain’t been in.”

“Could you just check your records, as a favor to me.”

“Whoa, dude. No strongarm, okay. I tell you, I ain’t seen her, I ain’t seen her.”

“You do sign up women for sex films?”

“We prefer to call it the adult entertainment business. And we usually say girls, you know? No dis intended.”

“Son, I don’t care what you call it. This girl has a mother who’s worried about her, and I just want to talk to her. I’m not here to make trouble for her or anyone else in the sex business. No dis intended.”

The boy frowned and got his back up a bit. “Hell, man, I’m proud of our business. You take your regular Hollywood movies, now—they put a girl who’s sexually active in the story, even a little bit, they got to find a way to kill her off in the first reel or make her pay for it somehow. She doesn’t get the desirable guy or the good job or the happy life. She’s got to be punished for liking dick. Our girls like it right out in the open, and they get to live all the way through the show.”

Jack Liffey laughed. “I never thought about it that way. As long as they don’t get AIDS.”

Clouds crossed the boy’s brow. “We’re real responsible about that. They get monthly tests and a lot of shoots use rubbers now.”

“I don’t need a deposition. Let’s say Luisa Wilson didn’t come here. Where else would she go in town looking to get into the adult business?” Adult business: he could give the kid that much.

“There’s really only four agencies that serve the professional producers, but there’s plenty of amateurs, too, these days. Everybody thinks it only takes an old VHS camera and a couple kids willing to screw to make some hot movie and make a million bucks. But the product usually looks like shit, and they always get beat trying to distribute. That end’s all sewed up. Still, they keep on trying, like swarms of bees trying to get into the honey tree. There’s wannabe adult business all over the place. But if your girl got smart, she only came to us or one of the other places.”

He gave Jack Liffey a flyer with the addresses of three more modeling agencies along with some general advice on AIDS and staying out of trouble on the streets and how to find a place to bed down for those just off the bus. It looked like something they’d hire winos to hand out to lost-looking kids on Hollywood Boulevard. He found himself folding the flyer a couple of times before putting it into his pocket, as if it might soil his shirt.

“Do you know the name Little Deer?”

He whistled. “Jeez, do I? She was the real thing. Like a Marilyn Monroe or something. She’s retired now, far as I know.”

“Do you know how I’d find her?”

“Naw, but I think she directed a few times at the end of her career. The smart ones do. You might try the Liberty of Speech Coalition.” The effort of being helpful was starting to show.

“What’s that?”

“Some of the old-timers financed a lobbying and legal group to look after their interests. Every redneck that gets elected D.A. anywhere in America tries to beat up on the biz to score points with his local Talibans.”

The bell buzzed, and the boy perked up.

“You ever performed?” Jack Liffey asked him.

“Aw, man, take a good look at me. All I could be is a stunt dick, and I’m no woodsman.” He winked. “But I get a little on the side now and then, so don’t worry.”

Jack Liffey just wanted to get away from that office and take a long shower to wash off anything that might have stuck to him.

“Thanks.” He reclaimed his card. For some superstitious reason, he didn’t want his name hanging around that office. In the waiting room now there was a very insecure-looking girl in a falling-off bright blue sundress. She had obviously augmented breasts, and clutched a clipboard that held the information form. She smiled hopefully at him as he came out.

“I’m nobody at all, hon.”

He almost turned back at the door to suggest she go home to Iowa, but it wouldn’t help and there were probably a hundred like her arriving every day.

“Jack! Long time no see!” Babs leaned out the kitchen window, looking a bit less like Veronica Lake after the two kids in quick succession. She still had the long silver hair, though.

“Hi, Babs. Is Chris here?”

“He’s out in the back. He’s tending the computers and kids.”

They had made the detached garage of the little Lakewood house into their computer room. It was quite a retrenchment from the glory days when Chris had lived in a huge place in the Hollywood Hills and co-owned a computer game company called Propeller-Heads. The big shakeout in the game industry had killed all that. He knocked beside the open door.

“Jack, good to see you. Come on, come on.”

The former garage was half filled with a profusion of old computers wired together, and Chris Johnson carried a baby in his arms, while a two-year-old puttered with some toy trucks on the floor. Jack Liffey noticed that the reset buttons of all the computers had been removed or covered over.

“The online nursery business died?”

“Just about all online business died. Except porn, of course. I set up Web sites for folks now, and host them. Babs is studying architecture.”

The boy on the floor started making thut-thut-thut machinegun noises.

“How would you like a jackliffey.com?” he suggested.

“I don’t think so, Chris. I don’t have a computer. I don’t even have a cell phone. It’s good to see you and Babs are still together.”

Babs had been in a lesbian relationship when Jack Liffey had first dragged her into helping with one of his jobs, and he had introduced the two of them, without any ulterior motives whatever. He had to admit Chris Johnson was a pretty charming character—he had the sort of buoyant energy and confidence that always attracted dogs and children—and he wasn’t bad looking in the bargain. He was so blond he was almost transparent, and he still had the football body he’d once worked at in order to play wide receiver for a college team. Babs had startled Jack Liffey back then by latching onto Chris almost immediately, abandoning in the process a long-time girlfriend. Jack Liffey had been afraid he’d get in dutch with the whole lesbian world, but nobody seemed to object.

The baby started to wail, and Chris tested the diaper, then offered a bottle. That did the trick.

“I’ve learned to type one-handed.” He sat and demonstrated at the keyboard of what must have been his primary computer. It was amazing, the blur of his right hand, while the left cradled and fed the baby. “Multitasking,” he said. “I can even tuck a phone in my ear at the same time. I hear you’re shacked up with a cop out in East Los. How’s that working out?”

“It’s interesting. At our age, we’ve both had enough disappointments in life that we’re still a bit cautious.”

“You mean she’s about to kick you out.”

Jack Liffey laughed. “I wouldn’t say that. Our relationship is just teething.” He thought of mentioning Maeve’s drive-by shooting, but he just didn’t want to go into it. “I like Gloria a lot. Trusting takes time.”

“You never went all that long in between women, my man.”

“Maybe that was my problem. What about you? At the time, I didn’t bet an awful lot on you and Babs hanging in there.”

“These little guys make a big difference.” The boy with the trucks was now making airplane swooping sounds. “But they’re worth every worry line. They make you look at life fresh.”

He didn’t want to get sidetracked into the glories of fatherhood. He had Maeve, and she would do fine. “I have a favor to ask.”

“Of course. You never show up unexpectedly to play handball.”

Jack Liffey pulled up an old ladderback chair. “I went to a sporting goods store one time looking for a handball, and, you know, the guy there said they stopped carrying them because they were the number one theft item. Isn’t that a great concept? Eventually they’ll eliminate the number two and number three, and then the store will have nothing worth stealing at all, and maybe all sports will die.”

“I forgot you were an anti-fan.”

“It’s not important.” Jack Liffey handed him the flyer—explaining who he was looking for. “I visited that first talent agency on the list, and already I want to run myself through a sheepdip full of disinfectant. Can you hack into their databases and look for her name for me, or anyone else who sounds like an American Indian and signed up in the last two weeks?”

“Child’s play. I’ll check out some other sources, too, and call you this evening.”

“Thanks, Chris.” Jack Liffey squatted down by the little boy and picked up a plastic airplane he hadn’t noticed. It was a P-40, with very slight indentations in the gray plastic to suggest the toothy Flying Tiger grin. If there had been a decal, it was long gone. It was strange how seductively beautiful the old prop warplanes could be. “This is great.”

“From my own youth.”

“The last time we were on the same side as the Chinese.”

“Yeah, but they make all our consumer products now. We don’t dare piss them off. We’d have to start over at the Stone Age.”

Jack Liffey flew the fighter around a bit and tried out his own thut-thut-thut. Little Vance Johnson won the dogfight with brute force, crashing a dump truck into him.

“I hear you did good today,” Keith hollered over the windrush in the Miata as he drove her over Topanga and down to the Malibu beach house. “You’re a quick learner.”

She was back in comfortable clothes, jeans, and an old pearl-snap cowboy shirt she liked, with her B-4 bag in her new room. She saw no reason to shout back to him, especially as he wasn’t asking anything much, and she just felt like settling in with the flow of everything, him, the drive, the job. She loved the yellow chaparral along the road, broken up by sumacs, tree tobacco, a few coast oaks—multimillion dollar homes set way up on their own roads.

She stared at one of those homes for a moment, and though sums of money in the tens of millions didn’t mean very much to her, she decided that, put together, all the homes she’d ever known in Owens wouldn’t trade for one fancy six-car garage like the ones they were passing.

Ten million here and ten million there and, pretty soon, you’re talking real money. She grinned. One of the girls had said that at break.

“I got the beach house from surplus inventory of this company I used to work with, picking up failed savings and loans. It didn’t cost me a penny, and, technically, it’s invisible to the tax people. Life is all about deals, kid. You gotta get unblinkered about stuff.”

He seemed too young to be talking like that, but they came down a hill and turned onto the coast highway. It was a really breathtaking moment for an inland girl, the water blue as a robin’s egg, choppy with a handful of sailboats as the sun was about to go into red couds, and the breakers rolling up and crashing right against the edge of the road. Seeing the Pacific always made her feel an outsider but more so like when it was getting dark, like the other night at the party.

“If the Levine boys are waiting, don’t say a word.”

She didn’t know who the Levine boys were, but it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be inclined to say much to anybody. Soon they came to a row of beach houses right up against the road, only the garages visible, the houses trapped between asphalt and surf. A Porsche was parked diagonally in front of their garage, and two lanky men with no hair at all glared at the Miata as they approached. One of the men looked Asian but tall for an Oriental. Keith did a funny whoop-whoop with the accelerator and came to a stop as the men sauntered over.

“Hey, thong miao,” the Asian guy said.

“Fuck you, too,” Keith said evenly.

“You better be stone cool, you welching cunt,” the other one said.

Luisa had never heard a man called a cunt before. It seemed weird. The Asian man pulled back a cowboy vest to show that he had a big black automatic pistol in his waist. Looking at the pistol made Luisa feel sleepy.

“I can get plenty of guns, dipshit,” Keith said.

“If this place had deer,” the other said languidly, looking over the beach houses, “they’d put out a cocaine saltlick.”

“We get deer off the hills. I got your money right here.” He tossed them a fat roll of bills held by a rubber band and waited while they flipped through it.

“You’re my absolute picture of a big time operator, Tweak,” Keith said, “just the cat’s hairball. Next time leave the muscle home, or you can do business with my whole crew of angry spades.”

“Next time, be on time, jerkoff. Levine waits for no man.” They got into their Porsche, started it noisily and zipped away without looking back into traffic, causing a pickup truck on the highway to fishtail and honk.

He took her inside and told her to hang out or fix herself some food or whatever, while he did some work in the back of the house. There was a deck over the water that was just stupendous, and she opened the rolling glass window and went out to watch the waves for a long time. They made her feel good, as if in time they might just wear away everything she didn’t like about the world. The rising and falling roar was immensely soothing. The sun finally went down into a line of cloud over the water, with lights coming on in a few tall buildings down along the curved coastline, probably Santa Monica.

After a while, he opened the sliding door to say he had to go out, and he’d be gone until late. When it got too cold to stay outside looking at the lights, she came in and watched a huge flat screen TV for a while. But there was nothing on she liked, and the videos lying around were all porn and chop-socki, which didn’t interest her, so she went into her nest and went back to reading.

She was asleep on the white leather sofa when he came back. He was on something, his eyes flitting around restlessly, but he took her hand and hauled her back to a huge bed in the back room. She undressed and let him do what he wanted to her because that was the way it worked, and she may as well not have been there while he bonked away. Just before he came, he broke a little glass tube under his nose and sniffed something and cried out. Then he rolled off and sighed.

“Kid, wake me up with your mouth at nine.” And then he was snoring like a cartoon.

Dear Diary,

It’s so hard to have a love affair with one of these hell-bent types. I had such longings & hopes for this man & me but he did me wrong almost at once. I slept & wanted to be taken off to some magical place where everybody was nice but even in my dream the men were mean & asked for things from me all the time. They would make fun of me when I got lost in this big city & I didnt know the words they used. I think Keith was one of them.

My crime was I didn’t wake Keith up early enough for him, as he said to, & he was very mad & as punishment he tore my book in two that I was reading & threw both halfs off the porch onto the sand. It didn’t matter that I had set out a bowl & the cereal for him & made coffee. He wasnt nice to me one minute until he needed me to get in the car. My heart is cracked & I feel so dejected & alone again. Help me, Diary.