And now, with her and Maurice separated and him awaiting trial for conspiring with his Vegas connections to take over the action of an Indian casino, some Beverly Hills sharks were going to snatch her home in exchange for their fees. Banish Olivia and her kids to a roach-infested welfare apartment next door to the one where his death would send Barb and Chez.
On a sudden impulse, he stood too fast, got woozy, but managed to stagger to the hall cabinet next to Chez’s bedroom door. One of his girls made breathy whistles in her sleep. He tiptoed and pulled the door closed, taking pains to latch it quietly even though he saw double knobs.
He went to the dining nook for a chair and returned to the hallway. Twice he started to mount the chair but wobbled. The third attempt succeeded because he grasped the cabinet handles in time.
When he opened the cabinet, he bonked his forehead with the door’s sharp corner, drawing a little blood but not enough to dribble into his eye. The object of this expedition, his high school annuals, were in the back of the cabinet. He had to move things, a pewter vase and picture frames, and the shoe box sealed with duct tape in which he had stashed his .25-caliber six-shot revolver. The maker, he suspected, was German, something like Plfstk he couldn’t pronounce. He’d bought it at a pawnshop and used to carry it on risky assignments, back when he was a security guard.
He climbed off the chair, balancing with one hand, all of his high school annuals tucked beneath the other arm, though only his senior year would have photos of Olivia. He must’ve left the shoe box teetering on the edge of the cabinet. As he stepped down, it fell, grazed his shoulder, made a bong sound as it hit the chair, and landed on the floor with a sharp thud. Ouch, Greg thought, and waited for Barb to shout, Hey, be quiet!
But if the crash had woken her, she ignored the disruption. He picked up the shoe box, set it on the chair, and went to the dining nook table. He opened his senior yearbook, turned one page, and found the first picture of Olivia, above the caption Most Popular. She wore a pleated skirt, an inch or so above the knees, and a purple short-sleeved sweater Greg remembered he’d always wanted to rub his nose in. She was made up heavy like the Portuguese babes from tuna fishing families. Like Angie Silva.
Olivia’s dark lipstick looked especially exotic haloed by her wavy golden hair. But gorgeous as she was, what set her above the other beauties was her goodness. She wasn’t shy or proud, but natural and gracious. Loyal to her friends, pleasant to everyone. She earned good grades without showing off. Greg remembered a girl saying, Olivia can afford to be sweet, cause she’s got nothing to prove.
“Phooey,” Greg mumbled, and turned the page. “Everybody’s got stuff to prove.” He found six more pictures of Olivia. The booster club, the French club. “French, huh?” Something else he’d forgotten. Maybe French classes had helped prime her to choose a guy with that name.
“Maurice,” he snarled.
Then he found Olivia in candid shots at a football playoff game and at dances. He caught nostalgia dragging his thoughts back toward his incipient death, which he chose to call it ever since Doctor Ramos used that bookish word that made it feel less real. He craved a smoke. He kept his stash of sinsemilla and papers in a top kitchen cabinet beside Mazola oil, Raid, and other items Barb considered dangerous.
He sat at the table and rolled a fat number. Before he lit up, he realized that after smoking he was likely to forget or blow off returning the annuals and his stash to where they belonged. He set the joint on the table, tossed the baggy into its cabinet, stacked the annuals, and carried them through the living room. As he lifted his right foot onto the chair, he noticed the shoe box beside his left foot and felt a mild electric warmth. A power surge.
He managed to replace the annuals without dropping anything, and when he closed the cabinet doors, they didn’t bang.
He fetched a Diet Slice and carried the shoe box out front. In the fog, thick and greenish, Greg sat on the folding beach chair with plastic slats. He smoked a few hits and discovered that tonight the weed’s first effect was to revive the sucking pain in his liver. He popped the tab on the Slice to lube his dry mouth and to wash down another Vicodin.
Green lights the size of fireflies began flitting around him. With each hit, more tiny green lights appeared in the fog. By his last puff they were a legion. Harbingers of death, he imagined. To soften his rising terror, he muttered, “I’ll shoot the bastards,” and reached down to pick up the shoe box, on the porch floor at his feet. But when he leaned, he toppled forward, and only braced his fall by grabbing a post, just short of a nosedive off the porch into Barb’s tulips.
The folding chair had collapsed behind him. He knelt, turned and unfolded the chair, set it upright, and sat in it with the shoe box on his thigh. He ripped off the duct tape, tore off the lid, and tipped the gun onto his lap. It was wrapped in a dish towel, which he unwrapped before he remembered that when he packed away the gun, he’d put a round of six cartridges with it.
Without thinking why, he loaded the gun. But the instant he gripped it with his finger on the trigger, even before he catalogued the reasons or checked the time, he knew why.
Suddenly, as though he’d gotten bewitched, turned from a frog into a prince, he saw everything with different eyes. His chest swelled with tangy air, though he couldn’t remember breathing. His brain dismissed all the dread, gloom, and sorrow for a lifetime of wasted opportunities and lame decisions. He believed the act he was created to perform had presented itself. For once, he felt like a champion.
But the next instant he thought, Murder?
He wasn’t going to kill anybody. The idea was just another of his fantasies, like when he used to imagine playing lead guitar for Bob Dylan even though he only knew six chords and lost the rhythm a few times every song he tried to play.
The guy he ought to shoot was himself, he thought.
He tried to remember the last time he’d gotten this mired in despair. If he could remember, maybe he’d also remember a way to climb out of it.
“David,” he muttered. King David made a habit of sinking in despair and climbing out. David was usually in danger. Because he was always killing people. “Saul killed his thousands but David his tens of thousands,” he quoted. David killed people because God told him to.
Greg lay the gun in his lap, sat motionless though the heat surging through him made him ache to move, and counted the signs he’d been given, maybe by God.
First, the movie flier that reminded him of the murder game. Barb had posted that flier. She never posted fliers. Next, Barb and Chez fell asleep at eight-thirty, when every single other night Chez would throw a fit if they tried to put her down before the SeaWorld fireworks.
And a few minutes later the gun appeared, after so long he’d forgotten he owned the damned thing.
“Man,” he mumbled, “how many signs do you need?”
He jumped up and stuffed the loaded gun into his baggy front pocket.
God wasn’t urging Greg to bomb abortion clinics or risk hurting innocent people. Nobody could call Maurice innocent. Only a few years ago, he was Pete Pinella’s “bodyguard” until the gangster went to Pelican Bay on a murder charge.
Greg rushed inside. He strode to the kitchen and looked at the clock. Ten minutes before ten. Another sign. The SeaWorld fireworks would blast off at ten, just when Maurice was supposed to leave his bartender shift at Rick’s Lounge, and just enough time for Greg to get there. If he hustled.
Greg tiptoed through the living room to Chez’s bedroom door and turned the handle slowly until it stopped. He pushed the door open wide but only leaned his head and shoulders into the room.