Xavier calls out from the ambulance chamber. “Make it snappy, Abe, I can’t really get the compresses up where the bleeding is.”
“You damn well better not try!” Abe hears the woman say sharply. “It was one of your spade brothers knocked me up in the first place.”
“Uh-huh. You just relax, lady, and shut up if you can. I’ll keep a hold on myself.”
X sticks his head through the window, into the cab beside Abe. “Ungrateful bitch.”
“So you’ve done deliveries before?” Abe asks.
“Yeah, couldn’t you tell? That was the real midwife touch, there.”
“I see. Was this one unusual?”
“Awful fast.”
“That’s what you think!” the woman cries from the back.
“Quiet, lady. Save your strength.”
Abe says, “I didn’t know it was such hard work. I mean I’d heard, but I’d never seen it.”
“No? Man, you are a rookie. Yeah, it wipes them out. Brains have gotten bigger a lot faster than cunts, and that makes it dangerous. You got two healthy people there and they can still both die on you. In fact, step on it, will you?”
When they get to St. Joe’s, and get the woman and her child onto a gurney at the ER entrance, she gets sentimental and starts to cry. “I really appreciate it—I was really scared. I’m sorry I said all those things about you. You aren’t really a spade.”
“Well,” X says, compressing his lips to keep a straight face.
“What’s your names? Abe? Okay. Xavier? Xavier? How do you spell that? Okay. I’m gonna name him William Xavier Abraham Jeffers, I really am. I really am.…”
She’s wheeled away. They wash up in the ER men’s room, then go back to the waiting room.
A doctor comes out in a few minutes and tells them that the woman is fine, the baby is fine, there are no problems. No problems at all.
Back out in the truck. Abe has kind of an unreal feeling. They’re both grinning like fools. “So,” Abe says. “William Xavier Abraham Jeffers, eh?”
“Got any cigars?” X asks.
And they both start to laugh. They laugh, they shake hands, they pound each other on the arm, they laugh. “Could you believe it when the whole neighborhood came in to watch?” “Or when the kid fell off into the trashbins!” “Hey, aren’t we about done for the night? Let’s go get a drink.”
So they go to celebrate at the Boathouse in lower Santa Ana, on Fourth Street. One of X’s regular hangouts. They drink a lot of beer. Abe relaxes, feeling good to be a part of X’s off-work life, to be accepted in this black bar, if only for a little bit, as a friend of X’s. Xavier tells their story to the guys and the whole place howls, immediately sets to retelling the story with a million elaborations. “Why you ain’t no spade after all! Heeee, heee heeee heeeee…”
Abe and Xavier get drunk. Abe watches X’s laughing face, and feels his own grin. He hasn’t seen X this relaxed in… well, whenever. Abe squeezes his eyes shut, trying to hold on to the moment, the smell of smoke and sweat, the rowdy voices of X’s friends, the look on X’s face. Hold, time. Stop.
31
But time, of course, does not stop. And eventually they take the truck back to headquarters, and Xavier goes home.
Abe tracks to Sandy’s place, still feeling high. Into the endless party, and for once he’s in sync with the prevailing mood. There’s been a headline in the Los Angeles Times that morning:
DEA DECLARES ORANGE COUNTY “DRUG CAPITAL OF THE WORLD”
and Sandy has therefore declared the day a local holiday. He and Angela have gone all out to decorate the ap, with balloons, ribbons, confetti, streamers, noisemakers, and big strips of paper that have the headline reproduced on them in various spectrum bends. Samples of every recreational drug known to science are on hand and in action, Sandy is in the kitchen singing along with the blender as it grinds up quantities of ice cream, chocolate sauce, milk, and, well, Abe isn’t too sure what else, but he has his suspicions. “Rnn rnn rnn, rnn rnn rnn!” Sandy sings, and grabs the blender from its base. He pours the frothy milkshakes into tall plastic glasses, handing them to whoever gets a hand out first, “Hey, drink this! Try this!” His pupils are flinching just inside the blue rims of the irises as he sees Abe and hands him a glass. Cold in the hand. Sandy uses the blender itself to clink a toast. “To the day’s work!” with that Sandy grin blazing at San Onofre–level megawatts. Now how did he know that his toast would be appropriate on this night of all nights? Another drug mystery. Abe drinks deep. No taste but chocolate, though it’s maybe a bit chunky. What might it be? He’ll soon find out. Best to establish a transitional period by lidding as much as possible.
A lot of people are already pretty stoned, they’ve got eyes like black holes and their mouths are stretched wide like they’re trying to do imitations of Sandy’s ordinary smile, they’re grinding their teeth and giggling a little and staring around like the walls have sprouted fantastic morphological formulations out of the usual condo cottage cheese ceilings, say, is that, could that be a, a stalactite there? Abe can only laugh. But Sandy splutters with dismay. “No zoning out here, this is a celebration, get on your feet!” People stare at him like he’s maybe part of the ceiling’s deformations. “Uh-oh. Jim! Jim! Jim—put something inspiring on the CD.”
Happily Jim hurries to the collection of tattered old CDs, bought in boxfuls by Sandy and Angela at swap meets, no idea what’s in the boxes, a perfect situation for Jim, who is in heaven bopping from box to box and rooting around. Abe laughs again, lidding from an eyedropper of the Buzz and feeling his spine begin to radiate energy. Jim, King of the Culturevultures. Hopping birdlike box to box, talking as fast as he can to people who clearly aren’t understanding a word he says. Head still as a bird’s, snapping instantaneously from position to position just like a finch’s, except that now Abe sees a kind of after-image of Jim, trailing behind him. A hallucinogen, eh? Fine by Abe. He can’t help laughing at his good friend Jim, who would no doubt look for the perfect music till dawn; but Sandy returns and grabs him by the elbow. “Now, huh? Desperate need for music now!”
Jim nods, his face suddenly twisted with nervousness. They’re really going to play his choice? What if he has gone off on some spiral of reasoning that has led him to a completely stupid choice, he can’t be at all sure that he hasn’t! Abe can read all this perfectly in Jim’s comically exaggerated expression of alarm, and he starts laughing hysterically. Jim trails Sandy to the CD player changing his mind, trying to get more time to think it over, but Sandy beats him away with one arm while inserting the CD with the other, and suddenly the speakers are roaring out some big symphonic fanfare. What’s this?
“‘Pomp and Circumstance’!” Jim shouts at Sandy and Abe, scowling with desperate uncertainty. Sandy grins, nods, turns the volume up so that the people on Catalina can enjoy it too. Then the march begins and Sandy high-steps around the rooms of the ap, leaning over to scream in the face of anyone who has remained sitting. Soon everyone’s up and marching like toy soldiers with scrambled circuits, banging into walls and knocking over plants and each other. Abe marches behind Jim and feels the dust in the blood begin to fly in him, the dumb old march has somehow acquired this immense majesty, now everyone’s out on the balcony, marching: twenty drum majors, a can-can line over by the railing, goose-steppers trying some kick-boxing.… Abe jumps up and down in place, feeling the glory of pure Being surge all through him. Incredible rush of exhilaration, face to the stars, it’s clear tonight and up there on the fuzzy black vault of the night are the big fast satellites, the solar panels in their polar orbits, the microwave transmitters, the ballistic missile mirrors to the north—all the new artificial constellations, swimming around up there and nearly blocking out the little old twinkly stars. And planes falling onto John Wayne Airport like space stations landing, like fireflies in formation: what an amazing sky! Abe leans all the way back and howls. Coyote’s entrance, here, the others take it up, and they howl and yip at the blinking night sky.