Mortality Bridge (26 page)

“The brothers don’t care who they sell to.”

“You’re not going to Watts and I’m sure as hell not driving you there.”

Niko waved at his brother as if batting away flies. He yawned hugely and spat out the window. “Spare me the party line, little buddy. I don’t really give half a shit if you approve. I’m facing the day without my usual rosy smile and it’s all your fault. So this is your chance to make it right.”

“I’m not going to help you buy drugs.”

Niko wiped sweat from his forehead. “If I was a kid and you broke my toy you couldn’t just say So what, kid, I don’t like your toy. Right?”

Van stared at him as traffic went by on Highland. “That’s some seriously messed up logic.”

Niko shook his head. “No it’s not. You break my toy, you owe me a new—”

“It’s not a goddamned toy.” Van slammed the steering wheel. His eyes were tearing. Frustration, anger, pity, some combination. “Jesus look at you. What the hell have you done to yourself out here? Mom’s got cancer, do you understand me? She’s going in for radiation treatments and Dad thought it’d be good if you were home. I’ve been running interference for you for a month. I told him you’re a musician, you keep weird hours, maybe you fell on bad times and your phone got cut off, maybe you had to move, it’s a tough life, flying by the seat of your pants, blah blah blah. And then I show up and—” He waved at his brother as if he could dispel him like smoke. “What a fool,” he said and Niko knew Van meant himself. Somehow that was worse than him calling Niko a fool. Because something in Van’s tone said, I should have known better. You’re a screwup and I should have known better.

Van clamped his eyes shut and turned away from him. Niko looked at the cigarette burned nearly to the filter in his fingers. He chewed his lower lip and scrunched his face up like a gambler figuring odds. Then he ground out the butt in the overflowing ashtray and set a hand on his brother’s shoulder. For the first time since he showed up on his doorstep Niko realized his little brother was still just a kid. He’d just gotten out of, what, his first year at UF? Only two years separated them, but Van was just a kid.

“Van. Van. I’ll go with you. Okay man? I’ll go home.”

Van turned toward him but his guard was still up. “Just like that huh?”

“Almost. You gotta cut me some slack man. It’s like six hours to Florida. I’ll be a mess.”

“Poor baby.”

Niko was dying for another cigarette but he wasn’t about to relinquish his brother’s attention now that he had it. “It’s like medicine, Van. If I don’t take it I’ll get sick. I just want to be sure I’ll be okay until we’re home, that’s all. I need to score. Just a little bit. Just enough to get me through the flight okay. And then we’ll be home and it’ll be fine. I’ll see Mom and you guys will help me through this.”

Van looked at Niko’s hand still on his shoulder. His mouth scrunched up and he looked worried. It was the expression Niko’d learned to seek every time he wanted to talk Van into something. Letting him borrow a dollar from the uncirculated coin set their grandmother had given them, loaning him money in Monopoly so he wouldn’t have to quit, letting him ride his brand new birthday bike. Of course somehow it always worked out that those mint coins never got replaced even with regular old coins, or he came back strong in Monopoly and trounced everybody and wouldn’t offer to bail his brother out, or he clipped a curb with the bike and laid it down hard enough to bend a pedal inward till it scraped the metal trouser guard every time Van rode it from then on.

Niko saw that look and saw that Van wanted to believe him so he pushed a little more. “I just need a little. Enough to get me home. I won’t buy any more than that, I swear.”

Van looked at his lap. “And you’ll come back with me?”

“I’ll eat the peanuts and stare at the stewardess’s butt.”

Van shook his head. “Why do I let you do this to me?”

“Cause you’re my brother.” Niko grinned and sniffled and shook Van’s shoulder. “That’s what brothers do, man. You know I’d do the same for you.”

Van started up the car. “No I don’t. Because I’d never ask you to.”

THEY DIDN’T GET a hundred yards from the Gulf station five blocks away from Niko’s apartment.

At the station Van gave Niko some money to fill up the car and buy more cigarettes and then sat there shaking his head and getting madder in the early summer heat. Niko went in and in a moment the pump activated. Van shoved the nozzle in and squeezed the handle. Niko came out of the station and went to a door and found it locked. He shook his head and walked quickly back into the station and came out and waved a restroom key at Van. Van frowned. Was Niko going to the bathroom to shoot up? How could he? He was clearly out of heroin.

The nozzle cut off and Van reinserted it and squeezed the handle again.

He kept trying to feel sorry for Niko but what he mostly felt was anger, and something that couldn’t be called betrayal because it was not entirely unexpected. Niko was the hell bent for leather one, the one without a brake pedal, the one who went too far. He had always stuck up for Van in fights with other kids and had always been fun to tag along with because he was restless and mischievous and always coming up with new diversions. But it seemed you always ended up standing beside him hanging your head and apologizing to someone for breaking their window, talking their son into jumping off a roof and spraining his ankle, getting into the birthday cake before it was served. Something in Niko didn’t know how to stop.

When Niko entered high school and Van was still in junior high they began to drift apart. Niko took up guitar and joined a band and discovered girls in earnest. Van stuck with the schoolbooks. He knew Niko was drinking and probably worse and it made Van a little cool toward his brother and a little sad. After Niko left for California seeking fame and fortune as a rock star, like every other American male of his generation who could even get his hand around the neck of a guitar it seemed, not only did Niko have no brake pedal, his wheels came off. In California you could do anything and no one seemed to care.

Van shook his head. Go west, young man. So you can fall off the goddamned map.

Niko came back from the restroom already lighting up a Kool and looking fidgety and happy the same time, a jester desperate to keep the king entertained and avoid losing his head. His wrinkled T-shirt was soaked with sweat. He kept rubbing the back of his head and scratching his arms. His nose would not stop running and he kept sneezing and spitting and swallowing.

The tank filled up and Van topped it off. Niko went to get the change and Van stood watching him in the hot and smoggy California day. He was somewhere he had never been before and about to go commit a felony with someone who might as well be a total stranger to him.

But no. However far gone he might be Niko was his brother, and Van was here for Mom and Dad. Because Mom might not have a lot more chances to see Niko after she went into the hospital. Though maybe the best thing Van could do for her would be to tell her that he couldn’t find him. Tell her Niko moved, no forwarding address. What good would the truth do her?

Niko came back holding two sweaty Cokes and a little tube of Bufferin. He passed a bottle to Van and opened the tube and tapped two tablets into his mouth and toasted Van with the Coke bottle and then chugged it and belched loudly. “The pause that refreshes,” he said.

Van made a sour face and Niko laughed and drummed the roof and got in the car and rubbed his forehead with his Coke bottle.

Niko leaned to look out the driver’s window, grinning that hideous fake grin, eager to get on the road toward his shitty little Shangri-La. “Something wrong, Van-man?”

“Gosh, I don’t know.” Van got in the station wagon and shut the door. “What could possibly be wrong?” He started the car.

NIKO’S STOMACH HAD started cramping while they were driving to the station. From the cold sweats and the tingling on his ass he’d known that everything he ate last night was about to blow out both ends. Naturally the bathroom door had been locked and Niko had to ask for the key, which meant keeping his cool. But if there was anything he was good at it was keeping his cool. He couldn’t do much about the physical symptoms but even when his hands were shaking and his nose was dripping and he was sweating like a thoroughbred he could bygod stand there in front of the Gulf Guy and say May I have the restroom key please? with his asshole clenched so tight you couldn’t pound a nail in it.

On the john he leaned his head over the sink and let go. It was as bad as he’d expected. On the way back to the car he could see Van looked steamed. Niko lit up a Kool. Showtime, folks. He kept quiet and let Van gas up the car and then went back to get his little brother’s change and also used his little brother’s dough to buy his little brother a nice cold Coke and got himself one too along with some Bufferin. He made sure Van saw his hand shake as he handed him his drink and downed the aspirin. He’d left his face wet from the bathroom sink so he’d look even more sweaty than he was. Do the vulnerable frail thing a little bit. Not exactly a stretch right now.

Sure enough when he leaned across the seat to ask Van what was wrong he saw Van’s anger turn to pity, saw the pity become guilt for judging his big brother so harshly. This suited Niko because Niko was getting thin. You could set your watch by a junky’s dose and he should have fixed hours ago. The way he felt now was nothing compared to what was coming if he didn’t score. Right now was more like an itch between the shoulderblades he couldn’t quite get to and he needed Van and Van’s bread to help him find a backscratcher. There wasn’t a virgin’s chance in Hollywood he was going back to Florida and the white picket fence trip that was their parents’ house. No way José. That would be like doing bad drugs even if his bloodstream were pure as angel’s piss. No, he’d ditch Van at some point after he scored. He’d think of something.

But right now Brother Van was Niko’s ticket to ride and he didn’t want to piss him off. So he got Van’s change and got him a Coke and joked a little too desperately and laughed a little too loudly and got him thinking maybe he’d get Niko on a plane after all. But most of all he got them moving.

The car shuddered idling at the entrance to the service station as they waited for a gap in traffic. The monotonous clack of the left turn signal was driving Niko nuts.

“Hey, let’s go to Vegas,” Niko said. “It’s a lot closer than Florida. Lot more fun too.”

“We are not going to Vegas. One shithole a year’s my limit, thanks.”

“Just joking. Jesus.” He smiled. “You think L.A.’s a shithole?”

There was no reason for what happened next. No cause. It was so simple. Van drove out onto the road in no special hurry. No opposing traffic. They turned left into the lane. The closest car a pale blue Dodge van waiting at the light in front of them. Niko saw the van in plenty of time. He even thought Hey if we don’t slow down we’re going to hit that van. It never occurred to him that Van would do anything but stop.

Van didn’t stop. He drove into the van. He wasn’t speeding. Wasn’t talking. Wasn’t looking anywhere but straight ahead. He just plain didn’t see it.

When they hit there was a single solid crunch and a mild smack like two bowling balls bumping. Not even very loud. Niko was wearing his seatbelt and he jackknifed forward but got his arms up in time and hit the dashboard with his palms and sprained his left wrist. That was it. Accident over. No shrieking brakes. No blaring horns. The van ahead of them rolled a foot or two and its double back door sprang open and a big cardboard box fell out.

Niko looked at his brother to ask him Didn’t you see that van? He was going to make a joke. Van hits van, film at eleven, yuk yuk. But Van was still slumped forward with the side of his head against the steering wheel. He looked at Niko with his tongue lolling and a doofy slackness to his face. Niko laughed. Yeah really cute, this stupid little fenderbender was the death of you, I get it.

Then a red bud bloomed in the white of Van’s right eye. It blossomed to the size of a penny. Dark red blood trickled from Van’s nose and flowed across his lip and still the bloodrose spread its petals in his eye. The dark blood trickled down Van’s jaw and welled and dripped onto the floorboard. The crimson flower filled Van’s eye now. Everything so quiet Niko heard the plop on the rubber floormat when the first drop hit.

“Van.” Niko’s voice small and lost inside the odd quiet of the station wagon. “Hey.” He touched his brother’s shoulder and his brother’s head lolled in an ugly boneless flop that leaned his body back against the door.

Niko jerked back. He looked out the windshield for help, anybody, someone who could do something. The driver of the pale blue van was just now getting out to see who had hit him. He looked annoyed but that was all. The cardboard box that fell out the back of the van had spilled cheap patchwork ragdolls onto the hood of the station wagon that beheld their liberation with vacant stupid grins that would haunt his nights for decades.

Moments that solidify the path of a life. Niko’s course was not bound by his brother’s death but instead was fixed when he looked upon his brother’s horribly unmoving form and thought How the hell am I supposed to score some dope now? Just a fleeting thought but there it was. That alien flower bloomed inside his brother’s head like something had invaded him and cored him like an apple, and all Niko could think to do was get away and hide and not talk to the driver of the van or to the police or anybody else, to gain a few more hours of freedom because every cell in his body was yelling that he had to find some god damned way to get a fix.

Niko glanced around the car. Hadn’t it been a while since they hit the van? Why wasn’t anyone coming to help them? Where was the driver of the van? He should have been back here by now.

Niko stared. The driver was still getting out of his van. One leg in broadcuffed jeans and scuffed workboots extended toward the pavement. An unlit filter cigarette clamped between his lips. The door half open as if he’d started getting out and then realized he’d forgotten something important.