The Nakeds (31 page)

“You can watch me surf,” Pablo said, smiling. He clicked on the radio and found a blues station that he said was his favorite. Most kids at school were dicks and they didn’t know dick about music, he told her. He had one hand on the wheel and the other in his lap, tapping his thigh, keeping rhythm with what he called a very bitchin’ harmonica solo.

At the end of the block, he turned down the radio so that the music was barely audible. “Becca told me that Mustafa spazzed out at a Jack in the Box. Said he went all body-snatcher and shit.” He sounded eager to hear all about it.

“When did you talk to Becca?” She turned to him, surprised.

He shrugged.

“I just told her about Mustafa last night.”

“Tell me about Mr. Spaz,” he said.

“He’s not Mr. Spaz,” she said.

Pablo, slow as he was going, went over a pothole and her cast bounced against the floorboard again.

And then it was quiet in the truck and she wished he’d turn up the music.

And then it was still quiet.

She rolled her window down a couple of inches and then rolled it up.

She shifted in her seat.

And then she found herself talking about Mustafa, telling the story as if he
were
Mr. Spaz, just that and nothing more.

She found herself describing his seizure with enthusiasm, in detail, talking about his flailing hands and jerking feet. She was outside of herself, watching, she was two girls: the first girl gesticulating and excited, and the other one hating that first girl. She was upset, realizing that Pablo was enjoying the story, but what upset her more was how much that first girl relished in the telling.

She heard herself laughing when Pablo laughed.

She heard herself embellishing—the burger didn’t just fall from his hand onto the table but flew across the room and landed in the corner. Azeem didn’t catch Mustafa’s body on the way down, but Mustafa fell to the floor and hit his head. She described the sharp crack of his skull striking the tile. “He could have died,” she said.

The more she talked, the bigger Pablo’s eyes got, the more engaged he was, and the more he seemed to like her.

The world was split into two groups, the damaged and the whole, the sick and the well, and no matter how much she wanted to be in one group, she knew she’d always be in the other. She could make out with a whole boy and even get him to like her, but she would always be a damaged girl.

She didn’t want to think about all that now, though.

She wanted to be someone’s girlfriend.

She wanted to be a girl on the beach.

She wanted to sit on the sand, smelling like coconut lotion, glistening and enviably tan, and watch Pablo surf. “My dad surfs,” she said suddenly.

“It’s cool when old men go out there. I’ve seen those old guys,” he said.

“He’s not
that
old.”

Pablo shrugged. “Is he good?”

“I’m sure he’s not as good as you are. I hear you’re really good.”

He told her that what she’d heard was true, he
was
good, but not good enough to go pro. He wanted to be a musician, anyway. He hated school and sometimes he even hated the beach and all the dicks who went to the beach and their dick girlfriends too. After he graduated,
if
he graduated, he said, he planned to live in the spotless truck and play his harmonica on the street for change until he was discovered.

She let him chatter on without interjecting and realized that she didn’t know him—she didn’t like him or like herself right now. She thought about telling him her stomach suddenly hurt and asking him to take her home, but decided to stay quiet.

“I’ll get me a pillow and a blanket and a hot plate,” he said, oblivious.

“You’d like that?” she said, weakly.

“Fuck yes.”

“I wouldn’t like that,” she said, realizing that it didn’t matter to him what she liked or didn’t like because his plans didn’t include her.

“I’ll live in a parking lot in downtown L.A and sleep in my truck. I’ve got a cousin who’s sleeping in a van now,” he said, proud.

“Poor guy.”

“What? Ernesto’s doing great.”

“Everyone needs a home.”

“You don’t get it,” he said. “I’ll live
here
.” He patted the steering wheel. “I’ll make friends with other people who love music as much as I do. I’ll hang out with my cousin and play my harmonica on the streets until someone important notices me.”

“Isn’t this your dad’s truck?” Hannah asked.

“It’ll be mine by then—and it’ll be clean,” he said, emphatically. He turned the music up, louder and louder—a guitar squealing so loud that even if she’d asked him another question he wouldn’t have heard her voice.

MARTIN RENTED
an apartment a few blocks from the water. What they’d advertised as an ocean view was really a sliver of sea you could only glimpse from the low bathroom window. You had to be sitting on the toilet with your head cocked at an uncomfortable angle to see a damn thing.

When Tony came over, Martin sat on the closed toilet seat and demonstrated.

“Where?” Tony said. “I can’t see anything.”

“Fuck it,” Martin said, standing up and rubbing his neck. “If I want to see the ocean, I can take a walk.”

“There’s a meeting tonight.” Tony looked at his watch. “Starts in a couple of hours.”

“Don’t need a meeting.” Martin was irritated. “I haven’t had a drink in months.”

“You want one, though, right? An icy cold beer? Some vodka and orange juice? Whiskey on the rocks? Remember how we used to sit for hours drinking whiskey? Didn’t matter how cheap it was, we loved it.”

Martin walked out of the bathroom with Tony talking to his back.

“Don’t you want something cold and frosty?” Tony pestered. “It doesn’t go away on its own. You have to confront it. Don’t you want a drink?”

“Only when you talk about it, dickhead,” Martin said over his shoulder.

“Let me know when it gets out of hand.”

“Not when.
If
.”

They were in the living room, sitting on Martin’s new couch. Martin rubbed his hand over the velvety fabric. “Bought this at the La Ramada swap meet, and those too,” he said, pointing proudly at the red leather easy chairs across from them.

“Annabelle’s been bugging me about new furniture. She wants a couch and a dining room set. She doesn’t want the boy in the girl’s crib. It’s yellow—we bought a yellow one so that the next baby, no matter what it was, could sleep in it. She wants, she wants, she wants. You’re lucky, man,” he said.

Martin said nothing.

“It’s not like we can’t afford it; we can. We’ve got enough money—it’s not that.”

“Get her what she wants, then.”

Tony shook his head. “Seems to me that you should sit on a couch until the springs poke up your ass.”

They were quiet a few minutes until Martin finally said, “Don’t
you
want some whiskey yourself?”

Tony sighed. He shifted his weight and looked out the window. He breathed in. “Can’t see the ocean from here, Marty, but you can smell it. Smells good,” he said.

“Wouldn’t you love a beer?” Martin pressed.

“Yes, yes I would,” he admitted. “I always want one, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to have one.”

“How’s that feel—me bugging you like that?”

“Shitty.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m trying to be a friend and sometimes I guess I’m just—”

“A dickhead,” Martin said, interrupting.

“I was going to say an asshole, but dickhead works.” Tony smiled. “Sorry about earlier.”

“Yeah, OK.”

“I mean it, Marty.”

Sadie hopped up on the couch between them and they both reached out to pet her head at the same time, their hands colliding. They quickly pulled away and Sadie had to do without.

The two of them sat without saying a word, thinking about the beer they wouldn’t drink, the many bottles of whiskey that waited for them lined up high on liquor store shelves all over town.

Tony got up from the couch and moved to one of the chairs. He cranked the handle on the side and shot back, disappearing from Martin’s view, his shoes in the air. “
Damn,
” he said.

“Don’t break my new chair. Pull the lever toward you,” Martin instructed.

Tony jiggled the handle and sat upright, his feet hitting the carpet. He situated himself. He ran his hand along the side of the chair. “Feels like vinyl to me. How much did you pay for these chairs?” he asked.

“Enough.”

“I hope you didn’t think you were paying for leather.”

“Don’t worry about it.”

They were quiet again until Tony finally said, “Do you like being back in town? You OK here? How’s work?”

“Great,” Martin said, meaning it. “I’m the boss. I’m in the kitchen, making stuff. I’m trying out new recipes all the time. You and Annabelle should come by on Saturday. I’ll get you a good table,” he said.

“We’ll get a sitter. You’ll give us a deal?”

Martin nodded. “My dad hired a good crew. He had an eye for that sort of thing. Not sure if I’ll be as sharp at hiring people when the time comes.”

“You’ll do fine.”

“I don’t know. My dad was a good judge. He could always pick them. He knew who’d be fast and who’d be slow.”

“You got foxy waitresses?”

“I’m talking about busboys and waiters. But there
is
a redhead—” Martin began and then stopped himself. “Want some iced tea?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Or a beer?” Martin teased.

“Tea’s fine. Tea’s great. I’ve been sober five years,” Tony reminded him. “How do you think I became a pharmacist? College and graduate school? I wouldn’t have become anything if I kept going like I was going.”

Tony asked him if he wished he’d gone to college. “You should have gone, man. It’s not too late,” he said.

“Cooking school was enough for me,” Martin said, thinking that Tony was somehow managing to bore him and irritate him at once, thinking that maybe he’d go back to Las Vegas after all. Maybe he’d get someone else to take care of the restaurant. He’d open a Kettle’s on the Strip and plan out the whole menu on his own. “I’ll get that tea,” Martin said, walking toward the kitchen. Sadie sprinted from the couch and followed him, the two of them leaving Tony alone to congratulate himself.

“Hey,” Tony shouted after him. “Tell me about that redhead.”

PABLO AND
Hannah pulled up to the curb in front of Rebecca’s house, and this time he made a point of rushing over to her side and helping her out. He pulled the crutches from the back and leaned them against the truck before offering her his hand.

Hannah had told Rebecca that Mustafa probably wouldn’t join them, but still Rebecca looked disappointed when they showed up on her porch without him and, maybe more importantly, without his pot. “We’ll have to drink
all
the vodka now,” she whined.

“Hey, Becca,” Pablo said. “Can you help me put the shell on?” He gestured to the truck, his future home, in the driveway.

Hannah wished she could have helped Pablo with the shell and was insulted that he hadn’t even asked her. She knew she was useless in a toe-to-groin and would have been mad if he’d asked her to help in the first place. There was no way for him to win.

She stood on the porch watching Pablo and Rebecca haul the shell from the back, and when they zipped it up together, chatting and laughing, she imagined losing them both.

Rebecca sat too close to Pablo on the couch. She laughed too hard at his jokes and twirled her long hair around a finger. She looked mesmerized and impressed when he said the most innocuous things and Hannah was relieved when the phone rang and it was Mustafa, relieved when Rebecca trotted upstairs to her room to talk to him, leaving Hannah and Pablo finally alone.

They heard her bedroom door close and then her exaggerated laugh behind it. They heard her enunciating words, saying them too loudly, the way she always did when she talked to Mustafa.

“She really likes him,” Hannah said, although she didn’t think this was true and wasn’t sure why she was saying it.

“She likes his pot,” Pablo said, laughing.

“He’s more than his pot.”

“The burger went flying, huh?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought you said—”

“I don’t know,” she snapped.

“Whoa,” he said, backing up. “Let’s be nice.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

He came closer, talked to her in a sweet voice. “I like you, Hannah. I do.” And she felt that he was trying to convince not only her but also himself.

And even though Hannah wasn’t at all sure that she still liked Pablo, it was important that he like her, so she responded to his soft voice, moving toward him, letting him kiss her and kissing him back.

And he handed her the crutches, and she moved with him into the den, and tried to convince herself with her body and his body that they were still boyfriend and girlfriend. So what if they disagreed on the way over. So what if he wanted to live in his truck and play his harmonica on the street. People say all sorts of things they don’t mean, she told herself. So what if she told him about Mustafa’s seizure, if Pablo brought out the worst in her—it wasn’t his fault that the worst was there.

In the den with the door shut, they couldn’t hear Rebecca’s voice, but Hannah felt like her friend was still with them. Rebecca was in the room, was on the couch with them—her voice and laugh in Hannah’s head. Still, they kissed and kissed and kissed, and Pablo kissed her neck and touched her breasts, and Hannah kissed back, positioning herself just so, inviting his hand into her favorite jeans.

The back of Pablo’s hand scraped hard against her cast and he cussed too loud. “Fuck,” he nearly screamed, moving his hand from the left side to the right.

She only kissed him again, trying to pretend that her leg wasn’t in the way. She was a girl whose cast was coming off in a couple of weeks, a girl who would then join the healthy, whole girls on their side of the room.

•  •  •

Later, when Rebecca finally got off the phone with Mustafa, she joined Hannah and Pablo in the backyard where they were sitting on wicker chairs, drinking a concoction of cherry punch and vodka. They’d already helped themselves to the Chinese food she’d promised them. Takeout cartons of fried rice and cashew chicken, half-eaten, sat on a side table between them.