The Sweet Dead Life (18 page)

"Already dead," Amber said. But she smiled.

I didn't smile back. "You're also covered in dust," I said. During her hissy fit, the gobs of dust on the ceiling fan had catapulted into the air and splattered her EMT shirt.

"I'll loan you something," I told her helpfully.

She gave me the stink eye. Whatever. I'd have done the same.

We left the house about twenty minutes later. Amber was wearing her EMT

pants and my old pink T-shirt that read,

154

"This Ain't My First Rodeo." I was still in my jeans, tank and hoodie. While I was getting her the shirt, Amber had managed to combine our last banana with the frozen blueberries and the ice cubes into a thin looking smoothie. I made my mother drink it, and when she leaned back on her pillows and her eyes fluttered shut, Casey kissed her on the cheek.

"You sleep."

It was almost dark outside, and the Gilroy's had plugged in their decorations.

The two yard angels glowed like spaceships in the middle of their lawn. On our driveway, my two angels narrowed their eyes at each other.

"What's the matter now?" Amber muttered. "Are you too stoned to drive?"

"That's what I'm talking about," he said evenly. "You may be my boss, but you need to lose the damn attitude."

"Whatever. You can drive. But the car better not smell like marijuana."

"It's Mamaw Nell's," I piped up. "She smokes Pall Malls."

We climbed into the Merc. None of us spoke, but Casey kept stealing angry glances at Amber as he drove. It was the same look he used to give me when we were little and I insisted that he watch
Dora the Explorer
instead of
ESPN
. I watched them nervously from the backseat. Finally, apropos of nothing, he snapped: "It's
my
dad and
my
mom and
my
sister and
my
life. At least it was. I mean isn't that the whole point of you being here? Making sure I do the right thing? So how can I do the right thing, if you keep doing it for me?"

She sighed. "You're right. I can't. However your dad fits into this whole puzzle, I don't know. You two are on your own."

155

I cowered in the backseat. For once, I wished Amber had shown a little more attitude. Even a lie would have been better than the scary truth.

156

157

W
hat Casey and I Remembered About the Day our Father

Disappeared:

*
The weather was humid but not hot yet. I knew this because I
remembered what I was wearing: the lightweight navy fleece that said
Monterey Aquarium, a souvenir from our trip to California the previous
summer
.

*
Mom had been late from work. A patient had gone wandering from the
Alzheimer's unit and Oak View went on lockdown until they found him.

Somehow, he made it back to his room on his own. She came home
about nine o'clock. Back then this was my bed time and I'd just put on
my PJs. The three of us asked each other where Dad was
.

*
Technically I don't remember this part, but Dad had been to Manny's
Real Tex Mex that day. The gift certificate was our proof of that, and the
confirmation by Bryce's buddy, Zeke
.

158

*
Another related memory: I had been to Manny's with Dad. He made a
big deal about their chili gravy and how when they got their liquor
license, they were going to have ten different Mexican beers on tap. He
scribbled it all down in a new spiral notebook. And that disappeared
with him. All the old notebooks--packed full of reviews and interviews
and descriptions--were still tucked on a shelf in his closet just like
always. Now I wondered. Why hadn't Dad told me he was going back?

*
Back to the day he went AWOL: When he left the house that morning,
he was wearing brown khaki Dockers slacks, topsiders, and a white
roll-up-sleeve dress shirt. He climbed into his blue Ford Focus. Mom
gave the police the exact same details, and more. He hadn't washed his
hair. He'd fiddled with his messenger bag. He'd kissed us and told us
that he hadn't slept well. Back then Mom's memory was precise like
that. It should have been. She spent all day working to spruce up other
people's brains. Like I said: irony. She once knew every memory trick in
the book
.

*
The police had been convinced that Dad had run off. "Was there
another woman?" they asked Mom like a zillion times
.

ABOUT SIX MONTHS in, Mom decided to believe them. Secretly, I'd given up in a much shorter period of time. Now this made me feel small and guilty.

Dad's cell phone had gone right to voicemail every time we called it. Mom had continued to pay for the phone for three years. "She calls his phone to listen to his voice on the message," Casey told me. Eventually he and I admitted to each other that we'd been doing the same thing. But the weirdest part: Someone had started 159 putting money in Mom and Dad's bank account not long after he disappeared. At first Mom didn't even notice--things were crazy and Dad had always taken care of the finances.

But then the deposits stopped. Just like that.

WE DROVE SOUTH on I-45 into Houston. The air was balmy again.

Christmas in Houston was always a crapshoot. Two years ago it had snowed--enough flakes to make an actual snowball. Last year, we walked around in shorts. Right now it was somewhere in between. But everything was twinkling and glowing like the holidays. Manny's Real Tex Mex sat on Westheimer, a little ways off Montrose. The building had been a movie theater back in the day, and the specials were up on the old theater marquee in red block letters. The combo plate looked promising: two cheese enchiladas with chili gravy, two tamales, rice, beans, chips and a bonus taquito with queso.

Tiny beer-bottle-shaped lights hung from strings on the ceiling. Half of the tables were packed with people scarfing down tortilla chips, chugging beer and margaritas. Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus is Coming to Town"

blared from the loudspeakers.

A smiling, inflatable snowman in a Santa hat and poncho sat in the corner.

When we walked by him, his eyes darted back and forth and then he said "

Feliz Navidad
, y'all."

Dad would have loved it. The knot in my stomach returned.

Casey, Amber, and I trooped upstairs. The game room had once been an upstairs lobby for the balcony level. The red-flowered carpet looked worn enough to be the original. It smelled like old carpet, anyway, and the room was stuffed with dozens of flickering screens and ancient pinball machines.

160

There was only one guy up there, hunched over
Terminator 2
. He thumped the pinging and flapping pinball machine with his hip. "Yeah!" he shouted.

He was thin and balding, his twig-like arms hanging out of a T-shirt that read

"One taco short of a combo platter." If you added some hair, he could have been Casey's age.

"That must be Zeke," Casey said, confirming our collective worst fears.

Right. So like Bryce, he was probably closer to thirty. On the other hand, it seemed Zeke was a man of intense concentration. At least when it came to pinball. I only hoped it also came to random nights five years and eight months ago. When he didn't look up--even after Casey's third "Hey dude!"--

Amber stepped forward.

Suddenly, the lights on the pinball machine blinked out. The little silver ball rolled down the hole and the whole thing went dark.

I frowned at Amber. "I thought you had earthbound limitations," I whispered.

She flicked a finger toward the floor. "Cord's loose," she said.

I followed her gaze to the black extension cord hanging almost out of the wall socket. Zeke jolted and turned around. He looked at the three of us like we'd fallen from the sky. Not far from the truth.

"Bryce told us to see you," Casey said. He sounded like he'd wandered into some old spy movie.
Bryce told us to see you. Do you have the goods?

Zeke looked disoriented. His beady eyes twitched like he was still watching silver pinballs. "I'm hungry," he said. "Let's grab some grub. I'll tell you what I know."

Zeke, it seemed, was in the same spy movie with Casey.

161

Amber sighed. "Geeks," she muttered. "Like there weren't enough of them when I was pre-med. I'm cursed. That has to be it."

ZEKE ORDERED THE combo special. Casey and I stuck to ice tea, spending the little money Casey had in his wallet. Amber sipped from her water glass and shot occasional longing glances at the margaritas being slugged down by the ladies at the next table.

I'd have indulged in some taquitos if we had cash. I should have answered Amber honestly back at the house. I
was
hungry.

The waiter--a meaty, muscular guy with very hairy arms and no name tag--

eyeballed us as he delivered our table's one and only meal order. The look in his eyes was hard to read, but I think it was saying,
Why are you four
cheap losers hogging a table and not ordering food? You definitely don't
look like big tippers
.

"Can I get you anything else?" he asked dully.

We shook our heads.

He stomped off, hairy arms swinging at his sides.

I stuffed a couple chips in my mouth and tried not to drool while Zeke forked into the tamale. Mid-chew, he reached into his pocket and dug out a piece of paper. With the drama that matched his weird silence, he unfolded it.

My father's byline photo stared up at us.

My mouthful of chips stuck in my throat. Casey was right. And screw it: Zeke deserved to be as geeky and dramatic and spy-movie-ish as he wanted. Sort of.

"This is the guy," Zeke said around his mouthful of tamale and gravy. He tapped my father's face, leaving a greasy dot of red in the middle of his forehead. "Bryce told you, right? About me?"

162

Amber smiled without any humor. "About you?"

"Yeah, that I've got one of those memories? If it's connected to a place I ate or a place that supports gamers, then I don't forget." He tapped the same gravy-grease finger to his own forehead. "You can trust me on that."

Casey glared at him. "And?"

Zeke tucked back into his combo plate. He looked a little like that actor Michael Cera. Only if Zeke had been in the Scott Pilgrim movie, he wouldn't have had seven girlfriends, evil or otherwise.

Amber leaned across the Formica table. "Zeke," she said. "I'm not a patient girl. If you have something to tell us, I would suggest you begin talking."

"She's not joking, man," my brother added. "
You
can trust
me
on that."

Zeke nodded. Chewed. Slurped some water through his straw. Our surly waiter appeared. He refilled our chip basket. I waited until he was gone to spot check for stray arm hairs. But before Zeke could dish, Manny himself walked by and waved hello.

I recognized Manny--whom I'd never actually met when I was here with dad--

from the picture on the front of the menu. He was in his late forties, really tall--about six foot five I estimated--thin and bald, the shave-your-head kind, not the follicle-challenged kind. Zeke got hyped at Manny's brief appearance. Now that Manny had franchised into Austin and Dallas and San Antonio, Zeke told us, he didn't come around as much. It was like a celebrity sighting or seeing the Pope. At least to Zeke, who chewed some more, then--when we were all on the verge of exploding--finally spat it out.

He was positive that he had seen Dad talking to Manny. On that fateful April 22.

163

The reason? Or reasons?

Back then Zeke thought he might want a culinary career. He'd taken a couple of cooking classes at Houston Community College and he wasn't half bad as a sous chef.
(Note: I have no idea if the chef part is true. But it's
what Zeke said. He was irritating as hell, but I didn't take him for a liar.)
He'd come to the restaurant that day to chat up Manny about a job in the kitchen.

Manny had been buying old pinball machines from Bryce, so Zeke figured he had an in.

"I drank like a gallon of iced tea while I was waiting," Zeke told us, finally taking a break from eating. "Your dad and Manny talked a long time. I didn't want to be in the john when Manny got freed up, but the waitress kept bringing out plate after plate of food, and Manny--he was pointing and talking and your dad was tasting and chewing."

"Food writer," I told Zeke. "He was gonna write a book about Tex-Mex."

If this interested Zeke it was hard to tell. He didn't seem to care so much about what had happened to Dad as he did about impressing us with his phenomenal powers of memory. I concentrated on the tortilla chips to keep myself from saying what I wanted to say:
I just hope all these stories are real
and not some fancy game-boy chicanery. If they are, I will procure new boots
so I can kick your skinny rear end
.

"Anyway," Zeke went on, "I had to piss like a racehorse. Finally, I said the hell with it. But I figured I'd give Manny a heads up before I headed to the john. And that's when it happened."