What We Do Is Secret (27 page)

“All right. I’ll talk to Blitzer. But not to make anything easier for you.”

“Why, then?”

“To set an example.”

“Of what?”

“Believing.”

She says maybe I’m nobody, and nobody cares, but maybe I’m somebody, maybe I stopped trouble, me alone, maybe Blitzer learned from me, maybe it was me who made the difference tonight, for Tim and David, it’s possible, anything is, anything better be where we run out of continent, maybe I should think about it.

She kills the engine and gets out and walks over to the van and I crack the window and slump back in the seat, trying not to think. I just listen to the soft
ka-thump
patter pitter of wide-apart rain and seagulls playing treble to the bass of the waves, if I could have one superpower I’d end up flying, I know I would.

53

Maybe it comes with the territory the way that Viet vet dude said getting it does, if you’re local, how the smell of morning coming soon out here is in my blood almost, though I’ve never lived anywheres close to the beach or even been here this early I ever remember, except once in OC the night Pat Brown ran down that cop in the Cuckoo’s Nest parking lot, and lots of us ended up at Huntington afraid to show on the streets till there was traffic, and witnesses in daylight, we felt like targets in a shooting gallery, we huddled in the sand around the legs of lifeguard towers and waited for the sun, for any sun to come.

It didn’t smell like this though really, like that mercury chrome they paint on your knees and elbows when you skin them when you’re little, and wool gloves when they’re wet, just barely, and those waxy wrappers on Starburst candies balled up in the pockets of your jeans and sniffed before you throw them out, there’s whispers of fruit but none you recognize, it’s not like Hollywood, not like steam from the Jell-O vats venting.

I guess I should have known from the beginning, waking up to what kind of cherry, black as night in Nome in shaked Alaska. I should have known crossing Highland with that leather dyke in Hermans, heel plates strafing the pavement like machine guns, like a firing squad. I should have known when Blitzer first brought up Idaho, and how did I imagine it, holiday in the sun?

Not even.

Deep dark water, scaring me, calling me.

I should have known counting backwards from the year 2000, doing the math on my age if I live that long and even while counting just saying no, to all those candles I won’t blow. I should have known when Siouxsie said my hand was cold, because I’m never cold, sleeping with Darby he’d open every window wide gaping wide in January even and stay the furnace too because he had his personal, me. But I’ve been lizardlike all night long, craving rays like Billy Graham Cracker prays, and there’s no prayer for me now, even with the rain just misting, I felt the shark-blood chill of that water on the wind back beneath the 405, I’ll freeze to death before I drown. So here I am counting again, one more time with no crowd of contenders at the finish line, counting my blessing.

I should have known with Siouxsie too when I read her mind on Santa Monica Boulevard, when she asked if I knew why Exene’s so multiple cool, and yes I did, I took the words, because she looks like Death. I should have known on my back on the tiles at the Jell-O factory waiting for Blitzer with a dead man watching, a dead man talking, Darby, promising, I’ll know them when I need them, and here they are at the damp cold mackerel slap of dawn, the dot dot dots, fully conned at last, what, reasons, when, now.

And then there was Holy Cross Cemetery, shivering in the night wind blowing in our faces off the graves, how much more of an omen did I need? I should have known with the Dog Groomer to the Stars, who brought up his lover who died, out of the blue navy blue, then said my whole life’s ahead of me, because a dude like that, there’s just one rule, whatever he says, the opposite’s true. And too what was I wishing for before I bailed, a high-rise window for a checkout route.

Then I should have known at Radar’s, from those feeder mice, deformed and doomed, I should have known in the Nast Western from that tunnel vision, around us and endless and whose tunnel, Darby’s. I should have known when Blitzer kissed me, touched me, fucked me, sang to me, down, down under the water, drown, drown under the water, I should have known afterwards, naked, wet, wondering, for the first time and last, what if I just went back, then realizing, no, I can’t, ever.

The driver’s side opens and Phranc leans inside.

“C’mon.”

“I’m not talking to Blitzer.”

“Who said anything about Blitzer? I’ll walk you out there.”

It feels like slow motion opening my door, and it’s the door that does it, I’m thinking of another door, the open door to that room where we found Rory, I don’t know anything about that door except Blitzer didn’t open it, he was with me, but what if I did know, it might explain what happened, it might explain it all, I don’t trip on it too hard but it’s like I’m back at Huntington in the sand by the lifeguard tower, waiting for the sun, for any sun to come, knowing it only comes through that doorway, if it comes at all.

Who am I supposed to be, though, a junior cop, sifting through the clues? Or is it the jury, what do they call it, reasonable doubt?

I mean all doubt’s reasonable, it’s no doubt that’s unreasonable. Blitzer said he’d never lie to me. And if you want the whole and nothing but, I can’t be sure he ever did. And if he did set Rory up, why did he tell me he was dead? I wouldn’t have known otherwise. We could have bailed for Idaho and grown beards to our boot tips and I might never have found out. But if Blitzer is lying and I believe him, it’s worse than playing junior cop, worse than playing jury, who am I but his sex boy, who am I but his slave, doing what he wants me to, tells me to, just to fill my romeo void. And maybe the mass of good citizens live that way but no, just no, only the dude who says no is free and death before yes.

It’s even more reason to check out, if Blitzer isn’t lying but I don’t believe him, it just proves how fucked up I am, one more feeder mouse, one out of many. And what’s the name anyways of the shut-down roller coaster on the pilings past the caved-in end of the pier, no not the Python, but close enough, the Eel.

Blitzer has to be telling the truth, and I have to believe him, it’s the only way, but even Sid Sings back on my chest instead of Animal Cracker’s couldn’t make it my way, it’s more like no way,
no way, cannot live in a world this gay
, thank you Tony Adolescent, you’ll never kiss me now.

This huge pterodactyl-bird flies right overhead, with wings that pump air down like bellows and creak like rusty hinges, hinges on a door, if only I knew, why that open door?

Phranc says it’s a heron.

“When you were set on doing this with Darby, were the two of you checking out together, was that the plan?”

“We were just going swimming.”

But she says it’s too risky here for swimming, with riptides and water like a wrecking yard anyways, with all the broken pieces of the rides and arcades.

“Rory went here all the time.”

“Rory surfed. And he was good. He knew what he was doing.”

“Darby came out here too.”

“You were with him?”

“No, but he said he did.”

“And you believed him?”

“I guess.”

She doesn’t ask why, she doesn’t need to, she’s got me asking myself, it’s mind control, Darby said lots of things, what she’s really asking is why I’d believe him when the question’s life or death but I won’t believe Blitzer when the question’s the same.

She says she knows Darby went swimming in the reservoir in West LA, once she went with him, swimming underground, Darby opened up a hatch and they went down into a sewer, then he closed the hatch behind them and there they were in this scary world, with no light at all, just pillars and water and darkness.

“I think that’s where the story came from, Rockets.”

And she starts talking about what she calls playing the tapes, and no not songs, though doors come up again, it’s how door number one, bad shit happens, and you deal, you know, for better or for worse. Then door number two, bad shit happens again, and if it’s close overall to what happened before, not in the details maybe but big-picture-wise, what you end up doing is dealing the same way. And not just dealing either but seeing it the same way to begin with, even bending the pieces of the puzzle in your mind to make them snap together into the old greatest-hits big picture better than their natural fit with the top-twenty new one. And we do this all our lives from here to fuckin infirmity and it’s basically one of the Jolly Green Giant–size reasons so many married people don’t stay that way unless they’re.

Fuck.

Well, masochists is what she says.

Hell fuckin na.

Why not start right there. Shine the tapes and play your sicko cards instead. On the fuckin table boy. Show ’em to the seagulls before you throw ’em to the fishes.

And I can’t believe it but I do, I just start talking, I tell her about that first time with Darby, he said to fuck him and I did, hard really hard, and he said scratch him and he said punch him and he said rip handfuls of his hair out by the roots and I did I did I did. And I bit him till he bled, everywhere he told me to, till he was like the Braille edition of
The Illustrated Man
, with teeth marks not tattoos. Though what was he to me but gentle gentle gentle, that night and always after, too gentle.

Too fucking gentle.

We’re at the end now, the broken-down railing at the abandoned dead end of the wave-slammed pier, where you can jump off and just swim, and it doesn’t matter if you live or die.

Phranc holds out her wrist and guides my fingers with her other hand to the scar from her Germs burn.

Maybe there’s lots of tapes I play.

The waves pound the pilings below and water rockets geyser up past our faces and explode in the air with spray so dense we’re drinking more than breathing, swallowing salt water like those Foreign Legionnaires in the book Blitzer read, emerging from the desert lost and crazed with thirst but finding only ocean and forgetting how fish are full of fresh water.

I tell Phranc there’s something I’ve been wanting to say to her, she’s light-years better than Darby at mind control, she got all those goons from the beaches to do the right thing when they took off their swazis.

She says it wasn’t all, it was some. And it wasn’t mind control, just telling the truth.

“Well, to tell the truth you have to know what it is,” I say.

Though facing it’s another thing. And that’s my problem, notice that I didn’t tell her I took off mine. And I hope she’s not remembering I wore one.

“Sometimes it’s enough just to know what isn’t,” she says. “And shortcuts help with that.”

“What kind of shortcuts?”

“Like if you’re deciding something based on what’s the punk thing to do. Which has to be like the second worst reason for checking out. Any time you’re thinking like that you better find the nearest mirror and stand in front of it waving a WARNING CAUTION MERGING BUSES flag till your arms fall off.”

The creak of heron wings, again, door hinges, again.

She says speaking of checking out, she’s up to something way more punk than that. She’s planning on making a living hosting Tupperware parties for Westside JAPs, no not Asians, I get it now, Jewish American Princesses, and yes with her flattop, and yes in her combat boots.

And how punk is that?

More punk than Radar buying feeder mice on Gower every day?

Fuck yeah.

She says the only thing more punk would be me signing on as her assistant.

She hugs me. She’s so small. I feel like this burly dude. This man. So that’s what it takes, to make me feel like a man. A lesbian. The world really is funny as fuck sometimes.

She says she’ll walk back now, give me my alone time, she’ll kick it in the parking lot, keep Blitzer company, he’s pretty worked right now but he’ll get over it, or he won’t, it’s like how we deal with figuring out we’re really alone, period, we get over it, or don’t.

“At least he’s got a head start,” she says. “Being black.”

“What do you mean?”

“His race.”

“Blitzer’s black?”

“You didn’t know?”

“No, I—it’s like, I mean, it never came up, I guess.”

Or did it?

Don’t ask
me
about the KKK.

I know how Mormons feel about people like me.

Here’s the brother.
Your
brother.

“Well, in a way that’s really cool. But think about it, Rockets. It’s why the mistaken identity could only go so far.”

She turns away and her boots make little splashes in the puddles from the spray. Soft splashes fading on the shuddering pier till I call out, “Wait.”

I ask her what’s the first worst reason for checking out.

She says playing a tape.

A Darby tape.

54

So now I’m alone in the wet live air with Rory’s wave, the freight train rumble and the Richter wail when the pilings shake and the backsucking rip to the world beyond islands, redwoods, seals in sea caves, coral reefs and cannibal chiefs, past sharks ever circling to the fourth dimension time itself, the date line, where you can look behind your back and see the future, if you’ve got the right directions, just don’t ask me, I’ve never even been to Tijuana, but I’ll make something of myself, oh yes, though no one says what, oh no, my hands turn red, his and mine, all this started, all this ends, it was stained with rust or blood, he couldn’t tell, he asked the dude and he said no, he couldn’t say, it was the knife, he was Rory, the dude his first trick, first ever, where was here, right here, the Cove, this was Rory’s wave, and more than once he told me how it felt to be a surfer here, it was maybe first grade then and clay wheels on skateboards then and Mickey Dora was around and Buzzy Trent and Jackie Baxter, dudes these Samo kids today never knew from Mister Rogers and they talk about vals, and there were surf breaks then like here and Station 2, and Pacific Ocean Park was happening and he meant hard, he learned to sneak in before he learned to read, and one time he stole this Sting-Ray bike and doused it with lighter fluid and rode it off the pier in flames, but first they shut down POP, Disneyland killed it, so his dad lost his stand selling surf wax aboveboard and beers to the boys from under the counter, then Renewal came in and moved everybody out to build the Shores, so he was living inland and the pier was caving in and this pyro dude was lighting fires, but even though, and even then, there were still rad places left where you could stash your stuff and kick it when your dad got sick and weird, and still the waves, the waves were the best part anyways, the lefts at the second T below the bubble ride and the right at the Cove, he kept his board up here and just jumped off and shone the paddle out, it was sketch enough as it was with the twisted girders and jumbled concrete on three sides and broken pilings bobbing in the water with barnacles that cut you hard, and the sideways rips if you lost your board and no beach to swim back to, but when it was on, four to five feet overhead and sometimes eight or ten, hell fuckin na when it was on, the Cove, it was perfect, it was hollow, it was clean, but always different too, unpredictable, and it all came back every time you took off, the broken boards and the gashes, and you’d be shaking inside you’d get so scared, so then to ride real well was like cruising with your foot to the floor and every light stuck on green, like you could live your whole life like that, without any rules, but the condos in the Shores weren’t selling and they thought it was the view and started tearing down the pier, and the pier made the break, though they only got as far as slicing the deck before they realized the job they had, so it made a gap in the pier before the Eel at the end, where it was caved in completely for like twenty feet, with no way across till Rory and Drew Blood found a two-by-four and nailed it in place so they could hand-over-hand, they called it Black Cat Walk, nine lives down to the dirty water foaming, frothing in hard as coffin nails, slamming steel and concrete and rotting wood, it freaked the most radical boys he knew, even Mad Dog, the fiercest thing Rory ever saw was Mad Dog skateboarding down California Incline, passing a three-axle semi while a car was coming up, and coming up fast, but Mad Dog was afraid of heights, and the first time he followed Rory across he got to the middle where it bowed a little and he just hung there frozen like a human icicle, and finally when Rory talked him over he cried and said he’d never do it again, and Rory just said Dude, you got to, you got to get back somehow, there ain’t no food out here, and that got him laughing, but the truth was Mad Dog never crossed out again, not the whole time Rory had his crib out there before he left for Hollywood and Darby, and afterwards it just wasn’t the same between them, Rory guessed because he saw him cry, though all it really was anyways was practice, Rory knew how to swing like a pendulum and just ace it, easy, and even coming back home a little drunk or tweaked it always felt good having that front door, how many people can say they got to live inside a roller coaster, it’s delight years from home, that trick didn’t know what to think when Rory said he’d show him where he surfed, except maybe he was leading him on to jack his cash, and when he saw the Cove he still didn’t believe it, but he kept on following, just like he followed Rory out of Ships and asked him if he wanted a lift, he’d heard him tell the waitress he’d been in Hollywood all night and still had to get to the pier to check out the waves, and Rory thought he’d lose him anyways at Black Cat Walk, it started as more of a tease than a trick, he knew the score but hadn’t scored himself yet, he was just my age now, but next thing you know the two of them were out there with the surf up and waves pounding the pilings so their voices shook talking, it was dark inside the Eel but the tracks let in light, the dude had blue eyes over the water but gray eyes in the toolroom where Rory showed him the knife, he found it in the sand the week before, dude said maybe it was blood, maybe it wasn’t, he put his arms around Rory, he touched his hair, he told him he’d better watch out for himself, and Rory said he did, he never brought anybody out there, dude said he didn’t know anybody who could make it across, and they laughed over that, locked tight with their legs twined together but their faces apart, they could see their breath, he could see his eyes, Rory said You’re different, dude said How’s that, Rory said I don’t know, I can feel it, dude said he could feel it too, and they laughed again, seems like everything was different back then, you always had your skateboard with you, were always on it, that was how you got around, and you did lots of different things, you did slaloms, you did speed runs, you did bank riding, you did pools, seems once you ride a perfect pool you ride something worse and it doesn’t seem that fun anymore, now does it, but how would I know, it’s like the date line, I’ll never know, I’ve never surfed and never will, I’m not even good at pinball, can’t surf can’t swim and who would teach me, Darby said he would, Darby said lots of things, Darby said It doesn’t matter if you live or die but Blitzer said Forget what Darby said, we felt like giants then, his breath I felt his eyes I felt, his sweat his taste his thirst I said I can’t forget what Darby said, he said Remember then, don’t you remember, yes I remember, I remember Hollywood and Rory missing mornings, missing lights from the lineup, lights and lights out, onshore street-lights and their silent shared shutdown seen only and alone by surfers sailors pilots in the violet, watching waitful over wavering long on reflection then suddenly dark and between you this glassy perfection, liquid-turned-rock shine, starlight within, melting mainland to morning to moment by moment the new-bright the not-night the never you find, no other country like it, no place else to get that view, the country the color of sun on wheat, the country the color the color the country, shining eyes, Spanish eyes, surfers now like sailors then, holding their breath, keeping their distance, keeping the secret that comes with the territory, anything might happen here and only here and why, the golden land was never ours before we were the land’s, will never be, we’re not supposed to be, we’re not, lights out, not here, lights out, like the dawn of another clean world is what Darby called the purple sky over storybook cities on perfect shining hills, and it glows around us and on us but in us too, it gives us this light, so it may be night but it’s never really dark, not completely, and if it’s never really dark you’re never really lost, you’re always going somewhere, and if you believe it’s somewhere better it will be, it’s already better, just by believing, that’s what Darby said, but if you do, and if it is, then it could matter then couldn’t it, if you live or die, it matters or it doesn’t and fuck, I don’t know which, I thought I did, I thought Darby had the answer but maybe I was wrong, maybe there’s more than one answer, maybe it’s not true or false but more like multiple choice, and the choices, fuck, I don’t know, if it’s believing that makes the difference and I believe Blitzer didn’t jack those drugs then everything’s already better, just like that, but how can anything real be that easy, for me nothing’s easy, masked or unmasked, shaved or unshaved, fucked or unfucked, it started with a cigarette and how does it end, stapled with my boot tips over inner space, thinking Dude, just jump, just fuckin jump, jump now, I don’t even get to see it flash before my rhymes-with-cries, my so-called life, I wouldn’t yesterday, I won’t tomorrow, it’s all the same to me, Fluff ’n’ Fold to Flipper specials, all this started, all this ends, rain again, not mist or drizzle real rain, yes I remember, rain, with Darby, outside the Masque, so long so long pushing down so long so long so fucking fucking long and yes so good so good so fucking fucking good, the world’s a mess, it’s in my kiss, people come out here, they just don’t get it, did Animal Cracker get it, yes, he’s local, it comes with the territory, lost borders, lookouts, watch fires burning, painted caves and Spanish graves, Rory made surf trips to Santa Barbara, there’s islands there, the Indians there said God made their people on the tops of the mountains when the world was water, long time passing, the sun shone, the water ran, dawn to dust, all this ends, Rory’s dead, Darby’s dead, do I get it, if I could see any islands out there I’d choose one man-glands down but the only clue cards on the table say the ocean ahead and the tracks behind, not the train tracks or the tracks on the record or the tracks on AC’s arms but all the ones that flowed me here, for better and for worse, comes with the comes with the comes with the but, this, is, right, now, it’s in my kiss and mine alone, Darby said it doesn’t matter if but if I was Darby and Phranc was me, you’ll know them when you need them, yes, lights out, Darby said you can cover your tracks by making tracks and if you make the right kind of tracks whatever’s behind can’t follow, you’ve escaped, you’re free, lights out, deciding, no, not easy, no, lights out but how many people ever really help you, and I know one thing, I got to get back somehow, there ain’t no food out here, and I remember too, I remember Darby telling me about the purple sky and making it so perfect with words that I could see it just like you and all those jacks and all those jills and even love it from a distance like a surfer or a Spaniard watching morning touch the golden land. And I always thought it was thanks to Darby but really maybe it’s thanks to me.

Rockets.

This lonely, teenage blind kid.

Walking backwards in the rain to the territory, ahead.

February 2, 2004
Santa Barbara
John Simon Ritchie
, requiescat in pace