He looks at the shirts, picks up the one from the Blue Oyster Cult show last December. He unfolds the shirt and looks at the front, the ankh and the reaper in a night sky, the tour dates listed down the back.

George loves his shirts, doesn't mean he has to be a d.i.c.k about it. Knows how much it sucks to go home after staying out all night.

You OK? Everything all right? I wish you would call if you're going to stay out all night. Something is going to happen one night and I won't even know to be worried or to look for you. All you have to do is pick up the phone and call. Even if you need a ride. Especially if you need a ride. Don't ever get in a car with a drunk driver. If you've been drinking that's one thing, but don't get in a car with someone who's been drinking themselves.

George can't lend him one c.o.c.ksucking shirt so he doesn't have to deal with that? They been friends how long? Jesus. Just ever since The Fight, that's all.

It happened a couple days after Paul and his family moved into the neighborhood. George was the local hero, eight years old, wearing jeans and boots and a pearl b.u.t.ton shirt like his dad. What a f.a.g he looked like. And coming on all cowboy tough, giving Paul s.h.i.t about the hippie stuff his mom found for him at the Salvation Army store.

They fought for so long the kids watching started to cry. They were so scared one of them was gonna kill the other one. They beat the living s.h.i.t out of each other. Went on for hours. Seemed that way. Anyway, didn't stop till Mr. Whelan drove home and saw them punching each other on the Phelps' front lawn. Pulled to the curb and came over and got a handful of their hair in each hand and yanked them apart.

That was a great f.u.c.king fight, man.

Next day they ran into each other on the sidewalk and talked about it and showed each other their bruises and sc.r.a.pes and scabby knuckles.

He crams the shirt back in the drawer. f.u.c.k this, man. Got cash on hand. Go down to Galaxy Records and buy a brand new shirt. Get that black Ozzy T with the red jersey sleeves. Yeah, man, cut the sleeves off, that'll look cool as h.e.l.l.

He climbs into his shredded jeans and the dirty T and pulls on Jeff's Harley cap.

--George!

He heads down the stairs to the kitchen.

--George, let's cruise over to Galaxy, check out some tunes, there's a shirt I like on the wall over there.

[image]

Andy walks around the empty house.

It's after twelve. The thermometer on the back porch is. .h.i.tting ninety. Mom and dad left for work first thing. Who knows when George and Paul and Hector took off.

He goes to the bathroom and brushes his teeth and fills a plastic cup with water from the tap and drinks it standing at the sink. He looks at himself in the mirror. Skin and bones and greasy, tangled hair. Mostly bones and hair. No wonder no girls like him.

Paul says he'd do better if he was bigger. Chicks dig muscles, he says, and flexes. Chicks like Paul OK, dig his muscles, until they get to know him. Then they get scared of his temper.

Hector says Andy needs to be himself. Chicks don't dig him when he's being himself, then f.u.c.k them anyway, he says. Chicks used to be into Hector, until he went punk and started wearing the mohawk last year. There are a couple that are still into him, funky ones with tons of black eye shadow and black nail polish and s.h.i.t.

George says he just needs to be cool, not dig the chicks too much. Just do your own thing and they'll come around. And it works for him. Like most things work for George. He's the one chicks come around to talk to, trailing a couple friends. Paul and Hector get the friends. Andy gets told to go home.

That's what it's like being the little brother.

He's made out twice in his life so far. Both times with girls that were older than him. Both times at parties where everyone was drunk and stoned. Both times they found out he was at least a year younger and ignored him after and told their friends it didn't happen.

He picks up a brush and tries to run it through his hair, but it snags and pulls at his scalp. He gives up and leaves it in a tangle.

In the kitchen he finds some of last night's fruit salad and sits at the table in his underwear. He studies the bowl and estimates how much more fruit is in it than was in his bowl last night. He remembers the total numbers of each type of fruit he had in his bowl because he counted them all and he multiplies that number based on his estimate and calculates the odds of selecting any particular type of fruit if he were to do it blindfolded.

He remembers catching his dad watching him pick through the fruit. Remembers the look on his dad's face. He gets that look a lot, the where did this weird kid come from look.

It's not like he's trying to be different, like he wants to be weird. He just is. Not like it's easy being this way. He'd rather be like George. He'd rather be like his dad. He'd rather be like anyone else. But he's not. Because no one else is like him. No one else is this weird. And that's just the weird stuff people know about. They don't know about the stuff inside his head.

Dreams where soldiers attack their house and he sneaks around with a toy gun that shoots real bullets and he kills them all. Moments in the middle of the day where he's by himself doing homework and suddenly sees himself with a knife, walking up behind some jock who picked on him in school and sticking it in his eye while he's talking to his jock friends and then just going crazy and cutting them all up. Things inside his head that he doesn't know where they come from and he can't tell anyone because they scare him so much.

He looks into the bowl. Apples are the most likely. He closes his eyes and reaches into the bowl. Apple. He drops it back in the bowl and fishes out a strawberry.

He wishes George and Paul and Hector hadn't taken off without him. Being alone sucks.

He finishes the fruit salad, washes the bowl, and rinses his hands and wipes them on a paper towel and uses it to blow his nose.

Making sure one more time that the guys aren't lurking somewhere in the house waiting to ambush him and scare him s.h.i.tless, he goes to the stereo and puts on Madman Across the Water, one of his mom's favorites. He turns the volume up and goes to his room and takes out a fresh piece of graph paper.

He starts to draw a new map, ignoring the grid of lines this time, drawing jagged twisting lines, caves and tunnels and dead ends. A labyrinth with more monsters in it for the guys.

After a couple minutes he stops drawing and goes back in the drawer and finds the picture of Alexandra that was in Timo's things. He looks at it, covering Te quiero, Timo with his thumb.

"Tiny Dancer" plays in the livingroom.

He pictures. .h.i.tting Timo with a battle ax.

Imsuchad.i.l.d.oImsuchad.i.l.d.oImsuchad.i.l.d.o.

[image]

--Chester. Muchacho, it's Geezer. Got a minute? Not bad, no complaints. Well, that's a f.u.c.king lie, course I got complaints. Man ain't got complaints ain't alive. Man that can't open his mouth to b.i.t.c.h is...the word? The word when someone's out of it, asleep, knocked out, but forever? No, like that, but the other one. Someone gets. .h.i.t by a hammer they go in a coma, but if the hammer hits you then you're what? Comatose. That's it. Man ain't got something to b.i.t.c.h about, he must be comatose. Yeah, yeah, then he'd really have something to b.i.t.c.h about, just couldn't, yeah. Hey, Chester, can we pa.s.s the f.u.c.king time later, I got something. A bond? Why the f.u.c.k else do I call you? Yes, a bond. A big f.u.c.king bond. Two big f.u.c.king bonds. Yeah, them. No, two. The little one is a minor, they released him to his parents. Too bad for him, what I hear he'd be better off staying in a cell. His old man's gonna beat the s.h.i.t out of him. That's sure as h.e.l.l what I'd do I was his dad. So his older brothers. Yeah, it's a load. No. No. Tell you what, no, you just put it up. f.u.c.k do I care that's not the way you do business? That's not my problem. You, no, you put up the bond. They're not going anywhere. Only place they're going is to do some work for me. They take off, we can talk. Till then, just bond their a.s.s out of jail. f.u.c.k do I care how you make money? I care about you bond the f.u.c.king Arroyos and tell them to get their a.s.ses over to my place. You worry about making money off some useless c.o.c.ksucker out there who isn't gonna have someone come in your office one night and hit you with a f.u.c.king hammer until you're f.u.c.king comatose.

Geezer hangs up the phone.

f.u.c.king people. What are they thinking some times? Guy asking him, How am I gonna make money if I don't get my ten percent? If there was ever someone else's problem, that's it. Go around expecting other people to take care of your business for you, you get what you deserve.

He should know. Look at this s.h.i.t with the Arroyos. What he gets for trusting a litter of spic puppies to take care of s.h.i.t in a responsible manner.

Now it's all about doing a job yourself if you want it done right.

Gotta get the spics out on bond. Gotta get them over here and tell them some bulls.h.i.t story about how it's all gonna be OK. How he's gonna set them up with a real deal lawyer who's gonna get them off. Yeah, right. Get a bunch of spic thugs off manufacturing and possession with intent to distribute and all that other s.h.i.t. f.u.c.kers are lucky the judge set any kind of bail. So, gotta tell them that fairy tale. Then gotta have them deal with these punk kids and get the rest of the stash back and...f.u.c.k. You ever get a break? And after the kids, gotta deal with that b.i.t.c.h Amy Whelan sticking her t.i.ts in his area of commerce. His markets. Knew she was gonna be trouble when she started in with the pills. Thought she got the message about not expanding her product line, turns out she's just plain stupid. Runs in that family. Seeing the experience he's had with Whelans, should have taken that stupidity into consideration with her in the first place. Well, that s.h.i.t's gonna get sorted out with everything else. Gonna make a clean sweep of everything.

Including the spics.

Gonna have to take care of that before they get it through their thick spic skulls that they're f.u.c.ked for life.

And do it all without p.i.s.sing up Oakland's tree any more than it's been p.i.s.sed up already. f.u.c.kers don't care to hear about legal troubles or what s.h.i.t your employees drop you in, just want to see the envelopes with the dollars inside. f.u.c.k they care a lab gets busted? Rent on the town is due, pay up. The half key the brothers say was missing from their fridge will cover it. Give some s.p.a.ce to think, get the new lab going.

Running your own business, is there anything worse?

He leans as far forward as his gut will allow, puts one hand on the coffee table and the other on the edge of the couch and pushes himself to his feet, taking the grabber with him because he won't be able to bend for it once he's standing.

Making a short mental list, a list that starts with gun and ends with garbage bags.

[image]

Hector comes back to the Whelans' with his mohawk reestablished. He hears Elton John playing but doesn't say anything, just turns it off, tunes the radio to KSAN, and "Baby's on Fire" comes on. He goes into Andy's room, watches him drawing one of his dungeons, and sits on the floor and looks through a pile of old comic books until he finds one with the Guardians of the Galaxy in it.

Andy barely notices him, rolling dice, sketching twisting lines, exploring probabilities, deep inside a world of small things.

George and Paul get back from the record store.

George turns off KSAN and puts the copy of British Steel he bought at the record store on the turntable. He drops the needle on "Breaking the Law" and turns it up.

Paul goes in the kitchen and finds a pair of scissors and sits at the table and cuts the sleeves from his new shirt so his arms will show when he's wearing it. He tosses the dismembered sleeves in the garbage and puts on the shirt and goes into the bathroom and looks in the mirror. It looks bada.s.s, the Diary of a Madman cover on the front and the picture of Ozzy lifting Randy Rhodes in the air on the back.

He remembers how he locked himself in his room when he heard the news that Randy had died. The best guitar player to come around since Jimi, dead at twenty-five. Just wanting to sit in his room and listen to Blizzard and Madman all day long, but his dad kept knocking on the door and asking if he was OK, ruining everything. Again.

It feels suddenly hotter in the bathroom. The spike digs between his eyes and knocks the air out of his lungs. He chokes and bends over the sink and presses his forehead against the cool countertop. The spike goes a little deeper. He fumbles with the cold water tap and sticks his head under the faucet and tries to breathe slowly as water runs over the back of his scalp and his neck. The spike pulls out, slowly.

He stays bent at the sink for a few minutes, turns off the water, and looks at himself in the mirror, pale, red eyed, hair dripping.

He makes sure the door is locked and drops to the floor and does a quick set of pushups and looks at himself in the mirror again with his chest and arms pumped.

Bada.s.s.

[image]

They hang around the house until it's too hot to stand it and then they ride to the bowling alley and blow a joint out back and go inside and eat lunch at the counter and play some video games. Andy mostly watching because he's so bad at the games it just makes him feel like he's throwing his quarters away.

Suchad.i.l.d.o.

They're late getting back to the Whelans' for dinner because George hits a new level on Missile Command and goes for the high score and gets it.

Mr. Whelan gives them a ration of s.h.i.t and tells Paul and Hector that the kitchen isn't a restaurant where you eat whenever you want to and if they want their dining privileges to continue they can d.a.m.n well be there when the family sits down. George and Andy he just gives a look and asks them if this is going to happen again any time soon and they tell him no. He tells them to empty the ashes from the Weber and get some coals going and sc.r.a.pe the grill, and goes inside to make the burger patties while his wife cuts tomatoes and chops iceberg lettuce and peels slices of American cheese from a yellow stack.

They eat in the backyard, sitting around an old picnic table Mr. Whelan salvaged from a building site. Right after the meal he's walking around the yard with his fourth beer in his hand, kicking stones from the ground he's going to rototill the following day, giving his sons and their friends a bad time, asking them if they have their back braces ready for the Sunday rock haul. Telling them to start drinking water now, gonna be hotter than h.e.l.l. Warning that he'll be getting them up at the crack of dawn on Sunday to try and beat the heat. Laughing at the looks on their faces as they think about how much it's going to suck.

Paul helps Mrs. Whelan clear the plates. Something he always does.

--I thought Sunday was the Lord's day, sir.

Bob Whelan yanks one of the weeds he let grow over the last couple weeks.

--Young Mr. Cheney, if Jesus can get up on Easter Sunday to move a rock, you can do it this Sunday.

They have popsicles for dessert and the boys say they're going back to the bowling alley and they get their bikes and take off.

Bob Whelan comes up behind his wife at the kitchen sink and reaches around her and puts his hands on her t.i.ts.

--Looking good, baby.

--Stop it.

--Mmm, feeling good, too.

--You're drunk.

--Drunk? On five, six beers? Baby, the day I can't knock over a sixer and keep my wits is the day I give up beer.

--Uh huh.

--It's Friday.

--I know what day it is.

--Date night.

--I know what it is.

--Empty house.

--Not for long.

--That's my point.

--Let me wash these dishes.

--Let me help.

He presses against her back, slides a hand, cold from his beer can, down the front of her cutoffs.

--Stop it. Bob! Stop it, your hand's cold. Stop it!

He doesn't stop. And they go to the bedroom.

Part Two

The House They Came to Rob

--Cops impounded my car, vato.

--f.u.c.k do I care about your f.u.c.king car. Ain't your f.u.c.king vato, neither.

Fernando raises his hands above his head.