Paul's into it. But there was never any question that he'd be into it. Paul likes all the ups. He likes getting baked and drunk and dropping a lude, but he really likes the beauties and the whites and the greens. Any kind of speed. Like Paul needs to be more high strung. Like they need Paul to be more high strung and starting any more trouble than he already does. Half the hooks they end up in are because Paul is so uptight and can't keep it together.

Some jocks walk past laughing, probably talking about the time one of them farted in remedial English, and Paul thinks they're laughing about him and starts calling them f.a.gs and telling them to say whatever they have to say to his face. They take one look at the four of them; big Paul with the curly hair and acne scars on his cheeks, Hector with his mohawk and safety pins, skinny George with his pretty face that all the girls dig, and Andy, short and scrawny with the long unwashed hair; and it's on.

f.a.g this and f.a.g that and kick your f.u.c.king a.s.s and do it if you're gonna do it stop talking about it and f.u.c.king do it, f.a.g, until one of them explodes from the pressure.

Chaos.

Fists and kicking and going down on the pavement with someone's arm around your neck and your hair getting pulled as your brother tears that guy off you and seeing someone's legs in front of you and grabbing their ankles and pulling them and hoping the f.u.c.ker doesn't split his head open when he hits the ground and Paul always going after the biggest one and getting him down and sitting on his chest and punching his face over and over until someone drags him off.

A dozen fistfights play out in Andy's head. He throws a grenade into the middle of them all and watches the body parts fly and winces and bangs his head again and rolls the dice and only stops rolling when the sum of their faces divided by the number of dice he's rolled totals a prime.

Order.

Yeah, Paul thinks the crank is cool. And if he does like he was talking about and sells it and gets enough money for a car they can all cruise around in, then stealing the bag will be cool. If he ends up whiffing it all himself and getting higher strung than he already is, then it's just the lamest idea ever.

And he can't even tell George what he did.

George'll be p.i.s.sed.

Just have to wait and see what Paul does. He'll either tell the guys he has it and make like he was the one who took it and tell them it's too late to do anything about it now and start figuring a way to sell it. Or he'll keep his mouth shut. And if he keeps his mouth shut, it's because he's snorting it.

He lifts his head, rolls the dice, puts a trap in an empty room. Then changes his mind and replaces it with treasure.

The Smartest Boy in Cla.s.s Paul rides his bike into George and Andy's garage. The cars are gone. Their mom and dad already at work. He leans the bike against the toolbench and lights one of the Marlboros from the pack he bought yesterday with the Arroyos' money.

It's so cool George and Andy don't have to worry about their folks being around during the day. Not like his dad. He's always around. Teaches computer cla.s.ses at the community college down the 580. Staggered schedule. Night cla.s.ses, day cla.s.ses, morning cla.s.ses. Summer, winter, fall, spring. Sooner or later, every f.u.c.king day, he pops up. Asking questions, nosing in his business like it's not enough already. Like he hasn't gotten enough and wants more, more than he's already had.

He grinds his smoke out, tossing the b.u.t.t in the coffee can full of sand that Mr. Whelan keeps out here, lighting another.

He smokes. And finds something else to think about, taking out of his back pocket the tightly folded copy of the Valley Times that he s.n.a.t.c.hed off someone's lawn on the way here, and unfolding it on the workbench.

So much for the Arroyos.

Those f.u.c.ks are gone. Only part of it that sucks is that he never got a chance to beat the s.h.i.t out of Timo. Or Ramon. Would have liked a crack at Ramon without that saw in his hand. f.u.c.ker's big, doesn't mean he can fight. Doesn't mean he can take it. Paul can take s.h.i.t those vatos never heard of.

He remembers all he's taken.

Lightning crackles between his eyes, the first flash of a migraine.

He drags hard on his smoke, the cherry flares. He lifts the bottom of his T and touches the tip of the cigarette to his stomach, adding another mark to his collection. The migraine recedes, blown over the horizon.

And the pictures of what he's endured go away.

He drops his shirt, the cotton stinging his stomach when it touches the fresh burn. He drags on his cigarette, tasting his own skin.

He can take it.

He can f.u.c.king take it.

He touches the wad of the Arroyos' money in his pocket.

His money now. He boosts himself up on the bench and pulls the cash out. After the food and the smokes and the bottle of tequila they got a college guy to buy them at the QuickStop by the freeway, there's a little over two hundred left. Fifty and change each.

Fifty bucks for weed and booze and pills and video games at the bowling alley. Fifty bucks to finish off the summer. Before senior year. Before he has to get serious about cla.s.ses.

Serious enough to pa.s.s a few. Just enough to graduate. Just enough to get a diploma. Just enough to get that piece of paper so that there won't be any question about the Army accepting him when he turns eighteen next June thirteenth and goes to enlist that same day. Next stop basic training. Next stop after that, the other side of the f.u.c.king world. Never to return, man. Never to return.

So fifty bucks worth of partying before that grind starts.

And the crank.

Sitting on the can this morning, door locked, bag of crank on his lap. Fingered a couple crystals out of the bag and set them on the edge of the sink and thought about crushing them with the bottom of his water gla.s.s and spooning up the powder on the end of his nail clipper and doing a couple whiffs. Enough in that bag to keep up for weeks. Keep up and clear. Keep him focused. Keep the s.h.i.t that comes into his mind on the outside.

But if you could sell it.

And not like dealing it, George is right about that. Get into trying to deal it, say around the bowling alley with the loose joint dealers pedaling their bikes around and whispering, Loose joints, man, loose joints, one for two or three for five, loose joints, get into that scene and a bust is on its way. Cops always cruising the bowling alley. There's the parking lot at the Doughnut Wheel. But those acid dealers from the other high school, they got that lot staked out. Besides, who knows how long it will take to sell it all?

Better to sell the whole bag at once. Won't be worth as much, but still a lot. Enough for a car. But who the f.u.c.k has that kind of money? George and Andy's aunt might be able to hook him up with someone. Or she might freak out. She doesn't like crank. Stays away from dealing it herself.

Jeff.

Jeff doesn't have the money himself, but he knows people. He talks all the time about stuff that fell off the back of a truck. Half the parts he gets for his Harley are hot. And he's done some stuff himself. Talked about some of the places he's guarded for Security Eye, goin' in when he's alone, boosting s.h.i.t. He knows people who buy s.h.i.t. And he knows dealers. Jeff knows everyone. And he won't give a c.r.a.p it's crank.

Just got to handle it right. Got to be cool about it. Don't just knock on his door with a bag of crystal and drop it on the table and ask what he can get for it. Start with the other stuff. Take him those chains and see how that goes. Maybe mention to him there's some other things to talk about when the rest of the guys aren't around. Yeah, be cool about it.

And then, the look on the guys' faces when he rolls up in a couple weeks in a car? Sweet. They'll have to work out some kind of deal. Park it at Jeff's or Amy's. Take turns with it. Hector can take it into the city to those punk gigs instead of having to go on the bus and BART. George can take his chicks for a ride instead of having to rely on them to borrow their dads' cars. Andy, well, Andy can learn to drive in a bada.s.s set of wheels.

Sat on the can in his old gra.s.s stained soccer shorts and the George Blanda jersey he sleeps in, staring at that bag. And he did the right thing, dribbled those crystals right back inside. Then got a roll of athletic tape from beneath the sink, taped the bag closed, lifted the lid from the back of the toilet, and taped the bag to its underside before replacing it.

Dad'll find anything you leave in the room. Checking it every day. Using that key he left in his jeans that time. Sure, let the old man dig around in there, that way he doesn't dig around anywhere else. Don't have to be as smart as Andy to figure out that kind of s.h.i.t.

Course, the cherry on top of the morning was the newspaper. Saw the story about the Arroyos on the front page of the paper. Almost choked trying to keep from laughing and blowing milk and Cheerios out his nostrils.

[image]

Kyle Cheney jiggles the handle on the toilet, but the plug still doesn't drop. The chain is snagged again. He lifts the lid off the back of the tank and sets it on the seat. Sure enough, snagged chain. He reaches in and untwists the tangled links and flips the plug down over the drain and the tank starts to fill with water. He fiddles with the handle, pressing it down and releasing it, trying to see why the chain only snags when he flushes.

Paul says it's because he's doing it wrong.

Flushing the toilet the wrong way.

He wipes his fingers on a hand towel and picks up his cup from the sink. Almost all brandy now. He drains it.

When did that happen? When did he become the kind of man who flushes toilets the wrong way?

It wasn't always that way.

He'd been far and away the smartest boy in cla.s.s. Not a prodigy maybe, not like Andy Whelan, but valedictorian nonetheless. He'd gone to college when that really meant something in this town. Not just college, but Berkeley. And a scholarship. Partial, yes, but a scholarship. And perhaps at Berkeley he was no longer the smartest, but he worked plenty hard. So, not top of his cla.s.s, but good enough to be accepted for postgrad work in computer science.

And computers! That had been thinking ahead. He'd been dead right about that. It was one thing to say computers were the future, it was quite another to have the strength of your convictions and commit yourself to that path.

If he'd just finished.

If he'd just not let himself get distracted by Paul's mother and her campus politics and idealistic crusades. And then, pregnant. Of all cliches.

With the PhD he'd still be there, teaching at UC Berkeley in one of the most prestigious departments in the country. Tenured. Perhaps a chair by now.

Well, he has a chair. At the satellite campus of a community college. An inst.i.tution that specializes in GED prep courses and AA degrees.

Department chair.

Lord, he's the entire computer department himself. Teaching data entry and machine language to borderline high school graduates.

Should have been more focused when he got the IBM job. Be a project manager by now. But Paul was born by then. And he'd fallen so in love with the boy.

His son.

Taken sick days just to spend more time with him. Margaret had loved that at first. Didn't give a d.a.m.n about his career. So many of the other men at IBM, complaining about their wives and how all they could do was shop and rag on them about getting ahead. But not Margaret. As long as there was food on the table and a roof over Paul's head she didn't care about money at all. He could hang about the house playing with his son all he liked. She was moved by what an attentive father he'd turned out to be.

But then she stopped loving it. Started saying things about it. As if it was wrong that a boy's closest friend should be his father. That a father's strongest friendship should be with his son. As if it were wrong.

Jealous is all she was.

And unreasonable.

She just could not listen to reason when he tried to explain it to her. Imagine, threatening to take his boy from him.

Nonsense.

Well, in the end it was her own fault. What happened was her own fault. No one told her to get so drunk and say those things and scare Paul so much he went running from the house. No one told her to go speeding off like a crazy woman looking for him. If she'd exercised just a little self control she never would have lost control of her car.

That had been hard. Explaining to Paul that his mother wouldn't be coming home.

The look from the boy.

Like it was his fault.

The toilet tank is full now.

He lifts the lid from the seat and his fingers graze something and he flips it over and sees the plastic baggie held to the underside by a large X of white athletic tape.

And for the first time in years he knows just what to do.

Summer Job --What about when they get out?

Paul snorts, blows smoke and pa.s.ses the joint around.

--Get out? A crank lab in this town? They're never f.u.c.king getting out. Something like that here, that's like cheating at cards in the Old West. Hanging offense, man. They're done.

Andy looks again at the paper spread across his dad's workbench.

--Think Ramon's OK?

Paul turns his back and walks to the other side of the garage.

--Somebody else please slap at the back of n.u.m.b.n.u.t.s' head this time.

George slaps at the back of his brother's head.

--Who gives a f.u.c.k if he's OK, n.u.m.b.n.u.t.s?

Andy ducks, the slap glancing off the top of his head and sending his unwashed hair into his eyes. He tosses it back.

--I didn't say I cared, I just asked if you thought he's OK. That's all.

Hector finishes counting the money they took from the Arroyos' and sets it on the newspaper.

--Ramon is a psycho, man, kind of guy they shoot twenty times and keeps coming. Bullet in the leg means s.h.i.t.

Paul points at the money.

--How much?

--Two fifty eight altogether.

Andy nods.

--Sixty four dollars and fifty cents each. Two of us get sixty five and give the other two fifty cents to make it even.

Paul takes a hit from the joint.

--Gee, I'm so f.u.c.king glad we have a rocket scientist here to do our math for us. Don't know how us r.e.t.a.r.ds would have figured that out with the fifty cents and all.

Well baked, Andy giggles helplessly.

Paul hands the joint to George.

--Better keep this away from Mr. Lightweight. Looks like he's over the edge again.

George hits the joint, watching his brother spaz helplessly, caught in a giggle fit that is clearly going the distance.

He pa.s.ses the joint to Hector.

--I don't know, man, I've been thinking about this. Maybe the secret, maybe the secret is to get him higher.

Andy is panting, shaking his head, tears starting to pop from his eyes.

Hector takes a hit, sucks the smoke in deep, holds the joint out to Andy.