--Take another hit, man, don't listen to them, you're handling this s.h.i.t just fine. No, seriously, man, you got it all under control. Cops, teachers, parents, whoever, they'd never know you're stoned out of your mind. Take another hit, go on, man, you're fine.

Andy waves his hand at the joint, sides heaving, gasping through the giggles, in danger of p.i.s.sing his pants.

Hector holds the joint up, strikes a pose. Eureka!

--He wants help hitting it!

Paul nods.

--Supercharger.

George nods.

--Definitely a supercharger situation.

Andy whips his head from side to side, tries to hold his hands up in front of him to keep them away, but clutches his aching sides instead.

--Nuhhhooo! Nuhooo!

Hector turns the joint around and puts the cherry inside his mouth, puffing his cheeks, while Paul and George take hold of Andy. He puts his face close to Andy's and blows. A thick stream of smoke jets from the tip of the joint.

Andy wheezes most of it in through his flaring nostrils and gaping mouth, instantly choking.

They release him and he doubles over, coughing and laughing and sneezing, ropes of drool and wads of snot hitting the concrete floor of the garage.

George pounds him on his back.

--Don't puke, man, that would be a breach of good taste.

Still bent over, Andy reaches back and slaps his brother away, the giggles fading as he gags a few more times.

Hector has taken the joint from his mouth. He blows some ash off the cherry.

--Looks like the supercharger did the trick.

Paul is laughing now, near silent hisses that slip in and out of his open mouth.

George looks at him.

--It's catching. Lightweightness is catching.

Andy is straightening, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

--You guys are d.i.c.ks, I thought I was gonna choke to death.

Paul slaps the toolbench, mouth still hanging open, tiny seal barks coming from the back of his throat.

George points at him.

--Supercharger, man?

Paul bends, puts his forehead against the top of the bench, banging his fist on the scarred wood, tears streaming.

Hector waves the joint in the air.

--He's gone over the edge, man.

George bites his lip.

--Definitely on the dark side now.

Andy is at the sink that their dad uses for washing paintbrushes and their mom uses for bleaching things. He splashes water on his face, rinsing away the mucus around his mouth and nose.

--Man, he's losing it, he may never come back. No wonder you guys laugh at me when I'm like that, he's a mess.

Still bent at the waist, Paul lurches across the garage, shouldering Andy to the side and sticking his head under the tap.

George goes and stands right behind him.

--That's a good strategy, wash that s.h.i.t out of your system. Nothing like a quick shower to help reestablish some f.u.c.king self control. You want me to wash your hair for you?

Paul comes up, flinging his head back and shaking it from side to side, water flying and spraying the others.

--Oh f.u.c.k, man! Whew! Oh my G.o.d. I lost it, man.

He shoves Andy.

--You busted my s.h.i.t up.

Andy grabs a dirty bath towel from the basket sitting on top of the washing machine and dries his face.

--Yeah, nice to know when I'm choking to death it's good for a f.u.c.king laugh.

Paul snags the towel from him and rubs his hair.

--f.u.c.king A right about that.

Hector holds out the joint.

--So who's ready for another hit?

They all fall out, staggering into the open air and sunlight of the driveway.

Across the street, Mr. Marinovic comes out of his house and stands on the porch shaking his head at them. He walks down the cement path to the driveway and swings his garage door open and walks around the side of his '78 Bonneville. Pulling into the street, he stops for a moment and watches them standing around their driveway, laughing and screaming and pointing at each other.

He rolls down his window and leans his head out.

--You should be working. It's summer. Why don't you have summer jobs?

The laughter stops. They all stare at him. The laughter starts again.

Mr. Marinovic rolls up his window, adjusts his rearview mirror, and puts the car in drive.

The boys watch Marinovic's car turn the corner as they snort a few last laughs out their noses, shaking their heads, exhausted.

George walks to the curb and looks up and down the empty street. Paul joins him. A Cessna buzzes by overhead on its way to the munic.i.p.al airport. It's quiet again.

Paul blows out his cheeks to make himself look fat.

--Why don't you have a summer job? Blah. Blahblahblahblaaaaaah.

George nods.

--f.u.c.k him. We have a summer job.

--f.u.c.king A. Let's get to work.

And they run across the street into the open garage and through the unlocked door that leads inside Mr. Marinovic's house.

The house smells like bug spray and TV dinners. Plastic runners laid across the wall to wall carpet lead through the livingroom and down the hall.

They ignore the kitchen. n.o.body hides s.h.i.t in the kitchen. They ignore the color TV and the console stereo and anything else that's just too big. They go to the master bedroom and Paul hits the medicine cabinet while George goes through the dresser drawers. If there's cash or jewelry stashed, it'll be in the dresser or the nightstand or the closet.

He runs his hands between neatly folded shirts. Squeezes rolled pairs of socks to see if anything offers resistance. He finds a box of condoms and a business card from the ma.s.sage parlor across town, a phone number written on the back in green ballpoint. Which is all pretty gross. But at least the guy's wife is dead. So it's not as gross as it would be otherwise.

Paul comes out of the john rattling a brown prescription bottle. George looks at the label. Phen.o.barbital. He remembers something Aunt Amy told him.

--s.h.i.t's for epilepsy.

Paul opens the bottle and looks at the pills.

--Does it get you sideways?

--f.u.c.k yeah.

--Think Marinovic is epileptic?

--He's got the pills.

Paul pours his palm full of pills and caps the bottle.

--I'll only take half.

He puts the bottle back where he found it and goes to check out the spare room.

George is going through the pockets of the clothes hanging in the closet. He spots something on the top shelf, reaches up and pulls down a jewelry box and opens it. Mrs. Marinovic's old jewelry.

Five bucks a week allowance for doing ch.o.r.es around the house doesn't even cover smokes. And the few extra bucks to be made some weekends when his dad takes him to a job site where they need a couple kids to clean s.h.i.t up? Four bucks an hour to shovel plaster fragments and splintered plywood and bent nails and haul the s.h.i.t out to a dumpster. Sweeping up and packing tools away in the sun and a half hour for lunch and all the guys on the site calling him kid and giving him s.h.i.t about his long hair and the silver and turquoise necklace and ring he wears.

Only way he's ever really made money was running pills last summer for Aunt Amy while his mom and dad thought he was doing custodial at the water treatment plant by the airport.

She robbed the pills from the hospital dispensary on her RN shifts and dropped two bucks on him for each delivery. He spent last summer ducking in and out of her house on Rincon Avenue to see if she had anything for him to run. She told him not to tell the other guys, especially not Andy, but he couldn't keep it to himself. Running dope, man, it was too cool not to tell them about it. Plus, they knew he wasn't mopping any f.u.c.king floors and he wasn't gonna lie to his brother and his best friends about how he got the cash for his Mongoose.

He kept doing it after school started, just a couple deliveries a week when he had time, cigarette money and s.h.i.t. h.e.l.l, he'd still be doing it except they got in a fight about a delivery that came up short. A few ludes and a couple whites and she pitched a fit. Like it hadn't happened before. But all of a sudden it was a big deal this time. f.u.c.k it. By then he had the bike. He walked out of her place while she was yelling at him.

Acting like she was a boss or something.

Only time he'd seen her since was when she came over for last Christmas. Gave Andy a Star Wars model, an X-Wing. Gave him a sweater with a reindeer on the front. Whatever. They'll make it up sooner or later. She's too cool not to be friends with.

Totally different from his dad. Which is why his dad can't stand her.

Delivering the pills had been cool. Hanging on Aunt Amy's couch and smoking her Marlboro 100's and helping her sort the pills she stole from the dispensary into baggies and cranking twist ties around their tops and tucking the bags into his pockets after a few calls had come in. Hustling over to Shovelhead's, pounding on the door to be heard over Steppenwolf playing "Pusherman." Folding the cash into a tight bundle and slipping it into his sock. Taking a hit off Shovelhead's huge neutronbong and bouncing two blocks to Tiny Red's. Swapping a quarter gram of pharmaceutical c.o.ke for sheets of Mickey Wizard blotter acid, tiny pictures of Mickey Mouse in his Fantasia costume printed on each tab. Hanging with some of the younger guys, the cooler ones. Like Jeff. That'd been alright.

But it was still a job. It was still someone telling you where to go and what to do and how to do it.

This is different. Going in someone's house when they're not there? Better yet, when they are? That's like the total opposite of doing what you're told. That's blazing a trail and doing it your own way. Whatever you find, cash, drugs, some silver or gold that you can take out to Hayward on the bus and hock, it's all yours. You take the risks and you get the rewards. Get caught, well that's just your own fault. It's all on you. No bosses. No coming home like his mom and dad, burned out and sleepwalking through the evening and dropping into bed and struggling through the next morning to do it again. None of that s.h.i.t.

[image]

He takes Mrs. Marinovic's engagement ring and her wedding ring and a set of tiny diamond earrings and a pearl choker and puts the box back on the top shelf, and he and Paul head out.

In the street, Hector and Andy toss a football back and forth. Hector lobbing the easiest pa.s.ses he can, Andy dropping them anyway, then chucking the ball way too low so that Hector has no chance to catch it and it ends up under a car half the time.

George whistles from inside the garage and Hector and Andy look up and down the street and give a thumbs up and George and Paul run out and they all trot back into their own garage.

Paul doles out the phen.o.barbital, two each and three for him, and they add the rings and earrings and pearls to the chains from the Arroyos and look at the pile.

Paul tosses a pheno in his mouth and dry swallows.

--f.u.c.k the bus ride to Hayward. Let's bike over to Jeff's and see if he can help us move it here in town.

His Son Reeling Paul leads them in a pack across the field to Portola. They cut across the QuickStop blacktop, go under the arching sign for the Rancho Vista Trailer Park, and down the gravel drive that runs between the trailers. They round a bend, pa.s.s a double with a mini white picket fence running around an Astroturf lawn patrolled by a toy poodle, and there's Jeff on the porch of his own single.

Rust streaks down the yellow and white siding, weeds standing knee high all around, a corrugated tin awning shading the porch, cracked plastic tiki lamps dangling from its lip. Two beat to h.e.l.l '63 VW Beetles, one being cannibalized for parts, the other consuming them; a '70 Datsun 240Z on blocks; and a sometimes functional '69 Chevy pickup, stand in front leaking oil, antifreeze, and radiator water into the weeds.

In the shade of the awning, Jeff sits on an upside down milk crate, the stripped carburetor from his '76 Harley XLH 1000 Sportster spread on a flattened cardboard box at his feet. The guys crunch up, and he waves oily fingers at them, pulling a filterless Camel from between his lips.

--Hey, f.u.c.kos.

Paul leans his bike on the 240Z and Jeff waves his cigarette.

--Hey, whoa, no, not on the wheels.

Paul moves the bike, leans it against the porch.

--Sorry, Jeff.