Ladies and Gentlemen (17 page)

I resented this, of course, and thought most of Kevin’s problems stemmed from the fact that, for as long as I could remember, he’d always been treated differently than I was, held to a lower standard, and that what my parents needed to do, just once, was to let him suffer some consequences. But our parents died suddenly last year, so lacking any last words on this, or anything else that might constitute their final wishes, I took this urging of my father’s to heart and promised myself that, despite failing miserably at it while they were still alive, I’d do my best to honor it in the future.

Any older brother who’s telling the truth could list a million such failures, but there’s one instance I’ll describe in particular.
I’d taken a job in Los Angeles during the summer after my second year of law school, mostly to be close to Kevin, who was managing a restaurant on Rodeo Drive. Kevin started working in restaurants when he was fourteen, busing tables on weekends, then working as a waiter; he’d go in right after school and return home late at night. He never had time for homework, though my parents always managed to act surprised when his dismal report cards arrived. At eighteen, he was managing his first restaurant, and there was good and bad in all of this. He never liked school much—he has ADHD and always resisted taking medication, with predictable results—so his success in this other realm helped his self-esteem. But he also got too great a taste of the wider world when he was too young, exposed to too many rudderless people and too much money, and this killed any interest he might’ve had in going to college. I’m not saying you can’t have a full life working in restaurants, and obviously countless successful people have forgone higher education. I just thought it was premature for Kevin to be narrowing his choices so dramatically. I always told him he’d regret not going to school, though I couldn’t really explain why to him at the time, and in any case he never listened to me. Another thing my father would say about Kevin: he listens only when he’s in despair.

As he was that summer. He’d been audited by the IRS in the spring, and it turned out he owed close to twenty-one grand in back taxes—which he didn’t have, of course—on top of tens of thousands in credit card debt. So much cash had passed through his hands during the six years of his working life that it didn’t make sense he had nothing to show for it. I didn’t realize that most of his money had gone to drugs and, at that point, was still going there.

He was living with his best friend from high school, Troy Warburg, a guy who did him no good. They’d bonded as class clowns and poor students, both exceedingly popular. An impregnable force field surrounded their friendship, shutting the family out. What drove us all crazy was that Kevin didn’t seem to realize Troy actually had a future, which he did his best to squander. At Riverdale Country Day, he was one of the top defensive backs in New York State, but got busted for burglary his senior year and was subsequently expelled—a misdemeanor that a lot of top NCAA programs were willing to overlook. Then during his freshman year at UCLA, he and some friends stole his roommate’s keys, took his car for a joyride, and totaled it. Furious, the roommate pressed charges, getting Troy kicked off the football team and stripped of his scholarship. He transferred to Cal State Fullerton and dropped out after a semester. Troy’s parents were divorced, and his dad, a bigwig realtor in LA, gave him a job in his company and bought him an apartment in Los Feliz, near the Griffith Park Observatory. As soon as he was set up, Troy invited Kevin to live with him, an opportunity my brother jumped at, much to my parents’ dismay.

I had my own reasons for disliking Troy that had nothing to do with his complicity in Kevin’s troubles, starting with his version of my character, which went something like this: I was selfish to the point of ruthlessness, perhaps even pathologically so. Everything I did or said was out of self-interest. Nothing I gave was free; everything I offered was part of some elaborate subterfuge. For example, when I counseled Kevin to do better in school, what I was really hoping to do was win my parents’ favor as a good son by forcing my brother to buy into a system where he always ended up
second to me. In fact, my whole sense of self
depended
on oppressing Kevin, along with everyone else. Troy believed it was his duty to remove the foot I’d placed on his best friend’s neck. Otherwise, he concluded, Kevin could never be “his own man.”

When it came time to argue my case, it didn’t help that Troy, at six-four, was a massive, biased referee who was always looking for an opportunity to intervene on Kevin’s behalf, preferably physically. I was a state-champion wrestler and not afraid of a fight, but I was a middleweight then, 158 pounds my senior year, and knew my limits. In high school, whenever Kevin and I got into it around him, Troy would wait for my brother to storm off, then bend down to get in my face and recite all manner of mangling threats—“A pop to the bridge of the nose,” he’d say, “sends a bone to Caleb’s brain.” He’d slap my chest with the back of his palm, or press a finger to my forehead, daring me to start something. I never did.

“Call out the bully,” Troy liked to say afterward, “and he’ll always balk.” Thus he’d prove himself to be the brother Kevin would never find in me.

But that night in LA: It was a Friday, and the three of us had gone to dinner at a Cuban place near Venice Beach called Versailles. Troy was mad for their garlic chicken, and he and Kevin got ridiculously stoned beforehand and were so utterly fixated on their food that neither of them could speak during the meal. Troy excused himself right before the bill came, so I paid. I didn’t care about the money, but Troy liked to stiff me whenever possible on principle. I’d learned to keep my mouth shut about it, since anything I said would soon be used against me in my brother’s court.

We found Troy passed out in the back of his BMW. There was so much smoke inside the car that when we opened the doors it was like someone had set the leather on fire. I told Kevin I’d drive, but he assured me he was fine. “Besides,” he added, “I don’t want anything happening to Troy’s car.”

As we drove toward the ocean, I was still in my suit, and exhausted. Leaning back in my seat, I asked Kevin where we were headed.

“Nowhere in particular,” he said. “Just driving this fine machine.”

At that time, he was wearing his hair long and looked like a skinny version of Vince Neil from Mötley Crüe. He made a cell phone call, perhaps to a girlfriend, and talked cryptically for a while. I paid close attention to the vast, low-slung, palm-tree-lined strip mall that was Venice Beach, trying without success to imagine myself living out here after law school. Troy occasionally piped up from the back, dreaming aloud in his stupor, mumbling incoherencies that sounded like an argument he was having with himself, then passed out again. After he’d been quiet for a time, Kevin relaxed. So long as Troy wasn’t a witness, it was all right for us to be brothers.

“What kind of work are you doing now?” he asked.

“Civil litigation, mostly.”

He nodded.

“Basically that’s when one party sues another,” I told him.

“I know that, Caleb.”

“I know you do.”

“What kind of law will you practice when you’re done with school?”

Kevin’s younger than me by three years, and when he asks questions like this his voice drops an octave and he stiffens his neck. Knowing so little about the professional world, he mimics the tone of authority—real man-to-man stuff—in order to hide his ignorance.

“I’d love to work in criminal justice,” I said. “Defense, probably, where the representation can be so bad. But I’ve got some big loans. Maybe I can pay those off after a few years of private practice, and then I’ll look into it.” I liked to take the long view with Kevin whenever possible, to demonstrate that I was thinking about the future. He was so broke and owed so much to the government that I was worried for him.

“Hold that thought,” he said suddenly. He pulled over, got out of the car, then stuck his head in the window. “I’ll be back,” he said, slapping the door.

We’d stopped on a street that ran right down to the beach. I could make out the sand and the whitecaps that burst into visibility before dissipating to black.

“Are we surfing?” Troy mumbled.

I told him to go back to sleep.

Kevin was gone for fifteen minutes. The interior lights flared on when he got back in the car, and I noticed the red irritation around his nostrils and traces of powder. I didn’t say anything at first, but after we drove for a few minutes I couldn’t help it.

“You’re showing,” I said.

He looked in the rearview mirror, then wiped the powder off with his finger, considered it, and rubbed the residue over his gums.

“Much better,” I said.

“I sense a lecture coming,” he said, turning to look at me

“I wouldn’t think of it.”

“Because nothing you have to say to me means shit.”

“That’s fine.”

“But I want you to understand that.” He was driving fast. “I want you to
know.
”

I checked if Troy was asleep—he was—and then leaned toward my brother. “You’re sure?”

“Fucking-A yes.”

“Well, let me tell you something,” I said, holding his eyes as he blew through a traffic light that had gone from yellow to red. By the time he realized what he’d done, cars had already entered the intersection. Kevin did a mad slalom between them, spinning the wheel so hard you could hear his palms slapping the wheel. I was holding my breath—partially to keep from laughing—and clenching the door handle through horns and screeching tires, bracing myself in this Tilt-A-Whirl for the delicious jolt of impact that would crumple Troy’s car.

“You fucking
asshole
!” Kevin said after we slammed, untouched, to a stop. “You could’ve gotten us killed!”

I was bent double laughing.

Then a squad car appeared out of nowhere.

“Oh shit,” Kevin said, adjusting the rearview mirror to have a look. “Holy fucking shit.”

A small part of me felt delighted, suddenly magnanimous and authoritative. I was about to take over, to calm him down and advise him, when he did something unbelievable. He reached into
his jacket pocket and threw something at my chest that burst all over me, then jumped out and started walking toward the police.

It was a plastic bag with at least two grams of cocaine inside. I remember holding my hands up, palms out, away from the gunshot wound of powder on my chest, and thinking—as the cops’ headlights and strobes illuminated the car’s interior—this was it. This was exactly how everything I’d worked for would get wrecked: by Kevin and his stupidity and his headlong rush to undo something that could never be undone. I sat there waiting for the cop to peer into the open window and end my life.

Even now I could hear Kevin talking to the police.

“My bad, officers,” he said. “My brother and I were screaming at each other, and I didn’t see the light. Okay, actually,
he
was screaming at
me
, but he does that all the time—which isn’t an excuse, so write me up.”

I turned to look. Kevin had an arm over his face to shield his eyes from the glare, holding out the other as if to say stop. The cops were yelling at him to freeze. They’d pulled their guns and were approaching cautiously, one of them filling my side mirror, but Kevin kept talking.

“Here’s my license and my business card. You guys like steak?”

They told him to shut his mouth and put his hands on his head.

“I manage Tatou on Rodeo. I’ll have my chef cook you the best steak frites you’ve ever had. On me. And that’s not a bribe.”

“Hands down … 
now
!”

“Okay, it’s a bribe.”

He obeyed, pressing his palms to his head; and then, miraculously, the second cop said his name. Off duty, the guy worked security
when the restaurant Kevin managed became an after-hours nightclub. There were some guffaws, relieved cursing, and the three of them chatted for a minute or so. I heard Kevin say something that sounded mildly conspiratorial, and they all laughed. The cops told him to be more careful and left.

He cleaned me up when he got back in the car, brushing as much of the coke as he could back into the baggie. My heart was still racing. As soon as he started driving, Kevin went nuts—screaming, hollering, laughing. I didn’t react.

“How about that, huh?”

Troy mumbled something.

“Man, you missed it. I put the Jedi
mind
-trick on their ass. Are you up, dude?”

Troy, still half-asleep, told him to shut up.

We came to a stoplight, and Kevin looked me over. There was still a mist of fine white dust on my suit jacket. He smiled and winked once, then squeezed my shoulder warmly.

“You’ve got to give me some credit,” Kevin said. “I saved your ass back there. If I didn’t know those guys and they’d seen you covered in that much snow, no legal-eagle career for you, my friend.”

I punched him square in the mouth, and would’ve rammed my fist down his throat if I could. He let go of the steering wheel and cupped his hands over his lips, and I set the parking brake and got out of the car. Then I reached back in to yank him over the passenger seat by the hair—he wasn’t wearing a seat belt—and out into the street.

And then I lost my mind. I started hitting and kicking him wherever I could: stomach, ears, ribs, shoulders, face. He flipped
over onto his stomach, lacing his hands behind his head to protect himself. He was screaming my name as I dragged him by the hair onto the sidewalk, ripped off my tie, and, with my knee pressing against his spine, laced it around his neck and began choking him. I got quiet and methodical and pulled the two ends as hard as I could until Kevin started gagging. I’ll never forget how he tapped my leg, like he was asking for a time-out. But I adjusted my grip and held him taut. He started to fade. It reminded me of when I used to wrestle, when I was pinning someone, and the ref would press his hand under my opponent’s shoulders, reaching deeply beneath the two of us with his head turned away, as if he were feeling for something under a sofa; and there’d be that extra beat before he hit the mat—like that one extra beat between hurting someone and ending them—when everything was completely still.