Making Nice (15 page)

She flipped her hair and sucked her drink straw hard, then glanced around the bar, a shithole on Gaffey in San Pedro called The Spot. The first time I saw it, it was wrapped in yellow police tape. I’d go a couple times a month ’cause I could walk there, and every time I did, an old person fell off a bar stool. I was pretty surprised to see Whatsherface and her friend walk in because neither of them were ugly or wearing hospital bracelets. Whatsherface was a brunette and looked like the kind of girl who’d neatly pile her olive pits on her plate. Her friend—who I was having a hard time paying attention to even though she had a sequined top on—was blond and sneezed like a laser gun. I ducked but they didn’t get the joke.

“Look,” I said, “I didn’t tell you about the drowned cat to make the argument that cats as a species are bad swimmers, but they are bad swimmers. What they’re good at is murderous rampages. Not only do their turds cause birth defects and mental problems, but cats spend all night looking for small animals to kill. For fun. They don’t even eat most of them.” The girls looked at each other and made their eyes big but didn’t say anything, so I kept going on about cats. My cat monologue. My catalogue. “I’m also not trying to make the argument that cats as a species are stupid. If I was making that argument I’d have told you about my father’s cat, Steve, who is a moron and can’t recognize me if I put something, anything, on my head. Like I’ll all of a sudden grab a can of soda or a fork and hold it to my head, and he gets all puffed up and hissy and gives me this who-the-fuck-are-you-supposed-to-be look, kinda like the one you’re both giving me right now.”

“Sorry,” Whatsherface said. “But I’m a cat person. I love cats.”

“She does,” her friend said.

“I believe you,” I said to her friend. “I believe you that your friend loves cats.”

“My cat,” Whatsherface said, “Derek Jeter—he’s not stupid at all. He fetches rubber bands and watches TV and is thoughtful. And he’s so considerate that he wakes me in the morning by gently pawing my face.” She went on to list more supposed-to-be-considerate things Derek Jeter did and said something about natural survival instincts, but I got distracted by her friend glinting her way toward the bathroom like a Sparkletts water truck.

“… and that’s why there are so many strays,” she said.

“There are so many strays ’cause cats fuck a lot and my friend’s tabby got cut in half by the parking garage gate in his apartment complex—how’s that for survival instincts?” She was so horrified that it was kind of great, but I knew I was blowing any chance I had with her, so I did the only thing I could do—I tried to change the subject.

“He kept its body in a shoebox in his fridge for a week so his crazy Guamanian girlfriend could say her teary goodbyes when she got home from her business trip. I mean, imagine that,” I said, “having to choke back the weepies every time you need to cream your coffee or butter your toast. Or do you not refrigerate your butter?”

I swirled my drink and watched the bubbles spin and gather at the top where they looked like fish eggs. Then I put it back down, waiting for her answer, but she didn’t have anything to say about butter or cats or anything else about anything after that, at least not to me. And when her friend came out of the bathroom the two of them whispered to each other and, feeling left out and vindictive, I leaned in and asked the shiny one if her shirt came with matching ice skates. She looked confused, then figured it out and slivered her eyes at me. I smiled dumbly, but it was too late for that because they stood up and left without saying goodbye. I waved at the back of their heads, and then at Johnny with the neck tattoo that looked more like a butthole than a gunshot. When he finally came over I ordered a double something from him, cheers-ed to cat shit everywhere and said bye-bye to myself—“bye-bye”—and drank it down.

*   *   *

In the morning I was back on the dock again, feeling like trash again, watching the trash flotilla again, which was usually pretty big in the summer ’cause there’s a lot more people on boats and beaches in the summer, but it was overcast and cool that morning, June gloom in July, so there wasn’t much to see until the yacht club kids sailed past in little racers to practice their tacking and buoy-rounding. I rolled up my shirtsleeves and watched from my chair for a while, until some shithead in a shiny new Bayliner came barreling up the channel and smashed into the dock and got all angry with me for not holding his two tons of bad taste off the bulkhead bare-handed. By the time I got him tied off he was already on the dock and squatting, running his fingers along a six-inch gouge.

“Look at this,” he said.

So I looked at it.

“Fuck,” he said. “It’s all fucked up now.”

Then he looked at me, expectantly, like, Say something, so I said something. I said: “What octane?”

He stared at me and shook his head but didn’t leave, I think because somewhere deep down in his shithead heart he knew he was clueless and just putting on a show for the woman who was on deck holding a rope looking confused and scared and besides, we had the cheapest fuel in the harbor. It’s a true fact: our gallons were a good ten cents less than Mike’s in the main channel, and everybody around knew it.

The guy was still sputtering in mock disbelief when the woman interrupted. “Look at
him
,” she said, trying to break the tension. “He’s got a tongue like a necktie. That a French bulldog?”

“Mostly,” I said. “That’s Jason. He likes garage sales and bird shit.”

She laughed in that singsongy feminine way, high-pitched and sincere, and it made me like her. She all of a sudden reminded me of my mother, and it wouldn’t have seemed odd to me at all if she smelled like Juicy Fruit and Aqua Net, crossed her arms and said,
You boys …

“Well he has the perfect job then,” she said.

“Not really,” I said. “Doesn’t pay.”

But it was easy money. Besides the boredom and the occasional shit tank blowing up in my face, there was nothing to it. My boss Tommy left me alone, I could bring Jason with me, and it was all the free soda I could drink. I was old enough to appreciate that, but I was also old enough to have cul-de-sacs for a hairline and occasional dick problems. My mother was dead, my father was confused, I hadn’t slept or shit right since I was twenty-nine, and it seemingly happened overnight. I was young—
blink
—now I’m not. And with all the free time I had to sit around on the dock I couldn’t help but inventory my life every now and again and think: Is this it? Eight bucks an hour and drowsy? Should I join the navy or something? And not because I bought into all that
Be all you can be
bullshit—I just figured I’d
Be all a dude with health insurance who’s good at push-ups
. And from my chair on the dock, that seemed like an improvement. Most things did.

So when I got a call from a guy I’d met around the marina who thought he was a cowboy and was rich, I didn’t hang up on him. He’d recently bought a million-dollar mountainside A-frame five hours north of LA that needed some work, and he thought I might need some work, too, and some time off the boat, just a month or three, depending. “Don’t say no, say yes.”

I said, “No dude. I’m living the dream.”

“Some dream,” he said. “Last time I saw you, you were holding a bottle of your own urine.”

“I fixed my toilet two weeks ago.”

“Well that’s why I’m asking you up here,” he said. “You’re handy and accustomed to the less-than-ideal. Just think of it—”

“Appreciate the offer,” I said. “But no thanks.”

“
C’mon
 … It’s beautiful up here. You’d love it, and I could really use the help. We can pay you more than you make on the dock, feed you every now and again, too.”

“Sorry,” I said. “Boat’s pulling up. Gotta go.”

So I went, and this time it was a beat-up twenty-six-foot Parker and it approached perfectly, nice and slow, its sun-colored captain bringing her in single-handed and smiley, then pumping his own fuel and small-talking me and the dog while he did it.
Weapon of Bass Destruction
was painted across the stern in gold leaf lettering, and when I noticed the dive gear onboard I asked him where he was headed.

“Couple shoals around the point,” he said, pulling a piece of paper out of his pocket and handing it to me. On it was a list, and I gave it the once-over but the names were science-y so I handed it back. “Every now and then the aquarium pays me to pick things up for them. That’s today’s assignment.”

“Sounds like a great job.”

“Used to be,” he said. “It’s harder to find stuff now and the pay barely covers the cost of fuel anymore. I’d rather be loading trucks for the port … Those guys have it made.”

“I thought so, too, until a couple longshoremen walked into The Spot and started singing
Ching-chong Ding-dong
over a game of nine-ball. I asked Johnny about it and, apparently, the shipping companies are trying to replace retiring workers with lower-paid dudes from China. There’s talk of a strike before the end of the year.”

He shook his head, quit at a hundred bucks and three cents, pulled the nozzle out too fast and dripped a few drops of diesel into the water. I watched the rainbows stretch and go oval in the tide, then headed to the register to ring him up. He paid in cash, gave me a dollar-and-ninety-seven-cent tip, undid his bowline and climbed aboard. I undid the stern and handed him the line as he started it up, and as he drifted off he ducked into the cuddy and popped back out with a doggie biscuit and tossed it over. I caught it and waved thanks, sat in my chair and listened to the sound of his inboard/outboard idle away, then squinted into the sun, a big orange in the sky that yellow-brick-roaded the water westward. I fed Jason the biscuit and scratched his head and told him he’s my little guy, my mini-rhino, my retarded miracle. Because he was. It was all a retarded miracle right then, and I enjoyed and appreciated it for a good three or four minutes before Jason barked at a feral cat slinking along the gate. It reminded me of Whatsherface and Whatsherface’s face when I told her about my job, and just like that I was back to overwhelming boredom and despair, restlessness and worry, the feeling that I should quit the dock and put my favorite shirts in a bag and move in a hard straight line toward the horizon, any horizon, because it had to be better than this piece of shit one right here:

Due south was an eyesore rock wall that protected the harbor and a beach for Mexicans that was so polluted they had to dig it up and truck in new sand. On the cliff above it sat Fort MacArthur, an air force base from which—if it wasn’t closed to the public—you’d have had a terrific view of the port’s mega-cranes and endless stacked containers, the bait barge and the always-idling-for-electric cargo and cruise ships forever burning bunker fuel ’cause there’s no shore-power for things that big. Across the channel was an old marina of splintering docks and wood pilings that the owners refused to fix because the city wouldn’t renew their lease. Rumor was they were planning waterfront apartments and a theme restaurant I imagined would serve overpriced crab legs and have Jimmy Buffett on a loop. Another 22nd Street Landing minus the history: shit seafood and big windows, maybe good bread.

I wanted to leave so bad I got hot, but I couldn’t leave, not for another five hours, so I covered my left eye with my left hand for a while, then dropped and did push-ups until Jason ambled over and started licking my forehead with his gross tongue. I shoved him away and did like seven more, but then he came back and started again. “Quit licking me, Jason!” I yelled. “I’m doing push-ups!” He cowered and looked at me cautiously, and I felt like a real jerk about it because he had those eyes—half-smart and vulnerable, like an ape’s—and then he shot his back leg through his front ones like a little gymnast and sat down and looked out at the water. Then I looked out at the water and watched as a yacht club kid tried to right his tipped-over boat. He didn’t have the weight or the strength or the whatever it is necessary to do it, and after a minute of him failing at it, I reached out and pet Jason on the head. “How’d you feel about you and me finding some new shit to lick?”

He lay down and rolled onto his side, then his back, and I stared at his pecker while I scratched his stomach before calling the cowboy back and asking if his offer was still good. He asked why I was breathing heavy into the phone and I said I just did a whole lot of push-ups, man, “What about the job?” About the job he said, yeah, of course, and asked when I was coming up. “I’ll see you tonight,” I said, “
late
.” Then I went and knocked on Tommy’s boat and told him about some imaginary family problems and a few real ones, like how my old man ran around my brother’s house looking for his lost airplane ticket until my brother muted the TV and said, “Dude. You drove here.” I told Tommy I needed to take care of some things for a while—which wasn’t a lie, not really—that I’d be gone for a few months and appreciated working for him, that I’d like to work for him again when I got back.

He lit a cigarette. “Hate to lose you,” he said, exhaling smoke out of only one nostril. “Everybody likes your dog.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Let me know when you get back and I’ll see what I can do.”

“I appreciate that, too,” I said.

It should have ended there but didn’t, because Tommy spent the next few minutes telling me about a chili cook-off he went to before we finally shook hands and I rushed off to pack the truck with whatever and the dog bed and headed north.

*   *   *

The house was a ski-in/ski-out 1968 A-frame somehow connected to a 1970-something A-frame that looked like it was built by my childhood barber, Mario, who gave everyone flat-tops no matter what they asked for. The first thing you saw on entering was a tiny bathroom off a low-ceilinged kitchen, because what says welcome like the option of taking a shit in a former closet or making yourself a sandwich. The whole place was the opposite of modern, a time capsule complete with wall-to-wall green shag, animal antlers above the fireplaces and doorways, a ten-foot-tall totem pole in the big room overlooking a three-and-a-half-legged pool table propped up by an encyclopedia on top of a cinderblock. In total I’d describe the place as a real dump on a half acre of volcanic rock and pine, buried five or six months a year, depending on the year, beneath a whole lot of snow.