Middle Men (22 page)

“I think Meryl Streep shows her tits in that,” said Larry, lighting a cigarette. “But for my money,
Crimson Tide
is the best movie ever made.”

“I'd probably disagree with you there,” said Matt.

“David Spade hasn't been in anything good in a while,” continued Larry, connecting a mysterious series of dots. “Not since
Three Amigos
.”

“He's not in that,” said Matt, with a sudden note of authority in his voice.

“Who am I thinking of?”

“I don't know.”

“David Spade. He was on
Just Kill Me
, right?”

“
Just Shoot Me
. Right.”

“He was also in the other thing. With Pauly Shore and the other guy.”

“I'm not sure what you're talking about.”

“What movie am I thinking of?”

“I don't know.”

“Was it
Valley Dude
?”

“I don't think so.”

“He wasn't in
Valley Dude
?”

“I don't think that's an actual movie.”

“I think I'm thinking of what's-his-name. The other guy.”

These were the kind of looping and erroneous cultural discussions Matt tended to have with his mom. He had a sudden urge to write it all down, every pointless word.

They were passing over the lost industrial cities of Bell, Cudahy, and Vernon, a flatulent corridor of derelict foundries and abandoned railroad spurs. In the distance, through the bright, murky haze, the downtown buildings looked like they were sitting in a jar of formaldehyde.

“I miss the road,” Larry said. “I miss the action.”

“The driving gets to me,” admitted Matt.

“Yeah, but it's better than being holed up in some office.”

•  •  •

They made a brief stop in City of Commerce to see Ron Ciavacco at Five Star, but his sister, Valerie, who did all the
purchasing, explained that Ron was at a doctor's appointment. He hadn't been feeling well. Without looking up from the invoice pile she was sorting, she coughed and said, “His heart.”

Matt drove east on Washington and then took Soto north toward Boyle Heights. After spending the morning on the freeway, circling through lifeless industrial zones, it was nice to see people on the street, waiting at bus stops, pushing strollers, crowding around the
frutas frescas
men. They passed the old Sears distribution center, a giant art deco relic. Larry had him turn left and they came to an empty road that ran alongside the stark, geometric banks of the Los Angeles River. The sloping concrete walls absorbed the sunlight and pulsed with an alien phosphorescent whiteness. Matt turned away from the hypnotic glare and saw a dead rooster in the middle of the street.

“Chupacabras,” said Larry.

They passed a series of vandalized warehouses and came finally to a long cinder-block fence crowned with barbed wire. A dozen or so cars were parked on the street. They got out and Larry removed the Hawaiian shirts from his briefcase.

“Do you want hula girls or palm trees?”

“Hula girls.”

“Take the palm trees. The hula girls is kind of tacky.”

Farther down, a couple plumbers wearing bandannas, cut-off Dickies, and bright red Hawaiian shirts walked through the gate, each with a twelve-pack under his arm. The air was filled with acrid smoke.

Going through the gates, they passed a dark, lanky bald man with a thick mustache. He was leaning heavily against a stack of pallets, trying without success to pour a bottle of Bacardi into a can of Coke. He lifted his head and fixed his bloodshot eyes on Larry's shirt. “Brentford sucks!”

“What did you say?” said Larry.

“Your ballcocks are fucked, man!”

“Who the fuck are you?”

“That's Mike Melendez,” said Matt. “He's the Kenner rep.”

“Fuck Brentford!”

“I don't have to listen to this.” Larry unzipped his fanny pack and took out a gun.

“Jesus Christ,” said Matt.

“Don't worry,” Larry told him. “It's loaded.”

Matt couldn't take his eyes off the gun. He felt, instinctively, that if he turned away, a bullet would rip open the back of his skull and his body would be dumped in the river. Mike, for his part, was not impressed. He made a dismissive propeller sound with his lips and took a swig of his Bacardi and Coke. “Whatever,” he said, shuffling away.

“Like Kenner's never had a recall,” said Larry, looking bewildered and disappointed as he returned the gun to his fanny pack. “Lamrock is definitely gonna hear about this.”

“Are you fucking nuts?” said Matt.

“Calm down, everything's fine,” said Larry. “Lamrock loves guns.”

“
Who?
Who the fuck is Lamrock?”

“Come on. I'll introduce you.”

Matt's head dropped. He rubbed his eyes. “You said there's beer?”

“Yeah, there's beer.”

They went through the gates into a large pipe yard. Plumbers were milling around, eating off paper plates, talking on their Nextels. They passed through the warehouse, where workers buzzed around, racing each other on pallet jacks, and
exited down the open steps of the loading dock. A big blond woman in a yellow muumuu called them over.

“I figured you'd show,” she greeted Larry, kissing him on the cheek. She had a bag full of plastic leis and ceremoniously placed one over each of their heads.

“Good to see you, Wanda,” said Larry. He introduced Matt and tugged on his shirt. “Look at this kid, all breezed out.”

“That's a nice one,” she said.

“What happens if you don't wear a shirt?”

“You don't want to know,” she said.

“I'd really like to know.”

She swept her flabby arm across the scene of the luau. He saw a cracked and weedy slab of concrete sloping down to the railroad tracks, with dramatic views of the septic river and the cluster of buildings downtown. The yard was strewn with old toilets and mangled pipe. Plumbers and wholesalers stood in a buffet line, where mounds of kalua pork were piled on their plate. A bunch of guys, including Armando, were standing around lighting fireworks. Woody Blake, the waterworks man from Barstow, was showing off his pit bull.

“If you don't have a shirt,” she said, “you can't be in the raffle.”

Matt laughed. He wanted a beer.

“Grand prize is dinner for two at Olive Garden,” she said.

“I'll never win that fucking raffle,” said Larry, taking his ticket.

They grabbed Coronas out of an old bathtub filled with ice and made their way to the buffet line, where Matt ran into Ron Ciavacco.

“Don't tell Valerie I'm here,” he pleaded, adjusting his elastic pants. “She thinks I'm at the doctor.”

“Give us an order,” said Larry, “and we won't say a word.”

“That's extortion.”

“It's business.”

“This your first luau?” Ron asked Matt.

“Yeah. Larry pulled a gun on Mike Melendez.”

“I heard.”

“Come on,” Larry said. “Let's find Lamrock.”

They walked to the far end of the pipe yard, which looked like an abandoned flea market. Matt saw televisions and VCRs, washers and dryers, coffee tables, empty jewelry counters, bicycles, pianos, surfboards, and a crumbling pyramid of tires. They found him passed out in an empty Jacuzzi shell. Lamrock was a chubby little man with with a gray crew cut. He wore red swim trucks with black socks and sandals. There was a shotgun next to his head and he had a small handgun holstered on his ankle.

“So what is he?” Matt asked. “A wholesaler?”

“More of a distributor,” said Ron, tentatively. “But a contractor too, I guess. On the general side of things.”

“I'll tell you what he is,” said Larry, holding his beer up in salute. “He's a goddamn angel.”

•  •  •

After lunch, Larry offered to let Matt fire off a few rounds into the empty river. “No way,” said Matt. “I'm scared of guns.”

Lamrock eventually rose from his slumber and Larry introduced him to Matt. Lamrock raised his beer and said, “Here's to ya.” Then he stumbled away. Later Matt saw him at the far end of the lot, aiming his shotgun at the ironwork of a distant railroad trestle. A crowd of drunk plumbers cheered him on.
Matt finally wandered away from the crowd and sat down on a rusty toilet.

It was two o'clock, that bright and desolate hour. Matt couldn't believe where he was. A year ago, when people stopped by to see his mom, they would often ask him, once they had left her room, what he was going to do “after.” It seemed like an irrelevant question, and he never had an answer. He would just walk them to the front door and return to her room. The walls were covered with family photos, a crucifix, and a framed map of Ireland. In the afternoons he opened the curtains and the glass slider, letting in the breeze and giving his mom a view of the pool. Twenty years ago, during one of the booms, the Costellos had put in the pool. It was their greatest triumph as a family. They probably should've saved the money to get them through the next bust, but Ellen Costello wanted her kids to have a pool. She gave her children everything she had and more, heedless of cost, and Matt knew that he owed much of his happiness to his parents' willingness to live beyond their means.

A million things about his mom should've made Matt nostalgic, but for some reason the time he longed for most was the last couple months of her life. They rarely spoke about anything important, but they had never been closer. Her suffering was beyond words and Matt knew that the frail, bed-bound woman in front of him was the toughest person he would ever meet. He wanted to be with her again, in hell, shifting her pillows, changing her TPN bags, rinsing her vomit bowls. Those afternoons destroyed him and would continue to destroy him every day of his life. For this he was thankful. He needed to be destroyed.

Matt liked to think that the last thing his mom saw, before she died, was the tranquil surface of the pool.

“There you are,” he heard Larry saying. Matt looked up and saw him silhouetted against the bright sky. Larry handed him a beer. “We're celebrating.”

“Why?”

“Because you're quitting.”

“I am?”

Larry took a sip of beer and looked out across the river. “Just be glad you got to see the luau.”

“Thanks for bringing me.”

“You're not a salesman.”

“I wish I was.”

“Go do something else,” said Larry, and there was mercy in his voice. “Don't waste our time down here.”

C
ostello sees a lizard at the bottom of the pool. The sucker is dead, dead. Full fathom five, as they say. This lizard situation, on a Saturday, presents a major hassle. Costello stands barefoot on the diving board, bouncing a little, with an unlit Tareyton between his lips. Saturday, an extra layer of brightness, Saturday brightness, like God opening a window in the sky.

The backyard needs some work. Weeds flaming up from cracks in the concrete, all the flower pots empty, the patio cover rotten with termites. Costello pops a net onto the aluminum pole and stands at the edge of the deep end. His wife wanted the deep end extra deep, so the kids could dive. The water is green, the lizard caught in silhouette, his tail wedged underneath the filter cover. Costello scoops up a flotilla of dead june bugs, dumps them in the planter, and then goes deeper, making a play for the lizard.

Next door, Jesse Rocha starts up his hedge trimmer. He's the same age as Costello, but semiretired. By some dull, suburban coincidence Rocha, like Costello, is also a plumbing lifer, but on the skilled side of things, repairs and remodels, three trucks and a shop. Last year, finessing his way out of a worker's comp lawsuit, he changed the company name from Rocha Plumbing to Advanced Plumbing Specialists. “This is the great state of California,” he said. “Sunshine and litigation.”

Rocha pokes his bald head over the brown cinder-block wall, the same crumbling wall that squares off every yard in this section of Anaheim. He turns off the trimmer.

“Hey, Marty,” he says. “I saw that thing in the
Pipeline
. Congratulations.”

It came yesterday, the new issue of the
Pipeline
, quarterly organ of the West Coast Plumbing Association. Twelve pages, two staples. Martin Costello, a nominee for sales rep of the year.

“I'm working on my acceptance speech,” Costello says.

Rocha laughs. He and Connie are nice enough, always helpful. A common-law thing, no kids. Hedging their bets for twenty years.

“You should hire our pool guy,” Rocha says.

“I don't mind doing it.”

“Your water looks a little green.”

“I'll blow it up with chemicals,” Costello says. “Nagasaki the shit out of it.” Points to the deep end. “There's a lizard down there. At the bottom.”

“I thought lizards could swim.”

“I'm not sure.”

“Crocodiles can swim,” Rocha says. “A crocodile is just a big lizard.”

“I know salamanders can swim.”

“That's true.”

“They're amphibious,” Costello says.

“My grandma used to keep axolotls.” Rocha spells the word for him. “Mexican salamanders,” he explains. “Milky white, with golden eyes. They'd freak you out.”

“Golden eyes? Holy shit.”

Nods, silence. A meeting of the minds. Two medieval doctors.

“You're not swimming, are you?” Rocha asks. “The water's a little green.”

“I'm just gonna float around on the raft.”

The trimmer cracks on, the noise a million tiny cracks in the afternoon.

Costello is shirtless, his belly soft and pink. Still wearing his old Dodgers cap. He hasn't combed his hair on a Saturday in thirty years, not since before the kids were born. He flips the cap around so he can see what he's doing. The long pole rests against his shoulder; he pushes it under the lizard, but the poor sucker won't budge. Costello gives up.