The Loss of Leon Meed

скачать книгу бесплатно


“Jim!” said Shane. The third annual Boys in the Wood racquetball tournament was in midcontest at CalCourts, where Shane Larson and Jim Sturges stood next to each other in line to get shower towels from the front desk. Broad-bottomed women in stretch pants and sports bras strode purposefully to their aerobics workouts and weight-diminishing sauna sessions. Their thighs and hair were massive. Televisions tuned to different twenty-four-hour sports channels perched on all four walls like bird nests, a permanent squawk, competing for the attention of exercisers and exercise-hangers-on standing below, where the semifinals of the racquetball C division were about to begin on courts 3, 4, and 5, and the judges were being asked over the PA system to take their positions in the observation areas. “Man,” said Shane, raising his voice a chirpy octave, “it’s been forever. Where are you living these days? I’m married, did you know that?”

Shane was a changed man. He knew Jim would be expecting the old Shane: the Shane with skinhead leanings who sometimes beat up middle-aged men with families just because they were middle-aged men with families, the Shane who’d once dropped seven hits of acid and baseball-batted his way into a Rolls-Royce parked implausibly in downtown Eureka in order to defecate on its virgin-calf leather upholstery before being arrested. But eight transformational years had passed since they’d seen each other, during which Shane had embraced his family’s Mormonism, the Larson faith for three generations already, and become an upstanding citizen.

“I didn’t know that,” said Jim, smiling mechanically. “Congratulations.”

He has no idea how far I’ve come, thought Shane, who dispensed with the small talk by saying, “I’ve stopped drinking and smoking and extramarital sex.” He stared penetratingly at his old friend. “Those were a fool’s paradise.”

“I see,” Jim said.

But did Jim see? Could he comprehend the metamorphosis? He’d never been as ultraviolent and antisocial as Shane, and in fact he’d been something of a wet blanket about fighting and unprovoked cruelty back in high school, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t been a sinner. Because he had. Jim had fornicated with abandon. He’d drunk alcohol to the point of bodily harm. He’d had godless ways. And although time could also have changed him, Shane didn’t think it had. No, Shane didn’t see salvation in Jim’s tired, distracted face.

Shane said, “I’m working now for Morland Memorial Services. It’s customer relations, some floor sales. I’m selling caskets mainly, but recently I’ve been getting contracts to do land plots. It’s a growth industry. The baby boomers are nearing their time. What’d you say you’re doing?”

Jim got his towel from the putty-chinned receptionist and gave it a quick inspection. “I’m in Los Angeles. Just home visiting for a while.”

Shane tried not to think about Jim’s inability to appreciate how far he’d come since they’d known each other in high school—because it was a major failure of imagination—and instead he thought about the business opportunity presenting itself. Let the past be the past. His great insight was: friends and acquaintances could be customers, and vice versa. “I know what you’re probably thinking in LA,” he said. “You’re probably worried because you have no idea where to be buried in such a huge city, right? I mean, down there where you don’t know anybody and everything’s so anonymous. It’d scare me to death if I was you.”

Jim stared in the direction of the change room and said, “Honestly I haven’t thought about it.”

Shane tucked his towel under his arm. “That’s what I’m saying. Why would you when the thought’s so scary? Being buried in some big city all alone? Jim, you’re going to want to come back to Eureka when you die, where your roots are. I think we should talk about this; I think it could be good for us. How long are you in town?”

Jim pivoted on one foot, his body aching toward the showers. “Not long,” he said.

“Let me give you my card.” Shane pulled out a buttermilk business card with blue embossed lettering: Shane Larson, Associate Sales Representative, Morland Memorial Services, 555-2432. “What’s your number in town? I’ll call you.”

“Actually I’m busy for the rest of my visit, so I’ll have to get ahold of you later.”

Shane, knowing that Jim hadn’t a clue how to conduct himself righteously in the eyes of God, that he was, spiritually speaking, a directionless person in need of guidance, said, “I have a better idea. We’ll talk it over in the shower. I can get you a great price on a site right now. You like the Humboldt Overview Cemetery? Who doesn’t, right? Imagine a place on the hill there, overlooking the bay, in a gorgeous casket made of beautifully contrasting white pine and mahogany, and with a crisp gold satin lining. Think solid mahogany swing-bar handles and sliding lid supports. Jim, I could take you down to the store after we shower and show you the displays and we could settle this today. Can you imagine how good you’d feel?”

Shane was really in the zone now, was in one of his total empathic mind melds, for despite his religious advantage over his erstwhile friend, he was Jim Sturges at that moment, seeing what he saw, anticipating the relief of putting the whole burial question to rest and maybe opening himself up to a higher power.

“Thanks,” Jim said, “but I really don’t have time.”

“It isn’t for me that I’m asking this. It’s for you.”

“I’m sure it is, but seriously. I’m not interested.”

Shane closed the gap between them by six inches and spoke quietly, confidentially, importantly, as sports commentators droned in the background, “Jim, death isn’t one of those things you can afford not to think about. You may want to, and you may get away with it in the short term, but it’s there waiting for you. I don’t know if you know this but I’ve become a Mormon, and that’s because I had a big realization a few years ago that we’re not here forever. I know what you’re thinking, news flash, right?” Brief chuckle and then po-face. “But it had never really come home to me before I was in my car driving along and I heard on the radio about a guy down in Matole who ran out into the street to get his son’s basketball and was hit by a car. Died on the spot. And I got to thinking, I don’t know why, it was just pressing on my mind, but I began to think about what it meant to run into the street to get a basketball, a reflex motion, your mind on what’s for dinner and how it’s time to mow the lawn again and a new soreness in your left knee, when wham! you’re dead. You don’t see it coming even though you know it has to eventually. Death is an invisible speeding train and you’re standing on the track somewhere, you don’t know where exactly, could be far down by the river or could be two feet away. It comes back to we all have to go sometime. And where we go depends on what we choose to do while we’re on this planet. You need to ask yourself. The soul and the body. Have you planned for them? You can either take out insurance—and we’re talking a tiny premium, month by month you won’t even feel it except as a feeling of comfort and security—so that you know you’re covered, or you can be a miser and end up rotting in the ground in some anonymous city with your soul burning forever.”

Shane had never expressed it so eloquently. He’d linked—pull the metal chain, feel its strength—his own personal epiphany with burial services and the afterlife. This matter of supreme importance—this primary undergirding—made him both vulnerable to scorn—people always sneered at the truth tellers, for guilty consciences are drowned out by nothing so well as jeers and ridicule—and strangely confident. After all, Shane was only human, he was an insignificant mortal, but the magnitude of God and of his duty to Him were commensurate. Shane was conjuring the infinite, evoking the ineffable. He felt measurable in joules. To decorate His crown.

Jim draped the towel around his neck and crossed his arms—what a tell! what a giveaway that he took this seriously and felt implicated!—and said, “I don’t want to offend you, and I’m sure your death episode was the real thing, but monotheism doesn’t resonate for me. When I die I’m going to donate all my organs and be cremated. But I appreciate what you’ve said and I’m going to leave now. Good to see you again.”

Jim walked away and Shane stared after him. How can anyone be so tone deaf? Obstinacy is what it is. Denial. People’s hearts get hard. They refuse to see anything but their own version of things. Sad, really. Sad.

So sad that the more Shane stood there thinking about it, as bruised racquetball players filed past him to get towels and chat with the counterwoman and buy a compensatory light beer, the angrier he got, like who the fuck do these people think they are? They’re handed truth on a platter and do they accept it graciously, maybe even appreciatively because after all it is their immortal soul that’s in question, I mean excuse me for trying to save you from the eternal fire, or do they refuse the platter and say, No thanks, I’m not in the mood? Not in the mood? I don’t want to offend you blah blah blah, but monotheism doesn’t resonate for me. Doesn’t resonate? Like faith is some kind of bell that you ring and if it doesn’t produce the right echo, you put cotton in your ears and head for the hills? I’m going to leave now. And did you see Jim’s face when he said that, with that left-lip sneer that was part disrespect and part you’re-a-nutcase-who-has-to-be-handled-delicately-or-you’ll-detonate? It was so condescending, and who was Jim anyway but some nowhere man living in LA and thinking that he was cool enough to dismiss what was most fundamental as pure hokum? Like, Save your fairy tale for the local rubes who don’t know better.

Shane’s fingernails dug into the flesh of his palms and he felt heavy and congested. He hadn’t had an alcoholic drink in four years. He turned to the counter and ordered a Budweiser. His wife, Lenora, was walking around Old Town in Eureka with her parents, who were visiting from Salt Lake City for a week, getting ice cream at Bon Boniere and trying on Celtic outfits at the Irish Shoppe that he would be angry if she bought. They pooled their finances now, which basically meant that Shane paid for everything since he was the only one with a job. He finished his beer and, an old habit rising from the murk of memory, squashed it into a thin disk on his right leg. I appreciate what you’ve said and I’m going to leave now. What a patronizing son of a bitch.

“Hey,” he said, addressing the counterwoman, “I need another one, on my tab.”

“You know we send an itemized bill, don’t you?”

“You think my wife pays the bills?”

“Just thought I’d mention it.”

It was like he’d never been away. After four more beers Shane was feeling the old body carbonation, like there were air pockets in him rising, making him a light and humming creature, clearing his brain and his vision and the space between him and any challengers out there. I’m sure your death episode was the real thing, but monotheism doesn’t resonate for me. Shane laughed and ran a hand through his short black hair, exposing its advanced widow’s peak. He rubbed his beak-shaped nose. Did Jim think he could treat Shane like a fool and then no hard feelings? Whoops, didn’t mean to shit all over your most sacredly held beliefs, see you around. Shane stacked the five aluminum disks on the counter and walked toward the showers. Pushed through the swing doors and into the steam of the locker room. A bunch of bald fat fucks sitting astride padded benches talking about you should have heard what counsel for the defense wanted to plea bargain with, and I was netting sixty a year on property speculation in Tahoe until the county increased regulations on undeveloped land that was more than thirty percent forested. Shane passed them by and stepped on the bare foot of a lobster-faced man resting his elbows on his knees, and when the man yelped in pain Shane told him to shut the fuck up. He was six foot four and his muscles were so toned and there was so much strength in his every sinew every atom and he was so light he could just fly up to some obstacle and overpower it yes because he was energy he was forward momentum and woe unto him who denies the truth and that’s what that fucker Jim was he was a truth denier and it was people like him who kept the whole world from achieving peace and brotherly love and the fruits promised the human race by a benevolent God. One bad apple. Past the sinks and the weigh scales and the towel closet, through more swinging doors and Shane was unswervingly determined, like a Tomahawk missile, to find his target. But Jim wasn’t in the showers or the saunas or the hot tub and Shane checked everywhere twice and he was forward momentum.

“Hey,” he said, pausing in the hot tub room, to the tub’s only occupant, a bearded man leaning front-forward into a white water jet, “you see a guy in here a minute ago who’s got brown hair, in his mid-twenties, looks like a real yahoo?”

The man turned his head to face Shane. “Nope.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve seen you in here before. What’s your name?”

“Alvin.”

Shane was floating there, surveying the scene, the mist rising from the tumultuous water and Alvin Driscoll facing the back wall of the hot tub with his pelvis positioned where water was surging out and wasn’t that weird. “What are you doing?” Shane asked. “Are you sticking your dick in the jet?”

Alvin slid away from the jet and was visible only from the neck up, his curly black hair thick with water droplets. “No, I was just—Nothing.”

“Yes, you were. You had your dick in the jet.” Shane’s eyes gleamed with rheumy mirthlessness and he was light light light. “What are you going to do, cum into this public hot tub and anyone who gets in it later will be taking a bath in your sperm? Do you know how disgusting that is?”

“I don’t know you. You’d better leave me alone.”

“And what are you going to do about it, huh? You fucking queer. I bet you sit in here and stare at everybody’s dick while your own dick’s in the jets. Oh, man, that’s—”

“Leave me alone.”

“ ‘Leave me alone,’ yeah all right.” Shane turned to go and put his hand on the door and then stopped. “Just one thing first. Stand up. I want to see if you’ve been sticking your dick in the jets of this public hot tub. Just stand up. If you don’t have a hard-on, then fine, I’m wrong.”

“Go away.”

“I’ll kick your ass, you little faggot, if you don’t stand up right now.”

Alvin didn’t move, and within a second Shane flew into the water—he was all energy—and pulled him up by the armpit and saw that Alvin indeed had a flagging erection, all varicose veined and darkly pink, whereupon Shane began hitting him, first on the side of the head and soon Alvin’s ear and cheekbone were bleeding in a diluted smear of sweat and mist and blood, then in the chest and the groin and back to the face—great thumps and Shane’s knuckles were aglow with pain and light—and the smacking sound on the wet skin was like a horse whip and a few blows glanced off though most of them connected and with one well-aimed swing Shane heard and felt Alvin’s nose snap which precipitated almost immediately Alvin lowering his guard and slumping into the water on the verge of losing consciousness. Shane was lifting him up again for more comeuppance when he felt two huge men—weight trainers on the CalCourts staff—on either side of him in the hot tub, grabbing his arms and yanking them sharply behind his back, so that Shane screamed with pain as he was dragged out and into the locker room for ground restraint. Pinioned on the floor, his eyes thrashing about in their sockets, he saw Jim Sturges at the edge of a group of onlookers staring down at him, and he thought, There’s Jim Sturges. I hope he gives me a call soon, because I could set him up with a nice spot at Humboldt Overview Cemetery. The soul and the body. Doesn’t he know that they’re one and the same?