Last Days in the Desert Read online

Someone cranked up the throbbing hip-hop.

  “Hey, hey, throwin’ it dooowwn,” sang and enormous man who was sitting on the front steps of the house with the balloon castle. “Throwin’ it dooowwntoooowwn in this ciiiitty! Ciiitty of fantastic tiiittiiiies!” He suddenly stopped, belched and looked astonished. He leaned over, almost toppled sideways, and then vomited into the base of the cypress tree beside him. “I’m okay. I’m okay. Perfectly fine,” he reassured absolutely no one when he reemerged. He sat up shakily and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Laughing couples jammed inside the jumping castle. The overflow crowd on the gravel lawn slipped into position and began grinding their pelvises together. Some of them formed themselves into another drunken conga line and wound out to the street and up a neighbor’s drive. The line crashed through an oleander hedge and two unsteady dancers fell to the base of the hedge and didn’t emerge when the line bounced mindlessly away without them.

  On the dimly-lit front porch of the old bungalow, a silvery beer keg suffered vicious kicks from a pack of young men. Their kicks sent the empty keg tumbling over the porch edge onto a bed of verbena. None of the men bothered to retrieve the old keg; they were desperately priming a newly tapped one. Had anyone bothered to bring up the empty they might have thought it strange to see a skinny man with two plastic pails emerging from behind one of the golden cypresses that flanked the front porch. The man scurried away toward the backyard.

  “So what’s your plan anyway?” said one young man to another.

  The other man looked around him and blinked. “Plan?” he managed to blurt finally.

  “For a job!” The young man who asked downed a big gulp from a trim rum bottle. He wore long Madras shorts and no shirt.

  “Oh, you mean that. Well, I don’t have a plan. I have an interview.”

  “Whoa, that’s all right. An interview, huh?”

  “It’s in Huntington Beach. Tuesday.”

  “Oh yeah, bitchin. Sounds good. Can I drive over with you? I wanna spend some time with a friend of mine in LA.”

  “Um, no, you can’t. I’m taking my sister back to my parents’ place and there’s no room for you in my car with all her stuff.”

  “Oh, thanks. When are you going, anyway?”

  “Sunday, the day after tomorrow, but you can’t go.”

  “I couldn’t have gone.”

  “No, you couldn’t have. I don’t have room for you, like I said.”

  “I have to be back before then.”

  “I’m trying to tell that you couldn’t have gone with me, dude.”

  “For what position?”

  “Huh?”

  “For what position are you trying for? For what?”

  “Um, like a lifeguard on the beach.”

  The interrogator stared. “Shit, no! Lifeguard? Jeez, are you kidding me! What, you like majored in finance?”

  “Yeah, thanks for reminding me. Nothing’s gonna come of the lifeguard job though,” said the young man to the other.

  “Looser lifeguard,” mocked his buddy, tilting back his bottle.

  “I’m not even going to get that lousy job,” said the other young man sadly. “I don’t think I’ll pass the open ocean swim.”

  “Yeah, dude, yeah!” yelled another partygoer who was on the porch of the old house and whose attention was riveted on the spout of the new keg. The well-wisher pumped his fist repeatedly. A bubbly amber froth dribbled from the mouth of the long, black spout; three hands held it out and let the foam plop onto the verbena bed. Urgently, the waiting men pressed forward transparent plastic cups. And a dog bowl showed up.

  “What? What?” the man holding the bowl said when others protested.

  “I’m telling you, dogs love beer! I’m taking it next door!”

  The enormous man who’d vomited got up and filled his cup. He returned to the steps. “Throwin it down,” he sang.

  “Will you please shut the fuck up?” asked one of the men at the keg.

  “Okay,” said the big man amiably.

  The screen door banged open. A buff, bandy-legged man wearing only a cowboy hat and loose red jams with the large white letters U of A emblazoned on the seat, staggered past the keg and across the porch, cradling carefully a mottled watermelon. Halfway across the porch, he stopped to lift the brim his cowboy hat and sip from the straw, which was sticking out of his melon. His head was long and the front flattened as though he’d been struck with a shovel and his features pushed to the four corners of his face; it could almost have been a monkey’s face, except for the pale blue eyes. He had just worked the straw away from his lips when a man with a syringe dashed out the screen door, jabbed the melon, depressed the syringe’s plunger and rushed back inside without a word.

  “Thank you,” said the watermelon dude, tipping his hat at his luck, long after the melon had been stabbed. “I thank you very much for your assistance. Very much appreciated, kind sir. Uh huh.”

  Staggering toward the porch steps, the watermelon dude brushed against a thin, intense female who wore her blonde hair in a ponytail. Stacie Folger was one of the three hostesses of the party. The other two were Tiffany Gomez and Yadira Armenta. Stacie addressed a circle of drunken men. “Like I ran three miles today. That’s probably like the most I’ve run in like three days because my ankles are killing me from dancing in heels. I usually run with this dude who lives like on north Park and something and I meet up with him north of Speedway. But I...”

  “Yam bags on her eyes,” the watermelon dude croaked confidentially as he teetered past her audience.

  “I’m sorry, what was that?” Stacie asked, turning her head angrily so that her ponytail slashed the air behind her head. She squinted her eyes at the watermelon dude.

  “Te he he,” he sniggered drunkenly. He drifted down the front steps in a frightening fashion with his watermelon, but somehow managed not to fall, or drop the melon, and he only trampled the vomiting man slightly.

  “De-hay,” protested the vomiter.

  “What did you just say?” Stacie asked the watermelon dude. She followed him down the steps to the front yard near the castle. “Come back here. I think I heard you, and you really make my blood boil. You are such a tool.”

  At her back, some of her audience drifted away sheepishly.

  The watermelon dude, snickering loudly, tripped away toward the crazy balloon castle. He swayed and rocked and waggled his head; he nodded and bobbed and teetered about, wambling his whole body to the beat of the music. At one point, he joined a dancing couple, and, tucking the melon under one arm, he casually lifted the skirt of the girl to inspect her G-string underwear.

  “What did you say?” Stacie yelled at him. “I asked you what you said!”

  Without turning back, he waved a dismissive hand at her.

  “Come back here!” she shouted, crossing her arms over her chest. “Jeez, you are such a tool. I don’t know why Yadira invited you. I don’t have time for your shit.” By the end her tirade, all of the circle of men had drifted away. “And the holes in the wall aren’t funny. You cost us our deposit, you idiot. You ruined our wall and we're leaving in a day. What are we supposed to do? How are we gonna get our deposit? We have to have the money!”

  She stomped back up the steps of the house and discovered that all of her audience had gone inside. A fuming Stacie started to follow them, but then she stopped for one more scowl in the direction of the man who had insulted her.

  He dithered around the wild castle unaware or unconcerned that his hostess’ furious gaze bore into him. He was watching a man in a great tipsy sombrero who had begun jumping in the castle. “Woo-hoo! Arriba, arriba!” the man hollered, nearly bursting the net ceiling with each bound. The jumping man whipped the hat off his head and walloped his thigh then waved it across at the star-strewn sky. “Woo-hoo,” he hollered. “Soy grad! Arriba, arriba!”

  Full of admiration for absolute abandon of the wild jumper, the grinning watermelon dude gave the man a thumbs-up
and rounded the cypress tree.

  Just then, he caught up with the skinny man who now had another pair of plastic pails that he was bringing around the side of the house.

  The two bashed together.

  “Dude,” was the watermelon dude’s protest after he’d staggered backward slightly and secured his melon. He pulled himself up to his full height, glanced down at the pails, set his shoulders back, and drew on his straw thoughtfully while studying the pails’ contents. When he pulled his mouth away from the straw, vodka and watermelon dribbled down the stubble on his chin. “Dude, are those guys real?” he asked in a dubious, drunken slur.

  “Shit,” hissed the skinny man, trying to glide away, “five-methoxy-dimethyltryptamine, you know?”

  “Um, are those guys real?” repeated the watermelon dude, blocking the skinny man's retreat.

  “Yeah, now keep it quiet. People want this shit. I don't want them jacked, understand?”

  “Viva La Management Societal! Arriba, arriba!” shouted the man in the castle, bouncing upward repeatedly.

  “Whaddidyasay?”

  “Yeah. They’re real. Now be cool,” continued the skinny man, “Okay?” He juggled the pails and pressed one finger to his lips.

  “Oh, um, sure. Gotcha. Coooooool.”

  The skinny man tore away around the side of the house, the watermelon dude slurping out of his straw and stumbling behind him. “Dude,” the watermelon dude called loudly. They passed beside a fat Chinaberry tree and an old neglected bed of irises which the watermelon dude trampled awkwardly with his flip-flops.

  A splintery picket fence squawked open and the skinny man with the pails slipped through ahead of his pursuer.

  “Dude,” called the watermelon dude again. “Are you leaving them here? Why are you leaving them here?”

  The man with the pails swung around, holding the gate open. Behind him, blue smoke drifted ethereally above coveys of dope-smoking dancers. The dirt yard in the rear of the house was dark and small, made even smaller by the looming spear of a forty foot tall cypress tree and the shaggy presence of a grapefruit tree and a large, dying Palo Verde. A rickety corrugated tin shed, which had been built in the 1920s, appeared ready to collapse under the strain of two skinny men leaning against it. “Yeah,” answered the skinny man, whispering pointedly, “Can’t take them out of state with me. Border inspection, you know. I’m leaving tonight, for a job in Utah. No drugs allowed. Five-methoxy-dimethyltryptamine, you know? Smoke it. I’m leaving a note with all the how-to’s for Tiffany Gomez. She lives here. She’s going to get them from me. It's a graduation present. Bitchin’, huh?”

  The man with the watermelon remembered vaguely that there was a reason why this was not smart, but what the reason was escaped him as his mind was saturated with dope, laughing gas and vodka, and he wasn’t terribly bright to begin with.

  “Oh cooooool. Tiffany? Gomez? That’s not her name, I don't think. The one who invited me. Tonight. To this party. I don’t know her name. She invited me. Some sorta Mexican chick…chick. We had some classes together, she said. Good party, though. Shit, I’d help you but I’ve got this melon.” He looked around for a place to stow it. In turning around, he lost track of where the man he’d been talking to stood. He spun around again and again stopping at various positions and not finding the skinny man with the pail in front of him.

  The skinny man peered suspiciously around the yard at the dancers and once he was assured that no one watching, he hiked up two steps to a narrow French door. “It’s okay, dude, really. I can manage. I don’t want these special guys of mine to be jacked. You’ve got to be cool about it. Keep it secret. Remember, it’s a surprise for Tiffany. You gotta be cool.”

  “Coooool,” repeated the spinning watermelon dude, still not locating the speaker.

  “These guys are wicked valuable,” added the man with the pail, “Fantastic stuff. Made by Mother Nature for the benefit of man. Smoke it. Five-methoxy-dimethyltryamine. Remember!”

  “Fuck yeah!” said the watermelon dude as he spun around crazily looking for his new friend who knew the long names of drugs. It might be good to know someone like that, if only he could locate him again.

  After checking once more for observers, and watching the watermelon dude spin around in confusion, the skinny man carefully transferred the pails to one arm and twisted the backdoor knob. He used his right shoulder to give the door a slight shove and sidled in.

  While he was inside, the room remained dark. Moments later, he emerged, unburdened and grinning.

  Chapter Three