PART I
Roger Grimes pulls his Prius into the driveway and stares at the house––a two story Colonial with a brick front. A starter house the realtor had called it, a gateway to the American dream. He glances down the street at the other houses, more or less the same, the wide suburban street, the tidy lawns, and curtained windows. Compared to the teeming urbanity of his loft in downtown Los Angeles, it couldn’t be more different. It’s as if Roger had been deposited on another planet. But it’s only the San Bernardino valley––the Inland Empire––and truthfully, a place as foreign to him as another planet. But now the house is his––a home for a family, for sobriety, for prosperity and for making memories. Ah, memories; there’s an ironic notion.
He feels like he’s watching himself as he gets his suitcase from the trunk, heads towards the front door and keys it open. He blinks and stares in, tries to force himself over the threshold, but his feet won’t move. If this is a different planet it isn’t fit for life. He finds it hard to breathe, hard to stay tethered to the ground. He feels himself pulling away from his body, sailing upward, and now he is looking down at his small figure frozen in that doorway. Absurd, all of it––the American dream house, the man, the very idea of living.
Cardboard boxes are stacked against the walls, furniture, fresh off the truck, pushed into corners, the windows gaping and blank. Dusk falling with a kind of hurried finality. Roger
moves through the gloom not daring to turn on a light, and then up the stairs to the master bedroom. He dumps his suitcase on the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room. That’s a blessing; no way he’d have the energy to drag a mattress up the stairs tonight. If he’s lucky he’ll be able to fall into it, pull a cover over himself and shut down his brain for a few hours. Not so lucky and he’ll be pacing the rooms like a beast in a cage. He glances around, then turns, and walks back out of the room and down the hall, compelled by some unseen force.
Another door.
He stops outside the door, and again watches himself as his hand goes out and opens it. Stepping inside, he still does not turn on the light. A baby’s room. Pristine. He knew what it was supposed to look like, because he’d seen Nadine’s sketches and color swaths, and he’d bought and assembled the crib just last week. But still, it’s a shock. The happiest little space you could imagine, with bright primary colors, stenciled silhouettes of horses and rabbits below the crown molding, a yellow shag carpet, and the crib, freshly painted, sitting in the corner by the window––the only window with curtains. There is even a rocking chair in the corner. That was Nadine’s idea, a place where she could sit and rock the baby to sleep. Roger’s eyes sweep the room and then he drops into a crouch and begins to weep.
***
For the last two years, Roger had been telling his readers about life on the city’s streets. He’d been their ambassador to the gleaming boulevards, the gritty alleys, and everything in between. He’d been their guide to the drug addicts, the criddlers, the bucklers and the con men. He chronicled the low road to getting high, drawn from his own firsthand experience. He promised them in the last column that he would continue these explorations, but this time he’d be talking about what he loved and hated about the suburbs. It was a shocking development that his days were numbered as a city dweller. He signed off with these words: “I’m making what I used to consider the two biggest mistakes a man can make after marrying––buying a house and having kids. Oh, did I mention the Prius? Don’t ask.”
His column was called “Street Level” and he’d been writing it for a small weekly arts and culture magazine. They had discovered his writing on Facebook. He posted regularly, reaching out to other recovering drugsters, and talking about his life on the streets and getting straight. Apparently, the editors found something useful and germane to their world view, because they hired him, and in a very short time he found himself rubbing elbows with a whole range of people that had never been part of his purview before. He won some awards, turned some heads, and interacted with people from all walks of life––cops and homeless people, politicians, and some pretty shady characters all became a part of his reportage. In the process the magazine gave him a home, a true sense of belonging. The editorial staff was incredibly supportive, and after a couple years he thought of them as friends and colleagues. The family he never really had. It was through them that he met Nadine, a woman he’d never suspect he’d wrap his arms around for as long as he lived. He had let a few bad characters go from his past, but for the most part he was a free agent, able to transcend the social strata, and was welcomed from the gutters to the penthouses. A magic trick if there ever was one.
He knew he was endangering his outlaw cred with this move to the ‘burbs, but was looking forward to coming home every night to the family unit. “Guess that just goes to show you, that no one is beyond redemption,” he wrote, “Not even me. Keepin’ it real, fellow readers. Keepin’ it real.”
***
Roger stirs. Rolls over on his back. His eyes come open and he stares up at the ceiling, first with a curious expression, and then with a look that’s as empty as the shadows around him. It’s dawn so I obviously slept, he thinks. He pushes himself up in bed, swings his legs over the edge. Sits there. He hears something––is it chirping? A bird chirping? He’s not sure that’s what he’s hearing. Why is it so loud in his head? He gets up, filled with an odd urgency, and heads out of the room.
Where is that sound coming from?
He rolls out the front door and down the walkway. The neighborhood is quiet, still in early morning hibernation. The San Bernardino mountains loom in the distance, Mt. Baldy pink at the tip, a single star next to it in the pale dawn. At the end of the block, Roger can see a street sweeper lumbering his way. It clangs and bangs along the curb, the huge rotating brushes scouring the dirty pavement. He walks out to the curb. The chirping is still in his head. And then he sees it: a baby bird has fallen from its nest. It lies in the street, directly in the path of the hard-charging sweeper. Roger leaps into action, jumping in front of the bird and holding up his hand for the sweeper to stop. The big machine brakes hard at the last minute. The window comes open, the driver’s head sticking out.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?”
“Just wait,” Roger says.
He kneels down, scoops up the baby bird––a small dewy mass of feather and tender flesh and moves out of the way. The big machine lumbers off, the driver shooting crazy-man looks at him. Across the driveway, a man in the process of rolling his garbage can out to the curb is gazing at Roger with the oddest expression. Roger catches the look, shrugs sheepishly.
“Baby bird.”
The man’s name is Todd, and now he’s holding a step ladder next to the tree, as Roger climbs up and deposits the bird back in the nest. Todd’s a big man with bear-like shoulders and arms. His hair is long and leans towards Joe Cocker territory. He’s dressed in cargo shorts and flip-flops, his fingers stained with nicotine, his eyes bloodshot.
“Usually when they’re out, they’re out for good. Sayonara, know what I mean?”
Roger starts back down the ladder. “Well, we’ll see.” He lands and turns. “Thanks for your help.”
Todd folds up his ladder, eyes him. “You know I was right there next to the curb when you came out. I didn’t hear that bird chirping. How did you hear it chirping from all the way in the house?”
Roger shrugs.
“Kinda like Superman, Todd says.
“What?”
“Rescuing things. Course he had x-ray vision. What are your special powers?
Roger shrugs again and laughs. “I don’t know, I just hear things, I guess.”
***
Todd walks over a pot of coffee to his kitchen table. He pours out a cup for Roger, pours himself one. “Okay, full disclosure, you probably won’t see much of me, I work mostly at night.” he says.
Roger sips, anticipating the caffeine kick, hoping for a lifting of the gloom that has settled around him, despite the blue-sky day and the welcome distraction of interacting with another person––someone that knows nothing about him.
“Really. What do you do?”
Todd pushes his hair back, snorts loudly like a wild animal. Laughs. “All right, I’ll tell you. I don’t tell most people this, weirds them out, makes them think I’m some kind of misfit. He takes a moment, then––“I gamble online. Poker. That’s what I’m doing right now…except I’m sitting out a little losing streak at the moment. Ride a hot streak, let a losing streak cool, that’s my motto.”
“Sounds wise.”
Todd lights up a Pall Mall and turns on a small electronic device that sucks the smoke away and purifies the air. It whirs next to his elbow as the smoke, caught by morning light, whirls and bends, and is pulled inside.
“Worked as a butcher for years over at Ralphs,” Todd says. The shear tedium of that job knocked me sideways though. Developed a monster of a cocaine habit, but then this happened.” He holds up his right hand and Roger can see that several digits have been cut off. “Shit, when I did it, I was so high I didn’t even notice, until they found my fingers shrink-wrapped with a porterhouse. Had to go to plan B. Started out as a day trader, you know, stocks. But...that didn’t work out.”
Roger nods. “I bet. That’s a tough one, but poker online seems just as risky.”
Todd makes a face, a grimaced half-smile, bobbing his head affirmatively. “The problem is, the wifey didn’t approve of gambling. Thinks it’s immoral.”
Roger glances around the room. There are numerous religious artifacts decorating the wall, and on the counter, a picture of his wife and three kids of various ages. He nods. “Those heathens in Las Vegas might have something to say about that.”
Todd snorts. “But, what does she think playing the market is? It’s gambling just like poker, except the odds are better in poker.” Todd slams down his coffee cup. “The hell with it.” He gets up, opens the refrigerator, takes out a beer, twists off the cap. “Might as well call it a day. He slugs back a drink. “You want one?” Roger shakes his head as Todd walks over to the family photograph, picks it up and contemplates it. “Don’t get me wrong, I loved my kids, but they’re like vampires, you know, suck the life out of you in a heartbeat.
“Loved?” Roger asks.
Roger holds his beer high in a toast. “The wife took a powder, went back east to her mama, took the kids with her. Haven’t seen hide nor hair of that crew for over three years. He takes a tsunami of a drink. “How about you––single, or is there a wife hiding somewhere?”
Roger takes a moment. “Single.
Todd grins at him. “Lucky you.”
“Guess I’m just a lucky guy,” Roger says.
***
How do you say it? Impossible really. There’s no way to shoehorn it into a conversation, even if you wanted to. Todd had given him his opening, with the question about being single or married, but still, he couldn’t quite go there. It’s like forcing someone to see with Xray vision, to peel away the surface normality and plunge into the shadowy depths––bone and flesh reversed, the hidden made visible. It’s a distortion that we shouldn’t see, that is foreign to us in every way. He could see it (oh, could he see it), but to say it made it seem unreal somehow. Nadine, his wife, had been killed in the street along with his unborn child. Stabbed to death by a deranged homeless woman. The blood was still there, still visible, etched into the cracks even after a thorough cleaning by city workers. To make matters worse, he knew this homeless woman, had befriended her, given her money, and had even encouraged Nadine not to be afraid of her. Her name was Jennifer, and she was completely crazy, but never seemed dangerous or threatening. He even celebrated the wild inappropriateness of her––her filthy, sunburned skin, matted hair, and the crazy assemblages of outfits, some not quite covering parts she needed to cover. It represented everything his increasingly youthful and moneyed neighbors didn’t want to see. When she walked by talking to herself, she was really talking to herself and not someone on their phone with an earbud in––a refreshing change of pace. Roger wasn’t a homeless-hater; he’d been one himself for a short while in his druggy days. He’d shared a crack pipe under an overpass with a range of damaged souls, and how someone ended up like that was not a mystery to him. Nadine was different, she was a suburban girl, and had lived a life far from the rough and tumble urban jungle.
They had been living in his downtown loft and were in the process of moving when it happened. The moving truck was at the curb. She had gone down with a couple of boxes even though he had told her that in her condition she shouldn’t be doing the stairs with boxes in her arms. She was so pregnant she couldn’t even see her feet. But Nadine was hands on about things and away she went, tottering down the stairs and out on to the sidewalk, as he labored to dismantle an Ikea dining room table that had made the cut as being worthy for their new digs. Most of his stuff was salvage stuff, trash really, the kind of furnishings you might have in college, but grow out of when you grow up. Hah! He hadn’t grown up, or at least not fast enough so here he was in his forties with concrete blocks and planks for shelfing, and a sagging sofa, cat scratched and stained that someone had left out on the curb (it was going back out on the curb).
He heard the screams and ran down the stairs. When he got out on the sidewalk, Nadine had collapsed next to the truck’s lift gate and Jennifer had fled. Later on, the ride to the hospital, he watched as one paramedic pumped Nadine’s lifeless chest, while the other fed her oxygen. It was grotesque––she was obviously dead, her dark eyes as glassy as a doll’s. Roger, still in shock, came unglued and screamed at them to leave her alone, that she was dead, gone. The paramedic, without missing a beat, told him that it might be too late for his wife, but they still might be able to save the baby. Dazed by it all, Roger realized he was right. Yes. Save the baby. Save the baby.
They could not save the baby.
And then the rest was a blur, a dream you can’t wake up from. You’re there, but not really there. They tracked down Jennifer and took her into custody as he was at the funeral––two caskets side by side, the one for the baby, tiny and compact. He had picked a plot right next to his mother’s. For some reason Roger kept thinking of the caskets as space capsules, something you’d shoot off towards another galaxy, not bury beneath the ground. The worst part of it all came at the end when he was walking to his car. Nadine’s mother, in her retro Farrah Fawcett hairstyle, inflated Botox face, and form fitting black dress––a sex-selling outfit if there ever was one––charged at him in a fury, and started screaming that he was scum, that it was all his fault that her daughter and grandchild were gone. And then she collapsed in tears and was hustled away by her second husband, a big-shouldered ex-football player, who had recently started to show signs of cognitive decline. She had never liked Roger, considered him a degenerate and lowlife. His past drug use, the time he spent in prison, his circle of friends, and the heavy tats on his forearms made him completely unfit for her daughter.
But it wasn’t just the piercing opprobrium of her mother that haunted him. There were other things, and they all came back to him over and over again––moments that seemed to foretell the horrors to come. The way Nadine woke up at night out of a dream and said to him that whatever happened to her, to never let her mother take the baby. Where did that come from? The way he jokingly kneeled and clasped her pregnant belly to him and shouted, “Don’t come out kid. Forget it. The world is doomed. Stay right where you are. I’m warning you. Do you hear me?” It was at a dinner party and everyone laughed, but in Nadine’s eyes a troubled look crept in. There were many more and they all somehow felt like warnings that he should’ve taken heed of.
***
When Roger gets back home from Todd’s, there’s a message on his phone. It’s his editor, David Karr. “Hi, Roger, it’s David. Listen, I just want to tell you to take all the time you need. There’s no rush for you to come back to work. Everything is fine here. Your job will be here for you when you’re ready. Just do what you need to do. Okay, buddy. All right. See you.”
He turns it off; he should call him back. Others have called, and he’s talked to no one. He’ll give it some time, and hopefully he’ll find the words to talk to them. But not now.
***
He screws some table legs onto his desk, then wrestles it upright. He runs his hands over the surface. He feels foolish. What is he doing? Should he sell the house, head back to the city, or make a go of it, somehow? He doesn’t know, so he continues on auto pilot.
He wanders the streets. He’s just walking to be walking. There’s no way he can sit in that house. He’s a man in a strange limbo. Life goes on around him, but he feels removed from it all. Numb.
He crosses a pedestrian overpass; cars roar beneath him. Downtown Los Angeles rises up in the distance, only the top of the spires visible, shimmering in a mantle of smog. Roger stops and stares through the chain-link fence. A lost continent.
He may be numb in terms of feeling anything, but as he walks, he becomes aware that he seems to be more sensitive to the sounds around him. The buzzing of a remote-controlled model airplane in a park fills him with dread. The sound of skateboarders, working the smooth curved walls of a tunnel leading from the park, sends shivers up his spine. They shout out to each other, but Roger hardly even sees them.
The sound of his phone ringing is like a siren in the night. A warning. He’s staring at it now as it rings. It’s several days later and his work has slowed to a crawl––rooms empty, boxes still stacked. The phone stops ringing.
Moving like a sleepwalker as he continues to unpack, he hears the sound of a skateboard and looks out the window. A boarder goes by, about 10 years old––chubby cheeks, blond, sunburned, and lots of attitude. Was he one of the kids in the tunnel? He’s not sure. The kid is working the slope of his driveway, slamming off the curb and into the street. It’s extremely obnoxious, like he’s trying to get his attention. He can close his eyes, but the noise doesn’t go away.
***
Driven from the house once again, he wanders a nearby mini mall. It’s a scorcher, the sun beating down unmercifully. He passes a parked sedan with tinted windows. On the door is some kind of realtor’s logo. The sound of a child’s cry stops him. He steps up to the window. There’s a child in a car seat in the back. All the windows are rolled up tight. Roger snatches off his sunglasses, cups his face and peers in. The child has one hand thrust outward, as if it is reaching for something. The fingers wriggle sluggishly. Roger is in a panic––the child seems to be in some distress. It must be a hundred and forty degrees in that car.
He flashes a look around and shouts. “Hey! Hey!”
He reaches down and yanks on the door. It’s locked. He pounds on the window in frustration. He steps back and eyes a nearby coffee shop––could this be where the owner of the car is? He hustles off. Inside the shop, he glances around. A woman that looks to be in her thirties is paying for an iced mocha at the counter. She’s dressed smartly, business attire, a small name tag on her lapel.
“Does anyone own a black Nissan?” he shouts.
The woman with the mocha turns. “Yes...that’s me.”
Roger marches towards her, full of rage. “You left your kid in the car with all the windows up in this kind of heat? What is wrong with you!”
The woman stares at him in disbelief. The mocha falls from her hand and splats on the floor. Her hand trembles. “What did you say? I don’t believe this. What’s wrong with you?”
Other patrons are beginning to stare.
Roger is shouting in her face: “Your kid is suffocating in your car, lady! It can get up to forty degrees hotter in a car, you know.”
The woman’s eyes suddenly fill with tears. She steps towards him, a growing rage, barely contained. “You are a sick man!” she hisses, then angrily pushes past him, and strides out of the shop.
Roger follows her out. “You can kill your kid that way. Don’t you know that? It’s incredibly irresponsible!”
The woman stalks to her car, takes her keys out and presses the fob. The car chirps; she leans down and throws open the back door. She turns with flashing, tear-filled eyes, her voice savage. “What kid? What kid?” she screams.
Roger stops, bends down and peers in. There is a car seat but it’s empty. He turns towards her, completely confused. “I thought I saw a child in there…
The woman is livid, her body stiffening. “You thought you saw a child?”
She leaps in her car and drives away. Roger stares after the car, deeply shamed and troubled.
***
Roger stares out the window. The kid on the skateboard is out there again. This time he’s just holding his skateboard and staring at the house. Roger walks over to the door and opens it. The kid is gone.
He walks over to his laptop on the table. On the screen are pictures of Nadine. A whole host of them––their life together, documented frame by frame. Roger closes the lid. Stands there, breathless for a moment.
***
A local kid’s baseball league plays in the park. Roger happened to wander by and now sits in the small set of stands behind the backstop. A group of parents cheer. To his surprise he sees Todd behind the backstop, shouting out encouragement to the batter. He must be the coach––the last person in the world he’d suspect would volunteer his time to coach kid’s baseball. The guy seemed like a man on a steep descent into in a bottomless pit of moral turpitude. Just goes to show you, never be quick to judge. Afterall, he was a shameless drug addict/lowlife that was now masquerading as a grieving suburban widower. And worse, just two days ago, driven by the sheer pain and hopelessness, he’d paid a visit to his old dealer. The guy was high-end, had the good stuff––uncut, unpolluted, grade A junk. You could shoot it in your arm and you probably wouldn’t die. Roger took it home, had his kit out and the needle poised, and at the last minute was able to summons the willpower to stop. But he didn’t throw it away; he put it into a drawer and ran out of the room. Case in point––he wasn’t in a position to judge anybody.
Roger’s attention is drawn to a father sitting nearby. He is staring at a young boy coming up to the plate. There’s something about his energy, an intensity to him that Roger picks up on. The kid at the plate strikes out, and the man is devastated. He curses angrily under his breath. Roger can’t keep his eyes off this guy. He struggles to turn his attention elsewhere, but for reasons beyond his control, he finds himself staring at him. His heart hammers in his chest––it’s as if he’s suddenly been thrown into full flight-or-fight mode. A sheen of sweat covers his brow.
The kid walks away with shoulders slumped from his at-bat as Todd peppers him with upbeat atta-boys. His eyes sneak over to the father. The father glares at his son, then turns, feeling Roger’s gaze, and shoots him an irritated look.
Roger trails the father and his son as they walk back to their car. He is in the same heightened state of alarm––compelled to follow them. The kid carries his bat and glove and is crying. The father’s head is turned away from Roger, but he can hear his words. In fact, he can’t hear anything else––the sounds of the park seems to fade around him, only the low, half whispered voice of the father and kid.
“You’re a little crybaby.”
“I am not,” answers the boy.
“Yes, you are. Just a little crybaby. You don’t think I know what you tell your mother.”
“What?”
“You tell her you don’t want to do things with me. I drive all the out here to see you, bust my ass to spend quality time with you and you don’t even care?”
“Leave me alone. I don’t have to see you if I don’t want to see you. That’s what mommy says.”
“You little pussy. Your mother make you play with dolls?”
“No!”
“Is that what she’s got you doing? You play with dolls, little girl. Do you? Do you?”
“Stop saying that! Stop it!” The boy raises the bat as if he’s about to strike his father. The father grabs the bat from his hand as Roger lunges at him.
“Hey!” He tackles the man, flings him to the ground, and places his knee on the guy’s neck. “That’s enough of that!”
The guy is stunned, staring up at Roger with a look of shock and confusion. “Get the fuck off of me!”
Moments later, Roger stands next to a police car talking to two uniformed police officers. The father stands a short distance away with his son by his side. “Look, the guy was going to kill that kid, I swear,” he says.
The officers eye each other. They are tired, bored, disinterested. One of them speaks. “Look, Mr. Grimes, you’re the one with the record here. You understand? Now, Mr. baseball over there, doesn’t want to press charges against you, so we’re just going to walk away. Consider yourself lucky.”
“But–– ”
“We’re done here.”
Roger nods and looks around. The father is grinning at him triumphantly. The two police officers start walking toward their car. Roger turns: Todd is there looking at him with a look of curious alarm.
“You okay, Roger?”
Roger shrugs sheepishly. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m, okay?
They ride home together in Todd’s Crown Vic, an ex-Highway Patrol car with the floodlight still mounted on the door. The light is fading, bringing with it that same feeling of doom that seems to be a the new normal in his life. Todd eyes him.
“What was that all about, Roger?”
“I don’t know, really?”
“Saving birds and now kids?”
Yeah, it’s…it’s a surprising development.”
Roger cracks the window, lights up. “Hope you don’t mind.”
The rows of houses stream by, lights in windows, the sky darkening overhead, streetlights like sentries marching ahead––endless. Pools of light flash into the car then pass, and in that darkness Roger’s cigarette tip glows orange.
“Look, Roger says, “out here you gotta fit in, or at least pretend to fit in. I ain’t your most normal suburban guy, but I play one on TV, get it?”
Roger nods.
“Something happened to you that you care to share with me? Maybe I can help.”
Roger glances at him. He seems sincere. “I’ve been through a terrible tragedy. My wife and my son were murdered.”
Roger blinks. “Wow, okay. That will knock you sideways, that’s for sure.”
“I’m still sort of processing it, or not processing it, I guess.”
Roger turns the corner into their cul-de-sac, slides into his drive. Kills the engine and lights. They sit, the dark houses before them. Roger sighs.
“It’s the dark house when you get home that’s hard to get used to. I can tell you that much.” And then he grins, and there’s something about that grin that feels completely wrong to Roger. Wrong in every way. It’s like putting quotation marks around his words––an ironic spin that feels oddly sinister. The grin goes away. “Anytime you want to talk about it, don’t hesitate to knock on the door, Todd says.
Roger takes a breath. “Thanks, man. I appreciate it.”