The Other Americans(2)

My mother wiped her nose with a crumpled tissue. “I knew something was wrong when I came back from your sister’s house. I went there to drop off karate patches for the children, and she asked me to stay for dinner. Then I came home, and he wasn’t here.”

Yet the armchair where my father usually sat still bore the imprint of his body. It was as if he were only in the next room.

“What did the police say?” I asked. “Do they have a lead?”

“No. The detective just asked a lot of questions. Did he have money troubles, did he use drugs, did he gamble, did he have enemies. Like that. I said no.”

I remember being puzzled by these questions, which were so different from those that swirled around in my head: who was driving the car and how did they hit him and why did they flee the scene? Then my gaze was drawn to the window. Outside, two blackbirds landed one after the other on the electric wire. The neighbor across the street was deflating the giant Easter bunny that had sat for weeks in his front yard, gathering dust. It stared back with grotesque eyes as its white ears collapsed under his shoes. The wind whipped the flag on the pole, and the sun beat down without mercy.





Jeremy




Back then I was struggling with insomnia, and I would go to the gym right when it opened, at five a.m. The doctor had told me that regular exercise would help. She told me a lot of things would help. Hot baths. Blackout curtains. Reading. Chamomile. I took long baths, I read before bed, I drank cup after cup of chamomile, but most nights I still lay awake, listening to the clock on the bedside table ticking in the silence. I’d tell myself, If you fall asleep now, you could still get four hours of sleep, or three hours, or two. As if I could reason myself into sleeping. Then, a little before five, I’d get up and head to Desert Fitness.

That morning, I had finished my cardio and was doing my crunches when Fierro came in. The gym was mostly empty at that time, so I was glad for the company, though he wouldn’t stop talking about his ex. This was right after he and Mary separated, and I think he was still in denial about it. His chattering made me lose count, and I had to stop and start twice before I was sure I’d completed my set. Fifty regular, fifty reverse, fifty double, fifty bicycle. I had another twenty minutes before I had to leave for work, but just to be safe, I skipped the biceps curls and went to the bench press. I liked to take my time when I lifted weights. Still do. I set myself up with two hundred and fifty pounds and settled down on the bench but, without so much as asking for permission, Fierro added fifteen pounds on each side of my barbell. “What’re you doing?” I asked.

“Dude, come on. No point in doing it if you’re not doing it right.” He stood behind the bench, ready to spot me. Waiting, really. He was in a gray One Shot, One Kill shirt, with the short sleeves rolled up to show off his muscles.

“Doing it like you, you mean.”

He leaned to the left, giving me his good ear. “What’s that?”

“Never mind,” I said. I could argue with Fierro, or I could start lifting and get to work on time. I started lifting.

“Anyway,” he said, “last night I found out Mary didn’t change the spark plugs on the Mustang, even though I reminded her about it three times. She’s going to ruin that car. Dude, take a break if you need one.”

I could feel beads of sweat on my forehead, but I pressed on. I didn’t want to give Fierro the satisfaction. We could be competitive with each other about certain things, going back to our days in the Marines. A blonde in a black leotard walked in and Fierro’s eyes instinctively tracked her all the way to the locker-room doors. He sucked on his teeth. “So I told Mary I wouldn’t sign the divorce papers until she gave me the keys.” He said this like he was proud of it, like he’d finally taken a stand.

“Isn’t it her car, though?” I asked. I’d ridden in that Mustang a few times, after Fierro and I came back from Iraq. I’d sit in the back, sipping on whiskey from my flask, while Mary drove us to wherever we were going, a bar or a club. Whenever she turned or changed lanes, a silver-plated angel ornament swung from its chain on the rearview mirror. I remember one time, she was talking about the bachelorette party she’d gone to while she was in Vegas with her friends from work when Fierro interrupted her. You never told me about no bachelorette party, he said. That was one of their earliest fights, and the fighting had never stopped, even after they’d split up.

“Her car? Who put the down payment on it? Who replaced those crappy hubcaps with chrome wheels? Who installed redline tires just this last summer?” Fierro turned his thumb, crooked because of an old fracture, to his chest. “It was me. I did it.” Now he put his hands over the barbell. “Come on, Gorecki. Take a break.”

“I’m fine,” I said. I didn’t have much time for a break. If I was late to work, Vasco would chew me out. For a while now, he’d been waiting for me to slip up, just so he could say he needed to look at the schedule again and why didn’t I take a different shift? I couldn’t figure out why the guy hated me so much. I finished my last few reps in silence, then sat up on the bench to catch my breath. My shirt was soaked and stuck to my chest. “Didn’t you tell me she was seeing someone?” I asked.

“What’s that? Man, the music is so loud in here.”

“You told me Mary was seeing some guy.”