Middle Men (23 page)

His sacraments wait for him by the shallow-end steps. Sports page, crossword puzzle, felt-tip pen, the Tareytons, three left, and a Zippo flashing in the sun. And the new issue of the
Pipeline
. A bit of vanity. He climbs carefully onto the plastic raft and pushes off the side, off the tile that she chose, orange and purple, a floral mosaic, Spanish.

A nice day, warm and clear. What they call an azure sky. On the wooden telephone pole in the corner of the yard a single crow keeps vigil. The telephone wires run parallel to everything. The sky divided by clean horizontal lines: the roof, the wall, the wires. This is what he paid for. Peaceful ranch house living. Sea-green stucco and a sliding glass door.

Three mortgages, babe, each one more magnificent than the last.

Costello is looking at himself. Page three of the
Pipeline
, a feature article about the company he works for, Ajax Plumbing Sales, of Compton. Special notices to Jack Isahakian, the owner, who is nominated for manager of the year, and to him, Martin Costello, the top outside guy. The supreme council of elders will announce the awards this Friday, after the annual
WCPA Best Ball Extravaganza. Every contractor, rep, and wholesaler in SoCal descending on whatever shitball municipal golf course the council has managed to rent out. The hackfest of all hackfests.

Costello is pictured merrily athwart a brand-new Ultima 900, which he specified onto every track house built last year in the high desert by Progressive Plumbing, Inc. (formerly Lamrock & Hoon LLC). The defective ballcocks on the Ultimas are still causing problems—a nightmare sorting the warranty situation with the factory—but the article doesn't mention that. A nice fluff piece. Jack, in his humility, made the photographer put the entire Ajax crew in the picture, inside sales, outside sales, warehouse crew, everybody hanging off forklifts and pallets in the sunny pipe yard. Everybody squinting, faces bright. Linda—pronounced
Leenda
—in her wheelchair, waving to the camera. Next to the forklift, Costello's son, Matt, the picture taken a couple weeks before he gave up plumbing to finish his degree, God bless. The article extols Ajax's transformation after the brutalities of the last housing crash, the bust years, 1989–95, the trifecta mortgage years. Jack Isahakian, quoted at length: “We got fat on new construction like everybody else, but when reality set in we had to change things, think smaller, master the nickle and dime stuff with our wholesalers.” All the news that's fit to print.

Rocha finishes whacking his bottlebrush plant, turns the trimmer off. Costello, drifting in the deep end, sees a cloud of red needles floating over the wall.

“We're turning on the barbecue tonight,” says Rocha. “Feel free to come by.”

A year of warm regards and kind invitations. A year of telling lies to avoid them.

“I'm meeting the kids for dinner,” says Costello.“Thanks, though.”

Rocha salutes and leaves the wall. A moment later the sound of his diving board, then a splash of impressive magnitude. Jesse Rocha, a virtuoso of the cannonball.

Costello lights up. Tareyton, the taste we're fighting for. No more sneaking them. Killing himself out in the open, under a blue sky.

Costello drifts for a few minutes, blowing smoke rings, idly snapping the Zippo. Nice and quiet. A dragonfly hovers over the water, touching down smooth and fast, then gone, zigzagging up and over the wall, a dust-off.

The telephone pole in the corner of the yard, like the mainmast of a ship. Galleons and caravels. Sailors in the crosstrees on lookout. Magellan and his crew, drifting on the equator, praying for wind.

Costello starts the crossword, but can't concentrate. An uneasy feeling clutches his stomach. The lizard directly below, full fathom five. He pushes off toward the shallow end and disembarks, his feet slipping into the slimy water.

•  •  •

Evening comes. The house is dark. Costello drives his Pontiac Grand Am one block, parks in a cul-de-sac, and walks back to the house, slipping in through the side gate. Smoke and mirrors, to make the Rochas think he's out with the kids. The Rochas always knock a second time, asking again if he wants to come over.

Later, in his recliner, in the dark, with the curtains drawn and the air-conditioning blasting, he turns on the game. The voice of Vin Scully, soothing and omniscient, the God voice of SoCal. Costello gets nervous during games. He paces the
green shag in the family room, looking for distractions. The upper shelves of the wall unit are full of pictures, Katie and Matt and Megan, as kids, in various stages of toothlessness and rec league glory. Then the encyclopedias, Funk & Wagnalls, A through Z, one a month at Safeway for two years. Costello wants to look up axolotls, but “A” is missing. There's a copy of
Moby-Dick
. Some other random books of nautical lore. Krakens, mermaids, the fata morgana. Costello finds the book of explorers, turns to his favorite passage. Magellan's crew, lost in the doldrums of the Pacific, slowly starving to death. Costello, laughing, reads his favorite quote: “. . . and when they ran out of rats, they chewed the bark off the mainmast.”

In the kitchen, by the light of the refrigerator, Costello takes out a giant bag of hot dogs. Then a giant tub of mustard, then a giant tub of mayonnaise. Smart & Final, apocalypse shopping. He puts dogs on a paper plate, shoves them in the microwave. Waiting, he sets up four buns, slapping on mustard and mayonnaise. He takes a fifth bun, balls it up, dips it in the mayonnaise, swallows it whole. The dogs pop and hiss. He pours Pepsi from a two-liter bottle into a clean glass just out of the dishwasher. A bit of decorum. The television illuminates the family room, waves of blue, aquarium light. Costello, leaning forward in his recliner, a dish towel over his knees, eyes focused on the game, mayonnaise punctuating both sides of his mouth—this is how he eats. The kids are trying to get him out more. It's been over a year, they say, you need to get out there, you need to do something, go somewhere. Go where? We've got the pool.

In the bottom of the ninth a pinch hitter stares innocently at strike three. Costello throws his cap at the television, stomps down the dark hall. For a while he plays hearts on the
computer, sipping his Pepsi, trying to calm down. His animated opponents are a bear, an alien, and some kind of go-go dancer. At ten o'clock, hearing the Disneyland fireworks, he can't help himself. He goes out through the garage, scales the side gate onto the roof, and walks barefoot across the asphalt shingles. An old summer ritual, watching fireworks on the roof, his pool and Rocha's sparkling in the darkness, the kids tossing their Popsicle sticks down the chimney. He lights up, snaps the Zippo. Down below he sees Rocha and Connie, holding beers, watching the sky. They hear something, start looking around. Connie, ten years younger than Rocha, firm as all hell, what they call a biker babe.
Thou shalt not covet
. Soon they'll notice the man lurking above them. They will ask legitimate questions and listen generously to his implausible answers. This is bad form, weird and selfish behavior, blowing them off to watch the game alone. They are nice enough people.

Costello, on tiptoe, moves toward the chimney, the only hiding place, but he trips on one of the support wires that hold up the old TV aerial. He rolls down the slant, but the chimney catches him before he can plunge into the dead rosebushes. Cursing silently to himself, he hears Rocha.

“Marty? Is that you?”

“Marty, are you okay?” Connie calls in her raspy voice.

Costello crouches behind the chimney. A night ambush. The sky cracking, turning colors. Surrender.

“Yeah,” he says, standing up, faking laughter. “I tripped.”

“Don't fall off the roof, man,” Rocha says.

“Look,” Costello says, pointing in the general direction of the Matterhorn. “Here comes the grand finale.”

Greens and blues and reds, whirling and cracking. Connie claps when it's over.

“I'll see you Friday, Marty,” Rocha says, squeezing Connie's ass.

“You will?”

“The WCPA tourney,” Rocha reminds him.

“Right,” Costello says. “Ajax is sponsoring a hole. Stop by if you want.”

An hour later, with his bloody foot wrapped in toilet paper, he watches the local news, waiting for sports and weather.

•  •  •

Sunday, Costello arrives late to evening mass, sits in the back, falls asleep during the homily, then slips out right after Communion, still chewing the wafer as he hurries across the parking lot. Francine, the parish retard, accosts him. Forty going on ten. Not enough oxygen to the brain at birth. Acne, hairy upper lip, one of God's defectives. Lives in a halfway house down the street. She rides around on a beach cruiser, greeting people, keeping track of who goes to mass, spreading her tragic brand of glee. His wife was friends with Francine, or put up with her, at least, let her stop by the house, let her ramble on and on. For a while, afterward, Francine came by to visit Costello. He'd hold the door half closed, smile, feign sleep, illness, never letting her in. A responder to subtle hints Francine is not.

She rolls toward him on her bike.

“Hi, Marty!”

“Hey, there, Francine,” Costello says, swallowing the consecrated host. “Shouldn't you be wearing a helmet?”

Keys, door, faster. A fucking zombie attack.

“ 'Bye, Marty!”

•  •  •

On Monday morning Costello neatly arranges his hair crosswise over his skull using a comb, a blow dryer, and an aerosol product called “The Dry Look.” Pleated khakis, beige golf shirt with Ajax logo, brown Members Only jacket. Everything you own is brown, she said. He clicks the Nextel into his belt holster and leaves the house at six o'clock.

Anaheim is beautiful. Supremo freeway access in all directions. All that concrete crisscrossing in the air, north and south, east and west, a compass rose. He takes the 91, the Artesia Freeway, east toward the Ajax warehouse in Compton. The freeway all to himself. Dick Dale on cassette, black coffee from McDonald's, a trunk full of defective ballcocks. He checks the odometer: 237,000 and counting. He averages 50,000 miles per year, vast territories, circles of latitude, Inglewood to Barstow, sailing across SoCal, all day, every day. Thirty-five years, carry the one, that's a couple million miles. Circumnavigation. Begin where you end, end where you begin. Sailors crossing the equator, initiated into the ancient mysteries of the deep. Getting laid in the watery parts of the world. In Hong Kong, R&R, the house on the hill, his first and only piece before her. Fifty thousand miles per year. Let them bury Martin Costello on the freeway. Let them throw his body over the side of a transition loop, commending his soul to
Trafficus rex
.

He exits the 91, cruises down Avalon Boulevard, turns left into an industrial cul-de-sac. Pigeons and graffiti and concertina wire. Costello parks next to Jack Isahakian's Mercury Grand Marquis. Luis, the Lord of Will Call, walks out of the Ajax warehouse, on his way to get breakfast at the roach coach, which has entered the cul-de-sac, horn blaring. The sun is coming up.

An exchange of
que pasos
, and then Costello asks, “You ever see an axolotl?”

Luis, eyes still bloodshot after his festival weekend in Zacatecas, shakes his head.

“It's a Mexican salamander,” Costello explains.

“I saw a gila monster,” says Luis.

“I've seen pictures of those things,” says Costello. “Ugly suckers.”

“The thing about them,” says Luis, “is they don't have . . . they can't ever . . .”

“They can't ever what?”

“The tail just gets bigger,” says Luis. “It fills up. Their whole life.”

“What, with shit?” Costello readies a Tareyton. “Are you telling me gila monsters don't have assholes?”

“It just fills up.”

“That's not healthful. Shit is toxic.”

Costello considers a burrito. It will destroy him, but what the hell. He and Luis load up on chorizo and enter the pipe yard. Sunlight playing through a pyramid of bell-ended sixteen-inch PVC. The warehouse is twenty thousand square feet. Smells sweetly of diesel exhaust. Costello walks up the ramp that Jack installed for Linda and enters the dark and empty office. He passes through the catalogue library and into Jack's wood-paneled war room. Jack is a giant eyebrow with a man attached. He's already on the phone with one of the factories. On his desk a double frame with pictures of his wife and kids.

Fluorescent light and the smell of a million burned coffees.

“Hold on,” Jack says, and puts his hand over the mouthpiece. “Listen, comrade. I'm sending out an email. I'm outlawing consignments. Anything we ship from here we expect to
be paid for. That's my new business philosophy. I'm speaking, what do you call it? Ex cathedra? You guys have too many funky arrangements going, and I'm too stupid to keep track. If you want, do sixty-day billing and address the receivable with Linda, but after that point we expect to be paid. That's what I'm going to say in the email.”

“Gila monsters don't have assholes,” Costello says, sitting down.

“Can I call you back?” Jack hangs up the phone. “Is that true?”

“The tail just gets bigger. The shit stores up in there and that's why they're poisonous.”

“That makes sense from an evolution standpoint.”

“Good thing humans don't work like that,” Costello says. “That would be a major blow to our industry.”

“Beautiful.” Jack sips from his Styrofoam cup. “Listen. You need to talk to somebody at Bromberg. We need to get this ballcock thing taken care of once and for all.”

“It's taken care of,” Costello says. “That's all I've been doing. Lamrock was merciful. He signed off on everything.”

“I'm still getting calls from everybody at Bromberg.”

“One defective part and the whole universe unravels.”