Other Resort Cities (22 page)

“You think that matters?”

“This is America!”

“Dog, this is what it is. Place don’t matter in the least.”

“I’m just a scientist,” Cooperman said.

Bongo sighed again. It was an especially pitiful noise coming from him. He was one of those Mexican guys who looked like he had some Samoan in him, his torso like a barrel, his hair always shaved close, though sometimes he grew a rat tail off the back of his head, which he then braided. He had a tattoo of his own name on his stomach, which Cooperman thought he must have gotten in prison, though he didn’t even know if Bongo had done any time, but who would be bored enough on the outside to get that done? Funny thing, though, was that Bongo was actually pretty easygoing. Married to a woman named Lupe, whose face he had tatted up on his forearm. A kid. Coached soccer. One time Cooperman even saw him at the Rockin’ Taco eating with his family, and they just nodded at each other. He had some hard knocks in his employ, there was no doubt about that, but Cooperman always admired Bongo’s approach to business—apart from the timing issue—which boiled down to the simple credo tattooed in Old English on the back of his thick neck:
Not To Be Played
.

“I left what I owe you in the bathroom, second stall, taped inside the toilet tank,” Bongo said. “I can get you twenty-four hours to get ghost. After that, I don’t know you.”

“That’s not going to work,” Cooperman said. “I’ve got a job. I’ve got a life here. I can’t just get ghost. Let’s be reasonable. Bongo? Bongo?” Cooperman pulled his phone from his ear to see if he’d lost the signal, but it was still four
bars strong. He called Bongo back, but the phone just rang and rang, didn’t even go to voicemail.

“Well, fuck you then,” Cooperman said and set the phone down on the passenger seat. Thinking:
I’ll just let it keep ringing. See how annoyed that makes him. Let him know I’m not just going to lie down
.
William Cooperman doesn’t get played, either.

Cooperman reached under his seat for his nine, shoved it into the front pocket of his Dockers and got out of his Escalade. He circled around the Sonic once to make sure there wasn’t a SWAT team waiting for him, and then entered the restroom. The only person inside was a Sonic carhop, still in his roller skates, washing his hands at the sink. The only sound was the running water and the constant ringing of a cell phone, which sounded like it was coming from inside the second stall.

“Oh,” the carhop said when he saw Cooperman. “What’s up, teach?”

Cooperman looked at the carhop, tried to see his face, but he was finding it hard to concentrate on anything. Bongo had been right fucking here, the entire time; probably got off watching him stew in the front seat of his car, probably thought about killing Cooperman himself. Probably should have. Christ.

“Who are you?” Cooperman said.

“Ronnie Key?” He said it like a question, like he wasn’t sure that was his own name. “I’m in your Intro class.”

“Where do you sit?”

“In the back,” Ronnie said. “I know, it’s stupid. I should sit up front. All the studies say people who sit in the front do better, but, you know how it is when you have friends in class, right?”

“Right,” Cooperman said. The longer he looked at Ronnie, the less he seemed real, the less the words he said made any sense. Maybe it was that constantly ringing phone that was making everything skew oddly. Maybe it was that he could feel his nine pulling the front of his pants down, making him aware that he looked like one of those slouchpanted thugs he avoided at the mall. “Was there a big fucking Mexican in here a minute ago?”

“I’m not sure.”

“There is no ‘not sure,’ Ronnie. Either a human being meeting the description of a big fucking Mexican was in here or was not in here.”

“Professor, I’m not sure I know what you’re talking about.”

Professor.
Of all the times to finally show some deference. It never failed to amaze Cooperman how often people could astonish you, because even the way Ronnie had said the word indicated a kind of awestruck reverence for the moment, for all the time Cooperman had put into his place of academic standing, even if the truth was that he’d put in shit for academics, it was all just the sprinklers that had brought them to this shared moment. Or maybe it was just confusion Cooperman heard. Either was fine with him.

Cooperman stared at Ronnie Key for a moment and tried to decide what to do next. His options seemed simple enough. Shoot him or let him roller skate back into his mundane life. The realization that those were his two best choices sealed the deal.

“I have to take a shit,” Cooperman said. He walked over to the second stall, opened the door and closed it behind
him, then waited until he heard Ronnie skate out the door before he dropped Bongo’s ringing phone into the toilet. The cash was right where Bongo said it would be, but there wasn’t much there. Maybe ten thousand. Enough to get out of town, but then what?

This whole thing was ridiculous. At his house in the Coyote Hills Country Club, where he’d lived a grand total of six months, he had another fifty, maybe more, plus his entire harvest growing in his backyard, which would net three times that much this month. Probably closer to four. He wasn’t a big mover. Cooperman had no delusions about that, he was just happy to provide a niche market, so maybe he’d been wrong ever thinking globally with this whole Nicaragua thing in the first place; but he’d realized that in time, that was the ironic thing now.

Cooperman just wanted to go home, spark up a bowl, grade some papers, and forget this mess, but going home didn’t seem all that prudent. He realized Bongo was trying to do him a favor, realized that Bongo could have killed him if he wanted to, could have alleviated this now-international incident without a problem, but didn’t. Cooperman didn’t know what to make of that precisely, except that perhaps Bongo felt a level of loyalty. Another surprise. Getting out of town was a gift from Bongo, but where would he go? He’d lived his entire fucked up life in Orange County, and it’s not like moving to Palm Springs was going to somehow change the end result that a bunch of angry Nicaraguans were now looking for him.

He stepped out of the stall and saw that the sink where Ronnie Key had been standing not five minutes before was now overflowing with water, the tile surrounding the sink a
growing lake of piss-colored water. His natural inclination was to turn the faucet off and conserve the water, but then he thought about where he was standing; thought about how just up the street there used to be groves of orange trees that grew wild from the water in the soil that had, nevertheless, been ripped up and paved over; thought about the chimpanzee and gorilla that lived in a cage next to that weird jungle restaurant on Raymond back when he was a kid and how no one seemed to give a shit that it wasn’t in the least bit natural; thought about how nothing in this place has ever lasted, how it’s always been a course of destruction and concrete gentrification. And what did that produce? Nothing came out looking any better, Cooperman thought. No one had figured out a way to make the Marriott across the street from campus as pretty as the citrus trees that once lived in the same spot. No, Cooperman decided as he walked back out into the furnace of the late afternoon, the faucet still going strong behind him, no one ever recognized the ripples.

 

The indignity of teaching adjunct at Cal State Fullerton extended beyond the known quantities of indignant students and the horror of keeping a clock. On top of it all, William Cooperman, who’d invented the most technologically advanced piece of sprinkler machinery ever, who thought he should be held up as a paragon of conservation and awareness in this new “go green” world, who’d figured out how to grow marijuana in an environmentally sound way that actually heightened the effectiveness of the THC in ways that could probably help a lot of cancer patients (and in fact, that was what Cooperman had always thought he’d use as his alibi
when he was finally busted, that he was growing a mountain of weed in his backyard as a public service to those poor souls with inoperable tumors and such), “
the
William Cooperman,” as his ex used to call him, had to share an office.

It was up on the second floor of McCarthy Hall and overlooked the Quad. During the term, it wasn’t such a bad view. Cooperman even sort of liked sitting at his desk and watching the students milling back and forth. As long as he didn’t have to teach the students, he actually rather liked the idea of them, of their determination to learn, their collegial enthusiasm for stupid things like baseball and basketball tournaments, their silly hunger strikes protesting fee hikes, the way every few years MEChA would demand that California be recognized as “Occupied Mexico” even while they happily wore Cal State Fullerton T-shirts and caps. Back in the 1970s, riot police beat the shit out of students in that Quad, but now things were much more civil. Protest was just as cyclical as the tides and, in a bizarre way, it comforted Cooperman during the school year. It also made the prospect of sharing his space with
fostering
Professor James Kochel less offensive since there was something to occupy his vision other than Kochel’s collection of “family” photos, all of which were of cocker spaniels, and shots of the geology professor in various biblical locales.

In the summer, however, it was just the two of them with no view to speak of, since the students who liked to protest and march and rally in the Quad typically avoided summer session. Cooperman didn’t know where they went and didn’t really care normally, but the loneliness of the campus this evening made him nervous as he walked from the faculty
parking lot to McCarthy. He paused in the Quad and looked up the length of the building to see if his office light was on, and sure enough he could see Kochel moving about. Cooperman found it strangely comforting, especially since he’d left his gun in the car, figuring he’d just run upstairs, grab his laptop, maybe heist a few other laptops from open offices since they’d be easy to sell along the way to wherever, and then . . .
get ghost
. Bringing a gun onto the campus might awaken his worst traits, a likely scenario since he was supposed to be teaching another class within the hour, and that meant a few students might show up early wanting to
talk
.

He harbored a fantasy, momentarily, that when he got to his office Katie Williard would be waiting for him and he’d grab her, too, and they’d run off and start a life. Tend the rabbits together, Cooperman thought, and realized the sheer folly of it all, but that’s what fantasizing was for.

Anyway, he hadn’t figured out where, precisely, he was going, but had a vague notion that the Pacific Northwest would be a hospitable place for the world’s finest weed grower, even sort of liked the idea of finding himself in a place like Eugene or Olympia or Longview or Kelso, particularly since he’d spent the last few hours liquidating his bank accounts and now had forty thousand dollars in cash stowed in the Escalade, a couple RD-2001s, and, finally, a reason to leave. The idea of living in near constant rain had a sudden and visceral appeal, and it astonished Cooperman that he hadn’t thought of living in Oregon or Washington previously. He liked apples as much as oranges.

Cooperman climbed the two flights of stairs up to his office. He was surprised by how light he felt, how clarity had
lessened the weight he felt about all of this crap. It wasn’t just about water anymore; it was about living a more principled life. He’d stood for one thing for a very long time and what had it earned him? Cash, of course, but in the end no one cared that he possessed the key to saving the world. What good was it being a superhero if no one respected your superpowers?

Proof was right in front of him, even: Professor Kochel’s name plate was above his on the little slider beside their office door. Respect was dead, so fuck it to death. Maybe I’ll get that inked on my neck in Old English, Cooperman thought. Fuck it to Death.

“There you are,” Kochel said when Cooperman finally opened the office door.

“Have you been looking for me?”

“Your phone has been ringing constantly. I took some messages for you.” Kochel handed Cooperman a stack of Post-it notes. The first was from Katie Williard, another was from Enterprise Rent-A-Car—a problem Cooperman hadn’t quite taken care of yet—and another still that had one word on it: Bongo.

“What did Katie Williard want?”

“Lovely girl, isn’t she? So bright.”

“What did she want?” Cooperman heard a new tone entering his voice. He liked it. Thought it made him sound like the kind of guy who just might have some neck ink.

“Candidly? I think she’s upset about your afternoon class.”

“Did you talk to her?”

“Briefly. She indicated to me that she just wasn’t satisfied in the level of teaching. It’s no reflection on you, William, I’m sure.”

“I’m sure.”

“I’ve had Katie in other courses and she’s just very particular,” Kochel said. He had a look of smug satisfaction on his face that Cooperman recognized as the same face he used when he talked about how his faith in Christ allowed him to see that many of the great mysteries of science were merely God’s way of testing us.

“Someone named Bongo called?”

“Oh, yes, sorry,” Kochel said. “That’s what the name sounded like. I could barely hear him.”

“He say anything?”

“It was very strange,” Kochel said. “I thought maybe it was a wrong number. All he said was to tell you that he couldn’t get you twenty-four anymore. I have no idea what that means. Do you?”

Cooperman looked out the window and down at the Quad, half expected to see an army of men already massed. But it was empty save for a lost seagull picking through an overflowing trash can. It was still sunny out, would be for another hour and a half, two hours, not that it probably mattered. The more frightening aspect was that Cooperman couldn’t remember ever giving Bongo his office phone number.