The Next Right Thing (10 page)

With the darkness settling into the hills, I headed back home. Approaching the day-labor station in Laguna Canyon—a stucco box on the side of the hill, a bathroom and shelter from the rain—I had to wonder how much work my guys were losing because I had no projects to put them on. Yegua was too polite to mention it, but the undocumented economy must have noticed
my absence. What happened to the
gabacho
with the F-350 who paid us too much?

I was about to duck down another gopher hole of remorse when I saw Troy Padilla ambling pathetically along the other side of Laguna Canyon Road. The guys at the day-labor station made walking look dignified, but Troy couldn’t pull it off. He must have been on his way to a meeting at the Coastal Club. I locked up my wheels and pulled a U-turn across the median. A Range Rover honked. A VW Phaeton honked at the Range Rover. My grille arrived at the spot where Troy had been staring into the gravel ahead of him.

Troy backed away. He looked pathetic doing that, too.

I threw myself out of my truck. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I shouted. “Relax.”

“Relax” was not one of Troy’s menu options. Which was probably my fault.

“Just stay the fuck away from me,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I want to apologize.”

“You want to make amends to me?” Troy said.

Fucking A.A. jargon
. “No, I don’t want to make amends—I’ve come to apologize. I don’t think you were with Terry at the end, and I was wrong to—”

“Make me piss my pants?”

I looked down. “That’s not how I was going to say it.”

“It’s all right,” Troy said. “It wasn’t all you. I was sharing just now with my friend. I think I was channeling some earlier trauma. Kind of a post-traumatic stress reaction.”

I laughed. “I’m pretty sure you were channeling a
pre
-traumatic stress reaction. I was going to kick your ass.”

“Maybe that’s what triggered it,” Troy said. “I have a family history of violence. It was a good thing, though. This was a bottom for me.”

More A.A. jargon.

“I threaten Wade,” he continued. “You threaten me. I piss my pants. It’s a cycle of violence. It doesn’t stop unless someone stops it. I’ve gotta be the guy who stops it. You know what I’m saying?”

To shut him up, I nodded. “You want me to drive you to the meeting?”

Troy stared at me. He could probably write a term paper about his violent family history, but he couldn’t decide whether he wanted a ride.

“Get in,” I said.

As Troy opened the passenger door, a young woman emerged from the bushes behind Canyon Auto. She adjusted her jeans as though she’d just relieved herself. Odd enough, but Troy waved and shouted at her that he was catching a ride to the Coastal Club.

“I can drive her, too,” I said.

“Emma’s not going to the club,” Troy said.

“What’s she doing, then—embarking on a trek across the continent?”

When she reached my passenger window, I recognized Pierced Navel from this morning at the recovery home. Older than I had thought but no more than twenty. Tonight she wore a grungy button-down and Vans slip-ons. Her dirty-blond hair was an almost fashionable bird’s nest. Beneath the tough-girl facade,
though, she was blank-canvas pretty, like a fashion model. I imagined she could be as beautiful or bland as she wanted. Still, something about her was very not right. If Claire Monaco’s troubles had transformed her face and body into a kind of brassy costume, this girl’s troubles had made her transparent. Somehow she reminded me of Claire but without any of Claire’s defenses. I figured I’d better apologize to her, too, but Troy, ever helpful, beat me to it. “Randy’s probably going to want to make amends, Emma.”

Standing behind Troy, resting her chin on his shoulder, she opened her eyes wide, a cartoon of smart-ass expectation.

“I’m sorry about scaring you this morning,” I said. “You want a ride?”

“Nothing scares me,” Emma said. “And I don’t fucking care about your
amends
.”

“That’s fair enough. Get in, Emma.”

Like Troy, Emma had no effective defense against clear instructions. She pushed Troy in and took the window seat. She propped her back against the door to face us both. “You know what job I want? I want to be a sniper. Maybe have a license to kill.”

“A fine ambition,” I said.

“Don’t fucking patronize me,” Emma said. “I’m talking about killing people, maybe even you. And I’m not the only one—it’s a big career path for high school seniors.”

“
I got it
, Emma. Just be sure I don’t kill you first. I’m as angry as you but with eight years of sobriety. That’s eight years of cunning.”

Emma briefly chewed on that before she said, “How come you’re not a cop anymore?
That’s
a license to kill.”

“You know all that stuff they ask you to write down in your fourth step?”

Emma nodded warily as we entered the Coastal Club parking lot.

I smiled at her. “That’s why I’m not a cop anymore.”

She laughed and turned back toward the windshield. Her laugh was sharp and loud: it woke me up and squared my shoulders. When I slowed down for the creek bridge between parking lots, Emma opened the door and jumped out. I stopped to make sure she hadn’t broken her ankle. That was when she turned around and gave me the finger, high up, like she wanted the whole world to see. She shouted, “I’m smarter than you. Don’t forget that. You forget that, and bad things will happen.”

“Okay,” I said to Troy, “who the hell is she?”

“You don’t recognize her?” Troy said. “She’s a reality-TV star. She was on that show
Treatment Center
.”

“Do I look like a guy who watches
Treatment Center
?”

“Yes, you do,” Troy said. “That’s pretty much exactly your demographic.”

“She your girlfriend?”

Troy sharpened his eyes on me. “What do you mean?”

“You don’t know what I mean?”

“No,” he said. “She’s not my girlfriend.”

“Tell me who she is.”

“She was raised in a family of Jehovah’s Witnesses, but she’s also this epic addict. She got kicked off that show for being too drunk and promiscuous, and you gotta understand that the point of that show is being too drunk and promiscuous.”

“Where the hell is she going?” I asked Troy.

“Recon.”

“Recon?”

“She’s always on a mission. She walks. She observes. She covers as much of the South County as she can, forcing it to yield its secrets. Boots on the ground, Emma says, rifle in her hand—thank God she doesn’t have the rifle yet. She’s too wired to meditate or pray—I think it’s her spiritual program. She’s been sober a few weeks this way.”

“This is the sniper thing?” I said.

“This is the sniper thing.”

God help me, I liked her.

In my first year of talking to Terry, it often seemed like he was going out of his way to avoid discussing the most pressing problems in my life. For example, if I wanted to talk about my pending conviction for aggravated assault. If I wanted to talk about the fact that my wife was not only divorcing me but also keeping sole custody of our daughter. If I wanted to talk about how I was going to make money now that the city of Santa Ana was no longer going to pay me.

If we were anywhere near an A.A. meeting—which was often the case—or even anywhere near other A.A. members, Terry would point to whoever had less time in the program than I did—and even after a little while, there were many—and he would say, “You’re not the patient here today.” It was how Terry directed us toward A.A.’s “primary purpose”—to carry the message to the alcoholic who still suffers. It was his way of reminding me that we weren’t always here to talk about
me
. Terry
wouldn’t tolerate self-pity. Helping others was the only way to help yourself. I sometimes had a hard time keeping that in mind, but it always saved my life.

My truck idled outside the Coastal Club. Troy didn’t take the hint. I was not going to the meeting. I was dropping him off. But first he had to finish telling me how weird it was that when your dad’s in the Mafia, you don’t think there’s anything weird about your dad being in the Mafia.

“The weirdness of the experience,” Troy said, “disappears right into the weirdness of the experience.”

Troy’s pseudo-intellectualizing made me nostalgic for the straightforward if psychotic Emma. Insane and pretty used to be one of my favorite combinations. I married insane and pretty.

Troy finally seemed to be wrapping up his spiel on the notion that maybe criminals should have their own recovery programs, too (he was reaching for the door handle), when my friend Wade poked his head through the window.

“Park the truck,” Wade said.

“No.”

“I think you’d be happier.”

“Like you?” I said.

“If you don’t want to participate,” Wade said, “why do you drive newcomers to the club?”

“He was wandering down Laguna Canyon Road,” I said. “Someone was going to run him over. And … hold up a goddamn minute … weren’t you two in a smackdown this morning?”

“We’re good,” Wade said. “Aren’t we good, Troy?”

“We’re good.
Love and service
, dude.”

“Are you sponsoring this guy?” I asked Wade.

“No.” And then Wade smiled. “Oh, man. I just got a download.
You
should be his sponsor.”

Troy and I looked at each other. We silently agreed this was not a good idea.

“You’re probably the only guy around here who’s not impressed by his family,” Wade continued, “with that badass cop background of yours.”

“His father’s probably a pharmacist,” I said. “Dangerous people don’t talk about being dangerous.”

“Don’t I get to have an opinion on this?” Troy asked.

Wade stepped away from my truck, which didn’t mean the discussion was over. Wade never let go of anything that didn’t have claw marks on it.

He stood beside my door, smiling at me, knowing he was about to pull his trump card. “You’re not the patient here today.”

Fuck you
, I thought, but I pulled into a parking space.

FRANK GILLESPIE GREETED WADE
and me outside the meeting room. Long before my time, he was a popular conference speaker known as California Frank. With his sparse gray hair, brown teeth, and early-stage emphysema, he could have been a time traveler from the gold rush.