Where You Live Page 2

  “Then congratulations,” said Shell. “You were an abused child.”

  Even though I thought that was crap I let it go, kept on with the ice pick like I didn’t care. Getting spanked, being put in your place, encountering power and authority beyond yourself—that was all part of growing up, of learning about the world and how to live in it. But they say compromise is important in a marriage—they do say that, don’t they?—and I was doing my best, making the agreed-upon effort.

  When the time came for the ultrasound we didn’t need it. “It’s a boy,” announced Shell, and of course she was right. But we went anyway, just to be sure, and because that’s what you do these days. We asked the doctor if being pregnant had anything to do with being psychic. He had a Magnum P.I. mustache and wire-rimmed glasses that were supposed to make him look not just rich but cultured, too. We waited, but he didn’t answer our question, just handed us the picture, mumbled something about the wonders of the human fetus, and said it was a boy. He circled the penis to verify.

  We taped the ultrasound picture on the refrigerator next to the magnets and funny pictures we cut out of newspapers and magazines, and there it hung until I made a crack about how it was reassuring that the baby looked like me and not like Ramón. Then Shell tore it up. She tore it up into little eggshell pieces and then she tore up everything else on the fridge, including that priceless picture of Nixon and Elvis that has graced several different refrigerators over the years. She marched into the living room, livid, grabbed the closest object (it was a Blockbuster video, Remains of the Day, Shell’s choice, not mine) and hurled it at me. She missed, but it hit the wall and exploded, bits of plastic and tape everywhere. It cost us something like a hundred bucks. The clerk couldn’t explain to me why one measly videotape was so expensive. “Policy,” he said, and how do you argue with that?

  And so there were the occasional fights, commotions, communication blackouts, etc., and once or twice I left for a few days and then came back and it would be tense for a day, maybe two, tops, but then it would be all right. Nothing more than the usual. The time passed painlessly enough. By the sixth month Shell was rapidly getting bigger and bigger and she grumbled about how her body was like an inflatable toy, only she couldn’t let out the air. She consumed massive amounts of TV, way more than the average 6.5 hours per day or whatever the latest statistic is. I was always bringing home movies, ice cream, magazines, new Nintendo games. Money-wise, Shell’s unemployment wouldn’t run out for another few months, and I picked up two or three night shifts a week at the printers, watching the giant machines spit out our local newspaper and drinking Jolt cola to stay awake. Plus I was painting apartments at the other building Mrs. Tokuda owned, down in San Ysidro. Cash, under the table, no strings. It might not sound like much, but at the time I was feeling okay. Generally. There was movement, progression. I couldn’t complain, not really. How your life turns out is never what you expect. Driving home at night on the 5, tired and ready for the couch and the balm of cable, I could see the lights of Tijuana in my rearview mirror. I’d half wonder what it would be like to live over there instead of here, the different language, the yearning to be somewhere else, the idea that things could be so much better if it weren’t for geography.

  It was probably around the sixth or seventh month when I came home after a day of painting (the all-important first coat for an apartment whose occupant, I’d discovered, happened to be a collector of hard-core pornography and rare South American stamps) and found Shell, as usual, marooned on the sofa, preparing the syringe for Hiccup’s injection, the cat curled next to her like the docile creature I knew he wasn’t. This was Shell’s domain. I tried, but I was just too squeamish, and besides, the cat thinks I’m a Nazi so it’s hard for him to be calm enough for the shot when I’m the one sticking a needle in him. Shell motioned for me to be quiet. Gently she repositioned Hiccup on his side, steadied the needle like a lifelong junkie, then ushered it into the cat’s skin, all in one fluid motion. A pro.

  Once that was over, I sat down and gave Shell a kiss that got half lip and half cheek. We went through the how-was-your-day conversation. Hiccup had had enough by then. He wanted to make his statement and publicly scorn my presence, so he ejected himself down to the floor and one-hundred-yard-dashed it toward the hallway.

  “I had another one,” Shell said.

  “Another one,” I repeated. “Wow.” I had only an hour to eat and shower before I was off to the printers for part two of my day. The mail was in my lap, a big, thick, ridiculous stack. Was it just me or was the amount of mail steadily increasing? Each day it took longer and longer to plow through. More credit card applications, banks I’d never heard of, based in places like Wilmington, Delaware, and Running Brook, Idaho. Jesus, didn’t these companies get it? People like us didn’t need more plastic, more burdens to fill our days and nights.

  “It was just right after lunch,” Shell went on, “and I had this flash, a BAM!, you know, in my head, and then I saw a red and white van with lights flashing. So then I do—I don’t know—the dishes, whatever, and a little while later I hear this BAM! outside. I look out the bedroom window and there on the street are these two cars, one totally totaled and the other up on the sidewalk all gnarled up like some modern sculpture. They called the ambulance and carried one of the guys away on a stretcher. A car crash. That was the BAM!”

  I tossed the mail onto the coffee table next to yesterday’s still unopened queries; it was practically the last available space on the table’s surface. This was an ongoing issue—the issue of space. Meaning more than just the coffee table. And what with the baby coming and all.

  “You know Shell, I’ve been thinking.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “No, good thinking.”

  “Oh, good thinking. Well that’s okay then. What have you been good thinking about?”

  “About your special powers of perception and whatnot.”

  This was a conversation I’d been trying to have for a while, and now it was happening, more or less unrehearsed. Usually when I had something I wanted to talk to Shell about I’d go over everything in my head, map out the scene, anticipate her comments and reactions. Not this time, though. I was going freestyle. Improvising.

  “All right,” said Shell, her mouth already souring into a skeptical slant that I knew all too well. She was wearing one of my old T-shirts, something she did a lot of now. The Pretenders: Learning to Crawl Tour ’84.

  “Well,” I started, “what I’ve been thinking lately is pretty simple actually. Very simple. What it is is this. How can we use this gift? Because that’s what it is, a gift. Not for the good of mankind or anything noble like that, but for our own selfish betterment. So I’m thinking: How can we take this gift, harness it so to speak, and then parlay a small investment into something greater? Parlay. Now there’s a word I’ve always wanted to use.”

  “Rick, what are you getting at?”

  “Well if you can see things before they happen then why not take it to the next level? What’s that Indian casino Mike and Nancy are always going to?”

  “It’s up by Temecula, I think. Why?” Her mouth slanted even further. I had my work cut out for me.

  “We’ve got a little money saved up.”

  “That’s baby money.”

  “We don’t need to use all of it. Just some of it. Besides, you’re never wrong. You say it yourself all the time. ‘I’m never wrong.’ It’s a gift. Who are we to question the hows and whys of such phenomena?”

  “But this is different. This is money we’re talking about now, Rick. You know we already have to borrow a shitload from my mom and probably from your sister, too. I don’t know about you, but being a mooch doesn’t suit me very well. I don’t like waking up in the morning and knowing that I owe somebody something. And I’m pregnant, I’m cranky, I’m huge, in case you haven’t noticed. It’s hard enough for me to go to the market or Target let alone some casino. Some Indian casino.”

  “Just this one t
ime. We’ll go, and if it works, fine, and if not, that’s it, it’s over. Just once. We won’t be greedy. That’s where these things usually go wrong. James Caan or whoever gets too greedy, wants too much, won’t settle for less. But for us less is already more.”

  Shell didn’t say anything, but I held out hope that she’d come around. Just like me, she can be coaxed into mischief with the right amount of prodding. Of course I’d have to brush up on my gambling. Maybe call Mike for some tips, when to hit, when to stay, what doubling down was all about. Although roulette probably would be best. All you had to do was choose red or black. I wanted to keep it simple, put the least amount of strain on Shell as possible. Red or black. Certainly she could see a color if she could see a car crashing.

  “So what are you doing Saturday night?”

  “Reading,” Shell monotoned, and she pointed to an opened paperback on the coffee table, Babies for Beginners, something like that. “And I shouldn’t be the only one doing this.”

  “I know Shell, I know. I promise I’ll get up to speed on the baby thing. But this is something we should do. It’s just one night. We’re in, we’re out. It’s for the baby after all.”

  “We’ll see,” she said.

  That night I left the printers early. It must have been three or four in the morning and I’d been up for almost twenty-four hours straight. As I drove I kept dozing off, drifting into the other lane, drifting (in my mind at least) into an alternate existence where I didn’t have to work two shifts back to back, didn’t have to argue why we shouldn’t name our kid Nigel or Percival. I tried everything: slapping my face, rolling down the window, turning up the radio. No matter what I did, though, I couldn’t stay awake, my eyelids heavy as pyramids. Somehow I made it home without killing myself or anyone else. I was alive. And for that, I was thankful. I was learning to take small victories wherever I could find them.

  We saw the burning blue and pink neon of the Laughing Coyote Casino and Restaurant from the main highway soon after we’d passed through Temecula. There wasn’t much else nearby, so it was easy to spot. We lucked out (a sign?) and pulled into the last parking space in the lot and then approached the entrance, over which hung a series of blinking dollar signs and a giant revolving teepee.

  “Chee-zee,” said Shell, who’d been having some doubts about the whole enterprise on the drive up. She talked nonstop. Her mother would kill her. San Diego radio sucked. Another week of this (the pregnancy, the fat, the waiting) and she’d be totally Sybil. Was this place even legal? Did they use actual American dollars? If the baby knew what we were doing. Maybe the premonitions weren’t always right. Etc., etc. But I’d already got the night off from the printers and withdrawn the money. More importantly, I’d managed to convince myself that this was our fate, our destiny.

  The air conditioning greeted us with an assaulting, Arctic blast. Inside, the place was packed, swarming with smoke and people and noise. It was pretty much like a regular casino you’d see in Tahoe or Reno, which surprised me. I’d been expecting something lower on the gambling chain, a large asbestos-ridden room decorated in brothel colors and peeling paint, a few tables, a couple of Rat Pack-era slot machines, a handful of lost souls wagering Social Security checks. But it wasn’t that at all. The colors were cheery, Southwestern. Families milled about. A fair amount of young people mixed in with the old. Waitresses and dealers wore snappy uniforms. To the far left there was a Denny’s-ish restaurant, and next to that a cocktail lounge with free popcorn and a sixties cover band that was slashing and burning its way through a disastrous version of “A Whiter Shade of Pale” as we entered. And yes, the gambling. Rows and rows of blackjack tables. The Wheel of Fortune. Keno. Roulette. Slots. Poker tables way in the back by the bathrooms and cashier stations. And strangely nobody who looked to be Indian.

  We started slowly with some video poker. Shell plopped down on the swivel stool and picked the cards as I fed the quarters. After an hour our initial five-dollar investment had netted close to two hundred dollars. Things were moving right along. Next we headed to the restaurant to kill some time before we hit the roulette table. I had a Sitting Bull Burger with cheese, Shell a bowl of Cherokee Three-Bean Chili plus a side of Onondaga Onion Rings. Next door the band wheezed out what I think was supposed to be “Purple Haze.” Neither of us spoke much as we ate. Too much tension, too much awareness that the next half hour could be critical—somehow, more and more it seemed like it would either make or break us, and not just financially. Shell finished everything and asked for a dessert menu. I filled out one Keno card after another.

  At the roulette table we stood around a while to get the flow of the game and for Shell to practice some. I’d been reading up on roulette. The easiest, simplest bet was to pick a color: red or black. So that was what Shell focused on. Three times she predicted the outcome, and three times she was right. We got our chips.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Don’t push me. God, I think I have to pee.”

  “Now?”

  “No, it passed. Wait. Aw shit. Let’s just do this before I faint or have a heart attack. Or have the kid right here right now.”

  That was good enough for me. “Make way,” I called out as Shell waddled forward and I helped her get situated at the table. “Pregnant woman gambling here.” The dealer was paying off from the last game. I was nervous, which usually causes me to say something stupid, and that’s exactly what I did. “You don’t look like an Indian,” I told the guy, thinking I’d make a little small talk, why not. But the dealer shot me this look like he’s heard this about a billion times before and if he wasn’t in a public place and wearing a uniform and name tag (EARL, it said) he’d strangle me with his belt and leave my body in some snake-infested marsh.

  “Place your bets,” he ordered, pretty obviously taunting me with his bloodshot eyes. He was short, probably in his forties, and had an Albert Einstein electric shock of hair. You got the sense that he didn’t have much of a personal life and that his work wasn’t exactly all that fulfilling and that he’d been having a bad day since around the third grade.

  People put down their chips, made their bets, just like in the movies and TV. I placed my hands on Shell’s shoulders, massaging gently. Scanning the table, I noticed that most of our fellow gamblers looked like extras from The Andy Griffith Show. I whispered in my wife’s ear:

  “Do you see a color?”

  “I don’t see anything,” she said.

  “Well maybe if you close your eyes, sweetie.”

  “I can’t believe I’m fucking doing this. Just shut up, all right. Let me think.”

  Shell took a deep breath. I waited. The dealer waited. Aunt Bee next to us waited. Floyd the Barber across the table, sipping his watery gin and tonic, he waited. Everyone’s bet already down. I pinched Shell’s shoulders. Hard. Harder.

  “Stop it,” she snapped.

  We needed to make a decision, black or red. Shell was sweating now. I could feel the damp of her skin. We hadn’t made love in I don’t know how long. Which is a strange thought at such a time, I know, but that’s what surfaced in my polluted mind. Black or red. One or the other.

  “Does the lady want to make a bet or not?” asked the dealer.

  Shell’s skin was burning, pure fire. Suddenly my mind slipped elsewhere. There we were on our first date: stupid, boozy, naked, humping away on my couch, our couch. In the morning we ate cereal right from the box and watched cartoons. I didn’t know about her asshole dad yet. She didn’t know about my less-than-stellar relationship history yet. It seemed so long ago that we’d crossed over into something that neither of us really wanted.

  “Red,” she said. “Fuck it. Red.” And the chips were placed on the felt surface of the table, and the dealer took our bet, all seven hundred—the five hundred we’d agreed on plus the two hundred from video poker—and then there was nothing to do except wait.

  For a second I had a flash of doubt. This was wrong. All
wrong. This wasn’t adult. Soon-to-be parents shouldn’t be doing this. I wanted to take the bet back, take Shell home and talk gibberish to her stomach and put on some Mozart. But it was too late. Together we watched the ball sputter and clank all over the spinning wheel. It went on for an eternity, a slow-mo movie moment where the soundtrack swells and your life stops and there’s usually a revelation of some kind; in this case, however, the revelation wasn’t coming; there was nothing but doubt and panic and an industrial buzzing in my head, and I seriously considered the fact that everything was relative—time, truth, sex, you name it—and that I’d never gotten musicals and probably never would. Click, click. Shell had put her hands over her eyes, like a little kid. The ball was immortal. It had a purpose, a power. Finally it began to slow down. Somewhere a baby cried. That was the only sound. That and the ball. Less ferocious now, settling in. Bounce, click, clack, zlack. Then it ceased to move as if at last it realized what it wanted, where it desired to be. Number 16. Red. Of course. Otis the Drunk let out a deep moan. The dealer looked pissed.

  I told Shell to look, that it was all good, that we won. She guessed right. Red. So why was she crying? People were starting to stare. I touched her hair, her wet cheeks. Nothing.

  “Please,” she said. “Just take me home. I just want to be home.”

  So we doubled our money and walked away. Not a huge deal for some folks, but for us it made a big difference. And as it turned out, we needed it. And as it turned out, we should have been greedy. If the rest of the world is out for blood, then why not us? Truth is, we fucked up.

  After that night Shell kept quiet about any more predictions. I could tell, though, that she saw things, bad things. And she was right. The last few months of the pregnancy fizzled away like a faulty Fourth of July sparkler. I ran out of apartments to paint. And not only that: some of the tenants were having problems—vomiting, nausea, shortness of breath—and claiming that unsafe paint had been used. They had hired a lawyer, threatening to sue Mrs. Tokuda, who dropped hints about raising the rent again to cover her legal bills. The printers was cutting back, and pretty soon, as the birth neared, I was officially unemployed and generating zero income. On more than one occasion I found my way back to El Torito. The people were different but they all looked the same as their predecessors: aging, a little haunted by something. I met a woman named Marcia Higbee. She told me I had lips she could trust. Meanwhile Shell’s unemployment had run dry. We considered asking my sister for money, again, even though she had her hands full with Nathan and his epilepsy. There was his medicine, the regular doctor visits. The insurance covered some of it, but not everything. Then, a week before Shell’s contractions started, just when we were set to bring up the subject of money (as in: can we have some?), Lydia informed us she’d been diagnosed with something called Sick Building Syndrome. The place where she worked, a real estate office in Santee, was contaminated with chemicals. She too experienced vomiting, nausea, shortness of breath. It seemed to be the thing.