Some woman was slowly pinwheeling face down in the pool. I went back into my apartment and lathered sunscreen on the lines in my forehead. When I reemerged, she was still face down. Guillermo was bent at the sprinkler by the live oak. I called his name, and he stood and tilted his head to see up by the pool. From way back, you could see the scar in his graying flattop and on his face. He crouched to the sprinkler, muttering. I leaned over the balcony railing and shouted hey, but she didn’t move.
I knew she was dead.
I took two steps, vaulted the railing, felt a hopeless stupidity mid-fall, and splashed beside her. Reflexive movement told me she wasn’t dead but spooked. I got her by the waist and pulled as if to bring her to the surface, but she’d surfaced and was yelling let go.
I shouted, I said. I’m sorry, but you didn’t say anything.
Her face was full of wrath. She glanced over her shoulder as Juniper slunk out from behind the potted cacti. The balcony looked lower from down here.
Should I thank you? she said.
The sun put amber in her eyes, a dusting of freckles on her forehead and face. She was looking at me like there was something inside me she could see that was worthy. I wanted to touch her goosebumps.
Which unit are you?
I live down the road, she said, pointing past the gate and the carport beneath my building, which framed the swaying cedar elms on Bridle Path, whereon resided the wealthy but waterless who repeatedly raided our pool.
Then get the hell out of here?
She stood still.
Guillermo! I shouted.
You’re serious? she said, wading to the stairs.
You can tell your neighbors to eat shit too. The entitlement—
A jester-hatted ghoul took up the back of her thigh and a dragonfly her calf. She wrapped up in a bright towel, and as she passed through the gate and into the carport, the Pink Panther’s face swinging side to side, I said I was kidding and come back, but just her—not her neighbors. Her laughter, bright and cruel, got absorbed by the sound of traffic.
I can’t have it! I shouted.
G was walking away from me in the parking lot. My wet jeans chafed and my shoes squelched in a sound erotic and humiliating. He went to the overgrown area behind Building 2, where the coyote had handed Juniper her ass, and stood before the irrigation controller. His nephew had told me he’d been a prison guard in Juarez, a fate marginally better than that of a prisoner in Juarez. I’d done time for a drunk-driving wreck in which I’d imperiled my son, so we were both comfortable around dangerous men.
You haven’t seen these strangers wading la-di-da into our pool? I said.
He touched the controller and checked his watch.
A year earlier I’d forgotten to take out my trash before leaving for a week. I’d called to see if one of the maintenance guys, whose job descriptions didn’t include taking out tenant trash, could do it for me. I’d come home to a skid mark in my toilet and thought, fair play. Later G had knocked to ask if my Prius were for sale. When I tried leaving that evening, the engine roared like a lawn mower. I approached him and his nephew and said seeing as he’d known I’d been out of town and would maybe want to sell the car, I would have been a coward not to ask what he knew about it.
A sign, I was saying. Keep Out Fucking Rich Fucks. Something like that. My brother is going to be here next week. My little boy is doing his birthday party here in August.
He nodded.
Did you talk to your nephew about the party?
He shrugged.
Weekends, his nephew worked with him. Evenings, they swam. The kid wore a chain, did swan dives, and ran around fleet-footed blasting regatón from a portable speaker. He had heart. My little boy would love him.
At arrivals most the dead sat on elevated flower beds with their brains blown out by their devices, awaiting with worse than apathy the cars that would whisk them away. Give The Third credit: his was among the few spirited faces. Sunglassed, arms crossed, he was leaning on his suitcase and laughing as I navigated curbside. His hair had thinned and the lines in his forehead were more prominent than mine, but he had those wonderful teeth and the Mediterranean pigment that had missed me entirely.
Check these out, he said, climbing in and handing me his shades. You should get some. No idea how you do it with this sun.
Only getting hotter, I said. I’ve got these though.
I’ll buy you some, man.
He was in town for a psychology conference at the Four Seasons, but I too had business: I’d told him I had a job in tech, and while maybe that had been misleading, this was a chance to show there was no shame in my trade and nothing could keep me from earning for my son.
You’re allowed to do that with me in the car?
Let’s not start that, I said. I know how to do my job.
We inched along the numbered columns in the rideshare garage.
It’s not a woman, is it?
Breanna, I said. Ms. Breanna to us.
You don’t think getting into a car with two men might be frightening for her?
The Third, my older brother and oldest associate, often said his earliest memory was of holding me in his arms and smelling my head the day I was born. When he first informed me of his visit, I was wary but relented: I wanted to talk to him about his path. Therapy was self-justification for the patient and a hustle for the practitioner. Do therapists ever tell clients their self-hatred is warranted, and given what you know of the world, does that seem right?
Not if you take those sunglasses off, I said.
He checked his look in the folding mirror. Ms. Breanna was wearing a pink cowboy hat. I trunked her bags, calmly explaining the situation. The Third turned and smiled in such a way as to prove we were not rapists. As I sped into the ferocious sunlight and gunned it up the entrance ramp, she was picking at the box on the seat beside her.
Projector, I said.
That’s what this is?
For my little boy’s birthday.
She made a noise of endearment.
The Third was looking at me. What is it?
Doing a pool party for Bill’s birthday. I’m going to project Terminator 2 onto the side of the building. We’ll have some sodas and watch the movie, float around a little.
I didn’t know he was coming down.
Why would you know? I haven’t told you.
When was the last time you talked to him?
Bill and I hadn’t spoken for a few months. I had called him during a relapse and couldn’t remember what we’d talked about, but a few weeks before then I’d explained to him that, now almost thirteen, he needed to call his old man—relationships took work.
Mind your fucking business, I said.
A massive truck merged so close The Third could have reached out and touched it. I remembered the sight of the headlights, drifting over the double yellow. I knew in my blood, bones, and brain how easy it’d be to veer right, scratch the paint, bust the panel, spin out and unravel everything we believed about the world and our places in it. I took the exit at Congress to show Ms. Breanna the city at sunset. Lore would have it a haven for destitute bluesmen, but now it was overpriced coffee and clothing shops and generic murals before which defeated men thumbed photos of their braindead wives.
So much culture, Ms. Breanna said sarcastically. Which I found offensive.
She asked about the capitol, but I kept quiet, worried that, were I to say anything, I’d joke that I couldn’t drive Congress, leading straight to its front steps, without fantasizing about barreling into it in a car packed with TNT.
We were westbound on Cesar, flanked by homeless tents that in a few weeks would be bulldozed in accordance with a law that banned lying down in public. Whenever I passed this place, I imagined G’s face flashing in the streetlight, but I knew his family wouldn’t let him fall that far into the snake pit.
Most these people, The Third said, are dealing with undiagnosed mental illness. I’m on a panel about it this week.
At the Four Seasons?
Ignoring me, he and Ms. Breanna got to talking panels and conferences. As we curved MoPac and the sun hit unobstructed, I popped the glovebox and handed him sunscreen.
Lather it on your forehead.
I don’t burn.
I’m saying it slows the aging process.
Ms. Breanna meowed. I realized I’d forgotten to put up the rifle I’d bought to kill the coyote who’d handed Juniper her ass. The Third was staying at the Four Seasons the first few nights, but our proximity to my place meant maybe he’d want to stop by. We were a block away. Forehead pressed to the passenger window, he didn’t recognize it from the photos as we turned onto Bridle Path.
You’re going to love this spot, I said, a last attempt at decent gratuity. My girlfriend lives down the street.
Your what?
She loves it here.
The Third was beaming. Terrible as it sounds, I had suspected him of coming to town, in part, to check on me. Now he looked like I’d put his worries to rest, like I’d given him a way to dismiss my venom as brotherly distemper.
Ms. Breanna’s rental had a glass facade and wooden gate, behind which her pink-hatted crew was doing something drunk with a plastic bat. She hurried out. When we returned to my intersection, a new easiness was settling in. I pointed out my building.
I’m guessing you guys crash at her place usually?
She doesn’t have a pool.
Ah, the site of the old pool party.
That’s the spot.
People must raid that thing all the time.
Why would you say that?
I’m just happy for you, man.
I peeked through the blinds and waited for Ms. Lorraine to finish her cigarette and chard, for Neighbor Rod and his age-inappropriate girlfriend to leave the pool and go inside. Then I went down and used my pocketknife to cut the zip ties of the signs—RESIDENTS ONLY!—G had posted at my behest.
I’d had time to think. There’d been amber in her eyes and sandy freckles on her forehead and face, and her expression had gone from feral to confused to looking like she saw something inside of me capable of delighting. All of this is to say nothing of the Pink Panther’s face, swinging side to side, forever pendulous in my mind, such that every day for the last week, I’d slept face down, thrusting against my mattress, waking amess with longing or at the mercy of a throbbing ache. Maybe I wanted someone to make nights on the road worth it. My ex and her husband Devin, a man to whom I was inferior in every conceivable way except IQ and looks, made so much money it was hard to take seriously my contributions to Bill’s livelihood. Then there was The Third: he’d looked at me like I’d told him something he’d been waiting, and desperately wanting, to hear.
I took the signs to the dumpster. Juniper rubbed up on my leg. I ran my fingers over the puncture wounds behind her ear from having had her ass handed to her by the coyote. I’d called the mobile vet and got her straightened out with her shots, but I told her then and now I couldn’t keep her. Bill was allergic. I told her I’d set out some water, but she’d have to go to Ms. Lorraine for food. She followed me into the pool area. I checked my phone and noted that 8:35 was ideal lighting in terms of start time for Terminator 2.
I passed through the courtyard, minimally reciprocating Neighbor Rod’s greeting so as not to feel complicit in his whole thing, and passed through the carport beneath my building and into the street. Despite encroaching darkness, it was mid-nineties, and the sunblock was seeping through my brows and burning my eyes.
Huge houses presided over Bridle Path. The street was wide enough to accommodate a cargo freighter, and the houses were set back behind yards of green like nowhere else in the desert. Tall windows threw slabs of orange that stretched toward the street. The trees too were enormous and sturdy, and they bent over the road to form a tunnel of swaying darkness, patched with a hazy navy, whirring with cicadas, the leaves’ ceaseless whisper like something coming that you can’t ignore.
Down the street, a stranger. I thought for sure he’d pull out his phone. This motherfucker. Voting maps show that the neighborhood was instrumental in passing the ban on lying down in public. They didn’t want to see them. In this neighborhood, my tendency to say hello and thus force people to contend with my existence was muted. I liked the idea of creeping them out.
Young man, how are you?
It was charming, the way he called me young man.
Just fine, sir. You don’t happen to know a woman with a dragonfly tattoo?
You live around here?
She left something at my pool.
Little Tudor down the road, he said. Purple lights.
The house had one of those sloped roofs that had always made my mother mention Hansel and Gretel but this one’s structural integrity appeared compromised, and it looked more like a child ducking their father’s backhand. The light in her windows was purple and pink and purple again, the bass of whatever she had on made the panes and whole house rattle. I stood in the street, not sure what to do. I knew I couldn’t knock. Knocking, I knew, would be borderline predatory. Instead I rifled through her mailbox and got her name.
It moved at a trot with its snout low to the sidewalk, and picking up pace, the fucker hopped the embankment to the grass and parking lot of the condos across the street. Its ears were drawn back and now, its head high and snout bobbing, you could see a certain dignity about it. It sniffed about the parking lot’s perimeter as if scanning for precious metals. It scratched behind its ear, a side grimace like a grin.
It was 4:03 AM. I’d just called it quits. I’d spotted it from the balcony, where Juniper, sleeping donut-shaped on the blanket I’d set out, was none the wiser.
The fucking thing accelerated again and climbed the red Volvo. It stood on the roof and arched its back and howled, and for a moment everything was silvery and submarine. It stared down the street, licking its chops. I didn’t even think about the rifle. I thought about the arid earth and the development out west. I whispered. It hopped down from the Volvo. I whispered something else. It kept going, snout scanning, shoulder blades rotating, and disappeared down the street.
The Third was cross-legged like a Bodhisattva on my floor pillow. The sun was low and bronze, and the blinds threw slatted bands on his face and the brick wall behind him. His pouches were bluer and more protruded. His smile lines were deeper.
This place is beautiful, man.
My living room was bare. Upon moving in, I’d furnished Bill’s room and had promptly run out of cash.
I’m serious, he said. I like the minimalism. Sick view of the pool.
I saw it afresh: the floor pillows were plush, the Victorian-style rug was elegant, and the pool water looked pristine with the ripples and the evening light.
How was the conference?
I met so many brilliant people.
Glad it was enjoyable to you.
Some of them live down here.
I kept my head down and continued unloading the Paloma fixings.
When do I get to meet your lady?
Another reason I was less eager to talk about his path: two nights of internet-sleuthing had told me Helen was not a therapist but a cam-girl. She was a dancer and de facto expert on trauma, the silences at the core of other people’s pain. Guys followed her to watch, yes, but she spoke to them with a lilt and a hush and a spirit of understanding that made you want to tell her things.
She’s out of town.
I didn’t know you were dating anyone.
You guys have similar interests, I said. You’d get along.
She’s into psychology?
She’s a cam-girl.
He stared. Like, porn?
Antiquated assumption.
I’m not judging. I’m asking.
She talks to people, man. She’ll show a little ass, sure, but she talks is the big thing.
Bless her for that, he said, leaning back against the wall. He stared at his phone. I grabbed the handle of his suitcase.
You’ll be sleeping in Bill’s room.
The guest room?
Why are you giving me shit?
I just didn’t know Bill had been here.
He set his wallet on the baby blue night stand next to the lava lamp and small plastic radio. He scanned the bookshelf I’d stocked with the Great Illustrated Classics I was afraid Bill had outgrown. He stared at the Dylan poster above the bookshelf and laughed. I told him I wouldn’t apologize for wanting my son to appreciate the greatest American besides Fred Hampton. In the kitchen, I screenshotted photos of Helen in case he asked. I made his Paloma strong. If we did talk about his path, the booze would help: he’d never had it like me and Junior.
He came out with the rifle. You keep this in Bill’s room?
It’s just a guest room.
It’s fucking loaded.
I don’t have a bed frame.
Why do you even have this?
To say we have a coyote situation would be an understatement. You think I’d leave it there when he’s down? Give me some credit.
He set the rifle on the countertop and took his drink outside. The sun was behind my building, the balcony in shadow. Ms. Lorraine was sweeping across the courtyard. The first breeze in a month approaching anything close to cool quieted the cicadas.
Goddamn thing brought me a baby possum, Ms. Lorraine said.
Juniper? Is the possum dead?
It’s in the trash out front.
She’s chosen you, Ms. Lorraine.
I need a fourth like I need scabies, hon. Don’t start that shit with me again.
The gate slammed. Without acknowledging us, G went to the water and started cleaning it with the net from the utility closet. The Third looked at me and whispered but mostly mouthed: is that the guy? The car?
I don’t think he did it, I whispered. I doubt he’s capable.
I went to my closet for the extension cords. I cut the binding and flung the first cord over the railing and into the pool area. I ran it inside and plugged it into the socket by the door. Aquí, amigo! I said stepping out, but G just stood there watching the cord dangle. I took the second one down and plugged it into the dangler and stretched it toward the shallow end. I explained to G, The Third, and Ms. Lorraine, the latter two watching from on high, that I didn’t know whether to put the projector in front of or behind the pool. Behind, the picture would be large albeit grainy, but Cameron had intended to create an experience of scale.
Have you talked to your nephew?
G kept dragging the net through the water.
I’d love to have him, I said. I’m going to man the grill. Everyone else can kick back, listen to some regatón. Bring whatever you want, but I’ll have plenty. Burgers. Dogs. Fundamentals, honestly. I’m thinking 8:35 will be the perfect time to start the movie. Does that sound right, Third?
8:35?
I think that’s going to be perfect, I said, ascending the stairs.
The Third was staring at me. You don’t remember the last time you talked to him?
He’d brought it up in the car, and I’d heard in his voice something I didn’t care to interrogate. Now there was no getting around it.
I golfed with Devin about a month ago, he said.
Devin doesn’t golf.
I literally just said I golfed with him.
You’re sure he was golfing?
He sent me this, he said, holding out his phone. He wanted you to hear.
It was a voicemail: Billy, Billy, Billy Boy, Goddamn my beautiful boy, Bill. It’s been a minute since I’ve talked to you. You don’t call, but I love you my boy, Bill. Here my voice paused and made noises like I was trying to drink glue. It picked up an octave lower: You don’t know what I’d do. You do not know what I’d do if it wasn’t for you, Bill.
I turned it off. Neighbor Rod was on his porch, and at first I was afraid he’d heard but saw he was absorbed in The Catcher in The Rye, which you’re supposed to read in high school.
You haven’t called him, The Third said.
So he’s not coming?
Why haven’t you called him?
A pry bar was at my chest, but let them see one thing, they might see everything, and you can’t account for everything—no one can.
I’m trying to teach him relationships take work, I said. Quit analyzing me, motherfucker. It’s creepy and unbecoming. I’ve been wanting to talk to you about this. It’s manipulative.
This conversation?
Have you ever told any of your patients their self-hatred is warranted?
He pushed play: Don’t tell your mom. Bill, shhh. Don’t tell Devin. I’m going to get it under control. I’m going to get a grip and get a handle on it, but you need to know. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you. I’m not saying across the country. I’m saying, Bill, if it weren’t for you, I wouldn’t want to be here.
The Third sat back. I’m not coming at you as a shrink.
So you admit there’s something wrong with shrinking?
He smiled. You’d know better than me.
…Motherfucker. We laughed until it felt like he was laughing with someone who technically did work in tech, who found human connection hard and getting harder, who had no taste for minimalism but a zeroed bank account, who hadn’t been teaching his son a lesson but ducking him, who’d bought a rifle to protect a cat but practiced putting it in his mouth and pulling the trigger with his toe. I’d put it in my mouth in front of the mirror, looked for something aspirational in it. We laughed till, in beginning to stop, I felt I could fall from this state of flotation into one in which I was heavy and real.
You’ve been avoiding Bill?
Yes.
Because you were afraid of what you’d said.
Yes.
You’ve been suicidal?
Yes.
I felt the chair’s metal rungs pressing into my ass and thighs. The soles of my feet were on the balcony’s cold concrete.
Have you told Helen you’ve been suicidal?
The pool water was pale in the dusk. During one of her streams, I’d heard her soothe a fat man that it wasn’t a big deal about being fat. His feelings were feelings, not facts, and feelings you could interrogate. The one I had was the kind that comes when you get a glimpse of a letting go, but the opportunities to fall safely are fleeting.
I want to tell her.
You should tell her.
I’ll tell her, I said. I want to.
Then I felt it: an accelerating absence.
It was noon and the AC had been roaring constantly since I’d come home at dawn, and I’d dreamt I was listening to it with nowhere to go and no way of falling asleep now that I knew I’d shown my little boy my cowardly soul. I wouldn’t have known I’d slept if not for a general feel for time’s slippage. I came to, dejected with mild but lingering relief after my conversation with The Third, who’d nevertheless wanted to stay with me in my apartment. I pulled up my laptop and continued my early morning search. The Coyote Deluxe Cage was slick and came with a meat hook where you could hang an irresistible cut of steak. It included a trap door that, once triggered, would enable easy transport so you wouldn’t have to worry about getting bit. I filed a maintenance request with my property management company, haranguing them for not doing dick about the coyote situation, and included a link to the cage. I shouted for The Third, but no response. I stood by Bill’s door and knocked and said wakey wakey hands off snaky. I said it was 108 degrees, which meant we’d be eating migas and heading straight to the pool, brother. I opened the door. The bed was unmade.
I went to the living room window. He was down there next to who else. He was bent like the thinker but rubbing his face, and she, my intrepid pool raider, my cam-girl, the Helen of my twilit reveries, was reclined and fingertipping her bottom lip.
I needed to save what dignity I had left, but I couldn’t know how long they’d been talking, and maybe I needed to intervene right away, kick her out and forgo any hope we might have had for a future, but it was possible they’d been at it for hours, the disembowelment of my Frankenstein monster already well underway. I opened Bill’s bedroom window and lowered myself onto Neighbor Rod’s Wrangler. Neighbor Rod and his age-inappropriate girlfriend saw me sliding off the hood.
That’s my car, man, Rod said, The Catcher in the Rye in hand.
You’re supposed to read that in high school, I said.
On the other side of the hedge that separated the pool and parking lot, I crouched to remain undetected, and slicked with sweat, the sun burning my head and neck, I made my way to the Chevy, but G was behind building 2, where I’d instructed them to place the Coyote Deluxe Cage.
Pool raider, I hissed.
Con tu hermano?
She doesn’t live here!
He walked away with his hands out, feigning innocence. I felt a sick and fleeting solace knowing if management gave me grief, I’d have him, the fact that he could have fucked with my car, to hold over their heads.
My phone vibrated: Come out here, man. Not judging just worried.
The sky was white like withering parchment. I was pacing and sweat-slicked, sunscreen burning my eyeballs. I had a choice: be a normal man with freakish tendencies or a freakish man with normal tendencies. The former, I thought, was harder to forgive.
Rod hadn’t left, so I climbed the Wrangler with him and his child bride inside and hoisted myself through Bill’s window. I grabbed The Third’s suitcase. The decent thing would have been to ask her to leave, but shrink-brained as he tended to be, he wanted to mediate, and of course maybe she was frightened, and maybe the only way for her to feel right would be for the three of us to hash it all out, talk till the truth of my life was mapped out before their eyes, as if I needed to answer to some bitch who combatted life’s vagaries with self-idolatry and psychobabble. Fuck no—I wheeled his suitcase to the door. I flung it open on hellish white. The bag reached its apex in front of the sun, a weird beauty about it, and somersaulted into the water. She was already shouting. The Third was watching, speechless, as if I were drifting into the distance on a storm-battered lifeboat.
I was on the other side of something. At least it was movement.
When I brought out the rifle, she shrieked. I’d bought a pump rifle in hopes it would be loud when I racked it, but it wasn’t loud and in fact made me feel insufficient. I didn’t draw down. I fired a round in the air, a measly pop, and another shriek. They were ducked down. The power of the shot was in my hands and running up my arms. The sight of them cowering blurred everything out of focus.
It’s okay, The Third was shouting. It’s okay!
You can both leave, I shouted, knowing with sudden clarity what I’d lost was isolation: the person I could have become would be beside me forever. The only way away was through. I racked it—harder this time. I aimed high. Fired and smelled the smoke.
