Sweet Nothing Read online

  THE BAR IS called the Alps. It’s shoehorned into a crowded mini-mall at Sixth and Berendo, between a dry cleaner and a tofu restaurant. David parks his rental in the lot and checks himself in the rearview mirror. He’s wearing a black polo and pressed khakis. I asked if I should dress up, and he said a shirt with a collar would be fine.

  We’re the only non-Asians in the place, which is decorated to evoke a mountain cabin, with skis and poles and snowshoes hanging on the knotty-pine paneling next to large photos of snow-covered peaks. A fire is burning in the circular fireplace in the middle of the room, surrounded by couches. The air conditioner is turned all the way up to compensate for the heat of the flames.

  The place has lots of customers for so early in the afternoon, mostly well-dressed middle-aged men drinking in groups of three or four. They watch warily out of the corners of their eyes as David leads the way to the bar and motions for me to sit. The bartender is a beautiful Korean girl in a tight red dress. She ignores us, polishing wineglasses until David calls her over.

  “What’ll you have?” he says to me.

  “I’m not really drinking these days,” I reply.

  “Get something so you don’t stand out,” he whispers, then turns back to the bartender. “Two Johnnie Walker Blacks on the rocks.”

  While the drinks are being poured, he nods to a little man with a complicated comb-over who is sitting by himself in a booth. The man nods back ever so slightly, then pulls out a phone and makes a call. Signals are definitely being sent and received in here. I can hear them whizzing through the air around me. Some kind of work is getting done.

  The bartender sets the scotches in front of us, and I take a big sip and try to look hard. David downs half of his in a gulp and says, “I should remember, I know, but how did you and Claire meet again?”

  It’s a filler question, one he presumes I’ll have a long answer to that’ll eat up the next few minutes. He wasn’t even looking at me when he asked it; he was watching the man in the booth. Him thinking I’m such a chump that I can’t see right through him should make me angry, but it doesn’t. I get the idea that he’s counting on me to play my part in whatever he’s got cooking, and I don’t want to let him down.

  Of course, the story I give him about Claire and I being introduced by a mutual acquaintance and gradually growing closer during a series of dinner and movie dates is complete crap. In reality, we met at a downtown bar, and I fucked her standing up in an alley two hours after I bought her a drink.

  A couple of buddies who’d done her and dumped her in the past warned me that she’d get too serious too quickly, but I was coming off a string of psychodramas starring women who’d left me feeling like I’d been beaten and robbed, and a bit of stability sounded appealing.

  Turned out Claire was as sick of her life as I was of mine, and that’s where we connected in the beginning. We teamed up to build our own thing, us against the world, carving out a new space and tossing aside any junk from our pasts that didn’t fit. We lost friends, we burned bridges, but we told ourselves it was the price of progress.

  And now, here we are. Mission accomplished. Married, baby on the way, cool apartment in a cool neighborhood, eating right, no more binges, no more soul suckers, no more morning-afters, yet I still wake terrified some nights and spend long, lonely hours in the dark conjuring up demons and disasters and torturing myself with the knowledge that everything we have could be snatched away from us as quickly as the wind blows out a candle.

  David says, “That’s how it usually goes, I guess,” when I finish giving him the sanitized version of how Claire and I came together. Then he continues: “Marjorie and I fought like wild animals for the first few years. We almost killed each other before we learned to get along. I’m glad you two had an easier time of it.”

  He finishes his scotch, bouncing the ice off his teeth. I’m halfway through mine, and it’s gone to my head. This is dangerous because I’m a mean drunk. A few belts, and I get a mouth on me. The mirror behind the bar is covered with that spray-on snow you use on Christmas trees, and someone has scrawled something in Korean on it. I have to stop myself from calling the bartender over and asking her what it says.

  “How do you like teaching?” David asks, another question he’s not interested in the answer to. Before I have a chance to respond, the man in the booth stands and walks over to us.

  “Hello, Mr. Song,” David says.

  “Hello, Mr. Friedman,” Mr. Song says in heavily accented English. “So nice to see you.”

  “This is my son-in-law, Haskell,” David says.

  “Pleased to meet you,” Mr. Song says to me.

  “Pleased to meet you,” I reply, feeling like we’re reciting a dialogue from a language class.

  “Can I buy you a drink?” David says.

  “No, thank you. I must attend to some business,” Mr. Song says. “However, I do have the information you requested.”

  He passes David a slip of paper with an address written on it.

  “Thank you very much,” David says. “Are you sure I can’t get you something?”

  “I’m sure,” Mr. Song says. “I must be going.”

  We finish up with handshakes and bows, and Mr. Song takes his leave, waving to the bartender and shouting something in Korean on his way out.

  “What was that?” I say to David after another sip of scotch.

  “What was what?” he replies.

  I tell myself to slow down, think things through, but, as I mentioned, I get mouthy. “I’m not an idiot,” I say.

  The only sign that David is irritated is a quick tightening of his jaw. It’s enough to back me off.

  “Mr. Song is the friend I was telling you about,” David says. “I’m sorry he couldn’t stay longer.”

  “Me too,” I say.

  David reaches over and flicks my glass with his finger, a strangely menacing gesture. “We should get going,” he says.

  I nod and down my drink, finally accepting that I’m just along for the ride. And you know what, something in that is immensely freeing.

  HOW DO I like teaching? I hate it. I hate the kids, who hate me back; I hate the other teachers, both the bitter burnouts and the deluded idealists; and I hate the principals. I hate the classrooms for their fluorescent sterility, and yet I’m filled with scorn when I enter whatever room I’m assigned to and see the regular instructor’s attempts to personalize the space: the inspirational posters, the photos of smiling students, the drooping houseplants. I hate the desks, I hate the pencils, I hate the blackboards.

  Why do I continue to do it, then? Because I’m too lazy to look for something else I might end up hating even more. And I stay part-time rather than going on full- so I’ll be free to take any film gigs that come my way, even though five years have passed since I’ve been on a set. I used to tell myself I was going to put together something of my own, a short that would serve as a calling card, but I get sleepy as soon as I pick up a pen or open Final Draft.

  At least I’m not alone. Lots of folks are spinning their wheels. Being nothing special is nothing special.

  THE CAR IS hot enough to boil blood. David starts the engine and turns on the air conditioner. Two men are smoking cigarettes in a patch of shade in front of the bar, and I think about asking for one. The traffic report comes on the radio. Everything is a mess in every direction. David lights the joint we were working on earlier and takes a hit. He doesn’t offer it to me.

  “One more stop,” he says as he puts the car in reverse. “It’s not far.”

  We drive to another mini-mall, this one on Olympic, and park in front of a shoe store. At least, I think it’s a shoe store. All the signs are in Korean.

  “Do me a favor,” David says. “Go in there and pick out some shoes and send the owner back to pull your size.”

  “What for?”

  “I want to surprise him. He’s another old friend.”

  This is a lie, but I’m afraid of how David will react if I ask again
what we’re really up to. I’m going to have to trust that he wouldn’t drop his son-in-law, his daughter’s husband, the father of his grandchild, into anything too shady.

  “Pick out some shoes,” I say.

  “That’s it,” David says.

  A chime sounds when I walk into the store, but the owner, staring at a laptop behind the counter, doesn’t look up. He continues to ignore me as I wander around the store. There’s nothing here I’d actually buy. All the styles are a little off—too shiny, too pointy. I eventually settle on a crazy pair of tasseled loafers made of green suede.

  The owner glares at me when I set the shoes on the counter.

  “How about these in a ten?” I say.

  The guy mumbles something under his breath, then slinks through a doorway into a back room stacked to the ceiling with shoe boxes. The chime sounds again, and I look over my shoulder to see David coming into the store with a finger to his lips. He motions to the front door and mouths, Wait in the car, then hurries over to stand with his back to the wall beside the entrance to the storeroom.

  Before I can move, the owner reappears carrying a box. David reaches out and throws a choke hold on the guy, who drops the shoes and struggles to free himself.

  “Get in the fucking car!” David yells as he drags the owner back into the storeroom.

  I’ve chosen sides or been chosen or whatever, and I can’t switch now. The heat comes down on me like a hammer when I step out of the store, and my legs are shaking. Anybody looking at me would suspect that I was up to no good, but luckily the parking lot is deserted. I move quickly to the car, open the door, and fall into the passenger seat.

  The scotch has turned into a snake in my gut, one that’s trying to slither its way back up my throat. I take out my phone and scroll madly through the names and numbers. Hello, Claire? Your dad is beating the shit out of some guy in a shoe store in Koreatown. Should you have maybe told me something before you left me alone with him? Hello, 911? Get me out of here.

  The worst part is, I saw the whole business coming and could have sidestepped it but didn’t. So nothing’s changed. Wife, baby, Diet Coke instead of whiskey, and still I stand there grinning like an idiot as trouble bears down on me and wonder if it’ll feel any different when it hits this time.

  The owner walks out the front door with David right behind him. The owner’s hair is mussed, and a twist of bloody toilet paper protrudes from his left nostril. David glances at me while the guy is locking up the store, and I sneak my phone back into my pocket. The two of them approach the car. David opens my door and says, “Mr. Lee is going to navigate.”

  I climb out and move into the back. Mr. Lee sits stiffly in the passenger seat, staring out the windshield. Waves of rage and humiliation ripple off him. David starts the car and drives out of the parking lot. One of his knuckles is oozing blood. He checks on me in the rearview, his icy blue eyes searching for weakness. I do my best not to give anything away.

  “Where to?” he says to Mr. Lee.

  IN THE YEARS between my father leaving and my mother marrying my stepdad, Mom dated a number of men and even let a few move in. I liked those who played Star Wars with me and let me watch R-rated DVDs and showed me how to load and shoot a .22. Others weren’t so great: the one who made me go to Sunday school with the neighbors so he and my mom could have “alone time”; the one who punched me in the stomach when I scratched his truck with my bicycle.

  And then there was Bill. He was one who stayed with us for a while, his excuse being that he was waiting for a big check the government owed him. He was a cocky, long-legged redhead just out of the navy who had lots of great stories about serving on the USS Nimitz. He’d call me sailor, and I’d snap to attention and shout out, “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  One day he and I went to Walmart while my mom was at work. Two security guards stopped us on our way out and patted Bill down. Unbeknownst to me, he’d swiped a screwdriver, two Snickers bars, and a pack of D batteries. The guards searched me too, and I couldn’t stop crying, because I was sure I was going to jail. Bill hung his head when they laid into him. What kind of man shoplifts with a kid, they wanted to know. “A dumbass,” Bill said. “A real dumbass.” One of the guards prayed with him, then they snapped his picture and let us go without calling the police.

  Bill begged me not to tell my mom what had happened, said it was some pills he was on that made him forget to pay. I’d never had an adult ask for my loyalty before, so I gave it wholeheartedly. A week later he snuck off while Mom and I were at the grocery store, taking our TV with him.

  Aye, aye, Captain, you son of a bitch.

  WE TAKE A short drive to a duplex on Normandie, a run-down heap with faded wood siding and bars on the windows. A pack of kids are kicking a soccer ball in the dirt yard and shouting at one another in Spanish when we pull up in front. David and Mr. Lee open their doors and get out of the car. I stay where I am, hoping they’ll forget about me. When David leans in and says, “I need your help, Haskell,” I say, “I’m not doing anything illegal.”

  David frowns and thumbs a bead of sweat from the tip of his nose. “Nothing illegal is going on here,” he says.

  If I refuse, things might turn even uglier. That’s my thinking as I leave the car and follow David and Mr. Lee to the side of the building and up a rickety staircase that leads to the entrance to the second-floor unit. At least if I’m there, I can get between them.

  Mr. Lee unlocks the door to the apartment, and we walk into the kitchen. The cabinets are all wide open, and flies buzz around a dirty rice cooker sitting on the counter. The place smells like garlic and rose-scented air freshener.

  “Wait here,” David says to me. He and Mr. Lee go down the hall, turn into another room, and close the door.

  I flip through a calendar that’s stuck to the refrigerator. Each month has a different photo of Korea: a neon-drenched cityscape, a stone temple, a group of women in colorful robes. I imagine Mr. Lee, homesick while he waits for his rice to get done, sitting with his head in his hands at the little kitchen table and wishing he hadn’t given up on Seoul. A picture of Jesus hangs on the fridge too, and a Pollo Loco coupon.

  The sounds of a scuffle drown out the shouts of the kids playing in the yard. Someone is slammed against a wall once, twice, three times, and the apartment shakes like it’s about to come down on us. The door in the hallway opens, and David steps out. He storms back into the kitchen, red-faced and breathing hard.

  “Go in there and tell him this is his last chance,” he whispers. “Say that you’re afraid of what’ll happen if he doesn’t give me the money.”

  “What money?” I say.

  “He owes me for a stone.”

  “David—” I begin.

  “Look,” he says. “This is it. If you can’t get him to pay, the matter moves up the chain, and next week the poor bastard will have a squad of ex-Mossad on his ass.”

  I close my eyes and shake my head. David could be lying, or he could be telling the truth. Right now, I don’t care; I just want to get out of here. I leave the kitchen without another word and walk down the hall.

  Mr. Lee is sitting on the edge of an unmade bed, smoking a cigarette. The room is a mess. The dresser has been tossed; so has the closet. Clothes are everywhere, papers, pillows.

  I gesture at Mr. Lee’s cigarette and say, “Can I have one?”

  He nods toward a pack of Kools lying on the floor. I pick it up, pull one out, light it with the book of matches tucked into the pack’s cellophane. I deliver David’s message pretty much as he told me to, and I’m not fibbing when I say that I don’t know what he’ll do if he doesn’t get what he wants.

  Mr. Lee stares down at the worn carpet between his feet. He’s trying his damnedest not to cry. A tear gets away from him and slides down his cheek. He finally points without looking to a heater vent on the wall.

  WE’VE DROPPED MR. Lee back at the shoe store, and David is a happy man. He switches the radio from news to classic rock and bobs his h
ead in time to the music. A big grin spreads across his face. He lifts the collar of his shirt to his nose, hoots loudly, and says, “Wow, I stink.”

  I stare out the window, watching the buses and the wheelchair bums and the blowing trash with new appreciation. The Earth is flat, and I wandered too close to the edge. I’m glad to be back on the map.

  “I’m sorry you had to see how the sausage gets made,” David says.

  “Does Marjorie know you beat people?” I ask. “Does Claire?”

  David’s smile disappears. “I don’t beat people,” he says. “That wasn’t a beating.”

  At a red light he reaches into his pocket and pulls out a wad of money. He peels off three hundred-dollar bills and holds them out to me.

  “Keep it,” I say.

  “What, you like it better when it comes in a check every month?” he says.

  He thinks he’s got me there. A real Big Daddy moment, a real life lesson. But hypocrisy is the least of my worries. I have plenty of other good stuff to hate myself for.

  See, you can’t teach anybody anything, David. That’s the one conclusion I’ve come to as a substitute. All you can do is present the information, and the student has to make the choice to learn. And what you’re laying down, I already know. Yes, we’re all con men at heart, and, yes, the world is a swamp of misery and avarice. But what I’m searching for, David, what I need, is someone to show me how to live in it.

  THAT NIGHT AT the Bowl, Marjorie hands me her phone and tells me to take a photo of her, David, and Claire with the orchestra onstage behind them. She and David each place a hand on Claire’s belly for the picture. Our seats are right in front, close enough to see the musicians’ brows furrow when they play difficult passages, close enough to watch them flex their fingers during pauses. But still, the pounding of my heart drowns out the music.

  Everybody in the boxes around us is drinking champagne, everybody’s having fun. I hand the phone back and turn to gaze at the upper tiers where I sat last time. I remember looking down here and wondering, Who the hell are those people?