San Diego Noir

He waved back and hustled to meet her. He picked her up, kissed her cheek, and would’ve held her on his hip while he carried the cleaning gear in, but she squirmed and jumped down. Barb, exhausted from cleaning three houses, came around the front of the car, blew him a kiss, and trudged up the steps to the porch holding Chez’s hand.

While he delivered the vacuum cleaner, broom, mops, and buckets into the garage, Chez zoomed past. She was already in her play overalls that matched her dad’s outfit. Over her shoulder, she shouted, “Mom’s mad cause you didn’t make the spaghetti like you were s’posed to.”

She leaped over the low rock wall between their yard and her friend Maria’s.

Inside, Greg found Barb stepping into the shower. He leaned against the sink. “Babe, tonight, we’re going to tell Chez about you-know-what.”

Over the splashing, she hollered, “Since you didn’t make the spaghetti sauce, how about microwave chicken and that summer squash with cheese that you and Chez like. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure.” He stayed a minute peering through the beveled glass, admiring her curves that had trimmed and defined over the past few months since she began jogging. He gazed at her breasts, which he still loved to fondle after thirteen years, more than ever since the hepatitis caught hold. For at least a minute he admired the henna-auburn hair she wrapped like a scarf around her neck while she rinsed her backside.

Greg sighed, then winced from a pain like a high-voltage whack to his liver. He groaned, and staggered toward the bedroom, panting and blowing the way he’d learned at Lamaze classes while Barb was carrying Chez. He lay down and kept panting. As the pain dulled to a bearable ache, he sat up and heaved his feet over the side of the bed. He took the pillbox from the breast pocket of his overalls, opened it, and fingered through the pills. No OxyContin, his most trusty painkiller.

He returned to the bathroom, where Barb was out of the shower and wrapping her hair in the Snoopy towel. She said, “You asked what was for dinner, didn’t you?”

“Uh-huh.” Greg opened the medicine cabinet and reached for the big new bottle of Vicodin. A lifetime supply, he thought, provided he died on schedule. He loosed a grim “Ho-ho.”

Barb, so accustomed to his laughs she didn’t question them anymore, gave him a patient smile while she slipped into her panties and lounging sweats. He swallowed his third and fourth Vicodin of the day, unless he’d forgotten others.

He followed Barb through the cramped living room to the kitchen, where she looked into the fridge and a cabinet, then turned with an exasperated grimace. “Should I go to the Safeway or do you want to?”

“I’ll go. Babe, we need to tell Chez. Tonight.”

Barb retreated as though he’d sneezed a mouthful at her. “Greg, she’s only seven. She doesn’t even know what death means, not really.”

“She found her bunny stiff in the strawberries.”

“I mean people.”

“Grandma Ruth. She knows Grandma Ruth’s in heaven.”

“So?”

“So how did she get to heaven if she didn’t die? Did you tell Chez she flew United?”

Barb plucked the magnetized notepad off the fridge and began jotting a grocery list.

“See, if we tell her now, there’s less chance it’ll knock her silly. I can smile while I’m talking about it, tell her you guys ought to have a party to celebrate me going to the most bitchin’ place.”

“Oh sure, that’ll make up for her daddy leaving her.” With a reproachful frown, she asked, “Have you given up praying for a miracle?”

He shook his head, a half-truth. He hadn’t quit praying, but he’d quit believing when he began to sense that God figured his work on earth was done. Though how God could reach that conclusion was a mystery. For all his good intentions, Greg thought, he hadn’t done much except mess things up.

She gave him the list and two bills, a ten and a five. “Don’t stop and talk with the street people, okay? I’m pretty hungry and Chez said she’s starving.”

“She’ll eat about six bites and say she’s stuffed.”

“I know.” Barb went to the sink and ran hot water to wash the dishes Greg had forgotten about.

Outside the Safeway, he ran into Chad, a homeless amigo who needed five of his dollars. He returned with one bag of groceries. Barb had already called Chez home and was helping her with Sunday school homework about daily life in biblical days.

While passing the couch, Greg kissed the crowns of his girls’ heads. He set the groceries on the sink-board, reached to a top cabinet for corn oil, and grabbed the cast-iron frying pan that hung from the wall behind the stove. Rust had formed along the rim. He hadn’t used the pan for months. He poured the Mazola oil, turned a burner to medium high, and set the pan on the burner.

He was chopping lettuce when Barb came in. “What’s that smell?” She went past him to the counter. “You bought a precooked chicken?”

“Yep, faster.”

“Not much faster than the microwave. What’re you making?”

“Tacos.”

She frowned. “Well, all right, but you can’t fry the tortillas.”

“I already started.”