San Diego Noir

“Then stop and microwave them. You can’t eat greasy tortillas.” She leaned closer and whispered, “They’ll kill you.”

“Yes, dear.” He winked at her.

He was turning to the stove when she asked, “Did you get the milk and Cheerios?”

“Nope. Ran out of money. I’ll go back later. Say, Chad’s hanging around the Safeway. How about I run back and invite him to share the feast I’m preparing?”

“Darn it, Greg,” she whined. “We have to watch every penny.”

He might’ve argued, if not for the fire. Flames spurted up from the corn oil, orange and blue, two feet high, to the cabinet. “Oh no!” Barb shouted, and pushed him aside. While she jumped to the fridge and opened the door, he grabbed a potholder from its hook. He meant to grip the handle and carry the flaming pan to the sink, pour off the grease, and let the fire burn itself out. But again, Barb pushed him out of the way.

Standing arm’s length from the fire, she poured heaps of baking soda from a box into her hand and slung them at the fire, until it died out.

The stove looked like a winter scene, Greg thought, and stalactites spiked down from the cabinets where the wood-grain plastic veneer had melted. Barb stomped out of the kitchen. Covering his eyes and leaning on the counter, Greg listened to her footsteps drum the wood floor, all the way to the bathroom. He knew she would lock herself in, sit on the edge of the tub, and weep.

As he lifted his hand from his eyes, he saw Chez beside the table, shooting a laser glare at him. Then she turned and marched out, stiff legged as a Nazi on parade.

He fought a chill. Bright flashes blinded him for a minute. Then he returned to preparing dinner. He was going to the fridge for lettuce and tomatoes when he noticed, on the door, a flyer from the Roxy Theater. A blurb for the movie that inspired James to dream up the murder game.

Night before last, when they were goofy, James on liquor and Greg on his prescribed sinsemilla, they rehearsed bumping off Maurice, the creep whose lawyers would steal James’s little sister’s nice home.

As Greg threw open the fridge, he recalled the rush of excitement and purpose he had felt beneath the stairs to Maurice’s apartment.

He finished chopping the lettuce and tomatoes, put out the mild salsa fresca Chez liked, for which he always remembered to make special trips to the People’s Co-op. He zapped tortillas in the microwave, wrapped them in one of the red, orange, and yellow napkins they had bought in Tijuana. He set them on the table alongside the chicken meat he had peeled off, shredded and piled neatly on a serving platter. Before he called them, he poured Barb’s red wine, Chez’s lemonade, and his own juice.

Barb must’ve prayed for patience and coached Chez, reminding her that Daddy was sick and needed their love. Four times, Barb told him what a special dinner this was. Every time he glanced at Chez, she beamed a phony smile. But their acts played out. By the end of the meal, Barb was staring dreamily out the window or sneaking furtive glances. Checking to see if he had died yet, Greg imagined.

He wondered if Chez had, on her own, guessed he was dying. While she dipped her last hunk of chicken in salsa and gobbled her peanut butter cookie, he caught her staring at him as though at a strange and scary creature. Maybe she already saw him as a ghost.

His girls watched Veggie Tales

. He washed and dried the dishes, put them away, cleaned the stove and polished it shiny white. Then he fetched his pillbox and picked out two tranquilizers. A Restoril and a Soma. He tried to decide which he should use then laughed and swallowed both without washing them down. Feeling a new pain like steel teeth biting his liver, he opened the box again and debated between one and two Vicodin. Might as well use them up. “Waste not, want not,” he muttered, and made himself chuckle.

In the living room, he flopped on Chez’s beanbag beside the sofa where his girls were snuggling. He pretended to watch the adventures of a cucumber and a tomato. Actually, he peered out the corner of his eye at his pretty family and grieved doubly, feeling sure that his life meant nothing to them anymore except trouble.

Chez complained of a headache. Barb said, “That’s funny, I have one too.”

Yeah. Me, Greg thought.

They gave Greg his goodnight kisses, brushed their teeth, and retired to Chez’s bedroom. He listened to his daughter read a couple pages of Charlotte’s Web before Barb took over for a minute then stopped in midsentence. When he summoned the energy to heave himself out of the beanbag, he went to Chez’s room and found both his girls asleep, tucked under the covers of the skinny bed, where Barb spent half the nights these past few weeks. To escape Greg’s snoring, she claimed, as if he snored worse now than ever before, which he didn’t believe.

The only cure for self-pity Greg knew was to shift from brooding over his problems to thinking of somebody else’s. The effort delivered him to memories of James’s sister.