What the fuck? WHERE’S THE REFRIGERATOR?!? he screamed to himself. The gap in the kitchen cabinets stared out like a dead man. Juan del Llano took it in like a flash and knew just who to kill. No one had jimmied the door, and only one other had a key.
Jesus goddamn HELL! Here he’d come over 600 miles to put the place on the market so the crazy old woman could have a few more months in happy geezer lockdown, and the fucking refrigerator was gone. Not only that, but the steel railing that used to run up the steps lay outside, busted clean out of the concrete blocks. Easier to get the booty in the truck that way, of course.
He drove to a certain house, but no one was home. Strange, because the car was in the driveway. He pounded again. BAM! BAM! BAM! Silence. Maybe someone had beaten him to it, he thought. He tried the door and found it unlocked. For the first time ever, he walked straight in, looking for a body. God, the smell. Not of fleshly decay, but puke-worthy. Fetid. Rotten. Unwell. Clothes and trash lay all about in piles that somehow didn’t move. There was nowhere to sit, no order anywhere.
Finding no evidence of immediate foul play, he left, frustrated and a little disappointed at the lack of closure. Five minutes later, he dialed a certain number that hadn’t worked before. AHA!
“Listen, I want some truth-telling and I want it now!”
“Okay.”
“What do you know about the refrigerator that’s missing from the old place?”
“I sold it…”
Siding with the enemy! Juan exploded.
“WHAT GAVE YOU THE RIGHT TO DO THAT? You FUCKING IDIOT!” was the least of what he said, but he knew the answer was the meth. The filthy, stinking, goddamn meth that turns brains into rancid muck and kills all sense of right and wrong. His anger was a fearsome tonic in its white-hot heat: “YOU ARE SO GODDAMNED CLOSE TO BEING IN JAIL!” he raged. “How could you DO that?!? AND YOU TRASHED THE FUCKING RAILING!”
“Well, you said that I could sell the washer and dryer, so I thought…”
“I never said ANYTHING LIKE THAT! ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?”
Which of course he was and would be forevermore, when it came to meth. Juan del Llano felt like he was yelling at a whirlpool and withdrew to contemplate the fate of everyone.
Before the day was out, he’d had the locks changed. Nothing would stop a burglar, but the message would be clear. (Anything to help a fellow out.) It was either be a clear and present danger or a son of God. Surely this was something anyone could understand, he thought, knowing it was false, but there would be a chance. Until the end, there would always be a chance, he had to think—otherwise, how could he live his own life?
Suddenly Juan del Llano realized he knew the dance and relaxed a bit.
This was Arizona, after all, and he could leave.
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{ 11 comments… read them below or add one }
Good writing. But why does Juan care so much about a refrigerator and a railing? These are gusty emotions, but what has caused them? Surely not the monetary aspect. The objective correlative seems insufficient.
What part of a junkie stealing his own mother’s refrigerator to buy meth do you not grasp?
It’s what a junkie might be expected to do. It doesn’t have much significance for the mother. I reckon I’m a pretty dull fellow, but I don’t see the outrage, but then I tend to be a literalist. Nevertheless, I sort of thought you were suggesting something ironic in Juan’s attitude, what with him “exploding with the righteous anger of a thousand angry suns, etc” That’s a self-parodying sort of line, ne c’est pas? Unless we were dealing here with crimes against humanity.
oh, ken ken ken… you SO don’t get it. when dealing with a family member (in this case John’s brother) who is so damaged and dysfunctional, there are many layers of emotional baggage being dredged up. yeah, the refrigerator itself may not be literally worth getting so worked up over, but that was just the most recent surface-level immediate trigger. what seems to be really outraging John is the fact that his brother has gotten to such a dead-end low point in his existence, and there’s nothing he (John) can really do about it. add into that mix that anything even tangentially related to the both literal and karmic pile of shit that is the situation with his mother will trigger a whole additional spectacular spectrum of damaged emotional turmoil…… he’s trying like hell to sort through the mess of the tail end of his mother’s life as efficiently as possible, and his brother’s actions are just one more extra element of Chaos he REALLY doesn’t need. his (over)reaction may not be practically justified, but it is most certainly understandable.
seriously, just cut him some slack. he’s going through something you can’t even begin to understand. don’t analyze so much and just try to be a friend to John; he really needs it these days.
But this is Juan del Llano! How can I use a literary alter ego if you put it all on moi? At any rate, he just called and said the trap is set: anything untoward, and the deputy down the road knows just where to go.
OHHHHHhhhhh…. ok. i was being “duh”. didn’t pick up on the “literary alter ego” technique. at all. maybe because i’ve followed you for so long i see it all as just varying expressions of your actual self, without the fictionalized separation intended.
)
(of course at the end of the day it really *is* all you, even if shielded by the author analogue character
Prove it!
Har.
See?
it’s all about the Gonzo. exaggerated reality to make a literary point.
how much of “Raoul Duke” was Hunter Thompson? of course he ended up being trapped by the caricature he created.
Well, one tries. Think family, though. “Crimes against humanity” fits quite well!
Oy, I know Juan has a temper, and I think Ken has a point. Though it involves you, the fridge caper isn’t a slap at you, but a slap at your legal authority. Yes, it’s about family, but your burden is to keep things professional.
Ken’s comment is valid literary criticism. The sentence in question is now edited and still “under development.”
While it may seem so, the “caper” is in no way a direct slap a Juan, although it makes his job much, much harder. The trailer in question was very near unsaleable anyway, despite having been purchased for $50K cash three years ago. The kitchen appliances, however, all matching brand name units, did present a favorable aspect upon entering the wreck. As such, the theft of the refrigerator prevented Juan from listing the property and potentially costs the estate thousands of dollars. The anger expressed by Juan is specifically directed at the miscreant, who by his theft sides with the enemy and abandons his family. Even worse, the demonstrated absence of any moral compass whatsoever forces a wrenching re-evaluation of his own relationship with the thief. As this plays out, there will doubtless be more surprises.
Stay tuned!