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“Dude, I can’t breathe!”
“You’re yelling! If you can yell, you can breathe, all right? We call 911 and it’s game over. We go back and I die in a diaper listening to instrumental light rock and the world goes poof and that is not gonna happen, so just get a grip.”
The neon light from the parking lot falls across Gonzo’s face like a strobe effect. His eyes are wide and he’s clutching his chest.
“Please. Dude. This could be game over. Call nine-one-one stat! Tell them to bring a nebulizer!”
I grab his shoulders hard and shake him. “Gonzo! I am not going to let you die. Okay? I’m not your mom! I am not rushing you into an early grave so I can get on with my life. Okay? Okay?”
I’m waiting for him to go medieval on my ass for talking about his mom that way, but surprisingly, he just nods, letting me get back to his bag. This time, I find the L-shaped metal canister. “Here,” I say.
Gonzo grabs it with both hands, shakes it hard, then positions it at his mouth like a tiny pistol and fires away. His eyes close as he holds his breath, waiting for the medicine to do its work. Exactly thirty seconds later, he takes another hit, holds his breath again until he can’t anymore, and it all comes rushing out of him in a whoosh. There’s a lot of coughing. In another minute, the color returns to his face. The air conditioner clicks on. It pushes the orange balloon back and forth in the artificial breeze.
“You okay?” I ask.
He shrugs. He can’t really commit to being okay. It might kill him.
“That wasn’t cool, what you said about my mom,” he says quietly.
“Okay, sorry,” I say, because I don’t have any fight left in me. “Let’s just crash.”
I turn off the lamp and lie down. The room is tomb dark. Only hotel rooms ever get this dark, like they know it’s their function to close you off from the world. When my eyes adjust to the lack of light, though, I can still make out Gonzo sitting on the edge of his bed, not moving.
I sigh. “Gonz, you’re not, like, having heart palpitations over there or anything, are you?”
“No. I was just thinking.” His voice sounds weird in the dark. Hollow and detached, like he’s as full of air as the orange balloon. “You ever have, like, these totally random memories sometimes?”
“I guess.”
“I was thinking about this one time when I was a kid. I was, like, I don’t know, five? Six, maybe? It wasn’t too long after my old man took off. The kids next door had this new swing set. It was ridiculously tricked out: swings, clubhouse, slide, monkey bars. The whole bolo, man. Way cool. To a little kid, anyway.”
He pauses, and I wonder where this little trip down memory lane is taking us. My pillow’s heating up under my head. I flip it over, settle my head against the cool cotton.
“Anyway, they told me if I wanted to be in the club, I had to be able to cross the monkey bars without falling. Dude, those bars looked like they were about four thousand feet high. But it was the first time they’d asked me over, so I didn’t want to mess it up. One of the boys gave me a boost and I started making my way across. I was totally sweating it. But I got to the second one and then the third one. By the time I got to the fourth rung, they started cheering for me, telling me to keep going. It was this freakin’ amazing feeling, like … I don’t know how to describe it. I was doing it, you know? I was making it, muchacho. Two more to go and I’d be home free.”
I can hear him playing with his inhaler; it makes a soft rattle.
“I was about to reach for the next one when I heard my mom scream my name. She was standing in our yard with this look of terror on her face. I could tell she was ready to run for me—she didn’t trust, you know what I’m saying? When I looked back at that next rung, it seemed about a million miles away. I didn’t feel so sure anymore. I reached for it, but sorta half-assed, you know? And I missed. Fell down and broke my arm and a rib and started crying. The kids thought I was a weenie, and their moms said I couldn’t come over anymore because they didn’t want me getting hurt in their yards. I spent a few days in the hospital and my mom bought me a bunch of Fast Wheels cars that I told her I loved and then I buried them in the backyard later and told her I lost them and she acted all hurt and said I took things for granted just like my dad.”
He makes a funny sound that at first I think is a hiccup. But then I realize he’s crying. “That was the first time … the first time I got that feeling … that … the only thing keeping me alive … was my mom. And I hated her for it.”
Outside, somebody’s getting ice. The machine thunks against the wall like a dying man’s cough. It mixes with Gonzo’s strangled, silent crying.
“So …,” I start. “So, you know, what did you have against the Fast Wheels?”
The sniffling slows down. Gonzo shifts on the bed in the deep motel black. “Huh?”
“I know you hated your mom. Shit, I don’t blame you. But what did those little toy cars ever do to you to deserve such a fate? Buried alive. Dude, that’s harsh.”
Gonzo goes totally silent—not even a sniffle. For all I know, I’ve pissed him off so completely, he’s about to risk another asthma attack just to kick my ass. I position my pillow as a shield just in case I have to ward off forty-two inches of the Gonzman pounding at me in Little People fury. And then I hear it in the dark—a bubbling laugh through tears.
“My friend,” he says with a snort. “I am the Ayatollah of Harsh. Do not f**k with the little people. We will lay waste to your souls!”
“Oooh,” I say. “Now you got me scared, dude. Terrified.”
“I put a freakin’ fatwa out on those cars.” He’s laughing so hard he sounds totally manic, but hey, whatever it takes to keep him up.
I put the pillow back behind my head. “Well, they didn’t deserve to live. They were tools of the infidels.”
