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It was all behind him now. Rudy was dead, decades ago. Uncle Tony had seen to it. Bruno was not in Newark anymore, listening to Rudy hit Mamma through the walls. Mamma was dead, too, eighteen years ago. Nothing could hurt her anymore.
Just…a…fucking…dream.Long past. Dead and gone.
He’d moved on, gotten his shit together. He was not that helpless boy anymore. He deepened his breathing, got up on wobbly legs. He’d use the tricks Kev had taught him.When you can’t stand what’s happening in your head, float back from it,Kev always said.Three steps. Turn down the volume. Then look at it. Idly curious. It’s just a bunch of monkeys fighting in a cage. Stupid. Irrelevant. Can’t hurt you.
He stumbled into the living room, air cooling his naked skin. The city lights reflected off the broad swath of planked flooring. He sank down into horse stance, and began the kung fu forms Kev had taught him. His legs shook, and monkeys screeched and flailed in their cage for a while, but eventually, he got where he needed to be. One with the night, crouching, leaping, punching.Black panther climbs the tree. Crane guards his nest. Crane flies into the sky. Wild tiger raises his head. Golden dragon stretches his left claw.Time flowed, smoothing.
Buzzzz. Buzzzz.Who the hell would call at this ungodly hour?Oh, man. Maybe it was Kev. The blaze of hope broke his mellow zen trance, had him leaping for the phone like a fish for a bug. “Yeah?”
“It’s Julio.” The cigarette roughened voice of the fry cook at Zia Rosa’s restaurant rasped uncomfortably over Bruno’s nerve endings.
Bruno’s stomach thudded down a couple notches. Not Kev.
Of course not. Why would Kev call? He was traveling the globe with his true love, Edie. Tied up in erotic knots on some sugar sand beach under the moonlight. Which was fine. Bruno was thrilled for that. He’d hoped and schemed to get Kev happy, smiling, sexually fulfilled. He loved that scenario,lovedit. Kev deserved blithering happiness and nonstop screaming orgasms after the horrific shit he’d been through.
But those dreams, man. Kev was the only person Bruno could talk to about that stuff. Kev had saved him, back when he was thirteen. He’d been wild-eyed and desperate with the grinding, constant Rudy nightmares. At the time, throwing himself under a bus had been looking kind of restful. Kev had understood that. He understood everything. He’d saved Bruno’s ass, so many times, on so many levels.
But then, Kev was a freaking genius. Nobody argued with that.
“…is the matter with you, man? Do you even hear me?”
Bruno shook himself out of his daze and tried to zero in on Julio’s grating monologue. “Sorry. Still half asleep. What did you say?”
“I was saying that Otis didn’t come in tonight at all, and Jillian called, said she can’t make it in at six, either, and I am so done, man. I’ve been here for twelve and a half hours.”
“Not coming in? What the matter with those guys?”
Julio grunted. “I don’t know or care, buddy. Call ‘em yourself if you’re curious. But I’m outta here, at six sharp. Closing the place up and locking the door. Just lettin’ ya know.”
Bruno glanced at the clock again, calculating dressing time, driving time. “Make it six-thirty?”
Julio paused, considering it. “On the nose, dude,” he growled.
Click.Julio was gone. Bruno let the phone drop, slid down the wall until his naked butt hit the floor. Great. An extra shift at the diner. This negated the mellow kung fu vibe in one crushing blow.
There was no logical reason to be so uptight about closing Tony’s Diner while he scoured the city for some decent waitstaff. But the place had been a fixture in his life since Mamma sent him there at age twelve, right before all the bad stuff happened. Bruno had worked there throughout his adolescence, bussing plates, waiting tables.
Thirty years ago, Uncle Tony decided that he wanted to run a food joint in his adopted West Coast city of Portland, Oregon. A no bullshit place that slung great hash twenty-four-seven, like the diners of his youth in New Jersey and New York. Where a guy working swing shift could get great fries or chops any time, day or night. He’d persuaded his unmarried sister, Bruno’s Zia Rosa, to move out and help. Zia had added her own heroic efforts to the production of food that made your taste buds burst into six part harmony while simultaneously clogging your arteries with deadly plaque.
But Uncle Tony was dead. He’d died a hero, last year, saving Bruno’s life among many others. He could hear his uncle’s gruff, Marines drill sergeant voice in his head.What’s this? Ya wanna close Tony’s Diner because of, what? Nightmares? Fuckin’ stress? You tired, boy? Fuck tired! Tired’s for pussies! You can rest when you’re dead!
Tony was resting. It was Bruno that couldn’t seem to manage it. Not with the Rudy dreams, and Zia Rosa missing in action. Zia had gone haring off a few weeks ago to attend the birth of yet another of the McCloud Crowd’s innumerable spawn, expecting Bruno to pick up the slack. Kev was off the hook, because Rosa wanted so badly for him to procreate, and all that sweaty humping took time and effort, right? But Bruno, man. Anything goes. Put that boy to work, day and night. Never mind lost sleep. Never a thought for his own kite and toy business.
Fortunately, his own outfit was a smoothly functioning perpetual motion machine. One of Bruno’s talents was to pick good staff and motivate them well. Too bad Zia Rosa couldn’t do the same.
But the restaurant was his most visceral link to Tony. God, how he missed the old bastard. Tony had loved the place. Bruno owed Tony his life, several times over. Tony had never closed the joint but for a couple of very notable days; one being the day eighteen years ago that Rudy and his goons had come to the diner to kidnap and murder Bruno. They had not succeeded, thanks to Kev, a.k.a. white-hot ninja maniac, and Tony. His uncle had carted the goons away in his pickup to an unknown fate. Or, well. Unknown, maybe, but certainly not un-guessed. A day of blood, terror and broken glass.
The other day the diner had closed had been the day Tony died. Another day of blood, terror and broken glass. Bombs and bullets, too.
Jesus, Mary and Joseph. Thought about in those terms, closing down Tony’s Diner was starting to look like the knell of fucking doom.
Aw, hell with it. He’d cover at the diner, for as long as it took. He wasn’t sleeping worth a damn anyhow, with Rudy coming at him full bore every night. His sex life was decimated. A guy couldn’t invite lady friends over for erotic frolics when he had an early morning date with monsters from the depths of his damaged psyche. Real mood-killer, that. Hadn’t seen any between-the-sheets action in months now.
Or missed it much, to be honest. Too tired.
He headed into the bathroom, stared at his face over the sink. He looked bad, he noted critically. Reddened eyes, cheeks starting to cave. He’d lost about twenty pounds since the dreams started up again. His head still throbbed, now that the calming spell of the kung fu forms was broken. He yanked open the medicine cabinet, rummaged `til he found a cluster of prescription bottles, rubber banded together.
He’d gone to a shrink with his problem a few weeks ago. This eerie cocktail of antidepressants, anti-anxiety meds, and anti-psychotics had been the guy’s recommendation. Bruno checked it out on the internet, discovered that his dose of the anti-psychotic was higher than the max recommended dose for schizophrenia patients. Similar to what they were giving veterans suffering from PTSD after multiple combat tours. He’d made a real impression on that shrink. Possible side effects included, but were by no means limited to; diabetes, weight gain, muscle spasms, slurred speech, disorientation, tremors. And to top it off, some of the vets who took it were dying in their sleep.
