“Shit if I know, Pebbles,” she said, irritated. “But who knows what other crazy conspiracies that TV show is going to spawn about the missing money or the secret to Hauler’s death.”
Down south, the sea-level temperature rose in the Pacific off the coasts of Peru and Ecuador, while the trade winds weakened where they normally swirled with strength. These elements signaled specific shifts in the climate patterns in the atmosphere. This in turn would result in the winter storms that usually bestowed heavy rains on the jungles of Central America and southern Mexico being pushed further north, into Southern California. This El Ni?o effect portended a wet winter in drought-stricken LA. But currently, as the weeks of weather built up, in the South Bay on a humid fall evening, tipsy patrons drank craft beers in sports bars, pretty girls in stylish shoes checked out their gear in nightclub mirrors, and traffic was light on this stretch of Pacific Coast Highway where swaying palm fronds made their whisk-whisk sound in the air.
Pebbles Hastings had the windows rolled down in her Falcon station wagon as she cruised PCH. Against a backdrop of waves swelling and crashing, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings did their version of “Goldfinger” on the aftermarket CD unit. A hot wind blew through the car’s interior and warmed her skin as she came to a stoplight. A familiar-sounding engine rumbled and she looked left and up a hill to the access road that paralleled the highway. There, gliding past the guardrail, was another Falcon station wagon she was pretty sure was the same year as hers. This vehicle too had the wood-style side panels and sport rims not dissimilar to the kind Hastings had on her vehicle. She frowned while the car went along and disappeared from view around a bend. She didn’t get a good look at the broad-shouldered driver and considered trying to follow it.
But she quickly discarded that idea and instead stopped in at a bar and got a vodka gimlet, which she drank slowly, contemplatively.
THE KILL SWITCH
by Willy Vlautin
THE HOUSE HAD three stories and was on the National Register but the people who owned it, professors at a university, and their two teenage kids seemed to be hoarders. Eddie Wilkens, a forty-two-year-old housepainter, was standing on a ladder above a small alcove deck on the second floor scraping paint when Houston called to him from below. Eddie waved, set his scraper on the deck’s railing, and climbed down.
Houston, a fifty-three-year-old alcoholic, was thin and small in stature with greased-back gray hair. “Man, I don’t know about this place,” he said when Eddie got down to the ground. “The entire yard is covered in dog shit and it’s all around the base of the house too. I’ve never seen so much. And then when I was walking around near the garage, I found a pair of men’s underwear and a half-eaten sandwich sitting on top of it.”
Eddie nodded, took a cigarette from his shirt pocket, and lit it. He spoke quietly. “Where I am on the second floor, in the alcove, there are McDonald’s bags everywhere, and clothes sitting out, and stacks of moldy books. And on the railing there’s what I think is a bloody tampon half wrapped in toilet paper.”
Houston laughed and pointed to Eddie’s cigarette.
Eddie gave him one from his pack along with a lighter. “When I went inside to get the third-story windows open I saw a plate with a half-eaten steak and green beans sitting on the stairs. It was covered in mold and ants were all over it. And if they want to go upstairs, they have to climb over it ’cause there’s stacks of books and papers everywhere else.”
Smoke came from Houston’s mouth and again he laughed.
Eddie leaned against the house. “I bid this job on a Friday night. I always bid bad on Fridays. I barely looked around. I didn’t want it; I could feel something was off so I just doubled the price and forgot about it. And then, shit, they took it anyway.” He sighed. “Well, we’ll take over the yard from here on out. We can’t be stepping in dog shit, rotten sandwiches, and underwear for a month.”
Houston nodded and they went back to work. They filled four black plastic garbage bags with trash and shit and then took lunch. When they came back they went up the ladders again and scraped. It was August and hot and the afternoon passed slowly. From the twenty-four-footer, Eddie lit a cigarette and looked out at the neighborhood. He could see his white van with WILKENS PAINTING COMPANY on the side and, past it, the tops of a dozen houses. He gazed out farther, across two streets, and made out a derelict-looking Pontiac Le Mans. It was red with a white top. He’d always liked those cars and decided when the day ended he’d walk over and see it. He finished his cigarette and went back to work.
Houston was on the other side of the house on a sixteen-footer, scraping. He was scared of heights and wouldn’t go any higher. He kept in the shade and worked steadily until Eddie came into view.