Steplings: A Novel

Chapter 11

Burl was careful to arrive five minutes early for his 5:30 meeting with Lisa's father. Since the doctor's clinic was closed Saturdays , the parking lot was empty but for a white Astro van with a magnetic sign reading Martinez Cleaning Service on its passenger door. He pulled his pickup into the first slot left of the handicapped spaces in front, shoved the shift into Park, cut the AC to low and left the engine idling. The clinic was housed in a brick one-story stand-alone between a Taco Bell and a vacant lot owned by the clinic, where presently, amidst the crabgrass and knee-high thistles adorned with windblown plastic sacks, two boys, hatless in the blazing sun, were tooling their bikes up a makeshift plywood ramp propped by paint buckets. Though he couldn't hear them, their wrist-twists and cheek-bellows signified motocross imitations. Rudden, rudden , rudden. They flew up and off the shaky ramp, and he reflexively registered the danger, parental warnings scrawling across the scarred surface of his exhausted brain. But his spirit was balmed by memories of being that young, of having fun! Jesus, it's great to see this, really. They're not parked in front of a TV or PC, how rare. Good old-fashioned American boyhood , Saturday Evening Post style. Mayberry. Beaver. Those shows weren't that far off the mark, were they? So what the hell happened to all that, anyway? One minute your kid is on skates or at the top of the monkey bars hollering Hey Daddy! Look! and the next he's wrestling you to a fall 177 requiring stitches and you're sitting in a parking lot waiting for his girlfriend's father to come rub your nose in your own crap. Taco Bell's smell provoked a boil-up of hunger and nausea in his blood. He needed to eat, but nothing would satisfy. Aside from the peanut butter sandwich and glass of milk he'd wolfed hours ago, he hadn't eaten since yesterday's lunch, and with only an hour's nap around noon today he was limp as a rag. Too anxious to eat, really, yet anxiety led him toward filling himself with something. In the old days, or not so old days, several slugs of ice-cold vodka could knock the edge off in seconds flat. Just the thought of it. ... Moments later, a navy-blue Tahoe wheeled into a handicap slot, leaving one empty space between the two vehicles, like men choosing urinals in a public restroom. Burl scurried to be first on the ground, thinking this would show deference, but he found himself having to stand alone while the doctor took his sweet time shutting off his engine. The Tahoe's windows were an opaque smoky tint, and when the doctor finally exited , he was slipping a cell phone into the pocket of his white golf shorts. He was wearing pristine running shoes and a bluestriped polo, Ray-Bans. Not offering his hand, he nodded and said, "Mr. Sanborn." Burl pulled back his hand, which had been at the ready, and said, "Doc Johnson, thanks for meeting with me," even though the meeting had been compulsory for Burl and at the doctor's behest. The doc stepped under the awning to the clinic's front door, bent over a silver hoop, and peeled away several keys as if turning pages. Burl studied the man's haircut. He had thick sandy hair that appeared to have just been-not barberedstyled , the strands so coarse and sturdy that his 'do probably stayed in place even on the links in a stiff breeze. Jason said Dr. J paid a hundred bucks a pop, or so Lisa claimed. Burl's haircuts ran twenty, including tip. They went through the clinic door into a lighted reception area. From somewhere in the building came the whine of a buffer or vacuum. Without checking if Burl were behind him, "8 the doctor struck off down a corridor whose floors had been freshly waxed. There was not a soul in sight, and the setting spooked Burl. He'd presumed the doctor had chosen to meet here because he had other business to attend to, that the choice of venue was incidental, not deliberate, but when the doctor stepped into his office and hit a light switch, and as the fluorescent fixtures blinked...