Three days will pass and Peter will watch cartoons and he will forget about the kid laying in the bathtub and he will pretend, along with Mary, that there never was a kid and I will try to keep cool, pretending to know what they are going to do, what will be accomplished, even though I have no idea what will happen.

I go to the car wash because I wake up and Peter will be heating a spoon in front of the TV and Mary will stagger in, thin and tan, and Peter will make jokes while shooting her up and then he will do himself and before the car wash I smoke pot and watch cartoons with Peter and Mary goes back to the mattress and sometimes I can hear the kid kicking against the tub, freaking out in there. We play the radio loud, praying the kid will stop, and I piss in the sink in the kitchen or go to the Mobil station across the street to shit and I don’t ask Peter or Mary if they feed the kid. I will come home from the car wash and see empty Winchell boxes and McDonald bags but don’t know if they ate the food or if they gave it to the kid and the kid moves around in the tub late at night and even with the TV on and the radio playing you can hear him, driving you to hope that someone outside will hear, but when I go outside you can’t hear anything.

“Just to you,” Peter says. “Just to you, man.”

“Just to me f**king what?”

“I can’t hear anything,” Peter says.

“You’re … lying,” I say.

“Hey, Mary,” he calls out. “You hear anything?”

“Don’t ask her, man,” I say. “She’s … fucked up, man.”

“That’s why you’re going to do something about it,” he says.

“Oh shit, man,” I groan. “This is all your fault, man.”

“Coming to L.A. is my fault?” he asks.

“Just getting the kid like that.”

“That’s why you’re going to do something about it.”

On the fourth day Peter realizes something.

“I don’t know what you mean when you say that,” I tell him, near tears, after he explains a plan.

“We gonna kill the kid?” he repeats, but it’s really no longer a question.

I get up late the next morning and Peter and Mary are in the back room passed out on the mattress and the TV is on and animated balls, blue and fuzzy and with faces, chase each other around with big hammers and pickaxes and the sound is turned down low so you can imagine what they are saying to each other and when I’m in the kitchen I open a beer and piss in the sink and actually put part of what’s left of an old Big Mac laying on the counter into my mouth, chewing, swallowing, and I put on a pair of new overalls and am about to leave when I see that the bathroom door is open a little and I walk over, carefully, afraid that maybe Peter did something to the kid again, last night, but finally I can’t even check, so I just close the door quickly and drive my car out to Reseda, to the car wash, because two nights ago I went in, high, and the kid was on his stomach, his pants bunched up around his bound ankles, and his backside was dirty with blood and I left and the next time I see the kid he’s cleaned up, dressed, someone even brushed his hair, still tied up with a sock in his mouth, freaked out, his eyes redder than mine.

I get to the car wash late and someone Jewish yells at me and I don’t say anything back, just walk into a long dark tunnel and out, the other end, where I dry a car with a guy named Asylum who thinks of himself as a “real goof” and everyone in the Valley wants their car washed today and I keep drying the cars, not caring how hot it is, not looking at anybody or talking to anyone, except Asylum.

“I’m not even, like, worried anymore,” I tell him. “You know? Or suspicious or anything.”

“You, like, just don’t give a shit anymore?” Asvlum asks. “Is that it? Am I clear on this?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I just do not care.”

I finish drying a car and I’m waiting for the next one to come out of the tunnel and I notice a little kid standing next to me. He’s in a school uniform, watching the cars coming out of the tunnel, and I’m slowly aching with paranoia. A car comes off the belt and Asylum steers it over to me.

“That’s my mom’s car,” the kid says.

“Yeah?” I say. “So f**king what?”

I start drying a Volvo station wagon with the kid still standing there.

“I’m getting angry,” I tell the kid. “I don’t like you looking at me.”

“Why?” he asks.

“Because I want to kick you in the head or something, y’know?” I say, squinting up at smog.