Ray’s Refrigeration

Originally published in Sierra Nevada Review

The refrigerator business isn’t what it used to be. Not since you can buy anything on Amazon at fridges at slave-wages. Not since the incident at our last annual sell-a-thon, when five year old Caleb Mackey got stuck in an antique Zenith model that locks from the outside and suffocated. Not since Ray had to start letting people go, starting with Miguel the security guard, who gave us all personalized keychains his kid made for Christmas. Now in addition to his own duties as owner and manager, Ray patrols the parking lot with a gun holstered on his belt that may or may not be loaded. It makes everyone a little uneasy. 

Today Terry’s outside scrubbing the Freezy Man suit because there’s nothing else to do. In better days, he would put on the suit and do jumping jacks in the parking lot to bring in customers. Everyone got a chuckle out of that. But since the Mackey kid died, nobody’s laughing. Everyone is convinced his ghost is haunting the shop. The only people who come in are sex workers from the STD clinic across the street to use our bathroom. 

On Ray’s desk is a picture of a young man with a crew-cut in military fatigues. It’s Ray, back when he was pretty. Not anymore. He’s a Vietnam vet who lost half his face in a napalm mishap. Now it looks like chewed-up bubblegum, and spittle leaks out of his cheek when he talks.

“You’re getting a promotion,” says Ray.

For a second, I’m excited.

“First fire the new kid,” says Ray. 

“Terry?” I say.

“He’s been fibbing receipts for petty cash,” says Ray. “No way a box of pens costs two hundred bucks.” 

I fight for Terry, I really do. He makes coffee when no one asks him to. Waters the succulents. Always offers gum. I say we should give him a chance to give back the money, but Ray isn’t having it. He says it’s either me or him, and I have to bury the hatchet. 

“You think this is hard?” says Ray. “Try fighting gangrene when your foot is full of punji sticks.” 

I sigh. I groan. I grumble yes.

“Atta boy,” he says.

After work I take Terry to Bazoombas. They have an all-day happy hour that includes a bucket of tater-tots and half a lap-dance. I drop the news, expecting a throng of daytime strippers will help cushion the blow. It doesn’t. I’ve never seen a grown-man cry like that, especially while a woman dressed as a sexy lunch lady pokes him sensually with a ladle. He confides in me that he can’t find work anywhere else with his arrest record, having been busted once for selling bath salts in the bathroom of a Benihanas. He says his wife Chi-Chi is pregnant again, and this time they’re keeping it. With nothing much to contribute, I offer him the last twenty dollars in my wallet and drop him off at the Home Depot where they’re secretly squatting in one of the gardening sheds.

“That’s okay,” he says. “By this time tomorrow I’ll be turning tricks for quarters.”

At home it’s not much better. Our son Tomo sits in bed making swoosh sounds with dinosaur heads while a tube pumps jelly nutrients into his belly. I ask him how his day went, knowing fully well that it’s been exactly the same ever since the diagnosis and Megumi had to start homeschooling him. He says today’s lesson involved a prenuptial agreement. I pat him on the head and go reheat tater-tots in the toaster oven.

Megumi’s in the kitchen talking on the phone with her therapist. “No,” she says. “We’re barely scraping by as it is, but he’s my husband, and I stay with him for our son’s sake.” It occurs to me there’s probably no one on the other line. This is one of her passive-aggressive little fits. That night I sleep on the futon again. What happened to us? Early in our marriage we took day-trips to a vineyard in Paso Robles modeled after a Wild West Ghost Town. Women dressed as harlots would pour us spritzers and we’d rent out a bed in a saloon and knock boots. Repeatedly. Now it’s hard to get into the mood. Ever since Tomo’s stomach problems started up. Not that I would blame the poor kid. 

But Christ. 

The next morning Ray’s in the parking lot frisking a teen and accusing him of spying on behalf of Jeff Bezos. I try to tug Ray away, reminding him that we don’t need another lawsuit on our hands. The teen drops a handful of toilet paper and pens and bolts for it. For the rest of the day, Ray is mad that I interfered with his vigilante justice, so he has me do a house-call at Happy Trails Funeral Home. The mortician is a German fellow named Karl Goodman, who is cheerful despite telling me in private about his bad eczema around the groin. Years ago he was scratching himself at his kid’s t-ball game and another parent saw, thinking he was publicly masturbating, and called the cops. His wife and kid left him out of embarrassment and he’s a registered sex offender. What I’m saying is, things could be worse. 

Because of the heatwave, the refrigeration systems overheated and the bodies are starting to smell. While replacing the motor, I think about the Mackey kid. He was around Tomo’s age, even went to the same school. While his parents were shopping for a new freezer, he was off playing hide and go seek by himself when he got stuck. I had Def Leppard playing over the speaker so loud nobody could hear him yelling for help. At the time, Karl was the coroner who inspected Mackey’s body. He said he probably suffocated before hypothermia set in. When we opened the fridge, he looked like a mummy, stiff and sleeping upright.

After work I drive to CVS to pick up Tomo’s food injections. Two years and his stomach problems won’t improve. I blame it on the fumes. We live in a house next to a factory that makes silicone breast implants. We thought it’d be a good starter home, back when the market was still afloat. My high school buddy Wendell was all set on helping me open a fabric store with only organic and hypoallergenic dyes. We thought hypoallergenic dyes would be the future. Then Wendell took off with that investment money and moved to the Philippines to open a massage parlor. 

“Sorry buddy,” he wrote on a Post-It-Note. “But a man has to put his personal happiness above all others.”
Boy did Megumi freak out. She called me dumb and naive and said I trusted too much. I told her I’d rather trust too much than live in a world where you had to second guess everyone’s motives and wear a wallet-chain. We put our honeymoon to Jamaica on hold. We both started to gain weight. We embarrassed our Japanese parents. I found a job selling junk refrigerators out of a strip mall in Van Nuys. Then the Mackey kid. 

On the way out of CVS, I notice a familiar face in the parking lot. It’s Terry wearing a cowboy hat and getting into a stranger’s car. I discretely follow them down the block to the freeway overpass where the car stops. I watch as Terry gets in the backseat and takes off his clothes, and then I realize he wasn’t kidding about being a gigilo. So I run over and bang on the windshield, recognizing the driver as a schlubby teacher from my son’s school. He freaks out and drives off, leaving Terry behind. I take the kid to El Burrlito so we can sit and talk over some stale nachos. He admits he was in the middle of a transaction involving a handie and maybe some butt-stuff. I talk to Terry in a stern, fatherly voice, thereby prohibiting him from prostituting himself on the street. He breaks down and says management at Home Depot found out about him and Chi-Chi and kicked them to the curb. Seeing no other options, I invite the downtrodden newlyweds to stay in our home on the pull-out couch.

“Absolutely not,” says Megumi. She’s convinced they’re addicts and Chi-Chi is carrying a crack baby. She thinks they’ll raid the medicine cabinet and sell Tomo’s medical equipment for drug money. I tell her they have nowhere else to go, and we should count our blessings, as we could easily be in their shoes if things had gone worse for us.

Megumi shakes her head. “Count your blessings means you still have more to lose,” she says.

I give Terry and Chi-Chi the OK and they’re delighted. They immediately help around the house, Chi-Chi doing the dishes while Terry wipes the gunk off of Tomo’s feeding tube. Tomo is overjoyed. He’s always wanted brothers and sisters. He says they’ve offered to take him to Disneyland if he pretends to be in a wheelchair so they can skip the lines. I say I’ll think about it.

The next day at work I walk in on Ray lighting the coals for the flammable chair. We did this once for a promotion, where whoever could sit on the flammable chair longer than thirty seconds would win a free ice cooler. He invites anyone bold enough to sit on it and potentially earn a bonus. Nobody volunteers. So he tries to prod Lexy from financing into doing it, and instead she slaps him and packs up her stuff and quits, calling this a hostile work environment. 

Afterwards I start thinking about asking Ray for a raise. 

“Don’t even think about it,” says Ray. 

I bring up Tomo’s piling medical bills. I mention how uncertain the poor kid’s future is, not to mention the strain on my marriage. Knowing Ray has a son of his own, I expect this to tug at his heart strings. 

“Tough shit,” he says. “You think that’s bad? My kid stabbed a guy at a the DMV and ended up in a loony bin where he chopped his own pecker off with a sharpened broom handle.”

I would quit, but not in this economy. Not after my last bunch of resumes got sent back, and we used them as paper mache for Tomo’s California missions project. 

 At dinner Terry and Chi-Chi tell us about their wedding night in Reno, where Terry didn’t have enough cash to pay the minister, so they ended up scrubbing vomit off the floors of the chapel instead. Terry met Chi-Chi at a last-chance high school in Downey. They would go to the nearby theme park Country Bumpkin Land and do it on the hay. I look over at Megumi who seems to realize that these are just kids after all, dumb, clueless kids. Suddenly I remember the pimply girl I was too chicken-shit to ask out to the prom, so I had my mother do it instead over the phone. I remember the hilltop where we’d park next to a big sundial so the missionaries wouldn’t forget when it was time to pray. 

Feeling nostalgic, I pile my wife and son into the car and go for a drive. At first Megumi is suspicious, asking why I made her bring her flats. But once we pull up it makes sense to her. The sundial is covered in graffiti now and surrounded by discarded shopping carts, but still pretty in its own way. Tomo finds an interesting stick on the ground that entertains him for an hour. We sit and watch the sunset while a family across the meadow is having a cookout. The father fumbles with the hot coals, the kids are running around unleashed, but nobody is yelling or snapping at each other. I hold Megumi’s hand as we reminisce about waiting in the dark, the stereo playing Santana, her unbuckling my belt, somebody’s elbow hitting the horn and getting the cop’s attention. The spontaneity. The passion. The belief that we’d never have to worry about hospital bills or mortgage payments.

When we get home it feels like moving day again because everything is gone. The TV. The toaster. Even Tomo’s framed bug collection. There’s a note where the doormat used to be, which says: “Thank you for your kindness and hospitality. Sadly, it isn’t enough for the life Chi-Chi and I want for our child, so we had to take more. Please don’t be angry - Terry.”

Tomo cries and asks what happened to our stuff. I lie and say this is like Christmas, but in reverse, where an angry Santa arrives unexpectedly and takes what he feels is owed. Megumi rolls her eyes. She says she needs a break and is going to her mother’s house in Torrance.

“When are we leaving?” I say.

“Not we,” she says. “Just me and Tomo.”

That night I sleep on the living room carpet after scrounging for quarters. I consider burning the house down for the insurance and buying a modest condo, but I wouldn’t want the flames spreading to the animal shelter down the street. Around three a.m. the doorbell rings and it’s Caleb Mackey, his gaunt little frame as alabaster as the moon.

“I died way too early,” he says.

“I know” I say. “Are you punishing us?”

“No.”

“Then whose fault is this?”

“I don’t know. I’m just a kid. I can’t even tie my own shoes.”

Then he disintegrates.

I put on my shoes and drive to work. Enough of this. I’m busting into the safe and taking what I want.  

At four in the morning the street is empty except for a coyote prancing alongside my car. The flickering neon clown light from Bozo’s Liquors stares down at me fiendishly as I park. So this is what it feels like to be bad. Inside the office I find the wall-safe behind a framed copy of an ad Ray took out in the nineties titled “Refrigerator King of the Valley.” I find ten thousand dollars in cash, along with a bayonet and what looks like a jar of human teeth. I take everything except the teeth and stuff it inside my backpack. I’m on my way out when someone points a flashlight at me, and it’s Ray in the alleyway behind our shop with a German luger in his hand.

“My private alarm went off,” says Ray. “Figured it was some crackheads. But this. I’m disappointed. Heartbroken. I thought I could trust you. Now get down on your knees before I blow them off.”

I do as Ray says, fully expecting him to shoot me regardless. But then he drops the gun and starts wiggling around like a worm without both heads. It looks like he’s having a stroke. He motions for me to call an ambulance, and for a second, he doesn’t look like a callous hard-ass, but a helpless baby. I should get help. Except: Ray dies, I get off scot-free. 

So I pat him on the shoulder and take off.

I’m halfway back home when I see a billboard for a medical procedure that can freeze your fat off, and I think: What am I doing? I left a man dying back there, a man who never did me any favors, but a man, nonetheless. Then I consider the money I just stole, what it’ll buy for my family, the kind of tone it will set for the rest of my life. A brand-new Honda Fit. Ceramic supplies for Megumi. Feeding tube replacements for Tomo and as many at-home excavation kits he wants. And what’s the opposite? Dad in prison? Further proof that my whole life was nothing but half-measures and poor decision making? To hell with that. Megumi always said I was a pushover. Like the blackjack player in Reno who kept calling me Sulu and took all my money. Not anymore. Stop being a giver and more a taker. Find Terry and Chi-Chi and get back everything they stole. Take Tomo out to the woods and teach him hunting. Have to learn hunting first, but we can do it together. Show him daddy can be a hard, cruel man when he needs to be.

Except that’s not true. 

And before I know it I’m driving back to the shop and muttering shit, shit, shit, whacking my palm against the steering wheel, picturing Megumi and Tomo behind prison glass, and relieved when I find a still-breathing Ray, that jackass, right where I left him.