Free Mooch by Dan Fante Page B

California 90048.’ Post-marked two days before. Safe to open.
    Most all the other stuff was crap, but two letters worried me. One had a New York law firm as the return address; I assumed it was my ex-wife’s attorney. Another one, an evil-looking, blue-bordered prick, note size, bore one of my mother’s stick-on return address labels. The postmark was a week old. Trouble. I threw everything into a trash bin except Cynthia’s package and mom’s note.
    I was right.
    Mom’s letter was to notify me that my brother, Rick, was dead from an exploded ulcer. Forty-eight years old. The family genius. Jonathan Dante’s first-born pride and joy. Ricardo Frederico Dante. Rick Dante. My big brother. Chess champion at ten, scholarship to art school, one of the designers for NASA of the flexible struts that held the first space stations together. A thinker. A guy deeply into books and Wagner and the histories of weird SS German generals. A confused, sad, isolated, bad-tempered, damaged mooch ofa guy. Dead from years of scouring his large intestine with two quarts of whiskey a day. First Pop, then Fat Willie. Now Rick. Dantes were dropping like flys.
    I shoved mom’s note down into my pants pocket, then locked my P.O. box.
    Outside, at the top of the steps, I was hit by a blast of summer heat and dizziness, so I sat down. The mighty Pacific sun had worked its way above the buildings, blinding me. A dozen nearby roofs had become shimmering, punishing, mosks: vengeful fire gods reflecting their contempt on anything not young and tan and imbued with L.A.’s frenzied TV optimism.
    Below me were people, locals coming and going around the Venice Boulevard traffic circle. Skateboarders. Mothers pushing strollers. Rollerbladers. People attending to the business of Monday. Lighting a Lucky, I took a deep hit and leaned back out of the glitter. Soon the day would be swarming. Pizza stands and ten-dollar parking lots would fill with tourists and immigrants talking in thirty different languages. Another perfect, cloudless summer day in the endless California dream. And my brother Rick was dead. Insignificant by comparison. Nothing at all.
    A girl in a tight two-piece bathing suit skipped by me up the steps into the post office, her thighs brown and flawless. A depilatory commercial.
    I opened Cynthia’s envelope. Clipped to the cover of ‘Compatibility’ was a note on Victorian-looking pink paper telling me how much she liked the story. Little fat angels with roses in their mouths floated along the paper’s border. Cin’s telephone number was there too.
    The post office has pay phones in front, so I punched in the number and let it ring.
    I had forgotten Cynthia was deaf. When she answered, hervoice had a distant, officious tone. She asked me to speak up and told me that an amplification gadget was attached to her earpiece.
    I immediately realized that the call was a mistake. I was unprepared for conversation. My brain began pounding. Cin started asking questions, normal conversation shit. Too much. How was I? Was I writing?
    ‘I’m sweating,’ I said. ‘My brother Rick is dead. How are you?’
    Speaking his name triggered a phantom. Suddenly Richard Dante’s sour face was in my mind: a sneering, twisted genie. Part hangover, part insanity from my motel room. It felt like the asshole was standing next to me on the concrete—in my face the way he used to be when we were kids.
    I began shaking.
    Attempting to save myself I hung up the telephone. But I could smell this ghost’s odious, stinking breath. To quell the stink I lit a new Lucky Strike, took a deep hit, and sat back down on the concrete.
    In a few minutes I was calmer, alone again.
    In my pocket I found more quarters, got up, and re-dialed Cin.
    ‘Bruno, you rang off.’
    ‘AT&T. The fucking telephone company. The Military-Industrial Complex.’
    ‘…Much better. I can hear you quite clearly now. Did you say someone died?’
    ‘You said you liked