Wear Your Home Like a Scar, page 18
“They’re going to notice if something’s banging around in the back. This’ll keep it still a while.” He shrugs. “Least, until the smell starts.”
That last part pushes me over the edge. I take two steps back, retch, then see a storm drain and let loose.
While I’m busy puking in the sewer, Jason gets a T-shirt from my car and wipes down the truck bed for prints and blood. My head hanging low, l see splatters of blood and vomit on the arm of my suit, the one I bought just for this dinner, the one that’s now more a piece of evidence than a wardrobe piece.
We climb back into my car. He holds up the shirt. “Burn this or throw it in the harbor as soon as you can. Do not throw it in a trashcan.”
“I’m not an idiot.”
The alleyway is quiet as we pull away. Jason says to just take him home. Carefully. He can’t deal with Bobby right now and he has to leave for Nashville in the morning.
The raindrops turn all the approaching headlights into hundreds of tiny halos.
Giselle answers after one ring. Like she’s been waiting by her phone.
“I’m so sorry, honey.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Some fucker cut me off and the car slid into a pole.”
Her shocked gasp breaks my heart a tiny bit. “Are you hurt? Where are you? I’m getting my jacket now.”
“No, babe. Hey. I’m fine. Jason’s taking me to the hospital just to be sure. I just wanted to tell you I wouldn’t be able to make it tonight. Tell your dad and brother I’m sorry.” A man wearing a trash bag as a poncho shuffles down the sidewalk in front of my apartment. I slide down in my seat so he won’t rap on the window and ask for change.
“Oh my god—you, I can’t believe—after all that—so sweet.” I can actually hear the tears running through her voice. I bite hard on the inside of my cheek to stay focused.
“I’ll come over in the morning and make you breakfast.”
“I’ll tell them I can’t come. You need me.”
I taste blood and I don’t know if it’s mine. “This is a big night for you guys. Don’t miss it. I’ll see you in the morning. Love you.”
“Hey,” she says before I hang up. “Don’t forget to take pictures. Insurance takes forever anyway and they won’t give you anything if you don’t have pictures.”
My stomach drops out. Insurance takes forever anyway. Jason was so amped up, that didn’t occur to me. Everything we just did was—
“Óscar.” She says it like it’s not the first time.
“I’m here, babe. I’m just…tired.”
“Get some rest. I love you.” She sobs, takes a deep breath. “God, I love you so much.”
“I love you too. Say hi to everyone for me.”
She says it a few more times before hanging up. I turn off the car and go inside. I chew two Oxy and bring a six-pack into the shower with me.
As the cab pulls up to her apartment building, I see her father’s Benz in the lot, wedged beside a new-model Chevy Malibu. While this is nothing monumental, the sight of his car at eight in the morning makes me incredibly anxious. I press the buzzer.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“Oh thank God.” The tone of her voice is unnerving.
The door unlocks. Three flights up, and her apartment door is cracked open. A hushed stream of voices slips out into the hallway, several of them unfamiliar. As I raise my hand to knock, the door swings open, Giselle standing in the doorway. She collapses against me, hands clenching my back. Shivering sobs run through her.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” Her voice is muffled by my jacket. “I love you so much.”
I pat her back, tell her everything is fine, everything’s okay. Inside the apartment, I see her mother pacing in front of the couch, bruised half-moons beneath her eyes. Her father sits in an armchair. The ashtray beside him is near overflowing. His face is the same color. Two other men kneel before him, writing on small pads. None of them seem to notice I’m here.
“Babe,” I say, keeping my voice just a hair above a whisper, “what’s going on?”
She pulls her face back. Scarlet veins threading across her eyes, black streaks down her cheeks. She hasn’t slept and her breath smells faintly of bitter coffee.
“Dan never showed last night.”
Cold pellets gather beneath my skin. I can feel each muscle in my mouth move as it forms the words, where is he?
“We don’t know, but they found his bike outside Highlandtown and—”
I pull her close and she disintegrates again. Her father’s eyes flick over to me, back to his wife. One of the men stands when his phone rings. One of the officers stands. He walks into the kitchen. Her mother scurries over to the armchair, hugs her husband.
There were no cars. There were no passersby. It was wet, views were obscured. We were there for fifteen seconds, twenty tops. We were fast. There were no cars, there were no witnesses.
I realize that Giselle has been mumbling into my shoulder for some time. “Sweetie, I can’t hear you.”
She pulls her head back, mid-wail. “They found his gym card. Lying in the street. The middle of the street. Next to his bike. It was all,” and she just mouths dead words, empty air.
The officer in the kitchen walks back into the room with an assured look on his face. He leans down to Giselle’s father, says something I can’t hear, then strides out of the apartment. A look crawls over her mom’s face, lurking somewhere between relief and horror.
“What?” Giselle says.
He stands and comes toward us. “The pawn shop’s manager will be in in a few minutes. He’ll have the keys and we can get the security tape, finally get some answers.”
Everyone joins in a chorus of Oh thank God.
My feet begin to move without any signals from my brain, edging toward the door. My throat spasms. I force myself to swallow. My hands tremble, eyes twitch, trying to close in some instinctual way. Self-preservation, probably.
Her father’s hand lands on my shoulder, stopping me in my place. “Please, stay.” He nods at her. “She needs you.”
As my arms drop from Giselle’s side, my palm brushes against the ring box in my pocket.
“Thank God for you.” Giselle squeezes my hand. “I’m so thankful for you.”
Back to TOC
A Sparrow with White Scars
Ruben sunk the eight ball on the break. I said it was fate. He wanted to go double-or-nothing for the third time in a row. I told him it was his funeral.
Misplaced-cargo anecdotes from the docks, a group of East Baltimore stevedores drinking away their misery after a pallet squashed their coworker, mingled with goddamned woman got me on the bottle again—the Pine Box hummed with post-work conversations. The Orioles were mounting their annual August comeback on the TV chained behind the bar, next to a photo of a man in a Marine uniform.
I chalked my cue while Ruben racked. Man-sweat and synthetic pine from the tree-shaped air fresheners in the bathroom. The lights over the table flickered, threw epileptic shadows and made the table shimmer like a mirage. Depth perception had always been an issue, so the lights didn’t bother me. For all the other regulars, those shifting balls took some adjustment, but whenever anyone came in hustling, they left without even the lint in their pockets. Before I could shoot, Ruben grabbed the cue ball.
“So it’s double-or-nothing, o qué?”
I shrugged, wiped the engine grease from my hands on my jeans and rolled my glass eye inside the socket. “Buy a round and we’ll call last game even.” His wife had gone a little crazy with QVC the week before and I didn’t want to exacerbate the thinning wallet. “That work for you?”
He returned the ball then waved a hand to Denny behind the bar, put up two fingers. The cue ball cracked like a gunshot, three stripes and a solid falling. Denny handed me a beer, condensation rolling down the sides. I pointed to the table. “Fourteen off the ten. Corner pocket.”
“Don’t scratch.”
The fourteen fell like a dead soldier, ten rolling to a stop about an inch too far. Ruben muttered something in Spanish. It sounded pretty vulgar.
The floorboards creaked and dipped under my feet as I surveyed the table. Denny’s old man had been a one-stop undertaker: build a casket, embalm the stiff, then facilitate the memorial service. When he didn’t come back from The War, Denny sold the company and bought a bar, disassembled the caskets and made them into a floor. He named it The Pine Box to honor his father.
The front door swung open. Baltimore breathed rancid smog into our dank bar, Little Carl Kahoutek and some of the other humps from the docks riding in with the current. Denny averted his attention, dried a tumbler with a gray rag. Even from across the room, I could see the smears on the glass. They sidled up to the counter, Little Carl trying to strangle me with a glare. I leaned against the table, posturing. Tap…tap…tapped the cue in time with my heartbeat, not conceding an inch to him. He spat on the floor and pulled out a stool.
I ran the table, only giving Ruben one shot. Just as he was lining up, I popped my eye out and set it in front of his ball. He couldn’t stop laughing to take his turn, so I finished the game and gave him four quarters for the jukebox. Beer to my forehead, I unstuck my shirt from my chest. A laugh rang out behind me. Delicate, but hoarse, like a nightingale with emphysema. I took a long drink, swallowed the acid taste of anxiety and turned around carefully.
Darla straddled a stool, listening to a man in a white polyester suit tell a joke. He looked like a Messiah Elvis. Her pockets peeked below the frayed edge of her jean shorts, a bikini strap caressing her neck underneath a tank top the color of a fresh bruise. She threw her head back when she laughed, tender breasts rocking, slender throat pale and exposed, and I could taste the salt on her thighs. When the troll turned to order drinks for them, she glanced over at me, licked her teeth and winked. My stomach filled with moths and metal shards.
From the jukebox in the corner, Stray Cats began to play. Ruben shuffled over, stifling a laugh.
“You’re an asshole,” I said.
He feigned shock. “No dice esto. What did I do?”
“‘Sexy and Seventeen’?” I dropped my cue on the table and killed the rest of my drink. Behind my eye, a piece of dirt scratched my socket. The scrape against glass was audible inside my ear. “You’re an asshole.”
“Parcero, you’re the one fucking Little Orphan Annie.”
“She’s not an orphan.”
“You’re the one fucking Little Annie.” He dropped a hand on my shoulder, picked up his beer and made a toast to himself. “I’m just here for comic relief, llave.”
I flicked my head toward the bar. “I’ll buy.” He started over and I called out, “You’re still an asshole.” I fed more quarters into the table and racked up.
Darla rose and sashayed in my direction. Conversations became timid and I could hear the change jingling in her pocket. Stools scraped away from the bar. Steel-toed boots hit the floor. Little Carl growled, watching his niece move like that. I made a concerted effort to breathe. She passed without any eye contact, but clucked her tongue so only we could hear, and opened the door to the bathroom. Jokes and anecdotes resumed and I willed the sweat back into my skin. I swallowed half my beer when Ruben returned.
“Your break,” and I handed him a cue. Leaning against the back wall, I tilted my head down as if examining Ruben’s stroke, while taking stock of the room in lopsided glances. Little Carl and the rest argued about the Orioles, ordered shots. The room buzzed at a normal level and my blood settled.
Then Ruben broke. And hopped the ball. And hit Little Carl directly in the ankle bone. The creak of his stool was a clap of thunder. The fan pushed around hot air. He knelt and picked up the ball, cheeks flushed with pain he wouldn’t show, and tossed the ball in his hand like it was some strange meteor fallen from the heavens. A masochistic smile spreading, he looked up at us. Needles stuck into my fingertips. Little Carl nudged one of his lackeys, a brief chuckle like they were sharing some inside joke, then reared back and hurled the cue ball at us. The bulbs flickered and reflected blades of light and the ball hurtled toward my right, and I ducked but it was in a blind spot, and I tasted the impact in the back of my throat before I felt it.
Bits of dirt and grease footprints and splinters of pine. Ruben’s machine-gun Spanish above me. I touched the side of my head, fingers warm and sticky. Just the tip of my ear, more embarrassing than painful. I bit the inside of my lips and stood. Little Carl was already back in his stool, elbowing the guys and sipping from a bottle. Denny poured drafts, head down to avoid taking sides. I palmed my beer and slunk out the back door.
The air was tactile. It filled my lungs like viscous fluid and I wondered if this was what people felt like when they were drowning. I crossed to the adjacent parking lot. Sleeping bags were piled behind a dumpster, with warped pieces of cardboard posing as ceilings. A crunch under my foot and I scraped my shoe over a parking curb to remove syringe pieces. A bum in a torn winter jacket scuffed along the wall. I hopped onto a chain-link fence and drank my beer.
The breeze from the harbor carried saltwater and gasoline. Streetlights buzzed. My ear throbbed. Fucking eye. Non-eye. Two kids threw rocks at the window of a vacant rowhome. Fucking Carl, that goddamned bastard. And now I looked like a coward and he’d gloat about how he’d run off the pedophile Cyclops, sent him back to his cave.
Across the street, the door opened, light spreading like an infection over the sidewalk. Darla dodged through traffic, arms hugging her ribs despite the heat and humidity. She slowed as she came closer, afraid that I was mad at her, maybe. I crunched the empty can and tossed it aside. Five feet from me, she stopped, head down and toeing a chunk of concrete. The tendons in her foot flexed.
“Hey,” she said, more to the parking lot than me.
“Hey.”
She kicked the concrete away, slowly took my gaze. Her eyes glistened like oil on a rain puddle. “You okay?”
I shrugged, lowered myself from the fence. “Just a little blood.”
A wet streak ran down her face and she fell into me, burrowed her head into my chest. I kissed her forehead and squeezed her tight, felt her breasts flatten against me. Her hair smelled of peaches and exhaust. Skin sticky with sweat. She turned her head up. “I’m so sorry about my uncle. He’s just…” and her voice crumbled. She shuddered with tiny whimpers.
“Sparrows don’t cry, do they?” Smoothing her hair, I said he was only doing what a man needed to do. “He’s just looking out for you.”
“He’s a fucking asshole.” Her voice, muffled by my chest.
I breathed a laugh. “Yeah, he’s kind of an asshole too.”
Fast-food wrappers and crushed cans tumbled down the street when the breeze picked up. Her hair fluttered in thick burgundy wings. Night had elbowed out day and the sky faded into a black eye. She pulled back, breath now steady, and wiped the streaks of makeup from her cheeks.
“Why can’t we just leave?”
“We will, just not yet.” Holding her chin between my thumb and index fingers, I watched the veins expand and contract across the white of her eyes. “I’m sorry, darling.”
“But there are garages everywhere.” She cupped her hand around a cigarette and lit it. “You don’t have to have something before we leave. You’re good. I’m sure you’ll find a job. And I can get one to help in the meantime.” Her arms played charades, acting out the idealized life we could have. One I wanted, but couldn’t act on yet.
“What about your brother? Won’t you miss him?”
“Course I’ll miss Matty. But he and Mom will be fine. You trying to find excuses not to go?”
“Darla Kohoutek, I’m not—” I started, then took a drag of her cigarette. “Look, we’ll talk about it in two months, okay?”
Her face knotted like she’d bitten into a sandwich and found half a finger. “Two months?”
“There’s laws against us leaving now, darling. I’d do time and your uncle would beat you senseless.”
“I’m an adult! I can do what I damn well please.”
“Not in the eyes of the law.”
She changed tack, coming up close to me and hooking her fingers in my belt loops. “How long were we together before my uncle found out?”
I took another drag of her cigarette. “A while.”
“One year and two months.”
“Okay.”
“You’re telling me we can’t stay hidden for two months when we’re not even in the damn state?” She sidled even closer, her breath rolling over my skin. “We’ll leave books lying around about the northwest. I’ll look up a bunch of shit on Seattle Craigslist. But we’ll go to Arizona or something. Find someplace where there’s nowhere around.”
“If anyone finds us before then, I’m going to jail.”
Over her head, I saw the door open. Five figures stepped onto the sidewalk, one holding something long and slender.
“It’ll be just you, me, and the cacti.” Her lips beside my ear. “You think they’d find us then?”
I glanced around the parking lot for a board, hockey stick, chainsaw. Anything.
Everything began unspooling in my head. We’d never be free here, even after she turned eighteen. Carl and his shitheads would always look for some reason to start a fight, and I’d spend the rest of my days trying not to kill the uncle of the love of my life.
And what kind of life was that, me and Ruben fighting with these assholes in parking lots? Coming home to Darla with bruises and split lips and broken bones? Never being able to have a family holiday dinner that didn’t end up with a trip to Mercy Hospital? No, that was no kind of life for Darla and me. We deserved better.
Another figure scuttled out of the bar. Ruben, I guessed. I dropped her cigarette on the ground.
Taking her hand in mine, I pressed our wrists together. Pulses synched, our sparrow-wing tattoos matching up, hers covering fine white scars.
