Old Ghosts, page 2
“Very pungent. Singes the nostrils.”
She scooped some out with her fingers and pushed me onto my back. “Family recipe. It’s supposed to break down scar tissue. I thought you’d like it.”
“Thank you,” I said. The salve felt like frozen Vaseline with bits of sand and glass.
“You’re pretty lucky, you know. A lot of people end up worse.” She spoke slowly, words seeping out as she concentrated on covering the area.
“What do you mean?”
“This is pretty clean. If there was a jagged edge, it could’ve torn you up pretty badly. You didn’t get tetanus or some other crazy infection. Who knows?” She rubbed in the last bit with a quick pat and looked up. “You got off lucky. Rebar can be some nasty shit.”
The sun slashed through the gaps between buildings. It reflected in serrated prisms off oil-slick puddles. It tinged leaves a lurid color, as if about to be set aflame. It turned the dark windows of apartments into mouths of a bottomless void.
The guy had done his research. The house’s brick exterior showed only slight cracks, no evidence of a sinking foundation. I guessed sixteen-foot ceilings in the first floor, probably a vaulted-cathedral atrium inside the door. Judging by the width of the block, I figured they had four rooms on the second floor with the possibility of putting another in the basement and still having a lounge area. It was the kind of house Luz and I would pause in front of when we went for walks, cupping palms to our foreheads as we peered into the houses. We’d plan out how to redo the rooms, which walls to knock down, which colors to keep.
Dwaine’s truck sat on the curb. Next to it, a Jaguar. Opalescent blue, the infinite sea at sunset. Seats made from the flesh of a dozen baby cows. Chrome rims with a reflection that made me think of snarling. Voices echoed inside the house. I helped myself to some coffee from Dwaine’s thermos and went inside.
“Hello?”
Footsteps in the dust tracked up the stairs. Above me, wisps of cobweb hung from the chandelier like ghostly Spanish moss. One of the dining room walls featured a gaping hole that might’ve been a thrown chair. Sixteen-foot ceilings, like I’d thought. Voices trickled down from the second floor.
None of the stairs creaked. Solid construction: this job might’ve been easier than Dwaine thought. The top of the stairwell overlooked the entranceway. Looking at the long chain suspending the chandelier, I almost got vertigo. Dark wood and dust motes.
Five doors in the hallway. Four rooms and a bathroom, and all of them closed except the one at the far end. Dwaine laughed, and I heard a dull smack. I pictured him clapping the shoulder of this yuppie, already yukking it up so the guy wouldn’t notice Dwaine’s hand on his wallet. Half-recessed brass light fixtures lined the walls. They’d be beautiful once polished. Faded mauve paint made the hall feel like a haunted birth canal. I sipped my coffee and it tasted of smoke.
“I think this was a good decision,” the voice said.
Dwaine laughed. “You ain’t never find a place like this, sir, not ’round here. Just you wait till we get her done and you won’t even recognize her.”
The man stood by the window, looking over the neighborhood like a hawk circling a forest clearing. Slicked hair hugged the back of his skull, so black he might’ve used oil for pomade. One ear slightly smaller than the other. A phantom familiarity wrapped tight around my neck as I cataloged his features. Dwaine checked his watch. I cleared my throat and startled him.
“There he is.” He rushed over to me. “We been waiting for you to start going over some plans.”
“Sorry I’m late.” I set the coffee cup on the floor and swore I saw concentric circles. A thousand bugs gnawed on my fingertips.
“I’ll introduce you two.” He grabbed my elbow and pulled me towards the man. “This here is Beto. He’ll be designing the house for you.”
The man spun on his heels. Black, oiled leather shoes. The tips of a white collar-shirt peeked from under his olive green peacoat. A thin mustache crawled across his upper lip. One eye squinted. Ghosts wailed inside my skull: I should’ve fucking known. A galaxy far, far away from lying in a hallway nursing a stab wound, the lipstick of a sociopath ringing the base of my cock, and still I hadn’t gotten far enough away.
“Beto, this here is Mr. Miller. You’re going to be designing his house for him.” Dwaine nudged me forward to shake hands.
“Nice to meet you, Mr. Miller.” I extended my hand; his was sharkskin.
“The pleasure is all mine.” He smiled like a wolf slinking away from a henhouse, covered in blood. “And please, Beto, call me Chance.”
Chapter 2
We trailed Chance through the hallway and down to the kitchen, a two-headed snake following the charmer’s horn. His shoes clicked on the wood floor like cartilage snapping. He wanted to tour the house, see what I had in mind.
Dwaine nudged my elbow, whispered, “You okay?”
“Fine.”
“Don’t look fine. Look like you just lifted up a skirt and found some balls.”
“I’m just hungover.”
The sun bled through the exposed window over the sink. Bars of light caught dust motes, swirling like we were standing in a Billy Wilder movie. I examined the pattern of splattered cement on my boots.
“So, Beto.” Chance stood in the middle of the floor, arms extended Christ-like. His suit looked cut from fresh cloth, but crescent moons of dirt darkened his fingernails. Wrinkles like cracked leather around his eyes. Two brown lines on his neck where he cut himself shaving. The past seven years had passed like sand over his crystalline sense of propriety. “Please. Enlighten me.”
I surveyed the kitchen, walls a muddy shade of human heart, moving to different angles to see how the color of the adjacent rooms changed the hue. Luz would’ve said to keep the dining room the same, because green meant energy and if you painted it red that would stimulate your appetite and you’d end up looking like a hippo. It nauseated me, though, the way it contrasted the kitchen. I would’ve painted it a sterile white, then she’d argue with me, saying the kitchen shouldn’t look like an operating room.
Chance clucked his tongue. “So, Beto?”
“Speak up, son. Man’s asking you something.” Dwaine shifted his weight from foot to foot.
“Don’t touch the dining room, it’s fine. Paint the kitchen walls white to brighten the room and replace these cabinets.” So easily, we fall into old routines.
“What’s wrong with them?” Chance said.
I sidestepped to my right, yanked the door off an open cabinet. A splinter tore my fingertip. “Replace the cabinets.” So quickly, we regress.
A smile crept across his face. “What would you suggest?”
“Rosewood.” Yet so fucking stupid, we never learn.
“And the appliances?”
I sucked at my fingertip. “They’ll work, but stainless steel would look better.”
He pulled a silver case from inside his jacket and lit a cigarette. The smoke smelled of acrid perfume. “Rosewood and steel. Rosewood being cultivated and used by numerous Amazonian tribes during religious ceremonies, juxtaposed with the sterility of Western-man-made steel. Beauty and death. The yin and the yang. Both sides of the Force.” He twisted the tip of his mustache, because of course he would. Dwaine looked around the room, utterly bewildered.
“Yeah, something like that.”
“I always thought those theories were bullshit.”
I shrugged, drew an arc in the dust with the toe of my boot and flicked a glob of blood on the floor. “I liked mind-expanders when I was in art school.”
Chance smiled, opened his mouth as if about to speak, then spun and disappeared into the next room, heel-clicks fading.
Dwaine smacked my arm. “The shit was that?”
“Dunno.” I wiped my nose on the inside of my shirt. Pine trees and burning insulation. The scent of Luz’s salve clung to my chest like a hazy memory.
“Say, Beto.” Chance’s voice echoed through the space. “Let’s save the basement for tomorrow.”
Dwaine answered for me. “That sounds great, Mr. Miller. We’ll have some plans drawn up for you right quick.”
“Care to join me for a cup of coffee?”
“Why sure,” Dwaine said. “Sounds great.”
“Not you.” Chance came around the corner and pointed at me. “Let’s take a ride. There’s a Dunks around here, no?”
“What the fuck is on your face?” I had the urge to yank out his mustache by the tips.
Chance slid his Jag in front of a city bus, cutting it off by inches. The bus bellowed like wounded cow.
“It took a while to grow.” He drove with one hand on the mahogany wheel, the other primping his mustache. “It’s very Orson Welles, don’t you think?”
I stifled a yawn. “You look like Rollie Fingers if he was a pederast.”
My stomach caved in, fire in the shape of a fist spreading through my chest. I gasped for breath. I never saw his hand move, before or after he buried it in my gut.
“Your apartment was a windy piss away from Fenway and you’re going to talk about that Oakland asshole?” He shook his head, tsk tsk tsk, and curled his mustache. “Anyway, of all people, I thought you would appreciate the perks of a revisionist personality. You seem quite adept.”
Air filled my chest like water through sand as I tried to keep my face neutral. I squeezed the skinned-calf seat until my breath was more than a gasp.
The dashboard panels could’ve been pilfered from a space shuttle. The trim that hugged the doors, made from ancient trees. The locks, from some animal that had probably been poached. Potholes littered the asphalt like track marks on the city’s veins, but the Jag floated over them as if it was the carpet from the Arabian Nights movie we’d watched a thousand times in his parents’ basement.
We stopped at a red light. A rap on the window. Outside, a man rattled a cup of change. One leg hung gnarled. The other used a piece of two-by-four for prosthesis, a rusted nail jutting from what would’ve been his calf. Simultaneously—unconsciously—we waved our hands, said these are not the droids you want. A thread of nausea, tinged with nostalgia, snaked through me. Chance pulled through the red light.
“Turn right,” I said, pointing towards the Royal Farms.
“What the hell is this?”
“Coffee,” I said. People around the neighborhood like it well enough, though if I called the place The Farm Store like Baltimoreans, I’d never hear the end of it from Chance. “It’s not great, but neither is Dunks’.”
“Blasphemy.” He screwed his lips up. I ignored it.
“So really, Chance, why are you here? Other than shitty coffee.”
He smirked, tapped the steering wheel to the beat of a Madonna song on the radio. Black dots tattooed just below the knuckle of each thumb, like rolling a five with dice.
“Why don’t Southerners believe in Dunks? Christ, I’ve only seen two since I’ve been here.”
“I wouldn’t call Baltimore southern.”
“Well, look who became Dixie-fried all the sudden.”
“I’m not Dixie.”
“Housing,” he said, guiding the car into the parking lot.
“What?”
“The market in Baltimore. I came down here to buy every house and turn the city into full-scale replica of Endor for us.”
I muttered Jesus Christ and slid out of the car, the door whispering closed. Saltwater in the air. Gasoline vapors and sewage run-off. The harbor shimmered, green in the mid-morning sun.
“Remember the Ewok village the three of us tried to build in your backyard? And your dad tore it down because we’d taken all the fire wood.” Chance opened the door, gestured for me to enter first. Floor wax and grease, old sausages. Dusty flannels and sawdust. The fluorescent lights flickered, buzzed.
“It took me a long time to get over that.” I handed him a paper coffee cup. “Though it wasn’t as bad as your mom when she found that ounce.”
“I’d never seen someone dunk their hands into toilet water trying to save something.” He whistled as if impressed, poured coffee for the two of us.
“I wasn’t in a good place.” I breathed a laugh. “But I think that was the first time I saw you cry. Or, only time, actually.”
“Fuck yeah, I cried.” He shook his head when I tried to pour cream in his, said he took it black now. “You remember the size of those crystals? God, I could’ve still been high today.”
“I thought you’d kill her.”
“Should have.”
The cashier wedged the phone between his ear and shoulder. Bleach blond hair with skin like aged caulk and Mongol eyes. Two tattoos on his hands I couldn’t make out. Pulling a few bills from his pocket to pay for the coffee, Chance squinted at some invisible point in the air. I said thanks, but he wasn’t listening. Steam rose from my cup. When the cashier gave our change, Chance just stood there, hand extended. The cashier looked at him. Chance said something guttural, motioned with his thumb. The cashier’s eyes twitched, and he hung up the phone without speaking. He recounted the coins, laid a nickel and two pennies in his palm, clasped his hand as if to make sure it wouldn’t fall out. Chance nodded, said do svidaniya, and left.
I leaned against the car, sipping coffee. “Was that Russian?”
He smiled, pleased. “The Force is strong with this one.”
“Since when the fuck do you speak Russian? And get your hands tattooed?”
The horn bleated and startled me. “Sorry, wrong button,” he said, pressing the key fob to silence the alarm.
We drove down Eastern Avenue, heading into the sun. Every ten seconds, he’d change the radio station, finally settling on NPR. Reports of tragedy and warfare from anonymous foreign lands filled the car. He flipped it to the classical station.
Then an awkward blanket fell over the car and for a moment, I thought he’d spiked my drink. Warmth settled in my body. The same houses and buildings I’d walked past a hundred times were oddly unique. My brain wasn’t racing in a thousand directions and I found myself falling into a contented trance. Like the first few months with Luz, but not. Like waking up and seeing her face, but not. Like eating at our favorite Thai diner we’d heard had closed, but not.
The whole sensation was unnerving, as if reminding me of what I’d left. I didn’t have many friends, but I had my family. Not a ton of power and money, but much more than Luz and I had now. A faint ticking, a ghost scratching its fingernails on the back of my skull.
I glanced over at Chance. Uneven ears and squinting eyes webbed with crow’s feet too early. Thin white thread of a scar starting at his temple then disappearing into prematurely thinning hair. He stared out the front window, head resting on a fist, the other hand on the wheel. I wondered what was playing on the movie screen inside his skull, if he was thinking about the last time we saw each other—me lying on the ground, a sliver of his face between the apartment door and its frame, the shimmer I told myself was a tear—or if he was just thinking how nice it was that the sun was shining. Maybe I was just superimposing my own thoughts, and he wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just looking.
“So, when did you get married?” I said.
He laughed. “Beto, you know I have no use for that.”
“Dwaine said something about you and your wife.”
He turned the wrong way on a one-way street. A dog with fur like a stained mop ran between cars.
“Chance,” I said, pointing behind us. “The house is back there.”
Mmhh, he said, lips forming a smile like a maggot molting into a fly.
Something not right ’bout them two.
“Where the hell are you going?” A woman lay sprawled on her front porch, one sleeve rolled above her elbow.
Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Hotshot and his wife.
He licked the edge of his teeth. “I need to make a quick stop.”
I yanked on the seat belt, clenched my fists so nails dug into my flesh. “I’m out of the business, Chance. I’ve got a family. I’m done.”
“Breathe into a paper bag or something. It’ll only take a second.”
Turn the city into Endor. For us. Us.
“Shut the fuck up,” I said. Goosebumps seized my body as he pulled the car over. I ground my palms into my eyes.
The back door opened, and someone got in. A thousand nails scraping glass reverberated through my chest.
“How goes it, sister?”
“Everything is good.” A voice like mercury in the palm of my hand.
“Everything is cut and ready to be disposed of?” Vague terms, old habits.
“Like a coat-hanger abortion.” And her sense of humor hadn’t changed a bit.
I bit my tongue until copper coated my mouth. I imagined her lipstick in my crotch.
“Beto,” she said. “You never returned my calls.”
“Long time, Delilah.” I opened my eyes. “Long time.”
Chapter 3
Delilah sat in the backseat, twirling her hair around her finger while Chance whistled along with the radio. The last time we were together, I saw only the top of her head, then a flash of white as the knife entered my stomach, then the Baltimore skyline. Her aura was putting on a favorite shirt that had been borrowed by someone twenty pounds heavier. Familiar and comfortable, yet unsettling. Her perfume filled the car, like wind-blown jasmine and a struck match. Her mouth could make a man sterile. She pursed her lips in an air-kiss and I realized I’d been staring at her in the mirror.
“Beto,” she cooed, “can you light me a cigarette?”
I told her that I’d quit, but patted my pockets anyway, knowing they were empty.
“Since when?”
“When I met Luz.”
Del clucked like a mad chicken, then burst into a giggling fit.
“Shut up, you cow,” Chance said. He tossed his case and a lighter into the backseat. “Now, when are we due?”
“Three weeks,” she said in a cloud of smoke.
