A pregnant girl answered the front door, dressed in pink sweats and black-and-white slippers with panda bear heads sewn on the toes. Her hair was short and dyed blond. Her arms and legs were so thin and long she looked anorexic, yet her chest and neck were so thick they looked nearly compressed. She had a pushed-up nose and sad green eyes.
“I’m the one that just called,” said Lynette. “JJ said it was okay to come by.”
The girl smiled. “And you’re alone, right? He said to make sure you’re alone.”
“I’m alone.”
“Well, then, come in. He’s in his bedroom. Do you know where it is?”
Lynette nodded and went inside.
There was no heat on and she could see her breath as she came in. The living room had the same threadbare brown carpet and the same two black couches that formed an L in the corner of the room. The long tile coffee table was in its place and on it were stacks of US and People magazines, a jar of weed, and an ornate glass bong. A large flat-screen TV hung on the far wall. The TV was new, but the posters around it were the ones she remembered. Band posters: the Wipers, Dead Moon, Caustic Soda, Napalm Beach, The Jackals, and Poison Idea.
The pregnant girl moved back to the couch, took a drink from a plastic bottle of Pepsi, and put a comforter over herself. A Harry Potter movie was paused on the TV and she started it again. The hall was dark, but a line of light came from underneath a door at the end of it. Lynette went to it and knocked, and a man’s voice told her to come in, and warm air rushed out as she entered. Inside, the walls were painted flat black and the ceiling a glossy bloodred. Another TV hung on the wall. Two portable electric oil heaters were on each side of a king-sized bed where JJ lay underneath a black bedspread.
“Shut the door,” he said, coughing. “Don’t let the heat out.”
She closed it while he sat up in bed and smiled with stained yellow teeth. He was fifty-seven years old now, with shoulder-length dyed black hair and thick-rimmed glasses. He wore no shirt and his arms and chest were covered in faded tattoos.
“You look good,” he said and got out of bed. He was naked. He was skinny with only a small gut, and his skin had begun to sag and his legs and groin were covered with old indiscernible black ink tattoos. He dressed, put on a winter coat, and they left the room.
In the kitchen he took a beer from the refrigerator, then opened a cupboard and took a scale from it. He told Lynette to follow him down the stairs to the basement, where he turned on a series of lights, and Lynette saw that even the basement hadn’t changed since she’d lived there. The walls were painted black and half covered with local band posters and flyers from twenty years ago: Calamity Jane, Pond, Crackerbash, The Maroons, Oblivion Seekers, Vehicle, The Obituaries. A series of stained carpet remnants and rugs covered the concrete floor and it smelled of stale beer and mold and incense. There was a wet bar in the corner of the room and he went behind it, sat on a stool, and lit a cigarette.
Lynette sat across from him on another stool, took out the freezer bag of cocaine, and set it on the bar. JJ picked it up and put it on the scale. “You have more than a half kilo here,” he said.
“How much is that worth?”
“Six grand, maybe. Can I try it?”
Lynette nodded.
JJ got up from the stool and came back with a small mirror, a library card, and a four-inch straw, and snorted two lines.
“Is it any good?” she asked.
He opened the can of beer and nodded. “Where did you get it?”
“I just sorta stumbled upon it,” she said. “Will you buy it?”
He shook his head. “Me, I can’t.”
Up close Lynette could see that he had become an old man. His dyed black hair was brittle and looked like a wig. His face had become wrinkled, his eyelids drooped, and the stubble on his face was gray. “I can’t have it around me. You meet the girl upstairs?”
“She having your kid?”
He nodded.
“Where did you find her?”
“She works for me.”
“Poor gal,” said Lynette.
JJ took another drink and pinched his nose with his fingers. “Don’t come to my house in the middle of the night and say shit like that. Remember you called me. I’ve never once tried to find you. You can leave if you’re gonna be a bitch.” He took more cocaine out of the bag.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
He shook his head and began chopping lines. “You’re the one driving around in the middle of the night with a half a kilo of coke, calling someone you say you hate.”
She nodded and watched as he cut the lines.
“I’m not at your house, am I? You think I did you so wrong, but you know I never wanted you to live here in the first place. You begged your way in and I let you stay as charity.”
“I know.”
“I didn’t kidnap you, did I?”
“No,” she said.
“Did I rape you?”
“No.”
“So don’t look at me like I did,” he said. “That was fourteen years ago when we were together.”
“I’m not looking at you in any way.”
“Bullshit. I know that look because I know you. You despise me, you hate my fucking guts. But remember you’re the one who came to my shop and hung around. You’re the one who begged me for a job. Begged and begged.”
Lynette nodded. “I know I did. I get it. But I was just a kid. So back off. I just want to sell this stuff.”
He did another line and then looked at her. “And you came on to me. I didn’t come on to you, did I?”
“I don’t want to talk about this.”
“Did I come on to you?”
“No, but I was desperate.”
“I know you were,” he said and leaned back and laughed. “That’s why I didn’t do anything. I put you on the couch in the front room. I did it to give you a break. To help you because it was winter and you said you didn’t have any place to live. Did I ask anything from you? Expect anything? Did I make a move on you?”
“No,” she said.
“And I tried to figure out where you came from, where you lived, who you lived with. Even before you stayed here, when you were just hanging around the store, I never knew anything about you. I tried, but you wouldn’t talk. And then after two weeks on the couch you’re the one who came back naked and crawled in bed with me. Am I lying about that?”
“No,” she said. “But I was scared that if I didn’t sleep with you, you’d get tired of me. That you’d kick me out and I didn’t know where else to go. Everyone said that about you.”
“Who?”
“Just girls around your store.”
“That’s bullshit. That’s your thinking, not mine.”
“Maybe. . . . But I was just a kid. I was really messed up.”
“And now you’re not?” he said. “Now you’re driving around with a bag full of coke in your coat pocket and showing up before dawn to a guy’s house you haven’t seen in almost seven years.”
“Maybe,” she whispered.
“And let’s be honest for a second. You fucked me over more than I fucked you over.”
Lynette laughed. “You’re a piece of shit for saying that. You’ve always been an asshole on cocaine.”
JJ shrugged and took another drink of beer.
“Are you going to buy it?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
She stared at him.
“You’re still an angry bitch.”
“Maybe, maybe I am. Maybe just seeing you pisses me off. And memories of this place. Maybe it’s that. . . . How many girls that come around your store have you ended up with? You groom vulnerable girls. That’s what you do.”
“I haven’t groomed anybody for anything. That’s bullshit.” He let out a short laugh and took a drink of beer. “I wasn’t the one that got you pregnant, was I? And who paid for your abortion, huh? Did your so-called fiancé? Where the fuck was he?
Where were your parents or your real friends then? Why didn’t you go to them if you hated me so much? Why come crawling back to me for help? I hadn’t seen you in five or six years and then you call out of the blue. I sure wasn’t the devil then. I didn’t ask questions, didn’t give you a hard time, I just helped you. I drove you there, paid for it, and let you crash on my couch for a couple days to recover. So don’t unload a bunch of shit on me ’cause your life’s falling apart. Look, I gave you a place to stay when you were homeless. I gave you a job and money and fed you. I was the best thing in your life and you know it.”
“I was just a kid.”
“You weren’t that much of a kid.”
Lynette paused for a moment. “You made me sleep with those guys.”
“I didn’t make you. I didn’t force you.”
“You did in your own way. You know that.”
He took another drink of beer and nodded. His voice became quiet and trailed off. “Maybe. . . . Maybe I did.”
“And you took pictures of me and filmed us together. I was too young and insecure to know I didn’t want that. But I didn’t want that.”
Again he nodded.
“And then that one guy. The hairy guy from Seattle. That time you did force me. I begged you that I didn’t want to sleep with him, but you said I had to. That you’d kick me out if I didn’t.”
“That was different,” he whispered and shook his head. “I am sorry for that.”
“I tried to kill myself that night.”
“I know.” He looked down at the bar and chopped another line with the library card.
“If it wasn’t for that guy, I would have been dead. He came back down to the basement and found me with the empty bottle of Valium. He was the one who cared. He made me puke and stayed with me all night, not you. I just want to know why you would make me do that?”
“He had a serious thing for you. . . . And I owed him money. I fucked you over to get out of a bill. I feel horrible about it, but, look, I was going through a rough time. Anyway, don’t blame me too much. You knew by the first month of living here who I was. You weren’t some naive kid, so don’t say you were. You just needed a place to stay and I gave it to you. And I put up with you. I sure as shit didn’t know how unstable you were. But then I didn’t know anything about you. You knew Portland and you’d hung around my shop, so I figured you were from here, but I wasn’t positive. I just knew you had a brother. He was the only one you’d talk about. You’d cry about how you missed your brother. I remember that.”
She only nodded and looked at the bar in front of her. It had been the first time in her life she’d lived apart from Kenny and there were nights when she couldn’t sleep because she missed her brother to the point where her stomach was sick. Sometimes in the afternoons she would disappear from JJ’s store and go to Kenny’s school. She would wait until his classes were over and stay with him until Marsha, the woman who took care of him in the afternoons, arrived. Sometimes Marsha would let them have time alone on the school grounds. It wasn’t until years later that Lynette learned her mother had paid Marsha to sit in the car and let Lynette and Kenny be together. Marsha would then report to Doreen how Lynette looked. She would try to take pictures of Lynette with her phone.
JJ pinched his nose and took a drink of beer. “I can’t take back anything I did, I wish I could. But if you think about it, you’re the one that set it in motion, not me. You crawled into my bed, I didn’t crawl into yours. And you knew how to seduce. You did because you’re good-looking and you knew the power of that. Even then you knew how to use it. At least admit that?”
“I did hit on you, but I thought I loved you.”
“That’s bullshit.” He laughed again and lit another cigarette from the pack on the bar. He couldn’t sit still any longer. “Let’s just be honest for a second. I had things you wanted and we hit it off. And once we got together we had a good eight or nine months. I broke up with Mindy and kicked her out for you.”
“But then you tried to destroy me,” said Lynette. “You made me feel like I was the most important person in your life and then suddenly you kicked me out of your room and I ended up in the basement. You didn’t even tell me why. You didn’t explain anything at all. You just made me sleep down here. And then you brought in that other girl. The big one.”
“Martha.”
“Yeah, Martha. . . . You didn’t tell me anything and all of a sudden she was there and you’d barely talk to me. You’d barely even look at me. Where before we’d go out, all of a sudden you and Martha would go out. And I could hear you two upstairs. I could hear you guys in bed. I could hear you two watching TV and laughing. And during the day, at the store, you guys would whisper around me and giggle, like the joke was always on me. Like I was the worst person in the world, like I was nothing. Like just one day I’m a leper.”
JJ shrugged. “What was I supposed to do? You were having meltdowns. You needed to be on medication. I got tired of you hurting yourself when I didn’t pay attention to you. After a while I was just sick of it. I needed to move on.”
Tears welled in Lynette’s eyes and she didn’t speak for nearly a minute. “The reason I quit eating and tried to kill myself wasn’t just because of that guy. It was because you were so mean to me. I even slept with Martha for you. I did whatever you wanted. Whatever. I did so many things that made me feel bad about myself. . . . If you hated me, why not just break up or abandon me? Drive me downtown and drop me off. Kick me out of your house and change the locks. I mean you had just turned forty-four. I remember that. We had that big party for you and you wore a Dallas Cowboys jersey with the number forty-four on it. . . . You were a grown man. Look, I’m not an easy person to be around, but I didn’t know that. Because it started here or at least showed itself here . . . I can be awful. . . . That’s true. You’re not the first person who’s said that and I’ve fucked up a lot of things in my life because of it. But back then it was the only way I knew how to get control of my life. And my life was out of control. But the thing is, I tried hard for you. I did everything. I cooked and did your laundry, and I did whatever you wanted when we were together. I did all that ’cause I was an insecure kid, sure, but also because I wanted to make you happy. You were the most important person in my life.”
JJ put two fingers into the cocaine and took out another small pile. He divided it into three lines and snorted them. When he finished, she grabbed the package, sealed it, and put it back in her coat. “I don’t want to be here anymore. Do you want to buy this or not?”
He leaned back and again pinched his nose with his fingers. “No. Like I said, I can’t. But I have a friend who might want to buy it. He’s the only guy I know who would have the money and would want it.”
“I’m gonna leave town tomorrow,” she said.
“What time is it?”
Lynette looked at her phone. “Almost five.”
“He works nights. He’s probably still up. I’ll text him right now.” JJ put out his cigarette, found his phone in the pocket of his coat, sent a text, and then stood up.
“How old’s your girlfriend?”
“Eighteen.”
“And you wanted to get her pregnant?”
He nodded. “My mom’s helping put in a playroom down here next month. We’ll put in carpet and fix the bathroom, paint it, make it kid-proof.” He finished the beer and put his cigarette in the can. “I’m gonna get another beer. You want one?”
“No,” she said.
“Hold tight and we’ll see if this guy texts back,” he said and went up the stairs.
Ten minutes passed and then she heard footsteps in the kitchen. His phone rang and she could just hear him talking. When it stopped, he came down the stairs and again sat across from her at the bar. He had a beer in one hand and a file folder in the other.
“You should take these. I don’t want them anymore.” He handed her the folder.
“What is it?”
He shrugged
She
opened the folder to see pictures of herself. They were 8 x 10 color photos. The top one was a close-up of her giving a blow job to JJ. His face wasn’t in the photo, only Lynette’s. She remembered the night because it was just after her seventeenth birthday and her hair was short and blond. JJ had given her a birthday gift certificate to Supercuts to have her hair cut short and dyed blond. She looked at the other pictures of her with JJ and pictures of her with the girl, Martha. None of it really hurt her until she came to a dozen photos of herself trying to pose like she was in porn magazine. She was on JJ’s bed, in the kitchen, and in the basement. Her face was so young, her chin covered in acne. She wore a necklace her mother had given her, a brown seashell connected to a gold chain, and on her right hand was a silver ring of her grandmother’s.
“Did you delete the files?” she asked and put the photos back in the folder, bent it in half, and put it in her purse.
He shrugged and took a long drink from the can of beer.
She wiped her eyes and stood up. “I’m gonna go now.”
“My friend, Rodney, called back. He’s interested and said he would buy it for three grand. He said he didn’t have any more cash on him so that’s his offer. You can go to his house at six, in about forty-five minutes. You want his address?”
Lynette wiped her eyes again. “And he’s alright?”
“He’s good enough. He’s just one of those guys who’s never outgrown cocaine.”
They went upstairs and into the kitchen. JJ opened the fridge and took out another beer. In the living room they could hear Harry Potter on the TV and see the eyes of the pregnant girl lying on her side watching it.
“I’ll tell you his address on one condition,” said JJ.
“What’s that?”
He moved right next to her and his voice fell quiet. “If I give you the address, I want your word that you’ll never come back here. Not ever again. No calls, nothing. I’m gonna be a father soon.”
16
The rain continued. The clock on the dashboard said five twenty a.m. Her car started on the fifth try and she drove to Prescott and headed north on 60th. For thirteen years she had avoided JJ’s neighborhood the best she could. If she had to drive near it, down Cully or Prescott to get somewhere, just the street names alone would unsettle her. She avoided the Fred Meyer he had once gone to, the part of Alberta Street where his vintage shop was, the taqueria he had once liked, the Dairy Queen, the liquor store, the Thai place, the BBQ joint, and she never went into any of the bars or clubs she knew he liked.
The Night Always Comes Page 10