Hooligans

by Chloe Garner

  He shrugged.

  She took that for agreement and went back to prep. About half an hour later, as she was putting a casserole into the oven, Trevor let himself in. He went to sit in his seat in the corner, and she didn’t talk to him.

  What was there to say?

  She was leaving. He was staying. He would be the one to watch over Robbie from here, and she didn’t trust that he was going to do it. Not the way she would have. But there wasn’t anything more she could do. This wasn’t her life and this wasn’t her world. She’d done what she could.

  “I got the fridge working today,” she said to no one in particular. “And the dishwasher, too. He said it looked like you’d washed a cat.”

  She looked up. Robbie was laying across the couch, drinking his second beer, and Trevor was watching somewhere over her head.

  “We didn’t,” Robbie finally said. Trevor had a big scratch down his cheek. She hadn’t noticed it when he’d come in. She sighed, wiping off her hands.

  “Let me look at that,” she said.

  “You don’t need to,” he said, eyes finally coming to rest on her.

  “I’m here,” she said, coming to kneel next to him on the floor. She put a finger to his chin, coaching his face to the side so she could see the scratch.

  “You didn’t get this shaving,” she said.

  “No,” he answered. That was all he was going to say.

  “Dennis didn’t eat anything today,” Robbie said. “Or yesterday, I think. Can I call him to come eat with us?”

  “If you want,” Lizzie said without turning. “I made enough for there to be leftovers.”

  Robbie got up and left. A minute later, she heard him talking on his phone from the bedroom.

  “What happened?” she asked, unable to contain it. It wasn’t deep enough to cause real problems; she wouldn’t have asked him to go see a doctor, even if she thought he would, but it threatened to bleed around scabs that cracked when his face moved. She went back to the kitchen to get a paper towel to put on it. She’d dissolve the dried blood there and get it cleaned up better, to see if it wouldn’t be quite so sensitive, after that.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he said when she came back. She became suddenly aware of how close he was to her. That she was touching his face, leaning against his knee. She tried not to jerk away, but she moved away anyway. She was leaving tomorrow.

  He was watching her with that intentness that made her think he could see her thoughts.

  “You should do more to clean these kinds of things,” she said. “If it got infected, you’d be in trouble.”

  “It won’t,” he said, and she shook her head.

  “Don’t take… Be careful with the risks you take,” she said. “You’re what he’s got, now.”

  “Is that why?” he asked, and she pressed her lips, trying not to get angry. She wasn’t the one who had shut everything down. It was insulting for him to tease her like that, and she refused to rise to the bait.

  “The casserole has about thirty minutes to cook,” she said. “I’ve got some work to do back in my room to get ready to leave tomorrow. Can you entertain yourself?”

  “Always do,” he said with a ghost of a smile. She nodded and stood.

  “All right. I’m going to get you some cream for that, and…” She nodded again, feeling lost and ever so slightly out of control. She needed to get back to familiar ground.

  There was disinfecting cream in the bathroom, where she’d seen it before, and she came back into the living room to toss it to Trevor, then went back to the guest room, doing more straightening, more cleaning, making sure she knew where all of her things were. She took a few minutes going through Lara’s jewelry box, surprised at some of the things in there.

  There were the normal kinds of things you’d find in anyone’s jewelry box: little earrings with colored stones, necklaces with sentimental pendants, a few simple rings. The diamond ring in there, though, surprised her, as did a pair of huge angel wing earrings, one wing on each side, that would have reached up to the peak of her ears and halfway to her shoulders. They were as detailed and beautiful as the tattoo, but Lizzie just couldn’t imagine Lara wearing them.

  “They were some of her favorites,” Trevor said from the doorway. She thought she’d closed that. She held them up.

  “Really?”

  He nodded.

  “She believed in what she was doing.”

  That, at least, sounded like the woman she’d met.

  She held them up to her ears.

  “What do you think?”

  His expression told her that he thought she didn’t really catch what she was suggesting, and she shrugged.

  “I’m sorry I’m not the one you’re looking for,” she said. He nodded.

  “I’m used to not being the one that someone’s looking for,” he said and she gave him half a smile, wistful. She didn’t understand, but she didn’t have to understand. That was just what it was. And they didn’t fit. It had been all sizzle, and while she was almost painfully aware of him being there, a physical awareness of him that bordered on an intoxication, she knew better. She was an adult with responsibilities and the ability to recognize a bad decision before she made it.

  And then not make it.

  This was her not making that bad decision.

  She twisted her mouth to the side and put the earrings back in the box.

  “He asked me to take them,” she said, and he nodded.

  “Better for you to have them than him,” he said with a hint of play.

  “Wouldn’t suit him at all,” Lizzie agreed in spirit. He grinned.

  “You’re fun,” he said. She nodded.

  “You, too.”

  She put the box into her suitcase and looked at the other suitcase, over by the door. She’d have to do something with all of that. All of the scents, all of the accessories that just didn’t fit her. She didn’t want to just throw them out, but keeping a shrine to her dead sister-in-law didn’t make sense, either. She’d figure something out.

  “You’re taking her away with you, then,” Trevor said, and Lizzie looked up at him, pulled out of her thought for a moment.

  “I guess so.”

  He bit his tongue between canine teeth and nodded.

  “It’s not the right outcome, but it’s at least fitting.”

  “I’ll take good care of her,” she said and he laughed loudly.

  “What, spilling her all over the back of your car?”

  She winced, then shrugged.

  “Do my best.”

  He grinned.

  “She’s gone, Lizzie. You don’t have to walk on eggshells because you’ve got her earrings.”

  “Yeah, I do,” she said, checking her watch. It was time to get the food out of the oven. The timer would be going off soon.

  “You would have been fun,” he said wistfully, not moving out of the way as she went past him. She didn’t linger. He was magnetic, but she didn’t linger.

  Bad decision.

  Her hair was up. She didn’t need his fingers in her hair. She wanted to adjust his collar, but she kept her hands to herself.

  Bad decision.

  Robbie screamed.

  She didn’t remember opening his door, but she heard it hit the wall as she went charging in, finding him staring into the bathroom.

  She peered around him, and found nothing. She looked harder, then turned to find Robbie’s face blank, completely vacant.

  “You learn to recognize the real ones from the flipped ones,” Trevor said from the hallway. “He’ll be okay in a minute.”

  She put her hand over her mouth, just dismayed.

  “I’m leaving him like this,” she said.

  “You’re leaving him no worse than he was the day before Lara died,” Trevor said, coming to lean inside the doorway and watch her.

  She glared at him.

  “Is that supposed to make me feel better?” she asked. He shrugged.

  “That’s life,”
he said. She looked at Robbie again.

  “What’s he seeing?” she asked. Trevor shook his head.

  “No telling. And he won’t, when he gets back. None of us do. Just not what we do.”

  She wanted to shake him, to make him better, but that had never worked. Not once. She felt herself melt back again, surrendering the rage to the sense of impotence, and she nodded.

  “Nothing ever makes it better,” she said.

  Trevor sighed and left. She looked at her watch again. Her casserole was going to burn. She tested Robbie’s grip on the door handle, but it was firm. She couldn’t even get him onto the bed.

  She heard the front door open and close and she left, with one last glance back at Robbie.

  “Robbie flipped,” she heard Trevor say.

  “Okay,” a voice answered. She came out to find Dennis sitting on the side couch. He looked at her with a sharp sense of awareness, like a predatory bird, when she came into view, and she tried not to stare back.

  “You hungry?” she asked.

  “Starving,” he answered. He had a raspy voice, tenor, like a smoker interbred with a snake. He was still watching her. Trevor had gone back to his chair, sitting like a master of the universe.

  She wanted to hit him, just to prove it didn’t work on her.

  She got the casserole out of the oven and put it onto the stove to cool.

  “You want something to drink?” she asked. There was a look from Dennis at Trevor, like he had to ask permission, and Trevor shrugged.

  “Lara kept a bottle of whiskey above the fridge for me,” he said. Lizzie glanced at Trevor, who nodded confidentially. Odd. She tried to open the small cabinet door above the refrigerator, but she couldn’t reach it. In her apartment, she’d have gotten one of the chairs from the breakfast table, but Robbie and Lara didn’t have a sitting table, so none of the chairs moved. She could climb up onto the counter, but that made her feel like a four-year-old, and she hesitated. Someone came up from behind her and leaned against the fridge to open the door.

  Robbie.

  He’d been sporty, before everything started. Tall and athletic. Sometimes she forgot how tall he was. He got down a half bottle of amber liquor and shot her a teasing look.

  “Missed that one, didn’t you?” he asked.

  “You okay?” she answered, and he shrugged.

  “You’re leaving,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

  She didn’t like it, but she couldn’t argue with him, either. He got a water glass and poured several ounces of the whiskey into it and slid it across the counter. Dennis got up and retrieved it. Robbie was in a new shirt and seemed composed. For an episode, it hadn’t lasted very long, and she was grateful for that.

  She got out plates as Robbie went and lay out across the couch again, portioning casserole onto each and then getting last night’s bread out to toast it. She brought the plates around and sat down next to Dennis in her accustomed spot to eat while the bread toasted.

  “Did you win?” she asked Dennis. He flicked his tongue at her by way of answer and she nodded.

  “All right, then.”

  “He doesn’t trust you,” Robbie said from the couch, his chin buried into his chest as he ate.

  “He doesn’t know me,” she said and Trevor laughed.

  “Outsiders,” Trevor said. “All they want to do is try to fix you. He knows it better than most.”

  “Obviously you’re friends with the tattoo guy,” she said. She heard Trevor laugh, but no one answered that. She went to go get the bread.

  The meal passed well enough, considering no one was speaking to her and because she was there, they didn’t talk to each other. Dennis put his empty plate on the floor and left when he was done eating. Trevor stayed a while longer, even after Robbie turned on the television and fell asleep. He was watching her, as she cleaned the kitchen and portioned the dinner into leftovers by day. She couldn’t make him cook for himself, and she couldn’t stay to make sure he was okay, but she could at least make sure he had a few days’ worth of food after she left.

  He was an adult. He wasn’t a normal adult, and she expected she would be back here before long trying to put together pieces, either because of an overdose or an arrest, but for now, this was all she could do.

  She couldn’t stay here and watch over him as her job.

  She wasn’t Lara.

  She wasn’t Lara.

  It was getting dark outside, and there weren’t any lights in the living room save the television, so Trevor gradually disappeared into shadow with just occasional highlights on his knee or his foot as the television brightened. She’d replaced the lightbulbs in the kitchen, and they were warm and bright, and she smiled to herself.

  She’d helped. She’d done what she could, and she’d helped.

  When she looked up again from loading the dishwasher, Trevor was gone.

  She’d cook tomorrow. Shop and cook, and leave Robbie with a week’s worth of meals. She’d clean everything and make sure he had the supplies to keep it up. The windows needed attention, and she could do that. She’d do his laundry, and then…

  Then she’d leave.

  That was what was left.

  She went back to her room and pulled up her computer, but e-mailing her boss seemed pointless, since she’d be in the office Monday morning by the time he got it. She went and took a shower, then went into the front room and turned on the television.

  That’s what there was to do.

  She went to bed around midnight.

  ***

  Robbie was gone again the next morning.

  She cleaned. She cooked. She got things done.

  She packed the car.

  She hoped Robbie got back before she left, but she wasn’t counting on it. She didn’t want to drive home in the dark, if she could help it, and she wanted to give herself a few hours at home to get everything unpacked and put away before she went to bed, so she would leave about an hour before dusk.

  She had everything loaded into the car when Robbie got home. He leaned against a post on the front porch and watched as she finished arranging things.

  “You have a good day?” she asked.

  “Worked this morning,” he answered. “Did some other things this afternoon.”

  She nodded, feeling awkward.

  “Well. I’m sorry, Robbie.”

  “I know,” he answered. He looked away. Something rattled and hissed in the plants and she frowned at it.

  “You’ve got rodents living in there,” she said. “They’re breaking into the house.”

  Robbie shrugged.

  “Okay.”

  She hugged him, and he held her tight for a moment, then nodded and let her go.

  “Don’t come back,” he said. “You don’t belong here.”

  “I get that,” she said, “but I’m not abandoning you. You call me if you need me. Anything.”

  “Oh,” he said, going into the house and coming back out with a book of checks and a pen that he held awkwardly. “I don’t really know…”

  “Know what?” she asked. The side of his face winced.

  “How to fill one of these out.”

  She laughed.

  “Do you want me to do it?” she asked. “You can just sign it.”

  He nodded.

  “All of it,” he said. “All of the food and everything. Okay?”

  “Close enough,” she said, writing an amount and handing him the book. He gave her a firm look and she laughed. “I promise. Close enough.”

  He signed like someone who rarely held a pen, then handed her the check and she folded it and put it into her pocket.

  “I mean it,” she said. “Just call if you need me. Even for a day or so to cook or whatever. Okay? Call me.”

  He shook his head.

  “I’ll see you at Christmas,” he said. “Okay?”

  She felt emptied out, but she had to go. She had to.

  She turned and walked down the pathway, getting into her car an
d starting it, putting it into reverse and looking in her rearview.

  Trevor was standing in the driveway.

  Well, she’d expected him, but not this late. She stopped the car and got out.

  “Go,” Robbie yelled from the porch, and she wasn’t sure which of them he was talking to.

  “Last second,” she said.

  “I’m going to prove it,” he said. She frowned.

  “Prove what?”

  “You said that it didn’t count as proof if I caused it or if it happened because I was there. You don’t believe me if I tell you they did it after it happens. So I’m going to tell you now. Your car isn’t going to start again.”

  “Get out of here,” Robbie said, jogging down the path and stopping short like he’d considered shoving Trevor.

  “They aren’t going to let you go,” Trevor said. He and Robbie were both watching her car like it was doing something. “And you’re going to believe me, this time.”

  She shook her head. Went and took his hand in hers.

  “You said you’d come see me,” she said. “You should.”

  He shook his head.

  “Your car isn’t going to start again,” he said. “You’re in our world now.”

  “They aren’t going to mess with me,” she said. He put out an arm.

  “Be my guest.”

  She kissed his cheek, which he offered to her with a sort of smug look, and then she shook her head and went to get back in her car.

  Turned the key.

  The engine clicked.

  She tried again.

  It clicked again.

  Trevor looked even more smug. Robbie looked dismayed. She rolled her eyes.

  “It’s the battery,” she said, getting out. “Even I know that.”

  Trevor shrugged.

  “The more you fight it, the worse it’s going to get. They aren’t going to stop until you make them.”

  “It’s just the battery,” she said. Robbie looked alarmed. She tipped her head at him. “I’m going. Just let me use Lara’s car to jump it, and I’ll worry about it tomorrow.”

  He sighed and left, coming back with a set of keys. She worked Lara’s car out of the garage and into alignment so that she could hook up the batteries - no help from either of the guys - and got into her car again. It coughed and turned over, and she gave Trevor a knowing look as she got out to disconnect the cars. As she shut the door, he shook his head.