He walked past the bar next door and Major Wing Lee’s at the corner looking straight ahead. The Chevy must have gone by but he didn’t see it. He felt naked and cold walking down the street, the plastic bag feeling like it was melting his hands, something inside folded up the size of maybe a sandwich. The money, or the dope. He wanted to look, but he just made the turn up Midvale and then took a clumsy skip step that became an uneven lope and then he was jogging past Buckets and the little storefronts until he hit Frederick, cut left, and ran hard.
He made his way uphill to Stanton, out of breath after thirty yards. Where the road turned to the left, he jumped the low wall and tumbled down the incline to the tracks, ran half a block to the base of a high-tension tower. He dropped down onto the gravel by the tracks, spit up some peach brandy, and sat wheezing, his heart going, wiping at the sweat leeching out of his hair. He wanted to look in the bag, but instead he stuck it in his jacket and forced himself up again.
For some reason he expected sirens, though he knew that was stupid. He ran a few steps, then slowed to a jog, then walked, one hand pressed against his chest like an old man. He kept moving east, sticking to the tracks, watching cars move on the nearby streets, looking for the green Chevy. When he had a gone a few more blocks, he threw himself over a fence into some weeds and lay down, overwhelmed for a minute by the luxuriant smell of leaves and long grass. The sun was going down, and lights snapped on at the familiar-looking highrise he could see over the tops of the trees ahead. After a minute, he realized he was back on the grounds of the Youth Study Center. He bolted up, threw himself over the fence, and ran back west, laughing.
He walked slower and slower the closer he got to Ridge, dropping down the narrow, canted streets, stopping to glance back up the hill behind him and keeping his head down. There were people out on the stoops, kids coming out after dinner to play until they couldn’t see anymore. He remembered that, stubbornly standing in the street in the dark with a hockey mask on, chasing up and down until it got so black they’d lose the puck.
It was full on dark when he stopped at the last driveway on Eveline and made his way behind the stores and restaurants that fronted Ridge. The first two buildings were unoccupied, and he could see through the empty first floors to the street in front of the Imperial. There was an ambulance in the driveway of the firehouse, its strobe lights flashing crazily and turning the street red and blue and white. There were cops in uniform stringing that yellow tape they always show on TV and guys in suits with badges hanging from their pockets. Everyone was pointing, making notes on clipboards, or talking into radios. Stunned by the sight of it, Jimmy forgot for a minute why he was there and wondered what had happened, figuring there must have been an accident.
When one of the cops shined a flashlight into the store, he dropped like he’d been shot and scuttled along the gravel to the end of the building, then ducked into the alley that led to his fire escape and pulled it down, wincing at every metallic groan and breathing through his mouth, his face hot, his hands slick with sweat.
Upstairs, he dropped onto his bed, breathless, and watched the lights from the cop cars and ambulances flash onto his ceiling. He got up slowly, keeping his head down, slid along the floor to the bathroom, and closed the door before turning on the light. He splashed water on his streaked face. He looked in the mirror, angling to see his T-shirt, now gray with dust. Inventoried his scrapes and bruises, the open cut over one knuckle, and his torn jeans. He patted at his face and hands with a dirty towel, shut the light off, and stepped out into the dark room. Strange, plasma-like shapes floated in his eyes and seemed to climb the walls. A moment later he saw someone near the bed. Grace Lei.
She was standing over the bed, motionless. The lights from the street played over her white shirt and pale face and the bag. She looked like the robots in his dope dreams, catching the pulsing light, breasts swelling as she breathed. She peered at him, and then the bag, and then him again.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “The door was open.”
“It’s okay.” He pointed toward the street. “What happened?”
“Luis got stabbed. Tiger stabbed him.”
“Jesus, because …?” He pointed at the bag.
“Maybe. Who knows what it was about? There was so much blood.” She put her hands over her face. “Tiger came in and said something to Luis, and Luis said something back. And then he pushed Tiger, and Tiger just stuck him. It was fast. I never even saw him get the knife out, he just …” She made a motion with her hand, the knife going in and out, in and out. “Boys like Luis? Tiger? They’re so angry all the time, who knows? You can’t talk to them.”
Jimmy walked over to the bed and they looked down at the bag.
“He said something stupid,” Grace continued, “and Tiger just stuck him. So Luis took off running into the street and Tiger went after him, and this pickup came zooming through and just, you know.” She swallowed. “Just wham. I never saw nothing like that. The truck went right over Luis. I got sick. Tiger’s friends just took off. Two firemen from across the street ran him down, Tiger. They held him until the cops came and took him away. They had all these questions, and I didn’t know, so I just came up here.”
“Did you say anything? About, you know, me? And the bag?”
“No, I didn’t even think about it, really. Until I was in the room just now.” She looked at him, or seemed to. It was tough to tell in the dark. “I knew you’d be all right to talk to. That you aren’t like Tiger, or Luis.”
They both stood, not saying anything for a while. The bag was dotted with grit from the gravel bed and smeared with Jimmy’s fingerprints. They could hear the police talking to each other in the street, doors slamming.
Finally, Grace squared her shoulders and reached for the bag. Jimmy smiled and she stopped and stared at him, her body taut, arched like the picture he had seen at his aunt’s house, and he thought, yeah, he was the wrong kind of Kelly, but maybe she was the right kind of Grace.
Her slender fingers closed on the bag and he smiled wider, so she said, “What?”
He said, “What if it’s sesame chicken?”
She smiled back, and for the first time he saw her teeth, white and even. “Then,” she said, “we’ll eat.”
A CUT ABOVE
BY LAURA SPAGNOLI
Rittenhouse Square
Beth pinched the skin between her thumb and index finger almost hard enough to draw blood. She took every step to the beat of a mantra—Don’t cry, don’t cry—and every step placed more distance between her and Tinto, a tapas bar where she’d left Kyle, who was the latest man to think she was a great girl (a girl? at thirty-four?) but who wasn’t ready for a relationship. It’s not you, it’s me.
What an actor. Literally. And Beth had to see him again to rehearse their final scene. She’d signed up for an acting class at the suggestion of therapists and friends alike, who urged her to find an artistic outlet for her emotions. And they were right. She had a knack for acting. It was just bad luck she and Kyle were doing a piece from The Glass Menagerie in which, ironically, she’d be pitied for lacking gentlemen callers.
Now she needed to focus on another scene: Walnut Street on a lovely August night, with her in a lovely white dress. It was eleven o’clock. Anyone who saw her might think she was heading out to canoodle with someone at a sidewalk café and not that her evening was a failure. She concentrated on an actable objective: to be in a rush to meet a date. Glancing at her watch for emphasis, she began to believe it. She walked east on Walnut confidently, passing packs of college girls in skimpy dresses and college boys in untucked button-down shirts headed toward the Irish Pub. Some boys followed her with their eyes as she passed. It was working.
She continued alongside shuttered boutiques and the oddly empty dirt lot north of Rittenhouse Square, where neighbors rejected development ideas as tacky or liable to attract an unwanted element. She sailed through the north entrance of the square when, suddenly, she slipped and fell. It was th
e heel of her right shoe, purchased last month at the Payless on Chestnut Street, now jutting out at a sixty-degree angle from the rest of the sole.
This latest twist plunged Beth into despair. She couldn’t focus on counting to ten or any of the calming self-talk she’d been taught. The lights in the square blurred and came back into focus when she blinked, then blurred again, but somehow she stood up. Carrying her shoes, she continued along a paved path. She nearly jumped when nearby automatic sprinklers surged on, then nearly jumped again when a woman screamed. The woman screamed a second time, but it was followed by laughter.
“It’s too late now,” a man said.
Beth stopped. A young woman stood on the path ahead. She wore a wet dress, once white but now semitransparent, that clung to her body. She leaned to the side and wrung water out of her long hair, looking in the mist-filled air like a modern water nymph.
“Thanks for the warning,” she said sarcastically to the man next to her. “I’m sliding everywhere.” She leaned one hand on his shoulder for support and with the other removed a pair of strappy sandals.
The man, in a light gray suit without a tie, was far less wet and kept joking. “Can you make it home barefoot, my little blossom? My bitter teacup?”
“Be quiet,” she said.
“Want me to take off my shoes so we match?”
“No, darling. I want you to carry me.” She held onto his lapels as if to draw him in for a kiss, and they remained in this pose like intertwining statues against the lush background of haloed park lights. Beth was moving past them, awkward in the shadow of their glamour, when she felt a tap on her shoulder.
“Miss,” the man said. He was close enough for her to see droplets of water on his dark blond waves of hair. “Excuse me—”
His companion giggled, arms crossed over her chest. They looked young, maybe just out of college.
“Yes?” Beth asked, a bit too energetically.
“In your opinion,” the man began, “is it worth it to take a cab just two blocks away? We’re damp and my friend here finds it impossible to wear her shoes without slipping.” The man’s voice was higher than she expected and somehow sweet, with a slight British accent.
“Of course it’s worth it,” Beth answered, waving her shoes in front of her. “I was thinking of hailing a cab myself,” she lied.
“A good answer,” the man said, catching her eyes and holding on to them with his. “We’re at the Belgravia. Any chance you’re headed in that direction?”
“I’m actually on Pine Street—”
“Why don’t you join us,” he offered.
The woman flashed him an indecipherable look, then smiled. She ran her hands through her wet hair and spoke with an accent similar to the man’s. “Company might be fun.”
The man rocked slightly on his heels. “We’ll toast to a fine evening, all’s well ending well or ending drenched or something.”
“Okay,” Beth said. I am open to invitations, she told herself. I am trying new things.
When they rolled up to the Belgravia, they stepped into what seemed to Beth like another universe—one that would make returning to her walk-up studio harder.
“Alex, Chloe,” the doorman waved them into the marblelined corridor strung with bright chandeliers.
“Welcome home!” Alex announced when they reached a door at the end of a hall on the sixth floor. It opened into a stuffy living room, cluttered with suitcases and clothing. A mahogany coffee table was covered with papers. More papers spilled out of accordion folders on a stained Persian rug below it, competing for space with numerous keys, empty glasses, and takeout food containers.
“Cleaning,” Chloe remarked in a stage whisper, “is not our highest priority.” She walked into another room.
“We’ve been traveling,” Alex added. “I want to share something we picked up. Do you like port?”
“I love it.” Beth didn’t know if this was true. I am trying new things.
Alex rummaged through a suitcase in the corner. He was slender but broad-shouldered and she noticed he wore no socks under his loafers. The wall next to him was covered with masks she assumed were African, and the other walls had paintings—abstract, with a gray, white, and red palette, one of them hanging cockeyed as if posted hastily and never fixed.
“Aha!” He turned around, wielding a dark brown bottle. “You’ll like this. It’s supposed to have,” he squinted at the label, “notes of honey. ” He handed her a glass and their eyes met again. Beth couldn’t decide if they were blue, gray, or green.
Chloe reappeared in a red dress and high-heeled black shoes. Her hair was drying to a lighter blond.
“That’s a good dress,” Alex said when Chloe spun in a catwalk turn. Beth saw it was backless and still had a price tag on it.
“A toast to our new friend,” he indicated Beth. “Our friend …”
“Beth,” she said.
“To Beth, a fellow underwater traveler.”
The drink was sweet and went down easily.
“Beth,” Chloe suddenly said. “What’s your shoe size?”
“Seven. Why?”
Chloe left the room and came back carrying a shoe box. “I got these last summer.”
Beth pulled out a pair of white high-heeled Manolo Blahniks and gasped.
“They’re yours,” Chloe said. “No worries.”
“I couldn’t,” Beth objected.
“Obviously I never wear them, so they’re of more use to you.”
Elegantly shod, Beth felt ready to dance but opted to lounge, given the steady refills Alex provided. After the port he dug into the rest of his collection, presenting a Calvados from Normandy, a Scotch from Scotland, and more. Beth envied the jet-setting pair. She loved traveling but hadn’t taken any trips lately. She had little time off from her desk job at a plastic surgeon’s office near the square, and besides, she was saving money. There were debts to pay from years ago, the upshot of ill-advised exotic vacations with boyfriends and splurges on clothing. She knew she hadn’t been herself during these periods of excess, bursts of exuberance followed closely by profound regret or worse, but credit card companies didn’t want excuses. They wanted their money back, with interest.
But she didn’t worry about debt or anything else just then. Hours blurred into each other and the three of them got silly. They played several rounds of “Would you rather …” with Alex supplying the most unappealing choices: Would you rather clean a monkey cage or a chicken cage? Go blind and lose the use of both arms or just lose the use of your legs? Shoplift from a store or steal from a very wealthy friend who’d never miss the item in question?
Finally, he asked a straight question when Chloe left the room. Eyeing Beth and crawling over the Persian rug, he kneeled in front of her, placing both hands on her knees and lowering his voice to a whisper: “Would you rather kiss me now or kiss me later?”
“Now,” she whispered back, not certain whether Alex’s discretion was merely that or part of a deception, and amazed either way by what happened. The kiss was brief, but warmer and more promising than any she’d had in a long time.
It was almost six a.m. when Alex accompanied Beth outside to wait for a cab. Bands of pink light appeared in the sky in the east. Beth shivered.
“Here,” he said, placing his jacket over her shoulders. It felt warm and smelled like Earl Grey tea. She closed her eyes and inhaled. They kissed.
“Let me get your number,” he said, reaching around her waist to get to the phone in the inner pocket of his jacket.
A cab finally appeared.
“Have a nice morning, beautiful,” Alex said. “I’ll be in touch.”
But he wasn’t, not later that week or in September, and Beth felt too awkward to call again after leaving two messages. She slogged through the humid days, working and taking lunch breaks in Rittenhouse Square, often sitting on a bench near the little bronze statue of a goat with her old friend Leah, who reminded her there were plenty of guys out there when Beth
whined about Alex.
“And these guys don’t have girlfriends,” Leah added.
“Who knows if she’s really his girlfriend?” Beth replied.
“After all the trouble you’ve had, all you’ve gone through …” Leah continued, as if to say, Enough said.
Meanwhile, Beth started another acting class and dyed her hair jet-black, much to her mother’s dismay.
“That color only works with certain skin tones. Change it, at least for your sister’s wedding.”
But strong choices was the theme of Beth’s class and she ran with it. Sure, she was playing another aging, tragic Tennessee Williams character, but she was shining in the part. Rehearsals kept her spirits up. She even went on a few dates with someone Leah deemed a nice, normal guy—a forty-something divorcé named Todd who worked in computers. He never made her laugh but he was attentive.
When she received a text one October night while watching Law & Order reruns at home, she assumed it was Todd until she read it: Please rescue me. She didn’t recognize the number and it had been a long day. An elderly patient in for the routine removal of a skin lesion had suffered a heart attack and was transferred to the hospital but died a few hours later. This meant paperwork, and the next day the widow would be coming to the office to pick up her husband’s belongings that hadn’t made it onto the ambulance.
Then another text appeared: Thinking of you, Beth. Sorry to disturb.
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