The Edge Of The Sky

by Drusilla Campbell

  “Do you ever wash your hands?” she asked the boy with his hand on her knee.

  He looked at her and then at his hands. His lower lip shone with moisture.

  “Your hands are filthy,” she said.

  “No problemo.” He put his hands on his knees and stood up and walked slowly into the kitchen. Tex said something to him and he laughed. From the couch Beth watched him hold his hands under the water a long time. Tex gave him two margaritas. He brought them back and set them on a box they were using as a coffee table. He held out his hands and turned them over. They were still wet.

  “Grease,” he said. “I’m a mechanic.” He put his hand back on her thigh, a little higher than before. She looked down at it and waited for the next thing to happen.

  The next time she was aware of anything, she was sitting on the floor in the farthest corner of the living room with a blanket over her legs. She must have dragged it off Kimmie’s bed, though she did not remember getting up from the couch. She looked around for her drink and saw she had a fresh one. She squinted at her watch. Almost eleven.

  “You passed out,” said the mechanic, standing over her. He held out his hand. His nails were dirty again, as if he were a magnet for grime. “Come back to the couch. We got something’ll pep you right up.”

  “Oh, yeah,” William sang out. “You can say that two times, two times.”

  The mechanic helped Beth to her feet. Her head hurt like the time she and another girl bashed into each other on the basketball court. She thought of home and standing in a hot shower until her skin turned lobster red, then going to sleep; in the morning she wanted to see her mother and sister in the kitchen, ordinary as pie, and Gala licking her hand and Buster wagging his hind end.

  “I gotta go home,” she said, and blinked.

  “Not yet,” Tex said from the couch. “We’re just getting started here.”

  “I don’t feel good.”

  Tex laughed. He was doing something Beth could not see with Kimmie and the guys crowded around the cardboard box. “Get on over here, li’l Beth. I’ll fix you up.”

  Tex drawled his words now. She hadn’t noticed that before. The mechanic guided her toward the couch and Tex slipped his arm around her and pulled her down between him and Kimmie. Up close, he smelled like smoke and wet leaves. She tried to pull away and he kissed her. His tongue slid between her lips and teeth, startling as a flash flood.

  She pulled away, gasping. She told herself to stand up and leave but her legs wouldn’t move. Kimmie draped her arm over her shoulder and said with sleepy urgency, “Will you be my best friend forever, Beth? We could get an apartment, or you could move in here. . . .” She rambled on, Beth did not listen.

  Beth watched as Tex placed what looked like rock candy in a glass tube with a bulb at one end. No one spoke. Beth looked across at William and saw that he was as rapt as if he were witnessing a holy event.

  “What is that?” she asked Kimmie. “Is that crystal?”

  “Isn’t she smart?” Kimmie sounded like she meant it.

  “I’m not having any of that.”

  “It’ll make you feel better,” Tex said. “Put a little light in your eyes.”

  What was wrong with her eyes the way they were?

  She stood up and Kimmie grabbed her hand and pulled her back down. “Nobody’s gonna force you. Just don’t run off, okay?”

  “I don’t want you to do it, either.”

  “One hit, Beth.” The mechanic reached around Kimmie and laid his hand on her thigh again. “One hit never killed anybody.”

  She shoved him away.

  Tex held a lighter flame under the bulb and the chamber bubbled and filled with smoke. He held his hand over the top of the cylinder and held it out to Kimmie.

  “Kimmie, no.”

  “Shut up,” the guy with bad breath said. “If you don’t like it, go home.”

  “Stay, Bethie.”

  “I’ll call my mom—she’ll come and get us.”

  One of the boys mimicked her in a mealy voice: “I’ll call my mom.”

  The smoke in the cylinder was thick and opaque as mushroom soup. Kimmie lowered her mouth over the opening. Beth reached out to knock it away.

  The mechanic held her arms behind her back. She struggled but his hands were strong.

  “Take it all, Kimmie,” Tex was saying. “Yeah, yeah, atta girl, hold it as long as you can.”

  Beth stared at Kimmie, holding her breath with her until she exhaled with a groan. She looked stunned. As Beth watched she saw the color in her cheeks go from pale to pink to florid rose and then crimson. Her mouth went loose and her eyes widened and the pupils rolled into the back of her head. Her lids drooped and then she began to drag for breath.

  “What’s that shit?” William asked.

  Beth grabbed Kimmie’s arm and shook her. Her head wobbled like a big flower on a weak stem. Her throat made a sawing noise.

  “Somebody do something,” Beth cried. “She can’t breathe.”

  The mechanic stood and began to move around the room, throwing things into a duffel bag. He bumped the CD player and the disc jumped. Rap, loud and raging, filled the room.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Tex muttered.

  “What’s happening to her?” Beth thought she could see the pulses at Kimmie’s temples expand and contract.

  The mechanic tossed the duffel to Tex and he shoved things into it—the pipe, a baggie, his lighter.

  “Do something!” Everyone was standing now except Kimmie and Beth, who was screaming. “I think she’s having a heart attack.”

  “Shit, my keys . . .”

  William tossed them to Tex from across the room.

  Beth felt her own heart ticking so hard she thought it might go off.

  “Wait ten minutes,” Tex said from the door. “Then call 911.”

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Lana hung up the phone and stood where she was, frozen. “What is it?” Mars asked from across the room. “What’s up?”

  Lana turned and looked at Micki. “That was your sister. Did you know about this?”

  “Not exactly.” Micki squirmed. “I told her she was stupid.”

  “You purposely withheld information—” She heard herself, the voice of the Inspector General, and stopped.

  “What’s happened, Lana?” Eddie asked.

  “Is she okay, Ma?”

  “What’s going on?” Tinera tugged on Dom’s arm.

  Dom said, “Go watch television with your sisters, Tinera.” He gave Kathryn a nudge. “You go with her.”

  “I’m leaving.” Lana moved toward the hook beside the back door where her car keys hung.

  “Going where?” Dom said.

  “Micki?”

  “The Gaslamp, Ma. Kimmie’s. But I don’t know—”

  “I do.”

  “You can’t go alone,” Dom said. “Kathryn, get my coat.”

  “No,” Lana said.

  “Do you want me to go?” Eddie asked.

  Dom lurched forward, shoving Eddie French out of his way. “This is family business, Lana.”

  Lana knew she couldn’t get in the car with Dom Firenzi.

  “Ma, can I come?”

  “You go watch the television,” Dom said. “Kathryn—you, too.”

  Lana glared at him. “Stop telling people what to do. I’m going alone.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Shut up, Dom. Just shut up.”

  “Will someone please tell me what’s happened?” Stella cried. “No one ever tells—”

  “You shut up, too, Ma,” Mars said.

  As Lana passed through the porch on her way to the car, she heard Dom say, “Kathryn, get the girls. I’m taking you all home.”

  She did not pause to wonder how her sister responded.

  Lana hoped she would recognize Kimmie’s building when she saw it, but as she cruised Sixth Avenue, the buildings looked nothing like they had in the daylight. Garish club and restaurant signs, streetlights in the
shape of old-fashioned gas lamps, and the pale wash of light from the staring moon combined to cast disguising shadows across the faces of the buildings.

  “There,” she said aloud. It wasn’t the building she recognized. It was the sight of a red-and-white paramedic van parked in front.

  She stopped the car in a loading zone and left the caution lights blinking. A noisy crowd of partyers came toward her with arms draped over each other’s shoulders, taking up the width of the sidewalk. She felt herself shoved to the side against the iron rail of an outdoor restaurant. The crowd passed and she hurried forward. The noise of voices and music and traffic, the smells of food and drink and exhaust from cars, made the air thick enough to drink.

  In the foyer of the condo building, Lana looked at the elevator buttons and realized she didn’t know which floor was Kimmie’s. She punched all the keys and watched the display. The elevator seemed stuck on three.

  “Lady,” said a man’s voice behind her, “you can’t just leave your car—”

  She saw a lighted exit sign across the lobby and opened the door. She tilted her head and looked up at cement stairs rising several floors.

  “You’re gonna get your car towed, lady.”

  Racing upstairs, the noise of her footsteps echoed in the stairwell. At the third floor the door stuck. She lunged against it with her shoulder, feeling as it burst open like some kind of maternal super hero. At the end of the hall, Lana saw the paramedics loading a gurney into the elevator.

  “Beth,” she screamed and ran, stumbling, throwing her arm out against the wall to keep from falling, dimly aware of the building’s residents in their doorways observing the drama. “Beth,” she cried again, and in the next second her daughter flew from the apartment and into her arms.

  Lana clutched her, grabbed her shoulders and hands and looked at her face, looking and feeling for injuries. “Thank God—I thought, I was afraid for you—”

  A police officer with a round, flushed redhead’s face stepped out of the apartment into the hall. “You this girl’s mother?”

  “Yes, I am,” Lana said. She began to be aware of what was going on around her. The paramedics could not fit the gurney into the elevator.

  “We’re gonna have to take the stairs,” one said.

  “Jesus, I thought these places were supposed to be up to code,” his partner said.

  The body on the gurney was Kimmie. Thank God, though her eyes were shut and she was not moving, the paramedics had not covered her face with a sheet.

  “I told you I called her,” Beth said to the police officer as if she had been trying to convince him of this for some time. To Lana she said, “I told him I wouldn’t say anything until you were here.”

  “The kid watches too much television.” The policeman mopped his hand across his brow and down over his eyes. “So now we’re all present and accounted for, let’s go sit down.”

  Another police officer, a woman who could have used a uniform one size larger, squatted in front of the couch, examining the carpet.

  “Do you know what’s been going on here?” the red-haired policeman asked Lana.

  “How would I? I just got here.”

  “Your daughter goes out at night and you don’t know—”

  Lana’s eyes burned and she had to cover her mouth with her hands to keep from shouting that she had tried to do the right thing. That she was one woman on her own and she was doing the fucking best she could.

  “Is Kimmie going to be all right?” Beth asked.

  “Can’t say,” the officer said.

  “She was fine and then—”

  “What happened to her?” Lana asked.

  “Seizure. Heart attack.” The officer shrugged as if he had seen too many of these things to be concerned with details. “It happens.”

  “Heart attack?” Lana sat on the arm of a ratty couch, stunned. “She’s only fourteen.”

  “Fifteen, Ma. I think today was her birthday.”

  The female cop said, “Nice way to celebrate. Crystal, from the looks of the mess on the carpet here.”

  Lana tasted chiles rellenos in the back of her throat.

  The redhead asked, “Who all was with you here?”

  Beth looked confused.

  The female officer sat back on her haunches. “Just take your time, honey.”

  “But I don’t know their names. Well, this guy Tex was one. And William. Kimmie said they came from Tucson. But they all left,” Beth said. “As soon as she started acting funny, they left.” Her eyes were round and disbelieving. “They said I had to wait ten minutes to call.... But I didn’t. I didn’t know if she was really sick or—”

  “You called 911—that was the right thing.”

  “But I called you first, Ma.” Beth began to cry. “If Kimmie dies it’ll be because of me. I shouldn’t have let her do it.”

  “Do what?” Lana asked.

  “I think I’m gonna ask the questions here,” the policeman said, and opened his notepad. “Your name’s Beth. Beth who?”

  Lana let her daughter answer. “Porter.”

  He looked at Lana. “And you’re Mrs. Porter? Or is that too much to hope for?”

  “Lana Porter.”

  “Okay, you all stay put and I’m gonna find out what went down here tonight.”

  “They had crystal,” Beth said.

  “You did crystal?” Lana could barely breathe. “Why, Beth? You know—”

  “Just let me ask the questions.” The policeman sounded tired.

  “Did you, Beth?”

  “No, Ma. Honest.”

  Lana hugged her hard, then asked the policeman, “Where are they taking Kimmie?”

  “Harbor View Emergency.” The cop flipped his notebook cover open and shut and open again. “You all can worry about her later. Right now you got your own problems.”

  “What problems? Beth hasn’t done anything wrong. She just said she didn’t use any crystal.”

  “Yeah, that’s what she said.”

  Lana took her cell phone out of her purse, “I have to make a call.”

  “Oh, Jesus,” said the red-haired cop. “Here we go with the lawyer.”

  It was like a police drama, only frightening and less organized. While they waited for Michael to get there, the officers looked around the apartment and paced and clicked their retractable pens. Lana kept thinking: I knew she wasn’t going to a dance. I knew but I let myself be fooled because I didn’t want to see. This is my fault. All my fault.

  After Beth had answered the officers’ questions, Michael conferred with them for several minutes out of earshot while Lana sat on the couch with her arms around Beth.

  “You’re sure you’re okay, honey? There’s nothing you’re not telling us?” Margaritas and marijuana and crystal meth weren’t enough?

  Beth shook her head and began to cry. “I let her down, Ma. I’m the only friend Kimmie’s got and I couldn’t stop her doing it.”

  “You did what you could.”

  “But what if she dies? Is she going to die, Ma?”

  Lana wanted to say that fifteen-year-old girls never died from strokes or seizures or heart attacks but that wasn’t true. Wasn’t everyone who died someone’s friend, someone’s baby grown up? She had watched the murder-and-mayhem TV and never thought of what it would really be like to be involved. She did not want to think about it now.

  “We don’t know what’s going to happen. We have to wait.”

  Michael came over to the couch and crouched before them. “This cop’s a nice guy. He says you and Beth need to go down to the station tomorrow morning and give a formal statement. I’ll pick you up—we can go together. I’ll make sure everything goes the way it should. Beth’s a good girl, never been in any jams—I don’t expect there’ll be any trouble.” He gave each of them a hand to help them off the couch, then held out his arms and hugged them.

  “It’s going to be fine, everything’s going to work out.”

  Lana had a parking ticket but she d
id not notice it flapping under her windshield wiper until she had driven up Sixth and across Broadway.

  “Can we go see how Kimmie’s doing?” Beth asked.

  Much as Lana wanted to get her girl home and safe, she knew this was the right thing to do. She parked the car in the almost-empty hospital lot, grabbed the parking ticket and shoved it to the bottom of her purse, and they went in through the emergency entrance, down a long gray-and-white corridor and into a waiting room lined with plastic chairs. Like the bus depot, Lana thought. The admitting nurse told Lana that Kimmie had been taken in immediately. Lana spoke to the doctor in charge, who wanted to know if she was the girl’s parent.

  “I’m sorry,” Lana said. “No one knows where her mother lives.”

  “Somewhere in L.A.,” Beth said. “She has a sister named Jules but. . . .” She shrugged. “I don’t know where she lives, either.”

  “Someone’s gotta pay the bills,” the doctor said and the wrinkles in his forehead moved like rubber bands. “We can’t just let her out on the street.”

  “What happened to her?” Beth asked.

  “She had a pretty big seizure.” He yawned, treating Lana to a view of his molars. “Sorry. We’re gonna do an EKG, take a look at her heart.”

  “Will she be okay?”

  “She’s a lucky girl,” the doctor said and yawned again, turning his head away.

  “I think I might know how to find the father,” Lana said. “Let me make a couple of calls.”

  She walked outside. The wind from the desert had come up again. On the news the weather announcer had said Southern California was in the midst of the longest sustained Santa Ana condition on record. Lana believed it. But the oboe sound of the wind, the grit in the air, even the physical discomfort of burning eyes, dry, caked nose, and a sore throat were nothing compared to the eeriness of summer in January, February now. If Lana could not count on the seasons to stay put, what was there in the world she could trust?

  She used her cell phone to call home. Mars picked up immediately.