“She has a lovely eye for line.” Riley gazes at me, not smiling. “Have you heard about her little art show?”
Blue continues as though she didn’t hear Riley. “God, I hated that place. I couldn’t wait to get out. Penned us all in there like cattle, slicing off parts of our brains, right, Charlie?”
“What about you, Charlie?” Riley’s finished his drink. “Were you chomping at the bit to get released, too?”
Riley’s face is worn and handsome, so familiar to me that a soft ache for him wells up inside me before I tamp it down, watching as he and Blue tease each other with lighters and cigarettes. “No,” I say softly. “I fucking loved it. I never wanted to leave.”
Blue guffaws. “Well, yeah. You were sleeping on a fucking heating grate before you came in. What was not to love?”
Riley squints. “Heating grate?” he says slowly. I look at him. I realize suddenly that he doesn’t remember, when we were sitting on the porch, all that time ago during the monsoon, that I told him I used to live outside. He doesn’t remember. Because he’s fucked up all the time. A wave of hard sadness rolls over me.
Blue looks from Riley to me. Her face pales. She smears her cigarette on the railing, mumbles Sorry.
Riley murmurs, “Hmm.” And then goes in and refreshes our drinks, lights new cigarettes, steers the evening back. They talk about me as though I’m not there, teasing me and laughing when my face gets red. Eventually, the neighbors go in, lights turn off, the street quiets down, but Riley and Blue are still going strong, trading cigarettes back and forth, giggling in the same snorty manner about music and politics.
Finally, I clear away bottles and overflowing ashtrays, fit Riley’s guitar back in its case, lift Blue to her feet by her elbow. She whines. “Why can’t we stay here? It’s still so early! I’m on vacation, for fuck’s sake.”
But I take her back with me anyway, holding her upright as we navigate the narrow stairs to my room. In my room, I’m suddenly dismayed, looking down at the single futon tucked against the wall. Blue staggers to the toilet, pulling her jean shorts down. “Excuse me,” she says. The sound of her pee echoes in the bowl.
She flops on the bed and wiggles her feet. “Somebody take off my shoes, please.” I yank off her perilously high wedges and toss them in the corner.
“Turn off the light. That lamp is killing me.”
In the dark, I use the toilet and brush my teeth, splash water on my face, slide into boxers and a T-shirt, and stare at her, curled up on my bed, before I drop down next to her. I scoot her over with my hip. I feel a wave of missing for Ellis all of a sudden, the way we’d curl together in her bed, whispering, our breath warm on each other’s faces. Gently, I rest my hip against Blue’s. She’s very warm.
Down the hall, a television murmurs.
“What’s the rock star say about your scars, Charlie?”
I close my eyes.
“What are you doing here?” Blue asks, drowsy. “Go back to your boyfriend’s.”
“No.”
Blue is quiet for a bit. “You don’t have to worry about me, or anything. I mean, I like to flirt, it feels good, but I’m not…I wouldn’t ever…I’m half show, is all I’m saying, okay, Charlie?” She pulls at the blanket and rolls toward the wall.
“And you know,” she says, her voice getting sleepier, but with a little edge, “a girlfriend can touch her boyfriend’s guitar, you know. You were mad at me for playing it and I bet you never even thought you were allowed to pick it up, but you are. He’s not some god.”
That smarts a little, that she’s so right, but I don’t know what to answer, so I stay quiet. When I think she’s fallen asleep, when her breath has become heavy and I’ve almost fallen into darkness, she suddenly murmurs, “Hey. Don’t let me forget. I have something for you. From Louisa.”
—
In the morning, she’s white as a sheet but perky, lustily gulping the coffee I bought for her at the café down the street. She takes a bath in the tiny tub as I wash a few cups in the sink. She’s not shy like me; I can see the history of her as she leans back, the water lapping at her breasts. After, she takes her meds, one by one, and then lines the prescription bottles up on the windowsill. I think back to her email, when she said she was on a lot of medication.
“I need grease for this hangover.” She pulls on her T-shirt. It’s short-sleeved. The burn scars on her arms are neat and deliberate. “And a soda. Like, a giant Coke.”
I motion to her shirt, her arms. “You don’t…I mean, if anybody sees?”
She scowls. “What the fuck do I care if they see, Charlie? This is it. This is me.” She tugs on my long-sleeved tee. “You’re gonna live your whole life in the dark this way? It’s better to get it out up front. And you know what makes me super mad? If a guy has scars, it’s like some heroic shit show or something. But women? We’re just creepy freaks.”
“Take your boyfriend. I mean, I’m not trying to be mean or anything, I like him, that whole charming rogue thing he’s got going on works like butter, but he’s got major problems.” She mimes drinking. “So, why didn’t you tell him about the hospital or that you were on the streets? He can have problems but you can’t?” Her words tumble out in an angry rush, surprising me.
I feel the press of tears. She’s moving very fast for me. “I don’t know.” I swallow hard. “I just want to get something to eat, okay? Can we do that?”
I feel in my pocket for my money, but she pushes my hand down. “Don’t. It’s on me. I’m sorry. I am. It’s okay.”
She slings her purse over her shoulder. “Let’s cruise. If I don’t get that soda soon, I’m gonna vomit.”
Blue buys us scrambled egg and hash brown burritos with green chile, and icy sodas. She’s ravenous and catty in the diner, whispering about the waitress’s wide ass, making dirty jokes about the salt and pepper shakers shaped like saguaro cactuses. She orders an extra soda and a cinnamon bun, the frosting sticking to her upper lip.
We browse in the funky wig shop on Congress. She buys feathery earrings and tries on colorful teased wigs. We walk aimlessly downtown, staring in wonder at the crisp, cakeish façade of St. Augustine Cathedral, the dainty, forlorn Wishing Shrine of El Tiradito, with its cluster of burned-out veladoras. Blue spends a long time peering into the divots in the pale, crumbling wall of the shrine, at the wishes and gifts people have left, the sunken candles, the stiff, fading photographs. I touch an empty niche. Should I bring a photo of Ellis here? I run my fingers over the smooth stones.
Blue is very quiet as we walk home. I breathe the early-November air in, look at the wide, endless blue sky. In Minnesota, all the leaves are on the ground by now and the sky is gray, readying for cold and winter. Maybe it’s even snowed once or twice. But here, everything is blue sky and endless warmth.
Back in the room, Blue settles on the easy chair with her phone, tapping and scrolling. When I casually ask how long she’s staying, her eyes fog over.
“I thought I told you I don’t have anywhere to go, Charlie. You’re so lucky here. It’s so nice. Look at all this fucking sun, even in the winter! It’s seventy-three degrees here right now.”
She puts her head down. “Do you not want me here, Charlie?”
I do, but I don’t, but I do, but I don’t.
I change the subject. “What about everybody at Creeley?”
Blue rocks her head from side to side. “I don’t really know, I don’t keep up. Isis left after you. Louisa’s never getting out, that dumb fuck. She’s gonna either die or be a lifer, I swear. Oh, shit!”
She scrambles from the chair to her duffel bag, rooting through it until she finds something. She holds out ten black-and-white composition books, tied up in a red ribbon. “Louisa said to give these to you.”
They’re heavy in my hands. I can picture Louisa, her red-gold hair coiled on her head, smiling when I asked her what she was always writing in those composition books. The story of my life, Charlie.
“Aren’t you gonna ta
ke a look?” Blue asks.
“Maybe later.” I slide them into my backpack. It doesn’t look like Blue tampered with the ribbon, but still. I don’t want to leave them here. Maybe there are things inside that Louisa only meant for me. Maybe I just want her words to myself.
Blue snuggles back in the chair. “Jen S. texted me. Dooley dumped her. She lost out on some basketball scholarship and kinda backslid, but her parents don’t know, yet.”
“Do you talk to anyone?” I ask Blue. “I mean, go to meetings or anything?”
Blue takes a swig of the beer she bought before we came back to the room. “Nah, I’ve got nothing left to say. You?”
“I emailed with Casper for a while, but she hasn’t answered anything lately.”
“You were always like her pet. We all knew it. Big fucking deal.” Blue gets up abruptly, begins pulling clothes from her duffel and spreading them on the futon.
I slowly zip my backpack shut. “Casper liked everybody,” I answer evenly, but what Blue says makes me feel guilty. Maybe I was a little bit Casper’s pet, her special project.
“No, she didn’t. She never liked me. Do you think she sent me emails when I got out? No.”
She has her back to me, winding her hair into a bun. There is the swallow, plump and blue on the back of her neck, watching.
To break the tension, I ask what she’ll do while I’m at work. Blue shrugs, shuffling to the kitchen.
I want to say Stop as I see her slide the bottle from the windowsill, rinse out a glass. But who am I to say? I’m just as lost.
“Oh, you know. I’ll be out and about. Maybe go talk to your neighbors.” She turns to me and smiles, her new perfect teeth a gleaming wall inside her mouth.
My hand on the door, I say, “Blue, take it easy with that stuff, okay? Maybe we can take another walk tonight, just the two of us. It’s nice weather to walk at night.” I smile at her, hopeful, but she just gives me the peace sign and scrolls on her phone.
—
She’s not in the apartment when I get home from work. I find her, instead, in Riley’s front room. I can hear the sound of laughter down the street as I turn the corner to his house. My stomach curdles with apprehension as I make my way up the porch steps and pause, looking through the screen door at the two of them on the floor, cigarettes in ashtrays, drink glasses everywhere, Blue strumming Riley’s Hummingbird as he gently corrects her fingers. He’s drawling jokes, she’s laughing, her face flushed in the universe of his attention. Just seeing his hands on hers hurts. I know she said she’d never do anything with him, but still. And then I feel shitty, because didn’t Blue say she was lonely? And here she is, having a good time, with someone paying attention to her.
Her hair is falling against her cheek, a silky fan. Blue—Patsy, Patricia—looks really happy and suddenly, just a little, my stomach loosens. After what she said about Casper not liking her like she liked me, shouldn’t she be allowed to have this?
She gives me a big grin as I slowly edge in the door, excitedly telling me about Riley treating her to drinks at the Tap Room, dinner at the Grill. He’s going to take her on a drive in the morning, she says, see the sights.
My stomach jumps. He’s never taken me for a drive. She looks really pleased, her fingers petting the strings of the guitar. I look over at Riley, but he’s picking at the label on his beer bottle.
Maybe he’s just making promises to her he can’t keep, being nice, and he’ll just disappoint her. Because: with what car? And where? Is he going to blow off his shift? I start to get a little angry.
I sit down with a thump on the burgundy velvet sofa. Riley looks up, finally noticing me, and leans over, pushing up a leg of my overalls and kissing my knee.
“Oh, hey, yeah, your landlord came by.” Blue puffs on her cigarette. “Lonnie?”
“Leonard,” I answer dully. She chews her lips, concentrating on the placement of her fingers on the Hummingbird’s strings. She has pretty fingernails, white and well filed.
“He wanted to know how long I’m staying, ’cause the room’s so small and all, and you know, maybe you’d have to pay some extra money.”
My face drains of color. Blue sees this and quickly shakes her head.
“Don’t worry, Charlie, I have money and plus, I’m gonna work off the extra rent.” She beams. “I’m the new building handyman. I didn’t go on all those construction site visits with my dad for nothing, you know. Did you see the stairwell? I fixed it today. We could be roomies forever.” She smiles wide, her eyes shiny.
She looks so happy, and expectant, that I kind of melt. It’s been sort of nice having her, for a little bit. She’s not the same as she was in Creeley.
The girls at True Grit, Temple and Frances and Randy, they talk about their roommates all the time. It might be fun, having a girl to live with. “Yeah,” I say, trying to laugh a little. “That might be cool, Blue.”
Riley laughs, too, but it has a sharp edge to it. “Hey now, Blue! Don’t talk that way. I don’t wanna lose my girl to her bestie. She’s the only thing keeping me upright. I call dibs.” He squeezes my knee a little too hard.
Blue raises her eyebrows. She tries to meet my eyes, but I stand up and offer to get everyone more drinks. I keep getting everyone more drinks, and myself, too, until I stumble just as much as they do.
I let myself get heavier and heavier because I wanted Blue to be different when she came out, I wanted her to be better, so that I could be braver about being better, too.
Maybe this is just the way it’s supposed to be.
Later, in his room, the house quiet now that Blue has fallen asleep on the couch, hands snuggled between her knees, Riley exhales against my shoulder. His room is cool; the windows are open.
He’s behind me, pressing me against him, his breath against my cheek. “Your friend, she was just talking shit, right, about rooming with you? I don’t know how I feel about that.”
I close my whirling eyes. I’m so tired of drinking, and cleaning up after him when he’s too high. Dragging him to bed. Getting him up for work. Where am I? What am I doing?
My voice skips, my throat is sore from cigarettes, but I push it out and it comes out angry and I can tell he feels it; his body shrinks back, just a touch.
“You won’t even let me have a friend? Like, just one friend?” My words are slurry and I start to panic a little. I don’t want to lose it, but the ball is getting bigger, the alcohol is pushing it along greedily.
“Hey, now.” Riley’s voice is soft. “I didn’t—”
“I mean, do you know how hard it is to be around just you all the time? When you’re so fucked up?”
Riley is silent.
My voice gets louder. I push his hands away, press myself against the wall, the window open above me. Can the neighbors hear me?
“You never ask me anything about myself. You’ve never even asked me about my scars. Or about my parents. Blue at least knows, she understands—”
“Hey, listen, everybody’s got shit, honey, I just didn’t ask because—”
“You didn’t ask because I don’t think you really care, as long as I’m here when you need me to be.” A cookie or a book or a record on a shelf, like Julie said.
I roll over. I can barely make out his face because of my spinning head and the darkness of the room. He’s so drunk, too, his eyes slopping down his face. Is he even going to remember this? “Here’s all of it, Riley, here you go. Here’s my shit.
“I had a friend and she tried to kill herself, and it was my fault. And I broke my mother’s nose and she kicked me out. There was never a heating grate, but here’s what there was: a loaf of bread can last a week, but you get stopped up.” My words are tumbling out, caught in slurry clouds in my throat, but I can’t stop.
“When I ask you for change, you’ll give it to me because I’m small and I look sad and I’m dirty and you have some secret thoughts about me, because I’m small and sad and dirty. You think maybe you could do things to me, and I would let
you, because I need money. And I know this, so when I say we should walk to the park and talk some more, privately, you’re happy to come with me, you’re excited and nervous.”
Riley whispers, “Don’t.”
He covers his face with his hands.
“I won’t look at you in the park when my friends jump you from the bushes. Or when you cry because they’re beating you with chains, taking your money, ruining your good suit. I’ve done my part. Why do you have so much cash in your wallet, anyway? You’re so fucking stupid, man, so fucking stupid.”
Riley says Stop, but I don’t, because I want to hurt him, just a little and just a lot, for how he looked at Regan, or whatever might have happened with Wendy, or the way he laughs with Blue and won’t let me be her friend, but mostly because I’m so tired.
I’m so tired of drunk and desperate. I’m tired and angry at me. For letting myself get smaller and smaller in the hopes that he would notice me more. But how can someone notice you if you keep getting smaller?
I kick the sheets off, claw my way over him, still talking, even as I jam my overalls up and try to slot the straps. I can’t. My hands fumble. I just tie the fucking straps around my waist.
“If you try to make it by yourself, a guy tries to rape you in a tunnel and he’s crazy high and strong. He gets his hands all the way down in your pants, his fingers inside you, his shoulder against your mouth so no one can hear you scream. Maybe two guys save you, two nice guys. If you pack up with a group, you better remember the rules of the group, you better remember who runs the group or he will try to hurt you, too.”
I lean down close to Riley’s face. He shuts his eyes tight. “I lived in a sex house. Someone tried to sell me for money. So I tried to die. There’s my story, Riley. When do I get to hear yours?”
I’m panting. He’s got both arms crossed over his face.
“Riley,” I say, my voice hoarse. “Riley, we have to stop. You have to stop. I don’t want you to die, Riley. Please, stop. I don’t want you to die. Will you stop?”
His voice is stronger than I expected.
“No.”
I almost trip, stumbling out of the room. I pull Blue off the couch by her shirt. She wobbles as she finds her footing. “What the fuck, Charlie…whaaat?” Her hair is in her face.
Girl in Pieces Page 25