by Patti Abbott
"So can I…" Mr. Harrison pauses, sweaty and nervous. He twitches, his words stalled. As I stand there, trying to decipher what he wants, Honey-Vivid hops up out of her chair, gun in hand, and cuts towards our old teacher. For a moment it looks like he is about to flee, instead he flinches. He is taller than her, but he is just a scarecrow next to her inferno. "How about we get a picture of you suckin' a dog's dick, and then we'll hook you up." She spits, and something globular hits his face.
"Chill, chica." I extend my hand and step in front of her. Mr. Harrison doesn't run or jump. He just stands there—stupid, shameful and dazed. He is space debris trapped in our orbit. Honey-Vivid thunders to her seat, frustrated, muttering as she lights a cigarette. "Fucking crackhead."
"So what you need?" My voice trails, unable to speak his name. My teacher flashes a sweat-crumpled twenty. He avoids looking at me, his eyes continuously darting back to Honey-Vivid. I slide the baggies into his hand and take his money. With eyes trained to the ground, he wipes his face, and shivers a couple final words out.
"Thank you."
There are tears in his eyes. I watch him turn away and disappear around the corner. I think of my brother, and I think of the old Mr. Harrison. The joy and the beauty of those memories evaporating like raindrops in the center of the sun. I feel vacant. Beneath me a squadron of fire ants drags a thrashing grasshopper across the yard.
IV. THE PERSISTENCE OF MEMORY
A few more customers flow through, but my thoughts are elsewhere. I am a phantom, my actions are on automatic; the hustle on instinct. All day the crack-baggies in my palm hatch into cash like caterpillars into butterflies; the green-paper folds like origami wings. The teapot grows empty. Uneasiness expands in the space between memory and the moment. It's almost time to take flight.
Honey-Vivid briefly disappeared around the corner, but has returned content. As she finishes up another cup of syrup, she smiles at me, her lips wet with codeine. I smile falsely; another thing to stress about, another layer on the landfill.
Intervention is not an option. When her sister surprised her with one, Honey-Vivid stabbed her in the hand and set fire to her car. I am afraid, but not of her. My fear is different; the fear of losing her versus the fear of losing her trust. I don't speak of it; the thought stays in me, caged deep. Seeing her like this, seeing Mr. Harrison like this, makes it hard to imagine what it will be like when we're twenty-one, much less what it will be like when we're nineteen.
Each moment is too bright to see past. Being out here, I have come to understand one thing—everything in the streets is Zen. Whether they know it or not, we are all Buddhist here; the addicts, the dealers, the streets, we exist in the moment, in the now.
I wipe my brow, and chug water from the garden hose. The world has the soft distorted drip of Salvador's clocks. It all melts together; the palm trees into the streets, the streets into the addicts, the addicts into the sun, and the sun into the money in my hand. All one vast fevered summer dream, a South Carolina ghetto-mandala. I blink as if the world won't move until I do.
Diagonally behind me, Honey-Vivid has grown tense. Her eyes scan the same group of sketched-out crackheads that have been lurking on the periphery. They've returned wearing coats, their hands concealed inside their pockets. The coats make their faces and limbs even more emaciated-looking; their eyes scalded out voids. Honey-Vivid spits into her empty cup and glides her fingers across her gun. Even in a codeine-cloud, she is still lightning. This time the addicts do not vanish—they stand there staring at us; a desperate spastic quality to their movement. Heat warps logic like blood melts snow.
No words are needed. Honey-Vivid gives me a look, a subtle nod of her head, and that's it—we are done for the day. She flashes her gun at them, before sheathing it in her belt. As we head inside, across the street, our supplier—my landlord and Honey-Vivid's Uncle—Poppy Quesada pulls into his driveway across the street. I look back over and the scheming addicts are gone.
What wind is to leaves, Poppy Quesada is to his enemies; he is fear in elemental form. He exits his Coupe De Ville like a panther; sleek and fluid. He waves at us. I nod my head and close the door.
*****
Inside, Honey-Vivid heads to the kitchen table to stack up today's profits; I deposit mine and disappear into the bathroom, avoiding the full-body mirror at the entrance.
I shed my clothes like a snake, place my 9mm on the toilet tank-lid, and step into the shower. Water flows down, adorning my back-tattoo of Lapu-Lapu holding a Kampilan, standing on Magellan's decapitated head. It stretches from my shoulder blades down to my hips, colors bright as a woodcut.
I scrub my hands over and over with lava soap. I keep sanitizer in my pocket when hustling, but there is always the compulsion to scrub my hands till they are raw when I'm done. I can never seem to cleanse the aura, to strip the ghost of addicts' sweat. I scrub and scrub till it feels as if the inked lines of Cocaine-Starlight have been erased, and if I raise my hands and open my eyes I will see my original form penciled loosely beneath—that I will see little Luna Castillo. That I will see my lines, and my mother's lines. But as the hot shower water cools to cold I stand there naked, eyes open, as neither.
As I exit the shower, and dry off, Honey-Vivid is chilling on the couch, her head metronomic. The owl tattoo on her throat seems to nod its head in sequence with her, the wings that spread on each side of her neck ready to swoop. Two inches of ash extend from the blunt hanging from her lips. Her laptop is open to a webpage selling firearms and there is a fresh bottle of promethazine beside her. With her eyes closed, and the haunted glow of the laptop illuminating her face through the smoke, she looks like a painting by Januz Miralles. Luminescent, otherworldly.
I remember how angry and violated my brother felt in High School, leaving an art piece half-complete to go to lunch only to return to find the art teacher had erased and redrawn a face, with little notes to the side demonstrating how to do it right. Joseph's identity removed from his illustrated face, the way the ocean currents would later remove the identity from his own face. My brother would either abandon the drawing or tear it apart, regardless of the grade. I look at the bottle, and say nothing to Honey-Vivid.
Turning away, I shift into my room and put on the Adidas tracksuit hanging from my door hook. Its primary colors and slashes of white like the Filipino flag. I remove my red beret from the closet shelf, then inspect my wet black hair in the mirror. It slices down on both sides of my cheeks like the black teardrop shape of the yin bending into the yang. I then place the beret on my head, cocking it to the side. It didn't fit me when my brother bought it for me, but it fits now. Finally, I slip on my matching kicks.
Swag.
As I slide my 9mm in my gym bag, Honey-Vivid's cellphone began to vibrate, rattling the glass coffee table. Her eyes flicker open, like searchlights through the harbor fog. She turns her head at my presence and smiles, and then checks her text. "Hey, that's Poppy. Wanna head to his party later? Sounds like it's gonna be fly."
"Nah, chica I'm gonna hit the studio."
Three Days Ahead
by Caleb J. Ross
Edmund and I met on accident. He hit me with his car. I wake in the hospital with his head eclipsing the window light, his thin hair casting a frantic halo. "You'll have beautiful scars," he says before apologizing for any pain. Just before a nurse walks in Edmund warns me that the staff thinks he's my brother-in-law.
I play along. He knew I would. It had been a full three days since the wreck and nobody showed up to offer any tears or time on my behalf. That's what he tells me. He was the only one. A stranger whose first words to me are the nicest words I'd ever heard from anybody. Somebody thought some part of me was beautiful.
The nurse greets Edmund by name. She turns to me, presses a series of buttons on my bedside, tells me I'm in a hospital, my injuries are largely superficial, but there might be brain trauma, which is why the last three days of my life never existed as far as I'm concerned. "For as long as I've k
nown Edmund he's never said anything about a sister-in-law," she says. I can't see Edmund's reaction.
My lips don't move the way I remember. I try to ask her, "does anyone talk about in-laws?" but her attention is elsewhere, adjusting knobs above me. She's testing me for coherence. Satisfied, she leaves. Does anyone talk about in-laws, as if it's already Edmund and me against the world. Already I'm defending this strange man from other strangers.
"Nobody came?" I ask Edmund once we're alone again. He's sitting beside me now, my bed adjusted so that the frantic halo has subsided, leaving just an average head atop an average body. He looks better without the angelic glow.
"Not even a single call," he says. "But something tells me you're not really surprised. That level of family disconnect isn't a hospital bed revelation. You've missed a fair number of Thanksgivings in your life, haven't you?"
I think I smile. "Not invited to them, more like." I pan down to his arm in a sling. "Is that all you got?"
Edmund follows my eyes, lifts his arm painlessly, as though the sling is cosmetic. "I got off easy."
"That nurse says she knew you."
"I work here. Record keeping. I answer phones sometimes. The money is shit."
"Why did you wait for me to wake up?" I test the resistance of the pillow. My neck still works.
"Your car is probably totaled. There's some salvage dollars left, but I wouldn't count on much."
I flex my legs, can feel my toes brush against the bed blanket.
"I didn't find a health insurance card in your purse. There was a Denny's name badge in your back seat."
"I don't follow." I've never been so happy to feel rough linens. All in all, my body seems to have fared better than my car.
"And with no family to turn to, you're probably hurting for money."
"This is the strangest blackmail I've ever been a part of."
"Not at all. My car is totaled, too. We're in the same position."
"And…"
"You're going to have beautiful scars. Perfect for what I've got planned."
*****
Repurposed lengths of wire coat hangers hammock the front bumper of Edmund's car. When he pulls up to the hospital curb where I wait in a wheelchair, the entire bumper sways, something hypnotic—enhanced, no doubt, by the medications riding my veins. He thanks the nurse, helps me into his car, and before fully explaining his scheme, tells me that he's got everything figured out. "I get calls every week," he says loudly over a strange mechanical grind from somewhere deep inside his dashboard. "People are dying to feel like heroes."
"Explain," I think I say.
Those calls he gets are from the family members of organ donors wanting to 'check in' on their gifts. "And I know everything about these people. I've got records of it all, from their names and addresses, blood types, medical history, all that important stuff, but census stuff too. Employment. Finances. Some of these people are loaded." He dodges a bicyclist, completely unaware as the man loses control and lands in a ditch, all this crushed by perspective in the rearview mirror. "We don't handle that stuff at the hospital. There are coordination services to organize reunions, but that doesn't stop people from calling me. Maybe, just maybe, I take a few of the callers up on their pleas and introduce them to you. You've got perfect organ transplant-looking scars."
"Your sling is gone," I say.
His excitement dissipates. "Are you in or not?"
"You should know," I say. "These wounds aren't mine to give away."
*****
Edmund opens his futon. He's not concerned at all about my archived injuries, those long settled into my skin's surrounding rough topography. I tell him about Marcel and about these decades old mis-healed streaks of corrugated flesh, wrapping my stomach, a few on my back, dotting my forearms, like I'd fallen though the backend of a box cheese grater when I was young. A cheese grater named Marcel. "Marcel's scars will poke fun at these weak ones you gave me." I try to smile.
Edmund brings me a stack of blankets, says they are his only ones, but that he gets hot at night anyway. "Sounds like Marcel should be in prison," he says, then asks if I want some water.
"You don't have to give me your blankets," I say.
"Of course I do," he says. "Look at you."
I don't need to.
Marcel was an uncle, the brother of a step-dad who stayed only long enough to plant my sister before moving on to the next vacant womb. My mother sniffed out another suitor, but Marcel found ways to embed himself into my life, becoming a loose thread I couldn't snip. He'd show up at school. He'd walk me home. He'd ask about homework and offer his help. He'd insist.
Marcel charmed his way into my life the way a mold charms its way into your walls.
Edmund insisted I take his bed. He'd take the futon.
Marcel's constant presence seemed premeditated to ensure the proper kind-man narrative in preparation for inevitable courtroom trials years later where those scars of his had healed too much, enough to justify only six years of prison. Six fucking years.
I was seven years old when Marcel dragged a halved golf club across my gut. It took weeks for the wound to finally stop bleeding at night. Mom had no money for doctors. No money for lawyers, either. Plenty of money for blinders, though. Custom fitted. Most nights I never saw her, she never saw me. She was a nomadic bar fly. I was bound to the home. Today the scar maps my lower rib at odd angles. Collagen fibers snake the purple line, some kind of bloated earthworm shape you'd mistake as an abstract relief wall-hanging if it were ripped from my skin and framed for snooty art gallery viewers. So raw, they'd say. Such emotion. They'd be correct, in a way.
He burned holes into my back skin. Decorated my arms with construction staples once. I was a canvas. He, a demented artist. That's not a reasonable explanation, of course, nor an excuse, but I've given up on reason. I let him have the artist's logic, convincing myself that he had access to a hidden aesthetic, and that maybe what he did to me was worshiped by some. Maybe I'd be museum quality. Maybe I was a golden idol. Maybe I was a Stockholmed little girl with no better context against which to measure those scars.
Edmund is the only man I've been alone with since, in any room. "We can share the blankets if you want," I say like it's a required etiquette.
Edmund doesn't respond. I convince myself that he didn't hear me.
*****
"Marcel might be mad if you took his scars from him." Breakfast is dry cereal. I'm surprised I can chew. Most mornings after a hospital, everything aches. This morning, my eyes open without the entire socket pulsing. Every gesture feels new.
"I took the liberty," Edmund says. "I woke you up and made you take the pills. You probably don't remember." He's folding the blankets on his bed. Replacing the pillowcases. "You're free to do what you want with the scars, you know. Those aren't Marcel's scars. He gave them to you."
Edmund has his shirt tucked in. Jeans. A belt even. Not bad for 8:00 in the morning. "Thanks. I don't remember a thing from last night."
"Have you thought about my grift?" He joins me at the table. He's elbow deep into the cereal box before I offer my bowl and what's left of my milk.
"Don't call it a grift."
He slurps the milk the way I've seen rich people do with soup. "So, it's a longer game than a grift. But it has promise, right? You pretend to be the organ recipient. Get in close with the target. Close enough to skim a few thousand dollars when he isn't looking."
"It sounds like graft, I mean. I don't need that kind of association."
Edmund glows. A much younger mouth full of teeth than I would have expected. "So you're in?"
"Marcel's going to want a cut." I decide to let the pun slide.
*****
Edmund has a grifter's eyesight with an entrepreneur's horizon. We're sitting at an Edward Hopper cafe mid-day, not even a single harsh shadow to complete the cliché. The place doesn't allow smoking. The waitress doesn't wear a name badge. But Edmund insists on black coffee. He whispers as he explain
s the list of names he's placed between us.
"From top to bottom, the most likely target to the least. All good targets, though. You've got the wealthy widower of a VP for a banking firm all the way down to the established widower of a computer programmer with a mid-tier rank at a high-tier company, and—"
"Stop saying 'target'."
"What?"
I've crushed him. "And get rid of the sling. Your arm is fine."
"I thought you were on board. Are you backing out?" He removes the sling, drops it to the booth seat.
"I'm giving you the opportunity. You have much more to lose than I do."
"I'm not backing out. Your scars are perfect. I've seen transplant scars. You've got ones that could pass for livers, kidneys, a heart, even an eyeball if the surgeon made a few slips."
The divot where Marcel carved a gun barrel into my temple the first day I wore glasses. They never had a chance to fit right.
"How old are you?" I take a sip of his coffee. He snuck half a creamer when I wasn't looking. "I thought you drank your coffee black." I've penetrated his diner armor.
He fumbles an excuse, something about ulcers, then slowly pulls the list of names to his side of the table. Until that gesture, I wasn't aware of a his-side vs. my-side dichotomy. Now I can't unsee it. "I've got scars, too. Plenty of them. If that's what you're asking."
I wasn't. But I am now. "From?"
I readjust to the Hopper façade around us and decide that nothing he's about to say is worth believing. He's constructed a ruse, assembled from shoddy black and white movies where characters are much too witty to be the product of such assumed trauma. Me, my scars, this diner, we're his makeup chair, his vanity mirror. "A few fights. I've got a pretty good gash on my thigh from a barstool." He stands to show me. I wave him down just as he reaches for his zipper. The grandmothers and grandfathers around us, enjoying their early dinners, are starting to take notice.