Pretty Bad Things

by C. J. Skuse

  “Problem, pal?” he spat back.

  The gray businessman’s neck had suddenly stopped working and he focused on watching the floors flash by above.

  “You’re looking hot,” I whispered to Steve and held my Coke glass to his cheek. “Want some?”

  He moved his face around and I tilted the glass so he could sip. And he glugged half that sucker down. Which seemed to make him feel better. Made me feel better, too.

  We got out of the elevator. Long pink-carpeted corridors stretched off into the distance like a spider’s legs, and Steve led me down one, right to the end. Room 8037.

  He took out his key card from the back pocket of his jeans and slipped it in the slot above the door handle. Then he allowed me to go inside first. As I walked past him, I got that pukey smell of his breath again. It made my stomach lurch.

  If it was a suite, then Steve had been robbed. It was a shithole, and no bigger than our room at the motel. In fact it was smaller. Low roller, I realized. My bullshit shield had failed me.

  Fuck.

  He locked the door behind us and ushered me through to one of the beds. I looked at him.

  “My friend Tommy’s in the other one. This one’s mine.”

  “Oh. You mind if I go freshen up?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t want you to go anywhere.” He stepped closer to me and grinned so his bottom jaw stuck out and his eyes were wide. “I want you to stay here with me.”

  “I need to use the bathroom, silly,” I laughed, pushing him away. “You can wait a minute, I’m sure.” The puke breath was on me again, and now I could smell his BO, too.

  He placed both hands on my waist, holding me close and diving in for the kiss. He kissed hard and cold. It was like being pushed into a wall.

  I pulled back. “I want to use the bathroom,” I kept saying, trying to push against his chest, slam my fists against him, but he just kept coming for me, and suddenly I was against the closet and he was unbuckling his belt and with one hand he held my neck, forcing my head back.

  “You fucking stay there! You ain’t going anywhere until you do what you came here to do.”

  “NO. Get off. Get off me, you sick fuck!” I shouted as loud as I could, even though my chest was being flattened.

  This wasn’t supposed to be happening. It shouldn’t have gone this far.

  Then I did something I haven’t done since I was a child. I screamed. It was the scream I screamed in the woods when I was six, on the second day of looking for Dad.

  It was the scream of lost causes.

  BEAU

  TWELVE

  ROOM 2, LUCKY INN MOTEL,

  THE STRIP,

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  All the way back to our motel I racked my brain, trying to think if she’d told me to meet her anywhere. Nope, nothing. We were at the pool. Then I woke up and it was almost dark and she was gone. I’d been asleep for, like, two hours. Damn the jelly beans!

  The clock beside my bed ticked over to nine fifteen. Everything was wrong.

  “Where are you?” I said it out loud. I didn’t know if I was hoping Paisley would answer back or send me some kind of sign as to where she might be. I had this unsettling feeling in the middle of my chest that something bad had happened. I was probably wrong. I was usually wrong. She would probably come into the room at any second and slump down on the bed. She’d gone up to the Stratosphere again or something, just for the hell of it. Hadn’t realized the time. Stop worrying, Gramps, she’d say.

  But as I watched the numbers on the clock roll over and over, my heart feeling more and more like a steak being pummeled by a meat cleaver, I knew I couldn’t just sit there. I had to find her.

  I caught the Deuce bus just outside the motel, but it was slow and seemed to stop every five seconds for more tourists to climb aboard and fumble around looking for loose change. I jumped off as soon as I could and ran the rest of the way to Caesars. I ran all through the mall, too, eventually finding the casino and the airport-like reception area and the concierge desk. I felt eyes on me the second I entered the casino. I was like this little alarm bell ringing, wherever I went, alerting the security to the fact that I was way too young to be anywhere near there. Two really thin waitresses asked me if I wanted a drink. They must have known I couldn’t drink. All the security cameras must have locked their black eyes on me, my sweat patches, my red neck, my sixteen years of inexperience. Eyes everywhere.

  Someone was in front of me talking to the concierge when I got to the desk, so I had a chance to catch my breath. The snooty Smile-Like-You-Mean-It guy who Paisley had been rude to earlier was gone, so I got a genuinely friendly guy instead, name-tagged Jamal.

  “Hey, welcome to Caesars Palace, how can I help you?” he said.

  “I’ve lost my sister,” I said. “We were by the pool earlier and I fell asleep, and when I woke up she was gone.”

  “All right, what’s your sister’s name?”

  It was then that I saw her, across the casino. I zoned in on a blonde leaving the bar with this tall dude with curly blond hair. They disappeared for a second behind a crowd of people in togas.

  “Don’t worry,” I told the concierge over my shoulder, “I think I see her.” And I set off again. What the hell was she doing?

  Some guy dressed up in a white toga like Julius Caesar was passing through the casino, followed by a female entourage to rival that of most rock stars, so I had to wait for them to get out of the way before I could really get going. By the time they’d posed for photos and exited stage left, Paisley and the Curly had gone. One elevator was just closing with an old man in it. Another was broken. I stood outside the other four and watched to see where each one was going. They could be on any floor between seventy-one and eighty. I had to try them all. It would take me forever. I got out of the elevator and shouted along every hallway like a madman.

  “PAISLEY! PAISLEY!” I waited a second. Some inquisitive doors opened but then closed. A couple of girls looked out of one door on seventy-five but otherwise nothing.

  On eighty, I didn’t have to make any commotion. I heard it myself, distant but definite. The worst sound I’ve ever heard. My sister screaming.

  “PAISLEY!” I shouted again, and headed along one of the corridors that branched off the elevators.

  I flew. I wouldn’t have been surprised to look behind and see a trail of flames. I reached the end door and banged and slammed against it as if my life—or hers—depended on it.

  “PAISLEY!” Eventually it buckled and swung open before me.

  “Oh Jesus. Oh my God, Pais.”

  She sat on the far side of one bed. It took a couple of seconds before she looked around.

  “Didn’t know you had it in you, bro.”

  I walked toward her. She looked okay. She wasn’t crying. I tried to catch my breath. It was then that I noticed the guy on the carpet, pants around his ankles. Un moving. Mouth open. Dead.

  “What happened? What did you do?” I panted.

  She was counting money, distracted as she spoke. “How’d you find me?”

  I bent over. I couldn’t catch my breath. “I saw you … the bar. He’s dead.”

  She got up. “No, he’s not. I slipped him something. He’s sleeping now.”

  “Heard you … screaming.”

  “Yeah.” She gulped. “They took longer to work than I thought. Almost had to work for my money. But I’m okay.”

  “You sure?” I went over and stood in front of her. “Pais? Look at me, are you all right?”

  She was still counting the money. She didn’t look up. “I told you, I’m fine.” She wasn’t fine. She was breathing fast, and her face was bleeding.

  “Tell me what he did,” I said, crouching down in front of her.

  “He didn’t get a chance to do anything,” she replied.

  “What … what did you do to him?”

  “Crushed up a couple of pills, put ’em in his drink.”

  I looked at him. Then at her. Then
back at him. “You drugged him? You DRUGGED him?!”

  “Yeah.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. She had this white shirt on—wide open, exposing her black bra—and these black stilettos with heels that looked like medical instruments. And her face was bloody. And her hair was a rat’s nest. And red lipstick was smudged all over her mouth. Talk about Beauty and the Beast: My sister was both.

  “Oh my God. You killed him, Paisley. You’re a psycho. You’re a complete … psycho!”

  She got up, the stack of money in one hand and a wristwatch in the other. “I told you, he’s not dead. He’s asleep. And our kitty’s back up to twelve hundred and two bucks and a Rolex.” She tapped the watch and held it to her ear. “I think it’s fake, though.”

  “Paisley … we need to call the police.” I glanced again at her open shirt. It was ripped at the buttonholes. “If he tried to …”

  “I don’t think our friend here would appreciate the cops getting involved. What with me being underage and all.” She snickered, like she was laughing it all off. Water off a duck’s back. But as she walked over to the desk and pulled out the drawer, I could see her hand. It was shaking. She fished out a piece of Caesars Palace stationery and a pen.

  “I’ll leave him a note. To explain.”

  I read over her shoulder as she wrote.

  To Steve,

  If there’s anything I can’t stand, it’s a pervert. If there’s anything I can’t stand more than a pervert, it’s a liar. And if there’s anything I can’t stand more than a pervert and a liar, it’s a guy that smells as bad as you do.

  Zooey, Age 16

  I couldn’t speak. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. She had it all planned out. All sewn up. A little orange bottle lay on the bed. I picked it up.

  “Ativan? Where the hell did you get Ativan?”

  She shrugged. “Virginia’s personal pharmacy. I saw it on ER once. It’s some kind of antianxiety pill. I thought it might help.”

  “Help who?”

  “Me.”

  “You get anxious?”

  “I get … everything.”

  “You … you could’ve killed him.”

  “Just a little bit,” she said, and walked straight past me to drop the note on Steve’s motionless body. “How sexy am I now, huh?” she muttered to him. I watched her shaky hand as it lifted to move her knotted hair back off her face.

  As we left the room, Paisley pulled the door behind her but, thanks to me, it wouldn’t close. By the time we reached the elevator bank, two guys in burgundy uniforms came bursting out from behind the automatic doors. They broke into a run down the corridor.

  “What’s going on?” Paisley called to them. “Hey, I think the people in eighty thirty-seven are having some kind of crazy party. It’s lucky you showed up.”

  They just kept going, shouting back something about how they had everything under control.

  “Suckers,” mumbled Paisley as she stepped into the waiting elevator.

  PAISLEY

  THIRTEEN

  DEUCE BUS STOP, OUTSIDE CAESARS PALACE,

  THE STRIP,

  LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

  I saw you both on the news. It made me sick to think of you both in that children’s home. And when I heard Virginia had taken you in, it nearly killed me. That woman is just bad. Bad to the bone. I knew she’d give you stuff, but she’s doesn’t have a maternal instinct in her body. She pulled a gun on me when I came to see you both, as soon as I was paroled. Bet she didn’t tell you that. She said neither of you wanted to see me, that you were doing just great, and that if I ever came to the house again, she’d call the cops—tell them I’d been harassing you and acting all violent. That’s why I write. I know she probably puts my letters straight in the trash. But I’ll keep writing. Maybe one day, one of them will get through.

  I was in a bad mood. I had almost been raped to begin with. Hey, that sounds like A Christmas Carol: “Marley was dead to begin with.” And it’s important to understand the fact that I was in a bad mood, because otherwise you cannot possibly imagine the wonder of what happened after that.

  It was a few days after the whole Steve incident. I wasn’t speaking to Beau. He’d flushed my Ativan down the can. We were nowhere near finding Dad yet, and I was having a real heavy period. And even though we had some money now, I was in a pissy mood. It was a hot, hot day. One of those days when it’s arid and dry and there’s no air and you’ve nearly been raped and you can’t find your dad and you feel sick from all the candy and the sun seems to hit you harder and harder the more you walk. I could feel the soles of my boots sticking to the sidewalk. I hated that.

  We were waiting outside Caesars for the Deuce. Beau was sitting on the bench eating Jujubes. I stood leaning on the Plexiglas behind him. I couldn’t wait to get back to the motel and deal with my underwear situation. Periods are a joke, seriously. I hate being a girl sometimes. I read once in one of those prim boarding school biology textbooks that you lose an “eggcup” of blood a month. I must be laying ostrich eggs. I was kinda glad to get it at first; I was way late and was worried I might have been sperminated by the train wreck of my life that was Jason. But I had dodged that particular bullet. My periods are always a nightmare, though. You’d think they would’ve come up with a solution to it all by now, all the cramps and the headaches and the mood swings and the misery. I guess they have. It’s called death.

  Anyway, this grizzly dude started walking up and down the line with this coupon book. He looked like a bum. As we waited, he walked up and down the line, again and again, his shabby white Reeboks flopping on the sidewalk like dirty worn-out diapers. His filthy toes poked through the front of one of them. His left eye was stitched shut like a pirate’s, and he had on this T-shirt that read I STAYED, I PLAYED, I GOT LAID, and there was this naked woman sprawled out across his chest in silhouette. Made me wanna puke.

  About the fourth time he came closer to us, Beau got up from the bench and joined me standing against the shelter. He took the slightest step behind me. I knew what he was doing. He was afraid Coupon Guy was suddenly gonna pull an audience-participation thing on him and single him out. Beau had always hated that. All that, “What’s your name, sonny?” bullshit. Street entertainers. Magicians. Clowns.

  “No smut here, folks. Get your coupons. Family fun. No smut. Pay no money,” said Coupon Guy.

  He walked up and down, up and down the line of tourists, back and forth, back and forth, badgering people as they walked by, shoving his books in their faces, saying the same thing over and over. The Deuce was taking forever to roll up.

  “No smut here, folks. Get your coupons. Family fun. No smut. Pay no money. No smut here, folks. Get your coupons. Family fun. No smut. Pay no money,” he kept saying, never deviating from the script, exactly the same tone of voice, up and down, taking his tobacco stench as he went and then bringing it back again.

  The tourists would sidestep around him or pretend they didn’t speak English. If I had a heart, I would’ve felt sorry for him.

  “What is it, a hooker guide?” some jerk in sweatpants asked.

  “No, sir, no smut here. Just coupons. Family fun.”

  “Why would I want it, then?” The guy shrugged, and two guys with him laughed like morons.

  We ignored him for what seemed like an entire millennium, listening to his spiel surreptitiously. “No smut here, folks. Get your coupons. Family fun. No smut. Pay no money. Hey, buddy!”

  For the splittest of seconds I thought he meant my dad, until reality kicked in and I looked behind us to where he had called, to see a similarly shabby guy with a beard and a red shirt, watching the news on the Jumbotron outside Caesars.

  The bus pulled up and Coupon Guy went over to the other bum. The bus lowered a little and I stepped up, feeding my money into the slot. I took my ticket and waited for Beau. We scoped out a couple of empty seats and sat down. A fat woman fell up the steps, and some other tourists rushed to help her. I looked out a
nd watched the two homeless guys rooting through a trash can together, pulling out wrappers and sniffing them. Red Shirt Guy thumbed through a paper.

  “What are you looking at?” said Beau, leaning forward and putting his ticket in his back pocket. “Ugh, what are they doing?”

  “What do you think they’re doing, they’re starving.”

  “God, how desperate do you have to be to go dumpster-diving?”

  “Well, you’re no stranger to trash cans, either, if I remember correctly.”

  Beau just looked at me. “Not by choice. Hey, look.”

  The bums were fighting now, shoving each other. Coupon Guy was trying to lay a right hook on Red Shirt Guy, but Red Shirt Guy was ducking, grabbing Coupon’s waist, and trying to bring him down.

  “My money’s on Coupon Guy,” I said. “He’s way bigger.”

  Beau frowned. “That’s really sad. They’re probably fighting over a moldy pretzel or something.”

  “Get outta here, go on!” we heard Coupon Guy shout as Red Shirt moved away. Then he ran to catch up with him, and kicked his ass again. Red Shirt fell to his knees. Coupon Guy laughed and went back to his line of new tourists at the bus stop.

  The doors wheezed shut and the bus started to move away. Red Shirt was walking alongside it for a second. I watched him. He looked up. The bus moved away from him. I saw his face.

  Dad’s face.

  My blood froze.

  “Oh my God, Beau.” I shot up from my seat, climbed over him, and moved to the back of the bus, watching through every window as it rolled on, hoping to catch another glance. Tourists jammed the aisle, so I had to squeeze my way through, angering some old fart with a camcorder and standing on a kid’s foot. The kid cried. The sun burned my eyes as it burst through every gap in the skyline to stop me from getting a closer look. He was too far away.

  I called up to Beau. “It was him. The guy in the red shirt. It was Dad.”

  “Are you kidding me?” Then he started frantically searching out the windows for him, too, and hiking through the aisle to join me.