by C. J. Skuse
Beau nudged me back and leaned in to speak.
“His name’s Buddy Argent. He might be under Michael Argent, though. If we could find him, you wouldn’t need to put him up. We’d take him off your hands.”
He smiled all genuinely at old Purple Eyelids, which actually stirred her into action. She started tapping on her keyboard and hit the space bar, looking briefly again at Beau. I watched him. There was a small but definite bat of eyelashes. He was playing her like a piano. I’d created a monster. But it was working.
“Yeah, here you go, Buddy Argent. Bed thirty-seven.”
Beau looked at me. I looked at Beau.
“Oh. My. God.” We both stood there, white sticks in our mouths, mirror images of each other. Suck on that.
Purple Eyelids swiveled her chair around and produced a long chain from her pocket. One end of the chain was tied to her belt; there were keys on the other. She found the right one to unlock her little booth. She didn’t even say thanks for the candy, just shoved it inside and locked the booth up again.
“Follow me.”
She took us through these double doors into what looked like a high school gymnasium, littered with metal-framed beds. On the bars at the end of each bed dangled collections of cherry and vanilla Magic Trees. They didn’t make the place smell any better. It just smelled like cherry-flavored ass crack. Grizzled men in baggy sweats on stained mattresses looked up at us briefly before going back to sleeping, scratching, playing cards, talking with each other, talking to themselves. I saw torn football jerseys, T-shirts, patchwork blankets. One old guy in a Red Sox cap was puking into a blue bag. I looked for the red shirt. I didn’t dare get too excited. I’d been there before, preparing myself the whole way from LA to Las Vegas. I kept hope at bay, pushing it off me like a puppy who just wanted to lick my face.
The beds weren’t numbered, so I don’t know how she knew where bed thirty-seven was, but soon she brought us to it. On the far side, next to a door marked WOMEN’S/FAMILY ROOMS, she came to a stop. A man was lying curled up with his back to us, like a big baby, wrapped in a muddy gray raincoat.
“Hey, number thirty-seven, wake up,” said Purple Eyelids, kicking the metal leg of the bed.
The man turned over and saw her. Then he saw us. It wasn’t Dad. I threw my Dum Dum stick on the floor.
“I’ll give you a couple of minutes,” she said, smiling at Beau and leaving.
The man was wearing a green baseball cap, and he turned it around backward. “Who’re you?” he garbled, still half asleep.
“We’re Buddy Argent’s kids,” said Beau. “And you’re not Buddy Argent.”
I was still slaloming down Mount Disappointment. I knew who the guy was, though. It was Coupon Guy from the day we saw Dad at the Deuce stop. I remembered the gruff voice and the stitched-up eye.
Coupon Guy sat up on his bed. He was fat for a bum. He had a real-assed belly on him. I kicked at the brown paper bag placed down by his bed. There was a stack of those coupon books behind it.
He leaned up on one elbow. “Lookin’ for Buddy, princess?”
“Yeah, what have you done with him?” I said, all annoyed and foot-stampy, like he’d hidden my teddy bear and I wanted it back.
“I ain’t done nuthin’ with him, princess. I was just borrowin’ his name.”
“Why couldn’t you use your own name?” asked Beau.
“'Cause I done that once before in here, and they threw my ass out.”
“Why?”
He tapped his nose as if to say, That’s for me to know. “What do you kids want, anyway?”
“What do you think we want? We want our dad!” I yelled in his face. Beau stepped in and held me back. My hand went to the Eclipse tucked safely in my dress. Beau’s hand went on top of mine to stop me.
“Then I can’t help you. I ain’t him.” He grinned. Across the far side of the room, there was a clanging of metal. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna wash up for dinner.” He started to untie the luggage straps that were holding up his pants. “Unless there was something else …?”
“Do you know where he is?” said Beau. “It’s important….”
“I might,” he said, getting up. He was about two feet taller than us and that gigantic gut deserved its own zip code.
“Forget it, Beau. I don’t want this mooch’s help,” I said, turning to leave.
My brother grabbed my arm, force-whispering, “Paisley, he knows Dad. We can find out where he is, get a message to him. We need this guy. He’s our best bet.”
I shook him off.
Beau looked back to Coupon Guy and attempted a smile. “If you could tell us where he is or how we could reach him, we’d be grateful.”
“How grateful?” He stroked his chin and pulled at the spiky hairs.
Beau shrugged. “I don’t know. What do you want?”
Coupon Guy looked at me with his one good eye. Then he looked back at Beau and scratched his chin. “Oh, I don’t know. Some dead presidents maybe?”
Beau nodded. “We have a little money. We could buy you dinner; you could tell us what you know.”
Coupon thought for a second. Then he tied up his pants again and buttoned his coat. He smelled so strong of so much stuff. Cigarettes, gasoline, cabbage, whiskey, piss. If I’d had a lit match, I would’ve thrown it at him and done everyone else in the place a favor.
“Money, dinner, and I’ll tell you where you can find him.”
Beau nodded. He picked my Dum Dum stick off the floor and put it with his, tossing them into a nearby bucket that served as a trash can. “Cool. What’s your name?”
“Well, my name’s Trenton. Trenton Anthony Ford. And you are?”
“Beau Argent. And this is my sister, Paisley,” he said.
Trenton’s eye zoomed in on me. I could feel my nose twitch up in a sneer. “Well, Paisley and Beau,” he said, picking up his brown paper bag, “buy me dinner, I’ll tell you what I know.”
We went to this yellow diner a little farther up homeless avenue and Beau got the Early Nerd special: a hot pastrami sandwich with Swiss cheese and a chocolate shake. Trenton ordered a double short stack with bacon, eggs, sausage patties, syrup, and whipped butter. I had to sit directly across from his saggy old bunghole, so I just ordered a coffee.
“What’s Dad doing now?” Beau asked. I kept my mouth shut for once as he asked Trenton all the questions. They got along like my grandmother’s house on fire. But my top lip kept doing this little Elvis thing whenever Trenton’s eye caught mine. I sat with my arms folded, leaning against the back of the booth, my stomach churning at his table etiquette.
He had egg hanging from his chin. “We hang out. Shoot the shit.” Every time he said an s word, he sprayed pancake crumbs across the table.
Beau nodded in understanding. He had eaten half his sandwich and pushed the plate over to me as a hint that I should eat something, too. I pushed it back. He hunched over his shake and started popping bubbles on the top. “How’d you end up on the streets, Trenton?”
His brown paper bag was on the floor under the table, out of the way. I wanted to know what was in it.
“Little woman kicked me out. I fooled around and got caught. You know how it is.”
“Did Dad talk about us?”
“Oh yeah. All the time. Talked about you two and your mom. Said you were the most ‘portant things in the world to him. I saw him a couple of days ago.”
“Yeah,” I said, slowly pulling the bag toward me with both feet. “We saw him from the bus. You were giving him shit, and he took off. We couldn’t catch up with him.”
“Do you know where he went?” Beau asked.
Trenton shrugged. “He’s around. Doesn’t come in the shelter. Doesn’t think he deserves to.”
That was so something Dad would say. He’d much rather live out in the open and sleep on park benches than admit he was destitute and go to a shelter. I bent forward, feeling around for the bag.
Trenton continued eating his pancakes.
I hadn’t touched Beau’s sandwich or my coffee.
“More coffee?” asked the waitress, appearing with a pot full of it. I looked at my cup and then at her. She just waited.
“I’m good. Thanks!” I said at last. Duh. She had a lot to learn if she thought I was gonna leave a tip for a lukewarm mug of grounds.
I continued with my undercover bag-opening attempts. Trenton was more focused on his plate.
I looked down. The bag was open. I couldn’t see much. Something white. Something silver. Candy wrappers. A beer bottle. A lighter. A roll of quarters. A roll of yellow police tape. Daredevil action figure still in the packaging. Something silver.
He was still talking to Beau. “… shit outta luck,” I heard him say. “No one’s gonna hire an ex-con with no fixed address, are they?”
I reached down into the bag. Tentatively at first, and then I had my fingers on it. I pulled it up, like a little crane pulling up a wreck from the ocean floor.
It was my mom’s necklace.
I would know it in a mountain of jewelry. I used to play with it when she was unconscious. I remembered not being able to open the clasp. I held it tight in my fist.
I pushed the bag back slowly across the floor.
“… my bet is he’s still hanging around Caesars trying to get work.”
I flashed back to last week. Coupon Guy and Dad arguing at the bus stop. He’d robbed him. He’d robbed my dad. That’s why Dad wasn’t coming back to the Jumbotron. Trenton had told him to stay away from his turf.
I leaned forward, my eyes so sore it felt like they were being scored by a steak knife. “Did he talk about our mom?” I interrupted.
“Yeah,” he said. “Just how much he missed her and still wanted her back.”
“He seen her recently?” I said.
Beau looked at me. Trenton shook his head, slurping up a dangling, chewed lump of sausage. “He wanted to get back in touch with her, though. Thought they could give it another shot. For you two …”
I dipped my head and thought. I came back up. “Did he say why he left us?”
Trenton shoveled another heaped fork into his face, probably to buy him enough time to think up another lie. Then he just said, “Sometimes dads just leave …”
I smiled, though I felt tears finally falling from my eyes. I couldn’t hold them in anymore. Everyone has a limit. This was mine. This was definitely mine.
“Kiss me, Trenton,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Kiss me. I like to be kissed when I’m being fucked.”
Trenton looked at me. My bullshit shield was tingling all over. I shot up out of the booth and lunged at him.
“YOU FUCKIN’ LIAR!” I shouted right in his ear, plunging his head down into his butter-soaked pancakes. “You evil … fucking … leech!” And with every syllable I dunked him again. And again. “How d’you like me now, ‘princess'?” I shouted, and each time I pulled his head up, there was more crap stuck to it.
It took every muscle Beau had to pull me off of him, then I marched out of there, the heat of the day bombarding my face after the air-conditioned coolness of the diner. I left Beau trying to stem the waitress’s concerns and probably leaving twice what our bill came to. I kept walking, right to the end of the block, taking insanely deep breaths the whole way. The tears kept coming and coming and coming.
I soon heard quick footsteps running up behind me.
“PAISLEY!”
“Fucker!” I shouted. “I should have choked him. BASTARD!” I shouted back up the street. “God, why are people such assholes, huh? Why, Beau? Why do we keep getting dicked at every single turn?”
“All right, calm down. It’s okay …”
I stopped. “He doesn’t know Dad any more than he knows Mom. Didn’t even know Dad was in jail.” I shook my fist. “And he obviously didn’t know the truth about this.”
Beau looked at me, grabbed hold of my hand, then gently pried open each one of my fingers and lifted up the necklace. The chain tickled my palm as it went.
“Where did you get this?”
“From his bag. It’s the necklace from Dad’s letter. It’s Mom’s necklace.”
Beau’s eyes were going all soft, and he started leaking tears, too.
“I always thought it opened. I can’t open it. Stupid fingers.” I wiped my cheek.
“Uh … I think you gotta slide it,” he sniffed, fumbling and rubbing the locket until unexpectedly it split open into two, like scissors’ blades. Two little sections. A little child’s face in each one: Beau one side; me, the other. Both grinning to show the little gaps in our top teeth.
“That was Dad’s fault.” Beau smiled, his tears trickling down over his lips as he spoke. “Too much candy.”
Another memory flashed into my mind. Of me, tugging and twisting at that tooth and getting all covered in blood and spit. And of Dad, holding my head and reaching in to pinch it straight out with his finger and thumb.
And of the dollar Mom put under my pillow that night.
I leaned over to Beau and put my head against his, and we looked down at the locket in his hands. And we both just cried and cried.
BEAU
EIGHTEEN
ROOM 2, LUCKY INN MOTEL,
THE STRIP,
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA
We went back to our motel. Neither of us wanted to do anything else. Paisley threw up. I didn’t know if it was all the candy we’d been living on or the shock of finding Mom’s necklace. Probably both. I was feeling a little sick myself. Our room looking like the refuse pile from Wonka’s factory wasn’t helping, either.
After I’d passed it back to her, Paisley hadn’t once let go of Mom’s necklace. The chain was coiled around her hand, the pendant gripped tightly in her palm. She came out of the bathroom and we lay on my bed with the bottle of cologne Paisley had picked up at the mall. She swore it smelled like Dad. We sat our stuffed toy owls, Two Wit and Two Woo, between us. We talked into the night about everything. Stuff we didn’t usually like talking about. The times O’Donnell and his gang had kicked the shit out of me at school. This Jason guy at Paisley’s school in Jersey, whom she said meant nothing to her but who I could tell had broken her heart. Well, maybe not her whole heart, but he’d definitely bitten a chunk out of it.
I guess unless you knew Paisley really well, it was hard to tell when she was hurt. She buried stuff kind of deep down and pretended it didn’t matter. But I knew. It could just be a look, a shrug, a fake smile. But I could see it. She talked about her counseling sessions. And I told her what had really been bothering me about the robberies—it was starting to feel like we were little again. Like we were in kindergarten or something. It was just like in that song from the dance machine.
And I wonder
When I sing along with you
If everything could ever feel this real forever
If anything could ever be this good again.
I was beginning to enjoy myself.
I couldn’t hold the gun without shaking, and I couldn’t demand money from store clerks. But just watching my sister, yelling at her to run, us fleeing each scene, pushing past tourists and vaulting over chain-link fences to race back to the motel and eat candy on our beds. Even falling over that damned M&M. I felt part of something exciting again. I felt like I was a kid again.
“You better hope me and this O’Donnell guy at your school never cross paths. Because if we do, I’ll probably kill him.”
“Yeah. And I’ll probably let you.”
We talked about being lost in the woods when we were six.
“I don’t remember much about it,” I said. “Do you?”
Paisley was staring up at the ceiling, chewing on some blueberry gum she’d pocketed from the Mandie’s Candies heist, the chain of the necklace wrapped around her fist. “Bits and pieces. Waking up and just seeing leaves. All these leaves. Trying to find open sunlight. And this really tall tree that I couldn’t see the top of. I remember going to pee behind it, and when I
got back you were crying ’cause you thought I’d gone somewhere without you.”
I laughed. “Yeah. Always the wuss.”
“No. You were a kid. We were both scared.”
“I don’t remember you being scared.”
She looked at me and stopped chewing her gum. “Yeah. You know me. Wouldn’t give a fuck if I had a bag full of ’em.”
I looked at her. She had the oddest twinkle in her eyes.
She looked back up at the ceiling. “I remember finding the Wonder Gummies in my coat pocket. We ate them that second morning. And I remember just walking and walking and my legs aching ’cause we never got anywhere. And just being so tired. But I knew we had to find Dad. And that if we found him, we’d be heroes. We’d find Dad, and he’d save Mom, and everybody would love us.”
“You really thought we’d be heroes?”
She nodded. “The third night I gave up. You had fallen asleep, but I was wide-awake, by myself. I snuggled up to you in this little burrow I’d made out of twigs and stuff, and I just drifted off. We must have kept each other warm.”
“Just like Hansel and Gretel,” I said. “Except now we’re leaving a trail of stickers, not bread crumbs.”
“I guess.”
“I don’t remember being found at all.”
“You were pretty out of it,” she said, levering herself up and hawking her gum toward the little trash can across the room. Amazingly, it went in. She took another piece from the nightstand and began devouring it. “I remember opening my eyes and seeing this giant above me with the longest legs, that stretched up and up into the trees. I thought it was Dad at first. But he said, ‘My name’s Officer Worley. You two are gonna be all right.”
“What happened then?”
“These two women cops got us orange juice that tasted like warm medicine, but it was the best drink I ever had in my life. Then we were put in the ambulance. They were saying all this stuff like, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe we found you,’ and ‘You two are all over the news. Everyone’s so happy you kids are okay.’ I just remember wanting Dad. And him not being there.”