Surreal Estate

by Jesi Lea Ryan

  But then Frank had mentioned Marty. I wondered how much he was into Frank for.

  I dropped the bills back on the pile and wandered out to the kitchen.

  Sasha had scooped all the items from the table into a large trash can dragged in from the garage, and now stood in front of the open refrigerator, chucking its contents.

  “All clear.” I disposed of my small bag into his bin. “You’re right. Everything in that room has to go, including the carpet. I cracked the windows and opened the blinds to help clear the funk. And look what I found. It might be able to be cleaned.”

  I held the spoon out to Sasha. His jaw tensed, and clearly he was struggling to maintain a hold on his anger. He took the spoon from my hand and examined the handle, eyes reddening with unshed tears.

  “This is real silver. My grandfather’s baby spoon. It was one of the few items he was able to bring with him when he moved to the US.” He scrapped his nail along the blackened scoop. “Now my mother is letting people use it to shoot heroin.”

  The spoon dropped from his fingers into the garbage, and Sasha stalked off to the bathroom.

  I wanted to hold him. Comfort him. Something. It was what I’d have done if Sasha had been a woman I was sleeping with. But he wasn’t a woman, and he didn’t seem to want to be vulnerable in front of me. So I didn’t go after him. Instead, I reached into the trash and retrieved the spoon.

  Breathe in. Breathe out. Clear your thoughts. Brace for the pain . . .

  As I’d done every night for the last few weeks, I unclenched my fists and lightly rested my fingertips on the living room carpet where I sat cross-legged. My breath caught with the rush of vibrating energy filling me. My thoughts tumbled like my brain had its spin cycle set on high, and it took a moment for me to feel upright again. Once steady, I imagined a hollow place inside me, big and deep. When the cavern had been established, I reached out to the house and sucked in as much of the hurt and misery as I could, filling the empty space. The energy buzzed through my limbs like my veins were live wires, and I had to resist breaking the connection to scratch my skin off.

  When the hollow was filled with roiling energy, I leaped to my feet on popping knees and rushed out to the dark backyard, where I dropped at the base of the tree. I heaved, emptying my mind along with my guts, sending the poison into the earth. Leaves withered and rained down on my head from the branches above. As my dry heaves stopped and the hollow rang empty, I rolled to a sitting position and buried my head in my hands.

  I was spent, in body and mind. I felt two hundred years old and crumbling apart, and there was nothing to be done about it. I’d made it my mission to heal Zayde’s house before Mom returned. Which as it happened, could be anytime, since after only three days into her rehab stint, she’d checked herself out of the center and disappeared on the back of some guy’s motorcycle. But this was Zayde’s house. The one he’d built with love and care to be a home for his family. I just wasn’t ready to give up on it.

  So, yeah, I had a serious time crunch to deal with. On top of the loan-shark enforced deadline at Nick’s house. If he got his legs broken over that stupid loan because I was too wrapped up in my own shit to help him, I’d never be able to live with myself.

  And that was why I was getting up at dawn every morning to start working on Nick’s house, and then taking the hour-long bus ride to Oak Creek to work here each night. I rarely made it home before midnight, where all I was able to do was take a quick shower and fall onto my bed pallet. The meager sleep I did manage to get was marred with bizarre and scary dreams, the kind that made me feel more tired when I woke than I’d been when I’d gone to sleep. A side effect of freebasing on bad juju for days on end.

  Things with Nick had cooled, but not from a lack of interest, just a lack of time. We worked beside each other every day, but usually Damien, Kelly, or some subcontractor was around and their presence prevented any real conversation. He offered almost every day to go to Oak Creek with me, but I didn’t want an audience for what I was doing. I had a feeling he wouldn’t like my method of healing the house. Maybe I’d let him help once the time came to make the minor repairs. I’d cleaned most of the place up and had even painted several of the rooms, but the plastic-covered window in the kitchen from where the glass had been shot out needed to be replaced, and the back bedroom needed . . . well, a nuclear bomb.

  Ignoring my sore abs, I stood to wipe the prematurely dead leaves from my jeans and made my way back inside. I’d have to book it if I was going to catch the last bus home. I scooped up my hoodie and began turning out lights. The house felt noticeably lighter than it had when I’d started working on it. It wasn’t done yet, but we were getting there. I made a pit stop in the bathroom and was washing my hands when there was a familiar tug on my arm.

  “Christ, not again,” I muttered. A heaviness settled on my left arm, pulling me in the direction of the back bedroom. I’d thought Nick’s sweeping it might’ve helped, but no, it had only gotten worse. The house wanted me to go back there something fierce. I had no intention of spending more time in the room that had been so badly defiled by my mom. The residual sexual energy made me want to tear my hair out. Not to mention that anxious, itchy feeling from all the meth smoked back there.

  The house yanked at my arm again.

  “What?” I asked a little too loudly for someone addressing an inanimate object. “Why do you want me in that room?”

  The only reply was more of the nudging.

  “Fine!” Frustration propelled me back to the room, where I flung open the door and switched on the light.

  Immediately, my vision fogged with conflicting images. On top of the room’s depressing reality, I could see the ghost of how it had been the whole time I grew up. Bed made with an old quilt, a black-and-white TV perched on top of the dresser, Zayde’s work uniform draped over a chair, his work keys on the dresser beside some loose change. If that was the only vision I saw, I’d hang out in this room every day. But it wasn’t. Overlaying everything was a vision of the sickness of the last year. Acrid smoke in the air, ashes ground into the carpet, a used condom discarded next to the bed. The cycling of the competing visions was disorienting. My mouth started to water again, belly began filling with acid. I squeezed my eyes shut to block the images.

  “What is it?” I yelled, “I’m here! What do you want from me?”

  The house tried to pull me farther into the room, but I clutched the doorframe to stay put. My arms tingled with the sensation of crawling bugs, remnants of The Ghosts of Tweakers Past. I released the frame to scratch them away.

  With a deep breath, I opened my eyes. “Show me.”

  The heaviness tugged me, and I gave in, walking past the bed to the far corner where two mail-covered dressers were shoved. The pulling stopped, and I tried to focus through the visions and make sense of what the house was trying to tell me, but my thoughts were bouncing in different directions at once. Miss Grandpa. Gonna puke. Rock bottom. Ant arms. Hate life. Need Nick.

  “What? What do you want me to see?” I shouted.

  My limbs shook, and I lost my balance, hip-checking the dresser hard, sending part of a stack of mail skittering to the floor. The pain of the drawer handle punching my flesh gathered my thoughts back together. I had to get out of here. I spun on my heel and ran for the door.

  It wasn’t until I’d plunked down on the bus stop bench that I noticed the bleeding claw marks on my arms.

  “Watch the woodwork,” I warned the installers as they carried the new cabinets in the front door. I’d gotten an incredible discount on a discontinued style at a manufacturer’s outlet. The dark stain paired with the quartz countertops I’d splurged on would be amazing. Kelly had suggested we echo the same materials in the bathrooms to make the home cohesive. Better listen to her while I had her, because once she graduated, I wouldn’t be able to afford her services.

  I followed the cabinet guys to the kitchen. The new floor had gone in a couple of days before, and I prayed no one w
ould drop a hammer or something and break a tile.

  “Starting to look like a real kitchen,” said Damien, from behind me.

  “Hey, man. Yeah, it’s shaping up.”

  “You just get here?”

  I nodded. “Finished up a big deck for that house out by the zoo this morning. The one with the sunken hot tub in it. It’s so cool. Here, I have some pics.” I handed Damey my phone so he could scroll through. “Once the landscapers are done doing their thing, this will be the best yard in the neighborhood.”

  “Did you do that brickwork on the barbeque yourself?”

  “Yeah. And Jeff did the mosaic tile countertop. Speaking of Jeff, he’s starting the tile in the bathrooms here this afternoon. Should be around any minute. Can you believe how quick this is going? At this rate, Steven might be able to put it on the market early next month. Part of me is going to hate to see it go, but the sooner it sells the better.”

  The whirring of the installers’ drills roared to life. Damien motioned for me to follow him to the living room, where he leaned on the newly exposed and tuck-pointed brick wall in front of the half-finished fireplace. It was still noisy from where Sasha must be running the floor sander upstairs. I hadn’t seen him yet, but as always, I was painfully aware of his presence.

  “What’s Sasha going to do when this place sells? He have a place lined up yet?”

  I ran my hand along my shorn scalp, not even wanting to think about the question. After our night together, I had half a mind to invite Sasha to move in with me. I knew it was stupid fast, and I didn’t have a lot of room in my garage loft, but then Sasha didn’t have much in the way of belongings. Waking up with him in my arms that morning had been the closest to perfect I’d ever felt. For weeks, every time we’d been in the same room, my heart would speed up and I’d get all nervous and twitchy, consumed with the desire to wrap him in my arms. When he wasn’t around, all I did was obsess over him like a teenager with his first crush. It was surprising I hadn’t resorted to writing his name surrounded by hearts all over my notepad. I’d been heading fast into the L-word territory, but then the shit had happened with his mom, and he’d gone all distant on me.

  And then there was the other reason I couldn’t ask him to move in with me. If I didn’t get out from under Frank Diamond, I might end up sleeping in the shelter with him.

  The whir of the sander signaled a change of direction above us. “Don’t know. I haven’t asked him lately.”

  My brother looked at me like I was the stupidest human being he’d ever met. “What do you mean you haven’t asked him? Too busy acting like horny teenagers to have a decent conversation?” The expression on my face must have given my disappointment away, because he stood up straight. “What’s wrong? You do something to piss him off?”

  “Of course not. He’s just been busy lately with work at his grandfather’s house. We haven’t spent any time together.”

  “How come you don’t help him?”

  “Doesn’t want my help. Trust me. I’ve offered.”

  To be honest, it pissed me off that Sasha was going to his grandfather’s house every night and not letting me give him a hand. I was a contractor for fuck’s sake! I worked on houses for a living. But he didn’t want me around, and made half-ass excuses about having to do it himself.

  And then there was the other issue. I’d thought Sasha had had as good of a time that night as I had, but he hadn’t touched me since. The few times I’d managed to get him alone and steal some kisses, he’d felt distant, like his mind was a million miles away. Whether it was because he was too exhausted from the hours he was putting into both places, or if he wasn’t into it because of me, I didn’t know. I’d never had any complaints from the women I’d been with, but what if I was supposed to be different with guys? Kiss them differently or something? Hell, I didn’t know. And no matter how cool Steven was, there was no way I could ask him about it. Was this Sasha freezing me out? I sure as shit hoped not.

  “You can’t just sell the house out from under him and send him back to a park bench. Have you asked Steven for any apartment leads?”

  “He said he’d keep an eye out, but the places in Sasha’s price range probably won’t open up until the end of the summer when the student leases become available. Look, Sasha’s not going to sleep in a park. We’ll figure it out.”

  I ducked my gaze to avoid Damien’s stare. Clearly, he wanted to ask more about Sasha and me, but unlike Steven, Damey knew when to back off.

  “Fine. Well, let me know if you need any help. I actually came over here to talk to Sasha. The band I had lined up for tonight at the bar broke up over some love-triangle drama, so I’m suddenly without music. Think Sasha would be interested in picking up a few bucks playing?”

  “You can ask him. He’s upstairs.”

  I followed Damien up the steps, inspecting the newly sanded floors in the bedrooms as I went. No gouges, good. We’d have to take a hand sander to the edges, but the hardwood was cleaning up beautifully.

  We found Sasha in the master bedroom. When he spotted us, he raised a finger for us to wait while he finished up the last couple of passes with the industrial sander I’d rented for the job. I took advantage of his distraction to watch him walk behind the big machine, his worn jeans riding his hips just right. He wore a mask over his face to keep from breathing the wood dust. A couple of those unruly curls had escaped from the knot at the back of his head and bobbed around his ears happily. I wanted to touch his hair, touch him. A mental snapshot of him naked and straddling me flashed through my mind, as it had fifty times a day for the past several weeks. I wanted him that way again. Soon. Whatever the problem was between us, I needed to get it fixed ASAP.

  Damien smacked me on the chest. He looked at me knowingly and motioned for me to wipe the drool from my mouth. I flipped him off.

  Sasha reached the end of the room and turned off the machine. He yanked the mask down around his neck. “Coming up to inspect my work, boss? What do you think?”

  “I couldn’t’ve done any better,” I replied. “Once the bathroom cabinets and fixtures are in, we can get the floors stained and sealed.”

  Sasha retrieved a water bottle from the windowsill and took a long pull. His Adam’s apple bobbed and the skin was flushed from exertion. My pulse thumped and I remembered how I’d kissed and sucked that skin. I wondered if he’d let me make a video of him swallowing sometime.

  “So,” Damien said, “I was telling Nick that the band I lined up for tonight canceled on me. You interested in filling in?”

  Sasha’s eyes flicked to me with a spark of excitement before it slowly faded. “I don’t know. I’d love to, really, but I have so much work to do down at my grandfather’s house before my mom shows back up.”

  “Work that Nick can help you with if you just stop being stubborn and let him. The big dope is itching to pay you back for all you’ve done around here. Do us all a favor and give him a chance to show his appreciation.”

  Leave it to my brother to say what I couldn’t. I cuffed him on the arm for his trouble.

  Sasha glanced to me again, this time with hesitation in his eyes. “Okay. I guess that would be fine.”

  “What do you say? Fifty bucks plus whatever you manage in tips? Weeknights don’t pull in a huge crowd, but once the bowling league gets done at Ten Pin Alley, things usually pick up for an hour or two.”

  “Uh, sure. Okay. I’ll be there at seven.”

  “Come early, and I’ll feed you.” Damien headed for the door with a wave.

  Sasha and I stood there listening to Damey’s clomping steps fade away, not exactly meeting each other’s eyes. How had things gotten so uncomfortable between us?

  “You really going to let me give you a hand at your grandfather’s house? I’m happy to do it, you know.”

  “Yeah. I know. It’s just that it’s sort of my problem.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” I said, taking a tentative step closer. He stiffened slightly, and my chest sq
ueezed at the rejection. “Why don’t you tell me?”

  He lifted the dangling mask from around his neck and tossed it down next to the water bottle on the windowsill. Then he yanked the band out of his hair and reknot it. Classic killing-time moves to keep from having to talk. How had I ended up on the other end of this game?

  I opened my mouth to ask him to level with me, but the marks on his arms derailed my thoughts. “What’s up with your arms?”

  He ran one palm over his forearm as if noticing the long red scratches for the first time. “Oh, these. I scratched myself.”

  I reached to examine the marks more closely. “On what? It looks like you got into a fight with a litter of kittens.”

  “It’s nothing,” he said, drawing his arm out of my grasp.

  I was about to protest, when a clatter sounded behind me. We turned to see Jeff and his crew carrying in boxes of tile for the two upstairs bathrooms.

  “Yo, Nick. How’s it hangin’?”

  “Good. You?”

  Jeff was one of my oldest friends and the best tile guy I knew. A real artist. He slapped me on the back with a meaty paw.

  “Can’t complain, man.”

  Jeff directed the guys to the bathrooms and called out a few orders for them in his booming but friendly voice. There was some confusion over which design was going in the master shower, but I helped to straighten it out.

  Once the guys started mixing up the mortar, Jeff turned back to me. “The house is finally starting to look habitable, thank god. I thought you were nuts buying it. Houses get funny when they’re left vacant too long. Place looked haunted or something.”

  “No ghosts here.” I grinned, wondering if I needed to confirm that with Sasha later. I turned to introduce them, and found the space where Sasha’d been standing empty. Damn it! When had I become the one who got given the slip?