Falling Back to One

by Randy Mason

  Once the shouting match was finally over, Mrs. Galligan went to bed. But Mr. Galligan stayed in the living room, watching some old war movie till three thirty in the morning. And all this time, Micki sat in the dark while Rick slept—a snoring, inanimate lump. It wasn’t until she was sure Mr. Galligan had gone to sleep, too, that she found her way out, walking on tiptoe in stocking feet till she reached the front door.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  A CRESCENT MOON HUNG lazily over the Manhattan skyline. After Rick’s stifling little room, the cool autumn air felt more like winter. Micki zipped her jacket closed, then kept to the shadows while she made her way home through the deserted streets. She slept poorly for a couple of hours, was startled awake by the alarm clock’s harsh cry, then forced herself to throw back the blanket and get out of bed. Eyes half closed, she ate her oatmeal and listened to the radio, staring dully at the saucer Baker used as an ashtray. The tiny plate was littered with cigarette butts. Too many cigarette butts.

  She lost her appetite. Even the coffee was hard to get down.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  BUT WHEN SHE GOT to school, Baker didn’t say a word, and she left the security office with all of the tension flowing out of her in one huge wave. After that, she started to crash, dozing off in almost every class. By the time she checked in at the end of the day, she was wondering if she’d make it home without falling asleep.

  Baker and Warner were by the file cabinets, talking, so she went and dropped her books on Baker’s desk. Not sure if she needed to take them all with her, she was flipping through her assignment pad when Baker walked over and made a point of standing next to her. Much too close. She had to tilt her head back all the way to meet the empty eyes staring down at her.

  “Where were you last night?” he asked.

  Her ears filled with a rush of blood. Then she heard the refrigerator door open and close as Warner, fixing himself a cup of coffee, added some milk. She swallowed hard. “At a friend’s. But I was off the street by curfew.”

  “C’mon, Reilly, you know damn well you’re supposed to be at your apartment.”

  “So now what?”

  “So now I want to know where you were.”

  “I told you, I was at a friend’s.”

  “Male or female?”

  “Male, okay?”

  “So you have a boyfriend.”

  His eyes were laughing at her! “He’s not my boyfriend,” she said heatedly.

  His mouth twisted into a smirk.

  Her hand clenched around the assignment pad.

  “But he’s fucking you, isn’t he?” Baker asked.

  For a split second, her mind went blank. And then she shot back, “So what!”

  “So he fucks you, but you’re not his girlfriend?”

  “He’s got a girlfriend, okay?” But her chest tightened: she shouldn’t have said that.

  “So he takes her out, but fucks you. Have I got that right, now?”

  She relaxed her hand and let go of the book.

  Baker’s voice became quiet. “I hope he pays you good for it.”

  Her fist cut upward, catching him squarely in the solar plexus. Face filled with pain and surprise, he doubled over. She stepped back, fist cocked to punch again, but Warner’s beefy arms wrapped around her.

  Baker grabbed her by the shirt, left hand pulled back to strike. But Warner, lifting her off her feet, quickly pivoted to break Baker’s hold and get her out of the way. Glaring over his shoulder, Warner shook his head violently. Only when Baker appeared to have regained some degree of self-control did Warner swing her back around to face him.

  “One way or another,” Baker said, “I’m going to make you pay for that.”

  “Like I fuckin’ care.”

  Almost in a whisper, he said, “You will.”

  The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Still she forced her eyes to stay locked with his—until his gaze dropped to her torso and remained there. She saw a malicious smile spread across his face. That was when she became aware of the coolness around her midsection. Despite the way Warner held her—arms pinned to her sides—she could, just barely, touch her stomach. She felt skin where her shirt should’ve been. The material, pulled free of her jeans, was now wadded up between Warner’s arms and her chest. Baker was looking at the very scars she’d refused to let him see. Though she knew she couldn’t reach, she tried to cover the skin with her hands.

  Baker laughed. “Very attractive, Reilly. That must be a real turn on for boys …” But his voice trailed off, the smile fading.

  A cold, hard knot in her gut, she watched as he moved toward her. “Stay away from me,” she said.

  He moved closer.

  “Stay away from me, y’fuckin’ prick!” And she kicked at him until Warner’s large hand clamped tightly over her mouth and nose. When she tried to free herself from his bear hug, he lifted her slightly off the ground, so that her kicking feet dangled.

  “You’re just making it worse for yourself,” Warner said, and she became very still. “Do you want to breathe again?” he asked.

  Eyes wide, she nodded while Baker, standing on the side and watching, felt a strange mixture of emotions.

  “Then you’re going to keep your feet on the floor, where they belong, understand?” Warner asked.

  Once more she nodded, and he set her down. He removed his hand, and she gasped for air, ribs straining to expand more fully against the arms that still confined her. Baker, meanwhile, was already leaning down—palms on his thighs to support himself—to examine the scars up close. Micki turned her head away.

  Besides the zipper-like signature of the surgical stitching, there were numerous lines in all different directions, the skin altered to various shades of pigment and levels of thickness. When her file had alluded to “some miscellaneous scars” on her abdomen, he hadn’t imagined anything like this. He lightly ran his fingers over the damaged skin. Her body recoiled.

  Looking up, he asked, “What’s all this from?”

  She glared at him.

  “I asked you something.”

  “It’s none a y’fuckin’ business.”

  The hand that had touched her gently just a moment before, now slammed across her face as if moving of its own volition. The room was spinning inside her head. But Warner, still holding her, jerked her back several steps, beyond Baker’s reach.

  “Are you crazy?” Warner shouted while he struggled to contain Micki. “Do you really think I’m going to participate in this?”

  Baker raised his hands halfway, showing his palms. “I’m not going to hit her again, okay?”

  “No! No! It’s not okay! This is over.”

  The cop’s voice boomed inside the small office: “YOU CAN’T SEE WHAT I’M LOOKING AT. I NEED TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO HER, AND SHE’S THE ONLY ONE WHO CAN TELL ME.”

  There was a lengthy silence, and no one moved; even Micki had stopped struggling. And the psych grad student recognized something the cop, who was highly defended, was completely unable to see—about himself. Arms still wrapped around Micki, voice low, Warner said, “You don’t touch her again while I’m holding her; is that understood?”

  Baker nodded.

  “I mean it, Jim.”

  “I swear to you I won’t hit her again, all right?” And then he lowered his gaze to meet hers. “I want to know what those are from,” he repeated.

  “Well I don’t wanna tell ya.”

  “Then we’ll all just wait here till you change your mind.”

  The knot on her cheekbone was swelling; she thought she could feel it changing color, becoming an angry purple-red. For the whole world to see. She wanted everything to just be over already. She wanted to go home. “Stitches,” she said. “Stitches from when they sewed my gut back together.”

&n
bsp; “I want to know what the rest are from.”

  She looked past him to the window, to the grey sky above the houses across the street. She loved grey skies. Still staring out the window, she said, “Knife cuts.”

  “You’ll have to do better than that.”

  Micki watched as a well-dressed woman walked down the steps in front of her house. She was holding the hand of a little girl, who was fussing and tugging at the chin strap of her little straw hat. Stopping, the woman leaned over and slapped the child, who proceeded to wail while her mother dragged her the rest of the way to the car.

  Micki said, “This guy, Nick, ‘the Knife’—that was his street name—he cut me up.”

  “And why was that?”

  When she looked back, Baker’s eyes didn’t seem quite so cold anymore. “I wouldn’t tell him where Tim was. Tim was this guy who—who—”

  “I know who he was. What did the other guy want with him?”

  “He wanted t’ waste him, said Tim had given him up t’the cops. The Knife had just finished doin’ time for sellin’ smack.”

  “But eventually you told him what he wanted, didn’t you.”

  “No! No, I never told him nothin’. Nothin’.”

  “Didn’t he kill Tim?”

  “Yeah, but not ’cause I told him anything.”

  “Didn’t you tell the ADA that that guy Speed attacked you because Tim’s death was your fault?”

  “It’s not the way y’think.”

  “So tell me, then.” And Baker folded his arms over his chest.

  Warner, still restraining her, shifted his weight slightly.

  Staring at the clock, she wondered if the three of them would really stay there all night. It felt like the room itself was holding its breath. She said, “The day before it all went down, Tim found out that the Knife had been released and was lookin’ for him. That’s why Tim went hidin’ at his girlfriend’s cousin’s place in Brooklyn.”

  “So you knew where he was,” Baker interrupted.

  Her eyes flashed. “Yeah, I knew where he was!”

  “Go on.”

  “If Tim had just left with Mary and gone t’Philly the way they’d planned, he woulda been safe. But he hung around t’come back and get me first. And then … well, that’s when …” She looked away.

  “Why didn’t the Knife just finish you off?”

  Her eyes whipped back to Baker’s. “That certainly woulda made you happy.”

  “Just give me an answer and keep the smartass comments to yourself.”

  She shrugged—an almost imperceptible gesture given Warner’s hold on her. “He probably figured I was gonna die anyway. I—um—I passed out when he started cuttin’ near my eye.” Her face reddened, but she continued, “I probably woulda died, too, only Willy, this other frienda Tim’s, found me and took care a me—cleaned the cuts and bandaged me up. A frienda his stole some meds and stuff from the hospital where he worked. But everything got infected anyway, and I got real sick.”

  Baker unfolded his arms. “Why didn’t you just tell the Knife where Tim was?”

  She gaped at him. “I owed Tim—big time.”

  “Were you sleeping with him?”

  “No! I told ya: he had a girlfriend.”

  “That doesn’t seem to be stopping you now.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Yeah, well … that was different.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “Hey! Tim was like a big brother t’me. He said I reminded him of his little sister, said I even looked like she useta.”

  Baker chuckled softly.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You believed that?”

  “Yeah, why not?”

  “Tim Reilly—that was his name, right?”

  “So?”

  “So he most likely had fair skin, red or blonde hair, blue or green eyes—am I right?”

  “Yeaaaaaaah …” She drew the single word out to the length of a sentence. “So what?”

  “So, in case you haven’t noticed, you don’t look anything like that.”

  “His mom was Italian,” Micki replied hotly, “and Tina looked like her.”

  The smug smile disappeared. “So what happened to her?”

  “Who?”

  “The sister.”

  “She died.”

  “I gathered that, but from what?”

  Micki was aware of the breath going in and out of her lungs. “A john killed her.”

  So Tim’s little sister had been a prostitute. And though Micki hadn’t said it, Baker was pretty sure Tina had been a drug user, too; the two almost always went together. His eyes lost focus as something clicked into place. Almost as an afterthought, he said to Warner, “Let me see her back.”

  Micki tried to glue her feet to the ground, but Warner, rather easily, turned her around, her unbruised cheek now pressed against the warm, solid wall of his chest. This was the closest she’d ever gotten to being hugged.

  Baker squatted down to get a better view.

  Micki felt her vest being moved, and then her T-shirt being lifted. Closing her eyes, she concentrated on the thumping of Warner’s heart.

  But one look at her back, and Baker turned his head away.

  Warner’s mouth fell open.

  When Baker finally spoke, his voice was thick and low. “Did all this happen at Heyden?”

  “Yessir.”

  “You got yourself into a lot of trouble there, didn’t you.”

  “Yessir.”

  “What did they use on you?”

  “A leather strap.”

  Baker took a deep breath. “What were the cigarette burns for?”

  She listened to Warner’s heart.

  “You must’ve done something special for those,” he pressed.

  The only sound in the room was the tiny refrigerator’s compressor kicking on.

  Baker straightened up, aware of the ache in his knees and lower back. “Turn her around,” he said to Warner, then addressed her again. “I asked you something, Reilly, and I expect an answer.”

  “Well, I don’t care, okay? I don’t care if we stay here the whole fuckin’ night. I’m not tellin’.”

  “Oh, really!” And with Micki’s eyes tracking his every move, he went over to his desk and picked up his cigarettes. Looking at her steadily, he lit one and waved out the match. She started struggling against Warner, a panicked, desperate look on her face. Baker followed her gaze to the cigarette in his hand. Christ! He quickly stubbed it out, and she immediately stopped writhing. But her body remained taut, eyes flicking back and forth between his.

  “Do you really think I’d do that to you?” he asked heatedly.

  “I dunno, y’hate me enough!”

  With a shake of his head, he looked away. “Jesus, Micki.” His eyes snapped back to see her stunned expression. “Shit!” And he walked over to the window, telling Warner to let her go.

  She hastily tucked her shirt back into her jeans, then retrieved her jacket from the coat tree, putting it on like another layer of armor.

  Silence settled over the room.

  Baker turned around. “I’ve come to a decision.”

  Shoving her hands in her pockets, she shifted her weight, meeting his eyes only briefly before staring past him, waiting for those dreaded words.

  “I’ve decided,” he said, “that your social life is your business. If you want to fuck around, go ahead. Just make sure that when that curfew hour hits, you’re in your apartment. I don’t care if someone else is there. Understand?”

  Her eyes grew wide. “Yessir.”

  “And you should thank Mr. Warner, here, for saving your ass. If you ever hit me again, you won’t be so lucky.”

 
“Yessir.”

  “So what’s this guy’s name?”

  “Rick.”

  “Rick what?”

  Distrust welled up in her eyes. “Galligan.”

  “Are there any others?”

  “Others?”

  “I don’t care if there are others; I just need to know who they are.”

  “There’s nobody else. Nobody else—” But she stopped and, after a pause, said simply, “Nobody else, just him.”

  “Does this Galligan guy have a record?”

  She shrugged and glanced away.

  No one said anything.

  Baker thought she suddenly looked very small. His voice almost gentle, he said, “You’d better get going, or you’ll be late for work.” And he actually picked up her schoolbooks and handed them to her. But he didn’t let go. For some strange reason, he wanted to tell her that he understood, wanted to tell her—while her eyes were locked with his—that she didn’t have to settle for having sex with some lowlife scumbag, which he had no doubt Rick was. Instead, the words that came out of his mouth were, “Just do me a favor, and don’t get yourself knocked up.”

  Roughly tugging the books out of his hands, she said, “Don’t worry,” and stalked out.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  BAKER SAT DOWN, LIT another cigarette, and closed his eyes.

  “I’m guessing those scars looked pretty bad,” Warner said.

  Eyes still closed, Baker responded, “Yeah. They’re pretty bad.”

  Warner moved till he was standing in front of Baker. “It’s tough being a hard-ass all the time, isn’t it.”

  Baker looked up.

  “Truth is,” Warner continued, “I think it’s good you finally called Micki by her first name.”

  “Really? Because I don’t; that’s going to cost me.”

  “How? If things were a little more relaxed between the two of you, all of this would probably go a hell of a lot easier.”

  “I’d rather keep the distance.”

  “For what? Right now she believes you’re capable of burning her with a cigarette. Is that the kind of relationship you want with her?”

  “I don’t want any kind of relationship with her.”