Little Threats

by Emily Schultz

  He glanced over, once or twice. During a lull in his conversation with friends he walked to her end of the bar. “Can I buy you a drink? You look like you need one.”

  “Yes, I do,” she said. She didn’t wait for him to introduce himself. She remembered the singing of the glass as the bartender took it down from the shelf. One. She’d allow herself that. Gin, lime, tonic. She clinked against his beer. She put her lips on the rim and swallowed.

  “You should know, this drink’s extra forbidden for me,” Carter said, and when he asked why that was, she set her glass down, already half-empty. “It’s been two years, but I think it’s going to be worth it.”

  He smiled and spread his hand over the glass to pull it away. He reached over the bar and dumped it down the sink. “I wouldn’t be a gentleman if I was the one responsible for that.”

  Carter looked at him. The man was younger than her. She felt foolish.

  “Some people in my family are in the program,” he said.

  “You’re right. I should probably go.” She glanced over at the table where she had left Alex. He was still sitting with his back to her. He was staring into his iPhone. He hadn’t even noticed how long she’d been gone.

  “You didn’t do nothing wrong, Carter.”

  He knew her name, but she hadn’t said it. Carter’s body sank away from his. She nodded, began to turn, and accepted it was her yearly public shaming as a Wynn. He placed a hand on her shoulder. Carter paused and he said, “I knew who you were when I came over. And you know who I am. No reason to let that ruin a good talk though.”

  She looked again. She hadn’t seen him in years. He had gone from being a child, four feet tall and shrill voiced, to a man: handsome, tall, well built, leaning on the bar.

  Carter finally saw Haley’s green eyes, although she realized a part of her had sensed his familiarity, the same way she knew what Kennedy was thinking before she said it. It wasn’t a psychic connection, as people liked to think, so much as the patterns of human thought, behavior. There were things you could feel in a person, not unlike when you stepped outside and could tell it would turn colder, or rain, by feeling the moisture in the air or looking at the sky.

  Everett leaned in. How gently he grazed her lips with his, both their eyes open, like he was asking permission. He put his hand on her jaw but didn’t deepen it, just held Carter there, their two breaths meeting. She was the one who grabbed him and put her tongue in his mouth as if she’d been waiting for this. They kissed for about a minute and then he pulled away.

  “How’s that for forbidden?” he asked.

  Chapter 18

  Gerry drove downtown because he liked the old cobblestone streets of Shockoe Bottom. Sometimes he went to see a movie or a show. Sometimes he had lunch, or a beer. He would pressure old colleagues to meet; a few times, he’d managed to convince his decorator, Laura, though he knew she only humored him in the hope of future business—anyone he could use as an excuse to go there.

  Today he and Kennedy went to the Civil War Museum. She hadn’t wanted to come—she was to start her first shift that night at the call center. But he’d convinced her she had time. He paid for them, as if she were still a child. Then she walked off and didn’t stay near him. So what? He could stand in the cool, dark silence, spend an hour staring at the worn and wrinkled boots of dead soldiers, their feet almost child sized, some of the shoes no bigger than his hand; they’d only been boys. How had they died? Their boots were still black with polish, and their kraft-brown uniforms were ripped where they must have been penetrated by bullet or bayonet, the chests of the mannequins only ten or twelve inches across.

  No one knew him here, and even though he’d lived in the city or just outside it for thirty years, he would never run into anyone he knew. Only tourists, with their chattering, their surprised hush as they came to exhibits they didn’t expect. Gerry and Laine had moved to the South from Cleveland and never quite understood this place’s obsession with saying there were two sides to the story, with reliving the battles.

  He’d watched the reenactments in the park when he was younger, but the girls were never interested. Even Carter, though she had excelled at history, had been happier to go to the tours that included shops or candle dipping, or old-fashioned homemade ice cream. War seemed less important than silk ribbons or basket weaving. This was the life of a father of girls, he told himself. And now, fifty-seven and alone, he had no one to please. He could read every plaque, stand before pictures of Gatling guns and warships, linger as he liked. He supposed Kennedy would come find him when she was ready.

  He dawdled in front of a display of revolvers, looking at their rounded wood handles. These had killed people. Here was one: a weapon that was both pistol and blade—a smooth, frightening transition to a thick, flat knife similar to the kind a hunter would use. Could it be considered a bowie knife? Gerry wondered. Gerry stared at it until he could imagine the blood on it, and a shiver ran through his whole body. He seldom thought about violence.

  Kennedy found him. “They’re rewriting history,” she said sheepishly, her smile pale.

  He’d noticed she never wore makeup now even though Carter had bought it for her and stocked the bathroom. When she was young her lips had always been painted, from thirteen on. He still thought she was beautiful, in a way, but prison had taken the girl out of her. Now she was beautiful like a statue was. He felt a pang of regret, as he often did, for who she might have become.

  “They’re not mourning lives. They’re mourning a way of life built around slavery,” she insisted.

  “Yeah, well, the boots got to me,” Gerry said. “Can we agree on the boots?”

  After, they emerged into the afternoon, and Gerry stood for a minute, letting his eyes adjust to the daylight. It was overcast but seemed bright, comparatively, after being indoors. He clipped a pair of shades onto his glasses and said, “Let’s walk a bit. A lot has changed. I’ll show you.” As they hiked up cobblestone streets, he said there was no point in living somewhere this physically beautiful if you didn’t get out to see it.

  But physical beauty perplexed him more and more with each day. Filling out his green polo sweater, he panted. Looking down, he thought his gut had become more rotund. That must have been why his heart raced. Why he sweated from the hairline, from his armpits beneath the London Fog jacket that Carter had dutifully given him last Christmas. He could smell himself, even in the cool November air, and still he strode forward.

  The condo tower was located between expressways and along the river. You couldn’t get there by accident. At the same time, you couldn’t ignore it. It was taller than the other buildings and its surface shone, all glass and steel. It was like an ostentatious gem on the finger of a recently engaged woman.

  “You see this? Only been here a few years,” he said, pointing. He stopped and Kennedy did too. She didn’t look very interested as she glanced up at the condo tower. It was just a condo tower to her. “I own one of these units.”

  “You do?” Kennedy looked confused. She stared up at the building and he could see her puzzling over why her father would have a second place.

  He grinned lopsidedly. “Sure. That Kimberson lives there.”

  Gerry didn’t know which unit belonged to Kimberson. Half the time he couldn’t remember the boy’s first name. What he saw when he looked at the building was money, his money, and lost opportunity. When he looked up at it—it was almost indigo the way it mirrored the sky—he experienced a pain like running one’s finger over a violent bruise.

  He’d meant it as a joke but there was an edge in Kennedy’s voice when she said, “Why do you know that?” She was already turning around to go back the way they’d come.

  Since Kennedy had come home, he’d remembered more of that time—the way he would enter the kitchen slowly on those long-ago mornings and breathe easier when he saw Carter or Kennedy, not Laine, standing at the kitchen co
unter. His gaze had always flitted to their hair before he spoke, uncertain even after years beside them which daughter was in front of him. It didn’t matter because he hadn’t known what to say to either of them. Kennedy would rail about current events in an insubstantial and idealistic way, and he didn’t have the strength to disagree, knowing it usually led to his being called a planet killer, a racist, or the patriarchy itself. He’d felt distant and unmoored and ultimately useless that year.

  It had only been a few weeks now, but each day felt extraordinarily long and the hours between them filled with small talk and silence. He hadn’t realized how silent prison would make Kennedy—sometimes he thought it was her manner, other times that she had nothing to say quite simply because life had not begun for her yet. He was intensely proud of her, the way she’d held up through the years, but he couldn’t express it—and he could see she didn’t want him to. The girl held herself with reserve. She’d always been harder than Carter, more likely to put her emotions into a physical outlet, like running, which she had started to do every day. Meanwhile, he knew he had a tendency to ramble, but even he couldn’t fill up every meal.

  Gerry didn’t follow her. Kennedy walked along the canal and sat down on a bench, peering at the water as if there might be fish. It was a perfectly reasonable place to bring his daughter for a walk. She could see that; that was why she’d sat down. He put his hands in his pockets. He tried whistling but it only made him self-conscious. A woman with a little girl passed him. They looked at him like he was a kind old man. The wife had an expression of gentle pity. Women looked at him like this more and more now, he’d noticed. It was the stupid raincoat, he was sure. The comfort shoes. When he’d had his own law firm, he’d had the best business suits, and women were helpless then. They’d practically swooned before him. Flirting at work had been as common then as turning on a light switch.

  Perhaps he and Laine should have separated in the early eighties, when many of their generation started to split up, when they would have still been young enough to go on. It was just a marriage that had become like a long sigh. In the aftermath, it was easy to forget that they were faithful to each other for sixteen or more years. It was only that spring they both began to wake up infuriated, the first breath of morning sucked in with ire. If it hadn’t been for the cancer, there would have been a divorce. But she’d spared him the mess and the money and died instead. He had mourned her, in his way. Certainly he had missed her over the years.

  Gerry glanced at Kennedy and saw she’d taken out a cigarette and was smoking, one hand dangling between her knees. Although she was only five foot four, she sat like a basketball player on the bench. Her moods worried him constantly, even if he pasted on a smile. Carter tolerated him but would never forgive him. After the separation she’d gone to live with Laine in an apartment for a few months—as if they could afford to rent another place on top of everything else—had heard all the stories of the marital discord over tea late at night in what he imagined must have been a tiny, dark kitchen. All the while, Laine growing frail, her eyes yellowing and her hands iridescent as a spider’s web. There was no way Carter could see Gerry as sympathetic after that. He knew that. She had become Laine’s, and Kennedy was his, even if she rebelled against the fact. That was why he had to focus on Kennedy, keep himself in her favor.

  He stared up at the glassy building.

  “We had something once, I’m sure of it,” he said aloud, knowing she heard even if she didn’t respond. “Now Kimberson has it—he and his mother. That poor woman, listening to every ambulance chaser.”

  Gerry had hired the best appellate lawyers. He’d never given up the fight for Kennedy. He put a private investigator on that monster Berkeley Butler every couple of years to see if he messed up. A part of him felt for the Kimbersons. He did. They’d lost a daughter but they’d also been seduced. A poor family looking for money, seizing upon it, as if the crime weren’t already being paid for in years, as if their ship had finally come in. It wasn’t even about money; it was about pride, or the lack of it.

  Gerry turned and walked back to Kennedy. He could see by her face she had heard him. She gave him an owlish glare and he was surprised to realize she’d thinned and become more muscular even in the short period of time she’d been home. She stood and they began walking back toward the car.

  “You don’t have to be angry with them on my behalf, Dad.”

  “Sure, sure,” he acknowledged. “When did you start smoking?” He attempted a tone of light concern rather than badgering dad.

  “I try not to,” she said, crushing the cigarette butt between her fingers and putting the stub in her coat pocket. The move confused Gerry until he remembered. His beautiful girl had spent her youth in prison.

  Gerry drove around several blocks, pointing out other landmarks to Kennedy as though she were a tourist, then wound down by the condo again. He couldn’t help himself; a part of him wasn’t done. He felt his heart speed up again, erratically, he might have said, but perhaps that was just his driving as he braked for speed bumps. He knew Kimberson’s Mustang was usually parked in spot C7. But as he approached he saw today a different vehicle, similar to Carter’s. A blue Honda Fit, backed into the spot facing outward. He was already past it by the time he thought to slow.

  “I don’t think you can go this way, Dad. It’s a dead end,” Kennedy said.

  “Goddamn.” And goddamn Kimberson, probably running out and buying it to try to look like us, he told himself as he pulled into a tight parking space to use for turning around. These Longwood people. If they don’t know what taste is, they watch someone else, then mimic.

  Gerry backed out again and drove through the lot. As he approached the Fit he let his own vehicle come to a crawl. There, in a green rectangle of sticker on the front bumper: 100% Vegetarian.

  He stopped and let his car idle in front of Carter’s. She wasn’t in it. He looked up through his windshield at the building. It was a Monday at one o’clock, a time she ought to have been at work. It was a large building. Perhaps she had another friend who lived here. After all, she and Alex used to live close enough to there, and her apartment now wasn’t that far away; it wasn’t unreasonable to think she might. Another car pulled up behind him and honked. Gerry accelerated out of the lot. No, he realized, she was in C7, Kimberson’s spot. It was no coincidence.

  He felt the hair rise on his neck. The business card he’d mined from that blazer pocket at Carter’s—it was Kimberson’s.

  He glanced over at Kennedy but her face was blank. After they’d left the downtown and gotten onto the expressway Gerry finally spoke, almost to himself: “She wouldn’t lie to me. Not about this.”

  “About what?” Kennedy asked.

  “Nothing.” He accelerated.

  Chapter 19

  Grab any free desk,” Kennedy’s supervisor told her, gesturing to the row of cubicles where her coworkers sat, side by side and back-to-back, wearing headsets. The small room hummed with voices reciting scripts, the dull rhythm of the words like the throb of an ocean.

  Kennedy thanked him and walked down the row. She started to sit down between a black woman in a tight blouse and a white guy in glasses.

  She felt a tug on her jacket and turned.

  “Sit there if you like, but I should tell ya that Giselle likes that spot empty and Jon there’s a registered sex offender.”

  Kennedy looked at the sex offender, who stared at her without any emotion, as if he hadn’t heard what had been said about him, though clearly he had.

  The dark-haired guy who’d tugged her coat nodded to a free seat beside himself. “I’ll give you no problem—if you don’t own an ABC store or a Butler’s we should be all right. I’m Nathan Doyle.”

  Kennedy decided to sit down at the offered carrel beside him, and he stuck out a hand to shake.

  Kennedy looked at the large knuckles. His hoodie sleeves were pushed up and there
was a Calvin and Hobbes tattoo on his forearm. Judging by his age, he couldn’t have had it more than ten years, though the ink had settled into his skin as if it had been birthed there, not placed there. He had the kind of carved musculature one only got from working out for hours on the yard, but his clothes were oversized, as if he didn’t care enough to show it off. His dark hair was shaggy and he looked like he hadn’t shaved that week. Below thick eyebrows, his brown eyes were unblinking. In a breath, she got the impression he’d looked at every awful thing life could throw at him and found it as tame as a kitten.

  “Got a name?” Nathan asked. He shook the hood back onto his shoulders.

  Kennedy smiled. She put her phone script in front of her and turned on her computer. She didn’t want to let Nathan know he’d made her speechless just by looking at her. The last time a man had looked at her that way she hadn’t even been of age. Now that she was, she could see how dangerous it could be, what it could lead to. As the screen flickered to life, he made a call.

  “Hello, I’m phoning today to ask if y’all might be interested in donating to the policeman’s ball? Yes, ma’am, I understand, but just so you know: your gift directly supports the families of law enforcement officers who have made the ultimate sacrifice.” Nathan leaned back in the chair as he spoke, keeping his tone warm and low. He winked at Kennedy as he said ultimate sacrifice.

  While he worked the woman on the line toward a donation she clearly didn’t want to give, Kennedy glanced at his black cargo pants beneath the table, a pair of black Nikes.

  “Pop quiz,” she said as he clicked off. “Who was our thirty-fifth president?”

  He tipped his head back, stared at the ceiling. “I don’t know, Roosevelt? Later? Nixon? Don’t really matter when neither of us can vote.”

  She smiled. “Kennedy. That’s me.”