Providence Noir

by Ann Hood

  “Yeah. Something to do with gangs and drugs.” Saying it didn’t make him feel better, but it made perfect sense. He braced himself for her response.

  Laura looked out the kitchen window toward where the car had sat. Cal could see the spot over her shoulder. A black Caprice. Old. Patches of rust on the quarter panels. Wheels long missing their shiny hubcaps. The tires almost bald. Black and menacing. The chugging engine the only sound in the darkness, filling the air with poisonous fumes. A young man dead inside.

  “Do you feel safe?” she asked. She faced him with crossed arms.

  “I haven’t talked to the police. I’ll call the station tomorrow. We’ll figure it out.”

  “We need to move. My parents agree.” She looked exhausted. “Or we can pretend like everything is okay while I expect to find dead bodies every time I open the front door.”

  “Don’t exaggerate, Laura. It’s not a zombie apocalypse.”

  She shook her head and went into her study, shutting the door behind her.

  Her fallback position when threatened was condescension, which sometimes made him feel ignorant, which always made him angry. Speed bumps. They had mostly seen each other at night when they were dating—dinners, movies, just hanging out. Now, they were together every day. He liked some of their new routines. They cooked together, which reminded him of his mom’s dinner schedule with meals assigned to each night of the week. Laura kept a list on the fridge. Sometimes she called him her sous chef, which made him grit his teeth. She used that tone in front of their friends sometimes. Like he was her pet.

  She came out when he called but declined the food. She lay down in the bedroom. He washed the dishes alone, his eyes unwillingly drawn through the window to Liz’s yellow picket fence.

  He didn’t know what was happening. Doubt constricted his chest so that he had difficulty breathing. Laura had changed. She was cold, as if she hated him. He could see the difference in her eyes. He wanted to yell at her and bang his fists on the counter and demand her affection. Was it the dead man or did moving in together change that much? Had she discovered something unforgivable about him? He had plenty to complain about too. Her attitude, number one. She could drop the bullshit superiority any time she chose. He thought of saying that. He thought of pointing his finger in her face and saying it in the ugliest tone he could muster. Then he caught himself, remembering his parents’ fights.

  Lord, they had had some knock-down, drag-outs. They had always patched it up, pretended as if nothing had happened. Cal and his brother would stay in their room, terrified that their parents’ rage would burst through the door—a door with no lock. There was never hitting. His father did not hit, but he tried to make his mother think he would. He had punched a hole in the garage wall once, straight through the sheetrock. His fingers had swollen like hot dogs. He never apologized.

  It must have been the pressure release for their relationship. They had to do that or the whole thing would fall apart. Whatever. His parents were still married, but there were fewer fights. Instead, they sat in separate rooms, waiting for the other to die, as if the survivor would win. What was the point of that? Maybe this whole thing with Laura wasn’t going to work out. Did he love her? A month ago he would have said yes without hesitation. Now, though, this was not fun. He would go to the police station, get some information, and hope that settled the whole thing.

  * * *

  The concrete-and-glass police headquarters sat over the interstate like a fortress before a moat. He entered, aware of the surveillance cameras behind mirrored half-globes. An officer waved him through the metal detector.

  A crowd milled before the information desk, Latino, Asian, black, some down-and-out whites. Cal braced himself and got in line. Two women with great manes of hair stood behind a green glass wall giving terse instructions over a phone. Their voices were nasal, turning down when they asked a question. Was he really doing this for Laura? When he asked his question, the woman glowered at him. “Let me see if the detective is in. Wait over there.” She pointed. Cal obediently hung up the phone and waited in the corner. The line snaked back and forth before him. He had almost walked out three times before the detective confronted him, a red-faced man whose buttons strained against his belly.

  “You the kid asking about the murder? What’s your interest?” The detective was not friendly.

  “The body was right outside my house. My girlfriend is totally freaked out.”

  “What did you expect living there?” Cal didn’t answer. “We got nothing on the case. No suspects, no leads.” There must have been something in Cal’s face. The officer seemed to soften. He scowled with discomfort. “Between us men, this looks like a gang thing. Some territorial issue, dealing drugs, the rest of it. The dead kid was in and out of the ACI. They aren’t after you or your girlfriend, okay? That’s all I got.”

  When Cal came home and told her what the officer had said, Laura locked herself in the bathroom. He heard her crying, but she said she was fine, just taking a bath.

  * * *

  Laura became strident. Her eyes were narrowed and suspicious. She barked at him for little things—the toilet seat, urinating in the shower, leaving socks on the floor. She refused to take care of the chickens so he had to do it, even though they were her idea, and she refused to walk Elmo after dark.

  She avoided him like a bad roommate. She went to class and the library. She stayed in her office with books filled with color plates, frescoes of gaunt faces, and shiny gold haloes. She was mapping the geometry of the Master of Provence, crisscrossing photocopied pages of the Descent from the Cross with thick black lines. Christ, bloody and disfigured, lay gruesomely prone across the arms of gray-faced mourners, Mary and Nicodemus and whoever else. Something to do with perspective and arrangement, connecting points located in folds of cloth and faces to create a pattern of diamonds that revealed some hidden structural mystery. She explained it to him, but she was looking toward the kitchen window. She was talking herself through it. She did not want him to respond.

  The smell of exhaust seemed to linger in the alley. The plants thrived on it. Liz’s garden rose up, green tendrils swallowing the yellow pickets and spilling into the street. When he took Elmo out for his last walk of the night, Cal looked behind him as they rounded the blocks. The streets were usually empty, long stretches of darkness broken by pools of dim light, shadowy and dangerous. Cambodian gangs were a problem, he knew, but there was a Cambodian family down the street. There was a Hmong church across the park. There were black and Latino families along with Italians and Poles who had been in the neighborhood for decades. He and Laura were identified with the new wave of younger people, gentrifiers. In the summer, the park was filled with all sorts of people. Liberian men played soccer in the mornings, screaming over fouls. White urban hipsters played kickball on Saturdays with stereo systems and kegs of Narragansett beer. On summer nights teenagers loitered around the swing sets, lit by intensely bright flood lamps, and they screamed with such intensity that Cal couldn’t tell if they were playing or being raped. There were too many trees casting shadows that were too dark. There were too many beat-up cars with rusted wheels and too many people hanging around, like the Latino men who gathered under the trees on hot days, or the bums near the dog run, drunk on cheap hooch from Tropical Liquors.

  He turned up Parade Street. The park was on his right. A large elm created a black canopy for two silhouettes that Cal could only discern because of the electric glow of one’s cell phone. He thought they looked Hispanic. A third man was straight ahead on the next corner; he looked at Cal, then away. His right hand was shoved deep in his pocket, his other hand on his phone. A man under the tree called to the man on the corner: “What are you doing? Come over here.” The man on the corner looked at Cal, then crossed the street. Was that a gun in his pocket?

  Elmo sniffed the grass along the curb. Cal’s elbows locked. He felt light-headed. He turned stiffly, trying to be casual, to move deliberately. “Come on, Elm
o,” he whispered, tugging at the leash. He resisted the urge to run. His fear embarrassed him. He was angry with himself, but what were his options? Was he going to ask them for their papers? Comment on the weather? Clearly a drug deal. He rushed home. Security lights clicked on in a flash outside the apartment. It jolted him, and he felt foolish again. A knot of anger stuck in his throat. He had forgotten the old woman had put them in. About fucking time.

  Laura was in her office with the door open. She asked how the walk was. His voice rose as he answered, “It was fine, only three dead bodies.” She was moody? No problem. He could be moody too.

  * * *

  He left for the bank early the next day, eager to get away from Laura. The morning was cool, a hint of fall. He looked at where the black car had been and saw a candle and flowers. A tall glass jar with the Virgin of Guadalupe in bright colors on a sticker and a white candle burning inside. Red carnations lay beside it. He knelt and sniffed the candle. The odor was of chemicals. He had expected vanilla or citrus. Behind it was a piece of lined notebook paper, the edges ruffled from where it had been torn from a coiled wire binding. It read in Spanish, We love you and miss you. We will see you in a better place. He folded it and placed it behind the candle, just as it had been. The chickens clucked behind him. Without fail, every time they saw him they groused and scratched, expecting feed.

  The sunlight cast crossways through the trees, hitting him dead in the eyes. The light was intensely yellow, not like the transparent light of midday, but a color that washed everything in a golden haze. The chickens slipped in and out of the shadows, clucking and bobbing their heads. Three Rhode Island Reds and three Plymouth Rocks. When the Plymouth hens stepped into the sunlight, their feathers, checkered bands of black and white, shimmered like silver. The Reds flashed like brass.

  “Beautiful morning.” The gravel voice was unmistakably Liz, but he jumped anyway. She wore lime-green Crocs and a nurse’s shirt covered in red and green jalapeños. Her gray-striped hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  “Hey, Liz. How was the hospital?”

  “Bloody as always, but we all survived.” She noticed the flowers and the candle. “What’s this?”

  “Someone left it overnight. For the dead man.”

  She picked up the note and read it, then folded it up and put it back in its place as he had. “Terrible for the family. We see these kids—mostly kids, sometimes adults—coming in with gunshot wounds or knife wounds. Gang fights. Bad drug deals. Fighting everyone. How are you two holding up?”

  Cal flexed his hand around the shoulder strap of his briefcase. “Doing okay. Laura’s pretty freaked. It’s made things a little rough.”

  She nodded and watched the flame in the votive. “Don’t let it eat away at you. You’re young. Talk to each other. It’s all about communication.”

  “I guess we both want to make sense of it.” He looked at Liz as if she knew the answer.

  She considered him for a second. “What’s to understand? No schooling, no jobs, no opportunities equals violence.” She spoke to him like a teacher. “These kids are so young when they get caught up in the gangs, they don’t realize they have options. Maybe they don’t. The cycle feeds itself. And the rest of us just stand around and watch. Pretend like it doesn’t have anything to do with us.”

  She laughed, showing her teeth, which seemed jagged and carnivorous. Wrinkles folded around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. The breeze moved the gray hair that was loose from her ponytail. The pink sunlight lit it like a red halo. He didn’t like her comment about people standing around and watching. He wasn’t one of those people. She was. Like a witch, glorying in the blood and death.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Crazy place.”

  Liz nodded. “You know you can make a left turn from the right lane in Rhode Island?”

  He told her to have a good one and headed to work in a black mood.

  * * *

  He did not want to do it, but Liz’s words echoed in his head. He had a choice: ask Laura what was going on, or wait for her to do it. The anxiety made him sick. If not for the constant worry, he would probably not do anything. But he had to end the agony. They would discuss this. Anger kept bubbling up in his throat with accusations of what she had done to him. He was preemptively attacking her, he knew. He wanted to be ready if she blamed him for something.

  They sat on the couch facing each other. Her hands were flat on her knees. She did not seem surprised by his request to talk.

  “I know this dead man has shaken you up. It’s upset me a lot too,” he began.

  She looked puzzled.

  “Look,” he continued, “I wasn’t a huge fan of moving to this neighborhood, but we’re here now. Let’s make the best of it. When the lease ends, we’ll move. Wherever you want. The East Side, maybe. Or Barrington.”

  Her hands curled into little balls against her jeans. She looked at them. “That sounds great,” she said.

  Cal was amazed. No accusations or recriminations. No blame game. He smiled. “Great,” he said. He put a hand on one of her balled fists. She relaxed her grip, flattened her hand so that it was rigid against her leg. “I love you, Laura. We can work through this.” He had not meant to use the word love, but it came out. It seemed like the right thing to say. He did mean it. Maybe not right now, but he would mean it if she said it back.

  He put his other hand on her shoulder and leaned in to kiss her. She tilted her head, making herself available to him. Her kiss was tentative. He moved closer, putting an arm around her.

  They had not had sex since the body was discovered. Sex had always been the easy part. The dead man had soured that. But Cal sprang to attention. He led her to the bedroom, removed his shirt and pants. Laura sat at the end of the bed. He took off her top and kissed her breasts, cupping them in his hands.

  “Too hard,” she said. “That hurts.”

  “Sorry.” He moved his hands down her sides to her pants and looked in her eyes. The need galloped inside him. She nodded yes but her eyes were dead. Reluctant. They disturbed him. They said there was something wrong. She did not feel the attraction she used to. She could say everything was okay, but it was not okay.

  He became self-conscious. He lost focus and his erection faded. She gave a light laugh, then fell back on the bed and covered her eyes with her hands. He pulled on his pants and left the room.

  He went to the kitchen and drank cranberry juice out of the bottle. He sat at the television wearing headphones and playing a video game. He was a Marine shooting at bad guys on the other side of the globe. He fired his weapon while the music played, a monotonous organ at a carnival booth. Blood poured from his victims. He continued playing well after he figured Laura would be asleep.

  * * *

  Cal thought he was dreaming. He had fallen asleep on the couch with the headphones on. The eerie carnival music played on a loop that repeated every ninety seconds. But then, mixed in, there was screaming. At least it sounded like screaming. The kids in the park or something. But close. Right outside. He lurched from sleep and tore the headphones off. It was the chickens who were screaming. Squawking, but with a high-pitched, blood-curdling intensity that extended for long seconds. He leapt from the couch and burst out of the house without thinking.

  The security lights snapped on and flooded the street, but the corner of the house kept the side yard in deep shadow. The screeching birds beat their wings against the wire barrier so that it shuddered. Feathers floated in the air, pulled up and twisted into the treetops by the wind. He banged on the fence with both fists. Something else was in the cage. The birds screamed louder. A light came on in the house. Laura was calling his name. He heard a snarling hiss, like a cat or wild animal. The chicken wire shook with the weight of some creature, but Cal could not make it out. The animal seemed large, too large for a cat but too dark to be a fox. He jumped back involuntarily, his skin wormy. The creature clambered to the top of the fencing, eight feet up, and leapt to a nearby tree branch that
bounced with its weight. Leaves and branches crashed to the ground as the animal bounded away. Then everything was silent. Even the chickens stopped their commotion.

  Cal looked down. Something wet shone in the half-light. One of the birds was dead. A Plymouth Rock. Black and white feathers danced across the yard. Laura came outside with a flashlight, wearing a T-shirt and his boxers.

  “What the fuck was that?” She was shouting.

  “Something killed a chicken!” He was yelling too.

  She trained the flashlight on the floor of the coop. The bird lay twisted on her side, her entrails spilling from her belly, her throat a red mass of feathers. Nothing more than a carcass now.

  “Susie,” Laura said. They could tell from her wattle.

  Laura moved the flashlight across the pen. The remaining five chickens clucked in a group, huddled together in the corner, jerking their heads left and right, their eyes shiny. Cal thought they must all be in shock.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked.

  He looked at her looking at him and something went off in his head. “What am I going to do? What the fuck are you talking about, Laura? What in the fuck are you going to do?” This was her fault. Fuck her. “What is going on with you?” His eyes strained to bursting in their sockets. He balled his hands into fists, ready to use them.

  She covered her mouth and closed her eyes. She mumbled something that Cal couldn’t understand.

  “Answer me!” he shouted at her.

  The old woman’s light went on. The shades in Liz Westerberg’s house rustled.

  “I’m pregnant,” Laura said. She began coughing, a convulsive, sobbing cough.

  Cal stared, frozen, his fists clenched.

  The old woman came out on her porch. “Everything all right down there?” she called.

  He and Laura looked at each other. Her hand was clamped over her mouth. Someone had to answer.

  “Fine, Mrs. Caracelli,” he called back. “Fine. We just lost a chicken.”