‘I’m on an assignment,’ I tell him again.
‘Heard that already.’
‘That all right?’
‘I got a choice?’
‘I’m not a cop, C.’
‘Heard that, too.’
I mill around the room, trying to look like I got some purpose but knowing damn well he can see through me. Always has. Probably always will, I reckon. A long pendulum of drool swings from the corner of Security’s mouth. The girl on the mattress hasn’t stirred.
‘She still with us?’ Clarence says.
I kneel in front of Security while he’s docile, get a few of his foot. Another roll or two of these should keep Cliff at bay until I get something better. Somewhere else. When I get too close, there’s a faint smell of vinegar that makes my mouth water and I back away, shove my hand in my pocket and rub the key tag. Doesn’t really matter which one it is. Six and a day, I say to myself. Six and a day.
Something thumps in the next room, probably the kitchen if this is like most Highlandtown row homes. There’s another doorway, this one with the door intact. I weave my way through fried fish baskets, paper bags speckled with spray paint, empty bottles of generic ammonia. The thumping falls quiet.
‘Someone riding hard?’ I say.
‘You ain’t the only one hip to the best corners.’ Clarence laughs to himself, picks up a spoon from the makeshift table beside him. Looks like a telephone cable spindle, but turned sideways. ‘Sorry. Was.’ He sifts some powder out of a bag, nodding his head like there’s some radio transmission he can’t get clear. Licking his lips, the cocksucker. Putting on a show. He says, ‘Keith, lemme hold your lighter.’
And like the stupid motherfucker I am, I pat down my pockets.
Finger cocked like a gun, he clucks his tongue and fires, then goes about cooking. I look around the room and hope I’m not erect. Dirty son of a bitch don’t even clean his IV after he’s pushed off. Just throws the cotton ball to my feet. ‘Don’t let it be said I don’t take care my own.’
‘Christ, Clarence.’ I dig in my pocket, pull out my keys and shake it in front of him. The thumping quietly starts again.
‘Oh.’ He nods a few times, though I don’t know if it’s me or the dope. ‘Yeah, I heard that.’ He roots around his space, exhumes a ring of keys from somewhere, though I got no idea why he needs keys. ‘Yeah, I got couple of them. Trade you two one-years for that.’
‘Fuck you.’ I start towards the noise.
‘Nah, Keith. It ain’t like that. That’s the good time, hear. I give anything be where you is. When you push off again, it’s like your dick bursting with rainbows and shit.’ He makes to stand but sways instead, settling back to the stool like a piece of gauze drifting on a warm, viscous air.
While he’s nodding, I walk to the back, hoping to burn through a roll on whoever’s riding back there then beat feet over Dundalk and take a meeting at Bethlehem A.M.E, over where I won’t know no one. I yank on the door and it’s locked. There’s just the tiny hole on my side, no latch to open. I pull again and realize the knob’s spinning in my hand.
‘Members only.’ Clarence’s voice travels through a fog of asbestos and sawdust to get to me. ‘Thought you saw the sign.’
I push, pull again, then see the latch and padlock, undone and hanging lopsided. ‘What the fuck is this?’
He mutters something--to Security, looks like--but gets no response.
‘Clarence,’ I call out. ‘I thought the stash was upstairs.’
The fucker, he just gives me the crescent moon again and leans against the wall. I shift in front of the door, move my hands slow and unhook the lock. The door swings open without a sound, and I think that’s what creeps me out most. The room isn’t a kitchen, but it’s dark, darker than the living room or hallway. The smell of stagnant cigarettes, unwashed body and chemical sweat is so thick I can taste it. On the shelf beside me are four empty cartons of lightbulbs. Knots of singed, crinkled aluminum foil dot the floor.
And in the middle of the floor stands a small crib holding a ten year-old girl, her arms lashed to the posts. One ear of her Hello Kitty headband has snapped off. Her skin melds with the shadows but I can still see veins threading through the whites of her eyes.
I say Fuck me, Jesus, but can’t tell if it was just in my head.
Two men sit in the corner, rocking their chairs and sucking on cigarettes like they was paid $10 for it. Scabs across their mouths, their sunken cheeks. The white one has scratch marks on his neck, though I don’t know if it’s from the girl or tweaking. They eye me with a predatory ferociousness, chain another smoke without looking.
The girl opens her mouth to say something, to scream, to tell me to fuck off for not saving her earlier, then glances at the men and tucks her chin to her chest. Silent. She pulls at the ropes. Her right sleeve is torn at the shoulder, kind of discolored.
I stumble on a glass bottle as I’m backing out of the room.
Clarence is just smiling, swaying and nodding and drooling and smiling. I shoot fifteen questions at him so quick it all comes out as, ‘The fuck, C?’
‘Members only.’
‘What the fuck are you doing with a little girl?
He shrugs. ‘Found her.’
‘What do you mean found her? How do you find a fucking child?’ I step back into the room, like I’m checking on her, like I have any right to check on her. One man sits in the same position, smoking. The other unfolds pieces of foil on the floor, a straw tucked behind his ear. I can see myself explaining a broken camera to Cliff, swinging it like a mace and opening the sides of their faces with shattered lens. I can see myself folding her under my arm, hearing their ribs crack as I mule-kick then run out of the room. I scratch my chest and feel a thin warmth. Hope I didn’t break the skin.
The question creeps out of my mouth hesitantly, like it don’t really want to be answered.
‘Waiting to hear back from the family,’ he shrugs. ‘About the only thing we can do now.’
‘Ain’t that the girl was on the news last week?’
He puckers his lips like he’s thinking. ‘Reckon so. Folks don’t care about no poor little black girl for more’n a few days, though, so I think we’re safe.’
‘How the fuck you going to get ransom if they got no fucking money?’
‘You know who her people are?’
I check on her again. The man on the floor keeps the straw between his lips, stares at the girl in a way that makes my fingers tingle.
I try to sound commanding. ‘Motherfucker, step back from her.’
He spins to face me, something sharp and shiny in his fist. The girl squeaks, then shoves her head down again, pretending she never moved. Her fingers knead her palms. Clarence’s voice draws me back to the other room.
‘Let me put it this way: The news ain’t want to report that police are looking for the baby girl of no slingers. I know kids is kids, but taxpayers don’t want nothing to do with them or they litter. You know, re-elections and all.’
‘You’re going to heist up the kid of an East Baltimore banger? Are you fucking serious?’
He blows a smoke ring at me, pokes his finger through it.
‘Why would they pay when they can just blast in and take her?’
That smile again, the one that got me a ninety-day holiday in Jessup. Twice. Clarence and his bright ideas.
‘They get no girl till we get our money--’
‘Then they track you down and kill you.’
‘Correction.’ He drops his cigarette and it sizzles in some dark fluid. ‘They track down those two knuckleheads. Why the fuck you think I keep them tweakers on? They got no idea what to do with that much money anyway.’
I rub the key tag, bite down on the inside of my cheek. ‘Who’s girl is it?’
‘That caper you thought up, the one with the dogs, it got me thinking, Keith. Only too much shit with dogs and not enough pay. This one got some pay.’
‘I got nothing to do with this.’ I
see a new car. I see curtains over real windows and not a concrete wall. I see fists of dope. I see clothes without holes. I see a pet Lab. I see a drawer of burnt spoons. I see a closet converted into a dark room. I see gelatin prints. I see a shelf of Brownie Boxes, Leicas, Landcams. ‘This ain’t me, Clarence.’
‘Nah, not really. But they know me, then they know you. People get to asking,’ he starts gesticulating, drawing in the air with his cigarette, ‘you know, I’m just saying.’
I cross the room to him, still listening for the girl. ‘You’re just saying what?’
‘All that ain’t important. Water bridges and shit.’ He sifts powder down into the spoon again. Asks for my lighter again. That smell, that gnawing again.
‘Water under the bridge.’
‘What I’m saying is,’ he flicks the syringe, squirts out the bubble, ‘you in or out?’
Herniated Roots by Richard Thomas
He was never the type to hide a fifth of bourbon in the laundry hamper or a couple of beers in the water tank of the toilet. Michael was out in the open, flailing his arms, falling down with a grin on his face, crooked and bent, all of him. The visions that danced in his head at night were of the things he had lost, futures that might have been, plans that were just out of reach, and they taunted him relentlessly. Six years sober he rarely ventured out at night, the call too often at the edge of his vision, rustling in the woods as he drove to the grocery store, the feeble pale of the moon overhead, showing him the only path to take. It was a simple plan: wake up sober, shower and shave, his coffee in a travel mug for the ride to work where he died a little bit more every day. Then it was home to distractions, his knuckles white all too often, holding on with a shaky grip.
“I like them a little green,” she said, as he stood in the fruit section of his local grocer, holding his bananas, staring off into the air.
“What?”
“The bananas,” she said, walking closer, “I like them a bit stiff, a hint of green around the edges. I can’t stand a mushy banana.”
She stood too close, her musky floral scent violating his space like a cloud of dust. She may as well have been naked and rubbing up against him. He usually avoided these interactions.
“Right, I hear you,” he said, “I couldn’t agree more.”
Michael pushed his glasses back up his nose, taking in her appearance. She could have been just another suburban mother, but it didn’t feel that way. Her jeans were a bit too tight, her blouse form-fitting, accenting her ample chest, a sparkle in her brown eyes, lush autumn hair falling to her shoulders. The faint outline of a snake tattoo, ran around her wrist, black sleeves pushed up to reveal tan skin and muscled forearms. She was everything healthy and alive that he was not.
“I’m Sandy,” she said, holding out her hand.
“Michael,” he answered, taking her grip.
She held his hand, a firm grasp, pumping up and down. Her smile grew.
“I just moved out here, I was in the city, and wanted some more space. I didn’t mean to intrude on your shopping, I just don’t know anybody around here, and you looked...”
“Safe?” he ventured.
“Smart was the word I was going to use, like somebody that might know his way around the neighborhood. I can hardly even find the honey. Seems like every store puts it someplace different—by the peanut butter, the condiments, the tea—who knows.”
Michael smiled. He was still in his work clothes, khaki pants that he bought in bulk whenever they went on sale. The tag in the back always rubbed a raw spot on his hip, but they fit him perfect otherwise. Slip on leather shoes in brown and black, and button down shirts in a wide range of blue completed his everyday attire.
“Would you mind walking me around the store a bit?” she asked, finally releasing his grip. “Maybe you could help me find that honey. And capers, where the hell are the capers? You’d think they’d be with the tomato sauce, but I swear they aren’t over there.”
Michael took a deep breath, and glanced down at his basket. The frozen Mexican dinners, the bananas, some grapes, lunch meat, white bread and a liter of Diet Coke seemed pathetic.
“I mean, unless you have something more important to get to. I don’t want to hold you up,” she said.
Deep in his memory there was a familiar twinge of unease, an alarm clock going off, and the need to wake up washed over him.
“Sure, I’d love to. Where would you like to start?”
She wrinkled her brow and tapped her finger to her pursed lips. He took a quick glance at the items in her basket—body lotion, avocados, one banana, olive oil, dark chocolate, and a small honey bear.
***
She had his number now and wasn’t afraid to use it. They lived five minutes from each other out here in the suburbs, the distant skyline of Chicago but an echo of memory, the highway laid out in long stretches of grey, leading back to his past.
Michael tried to watch what he ate now, healthy when he could, cheap on other days. When he first quit drinking, he gained a lot of weight, needing to do something with his hands, to drink something else—water, iced tea, soda, juice. He was slightly overweight now, but you wouldn’t know it from looking at him. He had nobody to tell him that his gut was an eyesore, that the little tire that ran around his waist was in need of some flattening. No woman had seen him naked in a long time, and this was also part of his plan. He jogged and he shot baskets on a nearby outdoor basketball court, usually alone, and he often held his tennis racket, standing in his apartment alone, twirling it in his hands. She wanted to play with him.
He was weak in the company of others, always going along with the plan, never wanting to make waves. It caused him less stress. And stress was a trigger. He had a lot of triggers, or he used to anyway. He drank when he was happy and celebrating, he drank when he was angry, when he was sad, drowning out his feelings while at the same time yearning to feel. He drank alone, he drank with music, watching television, while cooking or cleaning, even in the shower. He would sneak a forty ounce into the movies, or a pint into his jacket pocket. Sometimes he’d get home early in the morning after closing down the local bars and he couldn’t remember the movie. He knew the title, but it was all a blur, mouths yakking, laughter, or bloodshed, but most of what took place in the back of his head was that one continuous scene of the mouth of a bottle, raising and lowering, getting larger, getting smaller, the liquid pouring down his throat. Not anymore.
The met at a tennis court, walking distance from his apartment, dressed in shorts, t-shirts, and tennis shoes, appropriate for the weather. They stretched and bent, warming up, his eyes glued to her.
“I can’t wait to work up a sweat,” she said, lobbing the ball over the net.
He swallowed and nodded his head, focusing on the yellow, fuzzy balls. She was in great shape. Every time she moved it was if they were in bed, a small grunt slipping from her lips, her muscles tightening as her arm swung forward, her legs bending and flexing, leaning over to pick up a ball. He drank a bottle of water before they even started keeping score, sweat running down his back in tiny rivulets.
“Wow, you’re thirsty. That sun is really beating down on us,” she said.
“It’s hot out here,” he said, trying to breathe.
Around them flowers pushed up through the earth and beyond the faded fence two dogs growled and snapped at each other, a yip as one retreated, having lost. A door slammed and a car started up, revving the engine, backing out and shooting forward, tires screeching on the asphalt.
They played. In time it became a rhythm, give and take, back and forth, every muscle in his body stretching, the fluidity of the game a silent grace as they watched each other, long volleys that never ended. She was good and it was hard for him to score a point. He wondered if maybe she was too good, taking it easy on him, showing him pity. So he ramped it up a bit, going for kill shots, putting a bit more on his serves, and her smile began to disappear. He started to win and her face was a constant duality of frustrat
ed concentration and relaxed ego.
As they neared match point, she hit a backhand lob that set him up for an easy slam, and as he raised his racquet, her shadow dancing in the distance, he thought for one moment about how much he missed this, the friendship, the simple act of a woman filling up space in his life. He put everything he had into the shot, but took his eye of the ball for a second. She was hopping from side to side, waiting for the shot, a grin on her face, not an ounce of fear. The ball shot forward with a sharp whoosh and nailed her in the chest, the racquet flying out of her hand, eyes wide as she fell backward to the court.
“Oh my God,” he said, dropping his racquet and leaping over the net, rushing to her side. Her hand rubbed her left breast in slow circles, a grimace on her face. Michael bent over her, eyes scrunched up.
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