Dark Avenues

by Brian J Smith

  A check for six thousand dollars was enclosed.

  Two spaces below her name, she’d written, “P.S. Hailey is in rehab and they say she’s doing great. She can’t wait to go to Hawaii and spend time with her Uncle Bubby.”

  I sat staring at the letter for quite some time when something brushed across my left shoulder. Nohea appeared from my right, greeted me with another one of her patent pearly-whites and straddled my waist. When I slipped my arms around her, she leaned in for a kiss I didn’t want to end.

  “What did it say?”

  “Nothing I haven’t heard before.”

  I slipped both items back inside of the envelope, tore it into tiny pieces and dumped it into a nearby wastebasket. She scrunched her face together and winced but she knew we were financially secure enough not to need my sister’s money. We fell back onto the hammock, her sleek cocoa-buttery skin pressing softly against my own, and continued that kiss long after my coffee got cold.

  One thing was for sure.

  Grudges are forever.

  Family always comes first.

  ODIO

  This is one of those stories I like to apply to the category I like to call “a bully story”. I referred to it as a story that once you pay attention to it and then set it aside so you can write it later still manages to keep coming back to remind you it’s still there.

  I wrote this story back in ’09 and submitted it twice before it was finally accepted into an anthology that never saw the light of day. I was sent a sample copy to see if I liked what I saw and I did; I was so happy that I (to coin a popular eighties song) was walking on sunshine. I learned later on that the collection would never be released and the story would never see the light of day which was an utter disappointment.

  I thought it was flat and unappealing so I chucked it into my “trunk” folder and didn’t touch it again. Two years later, I went back to it, changing this and adding that.

  I thought about what people do when they have something that they don’t want anymore. After two failed endings, this one pretty much took care of itself.

  “HEY, Claire.” I said, waving her over. “Come look at this.”

  It was a six-by-nine hardcover book with a dog-eared leather-gray cover. The title was scrawled across in cryptic white font three inches from the top, said ODIO. The bottom right hand corner of the last O had a thin jagged crack that sent an animated river of blood across the cover.

  We were standing inside of a large kiosk in the far left corner inside of Minerva’s, a flea market that’d been stuffed into an old department store building that closed down before malts and poodle-skirts were replaced by I-Phones and (sadly) man-buns. We’d collected everything that we’d come for–Claire loved her knickknacks as much as I loved books–and this was the last leg of our seemingly endless journey through this gigantic place. When she came over to see what I was talking about, the field of kiosks spread across the place reminded me of open-faced cubicles, each one baring junk of all shapes and sizes; proprietors stood outside of their kiosks with kind optimistic eyes, waiting for the next customer to come strolling along.

  They’d sold everything from power tools, video games, paperback and hardcover books, tie-dye shirts, sports memorabilia, hunting gear, children’s toys, DVDs and VHS’, figurines, shoes, household appliances and whatever other hunk of junk they could salvage from their garage and make some money. In the end, it would all end up in the same place it was before you bought it, someone else’s garage where it succumbed to cobwebs and mold before its inevitable demise.

  I glanced over at the two svelte-looking women who’d greeted me a few minutes ago from behind a large Formica-topped counter and nodded; they nodded back. A brunette wearing blue-jean cut-offs and a dark-blue tee-shirt leaned against the counter, flipping through a magazine. The woman next to her, a frumpy-looking woman with boyish-cut brown hair wearing a gray NASCAR tee and dark sweat pants, sat on a metal-cushioned stool thumbing through her cell phone.

  I caught the lopsided curiosity etched across their faces and brushed it off as I held the book up for Claire to see.

  “The cover looks very brooding.” She nodded. “But there’s no author name.”

  “I know. I don’t know anyone in their right mind who would publish a book and not include their name on the cover.”

  “Maybe they just forgot.” She assumed. “Could you find that out by tracking down the publisher?”

  “It wouldn’t hurt.” I said, shrugging my left shoulder.

  I took it off the shelf, gave both the front and back covers a quick glance and set it on top of the other two. As I approached the front counter, Claire leaned over and planted a soft kiss on my right cheek.

  “It looks as if it was self-published.” I said, taking her right hand. “I’ll see what I can find out.”

  I raised the back of her hand to my lips and pressed them softly against the long white scar below the indentation between her second and third finger. She had it ever since she was ten when her parents left her brother in charge one night and he used her hand for an ashtray.

  Her cheeks turning a lovely shade of pink, she gave me a wide porcelain-white smile. In her white floral-print sun dress and white deck shoes, she looked as radiant and pink as ever. Her pale blonde hair sat on her head in an asymmetrical sweep above a heart-shaped face fitted; her blue eyes glinted in under the downward glare of the store’s recessed lights.

  A Garth Brooks song spewed out from the big-boxy speakers fastened to the wall above each kiosks. I set the books on the counter, dug my hands into my pockets and stepped back; Claire slipped her arm through the crook of my right arm and rested her head on my shoulder. The brunette slipped a piece of cardboard between the open magazine and glanced up at me, her face creased by a wide appreciative grin.

  “Can I get you anything else?” The brunette asked, light blazing inside of her heavy-lidded brown eyes.

  I shook my head and grinned. When she scanned my findings, her face lit up and her eyes widened. She prodded her left hand against her friend’s right knee until she looked up to see what all of the fuss was about.

  The brunette slipped a No. 2 from the small ceramic pink coffee cup sitting beside of the cash register and tapped its beet-red eraser against the stack.

  “Is that what I think that is, Mary Lee?”

  “Yes, it is, Flo.” The brunette said.

  Flo tucked her cell phone back into her pocket, snatched a quick breath, and rose up from a brown-leather barstool with haste. The mingled expression of confusion and awe on her face was the same one I’d seen on the faces of my students when they didn’t have a pop quiz. She sighed, raked a hand through her brown pumpkin-shaped hair and rubbed her palms together.

  “Are you talking about the book with no name?” I asked. “Do you know who wrote it?”

  “We don’t care about that, mister?” Flo stated. “We’re glad to get rid of it.”

  “Is it that bad?”

  “No.” Mary Lee said matter of factly. “We’re just glad someone else can enjoy it.”

  She tapped the no-name novel with her pencil again. “This one is free.”

  “Did one of you write it?”

  Her face creased with confusion, Mary Lee glanced at her best friend and chuckled. Claire’s hand twitched inside of mine and her brows furrowed.

  “You think we wrote it?” Flora snorted. “That’s a good one.”

  “Hell no.” Mary Lee chuckled.

  “Your sign says three dollars.”

  Mary Lee slipped a pencil from the little wire-mesh cup sitting beside of the register and tapped the eraser against the cover. Garth Brooks was replaced by Lady Gaga.

  “Do you know?”

  “Not really.” Mary Lee shrugged.

  “You mean someone just donated it to you without putting their name on it?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well which is it?” I asked.

  “We don’t question donations, sir.” Flora
said, “We just sell the galdang things.”

  “Do you know anything about it at all?”

  The expressions on their faces shifted from elation to anger. Mary Lee pursed her lips together so tight her worry lines bracketed the corners of her mouth and gave me an accusatory stare. Flora shook her head and drummed her cheap Press-On nails against the countertop one at a time in an edgy, rhythmic staccato.

  My face grew hot; my skin prickled and the hair along my arms and neck grew stiff. I could either walk away with my dignity in tact or give them the finger on my way out.

  Mary Lee chucked my purchases into a crinkled plastic grocery bag and slid it across the counter. Claire squeezed my hand again and nodded toward the front of the building, her face etched with worry.

  “Thanks for shopping with us, sir.” She replied in an arrogant voice.

  I kept my composure and collected my bag, my throat cluttering up with a score of swear words I decided not to say. As we walked away, I heard them mumbling under their breath.

  “...at it ever again.”

  “...his problem now.”

  When we were far enough away from their kiosk, Claire whispered, “Fuck them.”

  On our way out, we told everyone who was coming in to stay away from their kiosk.

  *****

  AFTER breakfast Monday morning, I stuffed the book into my satchel along with a stack of papers I’d graded last night and kissed Claire goodbye on my way out. When it came time for lunch, I took it out and carried it and my sack lunch into the teacher’s lounge.

  My friend Troy Woodson was sitting at the round Formica table in the far left corner of the room, munching on a burrito bigger than his own hand, or at least it’d looked that way from a distance. He was six-foot-two with a skinny muscular frame and a clean-shaven head to accentuate his big boxy face; a thin net of wrinkles surrounded his wide-set green eyes. He wore a tight gray Parker High School tee shirt and tight purple shorts that emphasized his crotch.

  When I approached him, he waved me over and wiped his mouth with a fistful of white napkins. He saw the brown paper sack in my hand, shrugged his shoulders and took a sip from a large red straw jutting out of a tall Styrofoam cup. The bright carpet of sunlight streaming through the curtains caught the corner of my book and lured his attention; the windows were slightly ajar to allow the breeze to come in because the school board refused to fix the air conditioning.

  Outside, a pack of bright-yellow school buses sat at an angle outside of a squat brick building their bumpers kissed by the harsh-white glare of the mid-afternoon sun. It was mid-April and we were gearing toward Spring Break, that one time of the year where the students and teachers let their hair down for two weeks before. We compared our lunches, me with my PB&J on wheat, apple slices and eight potato chips (Claire was a stickler for the nutritional facts on the back of the bag) and his massive burrito and decided that it was best neither one of us said anything.

  “It’s not every day I get my hands on something Mexican.”

  “This coming from the same guy who picked up a Latino from that bar two weeks ago and then wondered why he had a flat tire.”

  “You think you’re funny, don’t you?” He asked. “What did you want to talk about?”

  While he wrestled with his lunch, I told him about the incident on Saturday only I left out the parts that weren’t any of his business. After I was finished, he gave me a quizzical look.

  “Are you kidding?”

  I shook my head and bit off a corner of one of my sandwiches.

  “And they still didn’t tell you who wrote it?”

  The water cooler on the far right corner gave a loud groan and sent a massive bubble rising toward the surface. I finished the apple slice I’d been holding between my fingertips for almost twenty minutes and plucked a potato chip from the bag.

  “Does your brother still run that bookstore in Columbus?”

  He nodded, drained his cup in one giant swig, crumpled his trash into one crinkled ball, popped open the lid of his cup and stuffed the crumpled wrapper inside.

  “Can you ask him about this?”

  He ignored me, glanced over my shoulder and winked at something from across the room. When I followed his gaze, the French teacher, Mrs. Thompson–who always sat on the opposite end of the couch facing the far-right corner of the room–returned the wink. She wore a tight red blouse and a white polka-dotted dress that hugged every curve of her trim narrow frame; her bright-red hair was fixed to the back of her head by a thin black stick.

  “Are you kidding me?” I said between bites.

  “What?”

  “Do you realize what’ll happen if you fraternize with a fellow teacher? Greene will terminate your ass.”

  “He’d definitely have to pay for something like that.”

  Outside of Troy’s warm friendly exterior beat the heart of a proud bachelor who preferred the company of women. No strings attached, of course. He had no qualms about what an inter-office romance could do to his career as long as he got laid.

  My stomach clenched. I ignored their playful exchange and continued to eat. I slid the book over to his side of the table and tapped the cover with a half-eaten apple slice just as Flo had done so with the tip of her pencil.

  “Huh?” Troy asked, his face creased with confusion. “What did you want?”

  “I need your brother to tell me who published this book.”

  “Oh, okay. I’ll let you know what I find.”

  “Thanks, man.”

  He tossed the cup across the room, made a swishing sound with his lips and hit the trashcan beside of the water cooler. He picked up the book, patted my right shoulder and went on his merrily little way. Ten minutes later, I left the teachers’ lounge and saw him chatting quietly with Mrs. Thompson, the looks on their faces were anything but professional.

  Who am I to stop my friend from getting his fill? Is it my job to stop him from getting fired?

  The book was tucked under his arm and pressed tightly against his left rib but there was something different about it that made me look back to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind.

  The puddle of blood that’d been oozing across the middle of the cover was gone.

  *****

  TWO nights later, I was sitting in the living room recliner reading a Shirley Jackson novel when I looked up from the corner of my eye and saw Claire grimacing over a stack of paperwork spread out across the dining room table. She worked as a real estate agent and had to prepare a ton of paperwork for a house she’d sold a few days ago. We agreed to spend two days a week putting our cell phones on vibrate and turning off the television to clear our heads.

  I stopped every so often and glanced at her before she realized it, her thick black glasses winking under the downward glare of an overhead bowl lamp. After the fourth time, she caught me and flashed a playful grin at me. Her sky-blue eyes flaring with a mix of both affection and curiosity, she slid her glasses off her face and set them on the table.

  She slid out of her chair, sauntered across the room in a slow seductive stride and sat on my lap. She hadn’t done that since our third date, two months after we first began dating back in high school.

  I sighed, set my book onto the little coffee table beside of me, wrapped my arms around her and slid my face across the right side of her neck; her vanilla-scented skin made my body prickle. She raised my head up from leaned in for a kiss, her soft-pink lips glowing when my right pocket hummed. She felt the vibration that followed, cooed and flinched her eyebrows; we snickered at its impeccable timing.

  “Is that a cell phone in your pocket,” She said in a seductive voice. “or are you happy to see me.”

  “I’m always happy to see you.”

  After we kissed, she climbed off of my lap and strode back to the table. When I slid the phone from my pocket, a familiar name glowed from the front screen.

  “Hey, Troy. What’s shaking good buddy?”

  It’d been two days since I saw him but
I figured he was still hunting for information about the book.

  “Good buddy?” He said in a slightly accusing voice. “That’s a strange word coming from someone who doesn’t have the balls to say how they really feel about their friend.”

  “Say what?”

  Claire saw the confusion on my face and, brows furrowed, looked up from her work. I slid over onto the edge of the couch and, my face creased with confusion, perched the arm I used to hold my cell phone on my right knee.

  “You’ve always been like a brother to me and yet you talk about me like that behind my back.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He gave a pneumatic sigh and followed it with a loud burp that rattled his larynx. I motioned for Claire to stay seated, my free arm extended across the room, and shook my head.

  “I always knew you were jealous.”

  His voice was slurred. I heard the sound of crackling static in but I wasn’t sure if it was coming from his end or mine.

  “Are you drunk?” I scoffed. “Do you realize you have class tomorrow?”

  “I’m not stupid, Justin.” He murmured. “I read about it inside your goddamn book. You’re jealous because I can have any woman in the world and you can’t. Hell, I could take that pretty little wife of yours away from you if I wanted to.”

  His suave egotistical voice broke into a low wheeze. He gave a relaxed sigh, followed by a choking sob.

  “I thought I was your best friend.”

  “You’re drinking again, aren’t you?” I said, scratching the back of my head. “Sit tight. I’m on my way over.”

  “Don’t you–”

  I killed the call and stuffed my cell phone back into my front pocket. Claire rose out of her seat, her face creased with worry and waited for me to answer.

  “He sounded like he was drunk.”

  “When isn’t he?”

  “I’m gonna go over there and make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.” I sighed.