Downers Grove

by Michael Hornburg

  “Are you crazy? That’s exactly what Neckbrace wants you to do. You’ll go to jail!”

  I was getting so paranoid I started to wonder if I could even trust Tracy. If I was the curse, wouldn’t that benefit her? Wouldn’t she go on to live a long life full of hundreds of boyfriends? This whole thing was getting too far out of hand. “I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

  I found a cigarette in Mom’s purse, then went out on the porch to watch the last carcass get stuffed into a white plastic bag and dragged away. I started smoking in junior high because I thought it made me look older; when I got older I said to myself that it made me more introspective. Now it’s just a stinky habit that ignites fierce retribution in the morning.

  I flicked the half-burned cigarette into the yard, then got the hose out of the garage and washed down the driveway. The neighbors were still hovering together in bathrobes, staring. Even Jewels was up bright and early for the excitement, pretending to retrieve his mail for a closer look.

  I felt incredibly nauseated, my stomach was a brewing sludge pit of indigestion, so I turned off the hose and went and sat on the toilet for a while. A pair of dark purple loops hung under my eyes. My hands trembled slightly. My gums were sore. My head was throbbing. I finished my business, splashed some water on my face, brushed my teeth, then went downstairs to make coffee and slam some Advil. My brother was in the kitchen sprinkling sugar over his Froot Loops.

  “I had a dream about you last night.” He twisted his head back and forth, as if to jar loose the memory. “It was real creepy,” he said. “You want to hear it?”

  “No,” I said, but then changed my mind. I was anxious for anyone’s vision of the future.

  “You ran in front of an early morning freight train and got splattered into smithereens. I woke up right after that one.” He poured milk over his cereal.

  “That’s it?” I asked.

  “Weird, huh?” He shrugged his shoulders.

  HELP

  WHEN the floodwater finally receded it left a foot-wide ring around David’s basement bedroom. Mom and I helped bleach the walls and scrub the floor, but it still reeked big-time. Every table and chair had to be wiped down. My brother and his friend Dylan had moved all the good stuff upstairs as the water crested, but there were still a few bits and pieces of David’s past scattered in the wake: a guitar pick, an old baseball card, some girl’s earring, and a few misplaced CDs.

  “So what are you going to do when I leave?” Mom asked.

  “What do you mean?” my brother replied.

  “Well, I mean, if I move in with Dan?”

  David sat on that one. I was trying to read between the lines as fast as I could. It was so out of character for Mom. It was as if they were—breaking up.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I guess I never thought about it.”

  As much as his answer sounded lame to me I really didn’t have a better one. I guess I always assumed I would follow Mom, but now she seemed to be letting us know that the band might break up. It was a warning flare.

  The phone started ringing, so I hurried upstairs.

  “Hello?”

  “Is Chrissie there?”

  I was shocked. It was the boy wonder, man with a plan, Jesus of Joliet, my constant distraction.

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  “I need your help,” he said.

  “What kind of help?” I asked.

  “I need to borrow some money.”

  “You think I have money?”

  “I don’t need a lot,” he said. “I’ll pay you back. I swear.”

  Bobby was talking fast. He sounded like he had run to the phone booth or wherever the hell it was he was calling from.

  “What’s the emergency?”

  “The cops. They raided the garage. They took the car, the tools, everything! It’s all gone!”

  “What happened?”

  “Fucking cops. Fuck if I know. I have to get out of here …” He paused and I could hear him breathing. “You gotta lend me some money.”

  “What about that vampire babe—Ashtray Influenza or whatever the hell her name is? I’m sure she’s got a bottomless cash register.”

  “The cops shut down the bar. It’s like some big conspiracy or something.”

  I picked up the phone and dragged it into my room. I felt guilty I hadn’t warned him, but it wasn’t like I didn’t try. The panic in his voice frightened me.

  “You ever been to the Empress?” he asked.

  “The casino?” I walked over and sat down on the edge of my bed. “So, are you a card shark too?” I asked him.

  “I need to put together some money—fast.” He sounded desperate.

  “The Empress seems more like a place to lose a lot of money fast,” I said.

  “I’m running out of choices,” he said.

  “What about making money the old-fashioned way?” I asked.

  “I don’t have time for that!”

  “But you have time to pick up strangers’ cars and tow them down to Joliet?”

  “You don’t know that happened and you better stop believing it.”

  “I know your priorities, Bobby, and that’s enough for me to slap together a few puzzle pieces. You’ve got motive and there are people looking for you.”

  “And that’s why I’ve got to get the hell out of here!” he shouted into the phone. “Are you going to help me or what?”

  “I’ll lend you some money, but I don’t want you to blow it in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’m not gonna blow it. I know what I’m doing,” he said. “You only get ahead by taking chances.”

  “Yeah, but with you, the stakes get-a little higher each day, don’t they?”

  “Listen, I don’t have time to play fucking games.”

  Bobby was freaking out. I felt sorry for him. There was no changing Bobby. His idea of life was to keep accelerating, with the hope that he’ll be able to turn the wheel in the nick of time.

  “Please lend me some money. It’ll be all right. I promise,” he said.

  “Okay. Okay. Okay. I’ll get you some money. But only if I can come along.”

  “I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  CASINO

  GAMBLING is like an expressway to your destiny. To try and win at cards was like betting on chaos. We were riding toward the end of the movie, that was my gut feeling. It didn’t seem right, it didn’t have any natural qualities, it was so out of the blue and random. To me, Bobby seemed like a person moving backward, as if time were running away from him. His voice was heavy, and I could tell he hadn’t been eating. He looked thin and distraught. His mind was somewhere else. He didn’t say anything, although he seemed to be having continuous rambling monologues with himself.

  Watching the promises of billboards along the highway I was stirring over the idea that this mission smelled of doom and I was the good-luck charm. The car roared down the express lane. My mechanic gnawed a toothpick, a strange smirk leaking from the corner of his mouth. He reached over and touched my knee, pulled it toward him, slid his hand between my thighs and up under my dress. I closed my eyes and lay back on the headrest.

  “Nobody gets rich standing still,” he said. And I just wondered if that were true.

  I opened my eyes as we rolled up the exit ramp. Joliet was the end of nowhere. Most of the storefronts were boarded up. Gangs had staked turf. The only new industry was the casino. A woman was shot in the parking lot a few weeks after it opened. Some people called it a tragedy, others said it was a baptism.

  The parking lot was jammed. Bobby found a spot in the back under a light pole marked KING TUT. We got out of the car and marched toward the front door. The casino was actually a barge floating in the canal. Gambling is only legal in the water. The barge was camouflaged with decor as ostentatious and permanent as a Fourth of July float. Egyptian-style sphinxes guarded the entrance, plastic chandeliers hung over industrial carpeting. A few green plants filled the corners. Bobby kept
his hand planted firmly around my waist. I liked it, but he seemed unusually needy, which made me nervous. He sliced through the crowd, pulling me by the hand. We were like a snaking train of hope racing through a room of chaos.

  People stared at the slot machines like they were deep in a trance, cranking the handles, waiting for a crash of coins to come spilling into their tin trays; others sat stonefaced at the blackjack tables, holding their cards close to the green velvet. Winning. Losing. It was very hard to concentrate. Bells were ringing, people were shouting, everything was designed to be as loud as possible.

  “What an incredible collection of freaks,” Bobby said, leaning against the bar. “Where do they all come from?”

  “From here,” I said. “Same place as me.”

  My mechanic bellyed up to a $100 blackjack table. The dealer looked like the mother of two, maybe three, and had the steadiness of a bartender at 3 A.M. in the face of all-night drinkers. Bobby placed his chips on the table and the cards were dispensed from the automatic shuffler. I looked across the room and saw the same nervous face at every table. The casino seemed to hold the mixed euphoria of a wedding and a funeral in the same room. The first hand had all the nervous anticipation of a first dance. My mechanic kept his cards, the dealer took one and busted. Bobby won with a seventeen, and I must say I was relieved. He was up right away and even kissed me on the cheek while waiting for the new cards.

  Bobby carefully lifted his cards one at a time, and I could tell the dealer was checking out his body language to get a clue as to what he was holding. Bobby never looked at me or at the dealer. He kept his eyes on the cards.

  “I’ll hold,” Bobby said. The dealer took two and busted again.

  When the chips crossed over to Bobby I could see his eyes light up and his heart ignite with a feverish gleam of glossy destiny. It was scary really. I realized he was a person willing to gamble his last dime on the slender chance that he might win five more.

  Bobby won two in a row, but when the dealer took the next three and all the chips passed back to the house, I felt as if a hole had just been drilled through my heart where all the hope used to be stored. He never won on the racetrack, so why would he win here? Bobby was down to his last bet, and he suddenly looked like someone who had just licked the envelope of doom. I wanted him to win, but deep inside I wanted him to lose too, if only in a selfish bid to keep him from running away.

  Bobby looked at his cards with the same facelessness of the times before, only this time he seemed to be curling closer to the table, as if he were wilting. He took one card and busted. Bobby lost and the little money he had was gone. The dealer scooped up his last chips, then picked up the cards. Bobby stared silently for a moment, as if he were trying to control whatever was bubbling up inside. He looked shattered, as if he’d just swallowed what was left of his pride. Bobby took me by the hand and led me through the crowd. He was very upset, but I didn’t feel very sorry for him.

  Bobby was always looking for shortcuts in life, whether stealing a car to race the next weekend, or throwing money at a blackjack table to fund an evacuation. He was trying to walk on water and the waves kept sweeping over his head. But even in his worst element, I still felt incredibly attracted to him. Part of me was watching somebody walk a tightrope without a net, and part of me was wishing I were brave enough to walk too. It was a double-edged butter knife knowing my life was exciting because it was attached to his.

  When we got out to the car I tried to swing his mood in another direction, but he was sullen as a tree.

  “I’m so fucking stupid,” he said.

  “Listen, just because it didn’t happen this time doesn’t mean it won’t happen next time.”

  “It ain’t never gonna happen.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because pretty soon you’ll start believing it,” I said.

  Even though Bobby was the kind of person whose setbacks only gave him more determination, for me, it was as if the balloon had popped and the party was almost over. I didn’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. I put my arm around his waist and hugged him. And then he leaned down and kissed me in the middle of the parking lot. And these kisses were a whole lot different from the ones the night we watched the fire. It was as if he meant it.

  “You believe in me, don’t you?” he asked with surprise in his voice, as if I was the first person who ever did.

  “You’re the kind of person who chases destiny instead of letting destiny chase you,” I said. “There’s a lot of bumps on that road.”

  Bobby seemed incredibly vulnerable. He clung to me like I was going to save him. He kissed me again, but this time the kisses felt distant again, as if he were already thinking about his next plan. I kissed him as if to lure him back from wherever he was headed.

  “C’mon,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  THE TRAILER

  BOBBY took me to his trailer. It was perched in a sliver of woods, a hedge of tangled shrubbery and weeds bordering the far side of an unfinished development overlooking Bolingbrook Mall. The mall failed ten or twenty years ago and was still boarded up. The weathered plywood was coated with fresh graffiti. The plastic sign along the road had been punched out by gunfire.

  The mall once housed an indoor amusement park with a roller coaster, merry-go-round, and even a Ferris wheel. Clowns gave away free balloons, carnival music was piped in from the ceiling. What was billed as a shopping Disneyland turned out to be a pathetic attempt to give local carnies a year-round venue. Cheap hot dog shacks opened side by side with little flea market-type knickknack tables. It looked like a rummage sale with three-hundred-foot ceilings. It was always ghost city.

  Bobby’s trailer was surrounded by waist-high weeds, stacks of tires, and empty beer cans. Leaning against the rusty shed were souvenirs from his job: bumpers, fenders, and hubcaps galore. It looked like it may have once been painted swimming pool green, but that was a long time ago.

  When we got out of the car I could hear the power lines sizzling overhead: snap, crackle, pop. The wind tore through the bushes and howled around the trailer. Bobby’s wind chimes rang a constant alarm. Scanning the perimeter I kept thinking I saw something moving just beyond the corner of my eye.

  “Your place sure is spooky,” I said.

  “Keeps the ghosts away,” he replied.

  Bobby popped the door open, and I slipped into the mouth of the trailer. The smell hit me first, then Bobby turned on the light and I looked around in awe. Bobby’s trailer was a pigsty. There was garbage scattered all over the place. A small sunken brown couch covered with crushed Styrofoam cups and grease-stained paper plates faced a portable television resting on a milk crate. Red wax had melted over the armrests of the couch, the Big Gulp cups on both sides were filled with cigarette butts. The sink was piled with crusty dishes. The carpeting had probably never seen a vacuum cleaner, and there were fruit flies buzzing around everywhere.

  “Sorry about the mess.” He cleared a spot on the couch for me. “The maid is on vacation.”

  “You have a maid?” I asked. “How fancy.” I pulled a picture of Asha Lorenza off the refrigerator. “Is this her?” I held it up to him.

  “No.” He laughed. “You want to watch TV or something?”

  Bobby rescued two Budweisers from the refrigerator, cracked them open, and handed me one. I dropped Asha’s picture behind the couch, then dialed in a Godzilla movie just in time for some awesome Tokyo destruction. Bobby plopped down next to me and put his arm around my shoulder. I curled under his arm and traced the muscles of his smooth stomach.

  I could tell he was still upset. Bobby’s eyes were dilated and he had that unreadable look, trapped in that spacey boy thing, a million thoughts circling the wagon train.

  “Quarter for your thoughts,” I said.

  “Big spender.” He seemed impressed.

  “You’re worth it.”

  “I was just imagining flying to the moon.”

&nbs
p; “How come you’re always dreaming about someplace else?”

  “I like to project myself out of this trailer. I don’t need to explain that, do I?”

  “At least you have a trailer,” I said. I looked at his face, his hair, trying to read the lines stretching from the corners of his eyes. His whole face looked like history. I was trying to decide whether it had a future. He seemed like a white-trash miracle, one of those boys from a long line of rednecks who pops out of nowhere and takes over the world. I was certain Bobby was more than he even knew.

  “So where you gonna go?” I asked.

  “North Carolina maybe. I got some cousins down there,” he said between sips of beer. “You oughta come with me.”

  “What?”

  “You’d like it. There’s lots of trees and hills and the air smells good, not like around here.”

  Bobby’s idea came so far out of the blue I wasn’t quite sure how to digest it. I couldn’t tell if he meant what he was saying or was just talking off his sleeve.

  “You mean it?” I asked.

  “Why not?” he asked. “I need a good-luck charm.”

  My heart swung on a pendulum. I wanted to, but I had to think about it. He equated me with a trinket on a bracelet, and that’s a long throw from unconditional love. Mom did announce that from here on out it was every person for themselves, only I wasn’t sure I wanted to check into the first motel on the list. Not that I could afford it anyway. Plus, Bobby was a mystery wrapped around an enigma, who knows where that plane was going to land. He could tell by my silence that I was standing on the fence.

  “You gotta bust out of your cocoon sooner or later,” he said.

  “I haven’t even graduated yet!” I laid on his bed with a smile of possibility racing through my nervous system, but at the same time a streak of sadness was eating at my heart. I wasn’t sure I could bare for him to leave now, but I was even less secure with the idea of being his companion. He leaned over and kissed me and held me so tight I had a feeling that maybe this was destiny dropping its hook in my stream and it was up to me whether or not to take the bait.