No More Us for You

by David Hernandez

  She kissed the top of my head again. “I love you, Izzy.”

  “I love you too,” I said.

  When I stepped outside, Heidi was sitting on the curb next to her car, buckled over and sobbing. I sat down on the curb and wrapped my arms around her.

  “I wasn’t nice to her,” she said. “I didn’t want her to get too close to you.”

  “It’s okay, Heidi,” I said, rubbing her back.

  “I was jealous. I’d see how you two were with each other and I’d start hating her.” Heidi wiped her eyes with the cuff of her sweater. “I wanted it like it was, just the two of us. And now it is.”

  “Don’t do this to yourself,” I told her.

  “I got what I wanted.”

  “Don’t, Heidi.”

  “I’m not a good person.”

  “Yes, you are,” I said. I brushed her hair away from her face.

  “I’m sorry, Vanessa,” she said.

  Then we both cried on each other, right there on the curb in front of my house, the sky above us getting darker and darker, porch lights flickering on up and down the street.

  We stopped by a flower shop on Spring Street and picked out a dozen yellow roses that were inside a tin vase. When we placed them on the counter, the store owner asked if we wanted any baby’s breath. I shook my head no. “Just the roses,” I said. The woman rang us up and I noticed that one of her hands was severely scarred as if by a fire, the skin stretched and marbled white and pink. Her other hand, smooth and beige, pressed the keys on the register. We left and the door chimed twice behind us.

  We climbed back in the car and placed the roses in the backseat with the candles. We drove in silence, just the sound of the tires on the road and the quiet purr of the engine. I fiddled with the zipper on my sweatshirt, dragging the flat metal under my thumbnail as if I had some dirt there.

  “I don’t understand why they left us,” I finally said.

  Heidi looked at me and then back at the road. She rolled down her window, thin strands of her hair dancing around her face.

  “They said they’d meet us inside the gym,” I said. “They said they wouldn’t be long.”

  “Where do you think they were heading?” Heidi asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  We stopped at a traffic light. A car honked and another lurched forward. A motel’s neon VACANCY sign blazed hot pink beside a palm tree. In the evening sky, the moon was almost full—a white balloon tethered to the roof of a liquor store.

  “Maybe they were heading to his house,” Heidi said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “She was drinking, right?”

  “We all were,” I said, “but Vanessa and I only had one cup.”

  “I can’t believe she’s not here anymore.”

  More silence, more low hums from the engine.

  “Neither can I,” I said.

  I watched the cars at the intersection turning left onto Los Coyotes. I watched the shadowy faces of every driver and wondered about their lives, if they were married or not, if they had kids, if someone they loved had passed away, if they were listening to music, if they were happy, if they were heading home, if they were lost.

  The light turned green and we continued on down Spring, making a left and then a right and soon we were there. Heidi parked on a residential street lined with giant trees and I reached over into the backseat and grabbed the yellow roses, the bag of candles. I sat in the front seat for a while and closed my eyes, the flowers and candles on my lap, and breathed in the vanilla and roses.

  When I stepped out of the car, Heidi was already on the sidewalk, gazing up at a second-story window. A light was on, and someone’s shadow passed across the wall and folded at the ceiling like a paper doll in a book.

  The trees loomed above us and swayed in the night wind, the leaves rustling faintly.

  I joined Heidi on the sidewalk and together we walked to where it had happened, where a fire hydrant was sheared off and a wall smashed in, covered with a blue tarp. There were bricks and pieces of brick strewn on the sidewalk. It was as though we were standing at the foot of ancient ruins. Nearby was a framed photograph of Vanessa propped against the trunk of an oak. The photo was surrounded with roses and daisies and carnations, handwritten notes and cards. A brown teddy bear held on to a stuffed heart with I Love You embroidered into the fabric. On the curb, blown-out candles stood upright in their hardened puddles of wax.

  Heidi covered her mouth and cried. I was all cried out. I was an empty well, a vessel holding nothing but air and dust.

  I walked over to Vanessa’s photograph and placed the yellow roses around it, leaning them against the frame and the trunk of the tree. I positioned three right in front of the photo so the petals touched her shoulders and throat. The wind picked up and one of the roses leaning against the tree tipped over. I set it back in place and then removed the candles from the plastic bag and put them on the curb beside the others. The bag filled with wind and took off, floating and bouncing down the street like a little ghost.

  “Here,” Heidi said, giving me the book of matches.

  “I think it’s too windy,” I said. I tugged out one of the matches and lit it. There was a small burst of fire, a moment when my fingers glowed orange before the wind swallowed the flame. “It’s not going to work,” I said.

  Heidi sat down beside me and made a wall with her hands around one of the candles. “Try it now.”

  I pulled out another match and dragged it across the strike strip. Another flame burst in my hands, wavered. By the time we finally lit the candle, three matches later, the wind snuffed it out within seconds. “I knew that was going to happen,” I said.

  “What should we do?” Heidi asked.

  I looked across the street as if the answer were there, under the bright lights of a gas station where a woman was filling up her green sedan.

  “Was she a friend of yours?” someone asked from behind, startling both of us.

  He was in his mid-fifties, tall with a scraggly beard, with broad shoulders and thinning hair that the wind teased across his scalp. He wore plaid pajama bottoms and a tattered gray T-shirt with many holes.

  “Yeah, she was,” Heidi said.

  “A good friend,” I added.

  “It’s a shame,” he said. “A damn shame. I was home when it happened.” The man turned around and pointed at his house, a modest one-story with ugly lopsided bushes and a curtained window that flickered from the light of a television. “Scared me off my couch. I called 911. Took me a while to find the phone since I’d had a few.”

  Heidi and I both stood up and faced the man. He was barefoot and leaned too heavily on one leg, keeping his balance.

  “Did you see anything?” Heidi asked.

  “Lots of water. It was like one of them geysers you see on those nature programs.” He made a sound then like a rocket taking off and threw his hands up in the air. He took a step back, regaining his footing. “It was amazing,” he said.

  I cleared my throat. “So you just stood there and watched while my friend died?”

  “No, no, it wasn’t like that,” he said. “It wasn’t like that at all. There were other people running to help. Besides, I’m not much good in situations like that. I mean, I can barely help myself.” He rubbed his face with his hand, from forehead to chin, and then raised his finger. “I did call 911. At least I was able to do that much.”

  Heidi looked at the unlit candles on the curb and then turned to the drunk man. “Do you have a lighter, by any chance?”

  “Not on me,” he said, patting his pajamas. “You shouldn’t smoke, anyway.”

  “It’s for the candles,” I told him, but what I really felt like telling him was, You shouldn’t be a fat drunk walking around in your pajamas.

  “Oh,” he said.

  “We’ve got matches, but the wind keeps blowing them out.”

  “A lighter’s not going to make much of a difference,” he said. “Let me see one of them can
dles.”

  Heidi picked one up and handed it to the man and he brought it to his nose. “Mmmm,” he said. “Smells good. What is that?”

  “Vanilla,” I said.

  The man sniffed the candle again. “Va-nil-la,” he said, sounding out each syllable. “That’s lovely. Isn’t it wonderful that there are things in this world that smell like this?” He looked at the candle and smiled as if he had found the key to happiness.

  “I guess,” I said.

  He encircled the base of the candle with his thumb and forefinger and then handed it back to Heidi. “I’ll be right back.”

  We watched him turn around and head toward his house, his hand held out before him as if he were still holding the candle.

  “What’s he doing?” Heidi asked.

  “He’s drunk,” I said. “That’s what he’s doing.”

  “Should we go?”

  “And just leave the candles here? Not even light them?”

  A strand of hair flew across her mouth and she pulled it away. She set the candle back on the curb. “You want to try again?”

  “Not really.”

  Heidi sniffled. “What’s the point then?”

  At the gas station across the street, the plastic bag skidded on the ground by the pumps. It stopped, twirled around in tight circles, then skidded again until it pushed itself underneath the tire of a black sports car. The headlights flashed on and the car rolled forward, flattening the bag.

  “This oughta do the trick,” the man said when he returned. He was holding two glasses and I thought for a moment that he’d poured us a couple drinks, something to take the edge off our grief, but then I saw the glasses were empty. “Got these at a garage sale, oh, about three or four years ago,” he said. “Guy wanted thirty cents for each, but I talked him down to a dime a piece. Hand me them candles.”

  I grabbed the candles and held them toward the man.

  “Now drop ’em in,” he said.

  Carefully I slipped a candle in one glass and it made a soft thud when it hit the bottom. Then I slid the other candle in the other glass and he held them both aloft, proud of himself. “Perfect,” he cried out.

  When we attempted to light the candles again, the man stood close, blocking the wind with his body. He hovered over us and the scent of alcohol wafted from his mouth. I tipped each glass at an angle while Heidi reached in with the lit match held between two fingers.

  “Bingo!” the man said.

  The candles glowed a creamy light in my hands as I turned them around, examining the emblems printed on the glass. They were football helmets, washed out from numerous cycles in the dishwasher or sunlight or both. One helmet was pale green with a single wing spread across it, the other was faded blue and had a red C at its center.

  “Do you need these back?” I asked the man.

  “Not really,” he said. “I don’t care much for the Eagles, and the Bears, well, I used to love the Bears during the Perry and Payton era. Which was, what…two decades ago?” He open his hand and counted on his fingers. “Is that right?”

  He looked at us like we would know the answer.

  Heidi shrugged.

  I put our candles back on the curb. “We don’t follow football,” I said.

  “It’s a great game,” he said. “Brutal, poetic. You see, most people think it’s just barbaric. They don’t see the beauty of finding the open man down the field, threading the defense with a perfect spiral. It’s like an improvised ballet, you know?”

  Heidi and I both nodded. She glanced at me quickly and had this let’s-get-away-from-this-intoxicated-freak look on her face.

  “Who knows what would’ve happened if I didn’t blow out my knee,” he said, placing his hands on his waist. “I was one of the best young quarterbacks in the country. Hell, maybe the best.”

  The man scratched his beard and waved us off and staggered back to his house mumbling to himself. He cocked his arm, then tossed an invisible football at his home. When he reached his front yard, he sat on the grass and leaned on his elbows and looked up at the dark blue of the evening.

  “Let’s go before he comes back,” I said.

  Heidi walked ahead of me. “Good idea.”

  We hurried to the car and jumped in, keeping our eye on the drunk man. When we pulled away he was still sitting on his lawn, looking skyward, perhaps talking to the moon. Before we turned down the street I looked back at the candles we’d left on the curb, shining brightly in each glass as if sunlight could be made into a drink.

  CARLOS

  In the parking lot outside the museum, I sat in my car with my hands on the steering wheel and watched a yellow butterfly fumble around for nearly a minute—this way, that way, spirals and loops. I listed every screwed-up thing that had happened over the past three weeks: Vanessa dying, Snake in a coma, Suji getting pregnant, Mira breaking up with me, and, lastly, the asshole who’d pissed on the museum floor on my first day at work. The butterfly bounced around like a piece of confetti caught above an air vent until it finally landed on the side of the museum wall, opening and closing its wings like tiny hands clapping.

  Someone rapped against the driver’s-side window and I jumped in my seat. It was Nadine, the museum guard from the east wing. I caught my breath and rolled down the window.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” she said.

  “It’s okay,” I said.

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Oh yeah, I’m fine.” I realized that I was still holding on to the steering wheel and let go of it.

  Nadine nodded like she didn’t believe me. “Okay, I’ll see you inside then.”

  I stayed in my car and watched the butterfly for a few more minutes, its wings quivering with each passing breeze. I closed my eyes and listened to the traffic on Alamitos, to the whispering of tires over pavement, how they got louder and louder as they approached the museum, then faded away down the street, like the ocean’s back-and-forth with the shore.

  When I stepped inside the museum, Ms. Otto was behind the front desk, talking on the phone and writing on a notepad at the same time. “I understand,” she said. “Yes, you’re absolutely right.” She lifted her eyes and saw me and tapped her watch with the eraser-end of her pencil. “Let me call you back. I have someone here I need to talk to.”

  As soon as she hung up I said, “Sorry I’m late.”

  “That’s okay. How are you holding up?”

  “So-so.”

  “How’s your friend doing?”

  “He’s still in a coma.”

  Ms. Otto slowly shook her head. “I’m sorry.” She put her palm to her forehead like she was checking if she had a fever. “I can’t believe Vanessa is gone and I won’t see her sweet face behind this counter again.”

  “I know what you mean,” I said.

  “Are you going to the funeral tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be there. You?”

  “I’m going to try to make it. I have a million things to do before next month’s show. I haven’t even sent out a mailing.”

  “Let me know if you need any help.”

  “Thanks, Carlos,” she said. “I appreciate it.”

  The phone rang and Ms. Otto picked up. Her face stiffened and she slammed the phone down. “Another crank,” she said.

  “Maybe it’s that guy who peed in the museum?” I said.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised.” She stepped out from the front desk and headed back to her office, then quickly turned around and tore off the top sheet on the notepad beside the telephone. “Almost forgot,” she said.

  As I walked to my post, Leonard was staring at me with his arms folded and his head cocked at an angle. “You’re late,” he said flatly.

  “I know, I know,” I said. “My bad.”

  He let out a puff of air between his lips and stood up from his chair. “Some of us have shit to do. Some of us have places to be at.”

  “Sorry, brutha.”

  He laughed then, big and sarcas
tic. “Sorry, brutha,” he repeated, mocking me. “My bad.” He placed one hand on his belly and laughed through his teeth, a hissing sound like an air pump filling a basketball.

  I took Leonard’s seat and felt my cheeks getting hot.

  “I bet you live in a real nice neighborhood, in a real nice house,” he said. “Picket fences and shit.”

  “We don’t have fences.”

  “Whatever, dawg.” He strolled away with that easy stride of his and stopped beside the rag doll Jesus. He bent down and lifted his head off the floor so the doll faced in my direction. “My bad,” Leonard said from the side of his mouth like a ventriloquist. He laughed some more through his teeth and walked out of the museum with his left arm swinging fluidly at his side.

  I added this exchange with Leonard to my “Screwed-Up Things That Have Happened Over the Past Three Weeks” list.

  I patted my coat pocket even though I knew I’d forgotten to bring my Red Vines. It wasn’t long before I began chewing on my fingernails, one after the other, then spitting them out on the floor. I didn’t care. I used to worry about little things like homework or zits or whether or not a person gets too close to the art pieces. Someone could’ve kicked the pile of green sand in the corner for all I cared. I was tempted to do it myself.

  A woman walked into the museum talking loudly on her cell phone, waving one arm and saying “I know” a thousand times, with different inflections—I know…I know…I know—like some actor rehearsing her one line in a movie. I scowled at her. She palmed the mouthpiece and lowered her voice and kept talking, probably still repeating the same two words.

  “No cell phones in the museum,” I said even though I wasn’t sure if that was a rule.

  The woman covered the mouthpiece and turned to me. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes. If you need to talk, please do it outside.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  “I know,” I said, smirking.

  She squinted at me and then made her way toward the front entrance, still chattering on the phone.

  A man walked in shortly after with a smug look on his face. He reeked of cologne and wore a fancy suit and fancy shoes, a large ring with a black stone on his pinkie. Car dealer, I thought. The Mafia.