Rough Draft

by James W. Hall

  Misty parked in the covered lot and took a minute to stash the derringers behind the backseat. A few thousand dollars of hardware. The only valuable thing she owned aside from her Radio Shack computer. Something she’d started doing a few years back, a hobby, collecting derringers. Saving up her cash till she had a couple of hundred extra bucks, then picking out another one at a gun show or pawnshop. Mostly used ones, each with its own smoky history. She liked the idea of a little gun like that. Tuck it away in a pocket, no bulge. Carry two of them or three and nobody would know what firepower was passing by. She scrimped on clothes, movies, eating out at restaurants, so she could add to her collection. With some women it was shoes or purses or jewelry. You had to spend your extra money on some damn thing.

  In the rearview mirror she touched up her makeup, then walked across the lot to the Bayside Market. The place was busy as usual, teenagers and old folks, South Americans. Calypso music tinkling over the speakers, a strong breeze flowing off the bay. Out on the Intracoastal some big white yachts idled past, laughing gulls squawking overhead.

  Misty had on the tight orange shorts and the white cotton Hooters T-top, shortened to expose her navel. Underneath the T-top was the pushup bra that laid her breasts out for display on an extra-reinforced white cotton shelf. An engineering marvel and requirement of the job. You wanted tips, you had to have tits.

  Most of the girls had plastic ones, saline-filled or olive oil, or whatever they were pumping into them this year. Every week another girl showing off her new boobs in the kitchen, letting everyone have a squeeze, check how real they were. All the cooks standing in line, the dishwashers drooling. Misty kept hers natural. Not gigoondas, but big enough to get by. Though in the last year or two she had to admit they were starting to get a little gravity-challenged.

  She walked in the big glass front door and right away she could see something was wrong. All the girls gathered at the bar, folding napkins. No one looked over. No one said hi.

  Then Jesus Cardozo, the young manager with the sweaty face and Hitler mustache, came bustling out of the kitchen, spotted her, and sailed right over to where she was standing just inside the door.

  “Let me guess,” Misty said. “You’re about to fire my ass again.”

  Jesus just stood there inside a fog of cheap cologne. The other girls stopped folding napkins. They were out of earshot, but they were leaning toward her. She could feel the bra tightening around her chest.

  “I been telling you, Misty,” Jesus said. “I been asking you to try harder.”

  “Okay, okay, so I’ve been a little mopey. I’ve been going through a bad patch, that’s all. What can I say? You never get down, Jesus? A guy like you, you’re always up, happy-go-lucky, twenty-four hours every day? I don’t believe that.”

  “You didn’t think I’d hear about what you did, Misty? You think no one would tell me? You dump a glass of beer on a man’s head, I’m not going to find out?”

  “Hey, I was going to tell you about it.”

  “This is something we can’t have, Misty. You ruined this man’s fancy-ass toupee. We gotta pay for this goddamn thing. It’s sixteen hundred dollars, this hairpiece. It’s imported from Italy, the hair of some special order of nuns for chrissakes.”

  “It was an accident. I stumbled.”

  “That was no accident. It was on his fucking toupee, Misty. How’s that an accident? Explain it to me, the accident part. I got eyewitnesses come talking to me, telling me what you did. You poured a beer on the man’s head.”

  “Hey, the guy was sexually harassing me. He had his hand all over my butt. What’m I supposed to do, call over a lawyer, sue the guy on the spot? I did what I had to do. I cooled his jets.”

  Jesus shook his head.

  “Doesn’t matter he touched you, Misty. You’re a big girl. That’s part of the job.”

  “Asshole can do anything he wants to me, I got to stand there and take it? You rewrite the Constitution, did you, Jesus? I lost my inalienable rights all of a sudden?”

  “You have a problem with a customer you come talk to me. That’s how it works.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ve seen whose side you come down on, Jesus.”

  “Misty, you poured a beer on this man. He’s sitting there doing business with his clients and you embarrassed him. You ruined the man’s expensive fucking hairpiece. We gotta sell a lot of beer to make up for that sixteen hundred dollars.”

  “The guy should be happy I didn’t slam him with the beer mug.”

  “Look, Misty. Maybe it’s come time for you to look around for something you like better than serving beer. Some other line of work.”

  Misty looked over at the other girls. They’d gone back to folding napkins, chatting away like nothing was happening. None of them were her friends. They talked to her, shot the shit, but that was it. Not friends. Worked alongside a couple of them since she dropped out of community college her sophomore year. Five years and zero friends.

  “Yeah, yeah, you’re right, Jesus. I should’ve just stood there and let the asshole grope me. What was I thinking? I should’ve pulled down my shorts, made it easier on him, let him get way inside there.”

  “Look,” Jesus said. “I could give you one more chance. I know you got problems, Misty. I could see if I can forget this. Put it behind us. I’m not a bad guy. Maybe we can make a bargain between us.”

  “Let me guess,” she said, raising her voice so the other girls could hear. “Because you’re being so nice and all, letting me keep my job, you expect to come over to my apartment again. Crawl in beside me, make me breathe your dead-fish halitosis for two minutes while you work up to one of your premature ejaculations. Is that the bargain you had in mind?”

  Jesus looked over at the other Hooter girls. Everyone frozen, watching.

  Misty reached behind her, worked her hands up under her shirt. She unclipped the bra, then shrugged her arms through the sleeves of her white Hooters T-shirt and slipped it free, and tossed the bra at him. Jesus caught it by one strap and held it away from him like a rotting animal.

  “You know, Jesus, actually, I have to thank you. Last couple of months, I’ve just been delaying the inevitable. Now, because of the fuckhead in his Italian wig, I can start working full-time on my true calling in life. And listen, man, I want to tell you something. Thanks for the mammaries.”

  It was the same stupid joke the customers used all the time. Not the parting shot Misty would’ve wished for, but, hey, Jesus caught her by surprise. Next time she got fired, she’d do better.

  SIX

  There was never anyone waiting in Dr. English’s waiting room.

  Apparently Janet English was the one doctor in the western hemisphere who didn’t stack her patients’ appointments on top of each other. Gave herself a half an hour between sessions to have a cup of tea, clear her mind. Whatever the reason, Hannah was grateful for it. Never anybody to play eye-games with. Everybody wondering about everybody else. Afraid that one of the kids would erupt, start speaking in tongues or have a seizure, unzip his pants, flash his privates.

  Or maybe Dr. Janet English only had one client per day. God knows, she charged enough to stay afloat on that.

  There was one couch, gray nubby material. A green leather chair. A good magazine selection on the coffee table. The latest People, Time, then some weird ones you’d never look at otherwise. A tattoo magazine. A skateboarder monthly. A couple of teenage fashion rags and a couple for the computer crowd.

  There were two Andrew Wyeth reproductions on the walls. The Bermuda scene. A pretty Key West house on the edge of the wind-tossed Atlantic, a single coconut palm along the seawall bending against pre-storm winds. The other Wyeth was done in muted whites and featured a golden lab curled up on his master’s king-size bed. Tassels hanging from the edge of the bedspread. Late-afternoon light suffusing the room with a serene glow.

  The waiting room always made Hannah feel relaxed, which was a hell of a feat since every week when they came here, she inevitably c
ircled back to that July morning five years ago when her parents were murdered, the second-by-second unfolding of that day, and the days that immediately followed.

  They’d only been sitting for half a minute, Randall paging through the tattoo magazine, when Dr. Janet English came out of her back office. She was barefoot, wearing blue jeans and a black and red Miami Heat T-shirt. In her early forties, she had close-cropped hair, not a buzz cut exactly, but way too short for a part. It was black, graying around the temples. No jewelry, no makeup. Cherub cheeks, gray eyes that never seemed to blink.

  Last week Gisela said she’d heard that Dr. English was a lesbian. “Why should that matter?” Hannah said. “I’m not saying it matters,” Gisela said. “I’m just saying I heard she was a same-sex lady.” Hannah said, “But the implication is that it’s bad. That this woman with a medical degree from Harvard is somehow compromised because of her sexual orientation.” “Hey,” Gisela said. “That’s your spin. I’m just saying I heard from a reliable source, the child psychiatrist treating your son for posttraumatic stress is not one hundred percent kosher heterosexual. What’s wrong with you? You join the PC police or something? You been memorizing the lists of things you can’t say anymore? Look, Hannah, I’m just passing along some information. Do with it what you will.”

  Hannah was doing nothing with it. She liked Janet English. Liked the way she put her hand on Randall’s shoulder. Liked the way she smiled, and most of all liked the way she talked. Which was a lot like the way she dressed. No frills. Comfortable with the language of normal folk, not throwing around a lot of medical jargon. At first, it’d worried her. Seemed unprofessional. But Randall took to Janet immediately and that was good enough for Hannah.

  “How we doing?” Dr. English asked. More to Hannah than Randall, but including them both. “Everybody behaving themselves?”

  Hannah gave Randall a chance to respond. But he was staring down at the floor, eyes hidden.

  “Randall’s decided he needs a new wardrobe.”

  He shook his head, but wouldn’t look her way.

  “New wardrobes are important,” Janet said. “Gotta have the right uniform or they’ll throw you off the team.”

  “And I’m not sure we’ve got full compliance on the pharmaceutical front either.”

  “I know what you’re saying, Mom.” Randall lifted his head and gave her a reproving frown. “I’m not some little kid.”

  “So have you been taking your Xanax, Randall?” Janet had her hand on his shoulder. He was leaning lightly against her hip. A tingle of jealousy fluttered in Hannah’s chest. The closeness, the familiarity between these two. “Have you been taking the pills I prescribed?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because.”

  “Oh,” Janet said. “Because. Now there’s the great all-purpose answer.”

  “I didn’t take them because I shouldn’t have to take medicine. Because I should be all right without any medicine.”

  Dr. English looked at Hannah. A small smile growing on the doctor’s lips. Like, see how easy this is? This is how to talk to your son, how it’s done. But Hannah didn’t like it. Two adults double-teaming the anxious boy. It wasn’t fair. Wasn’t natural. And certainly nothing she could repeat at home alone.

  “Good answer, Randall. Very good answer. And I totally agree. You shouldn’t have to take any medicine at all. And that’s what this is all about. Trying to get you to that place where not taking medicine is the norm.”

  She looked at Hannah again. A bigger smile now, like this had been a minor epiphany. A glimpse, for Hannah’s benefit, of what went on behind the closed door of Janet English’s office. She didn’t allow Hannah to sit in. The doctor reserved ten minutes at the end of each session to go over anything that may have come to light during the forty minutes she was alone with Randall.

  “I’ve got an errand up the street,” Hannah said. “Shouldn’t take more than half an hour. I’ll be back before you two are done. Okay, Randall?”

  “Okay,” he said. But he wasn’t looking at her. Sulking now. She’d embarrassed him again, made him self-conscious, treated him like a kid. One or the other of the litany of offenses she was continually guilty of.

  “You do your errands,” Janet said. “We’ve got to discuss Randall’s fall wardrobe.”

  Hannah watched them walk into the dusky room. She waited till the door shut. Stood there a minute more, staring at the white dog curled on the white bed. That quiet bedroom where everything harmonized, everything made sense.

  “It’s called a petition for modification.”

  “He can do that? He can reopen the case? Snap his fingers, get a judge to reconsider.”

  “It’s the law, Hannah. He has rights like anyone else.”

  “He’s not even a U.S. citizen. He’s a goddamn Norwegian. What rights does he have to come here and try to take my child from me?”

  “Doesn’t matter what color his passport is. He’s the boy’s father, Hannah. That gives him rights.”

  “Not in my book, it doesn’t.”

  “Unfortunately we’re not playing by your book.”

  Two blocks down Ponce de Léon Boulevard from Janet English’s office, in the one-story white stucco office building, a cute Mediterranean restaurant on one side, more lawyers’ offices on the other, she was meeting with Brad Cohen, her family-services attorney. Mid-thirties, pink shirt, green tie with spewing volcanoes on it, and a haircut so bad it made his curly black hair look like a cheap wig. He came with the highest recommendations. Big-time rep around the courthouse, the great white shark on domestic issues. Divorce, alimony, child custody. This was the number-one guy in Miami. Jaws for in-laws.

  “Hey, I don’t write the rules, Hannah, I just try to bend them in the right direction to suit my clients.”

  She’d used fifteen of her thirty free minutes trying to read and make sense of the document Brad had received from Pieter Thomasson’s New York attorney. Pieter was safely back home in Oslo. Having fled the statutory rape charges stemming from his multiple encounters with a fifteen-year-old high school freshman twelve years ago, a period of time which coincided with his brief marriage to Hannah. A union that lasted all of eight months.

  “This guy’s got a warrant out for failure to appear in the molestation case. Unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.”

  “Even criminals have rights.”

  “You don’t know the whole story, Brad. My father lawyered the divorce and the custody case too. At the custody hearing Pieter threw a violent tantrum in the courtroom, had to be restrained by a marshal, screamed obscenities at the judge, and got tossed out. Now, five years later, the asshole pops up, thinks he has a shot at half-time custody?”

  “The court disposed of the statutory rape case. There’s no more warrant for failure to appear or unlawful flight.”

  “Disposed of it? You’re kidding. When?”

  Brad tapped the document that lay on the table before him. The one Hannah had tried to read. Indecipherable legalese.

  “Last week. An out-of-court settlement,” Brad said. “Money changed hands, the girl and her family signed the papers. His record is clean, everything’s whited out.”

  “He can do that? Drop some cash, walk away from something like that? He fucked a fifteen-year-old girl in the backseat of his Volkswagen bug. Tore her green plaid skirt, her goddamn school uniform, ripped her panties, deflowered this Catholic girl, and now he slips them a few thousand bucks and all is forgiven, come get your son, take him away to fucking Norway.”

  “I’m not saying we’re giving up. All I’m saying is Florida law favors custody by both parents. Now that he’s no longer a wanted felon, what the judge wants to know is: Has there been sufficient rehabilitation? Has the guy cleaned up his act?”

  “You mean, has he raped any more kids lately?”

  “Apparently he hasn’t. At least no one’s come forward to complain. Barring that, all we can really do is delay. Make the guy wait.”


  “That fucking bastard.”

  “I hear that a lot,” Brad said. He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, showing her his armpit stains. “You wouldn’t believe it, Hannah. Those three little words, it’s like an echo in here. All day long. I open at ten, close at six-thirty, eight and half hours that’s what I hear. ‘That fucking bastard.’ It’s wormed into the woodwork now. ‘That fucking bastard. That fucking bastard.’ Those words, they’re lurking in the bookshelves, hiding out in my silk palm tree over there. Like spider mites, the words are everywhere.”

  She sat there in the client’s chair. Padded black leather. Probably a thousand dollars. Gold studs, beautiful shined mahogany. In the last month she’d paid for ten chairs just like it. Fending off Pieter Thomasson. Her major life mistake. Marrying her goddamn math professor at the University of Miami. Hannah, a freshman, falling for the tall blond Nordic prof with golden hair, deep blue eyes, enormous white teeth. And that accent. That suave European way he had. He carried a pipe, for chrissakes. He wore smoking jackets. He buffed his nails and boffed his students. Didn’t let a little thing like a marriage vow change his mating rituals.

  “That fucking bastard,” Brad said again. Hands laced behind his head.

  “Okay,” Hannah said. “I get it, Brad. So give me a week, I’ll work up something more creative.”

  On the sidewalk heading back to Dr. Janet English’s office, still fuming, Hannah felt something tickle across the skin of her neck. The brush of eyes following her. She fought it for a few steps, this attack of dread, but it wouldn’t cease.

  In front of a delicatessen she halted abruptly and swung around. A couple of men in white shirts and ties passed by, neither of them looking her way. Lawyers talking shop. She peered across the street at the five-story parking garage. Nothing there either. A guy sitting at the counter in the deli with a motorcycle helmet in front of him was drinking a Coke through a straw. The traffic was light, the sky clear, a breeze was stirring the American flag planted in the small yard of an art gallery across the street. The scent of garlic and onions whisked down the block from Marco’s Sicilian Restaurant.