Lostart Street

by Vinnie Hansen

  “Shut up, you stupid, fucking cripple!” Bobbi shrieked, tears streaming. She hit with all her fragile might where The Visible Lady’s knees would have been if she’d had any. With a quick backward movement of her chair, The Visible Lady pitched Bobbi onto all fours against the asphalt.

  John Citrino and I each grabbed an arm and helped her up. She lifted as though every bone were broken although the damage seemed minor, one rip in the forty-dollar jeans, shredded palms, tears smearing the face with mascara, and snot running from her nose.

  “Let go of me, bitch,” she snarled at me.

  I let go, but John Citrino did not. He gripped the thin, freckled arm so it pinched white around his fingers. He plucked a clean, pressed handkerchief from his back pocket and stuck it in Bobbi’s free hand. “Clean yourself, Babe. Then we better have that private chat.”

  As Bobbi mopped her face and blew her reddened nose, The Visible Lady fearlessly wheeled closer. “John, I know I don’t have any legs to wrap around your neck, but then I don’t have a nose that will snort up your profits, either, and I think I’d make a helluva manager. You can see my handicap doesn’t keep me from doing what I need to do.”

  Citrino glowered at The Visible Lady. He tugged Bobbi toward the Seville, opened the door like a gent, and then pushed her inside. He climbed in the car himself. He did not race the engine or gun it. Bobbi made no attempt to escape. The Visible Lady and I moved out of the way as John Citrino drove majestically away.

  For all I could tell, they’d go off and make up and things would revert to normal, except that now the manager would hate our guts and make life miserable for us.

  Bobbi kept her head tucked down. The Visible Lady waved at the departing couple.

  Something Rotten in the State of Denmark

  The Visible Lady tilted her head back like a wolf baying at the moon and laughed.

  I drummed my thigh with rolled-up essays. “I don’t see what’s so funny.”

  It took a moment for her to contain the laughter. “I’m soooo happy.” She hugged her own torso. “I hate that bitch.”

  “I don’t see where we’ve accomplished anything.” I sat on her landing so we’d be more nearly eye-to-eye. Her face was strikingly beautiful, flawless skin and large violet eyes framed with lush auburn hair.

  “Well I hope he doesn’t murder her.” She clapped gleefully. “I believe in cleaning up the environment, but stop short of killing.”

  “Murder her?” I scoffed. “They looked like they were off to a love shack.”

  She shook her head. “I’ve only met John Citrino one time before, but I can tell you there’s one thing he values more than pussy.”

  Money, I gathered.

  “You don’t get it, do you?”

  I shook my head and made a mental note never to use that condescending tone with my students.

  “Three twenty-five is not supposed to be our rent. Bobbi’s been skimming. I always wondered how she supported her habit.”

  “Cocaine?” Bobbi’s hyped-up manner made sense now.

  “By far Alice’s biggest customer,” The Visible Lady added, matter-of-factly. “But when the police raided Alice’s, heh, Bobbi couldn’t wait to rent it. I never did like the bitch, but that’s when I started to hate her. I wouldn’t doubt if she turned in Alice herself in order to turn over the unit and jack up the rent.”

  The Visible Lady backed up to align her wheelchair with her step and landing.

  “Wait a minute.” I didn’t get up so she’d have to wait—or run over me. I was not at all convinced she wouldn’t do the latter. “Could I ask you a couple of questions?”

  “That’s one,” she said snottily.

  I sprang up from the concrete landing. To hell with her. I’d die of curiosity. I received enough abuse at school.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just get so fucking tired of people asking how I lost my legs. Even when they don’t ask, they ask. They ask with their exaggerated politeness, or their curious eyes, or with their embarrassment. I’d rather be invisible.”

  “Then where were you the other night,” I blurted, “during the fire?”

  She laughed. “I was dancing at the Catalyst.”

  I’m sure my face revealed all my disbelief. I’d always been a lousy liar, a no talent at poker faces.

  “Come on,” she said. “Why couldn’t I be out dancing?”

  Legless? Did she dance on her stumps? Dance in her chair? Was she kidding me?

  “Ask Chuck if you don’t believe me.”

  Chuck? I didn’t even say it, but she saw the question written all over my face.

  “My boyfriend, silly. You’ve seen him a bunch of times. He comes over every weekend.”

  Stunned, I stared at this legless beauty wondering whether to take her seriously and what she had looked like when she had legs, if she’d ever had legs.

  “Now that’s a couple of questions,” she said, suddenly curt, but with a hint of a smile.

  The Narrator

  A quarter cup of half and half diluted my coffee to a proper caramel color. As I sipped reflectively, I thought not of the manager Bobbi Headland or the owner John Citrino or of Florence’s upcoming cremation, but of my favorite subject—me. I was an idiot.

  Why was I shocked at the idea The Visible Lady might have a boyfriend? Shocked, shit, I hadn’t believed it. I’d seen people visit her all the time, why shouldn’t one of them be a lover? Well, at first I’d assumed she was old. But, even if she were old, why make those assumptions? Why shouldn’t she have a man? But how did they have sex?

  Images of various possible positions flashed by. Stop that. Not nice.

  Why did my mind convert her visitors into relatives? Did I think only people inextricably linked by blood would bother with the old or maimed?

  Maybe, because that’s the way I was. Well there I went, supposing everyone possessed my faults.

  Faults? What did I expect of myself? I was working sixty hours a week and was as nice to these wacky neighbors as I knew how to be. I was too hard on myself. No wonder I was too hard on everyone else. No wonder I didn’t believe a woman in a wheelchair might go out and boogie when I, with all my appendages, didn’t give myself that kind of break.

  I blamed myself for my pregnancy. I blamed myself for having an abortion. I blamed myself for not having the guts to keep the baby. If I could find a way to climb out of this pit, to forgive myself, then maybe I could forgive Angelo, and if I could forgive him, maybe my anger at the world would sink into hell, where it belonged.

  Backstory or Legstory

  About five o’clock I wandered to The Invisible Lady’s window. I squinted into the dimness of her apartment.

  “I’m here, Cecile,” she said. “Brace yourself. Citrino hasn’t shown up, so I’ll tell you where I left my legs. I know you’re wondering.”

  I didn’t say anything. This woman wielded her handicap like a bludgeon.

  “Have you heard of The Highway of Terror out of Quangtri?”

  “Vietnam?” I guessed.

  “My legs are splattered there.”

  “You’re a Vietnam Vet?”

  “Women were there,” she stated from the shadows. “I was a nurse. I never considered myself pro-war. That’s one of the biggest misconceptions people have about us vets. They seem to think everyone who didn’t duck what he’d been taught was his duty was some sort of blood-thirsty brute.”

  “I don’t think that.”

  “Did I say you?”

  Wow, she was prickly, or maybe the prickliness only went with the topic she’d chosen.

  “You know,” she said, “the things people do and say don’t have much to do with you, but everything to do with them.”

  Right-o.

  “In my hometown—Colorado Springs—there’s a mountain, Cheyenne Mountain, that’s hollow and inside is the North American Air Defense Command. My dad was a barber with special clearance to go into that mountain to cut the workers’ hair.”

  My
eyes were adjusting and The Visible Lady’s words pulled my attention to the beautiful locks flowing around her shoulders.

  “He—my dad—learned to shave heads in the army. So I grew up in a pro-military environment.”

  I didn’t say anything. This was clearly a sensitive subject.

  “Anyway, I went to nurses’ training in Denver and between my studies I watched the results of the Tet Offensive and of Hamburger Hill. I wanted to do something. I felt so impotent watching all that on TV.

  “To me all those war protestors were slaps in the faces to the soldiers. The soldiers didn’t create the war. Many didn’t volunteer to go. They were asked to go, and they were blown to bits. They came from blue-collar families like mine. Those demonstrators were another breed, privileged draft-dodging college kids.”

  Up through the window her hair swayed back and forth as she shook her head. “But I really did want to go. I dreamed of becoming another Florence Nightingale. I actually feared the war would end before I had a chance to be a heroine. Kissinger was already negotiating with the North Vietnamese. Even after I found out my assignment was in Quangtri near the DMZ, I wasn’t scared.”

  That seemed right. Even now The Visible Lady struck me as a fearless warrior.

  She paused. The silence stretched. A mockingbird peeped, trilled, tweeted and peeped again. A muscle car rumbled down Lostart Street.

  “So what happened?”

  “I got there.” She sighed wearily. “No twenty-three-year-old could imagine the reality. When the first casualties were brought in, I thought I’d run. Amputees bothered me most. I remember one boy—he really was a boy, baby-faced, still had acne—his name was Cliff Morgan. He had a bilateral amputation above the knees. I was making rounds and he said, ‘Lorraine, how do I write and tell my mother I don’t have legs anymore?’ I almost cried. Then I thought, ‘Wait. I can’t cry. I’m the nurse. I’m supposed to comfort him.’”

  Outside the window, looking into this hazy past, I realized the rift six or eight years made between us. A typical high-school student, I’d been much more interested in styles and boys than the war on television.

  Lorraine. I toyed with the name, trying to plug it and this background into the person of The Invisible Lady. She’d probably never imagined I thought of her as that, since she’d known my name, it seemed, from the beginning. But weren’t we all, like fictional characters, realized differently in each person’s head?

  “I lived in a stunned state,” Lorraine croaked. “Lost my appetite for heroics.”

  I waited. There was nothing to say, no comfort to offer for this sad history.

  “When the North Vietnamese attacked on Easter weekend,” she continued, “I ran like everyone else. Our truck was piled so high with supplies and workers and wounded that I had to ride with my legs hanging out. So many running people clogged the road that we could barely move. The vehicles looked like grotesque floats decorated with crates of chickens and bicycles. I felt more impotent than I had watching the war on TV. I was there and people were falling and I couldn’t do anything.

  “Then this whirring came right at me. I couldn’t move. The rocket cut through both my legs. If I’d fallen out, I don’t know what would have happened. Instead I fell backward into a truck full of medical workers and medical supplies. So I survived. I became a bilateral above-the-knee amputee—just like Cliff.”

  The cathartic rush of Lorraine’s story sounded as if she hadn’t told it enough times. Maybe with a story like that, one could never tell it enough times. “You don’t sound bitter,” I said.

  A strangling sound emanated from the window. “Don’t let me fool you. I’m very bitter.”

  “I would be.”

  “Bitterness is the worst part. I had a great doctor, though. He kept saying, ‘Lorraine, the injury won’t kill you, but bitterness might.’”

  My Big Saturday Night

  Oddly, all these events increased my loneliness, as though I’d ventured into the world only to discover I didn’t belong in it. By Saturday night, all my papers and lesson plans were done, so I rocked, thinking I should get up and go somewhere. Maybe to a club where there’d be other people. Up the hill from where I lived, probably not even a mile away, was a place called O.T. Price’s, with live music.

  I went to my closet and inspected my clothes. November evenings could be quite chilly, but I didn’t want to wear wool. It’d be too hot if someone asked me to dance. I didn’t want to wear layers because I’d have no one with whom to stash any shed clothing. If I chose silk, I’d have to dry clean it after one short wear because of the smoke.

  Ah fuck. If you’re going out, go out.

  You can afford dry cleaning, I told myself. You’re a grown woman with a real job.

  I unwrapped my silk shift from its plastic shroud. Although the cut was conservative, the pattern seemed daring to me, all black on one side, black and white striped on the other side, with red piping and belt.

  I shaved my legs and underarms and showered. Bent over, I blow-dried my hair so it would have body. I filed my fingernails and painted them red. I put on as much make up as I ever wore—mascara, blush and lipstick. I smeared myself with lotion and dabbed perfume behind my ears and knees.

  When I’d dressed, I checked myself in a newly acquired full-length mirror. I had a pretty face and a svelte body, but I already felt tired. It was 9:30.

  The parking lot beside O.T. Price’s was almost full and I had to park deep in the back. I climbed out into a pitch-black maze of cars, a perfect place for a rape or robbery. Which reminded me that we’d never solved the thefts at Lostart Street, although they seemed to have stopped. Maybe the thief had been Lefty Hunt.

  I wrapped my arms around myself, my heart thudding under my right wrist. I waited for my eyes to adjust and then shuffled over the gravel in my pumps. Two silhouettes stirred in the backseat of a yellow Charger. I jumped. They turned toward me. I hurried on, thinking how cramped they must be.

  Music pulsated through the corrugated-metal wall of the building. Vibrations came up through the concrete front walk. I threw open the door and made my grand entrance.

  Straight ahead through the smoke, the lead singer gyrated in a black leather mini skirt, a black leather jacket and a studded belt slung low on narrow hips. Under the jacket, a minuscule black top bared her midriff and exposed most of her cleavage. Long raven hair snarled and twisted over her shoulders. She was not singing now, but dancing to a complicated guitar riff. She turned her back to the audience and twitched her butt, which brought a round of applause.

  My enthusiasm drained. I felt old, and when I looked around, I felt even older. The crowd went for black, preferably leather, and peroxided hair. One needed at least seven or eight earrings to fit in and Doc Martens or high tops. Some of the students at Watsonville dressed like this, and for a moment I panicked, thinking one of them might be here with a fake I.D., and see me in the entrance.

  The man at the door let me stand, undisturbed by more than an occasional sidelong glance. He was older than the crowd and dressed in Levi’s and a sweatshirt, a man from my generation, the tail-end of the boomers.

  The small dance floor remained empty, even though all the tables seemed full, and people teemed around the bar to my right. The sweet cloying odor of clove cigarettes drifted toward me.

  A couple, probably the ones I’d disturbed in the parking lot, came in behind me. I stepped aside, and when they moved ahead of me to pay their admissions, I slipped out the door.

  Mrs. Bean’s Return

  Mrs. Bean came home on Sunday. The yellow cab rolled up the driveway through the fog as I sat at my desk drinking coffee. The car stopped by the burned structure.

  The driver twisted around. “This is it?” he said, loudly as though he thought Mrs. Bean were deaf, too.

  I couldn’t hear if she replied. I waited several minutes for her to pay him. The day was quiet, as Sunday mornings were, especially when fog muffled the distant noise of the freeway.

&n
bsp; I moved to the steps, thinking Mrs. Bean might extract herself from the cab, realize she had no home to return to, and die of another heart attack on the spot.

  As Mrs. Bean finally did swivel her legs out the back door and lift herself unsteadily on to her cane, the neighborhood converged on her as though everyone shared my thoughts.

  Lorraine rolled her wheelchair to her landing, Punky and Vince, both in robes, leaned out Punky’s door, and through the haze, Bucky and Dudu galloped down the asphalt, a scarlet ribbon bouncing on Dudu’s white fur. The Fat Lady waddled down her steps and then stood impassive as a lighthouse.

  Mrs. Bean seemed oblivious to us, but the driver didn’t. His head swung this way and that on its hammy neck, stunned by the sudden life, the apparitions in the gloom. As soon as Mrs. Bean hobbled safely around the back of the car, he tore off, burning rubber.

  Squarely before her home, Mrs. Bean stopped. Her head moved in a slow circle as her old eyes took in the sight. She raised her hand to her heart, and her cane clattered to the ground.

  Bucky and Dudu reached her first. Lorraine flew from her landing as I ran down from mine.

  Whatever momentary pain she might have felt, Mrs. Bean apparently had no intention of having another heart attack.

  She swiped at us with both scrawny arms.

  “Good Golly!” she said disgustedly as she flailed at us. “What do you all want?”

  One of her bony arms clobbered Bucky on the forearm and when he yelped, Dudu pounced at the disoriented old lady, yapping and nipping.

  “Get that horrid little cat killer out of here,” Mrs. Bean shouted. “This is private property.”

  Bucky collared the dog and backed away from the ungrateful old sourpuss.

  “If he bites me, I’ll sue,” she screeched after the figure retreating into the fog.

  Mrs. Bean bent as if to retrieve her cane, but Lorraine rolled over, snatched it up, and handed it to the woman. I doubted the wisdom of supplying Mrs. Bean with a blunt instrument, but Lorraine didn’t flinch as she sat blocking the old woman’s entrance to the burned building.

  “Well, what are you two up to?” Mrs. Bean asked. “I don’t plan to go back to that damn hospital, thank you very much,” she snapped.