USA Noir Noir

by Johnny Temple

  Long ago some people used to live there. Long, long ago the lady who built the museum lived next door, and the gardens were connected and she’d have come running. But there was a wall there now and the people who lived in her house didn’t even like the museum all that much. He wasn’t worried about them. And in the hillside below there were two little caves, for monks and nuns to meditate in. When Paul was a kid and used to come here, sometimes there’d be one of them in a cave for a few days, just sitting and thinking with their eyes closed. They used to leave their doors open and Paul would tiptoe over and hide behind the bushes and peek at them. Once, one of the nuns opened her eyes and saw him and he thought she’d be mad but she just smiled at him, nodded like she was saying hi, like she knew him already, and closed her eyes again. The nuns didn’t look like the ones he was used to. He’d never seen real monks, only in Robin Hood comics, but they didn’t look like this either. These monks and nuns had shaved heads—all of them, the nuns too—and gray robes and big brown beads, like rosary beads but not. He liked the way they seemed so calm and peaceful, though. That’s why he liked to watch them. Even when he was a kid, even before The Guys came, he’d never been calm and peaceful like that.

  But that was a long time ago. No one had used those caves for ten years, maybe more. The museum stopped having monks and nuns come and no one was ever there when the place was closed, and thinking without words Paul knew this was a good idea.

  Even though he also knew he didn’t have a good idea for next time.

  He wasn’t worrying about that now, as he finished his run and swung onto a bus for St. George. He couldn’t. He needed to go get himself together. He’d have loved to get high but there was no way he could shoot up now and still be able to do this job when it got dark. So he went back to his basement apartment, pushed some pizza boxes and takeout cartons out of the way to find his black shirt and pants. He took a shower, even though the clothes were filthy, and then lay down, rolled himself in his blanket, and slept. He hoped The Guys would give him a break; sometimes they liked to scream and yell and wake him just as he was falling asleep. He was braced for it but they didn’t and he slipped away.

  When he woke up it was just after sunset. Excellent. He took his black backpack and stuffed his ski mask and his gloves into it, plus a rope, and a hammer and a pry bar for the skylight. He stuck in a light-blue sweatshirt too, for afterward when they’d be looking for a guy all in black. If anyone saw him to describe him to the cops. But no one would see him; that was the beauty of this plan.

  At the bodega he bought two coffees, lots of cream and sugar, and threw them both back before he got to the bus stop. Now he was buzzed; good. He took the bus up to the corner past the museum and walked down. It was dark, with yellow squares of light glowing in people’s windows, the kind of people who had normal lives and no aliens in their heads. Except for one dog walker, no one was out. The dog walker had gone around the corner by the time Paul got to the fence. He climbed it easily, trying to avoid the flags. He didn’t know much about them but they were called prayer flags so he thought it was probably bad to step on them. He slid a little on the wet leaves on the north side of the building but he was completely hidden there from both the street and the next house. Because the building was buried in the hillside he was only maybe ten feet below the roof, and the rope tossed around a vent pipe took care of that. (“Lucky you’re a broken-down skinny-ass runt or that pipe would’ve busted,” Stoom pointed out. Paul didn’t answer.) The skylight, like he figured, was some kind of plastic, and the panels were even easier to pry loose than he’d hoped. He lifted a panel out, laid it aside, and waited. Right about that too: no alarm. He grabbed on to the edge, slipped over, and he was in.

  He dropped lightly into the center of the square stone room, almost the same spot on the floor he used to sit on when he was a kid and came in just to stare. The lady who sold the tickets thought it was neat that a little kid kept coming around, and didn’t make him pay anything. Sometimes if he’d boosted some candy bars he’d bring her one, and she always took it with a big smile and a thank you.

  He slipped the headlamp on and turned slowly, watching the beam play over the room. The place hadn’t changed much, maybe not at all. On the side built into the hill a couple of stone ledges stepped back. Most of the statues sat on them, lined up in rows. A bunch more were in cases against the other three walls. Two of the cases stood one on either side of the door out to the balcony. The space smelled cool and damp, like it was one of those caves where the nuns and monks used to stay. It was still and silent, but not the heavy silence of the shrink’s drugs or the skag. Those made him feel like everything was still there, he was just shutting it out. This, it was a quiet like everything had stopped to rest.

  “What a lovely little trip down Memory Lane,” Larry said acidly. “Can we get to work now?”

  Paul swung the backpack off, opened it, and stepped up to the shelves, leaning over each statue. He wanted them all, wanted to take them and put them in his basement room just to stare around at them, but that wasn’t why he was here and no matter how many he took that wasn’t what would happen to them. He reached out. This one, it was gold. He held it, let the headlamp glint off it. Then into the pack. That one was beautiful but it was iron. Leave it. The two there, with jewels and coral, into the pack. The silver one. That little candlestick, it too. That was all the best from the ledges. Now for the cases on the walls. Paul turned his head, sweeping the light around.

  There she was.

  Just like the first time, the girl in the kitchen, Paul almost pissed himself. A nun, in gray robes, big brown beads around her neck. She smiled softly and Paul’s mouth fell open. It was the same nun, the one from the cave, smiling the same smile.

  “You—you—you’re still here?” he managed to stammer.

  “I’ve always been here,” she replied. Her eyes twinkled, and she stood with her hands folded in front of her. When she smiled she looked like the lady he used to give candy bars to. He’d never noticed that before, that they looked alike. “Paul,” she said, “you know you can’t take those.”

  His voice had rung oddly off the stone walls. Hers didn’t disturb the sense that everything was resting.

  “How do you know my name?” This time he whispered so he wouldn’t get the same echo.

  “You came here when you were a little boy.”

  He nodded. “I used to watch you sitting there. Meditating.”

  “I know. I thought perhaps you’d join me sometime.”

  “I—”

  Larry interrupted him, barking, “Paul! Get back to work.”

  He said, “Just give me—”

  “No!”

  That was Roman. The kick was from him too. Paul’s head almost cracked. The pain was blinding, and he barely heard the nun calmly say, “Roman, stop that.”

  The kicking stopped instantly. Paul stared at the nun. “You can hear them?”

  She smiled. “You don’t have to do what they say, you know.”

  Paul swallowed. “Yes, I do.”

  “Yes, he does,” Larry said.

  “Yes! He does!” Roman yelled.

  “No,” said the nun.

  “I can’t get them to leave.” Paul was suddenly ashamed of how forlorn he sounded. Like a real loser. He heard Larry snicker.

  “Even so,” she said.

  He wasn’t sure how to answer her, but he didn’t get the chance. “Paul?” That was Stoom, sounding dark. When Stoom got mad it was really, really bad. “Do what you came for, and do it now. Remember, Paul: no swag, no skag.” It was one of those times Paul could hear Stoom’s sneer.

  Paul looked at the nun, and then slowly around the room. The headlamp picked out fierce faces, jeweled eyes. “There’s lots of places I could hit,” he said to The Guys. “Doesn’t have to be here. This was a dumb idea. You know, like my ideas always are. How about I just—”

  “No,” said Stoom.

  “No,” said Larry.

&nb
sp; And Roman started kicking him, chanting, “No swag, no skag! No swag, no skag!” Then they were all three chanting and kicking, chanting and kicking.

  Paul staggered forward, toward a statue of a person sitting cross-legged like the nun did. Pearls and coral studded its flowing gold robes. He reached for it but the nun moved smoothly in front of it. She said nothing, just smiled.

  “No,” Paul heard himself croak. “Please. You have to let me.”

  She shook her head.

  “Paul!” Stoom snapped. “You moron loser. Push her out of the way.”

  “No. I’ll get a different one.”

  “I want THAT one!” Roman whined.

  Paul swung his head around. The headlamp picked out a glittering statue with lots of arms, over in a case by the door. He turned his back on the nun and lurched toward it. By the time he got there she was standing in front of it, hands folded, smiling. He hadn’t seen her move.

  “Paul,” she said, “this life has been hard for you. I don’t know why; I think, though, that the next turn of the wheel will be far better.”

  He didn’t know what she was talking about. Wheel, what wheel? All three of The Guys were kicking him now, Roman the hardest, trying to pop his right eye out. “Please,” he said. “Get out of the way.”

  She said nothing, just smiled the ticket lady’s smile and stood there.

  Paul took two steps over to the next cabinet.

  There she was.

  “Please!” he shouted at her. “Stop it!” His head pounded, the pain so searing he thought he might throw up. He could barely see but he knew she was still standing between him and the statues. “Please!”

  “Hit her.” That was Larry. Paul barely heard him through the pain. He tried to pretend he didn’t hear him at all but Larry laughed. “Hit her. With a statue.”

  Paul’s hands trembled as he reached into the backpack, took out the gold statue. “Please,” he whispered to the nun–ticket lady. “Please move.”

  She just stood and smiled.

  Paul lifted the statue way high. As he brought it down on her shaved head he realized he was screaming.

  He felt the impact on her skull, felt it all the way up to his shoulders, his back. The nun crumpled to the floor without a sound. Blood flowed from the smashed-in place, started to pool under her face. Paul dropped the statue; it fell with a splash into the puddle of blood. “Oh my God,” he whispered. “Oh my God oh my God oh my God.”

  “Oh my God is right!” Larry roared a grand, triumphant laugh. “You killed her!”

  “Killed her! Killed her!” shrieked Roman.

  “You know what happens now, don’t you?” Larry said. “You go to jail. Prison, you loser, you go to prison where there’s no smack and we go too! Oh, will that be fun!”

  “No.” Paul could barely get the word out. “I didn’t. She’s not dead.”

  “Really?” said Stoom. “Can you wake her up?”

  Paul kneeled slowly, put out his hand, shook the nun gently. She still had that little smile, the ticket lady’s smile, but she didn’t respond at all.

  “Look at all that blood,” Stoom said. “You’re stupid if you think anyone could be still alive with all their blood on the floor like that. You’re stupid anyway, but she’s dead and you killed her.”

  “Prison!” Roman bellowed. “Killed her! Prison!”

  “No.” Paul stood slowly, shaking his head. “No.”

  “Oh, yes, yes,” Larry said. “Oh, yes.”

  Paul took one more look at the nun, then staggered toward the exit door. An alarm shrieked as he pushed it open. He ran across the terrace, slipping on the autumn leaves. When he got to the railing he stared down; the headlamp shone on branches and bushes growing out of the wall beneath him but couldn’t reach all the way to the street below.

  He grabbed the rail, ready to vault over.

  “No,” said Stoom in that very hard voice. “No, you’re staying.”

  Paul felt his grip tighten on the rail, like The Guys were controlling his fingers. He heard a siren wail. That would be the cops, because of the door alarm. If he was still here when they came, he’d go to prison for sure.

  “That’s right,” Larry said with satisfaction. “Prison for sure.”

  Paul took a slow, deep breath. “No,” he whispered. “She told me I don’t have to do what you say.”

  The Guys yelled, they bellowed and kicked, but Paul loosened his fingers one by one. He climbed over the railing, stood for a minute on the edge of the wall. Then he dove. His last thought was the hope that The Guys wouldn’t have time to clear out of his head before he smashed it to bits on the pavement.

  The impact, the thud of a body landing forty feet below, didn’t penetrate very far into the square stone room. It barely disturbed the resting stillness, didn’t echo at all past the golden Buddha in the middle of the floor. The statue lay on its side on a smooth dry stone tile, beside a backpack full of other statues. Except for the statue and the backpack, and the single panel removed from the skylight, nothing was out of place. The calm silence in the room continued, and would continue once the statues had been replaced in their proper spots by the museum’s new director.

  She would be pleased that something had scared off the thief, though greatly saddened that he’d fallen to his death over the railing at the terrace. As advised by the police, she’d add an alarm to the skylight. She had much to do, as she was all the staff the museum had. She guided visitors, and also sold the tickets, the ticket lady having retired years ago. She didn’t mind the work. She was hoping, even, to soon reopen the meditation caves, to perhaps make the museum not just a serene spot, but a useful one, as it once had been: a beacon for poor souls with troubled minds.

  SECRET POOL

  BY ASALI SOLOMON

  West Philadelphia

  (Originally published in Philadelphia Noir)

  I learned about the University City Swim Club around the same time things started disappearing from my room. First I noticed that I was missing some jewelry, and then the old plaid Swatch I’d been saving for a future Antiques Roadshow. I didn’t say anything to my mother, because they say it’s dangerous to wake a sleepwalker. But then I felt like we were all sleepwalkers when Aja told me about the pool, hiding in plain sight right up on 47th Street in what looked like an alley between Spruce and Pine.

  “You don’t know about the University City Swim Club?” she said, pretending shock. It was deep August and I sat on the steps of my mother’s house. Aja was frankly easier to take during the more temperate months, but since my summer job had ended and there were two and a half more weeks before eleventh grade, I often found myself in her company.

  Aja Bell and I had been friends of a sort since first grade, when we’d been the only two black girls in the Mentally Gifted program, though there couldn’t have been more than thirty white kids in the whole school. Aja loved MG because there was a group of girls in her regular class who tortured her. Then in sixth grade, I got a scholarship to the Barrett School for Girls and Aja stayed where she was. Now she went to Central High, where she was always chasing these white city kids. It killed her that I went to school in the suburbs with real rich white people, while her French teacher at Central High was a black man from Georgia. Despite the fact that I had no true friends at my school and hated most things about my life, she was in a one-sided social competition with me. As a result, I was subjected to Aja’s peacocking around about things like how her friend Jess, who lived in a massive house down on Cedar Avenue, had invited her to go swimming with her family.

  “Come off it, Aja. I just said I didn’t know about it.”

  “I just think if you live right here . . . maybe your mom knows about it?”

  “Look, is there a story here?”

  “Well, it’s crazy. There’s this wooden gate with a towing sign on it like it’s just a parking lot, but behind it is this massive pool and these brand-new lockers and everything. And it was so crowded!”

  “An
y black people there?”

  “Zingha, why you have to make everything about black and white?”

  “Maybe because people are starting all-white pools in my neighborhood.”

  She sighed. “There was a black guy there.”

  “Janitor?”

  “I think he was the security guard.”

  I snorted.

  We watched a black Range Rover crawl down the block. The windows were tinted, and LL Cool J’s “The Boomin’ System” erupted from the speakers.

  “Wow,” I said, in mock awe. “That’s boomin’ from his boomin’ system.”

  “So ghetto,” said Aja.

  “Um, because this is the ghetto,” I said, though my mother forbade me to use the word.

  “He spoke to me,” Aja said suddenly. “The pool security guard. He wasn’t that much older than us.”

  “Was he cute?” I asked without much interest.

  “Tell you the truth, he’s a little creepy. Like maybe he was on that line between crazy and, um, retarded.”

  I laughed and then she did too.

  “So you been hanging out with Jess a lot this summer?” Jess, a gangly brunette with an upturned nose, was Aja’s entry into the clique to which she aspired. But Jess sometimes ignored Aja for weeks at a time, and had repeatedly tried to date guys who Aja liked.

  “Well, not a lot. She was at tennis camp earlier,” Aja said, glancing away from my face. She could never fully commit to a lie. I imagined my older brother Dahani a couple of nights ago, spinning a casual yarn for my mom about how he’d been at the library after his shift at the video store. He said he was researching colleges that would accept his transfer credits. Dahani had been home for a year, following a spectacular freshman-year flameout at Oberlin. That memory led me to a memory from seventh grade when Dahani said he’d teach me how to lie to my mother so I could go to some unsupervised sleepover back when I cared about those things. I practiced saying, “There will be parental supervision,” over and over. Dahani laughed because I bit the inside of my cheek when I said my line.