City of Rose

by Rob Hart

  She nods. “You must be a real blast at parties.”

  A steeple stabs up into the sky before the full train station comes into view. Beige brick with orange roof and trim. It says UNION STATION on one side, GO BY TRAIN on the other. Crystal guides the car toward the entrance, where there’s a mess of cars picking people up and dropping them off. No one is doing it in any kind of orderly fashion.

  We’re a couple of lanes over and Crystal says, “Can’t get much closer.”

  “Find parking.” I hop out and duck through the scramble, almost get creamed by something that looks like a cross between a trolley and a multi-person bike, kids perched around the edges of the spider-like contraption and pedaling like they’re running from something.

  I push through the doors, into the main room of the train station. It’s big, lots of polished wood and brass and sand-colored marble. There are pools of people milling around the food vendors, staring at the arrival signs, vibrating with the apprehension of travel. It smells like French fries. I nearly trip over a group of crusty punks sprawled out by the door, a mess of mismatched luggage propping up a cardboard sign that reads: NEW TO TOWN. OUR DREAM TO OPEN A FOOD TRUCK. DONATIONS APPRECIATED.

  They look at me expectantly. I keep moving, scan the crowd, not even knowing where to start. Crystal didn’t have a picture, but she described Dirk to me. Sandy hair, goatee, thin, favors black. Lots of tats, but the most apparent being the noose tattooed on the side of his neck, which makes me believe that under different circumstances we wouldn’t be friends.

  I cut through the crowd, past the lacquered wooden benches, not even looking at faces, looking at necks, for the splotches of black ink. Hope Crystal gets a good spot and gets in here quick because if he’s here, she’ll see him right off. I check my phone, thinking maybe she’s texted me, and no, not yet.

  Five minutes pass. Nothing.

  This is insane.

  Maybe we should go to the cops.

  What the fuck does that even mean, that Dirk is going to sell Rose? Even though Crystal is convinced he’s not that kind of guy, there’s a level of desperation unique to heroin users. And anyway, this is already getting out of hand.

  I’m not a detective. I’m just some asshole who’s good at hitting people and can be occasionally clever. Every minute that ticks by makes me feel like I’m sinking lower into something and if I keep it up, I’m not going to have enough oxygen to get back out.

  There’s a bored-looking cop with a round ruddy face and a crew-cut standing at a post by the ticket window, staring at no one in particular.

  Maybe Crystal isn’t thinking clearly. Who even says she has to tell anyone what she does for a living? Maybe there’s a way to get this around the cops without there being a problem.

  She isn’t here yet.

  Fuck the Chicken Man. Dirk is a junkie idiot. It was probably one of his junkie idiot friends. What other explanation could there be? This whole spiel about the cops could have been a scare tactic. Something to keep us doing what we’re doing: Making bad choices.

  Executive decision time.

  As I’m walking over to the cop, the noose passes my field of vision.

  Dirk walks by me, just like that, a tattered green duffel bag flung over his shoulder.

  It’s him. I know it soon as I see him. My brain goes completely blank for a second. All this running around and he’s standing right there.

  Maybe I am a good at this.

  He’s by himself. No little girl tagging along. He’s got the vacant look and collapsed cheeks and waxy skin of a heroin user ready for another hit. I know that look. Seeing him, walking like it’s no big deal, it stops my march toward the cop. I watch him walk into the bathroom. The door swings closed behind him.

  You know what?

  Fuck the police.

  The bathroom looks like it was transported here from a high school. Subway tile and beige stall doors and urinals that stretch to the floor. One stall is taken. No one else inside. The door won’t lock but there’s a knee-high out-of-order cone just inside so I put it outside the door. Hopefully it buys me a couple of minutes.

  There’s an explosion of flatulence and a moan from the stall. I lean against the sink and wait for Dirk to come out. A few minutes pass. After some fumbling around with the toilet paper dispenser, he stumbles out and heads toward to the sink to wash his hands, tossing the duffel on the floor. I make like I’m playing with my phone. He doesn’t even look at me, walks past to the hand dryer. It looks like one of the first hand dryers ever built and sounds like a jet engine when he presses the button to turn it on.

  Soon as he puts his hands under it I get behind him and say, “Dirk.”

  He jumps away and I get between him and the door, to herd him back toward the sinks. He asks, “Who the fuck are you?”

  “Where’s Rose?”

  His face goes white but he doesn’t say anything. He’s jittery, his shoulders clenching and unclenching. There’s an angry red mark between the pointer and middle finger on his right hand.

  I get close to him. “I want you to understand something. Are you listening to me?”

  He nods.

  Muscle memory takes over. My voice drops an octave. “You’re going to tell me where she is. This isn’t a question. It’s not a debate or a negotiation. You’re going to tell me now and I won’t drag you over to that toilet you just befouled and stick your fucking head into it. Because I didn’t hear you flush. Now, who did you sell her to?”

  He shakes his head, puts his hands up in front of him, his eyes darting around the room. “It’s not like that. I didn’t sell her to some sick fuck.”

  “Tell me how it is. Right fucking now, or it’s toilet time.”

  “It was a foster family. Off the books adoption. Some nice family got her. You think I’d fuck around with my own daughter like that? What the fuck did Crystal say about me? That fucking cunt—”

  I stick my finger in his face, speaking loud so I know he’ll hear me over the roar of the dryer. “Watch your mouth. You kidnapped a little kid, and that looks like a fresh track mark on your hand. You’re not exactly in contention for father of the year.”

  Dirk’s lip curls up toward his ear. “That bitch has you all wrapped up, doesn’t she?”

  The hand dryer is still going.

  It’s so fucking loud.

  Why won’t it stop? Is it broken?

  “This isn’t about you or her,” I tell him. “It’s about a kid. Give me an address.”

  “Listen, man, you got it all wrong. I’m looking out for Rose, okay? The old man said she’d be fine.”

  “What old man?”

  Dirk looks up and past me, not listening, his eyes finally settling on something stationary over my shoulder.

  The roaring of the hand dryer stops, replaced by the echoing sound of footsteps.

  I try to turn around as something slams into me and drives me into a stall.

  Good news: The stall I’m in is not the one Dirk had just occupied.

  Bad news: Everything else that’s currently happening.

  I’m on my knees hugging a toilet, harried footsteps pounding away from me, my cowboy hat lying on the floor. I grab it and try to get out of the stall but the door swings inward, too close to the toilet, so I get stuck trying to squeeze around it. By the time I free myself the bathroom is empty. I duck out the door and don’t see Dirk, just crowds of blank people. Not even a commotion.

  They’re gone.

  My blood is pounding a drumbeat on the inside of my brain. Something hot and thick gathers on my forehead. I duck back into the bathroom and find a trail of blood trickling down my scalp, about to hit my eye. I can’t feel the pain yet. I’m still too charged up.

  I bend over the sink and splash water on it, watch swirls of pink disappear down the drain, then grab a chunk of paper towel and hold it against my head.

  That’s, what, two solid blows to the head in something like twenty-four hours? Three? I wonder how many points
have been knocked off my IQ. As if I had that many to start with.

  The door opens. An old man enters. He’s shrunken and lost weight since he bought his khaki-sweater combo. He looks at me with the wad of paper towel pressed against my head and asks, “You okay, son?”

  I nod at him, leave the bathroom. As I’m heading for the entrance I pass a newsstand, and you know what? Fuck it. If dumb shit is going to keep happening, I’m going to have a cigarette. I deserve it. And none of Crystal’s slims. Not that I care about how they look. Phallic is phallic. I don’t trust that they have enough nicotine for me.

  There are three people in line in front of me, so it takes five full minutes to get up to the counter, which is staffed by a girl with a wool cap and facial piercings who moves like she’s underwater.

  When it’s my turn she looks at the bruise on my face and the smear of blood on my forehead. She shrugs and asks me what I want.

  “That’s a loaded question,” I tell her.

  She shrugs again, so I ask for my brand and some matches. Cigarettes achieved, I duck outside, slap the pack against my palm, open it, take one out, and puff into the recessed filter to clear out the tobacco flakes.

  I fire up, get dizzy straight off, hate myself, and feel a little like I want to puke.

  Man, did I miss this feeling.

  The smell of it is like a key to an attic filled with dusty memories. Bleeding and smoking. I can feel pieces of my old life tugging at me.

  I’m halfway through when Crystal comes running up. “Took forever to find parking and then I got into an argument with a meter maid... was Dirk not here?”

  She gets a look at my forehead and her face contorts into a territory between confusion and fear.

  “Sit down,” I tell her, nodding toward a bench next to us. I fall into it. She perches, tentatively, on the edge. I run through what happened, everything Dirk said, and how I got rushed from behind. She listens and when I’m done she closes her eyes and exhales, folds her torso over her knees. Her fist goes up to her chin, her thumbnail to her lips.

  “I don’t even understand why he would do that,” she says around the thumb. “Why would he steal my daughter and give her away?”

  “He seemed pretty adamant that she was safe. Do you believe him?”

  She doesn’t hesitate. “Yes, actually. He wasn’t a great dad but he wasn’t a bad one. He hit me but he never hit Rose, never raised his voice to her. When we split up he pushed pretty hard to keep seeing her. Even threatened to get a lawyer, though he never followed though.”

  “I know you don’t trust him, but do you trust him with her?”

  “For as crazy as it sounds, yes, I do.” She looks at me. “But that doesn’t mean I’m giving up on getting her back.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

  She digs down deeper on that nail.

  “If you’re hungry we can get something to eat,” I tell her. “You shouldn’t eat your hand.”

  She looks up at me, pulls her thumb out and stares at it, the top of the nail chalky, the skin around it red. It looks worse than it did when I noticed her chewing it in the coffee shop.

  “Bad habit,” she says.

  I wave my cigarette. “These things happen.”

  With the hand she wasn’t chewing, she reaches into her purse and takes out one of her skinny cigarettes and holds it in her hand for a moment before placing it between her lips. I strike a match and offer it to her. She inhales and sits back, blows out a plume of smoke and stares at it.

  “This is the most I’ve smoked since I found out I was pregnant,” she says. “I sneak one every now and again but I don’t like her smelling it on me. And now it’s like when you’re a kid and you’re rolling down a hill and you’re picking up speed…” She waves her hand. “Forget it. What’s the next step?”

  I take off my hat, find the back of it is bent, so I twist the wire back into shape. “He said something about ‘the old man.’ Could mean his old man, like his dad. Do you know anything about his parents?”

  “No. He never talked about them.”

  “Could be something, could be nothing. I’m going to ask Bombay to look into his background a little. Maybe he has family around here. That’d be a good place to start. I think we bought ourselves some time. He might hole up for a bit, try to hide, or find another way out of town.”

  Crystal contemplates her cigarette. We sit there and watch as it sends up a few desperate wisps of smoke. I dab at my forehead with the wad of paper towel. It comes back a little red, but not so red that I’m worried.

  “Maybe it’s time to actually call the cops for real,” she says.

  “What if, and it’s just a thought, you got a lawyer? Someone who can be an advocate so shit doesn’t get out of control.”

  Crystal huffs. “I can’t afford a lawyer.”

  “There’s got to be some social service organization you can tap into, right? Isn’t there a sex workers’ union?”

  “Some strippers have unionized. I haven’t. Didn’t seem worth it.”

  “Maybe now it is. Can you talk to someone? Get some advice?”

  Crystal nods. “Yeah. I can do that. I know some people who might be able to point me in the right direction.” Her head dips back and she gazes up at the sky. “Nothing is every easy, is it?”

  “Nope.” I stand. There’s a creak in my knee that I’m only now noticing. Might have banged it up in the bathroom stall. Might have banged it up in the garage. It’s the most horrible guessing game ever. I stretch it out, swinging my foot forward and back, which doesn’t help much. “C’mon. Let’s go to the car. I’m on second shift. Tomorrow we find a lawyer. It’s fucking Portland. It can’t be too hard to find a sympathetic lawyer. We take it from there.”

  I begin to walk away and realize she’s not following me. I turn and her head is tilted and she’s staring at me. I tell her, “We should go.”

  Crystal asks, “Why are you helping me?”

  Shrug. “You know how many karma points I’m going to earn off this?”

  Her mouth is closed but her jaw pulses like she’s clenching her teeth.

  A young couple comes through the door, pushing aside the black velvet curtain and standing at the front of Naturals like they’re waiting for something. The guy is wearing black jeans and suspenders and a white shirt with a huge pair of red lips on it. The girl is a blonde, her hair in a tight ponytail. She’s wearing a full-body T-shirt like a dress, depicting a cartoonish, buxom woman in a pink bikini.

  The fact that they’re dressed like idiots doesn’t give me pause. What does concern me is the fact that they’re pushing a baby stroller.

  I’m hoping they’re using it to transport something, but as I get closer I can see that, yes, there is a baby inside, bundled in a blue blanket, waving its little monster hands and staring at the disco ball that’s casting shards of light around the room.

  Calypso is up on stage, fully nude, dancing to “Paradise City” by Guns N’ Roses, so I position myself so I’m between her and the baby’s line of sight. I don’t know if the baby will understand what it’s seeing, but still.

  Fingers crossed they need to use the phone or something.

  “Can I help you?” I ask.

  The guy shrugs. “We just want to sit and get a drink.”

  “You have a baby.”

  He leans forward. “So? What difference does that make?”

  Now I see what they were waiting for. Someone to challenge them.

  “This is a strip club,” I tell them.

  “The female form isn’t something to be ashamed of,” the girl says. I can tell it’s something she’s wanted to say for a very long time.

  I glance over my shoulder. Calypso is climbing off stage and things are quiet and people are craning their necks, looking over, trying to figure out what the hell is happening. Tommi must be in the back. I’m sure I don’t need to get a ruling from her on this.

  “Sorry, but you have to go,” I tell them.


  “What cause do you have to refuse our business?” the girl asks.

  “You have to be twenty-one to get in and that baby isn’t twenty-one,” I tell them.

  “We just want to have a drink,” the guy says. “The baby isn’t going to cause any trouble. What’s the problem?”

  As if on cue, the baby starts shrieking. That bone-grating cry that only a baby is capable of producing. This has to be an evolutionary thing. A survival mechanism. Nothing makes you want to drop what you’re doing like a baby crying.

  Now people are staring.

  “The answer is still no,” I tell them. “This is polite as I get. Don’t make me be not polite.”

  The two of them hover, very visibly upset, wondering if they should press the issue harder. I’ve heard of people trying to bring babies into bars. I guess this is the next logical step.

  After a few moments of grumbling and pursed lips, they turn to leave. The girl says over her shoulder, “I am going to give this place such a bad review on Yelp.”

  Control your anger before it controls you.

  Inhale, exhale.

  The couple leaves and the music kicks back on. Some punk-klezmer mix, which means Carnage is getting on stage.

  Back to work.

  Naturals is packed. Every stool is taken, every table filled, the front of the stage ringed with people waving dollar bills. There are three dancers tonight: Calypso, Candy Cane, and Carnage. The three of them different as can get.

  Calypso has skin the color of espresso with a touch of milk and she’s curvy with a lot of gold piercings in her face and a mane of hair like a lion. Candy Cane is a freckled redhead, white white skin with breasts so large and well-appointed you’d think they were bolt-ons, but no, she’s blessed. Carnage is tattoos and gristle with a blank, harsh stare like she’s accusing you of something.

  That plus Crystal and Cacophony, the other regular girl, and I keep meaning to ask if the C-names mean anything.

  When there’s a lull in the crowd and Tommi is back behind the bar, she waves me over from where I’m nestled up in the corner, watching the crowd watch Candy Cane dance, and points to a paper plate on the bar in front of her. It’s piled with nachos, coated in salsa and something that’s glowing fluorescent in the black light.