City of Rose

by Rob Hart

  “That’s a terrible idea. Let’s do it.”

  “So… I should go home.”

  She gives me this look when she says that, and I don’t know what the look means. All I know is how far she’s standing away from me, which is far enough that if I put my hand out I would barely miss being able to touch her. That’s the only thing I can tell right now.

  “Maybe you should stay at my place again tonight,” I tell her. “Just to be safe.”

  Crystal narrows her eyes at me. “I’m not going to fuck you.”

  “I’m not asking you to fuck me.”

  “That sounds like a back door invitation to me fucking you.” She laughs, lowering her voice to a deep purr. “Oh, baby, I just want to keep you safe. Come on by tonight, and if you want to be a little more comfortable, take your panties off.”

  “I’m not that kind of guy. I promise. Just… let’s go. I just need to stop at the club real quick and pick something up. Then we’ll go back. Okay?”

  Crystal pauses. Looks past me, above me. Seems to consider a lot more than what I’m asking her.

  Finally she says, “Okay. Let’s go.”

  An hour’s worth of research later, and my head hurts.

  This meeting tomorrow night is taking place in a school, and it’s hosted by the feds, and it’s about some kind of chemical additive that’s supposed to be dumped into the river.

  Portland has a rep for being a green and clean hippie-dippie city, which is a little funny considering the Willamette River, which cleaves the city in two, is filthy. Part of it is a Superfund site, which means it’s so dirty the federal government has given it a special earmark required for cleanup.

  The riverbed is apparently a sludge of agricultural waste, raw sewage, heavy metals, and industrial run-off. Not as bad as the Gowanus in Brooklyn—a waterway so polluted I’m convinced you would melt if you fell in—but it’s still pretty bad.

  That’s the riverbed. The actual water is a bit cleaner, thanks to conservation efforts. Apparently it’s safe enough to swim in because the levels of E. coli are below hazardous levels.

  Personally, I feel like any E. coli is too much E. coli, but I don’t judge.

  So as part of the Superfund cleanup, the feds are testing a new chemical with a name half as long as my arm. According to extensive studies, including animal trials, it’s completely safe, and has successfully eliminated a lot of the contaminants present in controlled conditions that are similar to the Willamette. Something about ionization and chemical binding and blah blah yawn science.

  On the whole, it seems like a pretty good idea, but here’s the funny thing about it: Ellen Kanervisto and the Keep Our Water Clean group are protesting the use of the chemical that’s supposed to keep their water clean.

  They don’t want chemical additives in the water, even if that chemical additive is meant to clean the river. Her and the other members of her group are sure that there’s some kind of conspiracy abounding, and point to a discredited study saying the chemical creates mercury-like compounds.

  This meeting is part of the environmental review process, in which the government will explain why it’s a good thing, and people will complain about it. It sounds like literally the most boring thing I might ever have to sit through in my entire life.

  There’s a scrape and a bump from the front of the apartment, and Crystal comes through the front door carrying a box of pizza. My stomach drops. “I thought you were picking up Thai?”

  “Everything’s closed. I know a late night pizza place. Only option.”

  “That’s not pizza.”

  Crystal plops the box down on the coffee table next to my laptop. “What do they say about beggars and choosing?”

  “I’d rather go out and beg on a corner for food than choose to eat this pizza?”

  “Ha ha.”

  I close out the windows I’m reading, shut the laptop, and bring it over to the kitchen counter so I can plug it in to charge. When I get back Crystal is already in the same basketball shorts and T-shirt from last night. She sits on the couch and opens up the pizza box. I put a beer down in front of her.

  “What do you think?” she asks.

  “Doesn’t look right. Doesn’t even smell right.”

  “Just try it.”

  I sit across from her and take a piece. It’s smaller than a slice of pizza is supposed to be, and thicker. Can’t fold it right. The cheese has weird dots of yellow, like there’s cheddar in the mix. That makes my heart hurt.

  She takes a big bite of her slice and smiles. “C’mon. It’s been a rough week. We earned some carbs.”

  I contemplate the slice a little more. “And why couldn’t we order in again?”

  “Because if we were lucky enough to find a place that delivered to this neighborhood, which we probably wouldn’t, it would take two hours and there’d be a service charge. Easier to go out and get it.”

  “Do you ever feel bad about the fact that you live in a fake city?”

  “Do you ever feel bad about the fact that you’re a whiny fuck? Eat.”

  I gird my stomach and take a tentative bite. The sauce is sugar sweet, and the cheese is a weird texture. It doesn’t pull like regular cheese, coming off in a clump. These people have never heard of oregano. Greasy, too, leaving a film on the inside of my mouth.

  Crystal smiles. “Good, right?”

  “I refuse to call this pizza. But it’s food, and I need food.”

  “You fucking diva.”

  We sit and eat, me mostly cramming it down my throat. It’s not entirely unpleasant if I don’t think too hard about it. When there are three slices left in the box Crystal takes it and puts it in the fridge, comes back and falls into the couch. She puts a fresh beer bottle on the table and nods down toward the glass of whiskey I poured for myself earlier, which I have yet to touch.

  “You going to drink that, or is it for display?” she asks.

  I poke at the glass with my finger and it slides across the table a little. The thing I had to pick up from Naturals was a bottle of Jim Beam, which I had to settle for since there was only one bottle of Jameson but plenty of Jim sitting in a carton in the basement. I figure Tommi will understand. I’ll pay for it, even if it means paying what she would have earned on it rather than what it’s worth.

  I pick up the glass and hold it under my nose. It stings a little, but it also smells warm.

  “Been so long since I had a drink like this,” I tell Crystal. “A real drink.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  I put the glass down. “I didn’t like the person it turned me into.”

  Crystal arches her eyebrow. “Why did you need to start again?”

  “I wanted to have it. I don’t know. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Ash…” She sits back into the couch, like she’s settling in for something. “Tell me again why you left New York. I know you told me, but I feel like there’s more to the story. Like there’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “What does it matter?”

  “Because it looks like you’re carrying something heavy.”

  The glass has beads of sweat running down it, the ice cube I dropped in long since melted, lightening the color of it from dark amber to light bronze. I pick up the glass and hold it to the light and press the rim of the glass to my lips and take a sip. It’s not the whiskey I drank, but it’s whiskey, the smell and sting of it breaking open something that was closed.

  I put the glass down. “Chell. The girl who died. I didn’t kill the guy who murdered her. But I came close. I’m glad I didn’t. I made a decision about the kind of man I want to be, and that’s someone who’s doesn’t kill people. But between Chell and my dad, that place was hanging over me like a burden. My dad being dead… I felt like there was something I needed to live up to. He was this grand ideal of heroism and here’s me, doing drugs and getting drunk and beating the shit out of people and thinking I’m somehow making good on that example. And I wasn’t. I was
just a stupid asshole. Still am. I’m not a good person. I don’t understand anything about myself and thought getting out of town would help.”

  Crystal wraps her lips around the rim of the beer and takes a long swig. “So that’s what this is about? You’re trying to prove something to yourself?”

  “Yes. And no. I don’t know.”

  Crystal nods, slowly. Sneaking up around the edge of something. “I want to ask you something else. It was the question you didn’t answer the other day.”

  I take a sip of whiskey. She takes a sip of beer. We place our drinks down on the coffee table, amidst the wet circles where they previously sat.

  “Okay,” I tell her.

  “When we went to the garage, I asked you if you had a death wish and you didn’t answer me,” she says. “And, honestly, this whole thing is insane. You’ve gotten beat up. Someone pulled a gun on you. You could have gotten killed in that garage…”

  I put my hand around the glass. Don’t pick it up. Feel the cool condensation on my hand. And I don’t say it to Crystal, I have to say it to the glass. “I don’t want to kill myself, but I’m indifferent to the concept of dying. I feel like if I did it would be like dust blowing away in a strong wind. Does that make sense?”

  I pick up the glass and finish it in one gulp, the burn of it filling me with warmth. I get up from the couch and go to pour myself another, prepare to finish the bottle and smoke a hundred cigarettes, like I used to when I wanted something to be numb and gone, but find Crystal is standing behind me. I turn to her and she reaches up and puts her hand on my cheek and says, “You are broken, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know what I am,” I tell her. “The only thing I know is that I don’t like the way I am.”

  She nods, pulls me into her, into the crook of her neck. I inhale, hard, that smell of citrus. She always smells like it, even though she’s showered here and is wearing my clothes, and I wonder if it’s something in her purse that she puts on, or if she always smells like that.

  I press my face into her smooth skin, feel her small, tight body against mine, and wonder if I’m going to be able to get through this without crying.

  Yes, I think so. Maybe.

  Crystal pulls away from me. She moves her face close to mine and I think she’s going to kiss me, but she dips her mouth and presses her forehead against my lips. She asks, “Will you sleep with me tonight? No fucking. Just… share the bed?”

  I nod, nothing left to say. No witty rejoinder. I’m hollowed out. The physical toll of honesty.

  She steps away from me and takes my hand. I reach back for the bottle of Jim, to bring it with me, and she shakes her head. “You don’t need it.”

  I shut out the lights, so there’s only the soft amber glow of the lamp on the bedside table. She leads me over to the bed and climbs in, pulling me after her. She lays down facing away from me. We slide under the covers and I cross my right arm under my head, and I don’t know what to do with my left arm, so I press it against my side as I stare at the back of her. She’s still facing away from me and she says, “You can put your arm around me.”

  Her voice is so small.

  I slide toward her and place my arm over her waist. She takes hold of it with both hands and pulls it close, like a teddy bear. I can feel her hands, and her breasts pressing through her shirt. Her black hair falls into my face and it tickles my nose.

  “How did Rose get her name?” I ask, because she’s asking so much about me, and I want to know something about her.

  “When I found out I was pregnant, me and Dirk decided we needed a fresh start,” she says. “Get off the drugs, live a better life. So we moved here because we heard it was pretty and we didn’t have any hookups. It worked out for me, not so much for him. Anyway. When we first rolled into town, we were in the car, and I was sleeping. I was only a few weeks along at that point, but I knew it was a girl. From day one, I knew. And I woke up and there’s this neon rose. It’s over one of the buildings downtown. And as soon as I saw it I just knew. Rose is a part of this town as much as she’s a part of me. She was the new thing we were going to have in a new place. A blank slate.”

  Her voice catches a little at the end.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask.

  “Rose has this recurring nightmare. There’s this thing that stalks around the outside of the house, and when it crashes through the window to come after her, she wakes up. I had her draw it for me. It’s a big man wearing a luchador mask. Like a Mexican wrestler. I don’t even know where she learned what a luchador mask is. So she would have the dream and wake up and come get in bed with me. We’d sleep like this, with me behind her and her curled up into a ball, like a little pill bug.”

  Crystal makes a noise that sounds like a sniffle. Like maybe she’s clearing her sinus, or crying. I can’t tell which without her looking at me. She grips my arm tighter, wrapping herself around it.

  “I hate the idea of her being somewhere right now and maybe she’s having that nightmare and I’m not there to comfort her.”

  Crystal brings her hand up to her face, probably to chew on that ragged nail. I take her hand and intertwine my fingers with hers. She lets me.

  “It’s going to be okay,” I tell her.

  “You’re not a bad person, you know,” she says. “A bad person wouldn’t care.”

  She kisses my hand.

  Now is when I’m glad she can’t see my face.

  A kid wearing a dingy rainbow poncho, with a mustache that curls up on the sides like a silent-film villain, walks up to the microphone. He puts his mouth directly on it to speak so that there’s a blast of static. He makes a face, leans back, tries again. “Sorry. So, I think we need more bike lanes in Hazelwood? Also in Hillsdale, and Mill Park, and Wilkes...”

  The moderator, a middle-aged, beer-gutted man, his skin shiny with flop sweat, sighs. He glances at the glossy boards surrounding him, displaying colorful graphs and pictures of the river. He shrugs at the stenographer at his side, a doe-eyed brunette in a pink sweater I’m sure he fantasizes about, given the creepy glances he’s been throwing her way.

  The moderator leans into the microphone perched on the table in front of him next to a blank paper coffee cup. “Sir, this is a public forum to discuss the Willamette River. Do you have any comments about the river project?”

  “I thought this was a public forum?”

  The man wants to laugh, I can see it stalking around the edges of his mouth, but he stops himself, knowing how well that would go over. He says, “Yes, about the river project only.”

  “Uh… maybe we need more bike lanes along the river?”

  “Okay, sir. Noted. Thank you for your contribution.”

  The man in the poncho smiles, looks around, confused a little about where he is: A public school auditorium, the place a third full, the crowd spread out along the worn wooden seats that are bolted in rows to the floor. Voices echo off the hard surfaces. Ellen Kanervisto is in here somewhere, I hope, but I can’t see her. I pulled up her profile on Facebook, found a girl with big brown eyes who looked Hawaiian or Malaysian, with a sloppy wool cap and a warm smile. Crystal and I don’t have much choice but to sit and wait for her to get called to the mic.

  Which, hopefully, will be happening soon.

  I dig a finger into my leg to try and keep myself awake. This is boring. So far one person has spoken in favor of the project, and I’m pretty sure that person was a plant, because she was dressed too neatly and sounded rehearsed. Like she was reading facts off a card.

  The rest of the people who’ve spoken have all been against the project, deriding it for releasing another chemical into the river. Every time someone speaks against the project, little cheers erupt from around the auditorium. Every time those cheers erupt, the moderator sinks into his seat a little.

  In a general sense, I would never trust a man wearing a suit, but I feel a little bad for the guy.

  Crystal’s head dips back. I turn to her and she yanks it back up, opens
her eyes wide. “Sorry,” she whispers. “Tired.”

  Her being tired makes me think of this morning, when I woke up, rolled over and away from her, completely out from under the blanket, which she had wrapped around herself like a cocoon. I felt good. Better than I have in a while. I stayed like that for a half hour, staring at the ceiling until she woke up.

  Then we got out of bed. Got food. Checked on the club to make sure things were okay, and to see if Tommi was still mad at me. Which she is, a little.

  Then we came here and it’s been an hour of people droning on about bullshit I don’t care about.

  Pretty dull, compared to the last few days.

  The moderator shuffles through the pile of cards in front of him. We were invited to fill out a card if we wanted to speak—both of us declined. He takes the top card and holds it up and squints, like the handwriting is sloppy, and says, “The next speaker is Ellen… Kanvista?”

  Ellen pops up from her seat across the auditorium like she had a spring underneath her. She’s slim, in a black sweater and gray tights, with a shock of electric blue hair. That’s why I didn’t recognize her. Her hair wasn’t dyed in her Facebook profile. She strides to the microphone and says, “Thanks for giving us this opportunity to speak out against your plan to rape our river.”

  Crystal drops her head into her hands. I laugh at that, loud enough that a couple of people turn and shoot me dirty looks.

  I lean over to Crystal. “She didn’t bring a purse up with her to the mic. She was sitting by herself. See if her phone is in there. Grab it and we go.”

  Crystal nods and gets up. I expected a bit of pushback. But no, she is very enthusiastic to commit petty larceny.

  Ellen is leaning into the microphone, so closely there are little bursts of static. “What you’re doing is removing from us any ability to make a choice here. You’re going to dump chemicals in the river and hope it fixes other chemicals. Well, what happens when you turn up something wrong with this chemical?”

  Not a terrible point.

  The moderator looks like he wants to argue back, but he’s not allowed to.