by Rob Hart
Anger. Rage. Sadness. Something with a definition.
Instead, it’s more numbness. I have to run my hand over the asphalt underneath me to remind myself that I’m real.
I’m a killer. I have killed someone with my own hands. A person who was breathing is now not breathing. This is the one thing in the world I didn’t want. To cross over that line. Now I’m somewhere beyond the veil.
What does that make me?
Damned?
Before I can even think of how to answer that, there’s a little girl standing in front of me.
Yellow dress with a white bow on the front, and yellow sneakers, and she’s playing with her dark brown hair. The wind is blowing it into her face and she’s trying to brush it away with her tiny little fingers but she’s making it worse.
“Are you Ash?” she asks.
“Yes.”
“My mommy said to come say thank you.”
I look up at Crystal, who’s standing beside me, smiling through tears. The woman with the black hair is standing at the door with a young man, the two of them holding each other up, sobbing.
I don’t know if I could ever be a parent. Not after this. Whatever bullshit I’m going through pales to the maelstrom of emotion stirred up for these two families.
The girl shuffles her feet. I ask, “Your name is Rose, isn’t it?”
She nods. “Uh-huh.”
“Well, Rose, it is very nice to meet you. I have heard so much about you.”
And I start to cry a little.
Because here’s the name for that thing I feel, the thing hiding under all that numbness.
Shame.
Rose wraps her arms around my head and awkwardly pats it, like a kid who doesn’t know how to be gentle with a pet, and she says, “Please don’t cry.”
She is so small.
And I cry a little harder.
Rose kicks off her yellow sneakers and runs to the surf. She splashes into the water and Crystal and I sit together in the sand, up where the water can’t reach us, side by side, pressed into each other. Leaning into the resistance.
The clouds have burned off and the sunset is a brilliant watercolor explosion of purple and orange and blue. I’ve never seen the Pacific Ocean. When Rose jumps and comes back down she sends splashes of water into the air that sparkle like diamonds. She laughs a big awkward kid laugh.
This moment I will carry with me for the rest of my life.
Crystal kisses me on the cheek. I turn to her and she smiles. Those blue-green tempered glass eyes brilliant in the fading sunlight.
I’ll carry this with me, too.
“She’s a good kid,” I say.
“I know.”
“How bad was it, with the Becks?”
“Wilson told them I was dead and instructed them to ease Rose into that. At least they hadn’t told her yet. It wasn’t easy, but they understood. Anyway, they got paid a bunch of money, which they get to keep. It’s not like it was a loss. I mean, it was, but…”
“Yeah.”
Crystal pushes her fingers into the sand, takes them out and rubs them. “Are you going to tell me what you did?”
“Wilson is gone.”
“How do I know we’ll be safe?”
I shake my head. “Wilson is gone. And the truth about Fletcher will be out soon. He has much bigger things to worry about.”
Crystal takes a breath. “Does that mean…”
Tears well up again. I push the feeling down. “In the car there’s a briefcase. There’s a lot of money in it. I’m going to take a little bit of it. Enough to survive. Give some of it to Tommi to put toward fixing Naturals and you tell her I’m sorry. Get Hood a new copy of the Battlestar Galactica box set. Then you take the rest of that money and get the fuck out of Portland.”
“This is my home.”
I nod toward Rose. “Home is wherever she is. I’m not too worried about Fletcher, but still, probably a good idea to be far away. At least for a little while.”
Crystal nods. “And what about you?”
“I don’t know. But I can’t stay here. And I can’t stay with you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I can’t.”
Crystal huffs. “You know, I get that your life is hard. You’ve been hurt. But you’re not going to get better by pushing people away. I don’t care what happened to you or to Wilson or any of that. You found my little girl. You gave me my life back. I want you… to stay. With us. I want you to take us to New York. I don’t want this to be the last time I see you.”
“Crystal…”
“What? What excuse do you have? What sarcastic fucking bullshit are you going to feed me this time?”
“Do you know why I helped you?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“Because I lost my dad when I was a kid and it broke me. It turned me into this horrible thing that I hate. And I couldn’t let that happen to someone else.”
“Ash…”
“I love you.”
The word gets caught in her throat. “What?”
“Don’t say anything. I don’t want you to say it back. This isn’t some magical happy story and I expect us to ride off into the sunset at the end. I want you to know that it was worth it. You said things I needed to hear and I do love you for that. This isn’t love like we should get married love. It’s just… I’m glad to have met you and everything that happened here mattered to me.”
“Then why go, if it’s good?”
“Because I’m a magnet for bad shit. I’m a target. You and Rose deserve better.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“I don’t need you to.”
She puts her hand on my hand, holds it tight, pressing her fingers through mine, like she’s trying to lock us together. Her skin gritty where there’s sand stuck to it. “Where will you go?”
“Not sure yet. It’s a big country.”
Rose bends down to pick up something in the surf and gets splashed by a high wave, soaking the bottom half of her dress. She runs away from it, toward us.
“I’m glad to have met you too, Ash,” she says.
“You can call me Ashley.”
Rose comes running up to us holding a pile of sand, and she says, “Mommy, look what I found.” She opens her hand and reveals a small white spiral shell.
And Crystal says, “That’s beautiful, honey.”
As we get ready to load back into the car, brushing sand from our clothes and shoes, Rose mumbles something to Crystal, who leans down close to hear.
She straightens up and says, “Rose would like it if you read her new book to her.”
I get into the back of the car and Crystal hands me the book from our visit to Powell’s, which she had slipped between the seats.
Abby the Astronaut.
Rose climbs into her car seat, and I let Crystal buckle her up. Once she’s strapped in, I get closer and open the book. I look up and see Crystal’s face in the rearview mirror and she’s smiling.
On the first spread, a little redheaded girl is sitting by her window, staring out at the night sky, which is lit up with stars. That image brings me back to a rooftop, a long time ago, where I learned what it means to take the things that are gone from us and still be able to hold them close.
I look over at Rose and she’s already been rocked to sleep by the gentle hum of the car engine.
The sun is down now, the dark punctuated by the occasional pair of headlights that shoot past us like comets. Inside my chest there’s a big black spot. I can live with that feeling, because at least I was able to do this one good thing.
That’ll have to be enough for right now.
At a gas station off US 5 Crystal stops the car. I climb out and close the door carefully, making sure not to wake Rose. Crystal gets out of the car, too. She asks, “Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
“One day tell her what I did. When she’s old enough and you think it’s okay.
Tell her what someone was willing to do for her. And I hope it means something to her.”
“I will,” Crystal says, and she kisses me one last time, pressing her lips to mine slowly, like she wants to savor the moment, and for that, I am thankful.
The way she lingers, smelling of citrus, I wish I could live in that feeling forever.
We separate, and her face is a mix of anger and sadness and frustration and longing. Those blue-green tempered glass eyes practically glowing in the moonlight.
More things to carry.
She climbs back into the car and pulls away.
I watch it recede into the distance, until the red lights on the back of it disappear over a hill. The gas station is the only thing lit up in the darkness, so I go inside. It’s shiny and clean, the light so blue and bright it feels clinical. I grab a bottle of water out of the refrigerator case and place that on the counter with a bag of peanuts.
The clerk, an old man in a blue vest with a snub nose, his greasy gray hair pulled back into a sloppy ponytail, asks, “Anything else?”
I nod toward a display of my brand of cigarettes. “Pack of those.”
He grabs one and places it down with my items. “These things will kill you.”
“Yes, they will.”
He furrows his brow but doesn’t say anything to that. I stick the water in my bag, the peanuts in my pocket, and step out front. Adjust my cowboy hat, spark a smoke, and get ready to stick out my thumb toward the next car that passes, hoping that I don’t blend too much into the darkness.
Read other books by Rob Hart
Rob Hart is the associate publisher at MysteriousPress.com and the class director at LitReactor. Previously, he has been a political reporter, the communications director for a politician, and a commissioner for the city of New York. He is the author of New Yorked and The Last Safe Place: A Zombie Novella. His short stories have appeared in publications like Thuglit, Needle, Shotgun Honey, All Due Respect, Joyland, and Helix Literary Magazine. He’s received both a Derringer Award nomination and honorable mention in Best American Mystery Stories 2015, edited by James Patterson.
He lives in New York City.
Find more on the web at www.robwhart.com and on Twitter at @robwhart.
Thanks to the folks I left out of the first book’s acknowledgments, or who have been kind or helpful since then: Hilary Davidson, Alex Segura, Leah Rhyne, Steph Post, Angel Colon, Ron Earl Phillips, Lyndsay Faye, J. David Osborne, Bracken MacLeod, Gabino Iglesias, Steve Coulter, Pam Stack, Jon and Ruth Jordan, Dan and Kate Malmon, Dave White, Brian Panowich, Chelsea Cain, and Terrence McCauley. To anyone I missed (and I’m sure I missed a few)—I am so very sorry. Please don’t be mad. Also, I would like to rescind the thanks I gave to Bryon Quertermous in my last book.
Thanks to Robert Fullum. My model for the cranky New Yorker transplanted to Portland. Special thanks to Kirsten Larson and Michelle Stevenson, who helped with some additional Portland intel. (Extra credit to Kirsten, who actually went to Portland Union Station and took pictures.)
Much thanks to Jacqui Kennelly and Renee Pickup, for early reads and invaluable editorial insight. Special thanks to Lark, for giving me a glimpse of the Portland stripping scene, as well as Viva Las Vegas, for her excellent memoir, Magic Gardens.
Tremendous thanks to my agent, Bree Ogden, and my publisher, Jason Pinter, for their tireless work on my behalf.
Thanks to my mom, who worked her ass off to promote my first book.
Huge thanks to my wife, Amanda, who is the smartest, prettiest, most supportive wife in recorded human history. I could not do this without her.
Finally, thank you, Abby. I finished this book the week after you were born. I’m probably not going to let you read this until you’re much, much older—but I really appreciate that you took enough naps so I had time to finish it.
The following is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in an entirely fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2016 by Rob Hart
All Rights Reserved
Cover and jacket design by 2Faced Design
Interior designed and formatted by:
www.emtippettsbookdesigns.com
ISBN 978-1-940610-56-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015951361
First trade paperback edition February 2016 by Polis Books, LLC
1201 Hudson Street, #211S
Hoboken, NJ 07030
Table of Contents
Praise for Rob Hart
Title Page
Also by Rob Hart
About City of Rose
Dedication
Quote
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
About the Author
Acknowledgments
Copyright Notice