Her vision was failing. This was the scariest thing, losing her sight, the room growing dark and dull.
There were other things here, familiar things, hairbrushes and makeup bottles, perfume, a small box of jewelry, silver rings and bracelets. There were carved wooden figurines here, small brown animals, a duck, a pig, a horse, a rabbit. She lifted the rabbit from the dresser, held it in her slick hand, and this kept her steady, the familiar touch of the smooth wood, the familiar shape between her fingers. This kept her steady until the room grew almost too dark to see. Then she replaced the rabbit and made her way back into the bathroom, slid back into the tub, the warm water embracing, her vision going, her vision gone, her body slipping beneath the surface and fading.
Darby stood at the dresser, his ears rushing, the carved rabbit in his gloved hand. The wood of the other figurines was rough, but the rabbit was worried smooth. There was a small chip of dried fluid on its belly. He pried it away with his thumbnail. All of the air in the room rushed in his ears. He pictured the rabbit safe in the drawer in the garage, with the ring, with the snow globe.
There was a loud banging coming from the stairwell. Darby set the rabbit back in its place on the dresser, went to the outer room. Peter was standing on the top step, banging his elbows against the walls of the stairwell. Darby stood in the doorway. This was what it looked like, this kind of sorrow. Peter banged twice more, three times more, then he slumped a little, let his arms fall to his sides. He took air in short, wheezy gasps.
“I came back for a change of clothes,” he said. He didn’t look at Darby, but into the stairwell as he spoke. “I’ve been sleeping somewhere else. I came back because I thought that no one would be here. She would be out with friends. Her mother at work.” He took air. “Her bathroom door was closed, and I could see the light under the door, I could hear the fan. I knew before I opened the door, somehow. It had never occurred to me, I had never imagined, but somehow I knew without opening the door.”
Darby listened and nodded, nodded like he’d seen Bob nod so many times. This was the correct response, to stand and nod. This kept things away.
“I opened the door, though,” Peter said. “For some reason I opened it. To confirm what I already knew.”
Peter didn’t look at Darby as he spoke. He stared at the wall of the stairwell. This was what it looked like, this kind of sorrow.
Peter turned back down the stairs to the restaurant. He would leave Darby to his work. He took the first step and something happened, he tripped or he missed a step or his legs gave out. Something. He went down hard on the steps, crashing down on his knees, tumbling over onto his side, sliding headfirst. He ended down near the door to the restaurant. He lay there, motionless. He’d held his hands up the entire time he fell, pale white skin past the sleeves of his suit coat. He held them up now as he lay at the bottom the stairs, delicate things he’d needed to save from the fall.
Darby stopped himself from nodding. He went down the stairs, looked at Peter’s hands held in the air. He did not want to touch this man. This man was contagious. His sorrow, his grief was something that could spread. Peter’s body shook. He was sobbing against the hard wood of the stairs. He was injured, possibly; he had hurt himself in the fall. Darby didn’t want to touch this man. This man was contagious. Darby pulled off his gloves and stuffed them into the pocket of his suit. He did not want to touch this man, but he took Peter’s hands and lifted him from the stairs, righted him on the steps. Peter’s head hung. He didn’t look at Darby. He began to speak in a whisper, apologizing, over and over, nodding his head with each apology. Darby could feel the shame on Peter’s skin, warm and slick with sweat. He let go of Peter’s hands and took a step back, into the restaurant, to let Peter pass. He waited until Peter was seated again in the dining room before pulling on a new pair of gloves, clearing his throat and spitting into the darkness as he climbed back up the stairwell.
He stood in the bedroom with the camera. He lifted the camera to his eye, looked at the room in the frame. The walls were clean, the carpet was clean. The rushing in his ears felt like it would split his head in two. He could see the figurines on the dresser, the wooden rabbit. He could almost feel it in his hand. If he were to take it, he could keep it safe. If he were to take it and slide it into his pocket, the sound in the room, the sound in his head would cease.
“That’s my job now,” Roistler said. He stood just inside the bathroom door, his bucket packed, his paper mask hanging from his neck.
“I can do it,” Darby said. He could almost feel the figurine in his hand, the smooth wood between his fingers. “Just give me a minute alone in here and I can do it.”
Roistler came into the room, stood in front of Darby, filling the camera’s frame. “We have to get this right. Who does what.”
“This is my job,” Darby said.
“Not anymore. It’s my job now.”
Roistler held his hand out for the camera. He said something else, but Darby couldn’t hear, the rushing had grown so loud. He could only see the rabbit and then Roistler’s face close in the viewfinder, Roistler’s lips moving. He lowered the camera, handed it to Roistler. He walked across the room, past the dresser, leaving the rabbit. Stepped into the mouth of the stairwell. He kept a hand on the wall to steady himself, to keep from falling as he took each step back down.
The Mexican restaurant was wedged between two larger stores, a pet store and a store where people brought big plastic water jugs to get refilled. Agua fresca. Michelle had asked The Kid to wait for her outside the restaurant while she bought a gordita. She said that she was fucking starving, and that she’d rather get a gordita there than get one at a roach coach and get sick and die. Michelle always seemed to have money for snacks, extra food, even though all the other kids joked about how poor she was. The Kid wondered where she got the money, if she stole it or something. He figured that it was none of his business, but he wondered anyway.
He didn’t know why she’d asked him to wait. He’d planned on taking an alternate route from school to the burned house to work on his mural, but then suddenly Michelle was alongside him, snapping her gum, talking about something she’d seen on TV the night before about the reason for Y2K, the microchip in all the computers that was going to fail at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Apparently, whoever had invented and programmed the chips hadn’t thought there would ever be a year 2000, and so the chips didn’t know what to do when it actually became that year. The people on TV said that the chips were going to fritz out and that was what would screw everything up, banks and cars and the stock market and tons of stuff with the army, tanks and fighter jets and nuclear missiles. The people on TV said that the trick was to figure out a way to convince the computers that the guy who’d invented the chips was wrong, that the year 2000 could actually exist. The Kid asked Michelle if the people on TV had figured out how to do that, but Michelle said she didn’t know, she’d fallen asleep on the couch before the end of the show.
Michelle came out of the restaurant, her gordita already half eaten, shreds of cabbage poking from of the corners of her mouth. The Kid tried to remember if she’d spit out her gum before she’d gone inside. He thought that maybe she hadn’t, maybe the gum was still in her mouth mixed with the cabbage and chicken.
They walked back toward the school, even though this was the exact opposite way The Kid wanted to go. Brian and Arizona were standing together in front of the school’s big sign. Brian was wearing his track and field uniform, the same thing he’d worn on Halloween, stretching his legs up behind his back like his dad did during The Kid’s sessions. Brian saw The Kid and Michelle and leaned over to Arizona, whispered something in her ear. The Kid remembered how Arizona smelled when she’d leaned over to see the drawings in his notebook. Soap and strawberry shampoo.
He could imagine what Brian was saying. Don’t look now but here come those monsters, here come those pigs. The Kid hated this, suddenly and fiercely, hated whatever Brian was saying and hated walking with
Michelle, hated Arizona seeing them together. He thought that they probably did look like pigs, Michelle stuffing her face, talking about how much she hated her mom’s boyfriend, using all sorts of curse words, little bits of chicken spraying from her mouth. The Kid guilty just by association. Arizona laughed at whatever Brian said, put her hand on his arm to keep steady, he was that funny. Her hand on Brian’s arm like she’d put her hand on The Kid’s arm. Brian didn’t stop stretching the whole time, pulling one leg up behind his back.
“I bet they’re going to start doing it soon,” Michelle said, mouth still full.
Doing what?
“You know what. It.”
You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“She’s his girlfriend. That’s what happens.”
She’s not his girlfriend.
“How do you know?”
I know.
“How? Is she your girlfriend?”
Michelle said this with a real mean twist at the end, like she already knew the answer. Like of course Arizona wasn’t The Kid’s girlfriend, like she couldn’t think of a crazier idea.
The Kid closed his notebook, watched Brian and Arizona while he walked, wondering what Brian had told her, what secrets he gave out. Things Mr. Bromwell had told his family at dinner, probably, secrets about The Kid from his thick file, from his test scores and paperwork. He imagined the Bromwell family laughing at their dinner table, heads back, holding onto the sides of their chairs because they were laughing so hard. The Kid thought of Mrs. Bromwell, Brian’s mom, laughing hardest of all, and The Kid thought about how unfair it was, somebody’s mother laughing at him when things were so different at The Kid’s house.
“Anyway,” Michelle said, “I’m going to ask Miss Ramirez if I can take apart that computer in the back of the classroom. I bet I can probably fix it. You want to bet?”
Brian leaned into Arizona again, said something that made her scowl and punch him playfully in the arm.
“Five bucks says I can teach the computers that next year is going to exist.” Michelle took the last bite of her gordita, dropped the paper wrapping onto the sidewalk. “You want to bet five bucks, Kid? I’ve got five bucks at home if you want to bet.”
Michelle’s apartment was in a large, whitewashed brick building a few streets from the school. Makeshift curtains of blankets and sheets hung out of some of the open windows on the upper floors. Other windows were stuffed with plants, with newspapers. Other windows were so grimy that The Kid couldn’t see what they were stuffed with. There were spiked metal bars on the top of the gate behind the building, and twists of barbed wire connecting the spikes. Michelle pulled open the gate and they climbed a few cement steps to a heavy steel security door. The door was maybe twice the size of The Kid’s front door, a serious piece of work.
Michelle shoved her hand down into the front pocket of her jeans. Her jeans were too tight, and she struggled to get her hand in and out again with a keychain. She unlocked the door, pulled it open. They walked in through the back hall, down a long cool corridor, past closed doors on both sides, TV noises coming from behind the doors, game shows in Spanish, talk shows in Spanish, cooking smells coming, chicken and onions, cigarette smells, and another smell, close to cigarettes but not quite, a sharp, strong tang.
“Smell that?” Michelle said. She took a deep sniff. “Somebody’s smoking bud. Somebody’s blazing.”
They climbed the carpeted stairs at the end of the hall. Michelle was out of breath when they reached the top. She coughed a few times, pounded her chest with her fist.
“Too much smoking,” she said. “What do you think, Kid? You think I smoke too much weed?”
The Kid didn’t know what to think. He never knew if what Michelle talked about was true or if she was just bragging, trying to seem even tougher than she was.
“If my mom’s boyfriend is home, just ignore him,” she said, “If he’s drunk, he might try to talk to you, ask you all kinds of stupid questions. You’re better off not even answering. If he sees you answer in your notebook, he’ll just start goofing on you.”
They stopped at a door halfway down the hall. Michelle singled out another key on her ring, unlocked both locks, pushed into the apartment.
The room was hot and stuffy. A yellow sheet covered the windows, filtering the sunlight, giving the room a feverish feel. There was a couch against the far wall, made up as a messy bed with a sweat-stained pillow and another yellow sheet. A tin ashtray sat on the arm, a half-smoked cigarette still burning inside. Michelle’s mom’s boyfriend was nowhere to be seen. The TV was on loud, a soccer game with excited announcers yelling in Spanish.
“My mom’s boyfriend sleeps out here most nights,” Michelle said. “My mom doesn’t want him in her bed because he smells like booze. So he sleeps out here most nights unless they’re fucking.”
She looked at The Kid, the shocked expression on his face.
“Don’t even think about it, Kid. It’s gross. Don’t even picture it.”
Michelle turned to the TV, the sprinting soccer players, didn’t bother to turn down the volume.
“My sisters sleep in with my mom, unless her boyfriend’s in there, and then they sleep in my room,” she said. “They’re real little princesses, real girly, not like me at all. That’s because my mom’s boyfriend is their real dad and he treats them like princesses. He treats me like shit because he’s jealous of my real dad. He’s jealous that my dad doesn’t have to put up with my mom’s bitching anymore now that he lives in the Twin Cities. I’ll be out there with him as soon as I get enough money for the bus. I’m pretty close. I could save that much pretty quickly. You know how much a bus ticket costs, Kid?”
The Kid shook his head.
“A fucking lot of money.”
A toilet flushed from behind a door at the other end of the hallway. The Kid could hear a man’s groan from behind the door, the sound of gagging, the man throwing up into the toilet.
“He’s drunk,” Michelle said. “That’s the sound of him being drunk.”
They walked down the hall toward the bedrooms. On the wall across from the bathroom was a framed painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The Kid knew about the Virgin because she was all around the neighborhood, painted on the side walls of banks, convenience stores, gas stations. His mom had once explained that she was Jesus’ mother, and people who believed in her believed that she’d appeared in Mexico many years ago and performed miracles. In the painting on Michelle’s wall, the Virgin was wearing a blue shawl that covered her head and ran down past her feet. The shawl was full of stars. There was a shining golden crown on her head. Her hands were pressed together in prayer, and she was looking down and smiling a little. A small brown boy was emerging from under the bottom of her robe. The Kid couldn’t tell if he was hiding under the robe or holding the Virgin up or what. Multicolored rays of light flowed out from behind her toward the edges of the painting. There was a light bulb attached to the bottom of the frame, an electric cord stretching down to an outlet at the bottom of the wall. Michelle clicked on the light as they passed. The shining bulb began to turn in its socket and the painting caught the light in such a way that the rays flowing out from behind the Virgin seemed to move, shimmering and pulsating, turning and reaching outside the painting and the frame, across the walls and the ceiling of the hallway.
They passed the bathroom door and the gagging noises, into a darkened bedroom. Michelle’s mother’s bedroom, The Kid guessed, a messy room with a big unmade bed and two smaller unmade beds, the sisters’ beds, the twin princesses.
Michelle told The Kid to stand watch at the door. She told him that if her mom’s boyfriend came out of the bathroom, he should make some kind of loud noise to warn her, he should knock on the wall or stomp his feet or something. The Kid stood in the doorway, listening to the loud gagging and throw-up sounds from the bathroom. It reminded him of Rey Lugo walking down the school hallway with that faraway look on his face. Rey Lugo looking at The Kid and th
rowing up in his tiny hands.
The Kid heard Michelle behind him, rummaging through some clothes on the floor, cursing under her breath. The Kid looked over his shoulder and saw her digging in the pockets of pairs of jeans, in the pockets of what looked like the baggy green pants that nurses wore. She flattened herself out as much as she could on the stained carpeting and reached her arm underneath the bed, pulling out old tissues and balled-up socks.
He looked back up at the painting of the Virgin. The colored light radiated out from behind her, reflecting on the opposite wall, yellow and red and purple. He wondered if the Virgin knew about the Covenant. He walked over to the painting, stood underneath. He could feel the colored light shining warm on his face. He wasn’t sure how to ask, so he recited the Covenant in his head again, reminded the Virgin what he was asking for, what he had given up. Reminded her that he had stuck to his end of the deal. He recited the Covenant and waited for something, some kind of sign that she’d heard, a change in the type of light, or more light, maybe, a different glow, something. He watched the painting, watched the light, but he’d been staring at it for so long that it was hard to tell if anything was different. He lifted his hand, slowly, the light covering his fingers, his forearm, his elbow.
“Got it,” Michelle whispered from back in the bedroom. “Fucking A.”
The Kid looked over his shoulder. Michelle was on the other side of the bed, holding something she’d pulled out of a drawer in the bedside table.
“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.” She rushed around the bed and banged her elbow on the corner of a dresser. “Fucking A,” she yelled, holding her arm, and then the toilet flushed again and the bathroom door opened and Michelle’s mom’s boyfriend lurched out into the hallway. He stopped short when he saw The Kid, squinting down with red, puffy eyes.
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