by Warren Read
“I was. Now I’m not.” Bootsteps drummed the floor, and just like that, he was standing in the doorway. His arms stretched up, and he gripped the top of the alcove, thumbs smearing black onto the eggshell paint. He was a gorilla, chest puffed out under blotted armpits, legs bowed and rocking himself stupidly from side to side.
“What the hell are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing,” he repeated. “Get your ass up. You’re coming with me.”
“I can’t,” she said. She laid her palms over her knees and the warmth of sweat seeped through her jeans.
Lyla stood behind Eugene, watching Marcelle. She reached up with her hand as if she might touch him on the shoulder or sweep her fingers through his hair. “Eugene, please,” she said. “All this fuss.”
“What do you care?” His voice sharpened even more, his eyes not leaving Marcelle’s for a second. They pinned her to the sofa like nails driven through her legs. “She’s my wife, right?” he said, over his shoulder to Lyla. “I always need her.”
It had never seemed possible that Eugene might know what she was up to. The only people who knew about what lay ahead were her and Mrs. Luntz and Mrs. Henry. Somebody called the house, maybe. Somebody called and he picked up.
“Come on,” he said, moving to the sofa and snatching hold of her wrist.
“Don’t!” She pulled back from him and fell hard against the cushion. He reached out to her again, but she lashed out, swatting her arms as if he were a wasp. She knew she couldn’t win, not if he was bound and determined to get her out the door. But she wasn’t about to make it easy for him.
“I’m sick, Eugene. You want me to throw up in your car?”
He leaned into her and got hold of her again, this time with both hands. “Don’t fuck around, Marcelle. I ain’t in the mood.”
“Eugene!” Lyla came into the living room, her hands clenched at her stomach. “You heard her. She’s not feeling good.”
“She’s fine. We’re just going for a ride,” he said. He yanked Marcelle from the sofa and shoved her from him, sending her stumbling across the room, through the alcove and past Lyla, all the way into the kitchen.
There was an overlay of words behind Marcelle, Eugene and his mother in useless argument, but she hurried to pull her coat from the hook by the kitchen door anyway. It was a parka, but not the one she had planned to wear to the clinic. This one was the older one, the one with the broken zipper and the cigarette burn on the sleeve. She fought to work her arms into it, and the thing deep inside pushed and pinched at her, just like Eugene. He stomped into the kitchen and began to dig through the cupboard.
“What happened to the donuts?” He moved up and down the wall, opening and slamming doors.
Lyla hurried into the room and stopped in the doorway. She watched Marcelle with eyes that drew down at the sides. Her lips pinched together in a tight frown. “I ate them,” she said. “Every last one.”
Eugene looked at his mother as if she had just slapped him. His tongue ran over his lower lip, slowly from one side to the other. Lyla held her gaze solid. “The hell you did,” he finally said. Then he glared at Marcelle, pushed past her, and swung the kitchen door to the wall. “Let’s go.”
He stomped down the steps to the car, tumbling his keys from his pocket and popping the trunk. Lyla stood beside Marcelle wearing a limp smile of defeat, lacing her slim fingers over the back of the dinette chair, neatly, as if staged for a portrait. Marcelle opened her mouth to speak. There was still time to stop him, to change his mind. His mother could put her foot down and demand that he leave Marcelle alone. But Lyla waved a hand at her.
“Go,” she said. “Just go.”
Marcelle crowded against the passenger door as Eugene shot down the highway, taking in the blur of trees and telephone poles as they clicked past. A set alarm clock beat inside her, or maybe it was a Jack-in-the-box, crouched and winding slowly, inching closer to breaking with every passing minute. Eugene cleared his throat. He sat stony with his hands firmly on the wheel, eyes forward, lids quivering. In small tics, his lips moved as if he was reading directions to someone who lived only inside his head. It was the sort of thing he did when there was something important waiting for him at the other end of the trip. When he had to talk to Benny about the job. Before he and Marcelle went inside to tell Mrs. Henry they were getting married. Anytime he went off to buy a bag of weed from somebody he didn’t already know.
They were at the base of the mountain, almost forty-five minutes into the ride before he said a word to her again.
“Take the wheel.” He let go before she could get a good hold on it. The car veered toward the shoulder and Marcelle jerked the wheel in an overcorrection, and there was a hard move to the center. Eugene grabbed it back from her and held it, shooting her a look. He thrust his chin at her and she took it again, carefully moving closer to him.
“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. He leaned to one side of his ass and reached back, fishing a can of Kodiak from his pocket. He popped the lid, tobacco shavings spilling over his lap, and pinched out a fat, grape-sized clump and stuffed it into his mouth.
“When we get there,” he said, “I don’t want you doing anything unless I say so. Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything. Just sit.”
“Where we going?”
He reached under his seat and pulled out an empty Coke can. He pressed it to his lip and spit a brown slug into it. “Somewhere,” he said. “Business.”
“What kind of business?”
“None of yours, that’s what.” He showed a row of brown-specked teeth. “Just shut up, you’re stressing me.” He reached into the console and thumbed through a few cassettes, then pulled one and punched it into the player. It was a band Marcelle never really liked but missed listening to, all the nights parked at the AM/PM with the doors wide open, standing behind Eugene with her arms locked at his stomach, waiting for those moments when he would take a break from his friends to turn around and kiss her, in front of everyone.
She slid closer to the door and pulled the parka hood over her head. Now that she wasn’t going to the clinic, she wanted food more than ever. Her stomach was fighting her and winning, and the spot where Eugene had grabbed her wrist felt like a sunburn. They were dipping down now, coasting the scoop to the wide river slough separating the rural from the suburban. The white tops of office buildings rose up over a low beltline of bare trees, the endpoint to the long, trestle bridge that stretched over yellowed fields. Here and there, standing mirror patches of water shone on the plain, still left over from the week’s rain. Marcelle had ridden over this bridge when the entire thing had flooded into one giant lake. A half-dozen farmhouses littered the land on both sides, filthy and cockeyed, as if they’d each been kicked hard in the side and left to rot through the winter.
Times like this, when Eugene would just toss her aside, Marcelle found herself turning over everything she had ever heard about him, from his own mouth or from the mouths of others. She had decided a long time ago that it was him who had set fire to Mick’s Laundromat, that it wasn’t Patrick’s dad like Eugene had suggested. It was the kind of thing Eugene would do, just because it would set people off. After all, he had done that stupid thing with the soap all over the floor at the school. Anyone with half a brain would have been able to realize what a crazy thing that was to do. How could he not have known that someone could get hurt real bad by doing that, or even killed? Mrs. Henry once told Marcelle that it was like he was stuck at five years old, that he could not ever see more than ten minutes past where he was.
They left the highway finally and emptied onto Pacific Avenue, and for a moment Marcelle wondered again if Eugene did know everything about her situation, if he hadn’t known all along. Maybe he was taking her to the clinic himself, to make sure that she did it, so he could watch, to be sure it was done right. He spun the steering wheel, white knuckles, and cut from the arterial into the grid of old bungalows, crisscrossing a few bloc
ks over to Broadway where he turned onto the main drag. They headed north, past the fast food burger joints with their red and yellow painted signs and the taco stands, and used car lots with strings of rainbow teeth flapping in the wind. There were people in long coats and stocking hats pushing grocery carts where there were no grocery stores, and taverns with half-lit neon signs and dented cars crowding the fronts. Just before the street dipped down into a shopping plaza, Eugene hooked the wheel and steered into the parking lot of what looked to Marcelle like a motel.
She leaned over the dash and peered up through the windshield. It was hideous. Marcelle couldn’t believe that any decent person would pay a single dime to set foot in there, let alone stay the night. Like the Sleep Inn, there was a separate office hut at the end, with a long stretch of side-by-side rooms that faced the busy street. But that was where the similarities ended. The faded white paint striping barely suggested parking stalls for each unit. Soupy orange paint hung from the clapboard like the place was molting, and a strip of dying grass sprung from the gutters in a long, yellow eyebrow. Mismatched drapes and busted screens scarred the windows. All over the concrete lot a patchwork of oil spots spread from building to fence.
“Why are we here?” she asked. Did he want to have sex with her? They could have done that at home, or off the highway in the car, even. Eugene said nothing, but turned to look out his window at the motel. He pulled his sleeve from over his watch. “Eugene,” Marcelle said. “Please talk to me.”
He shot her the look and stepped from his seat, hugging the exterior of the car as he circled to the backend. There was the sound of keys and then Marcelle heard the trunk pop, and a tumble vibrated through to where she sat with her hands tucked under her thighs. The car bounced and shook, and then the trunk slammed shut.
Suddenly he was at her door, thumping knuckles against the glass and waving her out. Draped over his shoulder was a purple sports bag, a bag she had never seen in her life. It sunk heavy at his side, and he scooped his hand under it as if he was cradling a baby, or at least in the halfhearted way Marcelle imagined he might try to. In that moment she could almost picture him as a father, though she had to work hard to imagine what it might look like. Tipping a bottle to his son’s mouth, patting it on the back when it cried. Saying, There, there, baby. A bandage of silver tape extended from the bag’s bottom. She wound down the window.
Eugene said, “Let’s go,” then he opened the door and pulled her arm, and she jumped from the seat before he could hurt her again. He walked away, and she followed him to the overhang and down the walkway, coming to a stop in front of number 8.
He stood at the door with his hands to his sides, staring at the number, almost as if he was counting to himself. She wrapped an arm around the post, thinking of just how much all of this was starting to feel like really bad news, the same twist in her stomach as when Patrick had pulled the pills from his pocket. Only this was worse. This was more than a simple unknown, an equal chance of excitement or danger, of putting yourself in the hands of someone who really believed he was giving you something good. There wasn’t the slightest bit of good that would come from this place.
Eugene knocked on the door, a drumbeat of dull, clumsy thuds. He jammed his hand into his pocket and stepped back, sidling up to Marcelle as if she was the willing partner in whatever scheme was about to go down. A volley of voices came from the inside, two or three people maybe, and when the door finally opened a man who was both taller and wider than Eugene stood in the doorway, his giant hand wrapped over the door jamb. A dark beard sprayed out from his face, and his head sported a dirty red baseball cap, plain with no writing.
“Jimmy?” His voice was dry and deep, and it croaked when he said the name.
“Yeah,” Eugene said. “I’m Jimmy.” Marcelle looked at him. He kept his eyes forward, but she knew he must be doing all he could to keep from looking at her. She squeezed the post tighter and looked down at her shoes.
“Who’s that?” The man nodded to Marcelle. Behind him, another man sat on the edge of a California king, showing mirrored sunglasses and arms that could have been either sleeves or tattoos. His head was shaved tight at the sides, flat along the top.
“Her? She’s my wife.” Eugene looked at Marcelle and when he smiled, he might as well have kicked her in the stomach. How many times had she seen that same snake’s grin and listened to his voice as he referred to her as his girlfriend, or his fiancé and believed that he really meant it? She had always imagined a bond between them, one that was so much more than what everyone had warned her he was capable of. Now she wanted to pull away from him, to run from this place and leave him alone to soak in whatever might be waiting on the other side of that door.
“Your wife?” The man looked at Marcelle. He moved his lips back and forth and the beard shifted like a sleeping cat. “What are you, twelve?”
Marcelle stepped away from the post and Eugene. “I’m almost eighteen,” she said, folding her arms over her chest.
“Yeah,” the guy laughed. “Eighteen in about five years.” He laughed again and tipped his dirty red cap back on his head. He looked at Eugene. “I don’t want no fuckin schoolgirl here.”
“She’s no schoolgirl,” Eugene said.
The man shook his head. “She ain’t coming in here.”
Eugene moved over so that he was next to Marcelle again. His shoulder pressed hers and Marcelle could feel his tremble. “Come on, man,” he said. “It’s not a big deal.”
“She ain’t comin’ in.” Behind him, the Army guy leaned forward on the edge of the bed. At his feet, an ashtray sat piled with a mound of stubbed filters.
Eugene moved the bag from one shoulder to the other, and the sound of glass against glass came through the fabric. He pulled back and looked at Marcelle. His eyes narrowed at her, as if this complication were all her fault, as if she had been the one to do something wrong. He’d told her to keep quiet, but then she had opened her mouth, told the man how old she was. He gave her a nudge with his shoulder.
“Go wait in the car.” He cleared his throat and leaned over and kissed her hard on the cheek. She pulled back and his eyes held onto hers, even as he backed away toward the motel door.
Marcelle held to the post as he disappeared into the room, and then she dug her hands into the pockets of her parka and walked back to the car and climbed inside. The raw smell of Eugene’s underarms and his tobacco breath filled the space. He had left his coveralls in a wad on the backseat. She unwound the window and put her elbow on the door, and looked out over the parking lot to the yard past the chain link fence. In the distance a school faced her, lit up windows grinning a long row of yellowed teeth. Kids swarmed everywhere, scrambling over a tight cluster of playground equipment, swatting tetherballs around poles. A smattering of boys knocked a red ball up and down the grassy field. Marcelle’s grade school had had a swing set with three swings and a connected slide, and a separate merry-go-round that had been roped off to the kids. She couldn’t remember if they had monkey bars or not. She had a vision of drawing a checkerboard hopscotch with a chunk of drywall that she had taken from the bed of her dad’s pickup truck, but she couldn’t be sure if she had drawn it at school or on her own sidewalk.
The kids ran everywhere, spilling from the slide, darting along the fence, up and down the stairs behind the school, back and forth like ants, always running, running everywhere. It was hard for her to imagine that she ever did that. Run from one place to another, screaming with joy and excitement. But she must have. That’s what all kids did. What would happen, she wondered, if you never outgrew it? What would the world be like if grownups sprinted in the mall from one store to another, pushing through the other shoppers, screaming just for fun as they ran from their cars, through the parking lot with the shared goal of getting there before everyone else? She could run far if she had to, if the right thing was waiting at the end for her. Her own apartment. A television and a microwave, where she could watch whatever she wanted and eat
as much she desired. Someone who made her laugh, instead of cry. There were things she could still have if she wanted them bad enough.
Her stomach rumbled again and she thought, what the hell, might as well go on across the street to the minimart and get something to eat. Her appointment was definitely dead, and it was not likely that Eugene would be coming out anytime soon. She picked three quarters from the console and opened the glove compartment that was packed full of trash. She dug through the folds of papers and bolts and empty cigarette packs for any other loose coins that might have been tossed in with everything else. A thick yellow envelope pushed itself from the stack, and immediately Marcelle saw a layered band of green bills peeking from the opening. She slid it from the compartment and held it in her fingers, looking out the windshield toward the motel window that remained curtained and still. She took the bills from the envelope and spread them in a tight fan. They were all twenties and she counted twenty of them before she gave up and drew one from the stack and tucked it into her pocket.
“Fucker,” she said aloud. He didn’t make this kind of money working for Benny. He’d either stolen it from someone or was selling whatever it was he’d stolen from someone. It was dirty money no matter how you looked at it, and the thought of it here in his car, this piece of trash car, was both terrifying and infuriating. How dare he? How dare he have all this money stashed away and yet when she asked to go out for a simple movie or a burger and a Coke, they could never afford it? He might miss it, but she honestly didn’t care one bit what he might say. She could pretend not to know a thing about it, not about that twenty or even the whole envelope. Just like she didn’t know a damned thing about why she was even there in the first place.
She crossed the lane and paused in the median, bouncing on her toes while a heavy truck downshifted and crawled up the low hill. When it passed, she dashed to the sidewalk and rushed into the store, making a beeline to the chips. She had just taken a bloated bag of cheese puffs from the rack when she heard a woman at the counter say, “Something’s going down over there.”