by John Vercher
Robert and Isabel. One of the park employees at Kennywood had taken it for them during the only real date they’d had. The exit for the Steel Phantom stood in the background. They had just left the coaster and her hair was a mess. Robert had whispered something in her ear just as the camera flashed and caught her, mouth wide open and laughing.
Stop it. Don’t you romanticize this again.
Isabel held Bobby’s graduation picture next to the photo of her and Robert so that their faces were right next to each other.
God, so alike, but so different.
Could she do it? Put aside her anger?
Maybe Bobby would smile again, a real one, big and bright, cheeks pushing his eyes into slits. Her little boy, not hardened and bitter by the world he lived in now, the one he had no hand in creating. He deserved a chance to have his father in his life. But what did that mean? For her? For Bobby? The idea of her son protected and happy had more weight and warmth? There was no guarantee that would be the outcome.
It didn’t seem so scary when she looked at that kindergarten smile, even though it meant she could lose everything.
She set the two pictures on the nightstand and walked back to her closet with the box of the rest. She pushed it back on the shelf, up against the wall when her hand brushed a bottle. A “break in case of emergency” stash she stowed away after she swore to Bobby to give sobriety an honest go.
“You promised,” she said out loud.
She turned to leave the closet, but one hand lingered on the shelf, as if pulled by an incensed child insisting they be allowed to play just five more minutes.
She pulled down the bottle and took three long slugs. Tomorrow would be a big day, after all, and she needed to get some sleep. She hoped Bobby was safe with all this snow.
A truck chirped in reverse as its plow scraped the asphalt. The sound woke Bobby. Dried drool had glued fibers of the carpet to his face. He pushed himself up and peeked over the edge of the bed. Aaron hadn’t moved. The room had black shades and he had no idea of the time. Maybe he hadn’t been asleep that long. The plows meant the streets might have been cleared, which meant the buses might be running.
The door hinges squeaked as he pulled it open, just wide enough to squeeze through and the floor cracked and groaned. Why was everything so loud when he didn’t want to be heard? He looked back but Aaron didn’t move. He snuck down the hall past Cort, dead asleep on the couch with his hand down his pants.
It was bright outside, but Bobby couldn’t see the sun. Wispy gray clouds turned black as they passed in front of it, like smoke from a building fire. The plows hadn’t made it to the side streets. They never seemed to have time for the shitty neighborhoods, even though that’s where the people who needed to get to work the most lived.
Bobby tucked his pants into his boots and hiked through the shin-high snow. Every few steps, he turned to look over his shoulder. Each time he expected to see Aaron behind him.
What am I so afraid of? Jesus. He said he’d never hurt me.
No, wait. He’d asked if I thought he’d ever hurt me. He never said he wouldn’t.
Bobby’d lied to him for as long as he’d known him. Something in Aaron’s voice last night when he told Bobby about the meaning of his last name—the crooked smiles—seemed to say that he knew and didn’t know all at once. Bobby heard Aaron’s voice in his head again about animals that needed to be put down.
All too familiar, though never before from Aaron.
Bobby found a sheltered bus stop on Fifth Avenue. Car tires sizzled along the wet road. He sat on the bench and leaned his head against the Plexiglas. The scratched plastic reminded him of the window separating him and Aaron in prison. He pulled his head away.
He used to get night terrors as a kid. His bed would be soaked with piss and sweat, and Isabel would come in to hold him. He didn’t mind the booze on her breath as much then, since it made it so he couldn’t smell his own pee. She’d say, don’t worry, the terrors are only scary at night. In the light of day, you’ll see how silly they are. Things are always scarier at nighttime. She’d lift his chin, smiling. That’s why they’re not called day terrors.
He’d fall back asleep knowing morning was coming and the terrors wouldn’t hurt him. But there in the bus shelter, he sat terrified. Terrified of the guy who used to be his best friend, terrified about what he had done, terrified about what he might do, about what he’d become.
Terrified that in more ways than one, he might have had a hand in that.
The bus hit a pothole. The hotels and studio apartments of Oakland and Shadyside gave way to rowhomes and bars, like the descending half of a bell curve that reminded Bobby that his normal was not in the middle. The bus rumbled over thick bumps of packed snow down Frankstown Avenue. Bobby pulled the cord. When he rounded the corner, he saw the passenger-side tire of the Fox up on the curb.
Isabel was home.
For the first time in as long as he could remember, Bobby felt relieved she was.
The Price is Right blasted from behind the door of their neighbor’s apartment. They never actually saw anyone come or go, and every time Bobby walked past that door, the smell of cat piss was stronger than that of the mildew embedded in the hall carpet. He wondered sometimes if someone was dead in there and if so, what the police would do with the television. The sound only stopped when stations went off the air. The white noise helped Bobby sleep. As Bobby unlocked his door, somebody bid a dollar and won a new jet ski.
Bobby shoved the door away from the warped jamb and called into the apartment for Isabel. No answer. Then snoring. He pulled a mason jar from the cabinet above the sink to add his tips to hers, but when he counted it out, it was little more than the night before. Had she not gone to work? Two weeks until rent was due. He would need to pick up another double. She would, too. He made his way to her bedroom. Next door somebody guessed the actual retail price and won a thousand dollars and a china cabinet.
The door was open a crack. Static-filled jazz filtered from the clock radio on the nightstand. He slowly pushed it open and peered in. Isabel lay on her back, open-mouthed while her guttural snores reverberated in the tiny room. Bobby had heard those snores before, though not for weeks. Three to be exact. He followed her arm as it hung from the edge of the bed, her fingers draped across the top of a plastic handle of Popov’s Vodka. Empty.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” he whispered.
A snore caught in her throat and she coughed and stirred but rolled to her side and stayed asleep. For a moment, Bobby’s anger superseded his fear. Things had been going so much better, yet she hadn’t been able to make it a month. Every time when he needed her the most, she had shown him that he couldn’t rely on her at all. He’d have to handle this situation with Aaron himself, although God knew how he’d do that. But he had to know why she’d slipped again.
He threw the door open so hard it slammed off the wall. She sat up with a start and grabbed her head. Bobby leaned in the doorway, arms folded and waited for her webs to clear. She groaned and pressed the heel of her palm into her forehead. She blinked away the brightness of the room and swung her feet to the floor, knocking over the empty bottle.
“Shit,” she said, softly.
“Tell me about it,” he said.
“Go ahead,” she said. “Let me have it. I deserve it.”
Bobby watched her from the doorway, silent. She looked over at him from beneath her mess of curls. “Go on,” she said.
“We have two weeks,” he said, quietly. “And the jar might as well be empty.”
“I had it, Bobby. I was almost all the way there.”
“And?”
“Does it matter? You’ve already made up your mind that I screwed up.”
“Did you?”
She put her head in her hands and groaned. “Yes and no.”
On the other side of the wall, somebody lost a game of Plinko and the losing horns sounded. Bobby laughed at the timing of the sound in spite of him
self. So did Isabel. It felt good, like a steam pipe vented of pressure. He uncrossed his arms and sat next to Isabel on the bed. He rolled the overturned vodka bottle under his foot.
“You promised,” he said. Isabel dragged her fingers under her eyes to wipe at tears before they fell.
“I know I did,” she said.
“This where the rent went?”
She appeared insulted by the question and turned to Bobby with anger in her eyes, but the lines in her face softened when she looked at him. She tucked a stray hair behind his ear. The gel had worn off and his hair slowly retracted into their natural curls. He could see that she had something to tell him, but he couldn’t tell what. Her mouth scrunched and a tear spilled down her face.
“No,” she said. “That’s not where it went.”
Bobby wanted to push for more, but then she might have had questions of her own, namely why he had just gotten home. He hadn’t thought of that in his immediate anger, let alone what his story would be. She stared at her feet and he didn’t press her further.
“Think you can pick up a double?” she asked.
Bobby nodded. “Can you?”
“Sure,” she said.
Bobby’s grandfather loved poker. He took Bobby to a game once with a bunch of his retired cop friends. He told him to watch the other players for fidgeting. The way they played with their chips. Which direction their eyes went after they looked at their cards. He said everyone had a tell. Little tics, even things they said and how they said it made them for a liar. It didn’t take Bobby long to figure out that Isabel had a tell, too.
It was “sure.”
She might have been able to pick up a double, but she wasn’t going to. It was in her voice. Of that, he was sure. He shook his head and went to leave. Isabel called out after him.
“Where were you, anyway?”
Fuck.
“What?”
“You just got home, right?”
“Aaron’s back,” Bobby said.
“From prison?”
“Yep.”
“I should have let you have the car,” she said. “Did you know he was getting out?”
“Yep. It’s fine.”
He leaned on the jamb again and picked at callouses where his palm met his fingers, thickened from years of stacking milk crates and carrying hot dinner plates. He uncovered the new pink skin underneath, then rolled the dead skin into little pills and let them drop to the floor. He wanted Isabel to hold him. Make the day go away. Stop drinking and not break promises. Don’t ask him to work even more. Protect him the way she’s supposed to. Don’t lie to him the way she seemed to feel she had to. He stared at the skin where the callouses had been. If it were only that easy, to peel everything off and start over. His eyes stung and his nose ran.
“Did something happen?” she asked.
Bobby turned his back to her as he wiped at his eyes. “You can have the car again tonight,” he said. “I just have to get a shower and get changed.”
“Wait.” She came up behind him. “I know this looks like I messed up really bad, but I promise there’s a reason. For the money, for the vodka, all of it. I just need to work something out first and I swear to you it will all make sense. I will make this right, okay?”
“Yeah, okay.” His voice wavered. Isabel placed a hand on his shoulder.
“Do you trust me?” she asked.
“Sure,” he said, and closed the door behind him.
Bobby made it to the bistro in time to send one of the lunch crew home, but the rush was shit. Nothing but tables of office park employees who only wanted appetizers and camped out in his station with refill after refill of coffee. He stared at the computer screen and tried to remember what the lady at table thirty-five had ordered for dessert. Normally he could easily memorize a ten-top’s order without writing it down, but today he couldn’t recall what she wanted. Who ordered dessert at three in the afternoon anyway?
Twelve hours of fear had worn him down. The vapid customer idiosyncrasies that tended to merely annoy him now made him feel borderline homicidal. He’d seen other servers dish revenge with a squirt of Visine into a rude guest’s coffee or watched them spit on the underside of their burger bun and then sit back and watch the show. He’d been tempted on more than one occasion to follow suit, though he never had. Now he wanted to go back to the dining room and wrap his hands around that woman’s neck. He surprised himself with his hostility, when hours ago he was faced with true viciousness, real violence with real consequences yet to be meted. Still, in some ways, it felt kind of good to feel something other than afraid. But the feeling was fleeting.
Aaron walked into the kitchen. He wore his back-of-the-house checkered pants tucked into his boots and had a white long-sleeved line cook’s jacket slung over his shoulder. He stopped short when he saw Bobby at the computer.
“Hey,” he said. “There you are. Where did you go?”
Russell yelled out from the hot food window where he pulled down plates to garnish them with sauces. “Cover them up, Aaron.” He pointed at the tattoos on Aaron’s arms. Aaron rolled his eyes and put on his jacket.
“What are you doing here?” Bobby asked. Aaron had never needed to work, but the restaurant had been a great front for his dealing weed before he got caught. He cleared more money in a night than Bobby did in a week of closing shifts. “Back in business?” Bobby asked.
“Condition of my parole,” he said. “I don’t have to wear an ankle bracelet as long as I check in and Russell vouches for me. We set it up before I got out. I made him promise not to tell you I was coming back so I could surprise you last night.”
Bobby nodded. He’d definitely done that. He went back to his computer screen, but Aaron didn’t leave. His voice lowered. “So seriously, where did you go?”
Bobby looked up. Aaron’s face had changed. Though he couldn’t be sure, Bobby thought he saw worry there. Maybe even fear. Had the consequences of what he’d done finally registered?
Aaron’s eyes traced Bobby’s face. He assessed him, scanned him like some kind of cyborg, wondering if Bobby had told Isabel, the police, anyone he shouldn’t have. Bobby felt that lightness in his feet again, the sense that his body was not his own and he wondered how young was too young for a stroke. Aaron waited for his answer as the shift change filtered into the kitchen. One of the servers Bobby knew had a closing shift walked behind Aaron. Bobby stepped around Aaron and tugged on the server’s shirt as he passed.
“Hey, you want the night off?” Bobby asked.
The server looked much the worse for wear. “Fuck yes,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “I think I’m still drunk. Shit, I have a follow, though.”
“No sweat. I got it,” Bobby said.
A follow meant Bobby made minimum wage on top of tips while a trainee more or less did the work for him. He and Isabel might make the rent if he didn’t end up in jail or dead. The server walked over to Russell at the food window to let him know about the switch. Bobby turned back to a waiting and increasingly impatient Aaron.
“So?” Aaron asked.
Russell called out again. “Bobby, run this broccoli cheese soup to ninety-five, will you?”
“You want to take your tie out of it first?” Bobby asked.
Russell looked down, unclipped his tie and threw it to the counter with a wet slap before he dished up a new cup. A prep cook slid the cheesecake Bobby had ordered through the window. Aaron watched him while he grabbed them both to run them out to the dining room. Bobby looked back. Aaron was still staring.
“Got to run these,” Bobby said. He held the plates in front of his face and hustled out. He heard Aaron suck his teeth as he walked towards the back of the kitchen.
Bobby dropped off the food and leaned against the bus stand in his station. He came up with as many reasons as he could to tell Aaron why he had left before he woke up.
That he might have killed someone and that he was an accessory for driving off? That was a good reason.r />
That he’d hidden the fact that he had a black father for all the years they’d known each other and that he thought he’d hurt him even worse than that kid at the “O” if he found out? That was another good one.
Bobby pushed the heels of his hands into his eyes until they squished, and fireworks went off behind his lids. He had no idea what to do and the fear and uncertainty smothered him.
Shift change meant shift meeting at the back of the restaurant. More of the servers smoked than didn’t, and after some bitching from those who didn’t, everyone bundled up to meet on the back dock. They shifted from foot to foot to stay warm, their smoke mixing with the steam from their breath. Michelle, Bobby’s now-trainee for the night, stood next to him. She wore black stretch pants and boots with the laces undone. Hair dyed blood-red poked out from under her longshoreman’s cap. Bobby rolled his eyes as Russell prattled on about servers not ringing in desserts and employee theft. While some servers drifted off, others had side conversations about which ethnicity busboy was behind the thefts. Bobby had his suspicions. He eyed Luis, who interpreted the stare and flashed him the finger. Michelle scribbled down every word Russell said like a reporter, and her enthusiasm irritated Bobby instantly.
Aaron stood next to Russell. Bobby stared, not meaning to, but unable not to, prepared to look away the moment Aaron noticed. But he never even glanced his way. Aaron waited for Russell to wrap up and pass it to him to run down the specials for the night. He looked at everyone but Bobby as he did. When he finished, he lit up while the non-smokers and those who’d had enough of the cold rushed the door to get back inside. The rest took their last drag, tossed the butts, and filed in. Bobby walked past Aaron with his head down, but Aaron reached out for his wrist.
“Hang back a second,” he said.
Michelle waited in the hallway just past the open door. The heat curtain above the doorway blasted and drowned out the sounds of the kitchen. Bobby waved her away. She gave an enthusiastic double thumbs-up and headed towards the front. Aaron released Bobby’s wrist and the blood returned to his fingers. He stepped back and let the door latch shut.