Portland Noir

by Kevin Sampsell

  Then Tino came in the alley door and went up to the bar without looking our way. He held his jeans pocket down from the outside with one hand and pulled money out from inside the pocket with the other. He bought a six-pack of cans to go, in a bag, and one beer in a bottle to have opened. His hands didn’t shake when he counted out change. When his hands didn’t shake, that meant he’d been drinking already.

  Tino worked as a narc for Lincoln High, catching truants, once in a while patting them down for weapons. On the side, he’d confiscate drugs from kids and sell them back to the janitors. Janitors sold the same score back to kids. Tino wasn’t getting rich, but kept his head out of water.

  Rebar followed my look. His neck was stiff; he had to turn in his chair. Tendons came to the surface. He said, “Your boyfriend’s here.” He rapped a foot against the leg of the table. It might’ve been more of a kick, but those Sketchers softened the blow.

  I caught the table, stopped it from rocking. “He’s not my boyfriend.”

  If Rebar hadn’t been there, just out of the psych ward, working hard to not drink and keep his head together, maybe I would’ve walked over and reached for Tino. Maybe I’d call him a boyfriend, or close enough to it.

  I never did get the dating thing, where it stopped and started.

  Tino saw us. He said, “Hey. What’s up?” He looked tired, his eyes ringed with circles. His top lip was chapped, cracked in a brown spot of dried blood.

  Rebar said, “When do I get my Dr. Martens back?”

  Tino half-laughed, blew it off.

  I said, “Criminey. Not the shoes again.”

  Rebar’d lost his Dr. Martens to Tino in a minor drug deal. Rebar made his dough in construction, old houses, but that didn’t always come through. He’d been broke that day. The shoes, as a trade, were a compromise. Rebar couldn’t let it go.

  He said, “Serious.”

  Tino said, “I’m not a hawk shop, friend.” He was wearing the shoes.

  I said, “Rebar’s fresh out of the funny farm. Trying to put a life together. Those shoes might be part of the picture.”

  Rebar’s house was a bigger part of that picture.

  Tino said, “Down here, or up on the hill?”

  “I was up on the hill,” Rebar said, and he said it so quiet his mouth barely moved. He shook his head, like he didn’t get it himself.

  Tino said, “I’m headed to Good Sam.”

  Rebar said, “You going nuts too?”

  “Going to see Eileen.” He turned a chair backward, sat on it that way, then lit a cigarette. “She had an aneurysm in her brain.” He pointed to his head with the orange tip of the smoke, his thumb aimed at the ceiling. His hand was like a gun, at his own head.

  I said, “No way.”

  Rebar said, “Who’s Eileen?”

  I said, “Waitress at Chang’s, dyes her hair.”

  Tino said, “Living with Ray Madrigal.”

  That was the part I didn’t want to say, and didn’t want to hear, the reason I knew who Tino meant—Eileen and Ray. Ray, who I’d lived with, before. I pulled the ashtray out of my purse, kept it hidden by my palm, and put it back on the table. I didn’t need that ashtray. But I couldn’t let go. I moved it to my purse again.

  Tino said, “They cut her head open and clamped a vein or something shut. She’s fine, but she’s bald.”

  I slid a salt shaker into my purse and said, “No shit?” Ray’s new girl, with hardware in her head.

  The bathroom at the Marathon was down a glowing turquoise hall, like a pool drained of water, and it smelled from mildew. It was the hallway to the rooms for rent upstairs. Just outside the women’s bathroom somebody had written in black marker, MEN WHO FATHER CHILDREN LIVE HERE. I read those words every time I turned the corner. I’d memorized the writing—all capital letters and jagged angles. The sentence stuck with me. It seemed wrong, reversed, blaming the men for where they lived instead of what they did, maybe even asking for sympathy, or renovation on the building. MEN WHO LIVE HERE FATHER CHILDREN, it should say. MEN WHO LIVE HERE ARE BAD—but the men in the building weren’t bad, only lost and lazy. Drunks. Only men nobody should have kids with in the first place. Men who father children live everywhere.

  I came out of the bathroom. Tino was in the hall. We went out back, to the alley between buildings, beside the dumpster.

  Tino pulled a pipe from his coat pocket.

  Pot smells good in the cold. There’s the density of it, that soft sweetness. I’d like to find that same sweet edge in something solid.

  Tino passed the pipe to me. I didn’t reach for it. “You shake down a freshman for that herb?” I said.

  “Maybe.” He was still holding smoke in his lungs. “What’re you doing with Rebar?”

  “Helping him out.” I shrugged.

  Tino said, “Watch him close. I don’t want to lose more teeth.”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “They don’t come back.” He smiled, to show a gap at the side near the front. His eye tooth, his dog tooth. A fist, a party. Like two years before, but it seemed forever. I put my lips to his cracked lips, kissed his gap-toothed mouth, breathed his secondhand pot smoke. I held onto the fake sheepskin of his Sears corduroy coat. Tino’s skinny body blocked the wind. One time, when he was still underage, Tino’d been busted for dealing and his folks sent him off to boot camp in Idaho. He broke out, hitched home, and hid in Forest Park at night when he couldn’t find a place to crash, until he hooked up with me for a while. I don’t know what happened to him out there in Idaho, but now, best thing about Tino was he wouldn’t leave the neighborhood. He said it himself—he’d never go anywhere he couldn’t walk home from.

  One of these days I’d go as far away as I wanted, and I knew he’d be there, home, when I got back. Tino was home, and he was mine.

  We went back in the tavern. Rebar worked his muscled jaw. Maybe it was time for more meds, I had no clue.

  Someone said my name, Vanessa, in the hiss of a whisper. I looked. The men lining the bar had their backs to our table. Music rattled under bad speakers. Nobody said my name. It was just noises, a cloud of tavern sounds; my name was a patchwork put together from scrap.

  Tino said, “Come see Eileen. She’d like it.”

  My hands were light and far away with the cold. I rubbed them together. “I don’t think we should visit Eileen. I’m fine here.”

  Rebar said, “Jesus, Vanessa, she had brain surgery.”

  I said, “Hospital-land. It creeps me out. All that mortality.” Then again, the bar was lined with vulture fodder.

  Rebar said, “I started to like it.”

  Tino said, “Ray won’t show up.”

  I said, “You going?”

  Rebar shook his head.

  I said, “Okay.” So I’d shake off Rebar. Maybe I’d get lost on the way too. Except when I stood, Rebar stood. He said, “Swap shoes with me, man.” He kicked off a Sketcher. Tino ignored him. Rebar worked his shoes back on and hustled to catch up, snagging my arm to hold me back.

  The hospital halls were miles of white, somebody’s idea of a sterile heaven, broken by red emergency phones and inset shrines of faded saints. Rebar put his arm over my shoulder. I hadn’t shaken anybody. He stooped to bring his face closer to mine and said, “Where I was, we had big rooms and new carpets. We had coffee machines.” His big feet swung out, ready to knock things down.

  I heard my name again, in a whisper: Van-ess-a, Van-ess-a … It was under the swish of clothes and the wheels of the carts. Rebar’s coat sleeve rustled against my ear.

  Tino skipped the reception desk.

  “You been here before?” Rebar asked me.

  “I was born here, but never been back.” The hospital was its own world, all clean, creased green uniforms. Aluminum carts, Formica. It was a different place from the world outside. In the hospital, pretty much I didn’t know anybody.

  Rebar, Tino, and me—we were a walking cloud of tavern air, smoke, and beer breath. I reached a hand
, laced one finger through Tino’s belt loop.

  Vanessa.

  I heard my name in the squish of shoes on hard linoleum, and the breath of coats as they exhaled. This time, though, when I turned, it was real. It was Mrs. Petoskey, our old grade school teacher. “Vanessa.” She said it.

  She was in scrubs.

  Rebar, Tino, and me, we stopped together. I said, “Hi.”

  Mrs. Petoskey said, “Good to see you. How’s your mom?”

  I shook my head. Brushed my hair out of the way. My mom? I didn’t know. I said, “Fine.”

  Mrs. Petoskey smiled.

  I said, “Still in the slammer.” Tino laughed, flashing his gapped teeth like it was a joke, and the funny thing was, it wasn’t. Mrs. Petoskey moved some tubes around on her cart. I said, “Meth charges.” Then I asked, “You don’t teach school?”

  Mrs. Petoskey said, “No, well, things change.” And she waved a hand over her cart, pulled on a face mask, and pushed on through a set of swinging doors. “Take care.” Her voice was muffled by the mask.

  Tino said, “Didn’t she have cancer before?”

  I didn’t remember, but she probably did.

  Eileen was in bed, watching TV, same as everyone in every dank hole of a tavern all over town. Her head was shaved and bandaged. Her face was puffy. She’d put on makeup and it sat like paint over her drained skin.

  I said, “They told me there was a dead hooker in here.”

  Eileen said, “Thanks a lot. Got years ahead’a me.”

  I said, “Isn’t that how every story goes?”

  I gave her a kiss on her pale forehead. I wasn’t glad to see her, but that wasn’t her fault. She was the only patient in a room with two beds, wearing a powder-blue hospital gown. She leaned against pillows.

  “’S good to see you,” she said. Her voice was slow and stuttery.

  Tino pulled a can of beer from his paper bag.

  Eileen asked, “How ’bout a cig-rette?” There were two No Smoking signs.

  Tino pushed the door closed. I sat on the windowsill. Rebar leaned against the wall too close beside me. When Tino passed around the rest of the six-pack, I said, “This man’s got the shoes and the booze.” I wouldn’t’ve said it without a few drinks in me already, but I wanted a little space. To set Rebar back. I ran a hand over Tino’s shoulders, that bony armature of a human.

  Rebar looked at the shoes, his shoes, on Tino’s feet, and he took a beer.

  I said, “What about your bracelet?”

  “I’ll try not to sweat.” Rebar tipped the can. He drank like drinking was breathing, like he’d been held under water and here was his can of air.

  “Rebar just got out of the other one. On the hill,” Tino said.

  “No kiddin’?” Eileen lit a cigarette, keeping an eye on the door. “Haven’t ’moked all day.”

  “The alarm’ll go off,” I said.

  “What’ll dey do if dey catch me—frow me out?” This was the lisp of her stroke, her brain stutter like a car with sugar in the tank.

  I sat on the empty bed. Tightened my rain coat around me in case some fire alarm sprinklers went off. “What the hell happened?”

  Eileen said, “Went out for drinks after work … my hands started feelin’ weird.”

  Tino said, “Must’ve felt pretty weird if they brought you to Emergency.”

  I felt my own hands, imagining my head as light, losing blood and circulation. I looked for Ray at the door, waited for the alarm to scream. I was ready to skedaddle.

  “It was,” Eileen said. “Cut my head open like dis.” She drew an invisible L on the bandage, down from the top and across one side.

  Rebar said, “How many channels you get?”

  The dark circles under Eileen’s eyes made her beautiful, like a face-lift patient or a drug addict in treatment. She was being taken care of, and that meant cared for. The blue hospital robe rested against her skin at her clavicle in a way that said fragile and yet still living, meaning strong. Who would’ve known light blue and bandage white could be so dreamy?

  I said, “You’re gorgeous.”

  She patted the bed beside her. I lay down, watching out for tubes and her food tray. She said, “You know, Ray doesn’t talk about you at all.”

  “Music to my ears.” I sipped my drink. Tapped the can.

  Tino and Rebar watched TV like TV mattered.

  She said, “I mean, he’s doing it on purpose. Like if he said your name, it’d all come back …”

  My nail polish was chipped red. I chipped it off more, letting red flakes rest on Eileen’s white sheets.

  She whispered, “If you wanted Ray back, you could do it.”

  I said, “Don’t worry. I don’t take anything that doesn’t belong to me.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since now, okay? He’s yours.” My purse was bulging with the ashtray, the salt shaker, who knows what else.

  Rebar crumpled his empty can. He made it small, and put it in his coat pocket. Tino hit the remote, changed the channel.

  Rebar said, “Hey, who’s the asshole?”

  Tino waved the remote, raised his hand. Asshole: present and accounted for.

  I said, “You going to let him get away with that?” Like it mattered.

  Rebar let the TV be his pacifier, eased into a new channel.

  Tino changed channels again. I got up, off Eileen’s bed. I put a hand on Rebar’s arm, said, “Keep a level head.”

  Rebar said, “What’re you, some kind of counselor?” He ran his fingers through my hair.

  “I’ve got a few good tips.”

  He let his fingers latch on, tug, and he laughed, like a joke, but he pulled my head back and my neck gave in so easily, Rebar’s face was close to mine. My hair was long, he held it, then he let go.

  I was done there.

  Time to go home, pack, get out of Rebar’s shack in the warehouse district. I said, “You need to manage yourself.”

  And I moved away, behind Tino, behind Eileen’s bed, far from Rebar’s reach. I ran one arm over Tino’s shoulder and said, “Those shoes suit him better anyway. Don’t they?”

  It wasn’t the shoes. It was everything. Rebar was a loaded gun.

  “Have another beer.” I tossed one of the last two to Rebar. “Calm down. I’ll be back. Bathroom.” I shook the nearly empty can in my hand.

  Eileen said, “Use mine.” She pointed to a door off the side of the room.

  Eileen’s bathroom was small, like a bathroom on the back of a Greyhound, only clean. Everything was made out of stainless steel and pressed board. I looked for signs of a hidden camera in the ceiling. Maybe a hospital kept watch in stray corners. What did I know? A second door on the opposite side of the toilet’s small space meant a nurse or another patient could walk in, and I was afraid I’d touch something meant to stay clean. I wasn’t drunk, but was on my way, and drunk was where I’d rather be.

  When I stood to flush, I saw I’d peed in an aluminum pan meant to catch a urine sample. The pan hung inside the toilet bowl. I’d peed in Eileen’s collection cup. For all I knew, Eileen’s pee was there too. I hadn’t looked first, and wouldn’t touch it afterwards. Eileen’s urine and mine, they’d go to the lab together.

  Then I heard Ray. His hoarse voice. I heard him in the hall. He knocked on the door to Eileen’s room. He yelled, “Eileen? Baby? I’m here.” I didn’t run the water. I listened.

  Tino yelled back “Baby, we’re all here.”

  Eileen said, “Come on in, sweets.”

  I listened for my own name, Vanessa, but didn’t hear it now. MEN WHO FATHER CHILDREN LIVE HERE. I read the words across the bathroom’s blank wall, saw those lines and jagged angles. The last time I’d seen Ray, he’d given me three hundred bucks and walked me to the Lovejoy clinic. What I didn’t tell him back then was, I’d already lost his kid. He left me on the corner, bleeding in ways he didn’t know anything about, with a pocketful of cash. Now he was back.

  I tipped my beer can upside do
wn over the urine collection tray, then put the can on the floor and crushed it.

  On the other side of the door, Ray said, “Bushmills. Excellent stuff.”

  Eileen laughed, said, “Blood thinners and painkillers.”

  Rebar was a soft murmur at the far wall, saying things I couldn’t hear.

  I turned the handle on the second door. The hallway was out there. I could walk out and keep going. I had my coat. We hadn’t gone so far I couldn’t walk home.

  I leaned into the mirror, fixed my lipstick. Rebar, on the other side of the door, said, “You think you’re some kind of fucking comedian?”

  Now Ray was the murmur I couldn’t hear. If Rebar was drinking Bushmills, let them be Christ crucified. I wasn’t going back.

  The ashtray in my purse was like brass knuckles. Solid, hard, and beveled.

  There was nothing in the bathroom worth anything unless I needed a plastic yellow pitcher or a roll of toilet paper. I wanted a powder-blue robe. A souvenir. A robe soft and sweet as pot smoke in cold air.

  I found a place where the counter opened from the top. I opened the piece of hinged pressed board, and down below was a dark hamper. Linens. There was the peeping corner of a robe. I reached in. I’d take one.

  On the other side of the wall Tino said, “Where’d Nessa go?” There was my name.

  “She’s here?” Ray said.

  I could leave. Leave Ray, the one man I wanted to stay with. Leave Rebar, who I couldn’t get away from. And then there was Tino. There was no place far away enough.

  I closed my fingers around a robe in the hamper. When I lifted the cloth, there was the blooming flower of watery bloodstains. Maybe it was Eileen’s blood. Inside the hamper, instead of clean pillowcases and sweet robes, there was a pile of bloodstained sheets, towels, and robes twisted and tangled. The hospital linens were thick as bodies. They were a pool of what’s left after you slice open a brain, arms and legs, hearts and lungs, clamp a vein shut. They were soaked in all that life, intertwined.

  I dropped the bloody robes. Washed my hands. I wasn’t getting anything here.

  I went back in Eileen’s crowded room. I leaned against the bathroom door. “Ray,” I said.