The Odds of You and Me

by Cecilia Galante

  It’s like time has stopped, as if I am watching a movie unreel itself in front of me. My feet are nailed to the floor, my breath a hollow ball in the back of my throat. A ticker tape flashes along the inside of my head: This isn’t real. This isn’t real. This isn’t real. Except that it is real. It’s James, the cook from the Burger Barn. James, who told me once that elephants can spend up to twenty-three hours a day eating. James, who was on the morning news this morning, being led down the front steps of the old apartment building in handcuffs after putting someone in the critical care unit of the hospital. He’s right here somehow, right now, right this minute, sitting less than six feet away from me in the choir loft of Saint Augustine’s Roman Catholic Church, pointing a gun at the middle of my chest.

  Run! Run! Run!

  I take a step back with feet that move with a mind of their own. First my right, then my left. Without dropping James’s gaze—which is boring into me with an electric heat—I reach out behind me for the wall; when I feel it, I will turn around and run down the staircase, even if I fall, even if I roll down the length of them. James’s eyes shift downward, following my feet, and then move back up again. His eyes are glossy with exhaustion, wide with fear. Purple cuts ribbon the sides of his wrists, and for some reason, the gun looks too heavy for him to be holding. He lets it fall suddenly, settling it on his right leg. His hands are shaking. “Bird?” he says. “Is that you?”

  I take a few more steps back, terrified suddenly that he recognizes me, that he remembers my name. This is big. Too big. Yes, I knew James once—but this, I don’t know what this is. This is like reality TV gone awry. A bad episode of COPS. I don’t belong here. I have to go clean Mr. Herron’s house. I have to get Ma’s sweater. I have to find out what happened during Something Special Day and then make sure Angus gets a snack before he goes to T-ball practice. Behind me, the wall comes into contact with my hands, smooth-cool to the touch.

  “Bird,” James says. “It was an accident. What happened at the bar. It was an accident.”

  I don’t care if it was an accident. And even if it was, why does he feel the need to tell me such a thing? Actually, I didn’t even hear him say that. No, this is just a dream. I am just imagining this. My feet continue to move with a will of their own, as my hands feel their way along the wall. Just a little bit more, and I will be at the top of the stairs.

  “You won’t tell anyone I’m here, will you?” James’s voice is ragged, his eyes enormous. Maybe the fact that there is no more hair on top of his head makes the white scar across his face look so awful. So permanent for some reason, as if such a thing has never occurred to me before. Or maybe it is just the gun, lying there on his lap like a dirty pipe. Whatever it is, I almost start to cry.

  No. Focus, Bird. Focus. Right foot, left foot. Right foot, left foot.

  “Bird?”

  I scream so loudly as Father Delaney’s voice comes up from the bottom of the steps that the priest rushes halfway up by the time I turn around and descend the first section of stairs. We meet in the belly of the stairwell, his eyes wide and fearful under a thatch of white hair. “Bird? Are you all right? What’s the matter?”

  I hold on to his arms for a moment, stare into his pale eyes. Just say it. Just tell him. Whisper it, if you have to. Make signs with your hands. James Rittenhouse, who was just arrested this morning for assault and battery, is hiding upstairs in your choir loft, bleeding. Call the police.

  “You scared me!” bursts out instead. “I didn’t hear you.”

  Father Delaney glances up the rest of the steps. Jowls under his chin sway a little as he moves; the white space along his black collar juts into the soft skin. “What were you doing in the choir loft? Didn’t your mother tell you I would meet you in the sacristy?”

  I nod, still gripping his arm. “I came in and you weren’t there. I went all the way to the back, even. I was calling you, but there was no answer. I thought . . . I guess I thought maybe you would be in the choir loft for some reason. I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, no.” Father Delaney shakes his head. “No one goes up here anymore. It’s very sad. We haven’t had a choir in years, and the organ is completely unusable. It’s actually hollow now.”

  I laugh then for some reason, but it comes out weird, almost like a cry. “Do you have my mom’s sweater?”

  “Right down here.” Father Delaney leads me back into the vestibule. He is tall and very lean; his black pants hang off his backside like a paper sack. I’d guess he’s in his sixties by now, but Ma says he still runs a few miles every day. It shows. He picks up Ma’s sweater from the floor, swats at it with his free hand.

  “I’m sorry if it’s dirty.” He holds it out to me, gives me an apologetic grin. “It’s not every day you hear someone scream inside a church. I must’ve dropped it.”

  I take the sweater from him and hide my hands inside it. They are shaking. “It’s okay. Ma won’t mind.” My heart is still hammering inside my chest; my mouth feels dry. What is James going to do? How long will he be up there until someone finds him?

  “Are you okay, Bird?” Father Delaney is looking at me with a peculiar expression. “You look a little pale.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m fine.” I head over quickly to the door. “I just have to eat breakfast. Get my coffee, you know?”

  He smiles, showing new lines around his eyes, his mouth. “Oh, I know all about that. I have to have a cup every morning before I run or my legs won’t even think about moving under me.”

  I push the door open. “Good to see you, Mr. . . . I mean, Father Delaney. Thanks for the sweater.”

  “Bird.”

  Shit. He knows. He can tell I’m hiding something. They always know. Even in confession he knew when I was holding back. Is that everything now, Bird? Are you sure that’s all you want to tell me? I turn back around. “Yeah?”

  “Don’t be a stranger.” Father Delaney slides his hands inside his pockets, rocks back on his heels a little. “We’re always here.”

  “Right.” I nod uncomfortably. This is Ma speaking through him, what she’d asked him to say. “Thanks. But it’s not really my thing anymore.” I shake my head, try to smile amicably. “I’m sorry.”

  “Okay. Well, just so you know, we’re starting a Forty Hours service tonight, which means that the church will be open until Saturday night. You can come anytime, Bird. Even if it’s five o’clock in the morning and you just want to sit. It doesn’t have to be for a service or anything.”

  “Uh-huh.” I think back, trying to remember what Forty Hours is, but nothing comes. And what the hell would I want to just sit in the building for? Especially with that creepy crucifix staring down at me? And James Rittenhouse hiding in the choir loft upstairs? “Okay. Thanks. I appreciate it.”

  “Give my best to your mother!” His voice follows me eagerly as I race down the front steps. I raise my arm in response, throw the car into gear, and step down hard on the gas.

  Chapter 7

  That was James,” I say aloud, slowing the car in front of a stop sign. “That was James!” I pause, looking out wildly at the street, as if he will suddenly appear at my passenger window. “He was on the news this morning. He was being taken to . . .” My brain races, struggling to remember. “Court? Jail? The magistrate’s office? He was put in a police car. I saw them put him in a police car. And then . . . what? What happened? Did he escape?”

  I can hear the words coming out of my mouth, but it is as if someone else is saying them. They hang around me in the small space of the car, like fragments of barbed wire. My fingers are trembling; something that tastes like bile is pooling along the insides of my cheeks. The light behind the windshield is sharp as glass, the leafless tree branches stark as ribbon. Behind me, a car leans on its horn. I startle out of my thoughts, pushing down hard on the accelerator.

  What was the chain of events between James’s arrest early this morning—less than three hours ago—and now? How in God’s name did he become an escapee? Did he just run of
f? Break out of his cell? He couldn’t have broken out of a cell. They have bars. They’re iron. They’re built to hold people in. I pause, thinking of all those escape sequences on COPS, the way some people just snap sometimes and then bolt. Years ago, a story ran in the local paper about a lady who was being arrested in front of the pharmacy for stealing a CD player. Somehow, just as the policeman cuffed her and was trying to get her in the cruiser, she broke away from him, ran across two lanes of traffic, and jumped off the side of the Market Street Bridge. It was front page news, that picture, the dead woman lying in a puddle of blood on the riverbank, both arms twisted horribly behind her, her neck splayed at an impossible angle. There was an uproar, too, that the paper had run it; people by the hundreds canceled their subscriptions, called the newspaper en masse to voice their disgust. Ma was one of them.

  I raise myself up in the seat, as if I will be able to see across town to the county jail, which is less than a mile from here, set back on a deserted stretch of the city. Where, at least, are the screaming sirens, the policemen running down the street? Shouldn’t they have those special dogs out, the ones that sniff an article of clothing and then locate the missing person minutes later? I glance down both sides of the street at the next stop sign—empty, except for the usual houses and yards. There are a few cherry trees trying valiantly to bloom, their pink-and-white blossoms like fragments of a cloud suspended on the branch tips. But no people. No police.

  I direct the car toward Mr. Herron’s place across the river, head down a street with a pothole so big that I have to swerve so that I don’t put a hole in my tire like I did last year. I am breathing in shallow gulps, as if my lungs are already filling with liquid. The image of James slumped in that corner keeps returning—the outstretched arm, the gun, the huge eyes underneath the white scar. He’d looked terrified. In all the time I’d known him—and it hadn’t been so long, only a few months, really—I’d never seen him look frightened. He hardly even seemed capable of making any real noise, let alone inflicting harm on someone.

  I turn the car down Cherry Drive where Mr. Herron lives, take a breath, stare out at the street. This part of the city is especially ugly, and this time of the year doesn’t help things. Empty garbage pails lie along the sidewalks; lawns are muddy and unoccupied. There are a few blobs of green here and there—a promise of something to come—but they are small and infrequent as to be almost nothing. Just a few weeks ago, right at the end of March, we had a massive, freak snowstorm. Sixteen inches. There are still vague remnants of dirty snow lining the edges of the sidewalk, a few icy puddles here and there, and although things are finally starting to warm up, it still hasn’t gotten over fifty yet. It won’t get anywhere near the seventies until June.

  My attention shifts to a man walking by briskly. With his lean frame, hunched shoulders, and fists shoved into his jacket pockets, he reminds me suddenly of Charlie, my old boyfriend. Another man I haven’t thought about—at least consciously—in years. Another person whose face crowds the inside of my head like too many people in the same room.

  I DIDN’T FIND Charlie, tall, with pale skin and a dead front tooth, particularly attractive when we first met, but he had a few other things going for him. He was the general manager at the Burger Barn for starters, which, at least in my mind, already set him apart from everyone else. He’d risen above the lowly ranks of the rest of us, had elevated himself to an administrative position, far from the humble, static plane we would probably occupy for the rest of our lives. I’d noticed him looking at me out of the corner of his eye a few times as I stood behind the register, clearing his throat as if he wanted to say something, but I didn’t think anything of it. No one really looked at me. Not that way at least. I’d dated a few guys before Charlie came along, and was not a virgin, but at ninety-eight pounds with a head of dry brown hair and teeth that could stand not only to be straightened but spaced a little better, too, I was never going to win any beauty contests. If men showed an interest in me, I was grateful, not flattered, as if they’d done me a favor. When Charlie looked at me, though, it was as if I was the only person in the room—and he was hoping to keep it that way.

  It was his dream of owning his own restaurant that really reeled me in, as if I might somehow get closer to actually being someone if I was with a person who had his own aspirations. He’d even told me about it once: a small corner place with hand-rubbed pine floors, strings of dried garlic hanging from the walls, and red, dripping candles on every table. It would garner a reputation for its homemade pasta, real minestrone soup, and broad, impressive wine list, and Charlie would be at the door every night, dressed in a dark suit and good shoes, welcoming the regulars back in. I liked it, too, that he was older than me—almost nine years, in fact—and that when he smiled, his green eyes lit up in a way that took me by surprise.

  One night after work, he asked me to go with him to Dugan’s, a corner bar a few blocks away from the Burger Barn. Dugan’s had a perforated tin ceiling that was turning green around the edges, and shabby bar stools. It served all the local drunks, boasted a Friday night dollar draft special, and had a wooden floor that smelled like wet peanuts. Best of all, Big Ed, who stood behind the bar, never asked for ID.

  Charlie bought me a beer, and then another. I listened as he complained about the other employees: Laurie who took a bathroom break every half hour so that she could reapply her makeup, and Jenny, my roommate, who rolled her eyes at the customers when they waited too long to order. He didn’t trust Lionel as far as he could throw him, but he thought James (who I didn’t know yet) was an okay guy. He definitely knew how to make a decent hamburger, and people went crazy for his coleslaw, which he secretly peppered with chopped jalapeno. He’d never once come in late, and he kept the kitchen pretty clean. But for all the time he’d worked there, Charlie said, he’d never heard James say a single word to anyone. Half the time Charlie didn’t even know when the guy had left for the night. He’d come in the back to check on things, and find everything turned off, including the lights.

  “He could at least say good night,” Charlie said, looking at me with slightly lidded eyes. He was on his third beer. “I mean, it’s weird, you know? He’s always slipping in and out that back door without a sound. Loners like that freak me out.”

  After our fourth drink, Charlie stopped talking about everyone else. Instead, he sat next to me and began whispering in my ear. When I felt the heat of his breath against my neck, everything inside me quivered and then jumped. It was as if someone had plucked a moth off the wall and cupped it in his palm. Maybe even blew on it a little. My brown, papery wings stretched, fluttered, and took off. All the way home with him.

  It was not my first time. But it was the first time I’d been with someone in a real bed, inside a real apartment, like a real grown-up. Up until that point, my sexual experiences had been either in the backseat of a car, or on someone’s floor with a set of sleeping parents upstairs. They’d been wordless, awkward, and much too brief. None memorable. None I ever found myself recalling later. For all the beer I’d downed that night, I still wasn’t drunk enough to forget the sensation of Charlie’s arms around me, the faint scent of peanut shells emanating from his skin as he pressed and squeezed me against him like a rag doll. We kissed briefly before he led me over to his bed, shoving his hands up my shirt as he pushed me down on the mattress. I remember feeling disappointed—Already? It’s going to be over so fast—but staying quiet. He was the older one, obviously more experienced than me, and he knew what he wanted. Right now, he wanted me, which was all that mattered.

  “Oh my God,” he said a few minutes later, his body shuddering like a violin. “Oh, Jesus.” I stared up at the ceiling as he collapsed against me, trailing my fingers absently through his hair the way I’d seen a girl do in a movie. She’d seemed blissful, though, caressing his scalp, her other hand resting lightly against his shoulder. I just felt lonely.

  A few weeks later, Ma stopped into the restaurant to say hello. She did this
every so often, claiming that she’d had a “sudden hankering” for a burger, a statement we both knew was a lie. Ever since I had moved out, she needed to lay eyes on me in person, liked to amuse herself, I guess, by keeping tabs on my whereabouts, even from afar. Charlie walked out from his office just as she was ordering, and I introduced him as my new boyfriend. She smiled and shook his hand, and we made small talk for a few moments. Afterward, I watched as she took her tray with the same single burger and small coffee she always ordered over to her favorite corner seat by the window. My heart sank as she sat there and ate silently. I already knew. But she called me later that night, just to confirm it.

  “I don’t like him, Bernadette,” she said bluntly.

  “You don’t even know him, Ma.”

  “I don’t have to,” she said. “It’s a feeling. In my gut.”

  “Based on what?”

  “His eyes,” she said. “He didn’t look at me once, the whole time we talked. Anyone who avoids looking at you directly like that is always hiding something,” she said. “Always.”

  I hung up on her.

  NOW, A LITTLE girl across the street catches my eye. She can’t be any older than two or three, her springy red hair held in tight ponytails, the hem of her pink spring jacket flapping open over a red T-shirt and pink pants. Her father’s index finger fits neatly inside her whole fist as she walks along the length of the sidewalk curb, sliding off after a few feet, then getting back up, and sliding off once more. The father laughs every time she falls, lifts her back up with a raise of his arm, says, “Whoopsie-daisy!” He has a full head of brown hair, cut short around the sides, longer in front, and is dressed in a dark blue sweat suit. Sneakers, too, with green stripes on the sides. Handsome, in an off-kilter sort of way, with a nose that’s too big and thin lips.