“What your father is doing is noble, I commend him, but your financial aid is based on the previous year, and your mother’s earnings were significantly higher last year too.”
“My mom won’t give anything. She doesn’t have anything.”
“Her income is modest, but she and your stepfather have a significant amount in assets. Your parents have joint custody?”
They did, but we’d lived with Dad exclusively since we were four and seven. Mr. Larson’s cell phone rang. “Sorry.” He stood by the window, facing the crush of gray and green just beyond the glass. I wanted to draw back the curtain of leaves and push him into it. I thumbed through notes for my women’s studies test without gaining any traction. I was too busy eavesdropping on the conversation.
“What would I like?” I looked up, thinking he was talking to me. “Janine. I expect you to do everything you can for her. I mean, yes, that’s what we’re asking, what we’ve been asking. For how long now?” While he listened, he hummed. “What kind of surgery? I understand. I understand it costs. Everything costs. Haven’t I been? Right. We’re prepared. Yes, she agrees.”
His daughter or his wife? Maybe a sister or a niece. Was it cancer or heart disease? Something rare? A brain injury? Something like Macy? Mr. Larson was going through troubles too. That we might share a pain warmed me like hot pudding.
“Sorry,” he said, sitting down. He checked the applications on his computer with shaky hands.
Should I or shouldn’t I ask? I found myself asking: “Who’s Janine?”
“Our bichon frise. The vet has been trying to figure out what’s going on. He was half suggesting I put her down, but the money we’ve already poured into medical costs . . . If we do this gallbladder surgery, she might have another year. That’s worth six thousand. We’re probably throwing good money after bad, but . . . Sorry about that,” he said again, though nothing about him seemed sorry for me. I doubted he had any idea what six thousand dollars would do for our family. I’d never heard people talk so lightly about so much money before I came to this school.
“Maybe I could speak with someone else?”
“They’re just going to tell you the same thing. You always have the option of a loan.”
“I can’t take out any more in federal loans.”
“I was suggesting a private loan.”
“My dad doesn’t want me to . . . We don’t want to do that.”
“I appreciate that. That position, and it’s a special one to take. It’s your education, after all. College is an investment and, I understand, an expensive one for many families. All families have sacrifices to make. You don’t have to decide this second.” He handed me his card to end the conversation.
It was easy enough to get his address. Where could I send a Get Well card for his dog?
* * *
A grackle floated off the bus stop. An Oxford-blue suit, European cut on a big man, approached Taco Heaven. Dad called suits this nice revenge suits, purchased after a first paycheck or on the occasion of a breakup. But this was probably one of many revenge suits. Did the suit’s owner have a face? Sure. But all I saw was a smudge where eyes and a mouth should be. God had licked his thumb and rubbed this man out from the neck up. White hair and a bushy mustache came slightly into focus.
For the last ten minutes, an older woman with a light shawl had struggled with her order. She was peering at the menu when the suit cut in front of her. He gave me the up-and-down, the same look I get in bathrooms. Angus was on break.
“I believe the lady was first,” I said to the suit.
“She doesn’t look ready to order.”
I recognized Larson, back from vacation. I should have placed him right away. Did he recognize me? I was wearing gloves, so he couldn’t see my name.
The woman raised her eyebrows. She said, “Actually . . .”
“Give me a Jamaican jerk taco, a bahn mi taco, plus an agua—”
I said to Larson, “Let me grab her order and then I’ll take yours.”
“But I just told you what I want.”
Ice cracking over a thin puddle—that was the expression traveling across the woman’s face. “I’ve lost my appetite.” She put a five-dollar tip in the jar and walked away.
When Larson placed his order, he spoke slowly, insultingly. It was the kind of voice kids used to mock Macy last summer.
“I heard you twice the first time,” I told him.
Angus came back inside, scraped down the grill. “Everything good here?”
“Maybe you want to think about who you have up front,” Larson said.
“Or,” I said, “maybe you want to think—”
“Why don’t you take your break now?” Angus interrupted. “I can take this one. You’re so wet you’re shaking, Re.”
I was sick of it. So sick. Of the cutting in line. The looks people like Larson gave people like me and Macy. My school. The heat and the rashes on my arms from sleeping on the ground.
A bronze sculpture of a ripped man walking with no arms and no head. Who knew where? The sorry bastard. A giant had pinched off his limbs and left him to wander around with no strength. The bubbles in the Topo Chico popped in my mouth. I hadn’t changed. My shirt clung to my binder.
“I thought you said you were good with people,” Angus said when he came out, throwing a dry Taco Heaven T-shirt on my shoulder.
“That guy wasn’t people. He works at the college.”
“Do you know him?”
“He didn’t even recognize me. What a dick!”
“Can’t you avoid him at school?”
I shook my head. “I don’t even know. I don’t think I can go.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
We sat beneath the magnolia, suffering. I took out my phone, went to the gallery, showed Angus two pictures of Macy. A before and after.
“I’m sorry for your sister.”
“Maybe I should go home.”
“You never know,” Angus said. “I knew a kid like your sister. We were all out together in Austin, off the Greenbelt, and people were diving, drinking. It was getting dark. You had to know where to jump and he didn’t know. Broke his neck.”
“My sister’s neck isn’t broken. What do you know about my sister?”
“Nothing. I’m just saying.”
The guards let us use the bathroom on the first floor. I wanted to cry in private, to change clothes and rinse my face after. As I walked into the men’s room, Larson came out. He looked at me with the same cocked head Angus had at my interview and that day he said I was lucky to be a girl.
In my stall, the same stall I always used, I changed shirts. Just outside the door, a pair of shiny brown leather shoes came into view. There was a knock and I heard Larson’s voice: “René Garraway?”
I didn’t respond, hardly breathed.
“Is that you, René? I think you’ve made your point.”
I put my face down in my lap so he couldn’t see me through the space near the hinges.
People like Larson make life harder. They hang around asking questions, making assumptions. They think I’m trying to make a statement when I piss. I’m not. I just want to piss. Is Larson trying to make a statement when he pisses? No. How much time lapsed, I don’t know. The glare off his polished shoes disappeared. I heard a faucet, then the door opening.
“Miss. Please use the other restroom.” The voice of a security guard from the door.
I wondered, as I sat there, waiting for them to go away, what Cecilia was thinking when she put the poison in Uncle Ross’s chicken cacciatore. Not enough to kill him, but enough to make him think.
* * *
Dad always said that in the fall, men either want to fuck something or they want to kill. Fall was two months away, but I had the urge.
At the Y, I did a search for cyanide. This led to a search for tasteless poisons. A stunning catalog of horrible deaths people had imparted to their wives, animals, coworkers, lovers, and rivals greeted me. In England
, a man made ricin from castor beans and used it to kill his boss and another business partner. Cyanide came in powder form and the gas worked just as quick. Uncle Ross should have died. She just wanted to scare him, because she could have killed him easily. Arsenic, for instance. No taste, no odor. For many murderers, those qualities weighed heavily in arsenic’s favor. Antifreeze. In one article, there was a picture of a green street gutter. A tabby cat tipped its face down to drink its death. How small a dose would I have to give to hurt without really hurting? The information on wikis and websites contradicted each other. Two teaspoons for a child. So, a tablespoon for an adult? I wouldn’t do it. It wasn’t real. A curiosity, that was all.
On my day off, I walked to H-E-B to buy a money order. Four hundred dollars to send home. After the money order, I walked the aisles, imagining what I would buy to eat when I had money someday. I grabbed a sample tortilla at the bakery—warm, oily, and salty—and ate it while touching fruits and vegetables. Pink salmon and frozen scallops and lobster tails. Waters. Milks in the dairy case. In the aisle for home goods and insecticides, a yellow antifreeze bottle. I left the aisle for a sixteen-ounce Mountain Dew, went back for the antifreeze, and paid at the self-checkout.
On Friday nights and weekends, bands played on a small outdoor stage to the right of the grocery store’s entrance. When there were no bands, it was shaded and a good place to sit. The Mountain Dew’s cold and sugar hurt my teeth, but the flavor . . . Delicious and weird. Mountain Dew tastes like nothing but itself—just like me. When the Mountain Dew was gone, I walked to the edge of the parking lot and poured antifreeze into the empty bottle. I left the antifreeze jug tucked behind a grassy bush sprouting hard white flowers. Clouds stacked like skyscrapers pushed south toward the gulf.
Did I really want to hurt people? No, not badly. Actually, yeah, just a little. But not seriously. Just a fright to make them appreciate life, just as I had been forced to do through Macy.
I walked through several neighborhoods. I passed bungalows and brick homes, but also construction sites. In Houston, if something is old, people want to rip it down, put in a condo, a steak house.
I needed a hat but didn’t have one. The sun swarmed like bees around my head. I went into the Rothko and pretended to meditate until six, when they kicked everyone out.
I was feeling lost until I saw Larson’s house. There was a dog with curly white fur in the yard. This was Janine. She looked sluggish, like me. I could help her. Larson stepped out onto his stoop and called her in. The two crepe myrtles in front of his house had scattered the ground with pink confetti.
It took a few days of going back at dark, to wait and to watch. He let her out at ten, but didn’t come out with her.
I took a small Tupperware from the food truck and filled it with the poison. I pushed it through the gate, standing back in the hot dark, to watch Janine drink. Forced myself to watch her finish.
* * *
I waited for Larson. I knew he would come. It wasn’t fate so much as tacos. The next Tuesday at the MFAH, he appeared. The longer line forced him to wait. I told the next customer I’d be right back. The Mountain Dew bottle was warm in my backpack. I scooped ice into a plastic cup, poured in a tablespoon of the antifreeze, and covered it with limeade.
When it was Larson’s turn to order, I said, “Sorry I was so weird the other day. It took me a second to recognize you.”
“I knew it was you right away, René.”
“How’d everything work out for your dog?”
“Not great. Did I see you the other day, on my street?”
“I like to walk. Do you live nearby? What can I get you?”
The limeade, I told Larson, was on the house.
I watched him eat two Thai chicken tacos at the Ikea table. I watched him drink a plastic cup of water while some feeling, like hair in a drain, clogged my gut. Fucking with a dog was a bullshit thing to do, right? I tried to imagine what Macy would say if she could speak. As Larson stood up, he shook the limeade to say thanks and goodbye.
“Let me make you a fresh one,” I said.
“This one’s fine. When they’re too cold, it hurts my teeth.”
He waited at the crosswalk for the westbound traffic to pass. I told Angus I had to pee. By the middle of the crosswalk, Larson had sucked down the limeade. I followed him into the museum. Near the Islamic art galleries, he rested on a bench. Should I say something to a guard? I could have said something to Larson, but Angus was expecting me back at the truck. I walked outside into thick air.
Within thirty minutes, an ambulance arrived.
“What’s going on over there, I wonder?” Angus said.
A customer with a broad, flushed face leaned on the truck. “I was just coming out. Some guy fell down. They’re trying to help him.”
“Who was it?”
“Search me. Guy wearing a suit. Lots of thick white hair.”
Angus turned. “Do you think it’s the guy from your school, Re? What did he have?”
“A couple of tacos and a limeade. And a glass of water.”
“Let me go see,” Angus said. “You never know. It could be something. Hold down the fort.”
I am still too close to the feelings. To describe them. I remember my heart pounded when, a few minutes later, the police cruisers parked behind the ambulance. I remember my hot and sour mouth, my curiosity. Another part of me, the part that could move, tucked the Mountain Dew bottle back into my bag and grabbed the cash out of the register before leaving.
* * *
August brought Hell’s furies. Walking over asphalt hot enough to melt, I became a blister. Red, shiny, and taut. Between the Y’s water aerobics classes, I slipped into the pool. Cold and chemical, it stripped away my skin, my cells. Given enough time, I would be stripped to bones.
In the locker room, I shook a bottle of shaving cream and rubbed the foam over my head. My own face was a blur, a smudge in the mirror, like Larson. I’m sick. No, I’m not. I filled the sink with water and pulled the razor in straight rows across my scalp. After each pass, I cleaned the blades, and it reminded me of shoveling snowy walks. I missed snow now, though I hated it then. The old men shuffled in from the sauna and turned cool showers onto their curved backs. Their loud voices were a comfort. They didn’t mind me. Called me a nice kid as I hand-washed my boxers and binder in the sinks.
When I was done, I sat on a chair outside of the locker room and stared at the picture Dad had sent earlier that week. It came with a text: Remember the pool? Wish we could see you before school starts.
We’d all gone to Walmart to buy an aboveground pool. I’d pushed Macy in her chair into the clothing section and rubbed different fabrics softly along her cheek. In the overgrown backyard, Macy watched us put the pool together and I filled it with the hose. We let the water warm for a day. Then it was ready and I stood in the pool.
“Light as a feather,” Dad had said, lifting Macy from her chair and setting her in my arms. Macy gasped at the feel of the water, let a long moan out of her faintly purple mouth. The inside of a mussel, the sea, Macy’s thin brown legs twigs scissoring in the water until my shhhhhh calmed her down. Behind me, I could hear Dad saying, “You’re good to your sister. You’re good.”
* * *
Standing in the museum’s shadow, I watched Taco Heaven from across the street. Angus had hired someone to replace me, a tall and lanky man who would have trouble standing in the truck all day. I waited to see Angus come out, but there was a small line and he always liked to stay ahead of a rush. Another half hour and I would go. At the sculpture garden’s edge, the bamboo waved as squirrels crawled up and down its narrow green trunks. In the middle of the Montrose and Bissonnet intersection, a man wearing a neon vest wove through the traffic, holding a cup. Veteran. Spare change. Anything helps. I waited the first half hour and then another and wasn’t surprised that, the whole time, no one gave the man anything. He was fast with his cane. Maybe he’d been hit, like Macy. Eventually, the line at Taco Heav
en disappeared.
I took a drink of water, thinking I would give it another half hour, when the replacement walked across the street to use the bathroom. He scooted across the crosswalk holding something in his hands. Maybe trash? Maybe Angus had seen me and this guy was bringing me something to eat. I looked away, bent down pretending to tie my shoe. I saw the man’s raggedy New Balance sneakers and stood up to look at his face. Fortyish, but younger-looking than Dad. He had a gap between his front teeth and wore his Taco Heaven T-shirt small.
“You look just like he said you would.”
“Who said I would?”
“Angus. He says don’t come back around here.”
“Who are you?”
“Vaughn,” the man said. “I’m the new you.”
“Why did he send you? Why won’t he talk to me?”
“I don’t know. I got nothing against you, but you got to get.” Vaughn peered at me hard, sweat pouring off his face. “You been through some things, huh? Well, I don’t know nothing about it, but you look young and smart enough to pull yourself back from that edge. I got to get back.” Vaughn handed me five dollars. “You know how Angus do.”
“Tell him I’m sorry,” I said.
The truck wobbled as Vaughn slipped inside it. The cicadas sounded like buzz saws and I dug a finger in my ear to get rid of them, but that only made the buzzing stronger. After noon, the shadows moved like ships on gray water. The heat held me close. But Angus would come out soon. Angus would come out. I was sure he would, once Vaughn told him I was sorry.
THE USE OF LANDSCAPE
by Robert Boswell
River Oaks
Imagine that thieves move into a house while the owners are away, and the first thing they do is mow the yard, trim the hedges, tend to the landscape—make it seem that they belong while they plunder.
This was Cole’s plan precisely, only the house was Madelyn’s body.
The Criminal Element:
Tariq, who owed Cole.
Herta, who loved Cole.
And Cole, who loved no one.
Why Tariq Owed Cole:
Houston Noir Page 4