St. Louis Noir

by Scott Phillips

  Taptaptap.

  Taptaptap.

  Now I was awake, my eyes open to the sun streaming in the uncovered window a few feet away from where I lay. Which was . . . where? There was an empty bird feeder in the shape of an apple attached to the window with a suction cup, and a blank wall of siding beyond it. I didn’t remember the window or the bird feeder and worried that I might still be dreaming. Then a shadow passed across the blank wall. A large bird? No. Something stealthy, moving quickly. A glimpse of brown hair and tan skin.

  My eyes moved to the wall around the window. Wallpaper. Tiny flowers and pastel stripes, like a little girl’s room. I remembered the boy and his dirty feet. Jeremy’s empty room behind the closed door. I was aware of someone near me. Light, sleeping breaths.

  I tried to turn my head but my hair was caught by a man’s arm. Alarmed, I jerked away, not caring that it hurt.

  The man threw his arm up over his face, but not before I saw it: roughly handsome with a pale mustache and a light coat of fine whiskers over his chin and jaw as though he hadn’t shaved in two or three days. His eyelashes were pale too. His own hair was on the long side, reminding me of a boy I’d dated in high school.

  “Your blond period,” my best friend Stacy had called it, when I’d dated three blond guys in six months. Stacy. Really my former best friend. She’d first sworn her faith in me, answering, “Never!” if anyone asked her if I was capable of killing my own four-year-old child. Then she’d moved away just before the trial, unwilling to appear as a character witness, saying her deposition was enough. But I’d heard her voice on the phone. There was something in it—some half-truth. Hesitation. I begged, but she hung up.

  The man made a moaning noise, and muttered, “Shit.” With his other arm he pushed away the blanket that lay over his legs and scratched his crotch, which, like his arm, was covered in pale, curled hairs. He didn’t have a morning erection like Gavin so often did. When was the last time I’d seen Gavin naked? Three months? Five? The last time we’d tried to have sex, I’d stopped him because I’d forgotten to refill my pills. And he’d been angry, saying it didn’t matter, we were married and Jeremy had been gone over a year. That was the night of the teacups, and my first half-bottle of gin.

  Suddenly realizing that I was naked as well, I pulled the other half of the blanket over me, knowing it was too late, trying to remember (and yet not remember) the day, the night before.

  Done scratching, he rose up on one elbow and glanced around. “Hey, where’s your bathroom? I’ve got to piss like a racehorse.”

  “Through there.” I pointed to the doorway leading to the central hall of the apartment.

  He sat up and leaned over the edge of the futon to retrieve a pair of black cotton briefs from the floor and carried them with him to the bathroom. When he was through the doorway, I saw Jeremy’s lamb where it had been mashed beneath him. A scream caught in my throat. I snatched the lamb to me, brushing it off furiously with my hand to remove any trace of the blond man. When I was through, I laid it carefully beneath the futon out of his sight. Out of his reach. Whatever I had felt for him the night before—and it must have been something, yes? even if I couldn’t remember it?—had been replaced by contempt.

  I pulled on the shorts I’d been wearing the day before, doing my best to ignore the unpleasant residue of our coupling between my legs, and took a T-shirt from one of the open bags on the floor.

  When I picked up his jeans from the edge of the futon, a wallet slipped out. His driver’s license read, Michael Francis James, and he lived on a street that wasn’t far away from where we were on Landsdowne. It made sense, given that we’d met at a bar in the area. At least I thought we’d met at the bar. I remembered sitting at a table alone and ordering food with my martini because it seemed too strange, too decadent to go into a bar in the middle of the day and only order a drink. And I remembered a man and a woman coming over to the table. Had there really been a woman? Blond, like him, I thought, wearing a loose pink shirt, telling me I looked awfully down. And that was all. Nothing until the morning and the tapping at the window.

  I replaced the wallet, my hand shaking. I bent to pick up his boots and shirt as well.

  What is happening to me?

  His voice came from the kitchen. I hadn’t heard him leave the bathroom. “Hey, Becky. You don’t have any beer?”

  Beer? I didn’t even drink beer.

  He stood in front of the open refrigerator, black underwear in place, a slack but not large beer belly peeking over their tops.

  “You need to leave.” I held out his clothes hoping he wouldn’t see my hands shaking. My head hurt like hell, but I spoke as forcefully as I could.

  “What?” He seemed genuinely puzzled.

  “This was a mistake.” I fumbled for his name. “Michael. Mike.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “No, really. Go.”

  “Huh. I didn’t take you for a love-’em-and-leave-’em type.” He let the refrigerator door close. “Not after all your crying to get that toy out of your car. You wanted to bring some pillow too, but it wouldn’t work on the bike. Real tears and all.”

  I gestured with the clothes again. “Here. Please.”

  He shook his head. “Let me get a fucking drink of water, at least.”

  I waited while he took a glass from the counter, filled it from the tap, and drank. When he was done, he dabbed rather delicately at his mouth with a paper towel. But then he let the paper towel fall into the sink.

  Taking the clothes from me, he tried to look me in the eye, but I turned away and he gave an unpleasant little laugh. He dressed in the bedroom. When he came out I was standing at the front door.

  “For a decent fuck you’re a cold bitch, you know that?”

  There was a shadow of hurt in his blue eyes that almost moved me. But I just opened the door.

  Before he crossed the threshold he bent to pick up something from the welcome mat. It was a yellow rose with pink curled edges and a long green wire stem. He examined it before he handed it to me.

  “Fake. It figures.”

  I shut the door behind him and went back to the bedroom. My hands were still shaking. Outside, a motorcycle started up. The sound of the engine surged, then faded off down the street.

  Whatever I’d done, I was desperate to undo it. I took off my shorts and found the underwear and shirt I’d been wearing. Balling them together with the blanket from the bed, I went, naked, through the door in the hallway and down the basement stairs. I stuffed everything into the washer and coated it with a capful of detergent before setting it on Hot/Heavy Duty. In the bathroom I showered, scrubbing myself as hard as I could—particularly between my legs—with a bar of soap and the chunk of loofah I’d brought from the house. Almost ten years with the same man, and I couldn’t even remember having sex with this Michael person. What if I were pregnant? Or he’d given me chlamydia or some other disease? Oh God! I rinsed my mouth again and again with the shower water until my throat was choked with hot water and tears.

  After showering, I opened a window in the kitchen and set the air conditioner to high to get the stench—perhaps imagined—of sex with a stranger out of the apartment. My head hurt like crazy, so I took four ibuprofen with a yogurt smoothie from the fridge. It wasn’t filling, but I figured it was vaguely healthy. The drinking of it kept me away from the lemonade and gin. Not that it would have mattered because the gin bottle sat empty on the counter, and I wasn’t going to open the second bottle. Ever.

  The thing to do was to get out of the apartment. I had no job to go to. Not yet. But I was going to have to think about it eventually. I’d had to give the landlord and his wife rent in advance for six months because I didn’t have one. Apparently this was how the rest of the world lived. How sheltered I’d been with Gavin and his steady paycheck.

  I found my purse and checked my wallet. The cash and credit cards were still there, so at least the guy hadn’t robbed me. I went out onto the porch, locked the doo
r behind me, and headed for the driveway. And, nothing.

  No Suburban. Shit. I closed my eyes. The keys were in my hand, and the extra set was—damn—probably still on Gavin’s key ring. It made sense that the Suburban was still at the bar. I was going to have to walk there and get it.

  The ibuprofen wasn’t doing anything for my headache, and I was thirsty before I even turned the corner. I was hoping the place wasn’t as far away as I thought it was, and was cheered to discover that the first couple of blocks were very short, bisected with alleys lined with tiny garages built at the same time as the early-twentieth-century houses. Neighborhoods didn’t come much more established than this one. It was the kind of area where residents got to be like family, raising generations of kids who went to the same schools, married each other, and moved into houses down the street from their parents. But there were also enough people that I might be left alone. There was no law saying I had to talk to anyone. I knew of even cheaper places in St. Louis to live, but the area seemed relatively safe. I was only a little afraid to be living on my own—something I’d never done before.

  Of course, the word had gotten out, hadn’t it? There might be people who objected to my living there. People who believed I’d killed Jeremy even though I was found not guilty. People had opinions.

  The houses thinned out as I approached the more commercial area where I thought the bar was, and they were older, more run down. I was amazed to see that one house—set back from the road on the tiniest of rises—had rough synthetic grass for a front lawn. Up at the top of the slope, there was a row of vibrant yellow and purple tulips as well. But tulips didn’t bloom in August. Like the flower on my doorstep, they were all fake.

  I bent to run my hand over the plastic grass where it met the cement to know what it felt like. It tickled, and I thought how strange and bold someone had to be to put fake grass in front of their house. Then I caught a movement out of the corner of my eye.

  “Hi.”

  “Shit, you scared me.” Realizing I’d said the word shit to a little boy, I automatically followed with, “I mean shoot.”

  “Where are you going? Can I come?”

  I looked beyond the boy. There was no sign of any adult with him. At least today he was wearing black flip-flops and brown shorts that were baggy but looked like actual play clothes. His cheek wore a smear of white like he’d been into paint or something. I had to stop myself from reflexively wiping it off.

  “Where’s your dad? You shouldn’t be this far from home by yourself.”

  He shrugged. That was all the answer I got.

  “I have to get my car.” I turned away and started walking. “You should go home,” I called over my shoulder. And I hoped that he really would. But, of course, he didn’t. I knew he’d follow me all the way to the bar. Then he’d probably tell his father. The father would tell the other neighbors, and someone would tell my landlord. God, where was all this going?

  It might not be safe for you, Becca. Come to Florida. Come and live with us. My mother had believed me. She worried for me. But her life was complicated. I couldn’t handle my stepfather. No, I had to stay.

  The boy followed a few feet behind me, his shoes making a slapping sound on the sidewalk. It bugged me, but as headachy and thirsty as I was, everything was bugging me. I wondered what we looked like to the cars driving by. I wasn’t used to walking places. I felt conspicuous, and it was made worse by the boy’s presence. What would people think? That I had asked him to come with me?

  By the next block, the houses were gone completely.

  “Listen, you need to go home, okay? You can’t come with me.”

  “Did you know that wherever you are there’s a spider within three feet of you? I learned that at school. Hey, isn’t that your big truck?” He pointed.

  Bridget’s Bide-a-Wee was still half a block away, but the Suburban was hard to miss, alone as it was in the parking lot. The pub was closed. It was too early to have a drink, anyway. I thought of the lemonade at home. So cold from the fridge. I willed myself not to think of the Beefeaters. I would pretend it wasn’t there.

  “Yeah, it is.”

  * * *

  The Suburban was stifling with heat. The boy stood at my shoulder looking in.

  “Hey, it’s got leather in it. My dad says leather in cars is for suckers.”

  “Does he?”

  “Can I ride in it?”

  I glanced around the empty parking lot, still feeling conspicuous. Could I possibly tell him he had to walk home, given that I lived across the street? Someone might snatch him from the sidewalk. The irony of the thought wasn’t lost on me.

  “Go around the other side and get in.”

  He gave no reaction except to run around the back of the truck to the other side like he was afraid I’d change my mind.

  I climbed in and started the engine and turned the A/C on full blast. The boy got into the passenger seat and started touching everything as though he’d never seen the inside of a car before. But he didn’t speak. Only touched. Finally, he settled back and peered at me expectantly.

  “You have to put on your seat belt.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  On the way out of the parking lot, he said, “That’s the snow cone place everyone goes to. They have tiger juice. Have you ever had tiger juice?”

  “No,” I told him. But I could take a hint.

  I pulled into a space near the metal trailer with the giant snow cone on its roof. When he started to get out, I told him he had to wait in the truck. To my surprise, he didn’t show any sign of disappointment. He really was a strange kid, and I thought once again that there was something not quite right about him.

  * * *

  I parked in the driveway.

  “Can I come inside your house?” He’d finished the snow cone in about two minutes flat as we sat in the truck and then he folded the paper cone into a tiny triangle. When he was finished he handed the triangle to me as though it were a gift. “You can have it,” he said. His hands were small, like a much younger child’s. I thought of Jeremy’s hands. How tiny they’d been when he was born. Gavin had worried that they might break if he touched them.

  Suddenly I wanted the boy away from me.

  “You have to go. Go home or something.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I said. Don’t . . .” I was about to tell him not to tell anyone he’d been with me, but I realized that it didn’t sound quite right. Just the thought made me feel guilty. Worried.

  “Go!” My voice was too loud for the inner space of the truck, but I couldn’t help myself.

  The boy showed no surprise. He opened the door with slow deliberation and got out. I didn’t look to see where he went.

  A few minutes later I headed inside the apartment and drank several glasses of water. Then I turned the air conditioner to its lowest setting and wrapped myself in the remaining blanket. I fell asleep clutching Jeremy’s lamb to my chest.

  * * *

  I woke feeling like a new person. And I was starving. After a dinner of macaroni and cheese and a tall glass of lemonade with gin—really, only a little gin, not more than a couple ounces—I went out to the porch swing with a book, finally feeling a bit more relaxed. There was just enough sunlight left to read by. I’d brought only a small box of books from the house: Agatha Christie paperbacks I’d read in high school, Jane Eyre, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Nerdy stuff that Gavin had thought was charming.

  The street was quiet except for a staccato flow of people coming in and out of a house near the end of the block. It looked like a party.

  Across the street, the boy’s house was dark. I told myself that I was stupid to worry. I hadn’t done anything wrong. I’d given him a ride home and bought him a snow cone. That was all. No one could fault me for that.

  The people coming and going from the party were young, much younger than I was. Maybe college-aged. Some guys were tossing what looked like beanbags into a brightly painted b
ox in the front yard, and every now and then a voice would erupt in laughter. They held big red Solo cups that they refilled at a keg on the porch. I wondered idly what would happen if I wandered down there.

  I wasn’t so bad to look at, was I? I put the book aside and gathered my hair into a soft pile over my shoulder. I hadn’t put makeup on in weeks, but it wouldn’t take me long to run inside. The Michael guy, now that I thought about him, maybe hadn’t been so bad. He’d liked me. Told me I was a good fuck. No. A decent fuck. Now there’s a gentleman for you! I laughed out loud to think of it. It felt good to laugh.

  Out in the trees, the cicadas started up, and the noise from the party got louder. Had I imagined it, or had a light come on behind one of the window shades in the house across the street?

  Where was the boy? I hoped he was safe inside his house now that it was getting dark. I wondered what he had looked like as a baby. Jeremy had started out fat-cheeked and round, with dimples on his elbows, face, and knees. But he’d quickly turned slender. So slender, in fact, that the doctor had been concerned. Worried that he wasn’t getting enough to eat. Later, she’d sat on the witness stand, answering questions in her squeaky, butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth voice, talking about percentiles and motor responses. She’d been recommended highly too. But she never liked me, the bitch.

  The boy liked me, though. I bet his parents would like me too. I could feel my resolve to keep to myself drifting away.

  I went inside to refill my glass and drank it down quickly. Seeing a container of grocery-store chicken salad in the refrigerator, I tried to remember if I’d eaten dinner. I wasn’t hungry, so maybe I had. It wouldn’t hurt me to lose a pound or two, anyway.

  I made another drink and started back out to the porch. The apartment was cool, but there was nowhere to sit except the bed. And I wasn’t tired. I needed a television too. Gavin didn’t like to watch television, so we’d only had the one. I opened the front door.

  “Gavin.”

  He’d come to me.