“That why you work all the time? For the mobster?”
“No, we get money from my dad’s life insurance. My mom’s pretty practical when she wants to be. She didn’t take the lump sum, so we get regular checks. Oh, and I already told you. He’s not a mobster. He’s just a guy with a dry-cleaning business.”
“That’s what they all say.”
“I work there because I’m saving up.”
“For what?”
“For school.”
Zoey rolled her eyes. “Boring.”
“What? Why?”
“Everybody and their pet llama saves for school. It’s like a cult. Why doesn’t anybody save up for something interesting ?”
“Like a lawn full of Venus flytraps?”
“At least it’s interesting.”
“How’re you supposed to get a good job if you don’t—”
“Look up boring in the dictionary, you’ll find a picture of a good job.” Something about the way she said this made her sound older. To top it off, she drained her glass (while I was only halfway to the bottom of mine). I felt insulted, partly because she’d just told me I was boring, partly because she had this older voice she could call up whenever she wanted, and partly because she was a better drinker than me.
“How much?” she asked me suddenly.
“What?”
“How much have you saved?”
I wanted to impress her. “A little over ten thousand dollars.”
She lowered the glass from her lips. “Not bad.”
“My last girlfriend dumped me because she said I was cheap. Maybe, but c’mon, that’s a lot of cash, right?”
“I can’t believe you saved all that working at a laundromat.”
I had achieved my goal; I’d impressed her. I took a big, bold gulp of my drink, stupidly forgetting it wasn’t just Coke. Halfway down, the burn of rum made me gag. I spat it out in a foamy gush—all over the bed, all over the floor, all over me.
“Kaz! What the hell?! ”
“Sorry! I’ll clean it up!” I jumped to my feet, but I had no idea where to go.
Zoey grabbed a ratty sweater off the floor and started mopping. She did the floor, the bed, and finally me. She dabbed at my chest. My stomach. My belt …
“Is that cola-puke on your crotch or are you just glad to see me?”
It was painfully obvious what was happening. I say painfully because it’s true. (Getting a boner in a pair of skinny jeans isn’t the easiest thing in the world.) Zoey’s dabbing morphed into—well, let’s call it more of a rub. Her hands were gentler than Becky’s. Something I appreciated.
“Wait,” she said, once my jeans were around my knees. “I’ve got something for you.”
My head was spinning. “Like a gift? Right now?”
She pushed me toward the closet. “In there.”
I stumbled out of my pants and opened the doors. Inside was an old armoire.
“Bottom drawer,” Zoey said.
As I reached down, I thought: condoms. This girl thinks of everything! But when I pulled open the drawer, I saw something else.
A gun.
A big black revolver, lying on top of folded clothes.
“Fuck,” I whispered.
“Yep,” said Zoey, her older voice returning. “That’s one way to put it.”
A million ideas flooded my head (like a fizzy spew of rum and Coke). A gun? For what? Why did she want to give it to me? I remembered how her dad had sounded on the phone. Angry, maybe even violent. Wasn’t there a movie like this? Some dumb kid gets a blow job in return for killing a guy? Is that what Zoey wanted me to do? Kill her father?
(Needless to say, propositions of murder make for a serious boner-kill.)
I cradled the gun on the flat of my palm like a dead budgie. “I have no idea what this means,” I said, turning around, “but I think you’ve made a mistake here, becau—”
I stopped mid-sentence because Zoey was practically naked. She was lying on the bed in her underwear (the famous pink leopard-print bra, with panties to match). It would have been the sexiest thing that had ever happened to me if only the universe hadn’t introduced a big fucking gun into the equation.
Zoey sat up. “What the hell?! Put that down!”
I did. It made a deep, echoing THUNK on the wood of the armoire, then rocked back and forth.
“You’re not wearing any clothes,” I said stupidly.
“Yeah, I sorta noticed. I didn’t think you’d turn around with a fucking gun.”
“I didn’t think you wanted to show me one!”
“I didn’t! ” She blushed all over and scrambled into a T-shirt.
“Then why was it just sitting in—”
“It’s not even mine!” She stomped over and stuffed the gun back into the drawer. “It’s my dad’s.”
“He carries a gun?”
“No, of course not. He’s not here. If he carried a gun, he’d have it with him now, wherever he is. He just keeps it in the house.”
“What does he need a gun for?”
Zoey pointed out the window. “Maybe you haven’t noticed, but it’s not like we live in the best neighborhood.”
Even worse than mine, I thought.
“He puts it in my dresser sometimes,” she explained. “Like when he leaves me alone for a night. But then he doesn’t tell me where, or which drawer. He’s an idiot.”
“Wait—so why did you want to give it to me? If it’s your dad’s?”
“Not the gun, stupid. I meant those.” She pointed to the back of the drawer, where a box of condoms peeked out from under a folded sweater.
I’d been right; I just hadn’t seen them. Stupid! But maybe there was still a chance …
“So, um … you think … ?”
Zoey shook her head. “I’d say the moment passed. But don’t worry, I’m more pissed at my dad than at you.”
The gun seemed to bother Zoey in a deeper, more complicated way than it bothered me. I was freaked out, but as long as it stayed out of sight from then on, I was fine. For Zoey, though, I sensed there was a bigger picture she didn’t want to tell me about.
She went back to the bed, her body slumped like the empty skeleton that made up the building’s other half. “You should go home.”
I tried to accept this. “Yeah, well, I gotta open up the laundromat tomorrow, so … ”
“So you better get going.”
I told her to text me if she was in the neighborhood. Maybe we could hang out again. She said she would, but I wasn’t sure if she meant it.
Out on the street, waiting for the streetcar to take me back in the opposite direction, I thought, I bet that gun will be the craziest thing I see all week.
I was wrong. The next morning, when I went into work, something even crazier was waiting for me.
41
Something Crazier (and Smaller)
Than a Gun
Mr. Rodolfo was already there. He stood behind the counter leaning on his arms, a blank expression on his face. Weird.
“I thought I was scheduled this morning.”
Mr. Rodolfo didn’t respond. The drawer of the cash register was open. He was staring into it, apparently zombiefied. Was it my imagination, or was the float in the register fuller than usual?
“Looks like we had a good night.”
He slammed the register shut. The counter trembled. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Doesn’t mean anything,” I told him. “I was just saying—cuz the register looks full.”
“There’s more to life than money. Don’t they teach you that in school?”
It was an odd comment, coming from him. It went against his whole good-for-business philosophy of life. I was about to point this out when I had another surprise. The rear door swung open a
nd the Brothers came lumbering in. What were they doing here? It was too early. They didn’t come until the afternoon.
Gonzo (I think) had a bucket and JJ (I also think) had a pair of mops, one in each hand. The mop-strings trailed dingy water down the back stairs. Silent as ever, they went over to Ol’ Betty, prying open the broken washer’s mouth and dumping in the contents of the bucket. A cascade of pinky-gray water sploshed into the drum. Why were they mopping up the back alley? I’d never seen them doing that before.
I turned to Mr. Rodolfo. “What’s going on?”
“Nothing,” he said. “You can take the morning off.”
“Seriously?”
“I mixed up the schedules. Work tonight instead. I’ll pay you double, for the full day, since it was my fault.”
Back out on the street, I watched the Brothers through the front window. JJ meticulously rinsed off the bucket and mops, while Gonzo came up to the counter, firing little bullets of Portuguese at Mr. Rodolfo.
I walked around the block until I was standing under the steps that led up to our kitchen. The pavement by the rear entrance to the laundromat was slick with water. The color was the same pinky-gray I had just seen dumped into Ol’ Betty.
I crouched down and wiped the pavement with a fingertip. All I got was a smoky sludge of water and dirt. Then I saw something. A little white cube, just inside the shadow of the bottom step.
It was a die. A single die, with yin and yang symbols for the pips. When I picked it up, I nearly fainted. Not because of what it was, but because of what was on it. Little flecks of something. Red.
The moment I saw them, I couldn’t breathe. The only thing that saved me from passing out was closing my hand, hiding the die, clenching my fist to keep my blood flowing.
Blood.
I took some deep breaths. I stood up. I shoved my fist in my pocket. I started walking. I just wanted to get as far away from the Sit ’n’ Spin as I possibly could.
42
Jumping to Conclusions
B-Man always carried A-Man’s die. Always. Like a talisman, like a religious relic—and A-Man was God. B-Man would never give it up. He certainly wouldn’t just drop it in the alley behind a laundromat.
I walked ten blocks up Steinway. I walked past the Super Center, past the school, until it was just a bunch of office buildings. Then I called Calen.
“Hello?”
“Shit, Cal, something happened. I think something bad happened.”
“Kaz? What the hell? What happened?”
“I think—okay, I think … ”
“Dude, just breathe.”
I tried. I took some long, deep breaths.
“Sounds dirty.”
I kept panting anyway.
“Just tell me what happened.”
“I think my boss killed somebody.”
“What?! No way.”
“Remember the guy we talked to when we needed beer for Toph’s? Not the one who actually bought it, but the other guy, the weird one? In that big bomber jacket? When I went out with Zoey, we saw Mr. Rodolfo come after him with the Arbitrator, and then—”
“The what?”
“A big fucking crowbar!” My voice came out like a whistle. Like I was twelve. Like my balls hadn’t dropped.
“That girl, Zoey? She saw it, too? With a crowbar? Dude. You need to call the cops.”
“We just watched,” I said. I felt sick.
“Wait a sec. When you took her to What the Pho? That was, like, two nights ago. You and her watched your boss off a guy with a crowbar and you’re just telling me now? How come you didn’t say anything at the movie?”
“He didn’t beat him with it. He just stuck it in his face.”
Calen didn’t get it (not that I was making sense). “But you just said he murdered a guy. With a crowbar.”
“No.” I tried again to breathe. “The crowbar thing happened a couple nights ago. He didn’t beat him or anything, he just waved it around. But then, just now, I came in to work this morning and I found the die. Remember? I rolled a two.”
“Dude, wait a second. This is important. Did you or did you not witness a murder?”
I put my hand in my pocket. I wanted to take out the die and look at it again, but I couldn’t. “There’s blood on it,” I said.
“Blood?”
“Yes! I know cuz I nearly passed out.”
“Wait, that’s it?”
“That’s what?”
“How do you even know it’s the same die?”
“I’ve seen it a bunch of times. It has these little symbols. I know it’s his.”
“You found a die with some blood on it—no, maybe some blood on it—and you think—”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Dude, you gotta be sure.” Calen’s tone had changed. “The police’ll shut that whole place down. If you’re wrong, it’ll be this huge deal and your boss’ll shit himself and you’ll definitely be fired.”
“I know.”
“But you really think this happened?”
“I do.”
“Then you don’t have a choice. You gotta call the police.”
“I can’t.”
“It’s simple. 9-1-1, yo.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
It wasn’t until Calen actually said it—you gotta call the police—that I realized I wasn’t going to.
“Because,” I said, “I don’t have enough yet.”
“Enough what?”
“I’m just so close,” I whispered.
“Enough what?”
“Money.”
“Oh, yeah.” Calen’s voice changed again. It got softer. “For your mom.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said. “Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions.”
43
The Emerson Center
After I spoke to Calen, I kept wandering the neighborhood. I circled back through Montgomery Park, past the big wading pool they have for kids. Crowds of them were there, shouting and splashing each other.
I passed a skinny guy in a straw hat. He was selling a bunch of framed photographs laid out on blankets. I don’t know why, but I stopped.
It was all these black-and-white photographs of crumbling buildings. A couple of them I recognized as local landmarks. More than half of the buildings were churches, and in every one, the focus was on missing bricks and boarded-up windows, or the fact that they were taken through wire fences thrown up by demolition crews. On the closest corner of the blanket was a picture of the church connected to the rear of the Emerson Center. When I saw it, something clicked.
If anybody knew where B-Man was, it was A-Man. I took the west exit from the park and headed in that direction.
The Emerson Center was a rooming house, partially funded by the church, whose steeple towered behind it. When I got there, I was greeted by three old men on the saggy porch out front. They each smoked a thin brown cigarette.
“Who are you?” one of them asked me. “New volunteer?” His voice was nearly as gravelly as something off a Shain Cope album.
“I’m not a volunteer. I’m just looking for somebody.”
“Who?”
For a second, I didn’t know what to say. Did the A in A-Man really stand for something?
“I’m a friend of A-Man’s. Is he here?”
The youngest of the three, a guy in a wheelchair whose legs only went as far as his knees, nodded. “He’s here.”
The one with the gravelly voice yelled into the house. “A-Man! You got a kid here to see you!”
Half a minute later, A-Man appeared behind the screen door. All I could see was an impressionistic outline: the thinness of his silhouette, the glossy twinkle of his eyes, the dim halo of his skull cap.
A-Man squinted at me. “I forget so
mething down at the laundromat?”
“I just need to ask you something.”
“Okay, c’mon in.”
At the back of the house, there was a small room with a bed (more of a cot, really) and a square metal-and-plastic table. His only decorations were a few framed pictures. Most of them featured the same woman. In some, she had a young boy with her, a kid about Nomi’s age.
“You look different,” said A-Man. “What changed?”
The question was a surprise, and I didn’t know how to answer.
“I met a girl.”
A-Man grinned. “So that’s why you look like your whole world flipped. That what you wanna ask me about?”
“Actually, no. I came about B-Man. Have you seen him?”
A-Man stuck out his lip. “Not since yesterday.”
I felt a cold heaviness in my gut. “What happened yesterday?”
“Nothing.”
“But you haven’t seen him?”
“No big deal. Not like we’re married.” A-Man’s half-closed eyes made a move for one of the photographs, but never made it. “B disappears. It’s what he does. He’ll be gone for a week, sometimes a whole month, and then—poof—he’s back. Happens all the time. I’m sure you’ve noticed: not the most predictable guy.”
“Okay,” I whispered. “That’s cool.” Maybe I was jumping to conclusions.
“How come you came up here to look for him? He in trouble? He do something stupid? ”
“No,” I said. “Just haven’t seen him in a while, so I wondered where he was.”
“Keep wondering.”
We were silent for a while. My eyes went back to the photographs.
“That’s my wife and son,” A-Man told me.
“You’re married?”
“I was. In my previous life. Those two there were my pinions.”
“Your what?”
A-Man stared at the photograph for a long time. “I’m talking about the machine,” he said at last. “When you’re born, all that screaming and blood, that’s you getting shook loose. After that, for a long time, you’re a lost cog, rattling around. Until you find your pinion, that one gear that’s been missing you. It’s the one place where you finally fit and the machine runs properly for once. Those two, they were my pinions.”
Blues for Zoey Page 11