Number 8

by Anna Fienberg

  Tony examines the lapel of his suit and flicks off an invisible speck of dust. “All right, now if you can, Rocky, reach back into the vastness of your mind. Didn’t I tell you the boy was skinny and wears his hair long?”

  “Well, yeah, but I figured anyone can put on weight. Take my own case, for instance, if I don’t work out every day, swim eighty laps, and lift—”

  “I’m not interested in your case, Rocky. The amount of interest I have in your case would fill one side of a twenty-cent piece. No, what I’m interested in is what we are going to do now that you have gone and kidnapped the wrong children.”

  “Wrong children?”

  “Yes.”

  “What’s your name, boy?” Tony suddenly barks at Badman.

  “Bruce Bradman.”

  “And you?” He flicks his gaze at me as if I’m an insect on his lapel.

  “Esmerelda Marx.”

  Rocky’s jaw drops open. “But they were at the right address! I figured, this girl here, well, maybe Val had another kid, see, one she might not have told you about. Val was scared of you all right. I thought you’d be pleased I found ’em both—”

  Tony steps right up to Rocky then and I see with horror that his face is slowly turning crimson. “Valerie has been very stubborn. You know that. She refuses to do that one little thing we asked her, to show, how shall I put it, her continuing good faith. She might be scared, Rocky, but not terrified. We need her terrified.”

  “Yeah, so I figured—”

  “I DON’T PAY YOU TO FIGURE, ROCKY. I DON’T PAY YOU TO THINK!”

  The cold threat at the bottom of his voice cracks like thunder. He’s thumping one fist into the other, shouting right into Rocky’s face. “You’ve got a brain the size of an AMOEBA. Do you know what an amoeba is, Rocky?”

  Rocky takes a step back. Sweat is bubbling on his forehead. He clears his throat. “I do, Tony. And I’ll have you know I take offense at that. An amoeba is one of the most primitive forms of life, a single-celled protozoa, a parasite. Well, I’m not like that, I work for my living—”

  “Well, now you’ll have to work very hard because you’re going to have to find a way to correct your mistake.”

  Badman and I look at each other. Badman is sweating almost as much as Rocky.

  “How you do you mean?”

  “I don’t want these kids, you see, Rocky. These kids spell trouble. Big trouble.” He’s talking to Rocky as if he’s a mentally challenged four-year-old. “Their parents will call the police. The police will be out searching as soon as morning comes. They won’t be like Valerie. They won’t stay silent with a little pressure from us. It’s not the same, Rocky.”

  “Yeah, but, but,” Rocky is scratching his head, “but these parents, they won’t think to come to the casino! Kids aren’t even allowed in here! They’ll just think their kids have run away or something.”

  “Eventually Valerie will talk. That was the whole point of getting her kid. The whole point of those phone calls. To make sure she didn’t. Do you understand that, Rocky?”

  “Yes,” says Rocky slowly, “but I’ve got an idea. We could get rid of them piece by piece. That way there’ll be no bodies to find. I saw it in a movie once. The murderer chopped up his victims like cold cuts at the butcher’s, and he buried all the bits in different places. No one ever found them.”

  Something hot and wet is seeping under my foot. I curl my toes back and see a stain spreading down Badman’s jean leg. The puddle is growing on the floor, the red swirling pattern of the rug darkening into a muddy mess.

  “Oh, Christ, the boy’s pissed himself!” Tony’s staring in disbelief. “That’s my Persian rug!” He turns to Rocky. “Do something, you big oaf! Get him off my rug!”

  Badman’s eyes are closed and he’s swaying slightly. His face is white.

  Rocky picks him up at arm’s length and folds him away in a corner on the polished floorboards.

  “Put your head between your knees,” I call over to him.

  “You shut up,” snaps Rocky. “Go and sit over there with your wimpy friend.” He’s lifting up the sopping rug, peeling it back from the wet spot. But I can’t stop looking at the floor underneath. There’s an indented line cut into the wood, and the grain of the wood inside the line is different. It’s a kind of door, an opening.

  I look up to see Tony staring at me and then back at the floor.

  “That’s it,” he says softly. “At least for now.” He bends down and mutters something to Rocky.

  “How long for?” asks Rocky.

  “Until we can figure out what to do. Maybe your cold cuts idea isn’t so bad.”

  Rocky grins with pride. “You can count on me, boss.” He peels back another foot of rug and lays bare a big lock. He starts to fiddle with it then suddenly stops, twisting around to me. “I said go and stand over there with leaky legs.”

  I inch away, over to the corner. From here I can’t see much. But then I hear something click over and Rocky pulls back the door in the floor. He disappears down into the hole.

  A minute later Rocky’s head and shoulders pop up again. “Come on, you two,” he calls to us. He sounds cheerful, like we’re going on a picnic. “You’re coming down here.”

  Badman looks up. “For how long?” he says softly.

  Rocky shrugs.

  I can hardly breathe. The unreal laughter is edging back up my throat. “Is there a night light down there? I don’t like the dark. What about a bathroom? Or should I go on the rug too?”

  “Witty girl, aren’t you?” Tony marches up to us. He leans down and puts his face right in front of mine. His black eyes nail me to the floor. He’s so close, but he gives nothing away.

  “There’s everything you could wish for in the cellar,” he tells me in that fake friendly voice. His face doesn’t move as he speaks. It’s like a mask—plastic. But you know something is boiling behind it. “Nice soundproof room, excellent Picasso on the wall, a luxury bathroom.” He turns to grin nastily at Badman’s wet jeans. “You might need the bathroom, boy. It can get quite cold down there. Affects the bladder, you know.” And he stands up and goes to select a fresh cigar from a box on his desk.

  I start to shake and I can’t stop.

  11. Jackson

  Mom and Mehmet are standing outside the glass doors of the pub.

  Asim and I are already across the other side of the parking lot, leaning against Mom’s Ford Escort. We’re having a yawning competition. Mine goes for about nine seconds. I leave my mouth open for just a second longer to make it an even number.

  “That was a huge yawn,” says Asim. “I even saw your uvula.”

  “My what?”

  “Uvula. The fleshy part that hangs down at the back of the throat.”

  “Oh.” It’s amazing how often Asim teaches me words in my own language.

  I’m so tired I could fall asleep standing up. Asim is sneaking a look at his watch. It was a great night, but now, I want to tell Mom, it’s over. I can see her leaning slightly forward as if she’s hard of hearing, laughing too much and throwing her arms around. She looks like a little kid who’s overexcited. I remember her telling me when I was little, “The game’s finished now, Jackson. Jackson? Just calm down and get ready for bed.” Well, someone needs to tell her that. Valerie? Valerie!

  But neither of us wants to call them. They probably wouldn’t listen to us anyway. It’s sort of nice watching them together, and painful. Maybe I could go to sleep standing up. But I think only horses can do that.

  “Did you know that pythons can dislocate their jaws?” I say to pass the time.

  “What, when they yawn?”

  “No, so they can swallow their food. Like maybe when they’ve strangled a cow or something. Mom told me once she was scared I’d dislocate my jaw when I yawned.”

  “You’ll probably be good at kissing then.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, I saw a movie once where the boy did not know how to open his mouth when he kissed.
The girl told him he had to open wide.”

  “Yeah, well I’m sure you have to go easy at first. It’s not like being at the dentist.”

  “No.”

  We stand there watching our parents. They’re standing very close. But I don’t think they’re going to dislocate their jaws or anything. They’re just getting to know each other.

  Finally, after we’ve had a holding our breath competition (I won), a finding 2% of $12.56 competition (Asim won), and who could name the capitals of Uzbekistan, Libya, and Norway in four seconds (Asim got that, too), Mom and Mehmet wander over.

  “Come, Asim, it is late,” says Mehmet.

  Asim grins at me, rolling his eyes. Mom and I watch them as they walk across the parking lot to their car.

  When we climb into our car, Mom points to the gas gauge.

  “Damn,” she says.

  The little green arrow is pointing to empty. In fact, it’s pointing below the red danger zone of empty.

  “Maybe we’ll get away with it,” she says hopefully. “Home is only five minutes away.”

  “No,” I say firmly. “Tomorrow you’ll forget to look and be on your way to work and suddenly there’ll be that coughing, choking noise of the engine and the car will stop. You might be doing a right-hand turn in the middle of traffic. The service station is on the way home. Let’s go.”

  “You’re right,” says Mom. “It’s a bad habit of yours.”

  She starts the car and switches on the radio. The baby boomers’ station, 101.7. That’s specifically for people in the middle-aged bracket like my mom. Sometimes the disc jockeys try to pretend that young people listen to it, but everyone knows who the real audience is. Van Morrison is singing “Brown-Eyed Girl” so Mom sings along, getting so carried away that she nearly forgets to stop at the gas station.

  “Turn here!” I yell and she brakes suddenly with fright so that the car behind nearly crashes into us.

  At the gas station I go into the little shop while she fills up the car. I wander along the aisles, looking at all the candies and mints and cereal boxes. I get absorbed in reading the marketing stuff on the back of the boxes. The cereals are all full of iron and vitamin B and folate, whatever that is. But it makes you feel healthy just reading it.

  Then I hear Mom telling the service station attendant all about her night. Her voice is loud and I see another young guy look up toward the counter. My ears start to go red and I decide to stay down here among the breakfast stuff. Maybe no one will ever know I am related to her.

  “Jackson? Jackson, where are you?”

  Mom’s voice is frantic. The whole shop stops and looks around.

  I rush up the aisle toward her.

  The man at the counter grins. “Do you want that?”

  I realize I’m still holding the Wheaties.

  Mom grabs me so hard in a bear hug I can hardly breathe.

  “Oh, Jackson, I thought some horrible man had kidnapped you!”

  “It’s okay, Mom, calm down.”

  She smiles. “It’s just—I guess it was such a wonderful night, I can’t believe I can really have it. You know, without something awful happening to punish me.” She smiles at the attendant. “Do you know what I mean?”

  “Not really, lady. But are you going to take the Wheaties?”

  When we get outside and no one can see, I take Mom’s arm. “You really were wonderful tonight. I was so proud of you.”

  Mom throws her arms around me again and I can feel the Wheaties box suspended between us.

  “I was so scared in the store,” her voice is loud in my ear. “It came over me like a tidal wave. I saw it all—all my past horrors grabbing you, taking you away from me.”

  I think of the smashed bike in the garage and the blue Mustang and decide not to tell her that the Wheaties box is crushed to smithereens against my chest. “Remember Miss Braithwaite?” I say instead. “How she told me that no matter what happened, I could take the good numbers with me? Well, same for you. You’ll always have tonight. Nothing will ever change that.”

  The clock in the car says 12:37 when we turn into our street. Mehmet’s car is already parked outside their house. Their porch light is on, the only one in the street. I turn to Mom and see she is looking at number sixty-four as well. She smiles as we clamber out of the car.

  Before I go in, I glance up at Esmerelda’s window. Her bedroom faces onto the street and sometimes when I’ve woken at 1:11 or 3:33, I’ve wondered if she is lying there sleepless, too. But no light is shining from her room. I stare up at the dark window and imagine what it would be like to tiptoe in there and sit on the bed and gently wake her up with a story about tonight. I could tell her about the guitarist’s dreadlocks and Mehmet’s surprise performance and how mom shimmied and sweated like Tina Turner. We could whisper about it all until the sun came up and then I could kiss her on the cheek or maybe the lips and she’d be all warm and soft in her nightgown.

  Mom is standing at the gate, smiling at me. “Do you remember Rapunzel, that fairy tale I used to tell you? Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair…”

  I make it to the gate in two lots of eight steps. “Yes. She was kidnapped by a witch when she was just a baby, wasn’t she? And imprisoned in a tall tower?”

  “Mm. And the witch used to climb up the rope of her golden hair to reach her. But one day a prince heard Rapunzel singing, and her voice was so beautiful he fell instantly in love with her. He came back every day to hear her and one day he saw the witch come and call, ‘Let down your hair!’

  “So the next day when he came he called out ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!’ and she did and instead of the nasty old witch climbing up to her window, it was the handsome prince!” Mom grins. “Do you remember how you’d always clap your hands over your ears then? You never wanted to hear what happened after. How the witch found them and turned the prince blind and abandoned the girl in the forest—”

  I clap my hands over my ears. “I still don’t want to know—”

  “Love really hurts without you,” sings Mom. “Billy Ocean, d’you know it? Great dance song. But listen, Rapunzel and her prince did find each other, and Rapunzel’s tears of love healed the prince’s poor eyes and they lived happily ever after.”

  We open the gate and walk down the path together. Mom takes a deep breath. “Summer nights are magical, aren’t they?” She does a shimmy with her shoulders and breaks into an old dance routine, the Swim. She even holds her nose as she does the dive part. Just as well it’s dark and no one else can see her.

  I can’t help laughing.

  “When I was a girl, I always used to think there was a lesson in Rapunzel for me,” she says as she puts the key in the lock. “You know, that you’ve got to let your hair down, take a risk, or you’ll never live.”

  “And if you’re a boy?”

  She stops for a moment to think. “I don’t know, maybe you’ve just got to climb up and find out.”

  12. Esmerelda

  Badman goes first down the concrete stairs. He takes one careful step after another like an old man. I suppose we’re thinking the same thing. This cellar might be the last place we’ll ever see.

  The room is bare except for rows of filing cabinets and a square table. Rocky is leaning against a cabinet, his arms folded. He points to two chairs lined up at the table. We sit down and watch Rocky take a couple of cans of tonic water from a small fridge.

  “There’s your drink,” he says to Badman. “Enjoy it.”

  Badman suddenly leaps up, knocking over the chair. He starts to say something but Rocky slaps a heavy hand on his head, rights the chair, and pushes him back down on it.

  “You be quiet and don’t make no trouble. You’ve already caused me enough pain tonight.” He runs a hand through his hair. “Amoeba,” he mutters. “Honestly, I’ll never get over it.” Then he bends down and glares into Badman’s face. “You and your damn stories.”

  “I’m sorry for your trouble,” I say to Rocky. “But was it
you who made those phone calls to Valerie’s house? You know, with all the heavy breathing?”

  “Who else do ya think, the Holy Spirit?” Rocky thumps the table, making the cans jump.

  “But how did you find them? Jackson told me they even rented their house under a different name.”

  “You can’t fool Tony—no one can. And, ’course, I helped track her down.” He thrusts out his chest. “I’m good at undercover work, always have been. Even Tony says that.” He frowns suddenly. “If only she’d behaved herself and made the payments, we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

  “So the phone calls weren’t just silent. You were threatening her, blackmailing her!”

  “Uh yeah, numb brain. After she said that about going to the police, what do you expect? I heard her myself.”

  “But that wasn’t Valerie! I know, I was there that day. Didn’t you hear the change in pitch?”

  “In what?”

  “In tone—voice, whatever. It was a kid who said that—Mitchell, from school. Valerie tried to snatch the phone away from him. Now I understand why.”

  “Well, how was I supposed to know that? Anyway, soon as the cops get a mention, we make a move. That’s just the way it goes. Tony’s a professional. Got a business to run. And he don’t believe in a promise unless he sees some dough.”

  “But Valerie doesn’t have any money!”

  Badman kicks me under the table. Enough, he mouths at me.

  “Of course she doesn’t.” Now it’s Rocky’s turn to treat me like a moron. “Tony just re-quest-ed a small percentage of her wages each week. As an act of goodwill. He wanted her to do a little trans-ac-tion for him—just once or twice. Is that too much to ask? He told her he’d invest her money in his other sideline interests. She might have gotten a good return on it, if she’d taken a gamble. But no, stupid bitch refuses and she talks about the police and now look where we are!”

  He takes another can from the fridge for himself. Rum and Bacardi. But I’m thinking, here are those percentages again, multiplying like germs until there’s a full-blown crisis. I see Mom and Dad sitting at the kitchen table, adding up the percentage of their salary each week that goes to the mortgage and food and electricity … Imagine if you had to budget for Tony money, too—oh yes, and here’s the money for keeping my son and me safe. It’d make you want to go to sleep and never wake up. No wonder Valerie’s been looking so ill. And we all thought it was Badman.