“Her jacket?” Doty inhaled the lilies’ sweet fragrance and felt like choking. She imagined a crumpled wool coat halfway submerged in river water, sooty and black. In her mind, she saw Lucia scrambling over the banks, scraping her knees and arms on rocks as the jacket was torn from her body.
Tina tucked her hair into an orange shower cap. “It’s just awful. She’s a dead girl now.”
Doty lifted the flowers from the table. She set them beneath the large window near the sink. In the light, the petals appeared clear as screens. “Don’t say that, Tina. She’s not dead.” Doty shook her head. “No, she can’t be dead. She’s probably just cold.”
* * *
—
It was Saturday and Doty had reluctantly agreed to a second date. On the shores of a mountain lake called Dillon, a warm wind carried a fleck of sand into her left eye, blurring Doty’s view of the water ablaze with ribbons of white. She recalled a bedtime story that her mother used to tell her and Tina about an evil water spirit roaming the Rockies. At night, when children are asleep, a white-haired man with pebbles for teeth steals their shadows, locking them in a mossy cabin on the lake floor. Doty rubbed her eyes and went to stand beside Joey as he unloaded an armful of fishing supplies from his truck.
A few feet from the shore, Joey spread a checkered blanket over the ground. He unknotted two fishing poles and jabbed live worms on their hooks. Doty sat down on the blanket and watched as he cast both their lines into the lake. Joey reeled the lines in a bit and nestled the poles within a crook in a small boulder. He then sat on the blanket and from a wicker basket pulled out cheese-and-jelly sandwiches, handing one to Doty, leaving dusty thumbprints along the crust. Doty slowly chewed her first bites as Joey asked her about her family. She explained that her mother was gone, her father dead, and that Tina was all she had.
Joey eyed her with an intensity reserved for judges and social workers. “It must be rough, being alone like that.”
“Believe me,” Doty said. “It’s not.”
Doty soon asked Joey about his job. He cut trees, this she knew, but Joey corrected her. It was much more complicated. He and his father planted seedlings, trimmed branches, studied bark. A new species of beetle, he explained, threatened to wipe out entire forests. He stood up, trekked over the rocks, and headed to the trees with wide, brisk strides. His boots crunched the ground as he went. Moments later, Joey returned with a black bug writhing between his index finger and thumb.
“They look like this,” he said, “though this little guy isn’t quite the same. Some people want to kill them, but I think even the ugly things deserve a chance to live. It’s just about making sure things can live together without destroying each other.”
“You should put that down,” Doty said, peering into Joey’s face. His expression was reserved, but his mouth showed a gleeful excitement, almost chaotic happiness. Who said anyone deserves anything, she thought, especially some black bug?
Joey laughed and blew the beetle out of his palm and it launched itself into flight over the lake. He sat down, closer to Doty than before. In the sunlight, his face almost seemed handsome apart from the babyish coloring of his cheeks and the pink line of his scar. He smelled even stronger of dirt than the last time. Doty leaned away. She caught herself fanning the air.
“What about you?” he asked. “You like that job with your sister? You two are secretaries, right?”
“Sure, it’s fine.” Doty searched for a smooth rock. She ran her palms over the ground until her eyes fell upon one that seemed polished somehow.
“You’d like to do that forever, as your career?”
Doty stood and walked the uneven earth toward the shore, her short heels jabbing into wet pebbles. She tossed the rock, dropping it into the water with a sonorous clop. “No,” she said, looking back at Joey. His gaze was fixed on her face, as though it were as interesting to him as that flying beetle. “To be honest,” she said with pride, “I’d like a more artistic job.”
Doty searched the horizon and watched wisps of clouds collide. She went back to the blanket, easing down in her polka-dot sundress. “Maybe design shop windows,” she said. “Sometimes I walk past those big department-store windows and I see all those beautiful dresses on the headless mannequins. It’s awful. I could do a much better job. At the Montgomery Ward’s, they had this big tulip dress hidden behind some beach ball. You could barely see what was important.”
“That right?” Joey said.
Doty grew quiet. She thought of Lucia. She had once walked by Montgomery Ward’s and, through the front windows, saw the girl laying out new pairs of leather gloves. She was bent over in such a way that Doty could see her neck, the place where her fine black baby hairs ended and the broad length of her back began. Lucia had turned around, and in an endearing bristle of movement, waved to Doty. She was too flustered to go inside and say hello. Now Doty wondered if she’d ever get the chance.
One of the fishing lines trembled, lightly ringing the bell at the top of the pole. Joey walked to the shore, where he methodically reeled in the smallest rainbow trout Doty had ever seen. “You shouldn’t have to slave away all day at some office job or a lousy department store,” Joey said over his shoulder.
Doty called out, “Excuse me?” She’d almost forgotten what they were discussing.
Joey pulled the fish from the hook, turned its slippery body over in his hands, and removed a knife from his trouser pocket. He slit the fish in a swift motion before deciding that it was too small for anything but waste. He tossed the dead fish into the lake and, without wiping his hands on a kerchief, sat back on the blanket, softly patting Doty’s thigh, squeezing hard around her knee. He smelled strongly of the dead fish and Doty felt trapped, though the entire mountainside was open before her.
“You should be taken care of,” Joey said. “A pretty girl like you deserves that.”
* * *
—
“What’s not to like?” Tina was lounging on the lime-colored sofa. The duplex was cool, smelling of juniper berries and flowery prefume. “He seems like a sweet guy. Plus he has that good job and doesn’t look half bad.”
Doty set two gin and tonics on the coffee table beside the magazines. She took a seat by her sister. “That’s fine, but I don’t feel right.” She reached for her glass and sipped. “Something feels wrong.”
“That,” Tina said, reaching for her own glass, “isn’t Joey’s problem. You have some sort of hang-up. A personal problem. The only thing to help with that is—”
Doty tossed a throw pillow at her sister.
“I’m an injured woman,” Tina screamed in feigned agony. “How dare you?”
“How dare you harm me by setting me up with these ridiculous men?”
“Good,” Tina said. “Glad you feel that way. Because we’re going out to Benny’s tonight. You, me, Randy, and Joey.”
“I was just with him yesterday. I don’t need to see him again tonight.”
Tina set down her glass loudly. She sat with perfect posture and sighed, gently moving Doty’s bangs away from her eyes with both hands. “Listen, I know you think we can afford to live in this duplex forever, but we can’t. You need to find yourself someone, and what you do in your own time, away from him, well, that’s your business.”
Doty turned to the window. The sheer curtains rose and fell, splintering the sunlight along the hardwood floor. She thought of telling Tina that she wouldn’t go—that she’d stay home and read, fix her hair, anything—but when she opened her mouth, she felt her hands tilting the drink down her throat instead.
* * *
—
Benny’s sat on a tree-lined avenue beneath the burn of several evenly spaced streetlamps, a rotund building with an elongated entrance and wooden Spanish doors. Inside, the waxed floor reflected the thousands of tiny lights strung up between the buttresses and corner walls.
Circular tables were draped in lace cloths, tinted lamps illuminated the bar, and Northside and Westside men and women in their finest clothes grouped themselves in fours or fives along the walls.
Doty slumped at a table with Joey, her arms folded in the lap of her peach gown. They had driven separately from Tina and Randy, who energetically danced in the center of the floor. When Doty and Tina first started going to Benny’s, they always arrived and left together. They mostly sat at the tables along the front, Tina scoping out the room for the best-looking men and the prettiest girls. “Competition,” she always said, but Doty never cared for the men there, and she didn’t view the women as competition. She simply enjoyed them, their beautiful clothes and hair, their bright happy faces.
“We should dance.” Joey reached across the table for Doty’s wrist.
She stared at the edge of the hall. A band wailed onstage. The musicians lowered their trumpets. Halos of light bounced off their brass and fell onto the dancing couples, Tina and Randy among them, in a sea of bopping heads and swaying hips. Joey stood and placed his hands on Doty’s shoulders. “Come on,” he said. “You can teach me how it’s done.”
Joey led them between the waving bodies until a wall of dancers surrounded them. He pulled Doty close, his right arm resting on her lower back, his left hand cupping her right palm. His skin was warm and moist and soft as a child’s. Doty tried to distance herself, but Joey held her torso to his, near enough that his chin was a sharp line edging over her curls. Doty moved as little as possible, finding herself bewildered by the other dancers and their enthusiasm. When she felt Joey’s arms tipping her into a spin, she cemented her heels to the floor and said, “I’m no good at those.”
“Sure, you are,” he said and flung her body outward. Doty wobbled, her back knocking against a couple. Joey pulled her in once more and then released her with such force that this time she twirled, watching the blurring sight of naked shoulders, pearl necklaces, exposed teeth, closed eyes. Doty raveled back into Joey’s arms, turning to look over her shoulder. Tina and Randy had returned to the table. Doty yanked herself away from Joey, and he followed as she hurried to her sister.
Both Tina and Randy were drunk, swaying a little to the left in their seats, laughing obnoxiously and giving one another sloppy kisses. Beneath the table, Randy passed a metal flask filled with whiskey to Doty. She leaned down and took a swig, then another and another. It seemed if she could get drunk, the night would be more bearable.
Tina stood and leaned forward over the table, her cleavage spilling from her neckline. She pulled a tube of cinnamon lipstick from her beaded clutch and offered it to Doty. “Here,” she said. “Looks like you could use a touch-up.”
Doty reached for the lipstick but stopped when she noticed Tina’s left hand. A small golden ring, a single diamond, glistening like a tear. She looked at Tina’s face, found her eyes. “Is that an engagement ring?”
Tina eagerly nodded before squealing out a yes.
“Yee-haw, Randy,” Joey said, shaking his hand in congratulations.
Tina inched back and kissed Randy on the neck. “Well, aren’t you happy for us?”
Doty forced a smile. She stood and hugged her sister. “Of course I am.”
On stage, the music quieted and an older Filipina woman in a white dress and matching hat walked beneath the lights, clasping a photograph. The crowd clinked glasses and yelled over one another, uncoordinated as they danced without music. Tina still held her left hand in the air, awkwardly displaying her ring as the faces around her moved their attention to the stage.
“I have an announcement,” the older woman said into the microphone.
“Oh God,” said Tina, melodramatically. “This isn’t the place.”
“My daughter is missing,” said the woman on stage. “Her name is Lucia Barrera—”
Tina waved to the table behind her, showing off her ring to a group of girls eating cake. “It’s just gorgeous!” they hollered and Tina agreed with a high-pitched yelp.
“Can you just shut up?” Doty screamed at Tina.
“My goodness,” Tina whispered, her expression oddly flat. “You can’t be happy for your own sister getting engaged. What’s wrong with you, Doty?”
“I don’t care about your stupid ring. A girl from our own neighborhood is missing.” Doty felt her pulse in her lips and her tongue prickled, as though it had fallen asleep. For a moment, she felt bad that she had spoken so harshly.
Tina’s face had lost its gloating sheen and had been replaced with an angry, snarled expression. Then, as if she had told herself a joke in her head, Tina drunkenly laughed in Doty’s face. “Oh, were you in love with that girl? Are you an invertida or something?”
Doty pulled away from Tina with disbelief and held her own cheek with one hand, as if she had been slapped. She studied her sister’s face, her eyelashes fluttering like dusty drapes and her bottom lip turned inward until Doty saw only teeth. “Why would you say something like that?”
“Relax, Doty,” said Tina, rolling her eyes. “It’s just a joke.”
Joey and Randy were laughing now. They both told Tina to stop, that she was drunk and might say something else she’d regret. The woman onstage finished her plea as the band quietly rumbled into a new set. All around them the dull thud of music vibrated the room. Doty got up from the table and turned to Joey as he impatiently chewed a plastic straw.
“Do you mind if we get going?” she asked. “I’ve got the worst headache.”
* * *
—
Joey drove with the windows down, the night wind rushing against their faces. He fumbled with the radio until he found a station. The song was sullen and crackled. Slow country. The way Doty liked it. Joey drove the back way to Doty’s duplex, easing into his stops and remaining still for far longer than necessary. She watched as he purposefully missed the turn for her street. She slouched down and held her hand to her forehead. How typical, she thought, rubbing her closed eyes.
He pulled into a dirt lot overlooking the city, an industrial area not far from her neighborhood, and backed up to the edge. Abandoned cars and enormous rusted machinery littered the ground. Joey shut off the engine. The music faded with the headlights.
“I live the other way,” Doty said.
Joey stepped out of the truck. He came around to Doty’s window. “I know,” he said, “but you gotta see this.”
Doty reluctantly opened her door. Joey led her behind the truck. They crawled onto the flatbed. In the distance, there were newly constructed high-rises, old stout brick complexes, and the constant blaze of the Olinger Mortuary sign illuminating the hillside like some advertisement for a 24-hour diner.
“See those trees over there?” Joey pointed toward an umbrella of leaves in the distance. “My pops and me planted those years ago. He took me as a kid. I must have been five or six. It’s strange. I feel like they’re mine, in a way.”
“How sweet,” Doty said. She could feel Joey’s eyes on her face, and then his palm beneath the pleats of her peach dress. She looked at the mound of his fist beneath the fabric, wondering how long she could let it stay there without feeling like toxic sludge was burning her skin. Not very long. “Don’t do that,” she said.
Joey put his hands in the air, as though he’d been caught stealing candy from a jar. He tilted away from her. “Did what your sister said bother you? You wanted to get out of Benny’s quick.”
She sat staring beneath her feet at the gravel, an ocean of dirt, swirling and rising and swelling below her shoes. “I wouldn’t say I’m too happy right now.”
Joey leaned toward her again. He had a rough patch of mousy stubble. It stabbed out of his chin, circling his mouth, the area of his scar bald. He moved closer and casually, as if they were in a movie theater, slipped his right arm over Doty’s shoulder. “You’re upset she said those things?” His fingers tapp
ed her collarbone. “Don’t worry. You can prove her wrong.”
Joey placed his hand on the back of Doty’s neck. He kept it there even after she threw her face forward, her hair coming around her eyes like blinders on a horse.
“I’m tired and want to go home,” she said, searching the ground for a large rock.
“Your sister will be gone soon, and how will you afford that duplex by yourself? What’re you planning to do? Get some nothing job putting dresses together in windows? You can’t live like that.”
Doty hopped down to the gravel. She stood very still with her hands on her hips.
Joey sat back with his legs crossed. “I wasn’t trying to offend you,” he said. “It’s just, you’re a beautiful girl. If you let someone help you, they will. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I don’t give a damn what you’re saying,” Doty said. “And I don’t need help. Take me home right now, and if you don’t, I’ll walk.”
Joey uncrossed his legs. He swiped his hands through his milky hair, pulled a deep breath, and stepped off the truck. He walked toward Doty, getting as close as he had when they were dancing. He grabbed her arm, squeezing it until she knew, in the morning, there’d be a bruise. “It’s not safe to be out alone. At this hour. In this spic neighborhood.”
“I’m perfectly fine,” Doty said, trying to pull her arm out of his grip. “I live in this neighborhood.”
“Fine,” Joey said, releasing his hold. “But why can’t you just give me a kiss?”
Doty began to run. She cut between car parts and broken tools, a slab of metal siding, an empty paint bucket, and a few loose shoes. The sights of the city smeared together into one string of bluish light. Suddenly she felt Joey’s hand clamp onto her wrist. He came at her with the force of a rabid dog gnashing into her flesh. Doty struggled to rip her body away, screaming, her voice echoing across the hillside.
“What’re you doing?” Joey asked. “Stop this.”
Sabrina & Corina Page 6