Pawned

by Laura Bickle

  Bert looks at her. “Are you all right?”

  She shakes her head. She lifts herself up into the cage, but her arms tremble. Bert catches her, seeing that the front of her dress is covered in blood. He looks back the way she’s come, and there’s a trail of red in the dirt.

  She reaches up to touch his face. “You’re free. The Ringmaster is dead.”

  She closes her eyes and doesn’t open them again.

  Bert buries his face in her shoulder and sobs, sobs for hours. He gently lays the body on the straw and walks out of the cage, the lion at his heels. He walks upright, the spell broken. He walks to the Ringmaster’s tent on two feet, not crawling on his belly. Pulling aside the curtain, he finds the Ringmaster in his chair, a steak knife protruding from his chest. A pistol is in his hand.

  Bert staggers away. The lion walks to the Ringmaster, sinks his teeth into his arm.

  Bert lets him feed, lets the starving lion pull the flesh from the bones of the Ringmaster as if he’s only meat.

  And he is.

  I see a flickering image of Bert and the lion walking together into the darkness. They’re sitting outside a tiny cottage on a cliff overlooking the sea. The lion looks fat and glossy, and the scars on Bert’s hide have faded. But in this sun-washed place so close to the ocean, there’s a sadness about them.

  Yet they do swim. They swim every day.

  The lion sleeps before the fireplace, his coat streaked with gray. He snores in his sleep, until one morning, he’s cold and still.

  Bert takes a day with a shovel, burying the old lion behind the cottage, and he doesn’t sleep another night in that place. He places his belongings in a sack and walks toward the road on two feet.

  CHAPTER 13

  I release the wall, pushing back as if it’s burned me. I blink back an overwhelming sadness. Now that he’s saved my life, I feel beholden to him to make his life better. To not allow him to be used and abused the way the Ringmaster did.

  But his time with us will be limited. We’ll grow old and die, like the lion did—if we’re lucky enough not to meet a tragic fate like the Mermaid. And Bert will be on his own again. Hopefully, a free man. Lizard. Whatever he is. I’m accustomed to thinking of him as a caricature, as less than human, swathed in bravado and the armor of scales. But I’m certain he’ll see us pass quickly into the night and feel something when we move beyond him, leaving him behind.

  I trudge upstairs. Bert sits on the couch, eating cereal with Callie and Carl. They’re watching cartoons. The overhead lights are off, and the volume is down low, so as not to disturb anyone. In the semi-darkness, the shifting light gives them a ghostly, ephemeral appearance.

  Bert glances at me. I think he knows I was down in his room, fondling his stuff. But he makes no mention of it, merely reaching into the box of Froot Loops with a clawed hand. I resolve not to look at him with pity. I’ll look at him as Callie does: with affection and wonder.

  But for now...I need air. I head down the hall, toward the fire escape. The door to my room is ajar. Beyond, both beds are empty. I didn’t see Lily in the living area, and the bathroom door’s open.

  I tiptoe across the floor to the window. It’s open, cool air sliding across my face. I step out onto the fire escape, disturbing a pigeon. It flies away in a flurry of feathers. A tomcat pounces, misses, and casts a dour yellow eye at me for interfering with his breakfast.

  The side of the brick building across from us is blackened, but the fire escape is still intact. I slip under the railing and jump to the other side, as I have so many times before. My sneakers ring on the metal, announcing my arrival like a doorbell.

  Lily’s window is open. I don’t remember if it was open before the fire, or if the firefighters opened it. I swing over the windowsill and lower myself inside. I shouldn’t be here, not until the fire inspector and building inspector and arson investigator and whoever else is responsible remove the yellow tape from the front door. But I can’t help myself.

  My sneakers land on wet, squishy carpet. Lily’s realm has corroded. I’m accustomed to seeing things ravaged by time in the shop. That kind of tarnish and erosion occurs over decades, even centuries. Destruction, to my understanding, is a slow process, an almost imperceptible death. But this has occurred overnight, and I don’t know how to take it.

  Everything is wet. Wet, and much of it is black. Lily’s gorgeous mural of the mermaid is darkened by soot. The ceiling over it sags from the water, drizzling down in a fine stream. Water rattles elsewhere in the structure. Lily’s paper origami fairies dancing from the ceiling have shriveled up to little blackened stubs. Her candle collection has melted and dripped onto the floor in rainbow lava.

  Lily’s here. She’s standing before her dressmaker’s dummy.

  “It’s going to be all right,” I say, feeling helpless.

  She reaches out to touch the dummy. The prom dress has melted. The adhesive and duct tape has charred and curled in on itself, fusing to the dummy in a grotesque sculpture. It reminds me of the Wicked Witch melting in the Wizard of Oz, but I would never say that.

  I wrap my arms around her. She breathes shallowly against my chest. Her face is hidden by her hair. I pull a bit of it back behind her ear, but her expression is blank.

  “It’s just stuff,” I whisper. “You and your sisters and your mom are okay. That’s what matters.”

  But she’s rooted in place, unable to speak. She’s like a tree that began to grow in this place, and has become silent and stunted when lightning struck too close.

  I HAVE TO GIVE MY DAD credit. He knows how to make shit happen.

  The fire marshal, building inspector, and general contractor arrive just after the sun. There’s a flurry of activity, some stomping through the building, and animated discussions on the sidewalk. The arson investigator shows up, drops off a form, and disappears. More money changes hands. The marshal and the GC agree that there’s minimal structural damage. The GC thinks it can be made habitable in a matter of days. A Dumpster is dragged up by a large truck and dropped on the sidewalk. A swarm of men arrive to pull out wet carpet and what can’t be salvaged. My dad, the girls, and Mrs. Renfelter comb over the wreckage for salvageable pieces of furniture to haul to our basement.

  Sid minds the pawn shop with Bert. Pops is propped up in a recliner behind the counter, where they can keep an eye on him. Over our protests, Sid sends Carl and me to school.

  “I want to help,” I say.

  Sid points at the swarm of men next door, marching in and out of the house like ants. “There’s plenty of help. You boys get your butts to school. I don’t want to see either one of you repeating a grade for truancy.”

  The old man shouts from his chair, “Get your asses to school. You’re not too old to spank.”

  Grumbling, I grab my backpack and follow Carl out the door.

  We plod down the street toward the school. The bus used to come by to pick us up when we were younger, but the high school no longer does busing. Supposedly, there are budget cuts. But I find that hard to believe when there’s new staff every year and new vending machines all the time. It’s all bullshit.

  “Screw this,” I mumble. My dad never really pays attention to whether I go to school or not. Most of the time, I want to go. It gets me the hell out of the shop. But the one time I want to stay home...

  “We’ve already missed a bunch of shit,” Carl says. “They let us stay home when Pops was sick. What’s one more day?” He’s sullen, hunched over, kicking at a rock.

  “Yeah. What’s one more day?”

  We reach the corner where we should turn left to go to school. The school is a 1960s glass and concrete building that has a lot in common with the jail, and not just architecturally. People swarm in, cars crowding the blacktop parking lot.

  I keep walking, walking past.

  Carl catches up with me in two of his giant strides. “Hey, man. What are you doing?”

  I’m not really sure. Our home is too crowded, and there’s nothing I ca
n do to help Pops right now. I haven’t yet figured out a way to undermine the bargain my dad made with Hoodie. I dunno if my dad throwing cash at Mrs. Renfelter’s problem will solve it. I’m sad and I’m pissed, and I need to get the hell away. I need to either break something or do something constructive. It’s hard to explain.

  But what I say is, “I’m playing hooky.”

  Carl shrugs. “Okay.” He keeps walking, shortening his pace to match mine, and we continue down the street in silence.

  Carl is the first to break it. “The contractor says the damage isn’t bad. They’re going to put a new floor in, new drywall, and it’ll be able to be lived in pretty quick. They’ll install a new sprinkler system upstairs to bring everything up to code...no fines.”

  “That’s good.” I jam my hands in my pockets. “All their stuff is ruined.”

  “Not all of it. Most of the restaurant equipment is salvageable. It just needs cleaning.”

  “But the stuff that really matters. Like Callie’s stuffed animals. And Lily’s prom dress.”

  “Were you guys gonna...um? Go to prom?”

  “I guess not anymore.”

  We pass the window of a thrift store. A pink and fluffy dress is displayed on a mannequin. A princess dress. We both pause to look at it.

  “There’s a dress,” Carl offers helpfully. He peers into the window at the tag dangling from the armpit. “It’s thirty dollars.”

  “Dude, that is a hideous dress. But it gives me an idea.” I rock forward and backward on my heels, considering.

  “You gonna get her a dress for a present and go to prom?” Carl rolls his eyes. “Dude, that’s so...Disney.”

  I punch him in the arm. “Shuddup. Yeah. Yeah, I am.”

  I trot off down the street with purpose. Carl scrambles to catch up. A plan hatches inside me. And I really don’t give a shit whether or not it’s Disney. “Dude, you can’t tell anyone,” I snarl.

  “My lip is zipped. But where the hell are you going to get a dress?”

  My mouth flattens. “Not at the damn thrift store. I want to get her something really nice.” Problem is, I know jack shit about dresses or where to buy them.

  Carl grimaces. “Grandma used to go to...Flemingstern’s.”

  “Jesus Christ.” He might as well have said “the mall.” Or “Monaco,” for all the good that would do us.

  Flemingstern’s is an old department store uptown, close to the casinos. It’s the place rich people send the concierges if they’ve forgotten their pocket squares or cravats or whatever the fuck else they need. I remember going there once with Carl to sit on Santa’s lap when we were kids. Sid took us, in full biker regalia. They let us go to the front of the line just to get us the hell outta there. They acted as if the only man they’d ever seen in chaps was John Wayne in the movies. It stank of perfume that made me sneeze, and there were these ridiculous women parked inside the doors, attempting to spray anything in a skirt that passed by. “Perfume snipers,” Sid called them. They skittered away from us in a cloud of pastel huffing.

  “Fuck. All right,” I acquiesce.

  We catch the bus to Flemingstern’s. It spits us out in a miasma of black exhaust, and we stand on the sidewalk, regarding the façade. It’s an old turquoise building, dating from the 1960s. It screams “fusty.” Mannequins in the front window have no faces, displaying women’s dresses in particularly putrid shades of lime green and pink. The sidewalk is scraped meticulously clean of black gum marks, and there are no homeless people sheltering in any of the doorways within sight.

  Carl sighs. “Let’s get in, get out, and not speak of this again.”

  “Agreed.”

  We advance to the revolving doors. I’m mindful not to put my fingers on the glass, keeping them on the chrome. As soon as we enter, a woman in black zooms toward us with a basket of samples of something then veers away. She smells like perfume. I start sneezing immediately.

  I rub my nose, stick my hands in my pockets, and walk across the marble floor, past the cosmetics counter. An old woman with a name tag looks up, alarmed, when we get turned around and wander too close to the jewelry and handbags. I want to tell her to stuff it, that I’m around a helluva lot more real merchandise than her cheap costume shit, but bite my tongue.

  I’m here to get a goddamned dress, and I will not leave without it. This is war. Maybe class war, but I’m going to win.

  At last, I spy something sequined and sparkly at the end of the aisle. Dresses. Long dresses in shiny fabric. Like I know what I’m doing, I march up to the dresses and finger a long blue dress. It doesn’t have any sleeves, and looks like it’s about Lily’s size. I flip over the price tag in the armpit.

  And nearly have a heart attack. This is a four hundred-dollar dress. Well, it’s “three hundred ninety-nine dollars and ninety-nine cents.” Which is ridiculous.

  “May I help you?” A middle-aged woman stalks toward us. She’s wearing four-inch heels, a black dress, and an unvarnished look of disdain. She looks a helluva lot like that woman with the Dalmatians in that Disney movie. She snatches the dress from my hands and puts it back on the rack, smoothing it.

  I keep my head up high. “I’m looking for a dress for prom. For my...girlfriend.” It sounds funny, me saying it.

  The saleswoman peers down her birdlike beak at me. “And why isn’t she here to look for herself?”

  I set my jaw. I don’t want to explain to her about the fire, the duct tape, or any of that shit. “It’s a surprise.”

  She sniffs. “What size is she? And how much do you want to spend?”

  I step back, considering. I have no idea what size she is. “Small. She’s small.”

  She rolls her eyes. “And your budget?”

  “Fifty dollars.” That sounds fair to me for a dress. And it’s what I have in my pocket.

  She chortles at me. Chortles. “We don’t have anything in your price range.”

  “I—”

  She turns her back on me and walks off.

  “Bitch,” Carl whispers.

  My face burns. I plunge my hands into the racks, determined to ignore her. I find nothing under three hundred dollars, and the one that’s three hundred dollars is a terrible shade of orange.

  Carl takes it off the hangar and holds it up against his chest, modeling it for me. “Not Lily?”

  “You look like a traffic barrel.”

  About that time, the Wicked Witch of the Dress returns with a security guard, whispering furiously to him. I take the dress from Carl and try to hang it up, but it’s ridiculously complicated, with ribbons and straps and crap.

  “I said, we can’t help you.” The Witch tears the hanger and the dress away from me.

  “Come along, boys,” the security guard says.

  Heat crawls along my collar as Carl and I follow him across the marble floors. Other shoppers stop fingering their merchandise to stare at us as we leave. The Perfume Sniper doesn’t even offer a spritz as we pass through the revolving doors.

  This is the thing that really pisses me off. People like this who act all snotty. When the chips are down, they come to us to try to pawn their engagement rings and grandma’s coin collection to pay their rent. They’re hypocrites in every way. We don’t judge people who come into our store, and I don’t understand how these jackasses can stay in business doing it. And pretending they’re better than everyone else. That woman probably makes ten bucks an hour on a high school education...treating me like shit.

  I kick the building on the way out, leaving a nice black scuff on the turquoise-glazed tile. I feel instantly guilty, because it won’t be the snotty saleswoman who has to clean it off, but a cleaning lady or the guy who scrapes the gum off the pavement.

  “What now?” Carl asks. His posture is slumped.

  “Now, we start hustling.”

  MANY GOOD HUSTLES BEGIN with the newspaper.

  I know it sounds low-tech and ridiculous. But you can learn a whole lot for the cost of a couple of quarters. When my
dad was hustling years ago, he’d read the obituaries then show up at the houses of the deceased to see if he could run an estate sale for the survivors. Less savory people take note of the time and date of the funeral and will burglarize your house if you print that info in the paper.

  I plug a couple quarters in the nearest newspaper machine and yank out a paper. There are handfuls of sales flyers. I put those aside on the top of the machine. None of those stores is in my budget.

  I’m more interested in the classifieds at the back. I flip through car listings and garage sales, not quite sure what I’m looking for. I dog-ear a page for an ad that’s a sob story about a cancelled wedding. The bride’s dress and the bridesmaids’ dresses and decorations are for sale. I wonder how to call up and ask how fugly those bridesmaids dresses are, but from the tone of the ad, I’m not sure any creature bearing testosterone would be allowed within fifty feet of the residence.

  “Jackpot,” I mutter. I stab my finger at an ad:

  THEATER COSTUME & PROP LIQUIDATION

  Theater closing—everything must go. Carousel horses, clown memorabilia, 1920s costumes, Shakespeare costumes, theater posters, ballet costumes, Civil War re-enactment gear, vaudeville props. Cash and carry, no reserve. Ask for Joyce at The Burlwell Theater, 1313 Hartwell Blvd.

  “That looks promising,” I say. Actually, it looks like the kind of thing my dad would really be interested in. But since he’s on my shit list, I’m not tipping him off.

  Carl’s pretty quiet.

  “Carl?” I prod him.

  “Um, that theater’s supposed to be haunted. It’s on one of the city ghost tours.”

  I close my eyes. “Really?”

  “Yeah, man. A bunch of ballerinas hanged themselves there in the 1930s. Nobody knows if it was a mass murder or mass insanity.”

  “Great.” I wince.

  “But let’s check it out,” he says cheerily. “Who knows what kinds of cool shit they might have?”