by Laura Bickle
“Yeah. But there isn’t any going back if you leave. It’s a clean cut from everything.” Bert looks down his lizard snout at us. “And I don’t think you guys are ready to do that. Not yet.”
CHAPTER 16
Dammit, I’m ready.
I know I’m ready.
I can feel it, this formless yearning gnawing at my gut when I stare through the window at the horizon, wondering what else is out there. All these things we have in the store, even my license plate collection from far-flung places...I know there’s more out there, and I want it to be mine.
I’m not the only one who feels this way.
Lily perches on the fire escape, her legs dangling over the edge. She’s staring at the space between our building and hers, at the blackened window frame covered in plywood. Among the bars of the escape, she looks like a bird in a cage. I climb out of my window to sit beside her. The old fire escape groans under our weight.
“I want out. Away,” she whispers. “I want to live someplace where things mean nothing.” Beside her is a shoebox. It’s full of charred fairy bodies.
I reach for her hand and then remember that it’s bandaged. I awkwardly put my arm around her shoulder. This still feels new. But good. “I know.”
She looks at me with dark eyes. “You cut your hair.”
I rub the back of it self-consciously. “Yeah. It feels weird.” I’m not telling her what Bert told me to say, about the head lice.
She reaches out to touch my head. She strokes me like I’m one of the alley cats. “It does feel weird. I liked it curly.”
“Yeah. Me, too. I...made a bunch of mistakes today. This is one of them.” I grimace.
She raises one eyebrow. “You want to talk about it?”
“No. I’m more concerned with how you’re doing.”
Her gaze drops, grows unfocused. Her hand slips away, and I instantly miss her touch. “I’m going to go. Not tomorrow. Or next week. But I’m not going to stay here.”
“I want out, too.” I don’t know how to explain it, but it’s like these buildings are burned-out carapaces. And we’re hermit crabs, grown just big enough that we’re chafing against the walls and want our own shells.
She nods, fingering the figures in the box. I wonder what she’s going to do with them. “I’m going to wait until everything’s put back together. But this is...” Her hand flutters at the void between the buildings. “This is enough.”
“We’ll find a way.” I want to tell her I have money and that Bert may be able to figure it out, but I can’t. Part of me thinks she’d recoil if she knew what a terrible person I really was. That all those license plates on my wall are stolen. That I hate my father. And that I just picked the corpse of a dead Mob guy like a buzzard.
It’s not that I don’t feel bad about these things. I do, when I do wrong shit, like stealing. The license plates, not a whole lot. They’re my vice, a vice I paid for with my brother’s blood.
I really wish I had a decent rapport with my dad, that I could confess stuff like this to him. I would never admit it, but I wish that I had the kind of relationship with my dad that I see kids at school having with their dads. Dads who pick them up from school, volunteer to coach their teams, and probably give a shit about their wellbeing.
As for Pearly’s wallet...I have a feeling I’m gonna feel a lot worse about that in the future than I do now.
She leans against my shoulder, looking up at me.
“I could be like that Charlie guy on Charlie’s Angels.”
She lifts an eyebrow. “Hm?”
“I could take you away from all this.” It sounds even cornier than I mean it to, when I try to mimic the actor’s voice. “We could be on the first train out of town...”
She laughs and shakes her head. It’s good to see her laugh, even with those shades of darkness rippling through it. “That’s a ridiculously chivalrous impulse. But I’m a self-rescuing princess.”
“So you don’t want me to go with you?” Tension rises in my chest, and I’m steeling against rejection. I know that any woman I care about is going to leave. Like my mom.
“I do. But when we go, it’s going to be on equal footing. I pull my own weight. I don’t need to be rescued.”
“I didn’t mean...” I’m not sure what to say. I feel like I grabbed for the check on a date and offended her. I’m fucking confused.
She leans forward and kisses me. Electricity jolts through me. I taste cherries. Her hands slip up around my neck. Her hair tickles my cheek, and it smells like fire and shampoo.
I sink into the kiss, my hands sliding around her waist. She’s so close, half in my lap, her breasts pressed against my chest. I pull her closer, craving that warmth. She shocks me, sliding over and straddling me. She kisses me deeply, and her yearning sinks into me.
I want her. I do. But it’s tangled in other wanting. I want to be with her, to feel her bare skin under my hands.
Yet I want more. I want to be free of the Bunko. I want to have a normal life, with a normal relationship in a normal place. No spirits and demons and magical bargains. I wonder if it’s possible to run away from Hoodie’s bargain, some jurisdiction where he has no influence.
Her warm hands slide down to my waist, and her fingers slip under my shirt to trace up my spine.
My grip tightens on her. I feel like we’re in a place apart from everyday life, between ground and sky, suspended.
A door slams shut behind us, down the hall at my house. The sound jars me back to the present, and the kiss dissolves. Lily disentangles herself from me, though I’m reluctant to let her go. She smiles wanly at me and gathers her shoebox. She rises to climb down the rest of the fire escape, the box tucked in the crook of her elbow.
Carl’s head pokes through the window. “Hey, Raz? Do you know where the extra towels are?”
“Check the dryer,” I mumble.
Carl’s gaze falls on Lily’s retreating shadow. “Oh, sorry. Didn’t...”
“Carl, shut up and go find some towels.”
Carl snorts and retreats.
The shadow that is Lily pauses at the edge of the alley. With a bent piece of metal, she digs a hole and buries her burned fairies. She buries them solemnly, as if she’s burying something of herself with them.
I CRAWL BACK THROUGH the window into my room to give Lily some privacy. Beyond the closed door of my room, I can hear voices in the kitchen, the opening of pop cans and rustle of plastic, as if everyone’s gathering to eat. I smell Chinese take-out. My stomach rumbles.
But I need some time alone. Some time to process and get the hell away from everyone. Ordinarily, I’d go for a walk, but Bert’s right—I can’t be seen. I shut my door, hoping Rose and Lily will be occupied enough to give me time.
I fish the money out of my pants pockets, staring at the money clip. I totally forgot to get rid of it. I’ll have to ask Bert where to dump it, or maybe see if I can melt it down. My dad melts junk silver jewelry and gold down into little bars—maybe this won’t be any different.
I have a good spot to hide things in my room, a spot no one knows about. I root around in my closet, digging among my shoes and heaps of clothes on the floor. I think there are actually only two items hanging. There’s a bunch of junk on the top shelf—some books, a poker set, a stack of Playboys from the 1970s that Sid let me have. And a frog. The last thing my mom gave me before she left was a stuffed Kermit the Frog. Nobody knows I still have it—it’s jammed on the corner of the shelf. I wouldn’t want to admit to keeping it, but I really don’t want to throw it out, either.
I find what I’m looking for in the back. It’s an old clock radio from the seventies, black and white plastic with the numbers that flip with an audible click. I turn it over and open the battery panel at the bottom. I’ve hollowed out most of its guts, and that plastic panel opens up to a gaping void. I take the money out of the money clip, count it out—four thousand thirteen dollars—and jam it into the back of the clock.
I stare at t
he clip before wedging it inside. I’m still cold, a little in shock after seeing Pearly dead. I hope he was just a foot soldier. A small-time guy no one will miss much. I steel myself and open up to the piece of metal in my hand.
I’m assaulted by a riot of color and sound. I see men and women in 1950’s clothes, stiff and starched like images I’ve seen in a stack of vintage Life magazines from that era. Gunshots rattle. I see a man who looks very much like Pearly, only in a dark suit and tie. Older Pearly. Maybe his father. He’s wearing a dark gangster hat and is carrying the same pearl-handled pistol that Pearly did. He walks before a pack of similarly-attired men in an alley. A man cowers before him. Older Pearly shoots him, and my ears ring.
I flash on Pearly as a younger man, in the eighties. I’m guessing that’s the era, since he’s wearing a white Miami Vice-style suit with a pink shirt. He has more hair. He’s carrying his father’s gun and standing to the right of the old Don. I know it’s the Don because I’ve seen his pictures in the paper. He’s a younger man in my vision, but still tall and sharp-faced with a jaw like a hatchet. Pearly is standing on a man’s throat in the sand, aiming the gun at him. The ocean roars in the background.
The Don crouches down to the man in the sand. I realize, with a start, that this is Older Pearly lying in the sand. His face is pale, and his hair is white. The Don says, “You stole from me.”
“It was a mistake,” Older Pearly rasps.
“There are no mistakes.” The Don’s eyes are dark, so dark blue that I can’t see the pupils. “You stole from me, and I shall steal from you.”
“Anything,” Older Pearly blurts. His craggy face drips with sweat.
“I will take your son. And your life.”
“I’m asking for mercy, Don...”
The Don gestures to Pearly. “Prove to me I can trust you. Prove you’re not your father’s boy, that you aren’t a bad apple from a bad tree. Pay for these sins with your own blood, and you shall begin clean with me.”
Young Pearly’s chin lifts. Regret, pain, and fear twitch across his face. He’s not much older than I am. His finger flexes on the trigger.
The gunshot echoes out over the ocean. A red stain splashes up on his immaculate white suit. Pearly’s hand shakes.
The Don embraces him, kisses his cheek. “You are now my son.”
I DROP THE MONEY CLIP. It rings on the floor like the tolling of a bell.
“Shit,” I breathe. I jam the money clip into the back of the clock, seal up the panel, and bury it under my clothes in the bottom of the closet.
I sit on the floor, watching sweat drip from my brow onto the floor. I want to tell Carl, but I don’t want to terrify him. I have to tell Bert, convince him to help us.
I ball my hands into fists and press them to the floor. I were a different kind of person, I would be praying now.
I don’t do that. Never have. I’ve seen some truly terrifying supernatural shit—ghosts carrying around their own severed heads, for instance. I’ve seen a lot more terrifying ordinary shit—like someone trying to pawn a finger with a ring on it at the night counter. Never mind the vicarious things I see with the Bunko.
But I’ve never seen any evidence of God. And it’s not like my dad took me to church on Sundays for an introduction.
Carl and I argue about this stuff occasionally. He says that if there are demons, there must be angels. And if there are angels, there must be a God. Then I hit him with the impossible question: how can God be all good, all knowing, all powerful, and there still be evil in the world? He can’t answer that to my satisfaction. So I gotta think that if there is a God, he either doesn’t give a shit or he’s too weak to help me. Either way, there’s not much point in me praying for his help. Even when I’m totally, perhaps irrevocably, up the creek.
I force myself to climb to my feet, heart still pounding. The echo of the shot that killed Pearly’s father still rattles in the back of my brain. I wonder how he did it. I wonder if he was angry at his father, like I am at mine. Or whether he was simply detached. Was one or the other of them a sociopath? Or was it a matter of survival?
I could probably find out if I want to spend the evening holding that money clip, staring at my reflection in the metal until it turns into something else.
But I’ve had enough of the blood. I’m afraid, sick to my stomach, and unable to process. I really want to crawl into my own bed and haul the covers up to my neck. I want to have a do-over—on a lot of stuff.
I force myself to stand and close the closet door. Footsteps in the hallway pause before my door, and there’s a hesitant knock. I open it to see Rose.
“I like your hair,” she says, her gaze flicking up to my bare scalp.
“Thanks,” I say again. I’m not telling a woman who’s sleeping in my bed what Bert told me to say about head lice. Especially not a woman who’s the sister of the girl I’m seriously crushing on.
“Am I bothering you?” she asks.
I shake my head. “No. Just digging out some clothes for tomorrow. How are you feeling?”
She looks a bit pale. She slurps from the straw of her Tiki cup. Rum and Coke, I’m guessing. “Okay.”
“Really?”
She makes a face. “Mom saw my tattoo at the hospital.”
“Did she lose her shit?”
“Yeah, pretty much.” She picks at a Band-Aid on her knuckle. She grins. “Losing her shit over something small is good for her right now.”
“Sounds like it’s a good distraction.”
“Yeah. I’m making sure to show it as much as possible. She thinks it’s fucking Harry Houdini.” She rolls her eyes.
I snort, but I thought it was Houdini, too. And I can totally see Rose trolling her mom like that.
“Anyway. I wanted to tell you that there’s Kung Pao chicken in the kitchen. Also rice and egg rolls from Wong’s Dragon Buffet.” She leans in and whispers conspiratorially: “I also hid a bottle of rum under your bed. You’re welcome.”
“Thanks,” I say. I love Wong’s, and the bottle of rum may be just what I need. I offer a conspiratorial grin and slip out into the hallway, toward the smell of dinner, even though I’m not hungry anymore, not after what I saw.
The debris of the meal is left on the table, in cartons and on scattered paper plates. I decide to leave it for Lily—I don’t know if she’s eaten. The smell permeates the kitchen and the living room.
I grab a soda from the refrigerator. Mrs. Renfelter sits with Callie on the couch, watching Tinkerbell on TV. She’s braiding Callie’s hair, and Callie has an antique doll in her lap. It’s one I recognize from the store downstairs. Most dolls give me the creeps, but this one is clean. It’s a blond porcelain doll with painted blue eyes in a calico dress. She was made by a man who ran a doll hospital for his own daughter. There’s no fucking way I’d let her play with any of the other ones down there. There are some nasty spirits attached to them. Take my advice: if a doll has creepy eyes, stay the hell away from it.
“You should eat something,” Mrs. Renfelter says.
I shake my head. “I had a really big lunch. I promise I’ll get something later.”
She looks closely at me. “Are you all right, sweetie?”
I pause. Something hot grows in the back of my throat. It’s like tears. I haven’t cried in a long time, and I sure as hell am not going to cry if someone’s nice to me. It’s overwhelming that, after all she’s been through, she’d notice I’m completely fucked up. And that she would care enough to ask. I don’t think I’ve ever heard my father ask if I was all right. Ever.
I wish she was my mother. I wish she was here, and I could unload all my fears and be comforted like a small child.
But I’m not a child anymore. I’m a man. And I have to act like it, no matter if it feels like I’ve swallowed razor blades.
“I’m fine,” I whisper. I pull my lips back in a simulacrum of a smile. “And I promise I’ll have something to eat later.”
I slip out of the room and down the sta
irs, searching out Bert. I want to talk to him about the money clip, what I saw, to see if that changes his assessment.
Voices and broken bars of harmonica songs echo from the floor of the pawn shop. I linger in the hallway. My dad and Sid and Pops are going over receipts, figuring out what comes next at the Renfelters’ house.
“It’s a lot of money,” my father is saying.
“Well, we should do it,” Pops declares. “It’s the right thing to do.”
A snort emanates from my right. I’m not alone in my eavesdropping. Carl leans against the wall of the vault room, arms crossed.
“What’re you doing?” I ask.
Carl gestures to the vault room. “Looking for shit to protect us from our mutual problem. There’s supposedly a gauntlet in there that was rumored to belong to Alexander the Great and assure victory to the wearer. Haven’t found it yet.”
“Good idea.” I nod. This is a start. We have magic. A leg up on the Mob.
“What are they going on about?”
Carl shrugs. “Pretending to be the Knights of the fucking Round Table. Rescuing the damsels. I guess it makes them feel good.”
“Have they told Pops yet?” I’m betting they haven’t, but I want to hear it.
“Have they told me what?”
Pops stands in the mouth of the hallway. He seems almost like himself. His color is good, and his eyes are clear. Something is pumping in his veins, giving him more vigor and life than I’ve seen in years. Clear and alert, the old man doesn’t miss anything.
I lift my chin. “Ask my dad.”
“Ask him what?”
“Ask him what he did to get you home from the hospital.”
Pops wheels around, stumps toward the showroom floor. Carl and I drift in his wake. My dad stands behind the counter, pale as a ghost. Sid crosses his arms over his chest, glaring at my father.
Bert’s sitting by the door, playing the harmonica, but not particularly well. I suppose that’s because his claws get in the way and he doesn’t have much in the way of lips in this form. He stops and joins the group glare at my father.