In the Garden of Rusting Gods

by Patrick Freivald

  She pulled the jacket from the rack. “I have just the thing for this weather.”

  He looked at it, laughed as only the young can laugh. “Not really my style, but thanks.”

  “Please, take it.” She pressed it into his hands. “I insist.”

  “Sure, Shelly. Got any umbrellas?”

  She nodded to a rack on the prop side. “Just parasols.”

  He picked one up, bamboo, lemon yellow with creeping vines of wisteria, either Japanese or made to look like it. “How much?”

  “Five bucks.”

  “Sold.”

  ~

  “Yesterday” by the Beatles warbled through the transistor radio on the vanity, softer and more poignant than their last hit single, and inescapable for the past six weeks. Alice twirled back and forth in front of the mirror, a grin plastered on her face. The powder blue poodle skirt and sleeveless black turtleneck showed off just enough dark brown skin to draw the eye, sexy and coy in the same breath. Not bad for six dollars.

  Still, it needed something.

  She pulled a polka-dot scarf from the closet, black and white, and tied it babushka-style over the curly riot of black hair on her head. The traces of green in her eyes popped, the most obvious touch of her father’s legacy; Darryl would love it.

  A throat cleared. She turned, smile already fading.

  Beth stood in gray jersey pants and a white T-shirt, dark brown hair in pink curlers. Her roommate wore the shirt out on the town like servicemen home from the war, often without a bra, a scandalous bit of fashion Alice couldn’t bring herself to imitate. Her mother had raised too much of a lady.

  “Nice costume. Going Trick-or-Treating?” The accusation in Beth’s tone sawed at Alice’s mood.

  “Very funny.” Alice put on bright red lipstick and blotted it. “Darryl is taking me to the drive-in.”

  “You know that’s not a good idea.”

  “I’ll be fine.” She crossed her arms. “What am I going to do, not date?”

  “Not date a white boy, maybe. Or not in public. It’s just asking for trouble.”

  A grin blossomed on her lips. “He is trouble, but the right kind. And times are changing, you’ll see. Speaking of, guess what we’re seeing?”

  Beth rolled her eyes and walked out, then hollered back, “Something gross, I’m sure.”

  “Monster of Terror. Debuted Thursday. It’s about—”

  “A terrible monster, of course. Or some guy in a rubber suit. Sounds ridiculous. Just don’t forget it’s Sunday; you’ve got work tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” Sarcasm lingered after the words had escaped. Horror movies freaked Darryl out more than they did her, but she took the excuse to cuddle up against him either way, and if that led to a late night all the better. Worst case she could always call in sick.

  ~

  Gail blotted her crimson lipstick and rubbed the waxy film from her front teeth. Scarf tied over her hair, eyelashes bold and long, a touch of foundation to smooth out the imperfections in her skin. And the old woman had been right—her eyes looked almost green from the right angle.

  “Who are you tonight?”

  She turned to her roommate, Amy, leaning against the doorframe in her boyfriend’s Pantera T-shirt, large enough to cover a pavilion. With a carton of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey in her left hand and a spoon in her right, Beth clearly had no plans to find a job, or go out at all.

  “It’s Halloween. I’m anyone I want to be.”

  Amy raised an eyebrow. “Dorothy Dandridge or Joan Crawford?”

  “How about Grace Kelly?” She twirled, letting the skirt flare up past her knees, dancing in the high heels.

  “In a poodle skirt?”

  “Why not? It’s a day of magic—anything can happen!”

  “Which in this case is?”

  “Work all day, stupid office party, then I’m catching a flick with Steve.”

  “What are you seeing?”

  “Some stupid monster movie from the sixties.”

  “Ugh, have fun with that.”

  She smirked. “I don’t think we’ll be doing much watching.”

  “Gross.”

  ~

  Alice’s high heels clopped down the sidewalk as the last October sun cast its final, long shadows between the rows of crumbling, postwar housing. Shrieks and giggles exploded to her right; a man in a white sheet chased a gaggle of children from his porch, bellowing and waving his arms. A little girl rode her pink bicycle across the grocery store parking lot, basket loaded with paper bags full of candy, her wide-brimmed witch’s hat the perfect complement to the warty, green nose strapped across her face. The air smelled of cut grass and fallen leaves and an acrid hint of diesel exhaust from trucks on the new expressway roaring past town.

  The orange-red glow of a cigarette illuminated eyes on the porch swing of a dark house, watching without blinking as Alice passed by. The ember died, and the eyes with them, darkness hiding the misshapen lump of the watcher’s body, only to resurrect and die again.

  Squeals of terror and joy mingled with the bite of cold air signaling the end of fall. The papers called for frost, and a hard freeze later in the week. More adult sounds filtered over the houses from the A&W on Wallen Street, laughter and hollering overtop the Juke Box blaring Eve of Destruction through speakers turned up too loud. A few brown leaves clung bitterly to naked branches, their cousins long since raked and carted off to mulch piles outside of town.

  A shadow loomed, blocking the remains of dusk. A man.

  He blocked her path, wife-beater stretched over his beer belly and around his sausage neck, frayed denim overalls stained with oil and grease. He sported a tattoo on his right bicep, a giant octopus entangling a Navy ship, USS Downes beneath it.

  “You’re in the wrong neighborhood.”

  She huddled around herself and stepped off the curb into the road. “I’m leaving, sir.”

  He shifted to get in front of her. She cut across the street and he followed.

  “You’re damned right you’re leaving. We don’t need your kind stinking up our streets, not even on Devil’s Night.”

  She said nothing, walked faster.

  “Hey! I’m talking to you!” Shoes flapping on pavement. Hot breath on the back of her neck. Rough hands grabbed her shoulders, cruel fingers digging into her skin, spinning her around to his hot breath in her face, garlic and onions and stale beer.

  She cried out.

  ~

  Dave ran his hands over the jacket, his Most Interesting Man in the World costume cast aside on the bed. Tina would be dressed as a bottle of Dos Equis, so the jacket didn’t make a lot of sense.

  The wool whispered against his fingertips, the leather sleeves smooth and cool to the touch. It pulled at him, cajoled him to put it on, strut around like the jock he’d never been.

  His phone buzzed again, rattling itself off the dresser to the floor. Fog clouded his vision, turned his gaze back to the red fabric. He hadn’t worn it since the storm, but had kept it in his closet just in case.

  And didn’t remember taking it out.

  The stallion emblem galloped through his mind, drove him to put it on.

  So he did, sighing as confused memories intruded on his brain; a sock hop at the school, staring at the girls from the lonely corner; seeing her, unable to summon the courage to approach; the pull of braided twine around his neck, feet kicking for a stool he couldn’t reach.

  Standing with the authority of purpose, he patted the inside pocket, pulled out a small box. An insulin kit with a tiny needle, treatment for a disease he didn’t have. He tucked it back inside and stalked out the door. On the street he took a right, away from the suburbs and his girlfriend’s party, away from the lights of downtown toward the Ward, a hot, mingled mess of college town and subsidized housing.

 
; Purpose drove him, someone to meet, to own. She didn’t know he existed, but after tonight he’d have her, and they’d be together forever.

  ~

  Freshened up but not refreshed, Gail trotted down her apartment stairs as fast as the high heels would allow. A ten-minute turnaround had given her enough time to touch up her makeup and splash on some perfume—hibiscus and vanilla, Steve’s favorite—but no time to sit and relax, to brush off a day of moaning patients and abusive, know-it-all doctors barking orders.

  She reached her car, grabbed the door handle, and hesitated. A horn blared on the expressway, an impatient trucker punctuating that everyone had somewhere to be. Letting go of the handle, she turned, confused. An easy drive, a much longer walk. Walking to the theater would clear her mind, settle her mood before their date. And if she showed up five minutes late instead of her regular ten minutes early, Steve would understand.

  Smoothing down the skirt, she leaned against the car, looked to the light-drowned stars to gather her thoughts.

  Passing.

  Nothing declared fearlessness like a walk through the white trash ghetto.

  The high heels hindered her movement, forcing smaller, faster steps rather than an athlete’s easy glide. Two blocks in she kicked them off and looped them through her purse strap. She’d dressed for an indoor party, not a long walk, and the cool air and colder concrete raised goosebumps across her exposed legs and arms. Removing the scarf from her head, she let it drape across her shoulders, lending meager warmth to the growing night.

  Bass reverberated from a house flickering with strobes, dubstep or dance music indistinguishable through the shaking walls. A pair of men vaped next to the porch, sucking on their electric sticks through the mouth-holes in plastic werewolf masks. As she passed, they broke away from the porch, low, easy gaits just enough to keep from falling out of sight.

  She sped up, glanced back. They kept pace.

  The concrete abraded her feet, a continuous emery board rubbing skin raw. She gathered her skirt up, bundling the fabric in fists at mid-thigh, and fumbled for her phone. She held the power button and the boot up screen cast the inside of her tiny purse in a red glow. Three steps turned her walk into a run as she passed the grocery store, closed for the evening and dark except for the “No Loitering” sign.

  Howls broke the air.

  The phone flashed ready. She entered her code at a dead sprint, thumbed the phone icon.

  Her head rang. Limbs tangled.

  She’d run into someone at a full speed, knocking them both to the ground. Turning, she recoiled from his werewolf mask, and the hateful eyes behind it.

  “How you doing?” he said, his lips an obscured blur behind a tiny slit.

  She screamed.

  ~

  Alice whirled and batted at the fat sailor’s hands.

  His fist stole her breath, knocked her stumbling onto the curb. Gagging, she rolled to her side, face against the grass.

  Not the first time she’d been beaten, but the first since ninth grade. A gang of white boys had kicked and punched her not for daring to outperform them on an algebra test, but for doing so while black. They’d put her in the hospital, and not one had been arrested.

  Streetlights faded as the sailor blocked the light.

  “Told you, you don’t belong here.” He cracked his knuckles.

  “Hey!” A dark shape slammed into her assailant and they disappeared from sight in a series of dull thuds and slapping noises.

  She struggled to her hands and knees, raised her eyes.

  Fists up, the men circled, one fat and at least forty, the other lean and young and vaguely familiar, face white under cheesy Boris Karloff vampire makeup that clashed with his maroon Stallions jacket. The vampire ducked a wild haymaker and jabbed the sailor in the nose. He stumbled back; the boy hit him again.

  Arms up in a block, her attacker grinned through blood. “That all you got, pipsqueak?”

  In a single smooth motion, the boy extended a hand. A knife sprang from the handle hidden in his palm; a switchblade. “Time for you to go home, old man.”

  His eyes flicked from the knife to the vampire’s eyes, then back to the knife. Puffing his chest, he turned, calling out. “You’re not worth my time.”

  A stumble up the porch steps ruined his bravado, and he slammed the front door behind him.

  The knife disappeared. He turned to her, hand outstretched, cool as a cucumber. “Hi, I’m Tim. You want to blow this joint before he comes back with friends?”

  Frowning, she studied his face, tried to drag a memory from the void of time. “Do I know you?”

  He bobbed his head, something between a nod and a shake. “Sort of. I was a couple grades below you at Franklin Academy, but we never really met. You’re Alice, yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  She took his hand, knuckles slick with the other man’s blood, and he hauled her up.

  ~

  Gail scrambled back on the ground to put some distance between her and the sailor—the wolf—she’d knocked down. Leaping up, she bolted, and the other wolf blocked her path, arms spread wide.

  “Get away from me!”

  His laugh sent a shudder up her spine. “You don’t have nothing to worry about. We’re just having a little fun.”

  We don’t need your kind stinking up our streets, not even on Devil’s Night. The thought stabbed through her, a jolt of electric, irrational hatred.

  They circled.

  A scream punctured the night, followed by laughter. In the distance a group of children yelled, “Trick or treat!”

  “Scream if you want to,” the first wolf said. “Adds to the fun.”

  Told you, you don’t belong here.

  They charged.

  She dropped to her knees and delivered a one-two punch to the first guy’s balls. He stumbled past, and the other jerked left to avoid him. She spun, shin catching the second man in the ankle. He fell to his back, rolled sideways just in time to avoid a chop to the throat.

  As the boys dragged themselves up, she advanced, fists raised. They hesitated, ran, and she whirled at approaching footsteps.

  “Hey!” A light-haired man slowed to a stop, his red varsity jacket emblazoned with a blue-and-gray stallion, eyes glazed, confusion etched across his rugged features.

  She squared off, schooled her breathing, ready. “Back off, man.”

  “You’re supposed—are … are you okay?”

  She nodded. “I am. But I lost my phone back there and we need to call the police.”

  Patting his jeans, then his jacket, he frowned. “I don’t have one.”

  “Are you okay?”

  His eyebrows furrowed. “I’m not sure. I think so. Yes. Are you?”

  He shied back as she stepped toward him, then shook her offered hand. Soft and smooth with a hint of calluses near the tip of his middle finger. A student’s hands. Someone without a job.

  “What’s your name?”

  “It’s … Tim.”

  She grinned. “You sure?”

  He swallowed, nodding. “I guess so.”

  “C’mon, let’s find my phone, Tim. I’m Gail.”

  “Gail?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Huh.”

  His slow, sidelong glance up and down her body sent another flurry of goosebumps across her arms. Way too many drugs in this neighborhood.

  ~

  Tim sauntered with easy confidence, leading Alice between houses toward the center of town, his maroon jacket a beacon under the fading mercury lights. “Let’s get you warm and see to that lip.”

  She hesitated. “I have a date.”

  His smile dazzled, as bright as his makeup. “I figured.”

  “Did you?”

  His sidelong glance wormed across her curves. �
��Dolled up like that? You don’t look like you’re hunting Tootsie Rolls with the kids.”

  A grin crept to her lips. “I’m not. And you?”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. What are you hunting?”

  He chuckled. “Same thing as usual, I guess. Let’s get you inside, then I’ll give you a ride wherever you’re going. You won’t be late,.”

  Five minutes later she sat at a dinette table, eyes tracing patterns across the linoleum floor as Tim put on the tea. He’d wiped his face with a towel, leaving streaks of white on his ears and cheeks between ruddy patches of skin, and his lips no longer matched his jacket.

  “Thank you,” she said for the hundredth time.

  “It was nothing. Fat coconut thinks he can beat up a chick on my watch? He needed some learning. Still …”

  “Still what?”

  The kettle screamed. He poured them each a cup, set one in front of her—chamomile—along with a honey jar. She lifted the wooden honey dipper, drizzled a little into her cup, put it back. Fingers warmed by the near-boiling water, she smiled.

  “Thank you.”

  “You need to stop saying that.”

  The tea soothed her throat, too sweet and almost too hot; perfect. She gulped it down, and he poured her another. “Maybe someday I’ll stop, but my mom taught me gratitude. She’d do anything for me, and I’ve always been thankful.”

  “No, I mean, he had a point.” Tim leaned on the table, hands flat, fingers splayed. “Girl like you in that neighborhood’s just asking for trouble.”

  The honey turned bitter in her mouth. “A girl like me.”

  “Yeah. You need to be more careful.” He glanced away, then back. “Look, I don’t make the world; just live in it.”

  Her tongue turned thick with distaste. “No, I suppose you don’t.”

  His hand flashed and a sharp prick stabbed her neck. She slapped at it, pushed back in her chair.

  Struggling to get words out, she tried to raise her eyes from the syringe that clattered on the table. Too sluggish, too slow, and the world swam. By the time she’d looked up he’d circled behind her, fingertips brushing up her arms to her shoulders, electric and dull at the same time. She tried to lift her arms but they lay heavy at her sides. Her head lolled back, eyes rolled to meet his, staring down in rapture.