Of Blood and Smoke

Chapter 1

ONE

Della

I do not want to be here .

This mantra repeated in my head as I hopped on the city bus that would take me from one end of the Bronx to the other. How to be a proficient or efficient New Yorker escaped me, and the safety of the subway in this area was questionable. So, I took the bus to avoid gang violence and get some sunlight. I preferred not being underground when and if a situation went crazy.

Every day, I found myself mumbling apologies to the people around me while I battled the crowds trying to fit onto the bus. I could wait for the next one, but it would be just as packed. I wouldn’t have to wait thirty minutes for the next pick up if I just sucked it up and entered the can of human sardines on wheels. Not having a working car was a massive headache, so I had no option but to bump into people or deal with them knocking against me while I took public transportation.

Everything was fine until my dad got sick; my life was pretty ordinary before that.

It all happened at once. My mom left my father in his time of need, my college funds dried up, and my job closed unexpectedly.

Perhaps not completely unexpectedly. My coworkers and I had all sensed something was wrong when everything suddenly went on clearance, but management reassured us it was to bring in new stock and freshen up our inventory of high-end teas and herbal beverages.

A Tea for Thee went from being a happy little shop I loved working in, tucked inside a quaint corner of downtown Boston, to being a source of resentment and despair for me when it was snatched away. I’d lost my family and a job I enjoyed at nearly the same time.

In retrospect, my fellow employees and I should’ve known our salaries were too generous for the small amount of business the place did. None of us ever found out what had really happened. All we knew was we showed up one day and everything was gone. The door was locked, nobody would answer the phone, and we were screwed.

So there I was, on a city bus, tucked between someone eating a can of creamed corn with their fingers and another fighting invisible birds—if the screeching and lurching was any indication of what was going on next to me.

My cell phone beeped with a notification, and I pulled it out of my bag, dodging flying elbows, and quickly tucked it away. It was a text message from my mother, begging me to fly across the country to visit her, to talk to her.

I would do neither—I hadn’t heard from her since my parents split a few years ago. For one thing, I had no desire to speak with her. She’d disappeared from our lives as if we’d never existed.

I’d spent months begging her to talk to me, to come see me, and she completely ignored my pleas. What was done was done; and I was too busy trying to take care of my dad and pay all our bills so we could survive. The tumult she’d send our lives into if I contacted her was unneeded and would upset the delicate balance I was trying to maintain. I’d made the mistake of trying to rebuild our relationship a couple times before and she’d used it to harass my dad. He never told me exactly what she’d said or done but the stress was enough to send him into the hospital with seizures. My job was to keep the two of us afloat and our life peaceful. There was no room for error when it came to his health.

My parents had been fortunate enough to have a modest home on the outskirts of Bridgeport, Connecticut, before illness and divorce forced them to sell. My dad continued his employment in New Rochelle until his body’s decay shoved him into very early retirement with his seizure disorder. I couldn’t fault his job; they were good to him when they could’ve totally screwed him over. But there wasn’t enough money to keep his decent apartment near his job, or to afford a higher quality of care.

So, I left school in Massachusetts, found work at a restaurant and at a call center, and helped us get a two-bedroom apartment in an area that was no stranger to flashing blue and red lights, or to murder.

At least it was affordable.

Walking through the parking lot, I eyed my car. It sat in our single assigned parking space with a deflated football on the trunk and a row of beer cans on its roof. It needed a new head gasket or something like that, among other things, before it could be driven again.

My dad wouldn’t tell me what had happened to his own car, so we’d been dependent on mine for a little while. I shot my vehicle a dirty look as if that would make it get its act together and engage in self-repair. We’d defied the rules and took up two spaces and then one day, it didn’t matter anymore because dad’s car was gone.

It was probably only a matter of time before my near-vintage Hyundai was towed away. My friend, Brett, kept offering to fix it but I already owed him enough and the fact hovered, driving me crazy. If I let him fix it, it would just give him more control over me and my life, and I didn’t want to make my situation worse.

I trudged up the eight flights of stairs and started down the hall, listening to the sounds of the world around me. Unidentified thuds came from behind one door, thumps of rib-crushing bass from another. Unit H-15 had the usual loud yelling about someone being “good for nothing,” and a staticky buzz vibrated the air around H-17 before I was able to escape the cacophony and enter some semblance of peace.

The excessive noise in my apartment building grated my nerves. I liked peace and quiet when I was home and it was hard to deal with the racket surrounding me, but I did what I had to do. I’d have thought after college and living in Boston, I’d be used to noise. I wasn’t.

Trying to shut it all out and not think of better times now past; I traipsed down the hallway, laser-focused on getting into the sanctuary of mine and my dad’s apartment.

There was still a stain against our door, shaped like a sloping shoulder, from where Mister Bucket fell when he was stabbed. The brown outline of his back and a floating circle stain showed his final resting position.

He used to wander the dim hallways of our building carrying, obviously, a bucket. The pail was always full of newspaper, and I couldn’t imagine why anyone would want him dead. It was grotesque, but also kind of cool in a way, a reminder of the brutality of my neighborhood if anyone dared step out of line. It served as a deterrent, I suspected, as no one ever really hung out near our door anymore while loitering.

That kind of scary control was a blessing. I didn’t have to worry about my dad as much if I wasn’t home.

My dad was asleep in his room, frequent napping being a side effect of his seizures. For what still seemed like no reason, he’d had a major one at work a few years ago in the middle of his day. He continued to have them occasionally and the neurologists couldn’t find the cause. There was no previous family history of the condition and to top it off, he’d had a stroke too.

Nothing had been the same since, and my mother disappeared, having married another man not even a week after dad got sick. She’d never tried to contact me since, for all I’d ever meant to her. At least not until today. I’d never been close to her, so it wasn’t a difficult decision to ignore her. She hadn’t crossed my mind in ages, when she popped up in my notifications uninvited.

I lifted the handwritten note Dad’s part-time caregiver left for me and read the reassurances that he’d bathed and ate and then went to do the same for myself. Fortunately, I’d only had one shift to work today at the call center, and now I had the rest of the day off other than my plans for the evening.

After getting cleaned up, I sat on the couch with the television muted, but on, and ate a bowl of pasta I’d heated up in the microwave. The screen in front of me flickered with images of unsolved crimes while I listened to the muffled noises of the apartment building combined with the low drone of the window-mounted air conditioner.

My dad wouldn’t wake up until the morning. Every day was now the same and the routine suited me after months and months of the initial battle for survival. I’d see my dad in the mornings, spending some time with him before I left for work. Melinda, our visiting nurse and caretaker, would stop by during the day and assist him with tasks like keeping appointments and taking his medications before guiding him through a physical therapy routine. She’d also read to him and do other errands as needed.

My father wasn’t completely incapable, he could use the bathroom on his own most of the time though he did occasionally need assistance in the shower. His mental facilities could be hit or miss—but were mostly hit, much to my relief.

It was hard to articulate the changes in him at times. Some days he seemed completely healthy, and I could forget but I could always tell, just under the surface, that he wasn’t. The major stroke had stolen the man I once knew and left him a mere shadow of the bright and energetic man he’d been before. To add insult to injury, he’d recently been diagnosed with diabetes. He just couldn’t get a break from medical issues.

Checking my phone’s clock, I realized I didn’t have much time and cleaned up my mess from dinner. I made a mental note of a new horror movie the streaming service advertised, grabbed my clutch, and locked up.

My friend Ashley met me in the parking lot when she pulled up for our festival date.

It was one of those balmy summer nights, the air full of mysterious and odd smells that clung to my skin. The constant drone of traffic was highlighted by distant sirens that seemed slightly muffled due to the lingering humidity weighing everything down. A few meager clouds drifted past a full moon, and a brave owl hooted from somewhere in the trees lining the decrepit public playscape across the street. All was right with the world—as much as it could be.

“Della, can you smell it? It's going to be a fun night,” Ashley said, after blowing a cloud of strawberry vape smoke out of the corner of her mouth. The damp air forced the foggy pollution from her pen to hover longer than usual, before a random stale breeze whisked it away.

“Want some?” She held the e-cigarette toward me.

“Yuck, no. What are you doing with that?” I’d never seen her smoke before.

She shrugged and tossed it on the console. “Andy left it in the car, and I thought I’d try it.”

I let myself into my friend’s car. “The night reeks of horror and hotdogs.” I turned to her. “And rotten strawberries.”

Ashley laughed. “That’s depressing but you might be right.” She took a left onto a main road, steering us in the direction of the festival we were headed to, one of many we tried to attend before the warmer months ended and the desolate, gray winter set in.

New York could be unbearably demoralizing in the colder seasons, with everything green having been stripped away and transformed into dreary decay. It was important to do as many fun things as one could before being outside became unbearable.

Four years ago, when my father and I had to transplant, we were evicted from the bright sunny colors of the only home I’d ever known. Stolen away from the lush, terraced gardens my mother hired someone to plant throughout our yard and the cheerful birdhouses I’d lovingly crafted since I was a little girl. I’d left them hanging there when we moved, imagining another little girl would take care of them, nurturing and feeding the birds who called them home. The whole neighborhood was full of life and greenery, and I would always miss it.

Our first apartment after we lost the house wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t home. This place, now, was definitely not home. “Looks like eastern Europe here, right?” I craned my neck out the window, glancing at the sea of concrete.

“If you squint, it all blurs together and you can pretend it's something else,” Ashley stated. Her apartment was only slightly better than mine, so it wasn’t surprising she’d imagine a different scenario.

Squeezing my eyes nearly shut, I did what she suggested and let the little slivers of light from the streetlamps blur the landscape. If I suspended disbelief, the granite monoliths almost looked like a fantastical medieval city. Almost.

“What are you doing? You look constipated,” my friend teased me.

After sighing dramatically, I said, “Trying to pretend this is someplace else.”

“Ha ha. Yeah, we wish.”

The lights of the street carnival lit up the sky in front of us with a rainbow of colors as we pulled into a parking space.

“I want fried dough,” I said, as we exited her car.

“Oh, yeah. Me too.” Ashley removed the navy-blue bandanna she’d had around her neck and tied it around her head like band, pushing her long, dark, curly hair out of her way. “Kinda crowded here tonight, huh?”

Scanning the crowds from where we stood in line, I watched the mass of bodies swarming about. Multiple attractions lined the park with vendors, small rides, games, and flea market style tables stretching out into the distance.

“Did you see the trailer for the new Wings of Death movie?” I asked Ashley.

She wrinkled her nose. “Yes. It looks so ridiculous.”

“No, it looks fun. You guys gotta come over and watch it with me when it comes out.”

“You already live in a murder scene, why do you want to watch one on Netflix?” she goaded me.

I frowned at her. “Please?”

Ashley huffed. “Fine. But you’re providing the alcohol.”

“Deal.”

We gained entry and started browsing, stopping to play a ring toss game we both lost, and then again to get our coveted fried dough from a greasy, rickety cart. Ashley got marinara, and I got powdered sugar.

Settling under fairy lights at a sticky picnic table, we quietly watched people for a couple minutes until Ashley broke the silence. “How’s your dad?”

She was a relatively new friend, the short distance between New Rochelle seemingly much too far when it came to navigating the traffic or train systems for my old friends to travel. People grew up, got married, moved for work, and had all the other things happen that separated adult friends when life got fully under way and they were closer to thirty than twenty. It was just too much trouble to keep in touch beyond sporadic texts and phone calls.

So, she knew most of the details about my father’s health, more so than anyone other than me and Melinda. I’d met her at the call center when I first started, and we’d hit it off. She was basically my best friend now.

“He’s hanging in there, doing the best he can,” I told her, wiping powdered sugar from my fingers. She’d seen him on days he was at his best as well as his worst, and they’d enjoyed each other’s company. “He told me to tell you hello the other day, but I forgot.”

“Hi, Dad,” she said.

Letting out a yawn, I stood up and lightly stretched my arms. “We should go wander around before I fall asleep.”

My friend gathered up our trash, crumpling it before tossing it in a waste bin. “I want to look at the jewelry,” she remarked.

We passed through couples and families, heading to the tables set up under open-air tents. Displays of necklaces and bracelets were dangling on boards with hooks, along with racks of rings and keychains. People milled about while we browsed and then we bumped into some of Ashley’s friends.

After smiling at them, I continued along the counter admiring the jewelry. “Della, come back.” Ashley waved to me. She gave the couple a hug before they wandered out onto the thoroughfare again.

Dutifully, I returned. “Karissa just gave me a link to a job application, we gotta apply.” She punched at her screen, sending me a copy of the link.

My phone vibrated in my pocket. “Think I just got it,” I mumbled, digging and seeing a notification. “Yep.”

I followed her outside and she sat on a wooden bench. “It's in the city, in Manhattan, but it pays much better than what we get now.”

“I think almost anything would. What is it?” Powdered sugar was stuck under one of my nails and I dug at it.

“Answering phones, data entry...” She trailed off, staring down and scrolling. She glanced up at me. “Like what we do now, but better working conditions and more money, looks like.”

That got my attention.

“Okay, I’ll apply.” Hope rose within me. The very thought of maybe not having to work two jobs always seemed like too much to imagine and yet still, I’d entertain the possibility every now and then. “I’ll do it when I get home.”

“Karissa and Mike both work there, and they said you can use them as references.”

“I don’t really know them. Are you sure that’s okay?” Ashley nodded, more focused on the screen in front of her than anything else. I vaguely remembered bumping into them somewhere once, with her.

Ashley flicked a glance at me before gesturing at her phone with a little laugh. “I’m in too deep now, sorry.”

I chuckled. “That’s okay, I get it. I’m going to run to the bathroom while you’re doing that. I’ll be right back.”

“Pee for me while you’re there?” she asked, grinning.

Giving her a thumbs-up, I replied, “I got your back.” Ashley laughed and returned to filling out the online form, and I started to make my way across the park toward the restrooms.

Both of us spent a good amount of time every week searching for better jobs. There wasn’t anything out there that we’d found so far. Every time one of us heard of a job, we let each other know and we both applied. We’d started saying “got your back” every single time and it became our catch phrase for nearly everything.

Often it felt like a waste of time filling out the applications, and we likely had hundreds of requests floating around in cyberspace.

As pointless as it probably would be, I knew I’d fill out the linked application she sent me when I got home. I had to keep trying. Every time I did, a fissure of hope would crack open inside me before rapidly resealing in despair over the lack of response. So far, we had only gotten call backs when it was a scam.

My thoughts turned back to my surroundings when I spotted a group dressed up as clowns, circus characters, and jesters just up ahead. One costumed man was juggling what looked like human heads while riding a unicycle. Another had a mask that looked like a skull as he roller skated around the group, lowering and spinning, before pretending like he was going to crash into the people walking by. I grinned at them, enjoying the creepy costumes.

Next, I spotted a court jester twirling a baton with bubbles shooting out of the ends and then a zombie nurse holding something on fire. I couldn’t tell what was burning, and I’d never know, because I darted to the side between a couple food trucks, not wanting to get in the way of the gathering crowd.

The festival’s light didn’t reach between the trucks. I turned my phone’s flashlight on right before I walked into a fence, nearly dropping my device at the barrier’s sudden appearance. It took a moment to figure out where I was in relation to the bathrooms, before remembering the facilities were near the end of the line.

“Left, I have to go left,” I muttered, getting my bearings.

Keeping my phone lit, I angled it to the ground and walked along the well-worn, make-shift trail. It probably wasn’t the greatest idea to stay out of sight and I doubted myself for a moment. I was no stranger to the rough and tumble areas of the Bronx and the boroughs, but I was also no stranger to the consequences of being a young female and the risks that status posed.

More than one woman in my neighborhood had been assaulted or robbed in the past. My scary movies reassured me I was almost certainly the dumb white girl in a slasher flick right at this very moment.

Patting my pocket, I reassured myself with the presence of my folding knife. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing, and it’d be used if necessary. A tiny thrill ran through me thinking about how satisfying it’d be to get to defend my body and feel like a badass before I chided myself for wanting to stab someone. I knew it was more the sense of control over my circumstances that I’d enjoy, rather than actually gutting someone.

I’d almost giggled out loud imagining wondering what to do with a dead body before I heard a muffled yelp.