Chapter 22 #2
I rub my face. The side of it is throbbing. I can only imagine how terrifically it must be bruising. I wonder if I’ve got a black eye. “We disagreed on remuneration.”
“Hah. He wanted you to blow him?”
“Uh. Yeah.”
“What a scumbag.” She flicks her own cigarette out the window before rolling it back up. “But I’m not surprised.”
“Yeah, well.” I stare out the window. We’re surrounded on all sides by trees, horizon obscured. It’s still dark; the clock on the dash reads almost four AM. “I’m more upset about the fact that he took off with my shit.”
She whistles. “Ouch. Rough.”
“Yeah.”
“Probably long gone.”
“I know.”
“Well, long as you know.” She smothers a yawn behind her hand. “Where’re you coming from, anyway?”
“Florida.”
“Came and went a long way, kiddo.”
“Sure did.”
“Was it worth it?”
Was it worth it?
“I don’t know,” I say absently. “Probably not.”
We don’t talk much more after that. She gets me pretty damn close to the apartment, dropping me off at a gas station on Allens at around five. She tells me to take care and I just smile and thank her again. We never did exchange names, I realize.
I start off the seven blocks it takes me to get home, empty-handed and empty-hearted.
And holy fuck, it really was all for nothing. There’s some irony here but I’m too fucked up to see it. Maybe someday I’ll be able to look back and see it as some wacky fun adventure, a story for the kids (not that I’ll ever have any), but for now I just feel empty and broken.
Rounding the corner, I approach the walkup above the shady tattoo studio, lurid neon signs lit up in the windows even at this hour. Trudge up the metal stairs and without ceremony, rap loudly on the door. My keys were in my backpack. All I’ve got left to my name is whatever was in my wallet.
So, my ID and some condoms and a few bucks. I’ve returned with even less than I started with before everything went down. The only way things could get worse is if I got arrested and at this point I’m expecting it, actually. When it rains, it pours.
No one comes to the door. I don’t even know if anyone’s home. I bang again, call out names, try tossing a pebble at the one window within throwing distance (Mike’s bedroom) but there’s no answer, no stirring of blinds. Just my fucking luck.
Someone in the building next door throws their window up. “Can you stop fucking yelling and carrying on?” he demands. “Some of us are trying to get some sleep.”
“Sorry,” I mumble, turning away.
I put my back to the peeling door and slide down to the threadbare welcome mat. I wrap my flannel around me and close my eyes.
Still, I don’t let myself think of Sam. He’s too precious and dear to me to sully with the dirty fingerprints of memory.
If I try to take him out and examine him at all, I’ll wind up crushing him like one of those little glass figurines my mom used to collect back in the days when things weren’t so bad.
When she still had a job, and a life, and didn’t scare me all the time. Only sometimes.
Always was obsessed with those things, the figurines, when I was a little kid.
Begging Mom to let me hold one for just a minute.
Of course, the one and only time she did—a little glass fawn, its spots painstakingly rendered on its backside by hand—I immediately dropped it.
It didn’t shatter, but its head snapped clean off.
Immediate tears: Sorry, Mommy. Didn’t mean to. Don’t hurt me. I won’t do it again. Sorry.
Those nails of hers. Always kept long and filed to razor sharp points, painted one color or another, wrapping around my shoulders and digging in until I was bleeding and shaking. Furiously. So hard that my neck would ache and my head would throb and sometimes I’d black out.
I shake my head and that memory dissipates. It’s useless like the rest of them, serves only to injure me. I don’t know or care where she is right now. I don’t want to think of her.
The way I won’t let myself think of Sam. He’s gone now. A brief bright spot that came and went. Someday I’ll get to look back and smile and be grateful, hope wherever he’s gone to is a good place. Hope that he’s happy.
Right now it just hurts too much.
I must actually fall asleep because by the time I’m shaken awake, the sun’s come up. Julian’s bent down in my face, blonde hair even longer and lighter than mine topped by a backwards hat. He looks like Jay from Clerks. He’s about as coherent, too.
“Ash!” he exclaims, kneeling and grabbing my shoulders. “Are you okay, man? What are you doing out here? Oh, shit—what happened to your face?”
“Jules,” I say. And then I don’t know what else to. I just let him pull me to my feet and I silently go inside with him.
Mike comes home a little while later. Late shift at the club before spending the night with his boyfriend, apparently. He arrives with half a cup of takeout coffee that, upon seeing my face, he lets me have the rest of without argument.
“What happened?” he asks simply.
With the caffeine to fortify me, I tell him. Everything.