Tiny Ladies

by Adam Klein

  ‘Then she asked me to take the picture of them. We started walking silently. She said she wanted to find this one stone angel that she loved. The cemetery there is huge, it seemed like forever before we arrived at it. It was like this interminable punishment she was putting us through. None of us was talking. Stefan had glanced once, briefly, at me. It was almost desperate the way he looked. But I found myself walking apart from both of them. It was partially guilt, but maybe a sense of the real dynamic between them; it was too intimidating. I could see how affected he was by her decision – how well she operated. She was surprisingly cool. But I guess it was obvious that Stefan and I were miserable. We were both chastened. You could see it in her expression in the picture – how open her eyes are – how she was daring me. I think she was daring him too.’

  ‘Do you want to stay over?’ I ask when she sits up and takes the last sip of tea.

  ‘No, I’ve got to go soon,’ she says, rattling the cup on the saucer as she begins to lift herself. ‘I can’t believe how late it’s getting.’ She turns the watch on her wrist. Just then I hear a car outside. I think nothing of it at first, though it’s unusual for someone to chance on this place.

  ‘They must be really lost.’ And it sounds like a door closing. It’s not a slam, but a firm push of the car door that I hear, and I rise to my feet instinctively. I go cautiously to the window, not wanting to concern Hannah and so walking casually – or what I think to be casual – and of course she asks me what I’m looking for. I put my eye to the peephole and my lips touch the door. There’s a dark car idling about a hundred feet from the house, and I strain my eye trying to make it out. Do I recognize it? And then I see the owl lift from his perch, his quivering figure swooping low to the ground, effortless as the stretch of a shadow. Shadow of a stone angel with no power to ascend. I reach over and flick on the porch lights, and notice the figure by the car. It’s unmoving, and though it wears a ski mask I’m certain its eyes are trained on the peephole, watching the watcher, waiting it out. As Hannah comes to the window, the figure reenters the vehicle and drives off. I feel I can’t move from the aperture in the door, and feel my hand instinctively reaching for the chain.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Hannah asks, and when I tell her I’m just a little concerned, my voice sounds weak with hesitations, breath I can’t catch.

  ‘Can you please stay?’ I ask her, without taking my eye from the door. ‘That’s the only way I’ll sleep tonight.’

  ‘All right,’ she says. And I feel her arm around me, tentative only at first.

  She stands talking to me in the bedroom while I make up the bed.

  ‘King’s being exiled tonight,’ I say, pushing him off. I throw up the new sheet like a tent. I always think about things like bedding and soft towels and plush slippers. Comforts. My education in comfort comes from magazines, and it always feels slightly staged when I do something good for myself. I pat the down comforter and wonder what she knows of comfort, how she learned it. While she’s in the bathroom, I return to the door and recheck the locks. I look out again and wonder about the hazy perimeter of the porch light, a line of security I’ve drawn that ends indistinctly where the darkness amasses and fortifies itself. I step away from the peephole, expecting the masks to lunge forward, contorted and terrifying. I quickly leave the room, overcome by the feeling of panic.

  I pull a large knife from the block, then another, and another. I carry the three of them, blades down in one hand, and walk back out to the front door. I look for places to put them where Hannah won’t see them and where King won’t get at them. Finally, I slide one into the deep pocket of my coat hanging in the entryway. I hear the water running in the bathroom, and quickly run into the hall and stick another on the top of my bookshelf. But I save the largest knife for the bedroom. I go to the side of the bed and lift the mattress, and that’s when Hannah reenters the room, a perplexed expression on her face, the water still running in the basin.

  ‘Carrie, what are you doing?’ She remains in the doorway, and I see she’s afraid of me, of my desperateness and my secrets.

  ‘Take those off.’ Victor was lying on the bed, wrapped in a blanket, shivering despite the heat.

  ‘They have to look like they’re mine,’ I said, fingering the necklace and looking at myself, ‘or they’ll be suspicious.’ This is how my mother must have felt dressing for my father’s court appearances. I was suddenly a respectable woman about to go out into the sunlight, talk to real people, people who work, and have families, and who fence off depravity with a set of skills I never learned. There was a lot of jewelry in front of me, expensive pieces. And I had to sell them, which meant selling myself. And that’s what I told Victor, who wanted it done yesterday and didn’t care about how much we made as long as he got his next hit. He didn’t care that we risked getting caught if we were too quick. I think he believed that sooner or later this would all have to stop and that someone else would have to put an end to it. It was the kind of thinking you see in people who’ve been out there for too long, who can’t sustain the energy it takes to run the treadmill of copping and detoxing. But then he’d always been reckless; if he’d been a success I wouldn’t have met him.

  God, my face was so worn and the bright diamond looked stolen on me no matter what expression I tried. My smile looked forced and nervous, and my attempt at a poker-faced expression just made me look tired. I unclasped the necklace and put it with the other jewelry in its case. Even the case looked expensive, and I remembered my cigar box. But these were memories, someone else’s memories. I snapped the case shut.

  ‘I once did something,’ I say, laying the knife down beside the lamp. ‘I did something and it hasn’t gone away.’ I turn and look at her and see she’s tense. I know I have to warn her about who I’m afraid of and who I am. Because once Victor did what he did to Janine, fear became second nature to me. She knows I’m not responding appropriately; I should be more alarmed. But I’m dulled by the forgetting and the running.

  ‘I got involved with a client of mine a few years ago, and in the beginning I thought I could exert an influence over him. But it worked out differently…’

  I sat still at the mirror. I can carry this off, I assured myself. I can do this without thinking of Janine. If she rises to the surface, I’ll push her down with dope. I opened the small box with the big ring. Put it on. I smeared some base on the top of my hand to rub out the marks, the endless jabber of needlesticks on my flesh. But the color didn’t match my skin tone. What name would they call that sickly color? The hands were uncontrollably shaking in my lap. No one’s going to look at my hands.

  Victor was trying to cop again. Money brought him to life. The promise of more money made him anxious. He had a kind of nerve damage that made the walls of our room feel like cards. His edginess made the light vibrate. The resources were always running out, and he was bird-like, moving from branch to branch, forgetting the pleasure, the capacity for flight.

  I went to the Shreve Building in San Francisco. A woman entered the elevator and we rode up silently, listening to the muted bell announcing each floor. The woman had shoes pointed like the tough, dull beaks of birds. She clutched her handbag, its stone clasp at her heart. She looked at me with a wavering smile, as though she were staving off tears. When we reached her floor, she slipped a pair of dark glasses on and left with a sudden confidence, her expression locked in place.

  I felt a dull panic thudding away at the dope. Why shouldn’t I sell these? Victor’s capable of any violence if I don’t sell them. I heard the bell, and watched the doors slide open on a place where the word ‘precious’ had a meaning and wasn’t just a dancer’s name. I walked in carefully, the way I walked out on stage the first few times. But I intended to reveal nothing. I wore the one pair of heels – too high, too provocative – I’d worn for stripping. I could dance in these.

  One foot before the other, handbag to heart. The man behind the counter was wiping the surface of a long glass cabinet. His teet
h were white as stones, his mustache black. ‘Good afternoon,’ I heard him say, with an English accent. He wore a small eyeglass on a chain around his neck, his collar buttoned to the top. He was Indian, I thought.

  ‘I’d like you to look at my jewelry,’ I said. ‘I haven’t had these appraised, but perhaps you can provide an estimate.’

  ‘Certainly,’ he said, eyeing me. The dress was too low. He looked at me expectantly, his eyes chipping away at my composure. I reached into the handbag and pulled out a small box, handed it to him.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he said, after flipping open the top and eyeing the ring closely. I could hear the real admiration in his voice; he spoke as though to himself.

  ‘The stone is over two carats; looks like a nice yellow marquise. About sixteen quarter carats along the side.’ I began fidgeting with the necklace, suddenly tight on my neck.

  ‘Is this for insurance purposes?’ the man inquired. ‘You can leave the ring with us and we charge three percent of its value for the appraisal.’

  ‘I’m interested in selling the ring.’ I felt I’d said this too hastily, too firmly.

  He looked at me with a smile I found unreadable. I thought: This is the theme of the day. Everybody complicit, smiling at me. They divine my plan before I do.

  He put his eye to the loupe. ‘An old piece like this, I’d have to find the right buyer. And that takes work, and time. Not every woman would feel comfortable wearing this ring. It’s a rather bold statement. What are you hoping to get for it?’

  ‘Listen,’ I said, suddenly desperate to get out of there. ‘I really can’t wait. I have an important situation, or I wouldn’t think of selling a family heirloom. It’s a good piece, you said so yourself.’

  ‘Would you wait here, please?’ He took it to the back. I felt myself perspiring, and turned from the counter. The cameras were mounted on both sides of the door. I turned back around and stared straight ahead. I wondered if I’d have to sell all the jewelry, but I thought I’d wait to hear the quote on the ring first.

  When he returned, he looked at me reluctantly. I was certain then that this would go very poorly.

  ‘I can offer you $4,000 for the ring. That’s quite high for us, but it’s clearly a unique piece. Of course, we’ll need to see your papers on it.’

  I was being very careful not to appear too enthusiastic. I’d never had that much money at one time in my life. I answered him as though I were unmoved, even a little disappointed.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s any value in haggling over it? I never received papers for it. When my grandmother died, the jewelry went to my sister. Years later, while she was in the hospital with terminal cancer, she asked me to take it from the safety deposit box. I never thought I’d sell it.’

  Who is this sister who turns up so readily when the truth is unspeakable? Perhaps it’s Janine: convenient and inconvenient sister.

  ‘Do you have identification?’ the man asked.

  ‘Of course. And here’s where I work. I work for the state.’ There was no end date on that piece of identification, and I was used to flashing it whenever I needed to build confidence. It had an undeniable air of officialdom, the state seal. Though by then I’d been asked not to appear on the premises. Policy for terminated employees. They’d had some tragedies with fired employees coming back to the workplace with guns and grudges. I’d never return. I had enough shame to keep my grudges in check.

  He gave the identifications a cursory look, then passed some papers over the counter for me to sign. I knew I was leaving a paper trail, but Victor had no idea where I’d gone to sell the jewelry. He suggested a pawnshop. But it was Janine who had taken me to the Shreve Building the first time. She’d once sold a piece of her own jewelry here. It was a small pendant her mother had given her. I’ll never wear it, she said. She was at her lowest then. And here I was, learning my best moves from her most desperate ones.

  The other jewelry, I thought, I’ll keep. If I’m ever asked, I’ll claim Victor had given me the necklace and told me it was his mother’s. To dump it all right then would have been hasty. And then it occurred to me that I would eventually have to sell it all if I stayed with Victor. We’d be through that money faster than we could imagine. And of course the question of what would come next was unfathomable to either of us. We were well beyond the realm of losing jobs or apartments. Now the prospects really opened up, seemingly bottomless.

  But I could leave him. The thought was like seeing a curtain of fire over the ocean, conflicting and alarming. The thought of leaving him had a terrifying vastness to it, an elemental threat. It didn’t seem possible it could come from my head. Perhaps it came from Janine’s. The thought persisted, demanded consideration.

  I could take the check for $4,000 and live on it for a couple of months. Disappear before her body turned up. And I thought: Janine would have wanted it to go this way. I owe it to her to use the money to get free of Victor. But of course it was too late to owe her.

  Victor would be waiting for me. I began to tick off what I would have to leave behind in order to get out from under him.

  I signed the papers and passed them to the man behind the counter. He went to the back to write the check. I imagined my clothes, a few furnishings. Did Victor believe these things would keep me with him? Of course not. He believed I loved him, that I’d go back for him despite the murder and all that led up to it. Maybe he thought Janine’s blood was a kind of covenant between us – that scary, ritual thinking of his.

  I would have to have a car, and I’d have to cash the check. My mind quickly shifted from what I’d leave behind to what I would need to take. I could deposit this check and have a car and some cash by the weekend, I thought. But first I’d need to cop. I couldn’t call our dealer. I’d have to go buy on the street. But I would quit this fucking habit if it killed me. I’d detox in some hotel room. I’d turn the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door and toss and turn for three days. I’d lie in the bathtub and rub vitamin E on my track marks. I’d drink water until it sickened me. The thought of those cups wrapped in paper made me smile, a bed with the sheets changed every day. I could afford this holiday, this new beginning everyone assured me I’d never have. I’d take a vacation from sickness. Sick of sick.

  Hannah is expecting more from me, but I’ve put a lock on these events. I’m a door that opens inward; I take on the stories of others, and never let mine pass. Frances would be proud of me. You don’t need to tell your story to get theirs. I tell Hannah simply, ‘I worry he might be after me.’ Now it’s another story of an abusive relationship, blurry as the heads – confused and raging – she paints on the girls of her canvases.

  ‘Did you lock the doors?’ she asks. She leaves the room to check them. I wander out behind her, feeling weightless as I move through the hall, and find her looking out the window.

  ‘No one’s there,’ she says. ‘I think whoever pulled up was lost.’ She feels better saying it. But she stands at the window for a long time. I remember what my mother used to tell me: A person who’s waited on never comes.

  I spent the first couple of nights with Josephine; I was interrupted from sleep when she’d arrive at the room with a trick. It had come to this for her, and she would nudge me with her cane to wake me. I’d sit in the hall while she earned. She seemed grateful for the company, and the quarter gram I bought her, and she didn’t talk about her daughters, or any other accommodation she’d made to take her pain away.

  I left the hotel in the morning and walked briskly to the used car lot on Valencia Street. I tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible. I knew he was looking for me, and he would get to this neighborhood if he weren’t here already. I craved that car like an armature. And when I’d finally purchased it and drove it off the lot, I felt my life coalescing, as though I were suddenly moving forward. The car felt like I’d grafted it on; its insularity calmed me immediately.

  I knew I’d need to get high or I’d never get out of town, and bought my drugs on Missi
on Street from the car. A Mexican boy on a bicycle sold me a gram, first peering into the window and looking at my eyes, the pupils rebounding to vast, hungering tanks. ‘Let me see your tracks,’ he said. I unbuttoned my sleeve staring into his eyes. There’s no end to the humiliations of this life. No end.

  I was ready to drive off when I saw the newspaper headline in a rack across the street. ‘My Night of Torture,’ and there was Janine’s picture beneath it. I pulled over and grabbed one and dropped it on the front seat, determined to read it later, once the city and Victor were behind me. But my mind kept crying, she’s alive, which suddenly seemed more terrible than if she were dead.

  ‘I’m not going to tell you there’s nothing to worry about. I’m pretty scared myself right now. If you want to go, I’ll understand. Though I do think we’re safe. Victor’s been in prison for some time. Not long enough, of course. But I’d really be surprised if they let him out,’ I tell Hannah. In my mind I’m spelling out the words ‘attempted murder,’ jotting them into a case file, then passing that file into another person’s hands. This passing goes on and on. And then someone drops it.

  ‘What did he do?’ she asks apprehensively.

  ‘Assault, robbery. You name it. He had a record before I ever met him, but I thought he’d change.’ I laugh out loud. When you say these things – see them for the first time – how can you justify them?

  ‘Drugs made him wild. He really was someone else when he used. So was I. I was easily deceived. Willfully and gladly deceived.’

  ‘Why do you think he’d come after you?’