Double Pop

by Jamie Bennett

  “Marlon Brando,” she scoffed. “You have to be pulling my leg. That Tyson is no Marlon Brando! He’s very unimpressive,” she said, her lips puckered in distaste.

  “How do you know him?” Luca asked.

  “I met him here one night,” she explained. “He tried to turn on the charm, but I’ve seen enough humbugs in my day not to be fooled by some smarmy grin.”

  Luca turned on me. “I thought you only saw him the one time, in San Francisco. He came to your apartment? Why was he here?”

  “He came to ask for more money,” I said. And to proposition me for sex, but I didn’t feel the need to add that. Luca already had the same angry, tense expression that he also got when he talked about fighting with his dad.

  “I’m very good with faces,” Eva broke in. “I’m sure that’s him.”

  I looked at it again. “No,” I said definitively. “Because he’s too much of a chicken sh—shoe. You know what I mean. He wouldn’t have the…he doesn’t have…” I hesitated, glancing over at Nola.

  “I coglioni,” Luca said. He was still frowning, big time.

  “Los huevos,” Eva added. She pointed at Luca’s crotch as explanation.

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Those are the words I’m looking for. He wouldn’t have enough of those to rob a bank! It’s easier to hit up all his old girlfriends for money. Or his mom.” But if those people couldn’t or wouldn’t give him any…and Ty had told me that he would take care of his debt. That it wouldn’t be a problem anymore.

  And he had also told me that he was going on a vacation. Maybe it wasn’t as much of a vacation as it was a run for the border.

  Luca was ignoring me and speaking directly to Eva. “Do you really think that fottuta testa di cazzo robbed a bank?”

  Apparently that translated for her, because Eva nodded emphatically.

  “Luca, what does that mean?” Nola asked, hopping down from her chair. “Fottu—”

  “Let’s learn words about food, instead,” he said quickly. “Do you remember how to say milk?”

  “Latte,” she answered, and he continued to introduce different vocabulary that was probably a lot more appropriate than what I guessed he had said to Eva.

  “Hang on, hang on,” I said, rubbing my forehead. I sat at the kitchen table and pulled out my laptop from my school bag, clicking closed the worksheet I had been putting together for my class. “Let’s see if we can look at this online.”

  The picture was clearer and larger on the newspaper’s website, but I still shook my head at it. “I can’t tell, Eva, not with the bandana and the glasses. And if I can’t recognize him, there isn’t anyone who can. I spent more time with him than his own mother.” I looked up, and Luca was staring at me. “What? You know that we were together for a long time. Years.”

  He turned his back on me. “Can you go get dressed on your own?” he asked Nola.

  “I know where my bathing suit is!” she answered happily, and took off into the bedroom.

  Awesome, another bathing suit battle. I used my fingers to blow up the image, studying the face on the screen. I bit my lip. Maybe. I couldn’t swear it wasn’t Ty, but maybe I was secretly wanting it to be true. I had already heard about the robbery, and the guy had gotten away with thousands. If it had been Ty, then it could have meant he’d stolen enough to pay off his whole gambling debt. And then no one would bother me and Nola anymore, putting bodily fluids on our door and nails in our car tire, ruining our bikes. I wouldn’t have to be afraid.

  I swiped to the next picture, looking at the bank lobby and the customers in the background. No, I hoped it wasn’t him. Because it would also have meant that Ty was a criminal, more than the petty stuff he had done before. He would have scared some innocent people and taken a ton of money that didn’t belong to him, and my moral compass swung over to the “no, that’s way wrong” point. If he—

  I froze, staring at the screen. “Oh, fuck.”

  “What?” Eva leaned forward. “What do you see?”

  I pointed to where I had flipped to the third picture, a close-up of the gun in the robber’s hand. “Right there, on his wrist. See that line?” I blew it up until it blurred almost beyond recognition, but I knew what it was. “Ty tells everyone that he got kidnapped by a South American cartel and that the wire they used to restrain him sliced his arm. Actually, he nearly severed a tendon on the lid of a can of refried beans. He was really hungry,” I explained briefly. I pointed at the blurry scar. “Right there is where he cut himself.” I swallowed. “That is Ty. He robbed a bank. That was what he meant when he said I didn’t have to worry anymore about the guys who loaned him the money. And why he was going on ‘vacation.’”

  “I’m ready!” Nola came out of the bedroom in my bikini top, flannel PJ pants, and her biking gloves. “Andiamo!”

  I tore my eyes away from the screen. “Nola…”

  “Let me help with this,” Eva said briskly. “We can’t wear bikinis out in winter,” she told Nola. “Really, at any time of the year, you’ll need a shirt.” They went back into the bedroom.

  “Do you really think your boyfriend robbed a bank?” Luca asked me.

  “He is not my boyfriend. He hasn’t been for years! And…” I hesitated, rubbing my forehead in worry. “I’m going to have to call his bitch of a mom again.”

  “‘Again?’ Why were you calling her before? Jolie, what the hell is going on? What did that mean when you said you wouldn’t have to worry about the guys who loaned him the money?”

  I busied myself getting my phone. “I’ll explain all of it, just let me talk to Cheryl first.” I stopped dialing and looked at how upset he was. “Just one minute,” I said to his frown.

  “What do you want now?” Cheryl answered the call. As if I spent a lot of my time asking her for things.

  “I need to talk to Ty. Right away. Where is he?” She didn’t immediately answer me. “This is really important,” I told her. “I don’t like you at all and I wouldn’t be calling except that there could be a very, very serious problem here.”

  “Is something wrong with the baby?” she asked.

  “No. Nola is fine,” I said, with heavy emphasis on her name. I tried another tack. “Cheryl, I know that Ty owed some people a lot of money. Did you give it to him so he could pay them off?”

  She started to bluster, a story about her (fourth) husband’s job at the oil change place, and how she wasn’t getting unemployment anymore because of this reason and that one. The gist of it was that no, she hadn’t given Ty any money because she didn’t have any to give. “Did you?” she asked me.

  “I gave him some,” I admitted. “I couldn’t…I wouldn’t give him the whole amount. But he told me that he didn’t need it from me, he was all set. I think he did something really bad to get that money.”

  Cheryl was silent again. Then she blurted out, “First he said he was going on vacation. But last week he told me about a plan he had. I told him not to do it, because he’d get in big trouble. But he said it was easy money, he had a great plan. Then he said he was leaving.”

  “I’m pretty sure he did it. Do you know where he is now?”

  “No. I think he’s gone for good. He said goodbye to me, like he meant it forever.” I could hear her sniffing, as if she was crying. I had always hated this woman, and she had always hated me, from the first time Ty had dragged me over to the house she had shared with her third husband. She had treated me like the trash she thought I was. Even so, even with that history between us, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for her. What if I were in her shoes?

  “He told me that he’d talk to me soon, when he got back from his, um, vacation,” I said, trying to make her feel better. “Maybe he has some plans to come home.”

  “He could always make you believe anything,” Cheryl scoffed, her voice strong again, scornful. “You were always dumb as a stick. We used to laugh together about how you—”

  I didn’t need to talk to her anymore, so I stopped that thought mid-stream. �
�Cheryl. If you ever hear from Ty, you can let him know that I don’t want to have anything to do with him. That if he contacts me, or Nola, or even comes around here and sneezes, I’ll call the cops.”

  “Bitch,” she hissed.

  “Oh, totally,” I agreed. The sympathy was long gone. “I’m one trashy bitch, and your son is a fottuta testa di cazzo.” I put the phone down, wishing, as always, that I could slam it. “Did I say that right?” I asked Luca, and tried for a smile.

  He was having none of it. “Tell me right now about Ty and his mother,” he said as the bedroom door opened and Nola came bolting out again, much more appropriately dressed in little pink leggings and shirt, her hair in two short braids.

  “Better?” Eva pointed to my daughter’s new look. Nola was rummaging through the toy box, talking about finding a particular blue unicorn stuffy.

  “Yes, much better. Thank you.” I had to sit down, suddenly. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about this,” I said to the air around me. I realized that I was still in my PJs, no bra, hair in a knot. I had learned that Nola’s father was a criminal on the run before I’d even had a cup of coffee.

  Eva sat next to me at the table. “Jolie, I have to tell you something.” She looked a little nervous, but also oddly…righteous?

  “Oh, Jesus. What is it now?”

  “I called the SFPD anonymous tip line and gave them Ty’s name. I said I recognized him from the picture in the newspaper.” Eva sat up straight. “I felt it was my civic duty.”

  “Eva…” I groaned.

  “Jolie, I had to. This way you can stay out of it, but I knew it was him, so I told them. I didn’t give any information besides that, not your name or mine. I even walked down to the transit center and used the payphone. I know you have ties to him, but honey, he is not a good man.” She patted my hand.

  “I know that,” I told her. Luca made a little noise in his throat, and I turned to him. “I really do know that, and I’m done with him. Totally and completely—as completely as we can be,” I sighed, and looked at our daughter together. She was the one who would come out the loser because of her loser father.

  “I found it!” Nola crowed. She ran over to the table to show Mrs. Santa her unicorn. “Can we go now?” But I grabbed her onto my lap to hug her and kiss her as much as I could. I would try to fix this for her. To make it ok.

  “Mama!” she squeaked, and I loosened my arms. “Let go. Mrs. Santa and I have to go downstairs.”

  I looked at the door. Maybe it was all right now and no one was after us, but maybe not. “Will you walk with them?” I asked Luca. “And make sure you lock your door behind you!” I told Eva.

  Luca gave me another look, this time like he was getting furious. But he accompanied them after I gave Nola one more hug and kiss, and I quickly put on one of my old, ugly bras. With the expression that Luca had worn when he left my apartment, I didn’t feel like I’d be needing the fancy one.

  Yes, there had been no need for the lace bra. Luca was clearly not interested in sexy times with me; he still wore the same pissed-off expression when I let him back into my apartment.

  “Jolie—”

  “Ok, listen.” I told him all about what had been going on, starting with Ty giving out my name and address to the guys he owed money to and me trying to track him down. I talked about the marbles at the top of the stairs and the semen on my door. I told him all of it. And he got madder, and madder, and madder.

  “Are you serious?” Luca exploded. “This was all going on, and you didn’t feel the need to mention it to me? That someone was threatening you—”

  “I called the police,” I put in quickly. “They didn’t think it was a threat or anything really serious. Anyway, it’s all over, now. Now that Ty, um, did what he did. I’m sure he paid them back. Cheryl basically admitted that he robbed a bank and is on the lam. Everything is fine!” Even as I said it, I knew that it didn’t sound great.

  Luca just glared. “So you think that because the money was paid and no one is going to put biohazards on your door, it’s fine?”

  “Well—”

  “I can’t believe this, Jolie!” he exploded. “Criminals are harassing you, you got a second job to make ends meet, your parents are combusting, your former boyfriend is showing up at your apartment? And you told me none of it until your hand was forced.”

  “You don’t understand. I didn’t want you to get burdened by it. I just wanted us to have a fun, light relationship, without all this stupid…” I held up my hands.

  “Life, is that what you mean? You thought that I could exist for you in a little fantasy bubble without all the scary, hard reality of your life. How would you feel if I were in danger, and you didn’t tell me?”

  I didn’t know what to say to him. “No emotion, no crying in the bathroom for hours, right? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Luca rubbed his face. “I need to…I don’t know. I need to go take a breather.”

  Exactly. Fuck! This was exactly, exactly what I knew was going to happen. I got furious. “Exactly!” I yelled. “See? Now when you find out about all my problems, you freak out!”

  “That’s not why I’m freaking out!” he yelled back. “I’m not angry because you have problems, I angry because of how you responded to them. The way you responded to me! You think that I’m a shallow idiot who runs away, who would leave you when you needed me!”

  “No! I don’t think that!”

  But he was already shaking his head. “How did you put it? You thought that we could ‘bang for fun.’ I didn’t realize that was all I was to you. That’s all you thought I was good for.”

  “No…”

  But he was already gone.

  ∞

  “Just pick up the phone,” Eva urged me. “Send him an IM. Or a DM. Or even an email.”

  “I can’t.” I sighed. “I can’t unleash myself on him right now. I know myself too well to open that door. I won’t be able to send him just one text, or call just once, I’ll fill his phone.” More sighing. “I hurt his feelings and he needs a little breathing room. That was what he said.” Now I wiped under my eyes. “He threw my words back at me, what I said about the two of us b-a-n-g-i-n-g just for fun. I didn’t mean it! Well, maybe when I first said it, I was thinking about lemon squeezy and nothing else. Maybe I thought it would just that, but now it’s not,” I said confusedly, and then I had to stop, because of the tears.

  “Jolie, honey,” Eva said gently. “I don’t think it was ever about the banging.” She shook her head when I pointed at Nola, playing with her unicorn and the giant doll on the floor of Eva’s apartment. “She has no idea what that word means and I’m not going to start spelling. No, you liked Luca from the beginning.” Now she held up her hand. “Don’t give me that ‘friends’ mumbo-jumbo. You know what I mean.”

  I nodded. I did. I had been fooling myself right along. “I didn’t think I wanted a boyfriend.”

  “Maybe not any boyfriend, but you do want Luca.”

  I nodded again, miserable. “I do. I do want Luca.” I blew my nose. “This is what he said would happen. He said that he couldn’t imagine that emotions wouldn’t get involved, and that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted us to be friends. He said it, like, a million times. If I can’t have him as a boyfriend, then I wish I could still have him that way. I won’t try to b-a-n-g him anymore.” I didn’t care what Eva thought; I had to spell that in front of my daughter. “I just need him in my life. In Nola’s life.” In one single day, one morning, she’d lost her dumb father to some country without an extradition treaty and she’d lost Luca because of me, her dumb mother. The second loss was a whole lot worse for her.

  “I’m as bad as Ty,” I told Eva. “He got in trouble this last time by betting on horses, doubling his usual bet and losing it all. I double popped too, risking so much more than I ever should have. I got in way over my head instead of playing it safe. I thought I could have Luca as my friend, and as my…you know.”

 
Eva looked very sympathetic. She patted my hand, and poured me another cup of the coffee that I had been guzzling all morning. “Life is a gamble, Jolie.”

  “Yup. And I’m a serial loser.”

  The alarm on my phone sounded on the table next to my mug. It seemed unfair that I had to do laundry right now, when there should have been a national day of mourning, when all I wanted was to curl up on my couch with a never-ending stream of Katharine Hepburn movies to take my mind off Luca. “I’ll be right back,” I told Eva, and slid despondently out of my chair. Before I left for the laundry room, I gave Nola another kiss. She was trying to make the giant doll sit up and drink the tea nicely, not a care in the world.

  What was I going to do about Luca? Knowing that he was angry and upset felt like a gnawing ache deep inside me. I thought that I would give him a little time to take the edge of anger off, and then I would apologize like I had never apologized in my life. I hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings and I wasn’t underestimating him, like he thought I was. I couldn’t estimate him higher, actually. What he had said about wanting to rent a helicopter to get to me, to help me when I needed him—a clean, wet towel fell out of the washing machine and slapped on the muddy floor. Damn! I put it on the dirty pile.

  Nobody had ever really cared before how I had acted, or if they did, I didn’t pay attention. I had always run things myself, on my own, doing what I thought was right and not listening to people who told me different. That was how I had gotten through college, when my family seemed to think I should just stop making myself exhausted and quit that shit. It was how I had left my hometown and gotten my job at Starhurst, when everyone in my orbit had told me that trying to juggle teaching and a baby by myself would never work and that leaving home was a huge mistake. It had also led me to make super awesome decisions like staying with Ty, when even my stepfather had thought he was bad news and I should cut him loose.