Shaking out the Dead

by K M Cholewa

  Linda looked from the money to his face. He knew that it would be difficult for her to believe he had no ulterior motive. He shouldn’t have offered the ride.

  “No blowjob is this good,” she said.

  “It’s not about that,” Paris said.

  Linda took the money. She looked down the alley and then stepped toward Paris. She dropped to a knee and started in at his belt.

  “No,” Paris said, pulling her to her feet. “I just want to. . .”

  But what he wanted was not to want.

  

  Linda knew that Paris wasn’t looking for sex. He was trying to make amends. She wasn’t sure what he had done, whom he owed something to, and whether the debt was real or imagined. But she accepted what men might thrust upon her, surrogate for anger, love, or regret. Paris needed her to take the money and that much she would do. But she knew, too, that he wanted more. She knew something about wanting to be good, believing you are against all evidence, but knowing that you are not despite your best efforts. She felt sorry for Paris, but with this, she could not help him. She could accept the money but not the goodness. To accept the goodness would force her to open that space that receives and the price of that was just too great. To be open and grow empty again, it was a journey she had taken too many times. One trip was not worth the other. She stepped toward Paris and reached for his belt.

  

  Linda pressed her mouth into his, and Paris found himself unable to pull away. It was the touch. The body heat. The place to disappear. Linda drowned out his goodness with a quick and firm caress of his balls. Paris drowned out Linda’s name by closing his eyes. Linda backed against the Dumpster for support, dragging Paris forward with her. She pulled his dick out from his pants. She stroked it until it stiffened, undid her pants and pushed them down, and then shoved Paris inside of her.

  Paris put his hands on the rim of the Dumpster behind her head. Linda’s breath was in his ear. He drew back his head and fucked her. He fucked her for Tatum — that’s how it felt — like it was, at last, what Tatum wanted, something sad and broken, and not his own desires. His eyes opened to a moonless sky, and he surrendered to oblivion. To thrust and sensation. He and Linda were both alone. Alone together. He looked to Linda’s face, her profile against the black metal rim. She opened her eyes too. They landed on his for just a moment but then refocused over his shoulder.

  “No,” she cried.

  Paris didn’t know what hit him. All he knew was that he was on the ground, his pants at his thighs. His head screamed with pain. Linda screamed too and hiked up her pants. A swift kick landed in his stomach, and he rolled to his side, reaching for the sides of his jeans.

  “Get out of here,” Linda was yelling, and Paris wasn’t sure to whom. He made it to his hands and knees and then up to his feet. But he was too late. Linda’s husband had her by the back of the neck, and he dragged her into the kitchen, kicking out the brick, the door locking behind him. Paris heard Linda scream again.

  Paris threw his body at the door. He pounded it. Then he turned and ran down the alley, slightly bent at the gut. He tried to holler “help,” but it came out as only breath. He stumbled as he ran, one hand steadying himself on the brick backs of buildings. A drumbeat pounded inside of his head. Run. Then he heard a crash, a sound like an air conditioner hitting concrete from a three-story drop. A gunshot. He reached the corner and rounded the block. Street lamps cast soft pools of light on the empty sidewalks and lit up the floating particulate. Paris straightened his body as he ran. When he reached the Deluxe’s door, he was pushed aside by two men racing out. Headlights from a car pulled up to the curb.

  Paris burst through the door and moved swiftly through the casino, afraid of what he might find. But the casino was empty. As he approached the diner, he could see her, Linda, held by the hair by her husband. In his other hand, he held the gun. Blair lay on the threshold between the two rooms, holding his shoulder, the blood seeping out between his fingers. The retards were under the table holding each other, cheek to cheek, eyes slammed closed and crying like children.

  White light exploded in Paris’s head.

  “Motherfucker,” Paris said, breaking past the threshold.

  Paris’s blood ran cold. His boots could kick without mercy. His fists could pound one after the other. Don’t stop. Don’t stop until it’s dead.

  “Shoot me,” Paris said, jabbing with his thumb at his own chest. “Shoot me, you motherfucker.”

  Paris didn’t know he had blood running down his head and off his lip. He didn’t know he had four inches on Linda’s husband and that the veins of his biceps stood out blue and were pumped fat with adrenaline. He didn’t know the force of his body walking the length between the booths and the counter was menace and threat and fearlessness, a single-focused rage and a self-disregard that made it so that no man could stop him. A gun might. Maybe a gun. Only a gun. Linda’s husband’s eyes were full of fear and feral threat, but they lost their focus on Paris for just a second, and in that second, Linda pushed at his ribs and spun, freeing herself just as Paris reached them and lunged for her husband’s hand.

  But the gun fired first.

  45

  

  Geneva spent the night at John’s for the first time. She dozed, rather than slept, which left her with a slightly buzzed, surreal feeling at six a.m. She sat up on the edge of the bed and stretched. John gently took her wrist, letting her slip from his calloused grasp as she rose. She smiled over her shoulder at him. As she drove home, she thought about the empty black lacquer box in the passenger seat. Perhaps someday she would fill it with Voodoo’s ashes. Perhaps, it would be filled with her own. God wasn’t pressure at all, she thought, driving in the diffused morning light. It just felt that way when you were holding on.

  She parked in front of the duplex instead of in the garage. She would be going out later. She craved the new and decided a new sofa was the place to start. Tatum’s car was not out front, she noticed. Out early, she wondered, or late?

  The Russian sage bloomed in the haze. Geneva took her time heading up the walk. The plums, rose and orange, were beginning to drop from the tree. In the matter of a week, they would litter the front lawn. Given her neglect, Geneva was surprised anything at all had survived. As she took stock, she decided that when Tatum got home, she’d knock on her door and invite her on the shopping expedition. Together they could scheme a way to bring Rachael back, at least for a visit. They could put their rough patch behind them. Geneva opened the front door. She entered the foyer, and life turned into a different place.

  Paris sat on the floor outside her door. He was bruised and stitched up. Part of his head was shaved, revealing the sutures. His eyes were wild, wet and red. He was a man betrayed by God.

  “Oh, no,” Geneva said, for whatever it was, it was real, and it was awful.

  “Oh, no,” she said again. She went to Paris and knelt before him. He needed to be held. He needed not to be touched.

  “She’s dead,” he said.

  “Tatum?” Geneva said, astonished.

  Paris dropped his head into his hands.

  Geneva assumed suicide. But then what had happened to Paris?

  “What happened to you?” she said.

  “She was shot,” Paris said, and Geneva’s breath stopped. “I went for his arm,” he said, “but the gun went off first. I think. I don’t know. Oh, fucking god. Oh, fucking god.”

  “Someone shot Tatum?” Geneva said.

  His silence answered.

  “At the diner?”

  He nodded and shook.

  “Oh, Paris,” Geneva said. “The police came?”

  His body convulsed, and his head managed to nod, yes.

  Geneva reached for him, but he shrank from her grasp.

  “C’mon,” she said, pulling him up by the arm.

  Paris allowed himself to be dragged inside, but he couldn’t hold himself up for long. He dropped
to his knees again inside the door. Geneva knelt down before him and put a hand to each side of his face.

  “Who’s got her?” Geneva said. “Where is she?”

  “I don’t know,” Paris said. “The police came and an ambulance came. They took me,” he said. “The police and the hospital.”

  Geneva placed a thumb at the side of each of his eyes and made him look at her.

  “Paris, are you in any trouble?”

  “No,” he said, and he started to shake again.

  

  Paris had told the police everything. Linda. The sex in the alley. Tatum. They broke up. She was his ex-girlfriend. The police asked why his ex-girlfriend would be coming to the diner at two o’clock in the morning.

  Paris had sat on the examination table in the hospital unable to speak. He knew there could be only one reason Tatum had come. To say, c’mere. To call him closer, again. I don’t blame you, it’s me, she would say. Let me try again. Teach me to love.

  There she would be, beautiful and alive, and meaning every word. She was there, behind his closed eyes as he sat on the gurney in his bloodstained T-shirt with his head throbbing. He could see her waiting for his answer.

  And there he would be, fresh from the alley where he false-drowned in false feelings.

  “I can’t,” he would have to tell her. “Don’t you get it?” He would be unkind. “I can’t teach you because I don’t know how.” And there they would be in their helplessness.

  Her eyes would water to him. She’d drop to her knees on the other side of the counter, her heart in her hand. Take it, she would say and then brace for the blow. But he couldn’t let her be there on her knees. He would climb across the counter and go to his knees too, so they both would be there, humbled, helpless, but together.

  “Why do you think she’d be coming to the diner at two a.m.?” the officer repeated.

  “We were still in love,” Paris said.

  Paris didn’t know what happened to Linda or her husband. As soon as the gun fired, he knew there was someone in the diner behind him. There had been no expectation, only reflex, as he had whipped around. The bullet passed through Tatum’s head. The thought was on her face. The heart in her hand. It was stopped in time.

  His legs buckled as hers did. Paris went down as though the bullet had hit him, too. Then he crawled on his hands and knees, screaming. His head spun, and he was nauseous.

  Feet stomped past him. Solid man strides in work boots. Linda, dragged past him in her discount huaraches. Tatum’s blood was splattered on Blair’s cheek and shirt. The retarded girls crawled out from under their table and came up behind Paris.

  “I can call 911,” the white one said, “because this is an emergency.”

  She went to the phone behind the counter, and the cross-eyed Indian one crouched behind Paris. She dropped her forehead to the nape of his neck. When the white one got back, she crouched by Paris too. Two more feet appeared, tennis shoes. Paris looked up. The alcoholic looked down. Her body twitched, and tears took jagged paths down leathered cheeks.

  The recollection was like a baseball bat beating against the inside of his head. He grabbed the hair he still had, and he made pained animal sounds on Geneva’s living room floor.

  

  Geneva stood, taking Paris’s wrists with her. She held his arms above his head. He sagged like a rag doll.

  “Paris,” Geneva said. “Have the police gone to her apartment?”

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  “I’m going over there,” she said, “to get Rachael’s number. Stay here.”

  Geneva released his arms and went to her kitchen. She pulled a black coffee mug from the shelf and dumped a number of keys onto her counter. She picked through them quickly, finding the right one. She paused at Paris again on her way out. She squatted in front of him.

  “You will be okay, Paris.”

  “She’s gone.”

  “She is. But Paris, look at me.”

  He lifted his broken face to her.

  “You will be okay,” she said again.

  Geneva left Paris and turned the key in the door across the hall. She stepped into Tatum’s apartment as though there were someone there to disturb. She paused and closed her eyes. Tatum was dead. It happens so fast. Our hearts shut to loved ones, and we expect them to be there waiting when we are ready to open them up again. It is a costly arrogance. Geneva collected herself. She’d been holding on for Paris’s sake, and it wasn’t time to break down yet.

  She opened her eyes. It was then she took in the state of the apartment. It had been ransacked, but neatly so. The sofa remained. The chair and the plants too. But the odds and ends were gone. Geneva walked toward the kitchen. The cupboards were open and empty. On the surface of the counter was a smattering of cutouts from photographs, her own image among them. There were also two big books, photo albums, and a third book lying open and bound in green leather.

  Geneva knew what the green book was, history carried like a cross. Beside the Book, a crumpled piece of paper caught Geneva’s eye. A torn out page. Geneva uncrumpled it and smoothed it on the counter. Despite the wrinkles, the detail was astonishing. It was Tatum. Paris had drawn it. This she knew. A baby picture of Rachael and Rachael’s name was absorbed into the drawing toward the bottom of the page. Geneva found it difficult to look at. Too personal. She wondered why it had been torn out but thought the more important question might be when?

  She tucked the page back in the Book. No good could come from Paris seeing this and making bad meaning out of something they had no way of understanding. She stepped to the other side of the counter and slipped the Book into a drawer.

  Cause and effect. It’s useless to look.

  Geneva turned her attention to the phone and saw a piece of paper tacked there. It said “Rachael,” and a phone number was listed. Below the piece of paper, the answering machine blinked.

  Geneva hit the button.

  “Yeah, it’s Lee. I think I can work this out for you,” he said. “I can bring Rachael next week for five days. I have business in Colorado. I’ll fly there from Montana.”

  Geneva heard the front door to the building open and footsteps in the foyer. She reached out and hit delete and then ripped the paper off the wall, cramming it into a pocket. There was a knock on the door she had left partially open. A rap, really, more so than a knock. A warning rather than a question.

  The cop was a woman. It was sexist, Geneva knew, but she liked the girl ones even less than the boys.

  “I’m Tatum’s friend,” Geneva said, before being asked a thing, “and I own this building. And I have power of attorney,” she threw in, remembering it on the spot. Tatum had signed it over to her during chemo. “Where is she?”

  “Coroner’s office,” the cop said. She had a long, blonde ponytail she was too old for and wore no makeup. “We need to contact next of kin. Do you know how we might reach them?”

  “Yes.”

  “We’d appreciate it if you could share that.”

  The cop was behaving decently but was executing the standard hands-on-hips posture. She looked around the room. They always look around the room.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Geneva said, pulling the cop’s eyes to her.

  “In situations like this, we like to send over an officer.”

  “They live in Illinois.”

  “You don’t want to do this in a phone call,” the officer said.

  Geneva considered it. She didn’t know all the details of the crime and doubted she could squeeze them out of the cop. She wouldn’t be able to answer the inevitable questions. But she was concerned about Rachael and the manner in which the information reached her.

  The hairs on Geneva’s arms prickled. Irrational facts are facts nonetheless, and Geneva realized a big one. There wasn’t time to articulate it to herself fully, but she knew this was the plate. She was up to bat.

  “Is there a way for me t
o know when the family has been contacted?” she said. “There’s a child involved, and I need to know right away.”

  “Can’t make promises,” the cop said, “but I’ll see what can be done.”

  Geneva steered the cop out of the apartment and into the hall. She provided her with Lee’s name and relationship to Tatum. She read her the phone number off the piece of paper in her pocket. The officer left, and Geneva’s door opened. Paris entered the hall. He looked terrible, his face destroyed by tears. He leaned in the doorframe of Tatum’s apartment. His eyes narrowed, taking in the state of it.

  “Was she moving?” Paris said.

  “I don’t know,” Geneva said, coming up behind him. “We’ve been kind of disconnected since Ralph died. I’ve been disconnected.”

  Paris looked at her for a long moment and then back into the apartment.

  “She has topless pictures,” he said.

  “She had me take them before the surgery,” Geneva said. “She showed them to you?”

  “No. I looked through her things once,” he said. “I found them.”

  “Did you want them?”

  “No,” Paris said softly.

  He walked in, eyes slipping slowly over what remained. At the kitchen counter, he pushed around the paper dolls with a finger.

  “Rachael’s pictures,” he said.

  “Where are you living, Paris?” Geneva said. “Where did you go?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Paris said.

  “Do you need a place to stay?”

  Paris shook his head.

  “Stay,” Geneva said.

  Paris shook his head again. He pushed the cutouts farther apart. Tatum. Geneva. Himself. Vincent. Rachael and each of her parents. They lay there like puzzle pieces.

  “For a moment,” Paris said, “it seemed like everything was how it’s supposed to be.”