Goody One Shoe

by Julie Frayn

  At the door to her apartment, Billie slowed. The morning sun slivered into the hall from an inch-wide crack between the door and the jamb. “Well, at least I didn’t crawl down the fire escape.”

  She eased the door open. At the creak of hinges, she cringed. She slid inside, her nerves on high alert, her eyes ping-ponging about her apartment. Her purse sat on the floor under the breakfast nook where she’d left it. Peg Leg lay on the window ledge in the sunshine, his eyes locked on her every movement, his tail doing its usual metronome swish.

  She did a quick recon. The apartment was in order, nothing missing. And no one inside. Except for the cat.

  She retrieved her wallet and keys, locked the door, and went to pay the irate cabbie.

  1993

  “GOODY TWO SHOES! Goody two shoes!”

  Billie cowered behind the trunk of the ancient maple and covered her crying eyes. Three boys and two girls, including Justine who had been her best friend until grade three, when fashion choices and religious leanings meant nothing, circled around the tree and taunted her with mangled lyrics to that song she hated so much. She shifted her hands to her ears to block their off-key voices. Why would she drink or smoke? She was only ten years old. Just because Justine let Ronald kiss her and touch her places his hands had no business being. Just because they stole their parents’ cigarettes and lit them behind the garbage bins at recess instead of playing soccer or hanging from the monkey bars like normal children, why did she have to follow suit? Why did that make her the target of their cruelty?

  Ronald smacked at her head on his way by, then yanked the pile of books and extra-credit work out from under her arm. Texts and paper landed in the dirt and strew across the grass. He grabbed the small ivory leather-bound book she kept with her at all times. “What’s this?” He flipped it over. At the sight of the cross on the cover, his eyes lit up. “Oh man, what are you, one of those Gee-hova’s witnesses or something?”

  Billie tried to snatch her bible back but he pulled it away.

  “No wonder you dress like that.” Another boy yanked on her plaid, pleated skirt. It was long and grey, with forest green stripes, not the red tartan mini that her former friend sported. Billie wore her hair long and drawn into a low ponytail. She had no bangs to curl over her forehead and glue into place with hairspray like Justine, and all the little clones who followed her around, did. Billie was all buttoned up in her thrift-store hand-me-downs, knee-socked, and penny-loafered. Cheap comfort and common sense. Justine was show, flash, colour. And money. Their friendship hadn’t survived the summer break before grade four started in the fall.

  Ronald held the bible above his head. “My dad says all you bible thumpers are a pain in the ass. You should keep your religion at church where it belongs.”

  She jumped for her bible, came down on a tree root and twisted her ankle. She landed on her knees in the dirt. Pain shot up her legs. With her hands on the ground, she stared at his red high-top Converse All Stars. “I do keep my religion at church.” She looked up, past his skinny jeans and neon, lime green T-shirt — all the new fashions her parents couldn’t afford to buy her. And she would never ask for anyway. “And I see you there every Sunday.”

  His face turned crimson. “I’m no bible thumper.” He brought the book down and hit her on the head with it.

  Justine grabbed his hand. “Stop it, Ronald. Teasing her is one thing. But no hitting.” She held out the bible. “Sorry, Billie.”

  Maybe some of the old Justine was still in there somewhere. Billie smiled up at her and reached for the book.

  Justine snatched it away. “Psych!” She held it above her head and laughed.

  The end-of-recess bell rang. Its sharp tone echoed off the surrounding homes and bounced back into Billie’s ears. Ronald grabbed the bible from Justine and ran toward the school. He tossed it into the air.

  Billie watched the sunlight catch the silver cross stamped on the cover. The book landed in a mangled heap in a puddle. She glared up at Justine.

  Justine bent down as if to help Billie get up, but instead waved her hand in Billie’s face and smirked. “Bye-bye, goody two shoes.” Justine turned and raced back to the school.

  Billie pushed herself up and sat with her back against the tree trunk. She wiped tears from her dusty cheeks and slapped dirt from her scraped knees. When she was certain all the kids had returned to class, she retrieved her books and papers. She plucked the bible from the puddle and wiped it on her skirt, tried to flatten the wet and stained pages. Tears dripped onto them, thwarting her efforts. She ran three blocks to home. She eased the door open and sneaked inside so she wouldn’t wake her father, who was on a night shift rotation.

  At four in the morning, she would hear the click of the door against the jamb, the clank of bullets emptying from his service revolver into the box of ammo, the scratch of his key in the lock of his gun safe. She never slept until he was home safe, tucked into his own bed.

  She peered into her parent’s bedroom. He was snoring under the covers. His badge and empty holster sat on the dresser next to the little wooden bowl he emptied his pockets into. She loved the sound of change and keys jangling with every step he took. The sound of the handcuffs tinkling against each other at his lower back where they were clipped, ready to snap on the wrists of evil people who dared commit crimes in his precinct.

  She closed her eyes and imagined cuffing Ronald and Justine together, their arms around that tree, faces smooshed into the ragged bark. She took her father’s gun and made them pay for how they treated her. They were evil to the core. She held the gun to Ronald’s temple until he peed his pants and cried like a baby, begging for his pitiful life. But she wouldn’t give him what he wanted. The weight of his dead body after one efficient shot to the brain dragged Justine to the ground with him. She deserved no mercy either. Three well-placed bullets to the abdomen made her bleed out slowly. Billie squatted and watched the life drain from Justine’s eyes. When she was gone and her stare was as blank as the space between her ears, Billie smiled on the inside.

  Her father snorted sleep from his nose and rolled onto his back. She pulled the door closed with a quiet click and tiptoed to the bathroom. She fetched a dry washcloth from the cupboard, opened her bible, and wiped dirt and water from each soiled page. She hummed and sang to herself.

  Jesus loves me! This I know,

  For the bible tells me so;

  Little ones to Him belong;

  They are weak, but He is strong.

  She paused, the washcloth poised over Leviticus 24:20. She was weak. She needed Jesus to hold her up. To show her the way.

  Eye for eye. Tooth for tooth.

  The words jumped from the page. That was God’s plan then, wasn’t it? Justice. Swift and in-kind.

  If only she were strong enough to deliver it.

  Bat Head

  NICK FRASER STOOD BETWEEN his court-appointed attorney and Todd’s court-appointed attorney.

  The old hag of a judge droned on and on about the impact of their little shoplifting spree. It was no big deal, just a few grab-and-runs in the mall. A victimless crime, a dare. Normal teenage bullshit. But apparently, bullshit was a criminal offense. Didn’t help that the old bat kept eyeing up their tats. Bitch was probably jealous. No one would want to see body ink on her flabby ass.

  His fucking old man wouldn’t even pop for a real lawyer. It’s not like he didn’t have the cash, he was a stock market trader for fuck’s sake. No, daddy had to teach his wayward son a lesson. What lesson was that, exactly? That his father was a cheap-ass bastard who would rather let his son go to jail than home?

  “I realize this is a first offense for these …” the judge looked at them over the rim of her reading glasses … “gentlemen.” She smirked and looked at the docket. “But I get a vibe that if we don’t nip their activities in the bud, soon they’ll be back in my courtroom for more serious offenses. So, as a message to you and your peers, I sentence Nick Fraser and Todd Williams to one month in ju
venile detention.”

  A month in juvey? For a few bucks worth of smokes and couple of leather wrist cuffs?

  Nick jerked his head at her. “We got no fucking peers, lady.”

  “You stupid little shit.” His father’s baritone boomed from behind him.

  Nick turned and smirked at his old man.

  He took a swing at his son. Nick bobbed and weaved, just like the old fart had shown him. Just like he did when he got arrested and his father went for his throat. He got the “no kid of mine” speech, and the “how do you think this makes your mother feel” talk. When Nick dismissed it all with a flip of his middle finger, his father laid hands on him.

  It hadn’t been the first time.

  The judge slammed her gavel down. “That’s enough.” She pointed her scraggly finger at Nick. “You just made it six weeks, young man.” She shook her head. “The apple clearly doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

  Thursday the Twenty-eighth

  BILLIE SHIFTED HER BUTT on the hard plastic subway seat. She scratched her red pen across the newspaper article, fixed poor grammar, corrected spelling. And altered the ending to ensure the bad guys got away with nothing and the legal system was on the ball for a change.

  This had become her new routine, her latest obsession. With each article she edited, each wrong she righted, each scumbag who got their not-so-happy ending, her mind wandered to Bruce. He didn’t only share Batman’s real name, he’d also swooped in when she needed him, then disappeared into the bustle of the city like the Dark Knight himself. She hadn’t seen him on the subway since their first encounter a few days before. Not because he didn’t ride the subway, she concluded. But because she hadn’t needed him.

  She didn’t need him to rescue her. Not in the damsel-in-distress kind of way. But she did long for rescue from her daily life. For some sanity and order in her world. Would his presence bring that? Could anyone bring her that?

  Every day she scanned the faces in the crowded cars, hoping to catch a glimpse of Bruce’s imperfect face and swarthy bulk. Even if he never spoke to her again, it didn’t matter. She could edit that part in. If only she could see him, verify his existence and prove he had spoken to her. Touched her. Prove he wasn’t a figment of her mental red pen.

  She flipped the newspaper page. Some underage petty thieves got away almost scot-free. First offense. Rich parents. Good lawyers. Only six weeks in juvenile detention.

  She tapped her pen against her lips. Sounded familiar. Like a certain band of high school thugs who rode the subway. Thugs who were nowhere to be seen the past couple of days.

  She scratched her pen across the page, sent the future crime bosses to adult prison, and made their parents pay fines. Hefty bloody fines.

  “Yeah, get ‘em before they go rogue for good.”

  She froze at the sound of the throaty bass, shifted her eyes until they focused on the black pants and shiny, fancy shoes. She drew her brows together. Those shoes didn’t match the rest of him. She raised her eyes. It was Bruce, all right.

  He sat beside her, nudged her with his shoulder. “You missed one.”

  “I — I’m sorry?”

  He pointed at the page. “Shouldn’t that be ‘further?’”

  She smiled. He was so cute, in a rough-and-tumble, don’t-mess-with-me kind of way. And so clueless. “It’s distance, so it’s ‘farther.’ If it was about time, or doing something to a greater degree, then it would be ‘further.’”

  He nodded. “Yeah, that’s why I have an assistant. She can fix all that stuff.” He bit his top lip with his bottom teeth. “Are you an editor? Like, for a living I mean?”

  She opened her mouth to say no, just a proofreader, but stopped. She had one client. A real one. She was an editor now, damn it. “Yes. Yes, I am. How about you? Assistants and fancy shoes? I figured you for more an outdoorsy type. Fireman maybe.”

  “Fireman was the dream. Or policeman. But then, you know, I hit puberty and all.” His laugh filled the subway car. “I worked construction for years, started as a labourer when I was just a kid in high school. Worked my way up the ladder, so to speak. Now I’m construction management. Traded in my steel toes for wing tips, my safety vest for a suit jacket. Not bad for a guy who barely scraped his way through high school and doesn’t know when farther is further. Or further is farther.”

  His smile was enormous. And the ease with which he threw it around enviable. She normally hid her smile behind her hand, behind a book. Or behind her mouth, more often smiling on the inside, unwilling to share her happiness, what little of it there was, with the big, ugly world. But his smile wasn’t a shield. It wasn’t a salve to be thinly spread or meted out in measured doses. It was just him. No pretense. No shame. No fear.

  What did that feel like?

  “So who do you edit? Any famous authors? Stephen King maybe? You do have a flair for gruesome justice.”

  Her cheeks burned. “I freelance. Only one client so far. An independent author.”

  “Freelance? You just ride the train for fun? Feed your desperate need for other people’s B.O. and the less-than-gentle nudging of asshole high school bullies?”

  “I work as a proofreader for a publishing house. I hope to be an editor there one day, but until that happens, the freelance thing seems like a good idea.” Katherine’s flesh would have to be dripping from her bones in the fires of hell before Billie ever got a shot at promotion. She drew the outline of horns on Katherine’s floating image and filled them in with red ink. And grinned on the inside.

  “You always sit in the same seat, in the same car, at the same time. Creature of habit?”

  “I’m not always in the same seat.” Her weak protest faded as she spoke it. The only time she sat elsewhere was when someone beat her to it.

  “Sorry, that wasn’t an insult.”

  Then why did it feel like he’d slapped her?

  He touched the skirt at her knee. “I find it comfortable. I like predictability. If I need you, I’ll always know where to find you.”

  The subway did its usual jerk and spasm. Bruce stood. “This is me. Meeting on the construction site.” He tipped his imaginary hat. “Catch ya on the flip side, Billie the editor.”

  Billie scribbled a red fedora on his head before he turned and the living zombies on the platform swallowed him whole. She rubbed her knee where his hand had been. He’d always know where to find her. Why would he want to do that?

  Thursday, June 4th

  “WHEN ARE YOU HAPPIEST?” Doc Kroft did that thing where she bored into Billie’s brain with her laser eyes and tried to extract truths that even Billie didn’t know existed.

  Billie grabbed a throw cushion and squeezed it into her belly. “When I’m running. Or editing. Or with Peg Leg.”

  “What about when you’re with other people?”

  “Not so much.” Bruce popped, uninvited, into Billie’s head.

  Doc pursed her lips. If she had a selfie stick, it would have been a perfect narcissistic pic for Facebook or Instagram. But, like Billie, Doc probably didn’t waste her time on so-called social media. What was the point of virtual friendships? Sounded more lonely and pitiful than no friends at all.

  “We need to fix that. You have to make some connections. Someone outside of your head doctor and the trainers at the gym.”

  “Oh, no worries there. I don’t talk to any of them.”

  Doc sighed.

  Billie stared at the purple paisley pillow, ran her fingers over the nap of the velvet, short and soft like little boxes that gold crosses come in. “There is someone. Sort of.”

  “Oh?” The doc leaned forward. “Tell me.”

  “A man I met on the subway.”

  Doc leaned back again, a satisfied grin on her face like she’d just finished a turkey dinner. “A man. Interesting.”

  Billie’s cheeks warmed. “Not that interesting. We’ve only spoken twice. I doubt he wants anything more than that.”

  “His name?”

  “B
ruce.”

  Doc scrunched her face. “That’s unfortunate.”

  Billie smiled. “It’s all right. He’s no Batman. For one thing, he’s real. And I bet his parents weren’t murdered when he was a kid. And he doesn’t live over a cave or dress in tights in his off hours.” At least, she didn’t think he did.

  Doc let an uncharacteristic laugh escape. “So, you only have his name?”

  “And what he does for a living. Construction management. He didn’t write his number on my palm or anything.”

  Doc nodded. “And what if he had?”

  Billie stared at the pillow. What if, indeed?

  Billie sauntered through the lobby of Doc Kroft’s office building, her mind affixed on Bruce’s face and sturdy frame. She imagined her hand against his cheek. His skin, like the finest tanned leather, soft yet thick, supple, and virile.

  She slowed as she neared the door. Her thoughts toyed with an erotic scenario that she’d never be able to complete. Lack of context. Zero experience. And two men on the sidewalk, standing beside a white minivan, distracted her.

  One of them wore polka dot pants and massive red shoes. The other was fitting a wig of spun neon-orange fibres over his balding head.

  Her vision blurred and then focused on the face of the tall one who was donning a rainbow wig. The pedophile clowns who, thanks to overzealous cops with no search warrant, got away with raping a young boy. The ones she punished with an edited sentence of penile dismemberment.

  She wanted to scream, call the cops. Do something, anything to put them away. To prevent them from ruining another child’s life. But she was riveted to the floor. All she could do was stab them in the crotch with an imaginary red pen, powerless to complete the act in real life.

  The rainbow-wigged one slapped the other on the back and laughed. They climbed into the van and pulled into traffic.

  Billie ran to the bathroom, pushed open a stall door, fell to her knees, and vomited her chicken Caesar wrap into the toilet. She called silently to God and apologized for her murderous intentions. She was going way over their unspoken agreed-to allotment of dark thoughts.