by Sara Hosey
Later, after I met Corinne, I told her that story and she said, “Ohjesuschrist it was him.”
“Who?”
“What’d he look like?”
“The guy who tried to take Angel?”
“Yeah, yeah, what did he look like?” she asked again, waving her hand impatiently.
“I dunno. White guy, blond hair. Kinda built. Ugly tats.”
“It was him.”
“Who? Not …?”
“Yeah. Looking for me, I bet. Great. So, he knows I’m in the park.”
“We don’t know for sure it was him.”
“Yes, we do. Why would he want Angel? But that’s just exactly something he would do, though. And then brag about it later. Stealing some kid’s dog.”
“Bad dude,” I said.
“You got that right.”
Chapter 13
Corinne.
It was July 6th that I met her. It was drizzly and gray and Angel and I had taken shelter under one of the unused railroad bridges.
We had just arrived at the bridge and I figured maybe I’d pick up a bit, seeing as we might be spending some time there. That’s what I did sometimes, trying to do my part to keep the park clean and all. I’d found some great stuff that way too, like a ring with a pearl on it and a pocketbook, which was probably ripped off and then dumped—there was no cash, but it had a comb and a lipstick and a roll of mints. I liked having those things for some reason, so I kept them stowed. I found a plastic lawn chair that I kept covered with branches in one of my spots and took out only now and then, a dog collar I used for Angel, and the cord that served as her leash.
I had also found more than one gun, which was pretty nuts. The first one scared me. I was walking along, looking at the ground and the sun glinted off something under a bush, catching my eye. I stopped and bent down to investigate. At first I thought it was a toy pistol but its weight in my hand told me otherwise. I got nervous and put it right back down again. I just kept moving, thinking someone was watching me or would come back for it and would track me down. Later, I thought maybe I should have put it on the main path because it might have been used in a crime and the cops should have it. But then I was afraid some kid would come across it and get hurt. Or that if I moved it, I’d leave fingerprints, implicating myself in a murder or something.
The second gun I found, well, that one scared me too, but it was after that thing with the creep and the knife, so I took it and buried it in a special spot, because by then I was thinking that you never know when you might need a gun. I wasn’t about to tote it around with me—way too risky if I got picked up by the cops or if someone harassed me and got it away from me. But I figured it was better for me to know where it was than to just leave it lying around.
So, that was just my way: I would poke around, pick up, check things out. That day, under the bridge, I was collecting beer bottles, thinking about getting the deposit for them later, feeling all authentically homeless, when I saw a red backpack sitting on top of a pile of leaves just beyond the bridge. It was left unzipped, so it kind of gaped at me. I imagined that was what Alice must’ve felt like when the cake said “Eat Me.”
“Hmmm,” I said aloud. Angel, of course, bounded over, happy and curious, and stuck her nose in the bag.
I walked over and gave her a gentle shove with my knee and peeked inside. In a glance, I could tell it was a get-gone bag, run-away-in-a-hurry stuff: a bottle of Coke and what looked like some clothes—underpants, socks, a T-shirt. Wrapped in the T-shirt was a big, serious-looking kitchen knife. I crouched down and unzipped the front pocket. There was a toothbrush and toothpaste, a bottle of Advil, and two other label-less prescription drug bottles, a tube of some cosmetic cream, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, and, in an even smaller inner pocket, some smashed bills.
Whoever’d left it hadn’t gone far.
I stood up and looked around, but I didn’t see anybody. I totally wanted to take it. My first thought was, like, what a great find. But I didn’t really need any of that stuff, except for maybe the money, and there was a part of me that would feel like crap for ripping off somebody who might actually need it.
“What are you, the Parks Department?”
I spun, startled. Angel, who had lost interest as soon as she determined there was nothing edible in the bag, had been off sniffing around under the bridge. She looked up and barked once sharply. But she wasn’t afraid. She came leaping over to my side and barked again, but the hair on her spine didn’t shoot up, and she didn’t growl.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” It was a girl, tall and skinny, and a little older than me. She was still about twenty feet away and had her eyebrows up, as if to ask if it would be okay to come closer. “You made a good choice, there,” she said. “I didn’t want to have to kick your ass.”
I just stared at her.
She approached and Angel went tentatively toward her and they met around halfway. The girl was good with dogs: she bent down and let Angel sniff the back of her hand.
“Hey, doggie …” She slowly reached to pet Angel on the side of her neck. “Hey, doggie,” she said again.
She was a white girl, super pale. One side of her face was covered by her dirty blond hair, which was in what looked like braids but were now becoming dreads. I generally hate white girls who have dreadlocks. But I felt myself leaning toward her. I was drawn to her. Her hair seemed to suit her somehow. And she knew how to act around a dog.
I also noticed, right away, that she looked freshly beaten up. She had a black eye and a bruised and swollen cheek. One side of her face was so swollen, in fact, that it didn’t look real, all pink and blue and shiny. It looked like movie makeup or something. And there was another bruise peeking out from under the big scarf she was wearing. The scarf itself was a little strange for the weather, but then she was dressed dramatically: short shorts and a tiny tank, platform sneakers and the big scarf.
“Great dog,” she said, looking up at me.
I nodded and walked over to them.
“I’m Corinne.”
I smiled at her.
“So …?” she asked, looking at me, kind of laughing. “Do you talk or …?”
“Oh,” I croaked. “Sorry. I’m … Brenda.” I tried to smile again. My voice sounded strange to me.
“Relax,” Corinne said, standing up. “I’m not, like, a narc or anything. You live over here?”
I shook my head no. “I move around.” I didn’t get out much more than a whisper.
“What?”
“I move around,” I said, a little more loudly.
“Oh. Me too.” She nodded to where her backpack sat on the pile of leaves. “That’s my stuff.”
“I know.” I added quickly, “I wasn’t gonna take it.”
“I know.” She shrugged. “I was watching you. I heard you coming and hid. I was cursing myself for not grabbing the bag. But why wouldn’t you just take it?”
I thought for a minute. “What do I need someone else’s underpants for?”
“Ha,” she said. “You never know. Sell them?”
I made a face.
“Sometimes you gotta hustle in this world, sister.”
That made me laugh a little. “I guess.”
“For real, though,” she said. Her voice was low and gravelly. She had a way of talking that made everything funny, or almost funny. Like if she wasn’t completely joking, she was almost joking. “There must be something wrong with you. Why didn’t you just take it and look inside later?”
“I don’t need to steal from anybody.” I was maybe a little too emphatic. I wondered for a moment if I had forgotten how to act around other people. Everything I said was coming out too soft or too loud, too fierce or too timid. I was out of practice.
“Okay, there, calm it down. Just asking.”
“I just meant
, you know, I’m doing okay is all.”
“Oh yeah?” She snorted. “Then you’re doing better than I am.”
Despite the bruises, she was really pretty. Beautiful, even. Thinking back, I know that one of the things that made Corinne so attractive was that she always seemed like someone who was exactly in the right place, wherever she was. She was always where she belonged. The way she dressed, the way she moved, the way she talked. She seemed completely at ease.
“What happened to you?” I ventured.
Before answering, she reached into her back pocket and took out a crumpled pack of cigarettes, gingerly sliding one out. Then she took a few steps over to her backpack and picked out the lighter, dropping it back into the bag’s gaping mouth after she lit the cigarette.
She inhaled and looked me in the face. “Got my ass kicked. Got my ass kicked and took off.” She winced as she blew smoke out of the side of her mouth.
“Why? In the park? Who kicked your ass?”
She shook her head and smiled. “No, not in the park. At home.” She exhaled and added dryly, “He just really loves me.”
“Ouch.” I looked at the ground.
“Ouch is right.” She smirked. “What’s your excuse?”
“Me?” I looked up and grinned back. “Nobody loves me. So, I’m doing okay.”
“You look a little worn out, if you ask me.”
“You shoulda seen me before.” She smiled at that. Her teeth were big and dazzling.
I smiled back, but with my mouth closed. The girl seemed okay. Actually, to be honest, I was more comfortable than I’d been in a long time. Like, my time in the park had left me feeling, I don’t know, maybe less scared in general. Or maybe it was just that I hadn’t had a real conversation since the last time I saw Lizette. Maybe I missed people more than I realized. Whatever it was, I found myself laughing with this funny girl with her dumb hair and talking more than I had in a long time.
I slid down to sit with my back against the base of the bridge. Angel trotted over and nudged me, looking for some scratches. I let her knock my elbow up so that she could sit with my arm around her, scratching her chest.
Corinne came over and sat with us. She smoked with one hand, used the other to pick up leaves, crumple them and flick them away.
“So, you’re into the Ramones?” She nodded at my T-shirt.
I nodded to confirm this. “Do you like them too?”
“I don’t think I ever heard them.”
I wanted to say, “Of course you have,” and to sing to her, “Rock-rock Rockaway Beach …” or “I wanna be sedated …” but I didn’t.
“So …?” she drawled. “Like, what are you? New wave or gutter punk or what?”
I shrugged, but she waited for me to answer. “I guess I’m a skater?”
“No way.” She looked pleasantly surprised. “That’s cool. Can you actually skate or do you just like the fashion?”
It was my turn to make a face. “Of course I can. My board is just stowed right now.”
“Yeah, I guess it would be hard to skate around here,” Corinne said, surveying the muddy paths.
I nodded.
“So, what, you’re like, urban camping?”
I smiled. I liked that one. I nodded.
“So, you’re an urban-camping, skater-slash-gutter-punk, like, anarchist-type?”
“What’s a gutter punk?”
“Oh, you know. A tourist. Homeless for the weekend, then back to dad’s split-level in Jersey. In it for the story, that kind of thing.”
“Huh. I don’t think I know any of those.”
“Sure you do. Shoot—” Corinne took a drag on the cigarette. “I’m not so far off that myself. Want a cigarette?”
“No thanks. You know, those things are really bad for you.”
She made a face of mock horror. “Really? I’d been doing this for my health.” She flicked some ash, got back to business. “So, why’d you run away?”
I shrugged.
“That bad?” she asked, watching me.
I looked at her.
“What—a stepfather?”
A chill ran down my spine. Who was this girl, who seemed to know so much so fast?
“Brother,” I said, quietly, looking at my hands, one on each knee. “A stepbrother.”
“Yikes.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Yeah.” Corinne sighed, took a deep drag of her cigarette. “Yeah.” We sat there for a minute. Then I leaned down and kissed Angel on the snout, started nuzzling her and petting her. “I’ve got a mom,” Corinne said after a while. “She’s cool. I can go back to her. And I will. But not yet. He knows where she lives. He’d find me there.”
“Where’s your mom live?”
“Jersey. Split-level. Ha. But it’s not really like that. She’s got money, she’s got boyfriends, she’s got cars, she’s got problems. You know? Problems.” She rolled her eyes. “But I could call her, I guess. She might come pick me up.” She dragged on the little stub of cigarette. “She’d be pissed, though. There’s a whole lot of … you know …” She made a little propeller motion with her hand in the air. “She doesn’t … approve.” She looked off, into the distance, as though imagining the reunion and then her shoulders visibly dropped and she sighed and said, quietly, “Fuck.”
I sat and waited.
“It’s nothing,” she sighed again, looking a little hopeless and a lot tired.
“How long you been in the park?”
“Since Saturday night. Or really early in the morning Sunday. So, just since yesterday,” she added, when it was clear I had no idea what day of the week it was. “How about you?”
I smiled to myself. “A long time.”
She widened her eyes. That seemed to confirm it for her: I was, clearly, insane. “What? Like since 1989 or something?”
“No, no, just, a month or so. Since May thirty-first.”
“So, what’ve you been doing for money since May?”
“I brought a lot of gear with me,” I explained. Corinne lit a third cigarette; she was lighting each off the one that came before, like it was somehow important to keep each ember alive, like getting through that pack was a chore she had to complete before we could move on. “And I do a little begging when I need to.”
“Bet the dog helps out a lot.”
“I guess. I don’t know.”
“For real, though. People will give you more money if you have a cute dog. Although that dog,” she scrunched up her face and pointed the cigarette at Angel, who was snoozing at my side, breathing heavily but with one eye open, “isn’t exactly what I’d call cute. No offense or anything. I mean, she’s … appealing somehow. And she’s tough looking. That tail, though.” Corinne grimaced.
“I think she’s cute.” I patted Angel’s side. “I think you’re cute,” I reassured her.
“Well, she is your dog,” Corinne said. “Face only a mother could love and all that. You bring her with you?”
“No. We sorta found each other in the park.” I patted her even more vigorously, which she took to be a sign that it was time to play. She stood up, licked my face, put her paw on my thigh.
“That’s cool.” For the second time, I saw her drift away, her face almost going slack as she thought about something, somewhere, else. “I have a dog too.”
“Oh yeah?” I pushed Angel’s paw off my leg and pushed on her butt to get her to sit. “Relax,” I told her. She sat, put her paw back on my thigh, stood up again. I surrendered and she maneuvered her way in so that she was standing with her front legs inside my crossed legs, breathing right in my face. “Ugh,” I complained, but I put an arm around her.
“I left him behind, though. I guess I shoulda taken him with me. Then we could both have dogs.” She gave Angel a half-hearted pat. “I’m kinda worried abo
ut him. The dog, I mean. Prince. He’s named after the singer. You know?”
I did, vaguely, so I nodded. “What are you worried about?”
“My boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend. He’s the kind of jerk who, you know, would take it out on the dog. You know, to get to me? He’s that kind of bad news.”
“That sucks,” I said a little lamely, a pit in my stomach. I did know that kind of bad news; she didn’t have to tell me.
“Yeah. Or … I don’t know. That’s the worst-case scenario. I guess best-case scenario is that he just neglects him. And that’s no good either.”
“Can you go back and get him?”
She snorted. “I don’t know. No.” She waved a hand over her face, as if to say, do you have eyes? She let out a sigh. “I mean,” she said, dragging on the cigarette and then looking up and blowing the smoke into the sky. “You see, if I go back there, one of two things are gonna happen.”
I waited.
“He’d kill me. Like, literally murder me. Or,” she continued to look up and away, brought the cigarette to her lips, inhaled and then blew three smoke rings, slowly, casually, before continuing, “or, he’d be really sorry and we’d get back together. And then he might change. For real, really change. Maybe we could work things out and all that. And then maybe things would be better for a couple of weeks or months or whatever. And then he’d kill me.” She finally brought her eyes back down. They were filled with tears, but she didn’t cry. I had never met someone who was so honest, just like that, right out the gate. I wasn’t even sure how to respond.
“I guess you can’t go back there then,” I said finally.
“I guess not.”
She rubbed her hand over her face and eyes, crying “argh!” and laughing. “Drama, drama, drama! I’m okay. For real, I’m okay. Whatever, you know.” She forced a laugh. “But listen girl—Brenda—if that’s your real name,” and she laughed again, a throaty chuckle and I wondered how she knew it wasn’t, “you don’t have anything to eat, do you? Because I am star-ar-arving. Since you’re like, a veteran homeless person and all. You got anything? Anything at all?”
