Black Box

by Cassia Leo

  ‘No.’ Just meth-induced heart palpitations.

  He waits a couple of minutes for me to catch my breath, then, without a single word spoken, he grabs the handle of my suitcase and begins to drag it toward Massachusetts Avenue. I keep my head down and press my lips together to keep them warm – and to hide my smile.

  We cross Mass Ave, passing a pizza place, and continue half a block before we turn right into a small side street that looks more like an alley. My heart is racing again. I shake my head, taking quick, shallow breaths to try to stave off a panic attack.

  ‘Where are you taking me?’ My voice is muffled by the fear flooding every vessel in my body.

  ‘What?’ he says, looking over his shoulder as he continues down the tiny street toward an empty parking lot.

  ‘Where are we?’ I shriek.

  He stops and stares at me. ‘Are you all right? I’m just taking you to this jazz club.’ He points at the brick-faced building to a sign that reads: Wally’s Café. ‘See?’

  I draw in a long breath of freezing cold air, then I nod my head and continue after him. ‘Isn’t it a bit early to go to a jazz club?’

  ‘I know the owner. If he’s not there, the manager will be there. They don’t officially open for another eight hours, but there’s pretty much always someone here. They’ll let us hang out and keep warm as long as we want.’

  ‘How do you know the owner? Are you related to him or something?’

  ‘No, Wally’s is sort of a training ground for local musicians – particularly music students. It’s one of the oldest and best jazz clubs in Boston and, if we stick around till six, you’ll hear some of the best live music you’ve ever heard; guaranteed. Tonight is blues night.’

  As he approaches the door to Wally’s, I don’t bother telling him I’ve never actually heard live music before.

  He has to knock a few times before someone finally shouts through the door, ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It’s Crush!’ he shouts back. ‘And it’s colder than a Yankee’s heart out here. Open up!’

  The door swings open, revealing a tall, thin black man in a blue and white plaid dress shirt and gray chinos. ‘Get your butt in here, boy. You’re letting in the snow.’

  Crush quickly pulls the suitcases and the guitar case into the club and I smile at the man as he holds the door for me to enter. Crush rolls the luggage into a corner near the entrance of the dark club, dusting off the snow before he turns to me.

  ‘Leroy, this is my friend Mikki. Mikki, this is Leroy. He manages the club.’

  I nod at Leroy and he scrunches up his eyebrows. ‘Nice to meet you too, young lady.’

  I hate talking to strangers. I’m not sure how Crush has been able to break through that social anxiety, but Leroy is making me nervous. I feel as if he’s expecting me to say something clever or funny, just because I walked in with Crush.

  ‘Sorry. I . . . it’s nice to meet you.’ I hold out my hand to him.

  He pauses for a moment as he looks at the tattoos on my fingers, then he smiles as he shakes my hand. ‘Y’all can go hang out at the bar. Jimmy’s coming in about an hour. He’ll fix y’all a drink. I’m going to get this damn schedule worked out. Third Monday this month I got a cancellation.’

  The club is tiny and very dark, but it’s warm; and not just because the heat is working. Something about this place feels . . . safe.

  We sit down on some stools at the bar, which runs almost the entire length of the narrow room. I take off my coat and lay it across the stool next to me and Crush does the same.

  ‘When Jimmy gets here, he’ll make you the best damn martini you’ve ever had.’

  ‘This place has the best music and the best martinis? Sounds like heaven.’

  ‘It is,’ he replies proudly.

  We sit in silence for a moment; just long enough for the dark anxiety to start building inside me again. I begin thinking of how I almost freaked out in the alley a few minutes ago and wondering when my craziness is going to be too much for him to handle.

  The alley.

  Don’t think about it, the voice inside my head shouts. But, on any given day, my thoughts vary between a leaky faucet and a fire-hose of negativity, drowning me or just annoying the hell out of me until I’m forced to do something to make them stop.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Crush asks, and suddenly I notice that he’s holding a crushed penny in his hand; actually, he’s rubbing the penny between his thumb and forefinger.

  ‘Do you think saving someone’s life cancels out taking another person’s life?’

  He looks horrified by this question. ‘What? What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean exactly what I said. If you kill someone, can you erase that sin by saving someone else’s life?’

  He drops the penny onto the bar. ‘Why would you ask me that?’ I wait for him to pick up the penny before I reply.

  ‘Look, it’s just a question. No need to freak out. I didn’t kill anyone.’

  ‘That’s not what I was implying.’ He shakes his head. ‘Just excuse the minor spaz-out. The answer to your question is no. I don’t think saving someone’s life cancels out killing someone else.’

  He casts his eyes downward after he says this; a sure sign that he’s lying or he’s hiding something. ‘Have you ever killed anyone?’

  The book in Grandpa Hugh’s hands is so old it looks like it could be from dinosaur times. When he told me he had a surprise for me in his study, I thought he was gonna give me a new guitar or a BB gun. Or maybe even those boxing gloves he promised me – the ones signed by Muhammad Ali. I guess a book isn’t so bad, if it’s new. I don’t want some old book written in weird words I can’t understand. I’m only ten years old. And I haven’t even read that book of poems Grandpa got me last year.

  ‘Take it,’ Grandpa says, holding the book out to me, his knotty, wrinkled hands shaking with the weight of the book. ‘Come on, son.’

  I take the small book from his hands and I’m surprised that the mint-green cloth covering the book is soft. Usually the cloth on hardcover books is rough. The book feels loose, like Jell-O. It just wants to fall apart or fall out of my hands. It can’t decide. Just like I can’t decide if I should tell Grandpa I’d rather take a trip to his workshop in the basement to see his gun collection. That would be more fun then trying to hold this book together.

  ‘Black Box,’ I say, reading the title on the cover. ‘Is this a kids’ story?’

  ‘It’s okay for smart kids like you. It’s about war and family and . . . well, you’ll just have to read it to find out. You’ll like it, I hope.’

  Grandpa leans forward in his giant leather chair, as if he’s waiting for me to open the book and start reading. So I do. And I’m really surprised when I find I can’t stop. I don’t know how long I’ve been reading, but my arms start to cramp up from holding the book in front of me. Taking a seat on the sofa across from Grandpa’s chair, I continue reading.

  Herman always spoke highly of his mother in the company of others, but as soon as he was alone with her, he became a tyrant, throwing one tantrum after another. When Polly attempted to discipline her six-year-old son, he only retaliated with more violence and vile language. He was a very bad boy with a heart as black as soot. That’s what his mother always told him. Finally, Polly decided she had no choice but to place Herman in an orphanage.

  Herman cried and acted out for weeks, but he soon realized that he didn’t want to be thrown away again. And the nuns refused to adhere to Herman’s outrage. Within months, he was as mild-mannered as the young girls who had been born in the orphanage. For ten years, he ate his vegetables and wasted not even a crumb of bread. He said good morning and good evening and never forgot a please or thank you. He helped the nuns with the wash and the milking of their one cow and four goats. He did well in his classes and always offered to read aloud during weekly mass.

  But deep inside the soft curves of his soul, Herman knew that the prickly tyrant he left in Winchester with Polly
was waiting.

  Now sixteen years old, Herman decided it was time for him to take up a hobby or involve himself in some great cause; something that would keep the tyrant at bay. On the morning of December fifth, Herman pulled on his gray coat and rain boots and set off for a long walk to the town square to enlist in the United States Army.

  ‘How could his mom do that to him?’ I asked Grandpa. ‘Is that legal?’

  Grandpa lets out a raspy laugh then he sits back in his big chair and folds his hands over his belly. The leather patches on the elbows of his maroon sweater squeak a little against the leather arms of the chair.

  ‘It was legal then and it’s still legal now, son, so you’d better behave,’ he replies with a wink.

  I smile as I glance at the page again. ‘Is Herman going to war?’

  ‘He sure is, but there’s lots more story that comes before that. You just keep reading and tell me what you think when you’re done.’

  I pull the red ribbon bookmark between the pages to mark my place, then I close the book. ‘Why is it called Black Box?’

  ‘You’ll find that out too, but I’ll give you a hint. There’s a little blackness inside all of us.’

  There’s a little blackness inside all of us.

  ‘Don’t worry, son, not all stories have happy endings; but that doesn’t mean they’re not worth the read.’

  Staring into Mikki’s green eyes, I swear I’m looking into my own. She’s hiding something from me that I haven’t quite figured out yet, but I’m positive it has to do with her trip to L.A. There has to be a reason someone as skittish as her decided to have coffee with me rather than go home when her flight was canceled. And there’s definitely a reason greater than curiosity for the question she just asked me.

  If it weren’t her asking, this would be the point in our conversation where I begin to suspect her of being an undercover cop or journalist. But it is Mikki. And something about this girl tells me she’s not here to find out what happened in a dark parking lot three years ago.

  ‘That’s a trick question,’ I reply. ‘If I tell you I’ve never killed anyone, then you’ll think I’m a good guy and you’ll stay, because even though it’s not a very exciting answer, it means you’re safe. But if I tell you I’ve killed someone, you may find it intriguing or frightening. Either way, intrigued or scared, you’ll probably try to get the fuck away from me, and I don’t think I’m ready for that.’

  She smiles as she looks down at her fingers, which she’s tapping on the surface of the bar. ‘That’s a real suave way to dodge the question. It also sounds like something a murderer would say.’

  ‘Really?’

  She looks up and meets my gaze again. ‘Who did you kill?’

  I pause for a moment as I try to figure out where she’s going with this conversation. Then it hits me. ‘Do you want to die?’

  ‘What?’ she asks, shaking her head far too adamantly. ‘That’s . . . that’s a stupid question.’

  ‘Why is it a stupid question?’

  ‘Because,’ she snaps at me. ‘It’s just stupid. I don’t want to die.’

  She continues to look down at her hands, which are still trembling as she fidgets with her silver thumb-ring. I get an urge to grab her hand again, to stop the trembling and fidgeting, but I don’t.

  ‘I’m sorry. I guess that was kind of a stupid question. I was just wondering why a pretty girl like you would hang out with me when you could be at home in your warm bed with your pjs on. Or out with your friends . . . or your boyfriend.’

  She finally chuckles. ‘So, accusing me of wanting to die is your way of avoiding my question or is it just a really messed-up way of asking me if I have a boyfriend?’

  ‘It’s just me being a total dick. And . . . do you have a boyfriend?’

  ‘No.’ She looks up and fixes me with a steely glare. ‘Most guys don’t appreciate a girl who’s crazy and also doesn’t put out.’

  I’m not quite sure how to respond to this statement. It’s probably best to change the subject or reach for a joke. ‘Yeah, I know how you feel. Most girls don’t appreciate a guy who can cite Shakespeare and won’t put out. Actually, I think that’s a line from Macbeth.’

  Her glare melts into a reluctant smile. ‘You’re not a total dick.’

  ‘Still not putting out.’

  Jimmy, the bartender, arrives a few minutes later and Mikki retreats into herself again in his presence. Jimmy’s a cool guy, like me, but he can seem a bit intimidating. At six-foot-three with nineteen-inch biceps, he doesn’t have to work hard to keep the rowdy customers in check. But I want Mikki to feel relaxed. And I can see, by the way she’s fidgeting with her thumb-ring and her hair, not adding a single word to our conversation, that she’s pretty uncomfortable.

  ‘You want to head out of here? We can go get a drink somewhere else.’

  She looks up at me, slightly confused. ‘Why would we go somewhere else? We haven’t even finished our first drink yet.’

  I nod and ask Jimmy to get another round of dirty martinis ready. ‘How do you like that martini?’

  She picks up the martini glass and guzzles down the rest of the drink, leaving the olive at the bottom. ‘Delicious.’ She grabs the other glass that Jimmy just set down in front of her and takes another long swig. ‘Definitely the best martini I’ve ever had in Boston.’

  ‘Have you ever had a martini in Boston?’ I ask, then I guzzle the rest of my first martini so I can keep up with her.

  ‘Not nice, young lady.’ Jimmy chides her and she lifts her martini glass to him.

  ‘Still the best,’ she declares, then she finishes martini number two.

  Jimmy throws me a brief glance that probably means, Where’d you find this one? or, Am I gonna have to eighty-six her at eleven a.m.?

  ‘Maybe you should eat a little something before you transform into a walking dirty martini. All you had was half a muffin.’

  ‘The bottom,’ she clarifies, looking at Jimmy. ‘I’m not hungry.’

  ‘I make a pretty mean green olive and maraschino cherry kabob,’ I reply, and Jimmy lifts the condiment tray onto the bar.

  I grab a toothpick and stack two olives and two cherries, then I hold it out to her. Her face looks a little gray as she shoots my concoction a look of disgust.

  ‘I said I’m not hungry. You eat it.’

  I pop the toothpick into my mouth and pull it out clean. The bitter brine of the olives hits me first, then the cloying sweetness of the cherries. I take my first chew and it all explodes into a squishy mess in my mouth.

  ‘That’s disgusting,’ she remarks.

  I gulp down the rest of my shit-kabob and Jimmy shakes his head as he sets a glass of ice water on the bar for me to wash it down. ‘Yeah, but it got you to stop jonesin’ for a martini for two minutes.’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘I’m more of a beer girl, anyway.’

  ‘You and I are going to get along very well.’

  ‘I thought we were already getting along pretty well.’

  I successfully manage to get her to slow her downward slide into Crunksville by asking Jimmy to switch us to tap beer, which he cuts with a little club soda. Then I keep her talking to keep her mouth busy. Soon, three hours have passed and we’ve only had three more beers. Unfortunately, with the lack of food, she’s looking pretty loose as she leans over the bar with the side of her head propped up on her fist.

  ‘And that’s the tragic story of why my dad gave Bradley away when I was six.’

  She’s just spent the past twenty minutes telling me the story of her dog Bradley Snickers, a chocolate Labrador Retriever. The only pet she ever had.

  ‘You took your dog for a walk on thin ice to see if it would hold you both?’

  ‘I’m not saying it wasn’t a stupid thing to do, but I was only six years old. I think my dad may have overreacted just a little.’ She guzzles the dregs of beer in her glass and looks up at me, her eyes unfocused and a bit teary. ‘I loved that fucking dog. It was the only
thing I ever loved. I would never have purposely hurt him.’ I reach up to brush a piece of hair away from her eyes and she smacks my hand away. ‘Don’t touch me. I didn’t say you could touch me!’

  ‘Sorry. I – I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t have to be sorry, just don’t do it.’ She chuckles a little after she says this. ‘That’s what my mom used to say to me when I got in trouble and I tried to apologize for being bad. She’d say, “Don’t apologize; just don’t do it.” Like it’s that easy to always do the right thing.’

  ‘Mikki?’

  ‘What?’ she snaps at me as she slides her empty beer glass away so she can rest her head on top of her arms.

  ‘Where are you staying tonight?’

  She heaves a deep sigh as she closes her eyes. ‘Don’t know. Right here seems just fine.’

  Jimmy raises his eyebrows as he pretends to be busy popping the seeds out of the lemon wedges he just cut. I can’t help but watch her face with a bit of awe. Even with her black hair, her lip ring, and the tattoos on her fingers, she looks so sweet and innocent. I feel strangely protective of her, like I should tell Jimmy to buzz off. She can spend the night wherever she wants. Can’t you see she’s broken?

  I can tell by the shiny bit of drool accumulating at the corner of her mouth that she’s already beginning to fall asleep. I take a risk and reach for her. Gently grasping her arm, I give it an easy shake. She doesn’t flinch this time.

  She groans softly and her eyelids flutter open. ‘Sorry. I didn’t sleep last night.’

  ‘Maybe we should get you a room so you can get some rest.’

  She pushes herself up from the bar and blinks a few times. ‘If you try anything I’ll kill you,’ she mutters, reaching for her purse. ‘And I don’t mean that figuratively. I will actually murder you. I have nothing to lose.’

  ‘Not if I kill you first.’

  Rina lies back on my bed and holds up the piece of paper I just handed her. She reads the poem silently and I watch her; silent on the outside and screaming on the inside: She hates it. I take a couple of deep breaths to keep from hyperventilating. I’ve never shared my poems with anyone.

  Finally, she smiles and lets the paper fall from her fingers and float down onto her chest. ‘Wow . . . Is that what your first kiss felt like? Cause mine was nowhere near as romantic as that.’

  ‘So . . . you liked it?’

  She laughs as she sits up. ‘Are you kidding me? That was amazing. Do you have more?’

  ‘No,’ I reply quickly and she looks confused. ‘I mean, nothing that’s ready to be seen.’

  ‘That’s cool. So . . . the guy in that poem . . . was that . . . Brad?’

  ‘No.’ I snatch the paper off the bed. ‘He wasn’t my first kiss.’

  ‘No, he was your first asshole. There’ll be plenty more of those. At least, that’s what my mom says.’

  I fold the piece of paper, where I poured my most intimate thoughts yesterday, and tuck it into the top drawer of my nightstand. ‘I’d rather not talk about Brad.’

  Reaching into the back of the drawer, I retrieve an amber bottle of pills. I spill one of the green pills into the palm of my hand, then I grab the glass of water from the top of my nightstand and guzzle it down. Rina doesn’t stare at me while I do this. This is normal behavior to her. She’s seen me popping pills since the day we met on the first day of school six weeks ago. Her mom pops pills too, but for different reasons than I do.

  ‘Hey, I have an idea.’ Rina jumps off the bed and spins around to look me in the eye. ‘You should submit your poems to the newsletter committee.’

  ‘Hell no! I almost passed out just from showing them to you. I’d die of mortification if anyone else read them.’

  ‘But it’s so good! You can’t keep that to yourself. That’s not fair to the rest of the world.’

  I shake my head as I grab my empty glass off the nightstand and head for the bedroom door. ‘No way. End of discussion.’ I open the door, opening my mouth to ask her if she wants anything to drink, then I see my mom at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Mikki, have you seen Rina? Her mom just called and said she doesn’t know where she is. She’s on her way here.’

  ‘Haven’t seen her,’ I blurt, then I slam the bedroom door shut. ‘Your mom’s on her way,’ I whisper frantically.

  Just then, the doorbell rings and Rina grabs fistfuls of her long red hair. ‘Oh, shit! What do I do?’