Leslie high-fived and knuckle bumped a table of young guys.
One of them said, “Fight the power.”
“Everybody thinks he's a scream,” Emily said.
“Does he always have a beard and wear a bra?”
“Yeah, and a thong in the summer. He's like Austin's human weather gauge. People say you can tell the temperature by what Leslie wears.”
This day, Leslie sported hot pink bellbottoms ringed with white flowers at the hem and a matching pink halter top with peep toe platforms. He wore a cropped zebra print coat.
“For a homeless guy he sure can dress up.”
“Yes. He must be resourceful.”
Where did Leslie keep his stash of costumes and signs?
“He's been in rehab, got beat up a couple of weeks ago. Says he was trying to convince some kids not to do drugs.”
“Yeah,” Lorelei snorted. “Good luck with that.”
“You know what they say, ‘Crack is whack.’”
“Don't make me gag.”
They watched Leslie work the room.
“I have a brother,” Lorelei said softly. She sipped her coffee and waited for a reaction to her casual announcement.
Emily tried to seem disinterested. “What's his name?”
“Noah. He's sick.”
“In what way?”
“Schizophrenic. When he's on his meds he does fine, but he needs somebody to make sure he takes them like he's supposed to.” She took another sip of coffee and paused to gather her words. “He ran away from home. But I guess when you're twenty-two you can't technically run away from home. My parents are tired of trying to take care of him. He was a drain on them. An embarrassment, I guess.”
“So, where is he now?”
“Who knows? I keep looking for him, but so far, no luck.”
“That why you came to Austin?”
“Yeah. He stays in the adult shelters. That makes it harder for me to find him. But he moves a lot. He's probably not here.” “We could ask Leslie if he's seen him. He knows about everybody.”
“Maybe. I don't know.”
“Have your parents filed a missing persons report?”
“I doubt it.”
“You don't talk to them?”
“No. They don't care about me either. Plus, they'd hate these,” she said pointing to her face.
There were probably plenty of parents who would reject their children over something as superficial as tattoos. Emily wondered if her parents would be like that. A tramp stamp or something she could easily hide would be one thing, but Barbara wouldn't be able to handle a facial tattoo. Emily was still considering this as they walked back to her house.
“So, what made you think Noah came to Austin?”
“It's logical. He likes music. It's on the circuit.”
“The circuit?”
“Yeah. Travelers go from Seattle all the way down to Miami, depending on the weather and stuff. Then they turn around and come back the other way. He's not here or I would have found him by now. I'm thinking he's already moved on to New Orleans. Austin's been great and all, but it's not like I can live with you forever.”
Lorelei let things hang a moment, but Emily didn't take the bait.
“So anyway,” the girl said. “Mardi Gras is coming up. Wanna go?”
“What?”
“Let's go to Mardi Gras.”
“And do what?”
“And do whatever.”
“I don't think so.”
“Couldn't hack it on the streets?”
“I'd do just fine.”
“Oh yeah, here.” She handed Emily her empty coffee cup. “Go over there and ask that guy for a dollar.”
“No way.”
“Chicken.”
“No. I'm not going to beg.”
“See. You couldn't make it.”
“I could too. I'm a bartender. I can get a job in any city.”
“But don't you see that what you do isn't all that different from what I do? What do you think tips are? You're still living off a stranger's spare change. You spange. You just don't call it that.”
“It's different. I work for it.”
“You don't think I work to get money? Don't you think standing on a sidewalk all day trading your dignity for pocket change is work?” She picked up a bottle in the road and smashed it on a rock.
This startled Emily, but she decided to ignore it. “Why are we having this conversation?” she asked.
“Because you're being hypocritical.”
“And you're being a little snot.”
Emily liked her better when she didn't talk so much.
“Look,” she said. “I know I can't stay with you forever. I appreciate the help, but it's time to vacate.”
Emily nodded and said nothing. She felt guilty at how relieved she was, but not guilty enough to offer to let her stay longer.
Barbara
SHE TOOK a little Zoloft. Fifty milligrams every day just to take the edge off. All her friends took something. Everybody did, right?
Barbara popped the little white pill into her mouth and washed it down with a swirl of wine. Who could blame her for ignoring that pesky little alcohol warning on the prescription bottle? If she followed all the darned instructions she'd never get to have a glass of wine or a cocktail. And sometimes she needed a drink more than the pharmaceutical.
Her therapist called it self-medicating. Her daughter called it better living through chemistry. Barbara called it survival.
She wandered back into the office, where Gerald was paying bills.
“So what's the damage this month?” she asked.
Gerald removed the reading glasses from his nose and rubbed the red spots where they had pressed him.
“We'll survive another month.”
She sipped her wine and nodded. No need to discuss their situation. Their life that had started as the typical American success story had ended up as the typical American financial disaster. In the beginning, they rode that big wave of money that washed over Austin during the tech boom. The city's nickname was Silicon Hills because of Dell, IBM, 3M, Motorola, Samsung, Texas Instruments and other companies that fed off the young energy of Austin. Gerald had been in software development in the middle of it all. Barbara had worked at a public relations firm.
They were flush. They bought a house. They bought stock. Emily arrived, so they bought a bigger house. For twenty years they had steadily increasing incomes, so they leveraged their future. A future they had never questioned would only get increasingly better.
Then the market soured, the tech bubble burst, and Gerald lost his job. They were left with a huge mortgage, three car payments and credit card debt that climbed each month.
Gerald was unemployed for nearly two years. A situation that devoured their meager savings and cut a gash in their marriage that Barbara was unsure would ever heal. They continued to wait for the real estate market to recover and prayed that their stock portfolio would rebound.
“So, we're okay? No need to tap the line of credit this month?” Barbara asked.
“No. No. We're good. Really.”
The job Gerald eventually landed was a step down in stature and pay. They discussed moving if he got a good out-of-state offer. But their house was worth half of what they had paid for it, so they kept holding on, hoping for the real estate market to recover. Barbara used to drive around collecting the white sale sheets out of the plastic tubes on her neighbors’ lawns. Asking prices kept declining. Barbara finally gave up and quit torturing herself.
Gerald said the recession hit Austin earlier than other parts of the country. Big boom. Big bust.
He pushed a button and the computer screen went black.
“I'm going to watch a movie. You game?” he asked.
“What movie?”
“Wall Street.”
“God, no. Thanks, but I'll pass. Why do you beat yourself up with that depressing stuff?”
“I don't know. Gues
s I like to think it will help me figure things out.”
“Phfffff.”
Sometimes Gerald puzzled her. They had both been downsized about the same time—a double whammy of bad luck. It seemed Gerald had taken the loss harder. Barbara immediately started freelancing and now had a dozen clients. No big accounts yet, but she was steadily increasing her customer base. It was a new phase for her, always on the scramble for the next job, the next injection of money to keep them afloat. She didn't like the stress, but somehow she seemed to thrive when there was more at stake.
But that wasn't Gerald. He was the slow and steady guy—the dependable, methodical worker who liked parameters and knowing what to expect. When he should have been fighting the hardest, he'd given up. Instead of looking for a job, he'd gone into a funk and started drinking. She'd made the mistake of forcing him out the door with his golf bag. He'd just gone to the country club (a contractual expense they couldn't easily shed) and spent money they didn't have at the club bar with equally miserable unemployed members. Even when he was home, he wasn't really present. He'd shut himself in the theater room until Barbara was sure he was going to develop a vitamin D deficiency. That was one habit he had yet to shake. He could shut himself up for hours in that dark room.
Emily had inherited some of Gerald's need for routine and solitude. Neither seemed to embrace change or challenge. Emily had been a mediocre student and her lackluster performance hadn't earned her any prizes in life.
Barbara heard the rumble of the surround sound and she felt sad and alone. It was hard being the one who worried and planned and pushed. No wonder she self-medicated.
She hauled herself up the stairs to Emily's room. She used the handrail to steady herself, but only once. Barbara flipped on the light in her daughter's room. The dresser glittered with costume jewelry and evaporated bottles of cheap perfume. The corkboard still held Emily's photography, strange things she thought deserved to be documented.
Barbara knew it was melancholy to comfort herself with her daughter's life, but she missed her. She missed all the little clues that meant her daughter was still a part of their home—headbands strewn around the house, long shiny hair in Barbara's brush. Her delicate wet footprints fading on the tile after a shower. Her laugh, like sunshine.
Sure, they'd had difficulties, but Barbara chose to dwell on the beautiful aspects of her daughter. Like labor, it was easy to forget the pain of having a disgruntled, rude teenager.
An ache gripped Barbara's chest like an invisible hand. All mothers know these hurting moments when your child burns so strong in your heart that you need them physically. She lay on the bed beside Emily's favorite stuffed animal. The toy had been dragged through the dirt in the park, thrown up on in the car, lost on the floor of the grocery and abandoned when Emily went to college.
“Hello, you old bear,” Barbara said. “Are you lonely up here all by yourself?” Miranda Panda didn't respond, so Barbara tipped her wine glass toward the creature's stitched mouth. “There now, how's that? All better?”
She'd never admit it, but Barbara mourned the days she hadn't been the one to take Emily to the park. They'd splurged on the very best daycare, the one that promised an enriched experience, but Barbara envied the women who got to spend their days with her daughter. She had missed so much of Emily's young life, and now that she was grown and gone, Barbara felt an acute sense of loss. She'd bought her things to make up for not being there for her, things to ease her own guilt. And where were those things now?
Barbara had been torn. She had wanted to work, and she'd felt an obligation to help keep up their lifestyle. The Bryces had grown accustomed to nice things and it never occurred to them to cut back. They simply worked harder.
That's what people did in the eighties and nineties. They embraced the pursuit of wealth. It was exciting and stressful in a good way. Everybody was competitive. Business was fun.
Then it all crashed and burned.
Being an adult was complicated and often not much fun. Every day brought a fresh difficulty. So, while it was frustrating to watch, Barbara found it hard to fault her daughter for being a reluctant adult.
Life is hard.
That's why Zoloft remained Barbara's best friend.
Lorelei
IT SUCKED to leave Emily's house, but Lorelei knew when to move on. She didn't want to burn her chances of ever crashing there again. Emily had developed that impatient look adults get when you've become a drag.
She set off on foot toward downtown on a main road. The van guy who had rescued her had driven it and she knew that path was a straight shot back to Shoal Creek. She crossed a big bridge into the city and stopped to look over the edge. While the water had receded, the corridor below the bridge was still forbidding.
Gnarls of trees amassed against pilings. Odd bits of humanity, clothes and garbage and yard art were twisted into the mix. All the squatting spots by the creek would still be underwater. She reassessed and headed toward campus. She needed to find a place to crash before dark.
Along the way she often stopped to consider some strange result of the storm. People were out everywhere, washing steps and righting muddy lawn furniture.
As she neared campus, she stopped to follow the source of laughter from an alley. In the closing light, she could make out a girl watching two guys chase something. They seemed to snare the small animal. They whooped with victory and stuffed the poor thing into a cardboard box.
She hoped it wasn't a kitten.
“Lorelei.” It was Fiona. “Oh, hey. You're still around.”
“Yeah.”
“You wanna come with us? We're going to hang out with some people at somebody's apartment.”
“Cool.”
“Come on.”
They all headed toward a bumper sticker-strewn old van leaning on the far side of the street. At their approach, a girl turned from the passenger seat. She spilled some liquid into her mouth from a giant beer can.
“Who's that?” she asked, waving her beer at the newcomer.
“Her? Oh, that's Lorelei,” Fiona said. “She's chill.”
Lorelei threw her pack in the back and crawled into the dark depths of the vehicle. It was dirty, what her mother would have called filthy. Fast-food wrappers and paper cups with liquid inside rolled around on the floor. A mangy dog that smelled like death slept in a corner. The others tumbled inside and slid the door shut, cutting off sunlight. It was stuffy and Lorelei began to sweat.
“That's Tweak,” Fiona said of one boy. He raised a beer can to her. “And this is Toby.” This one looked fresh off the farm, but there was something girly about him too. “And that's Malcolm driving, and that's his girl, Ajaicia.”
“How you doin, mon?” Malcolm said. Rasta. No dreads, but his grill was golden. His girlfriend ran her hands down his arm to show he was taken. She looked sort of like Elda, just not as pretty.
“Hey,” Ajaicia said, more friendly this time. “Oh my God, your tat is badass.”
“We're going to my place to hang,” Malcolm said. “You're welcome. Everybody welcome.” He was older. Lorelei gauged him to be in his thirties. What was he doing hanging out with street kids? He was either a social worker or a drug dealer. She bet drug dealer, but either way, a floor where she could sack out sounded fine for now. They would probably even scare up some food.
The animal scratched inside the box. She hoped they didn't intend to eat whatever was in there.
“Have you seen Mook or Elda or anybody from that group?” Lorelei asked Fiona as they bumped along on the hard van floor.
“No, man, they like, took off to Mook's mom's or something,” she said. “That's where he runs off to.”
“What about Freestyle and Minion?”
She scoffed. “What? Those losers. I mean Minion, he's okay. But Freestyle, he's a loser for sure. Crazy foster scare motherfucker.”
Freestyle had never mentioned that part of his background. That explained a lot.
They pulled into a rat
ty apartment complex with a faded sign that read Siesta Gardens. The once adobe-colored walls were streaked with rust leaked from the roof, giving the whole complex the appearance of melting. Empty liquor bottles and cigarette butts littered their way. Tiny faces with round hopeful eyes peeked from behind windows smudged with grime. Malcolm led their group past scarred doors. One was kicked in. The doorframe was splintered where a deadbolt had been.
Lorelei got the feeling this was going to be a flophouse. One step inside the apartment and she knew she was right.
Unlike a community house where things were marginally safe, a flophouse was anything but. These were lousy places where you could get drugs, robbed, laid, arrested, raped or worse. Lorelei knew she wouldn't be staying the night, but she decided to hang around for a while just to see who might arrive. It was surprising the people who showed up at a flophouse.
Before her eyes even adjusted to the darkness, Lorelei was hit with the smell of nicotine and stale beer. Kids were scattered around on an old couch, an armchair, the floor, about a dozen in all now that their group had arrived. A coffee table held an armada of beer cans. A few were stacked into a pyramid among overflowing ashtrays and empty plastic pop bottles.
A grossly thin guy in a wheelchair smoked a cigarette, and Lorelei could feel his eyes on her. It didn't take her long to surmise that Malcolm shared the apartment with him. Or maybe it was this guy's apartment and Malcolm was a squatter. She avoided the thin man's vulpine stare.
A round of applause went up when Tweak arrived with the box. Malcolm emerged from a back room with a giant cage. People grabbed beer cans and cleared the table. He set the cage on the table.
Everyone turned to look at the guy in the wheelchair, and that's when Lorelei noticed the snake wrapped around his arm. He uncoiled the redtail boa. Her brother's snake had had the same pattern that reminded her of chromosomes she had studied in science class. She was creeped out by how the pattern repeated through the reptile's eyes. Glass over yellow scales that made it look as if it could read your every thought. Her brother's snake had made her feel naked, like it could see her in a way impossible to others. She had been glad when the morbid thing slithered into the wilderness behind their house. She knew it wouldn't survive the winter.
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