Clover talked about her job, and her mom, and a little bit about Denny. After about fifteen minutes, though, Clover found herself running out of things to say to Sylvia. The television was still on, and Sylvia’s attention kept being drawn to The People’s Court. Clover finally picked up the remote and clicked it off.
“Thanks,” Sylvia said. “That was too distracting.”
“How’s Norman?” Clover dived right in.
“Norman? My brother?” Sylvia squinted her curiosity at Clover. “He’s okay, I guess. Why?”
“Was he in Sacramento last week?”
“Norman? My brother? I don’t think so. Why?”
“Is he here?”
“Norman? My brother?” Sylvia didn’t seem to be getting the message. “No, he lives with his slut.” She started applying a second coat to her right hand.
“So he could have gone to Sacramento without you knowing.”
Sylvia shrugged, a frown on her face. “What’s it to you?” she asked without looking up.
“Can we go see him?”
Sylvia stuck the brush back in the bottle and looked up at Clover. “Norman? My brother?”
Clover nodded.
“Why would you want to go see him? What’s this about? You didn’t come to see me after all, did you? You came to get information on my brother.”
“I need to talk to him,” Clover said. “Coming to see you was the bonus.”
“Sure.”
“Can we?”
“Can we what?”
“Go see him.”
“Yeah, sure, someday.”
“Now.”
“This better be important, Clover, because you’re starting to hurt my feelings.”
“It really is important, and I’m really in a hurry. I promise you that in a few days, when everything is settled, I’ll come by and we’ll go have lunch. I’ll show you my apartment. We’ll go to a movie or something.”
“Really? Don’t say that if you don’t mean it, because I really like you. I’ve always liked you.”
“I like you too. I do mean it. I didn’t know how much I’ve missed you until I saw you.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Clover said it and she meant it. She would like to see more of Sylvia. Sylvia could be fun, mostly because she could say things like “he’s living with his slut,” without blinking an eyelash. Saying something like that would never occur to Clover in a million years.
“Okay. Let me put my shoes on.” Sylvia screwed the top back on the peanut butter, tested the fresh toenail polish, found it satisfactory, carefully slid her feet into sandals, grabbed her purse and said, “It’s not far from here. Want to walk?”
“Sure.”
Clover was happy to be out in the fresh air. She didn’t know what she was going to say when she got face to face with Norman, but she figured she’d blurt something out. She’d think of something. For now, it was nice to just walk with Sylvia on a late summer afternoon.
“I’m thinking of moving to Hollywood,” Sylvia said.
“Hollywood? That’s not a very nice place.”
“Better than this dump.”
“What would you do in Hollywood?”
“Marry well,” Sylvia said, then gave a harsh bark of a laugh. “Don’t you ever feel like living here is going to keep you down? Don’t you wonder if you’ll be working at the donut shop all your life? Don’t you want to see some of the world? I do, and I’m afraid that if I don’t make a drastic move, that I never will. I’ll marry some slob because it’ll get me out of my parents’ house and into one of my own and then I’ll have a pack of kids and my body will be shot to shit and I’ll have baby puke on me all the time and my life will be ruined.”
Clover was not surprised to hear this kind of talk from Sylvia. Sylvia had always been discontented, even when a child, but the harsh take on her future was startling. Clover had not looked at her life in that way, nor did she want to. Clover was more of a day-by-day type of person, and only rarely did she think that was perhaps not the best way to maximize her potential. But Hollywood?
“I could move to Hollywood and become a high-priced call girl,” Sylvia went on, “but already I’m getting too old to do that. And I’d have to lose a ton of weight.” She kicked at a plastic car some kid had left on the sidewalk. “But that’s how you meet the rich and powerful.”
“You might meet them that way, but you aren’t going to marry them that way.”
“I could marry a porn mogul,” Sylvia said. “They’re not so picky.”
Sylvia’s self-esteem had taken a shocking and drastic nosedive since they had graduated from high school. Maybe getting out of West Wheaton would be a good thing for her, Clover thought. But maybe she ought to be steered toward a healthier place. “How about Seattle?” she said. “Or maybe you could go over to Davis or something and go back to school?”
“What about you? Why aren’t you in Seattle or in Davis?”
“I’ve thought about it. Right now I’m seeing a guy–”
Sylvia put her hand out and they stopped walking. “So tell me, Clover, does this guy of yours have a job?”
Clover smiled, looked at her feet, shook her head.
“Yeah. That’s what I thought. Does he have a car?”
Clover shook her head again, then looked up at Sylvia.
“Exactly what I’m talking about, girl. You and me, if we don’t escape this rat hole, we’re going to be stuck with six screaming kids and a man who visits occasionally, just long enough to knock us up. Then he’s out of there, leaving no money behind. We’ve got to make our escape before it’s too late. It might already be too late for you. You’re probably already knocked up.”
Clover knew it could be true. She never missed a birth-control pill, but she also knew that they were not fail-safe.
“You’re probably right,” she said. “I’m going to give it some thought.”
“We could be roomies. We could get an apartment together, say in Beverly Hills.”
“What about San Francisco? Or Portland, Oregon?”
“Ick. Cold. Rainy. Foggy. Let’s go where the beautiful people are. Venice Beach.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“It could be great,” Sylvia said, and there was a little lilt in her step after that, as if talking about the reality of it made it automatically happen. “I think I’ll start my diet.”
Clover nodded and they kept walking, past the nicer of the low-rent neighborhood houses, to a ratty area of town, where fences leaned, dogs barked, porches sagged, and screen doors hung half off their hinges.
“Here we are,” Sylvia said. “The coke whore’s lair.”
They clomped up the front step, avoiding the big hole in the porch, and Sylvia opened the front door. “Hello?” she called. “Christine, are you here? Norman?”
The inside was dark and stank like moldy produce. The living room looked tossed, but that’s probably the way it always looked. Empty wrappers from cookies, cakes, and other sweets were thrown in a pile in the corner along with a half dozen broken children’s toys. There was a speckled mirror square on the table with a piece of a fast-food drink straw laying across it, and empty beer bottles on the nasty, stained and littered carpet. The couch was a horrid green, covered with what looked like laundry.
“Jeez, what a dump,” Sylvia said, and started folding the things on the couch. It wasn’t laundry: it was a tangle of sheets, afghans, blankets and old bedspreads. All old, all torn, all stained. Clover grabbed the end of a wrecked yellow chenille bedspread and helped Sylvia fold it. “Norman, are you here?” she yelled again, then went into the kitchen while Clover folded a couple of blankets, and came out with a cardboard box. She started throwing trash into it.
Just as they were getting the place looking better, the toilet flushed, and the two girls looked at each other. Someone was here. The door opened, and a skinny, bare-chested Norman lurched through the door into the living room. His eyes were vacant and his b
eard was at least three days long.
“You’re thrashed,” Sylvia said to him.
“Hey, sis,” he said, and landed on the newly folded stack of linens on the couch, sliding it into disarray.
“You wanted to see him?” Sylvia said to Clover. “There he is, in all his drugged-out glory.” She threw more beer cans into the box in disgust.
“What?” he said, and reached for a beer can, shook it and threw it at Sylvia when he found it empty. She picked it up from the floor and put it into the box.
Clover saw the raw needle marks in the crooks of his elbows, and her stomach took a turn. “How do you get the money to do this to yourself?” she asked before she could stop herself.
Norman ratcheted up a wily smile. “Friends in high places,” he said. “Hey. Where’s Christine?”
“Where are Christine’s kids?” Sylvia asked. “They live here in this rat hole with you two creeps? I’m calling Child Protective Services.”
Sylvia dropped the box and disappeared into the back, presumably to check the bedrooms for children, sick or dead or worse.
“Been on the train lately?” Clover asked.
Norman was busy running his finger over the surface of the mirror tile. “What’s it to you?”
“Nothing. Just saw your name on the train roster, from Sacramento to Bonita the other day, and thought you ought to know that somebody is about to hang you out to dry.” It was a bold move, but Clover had nothing to lose.
Norman’s head snapped up and he fixed her with a cold stare for as long as he could maintain it, and then he blinked, stretched the muscles of his face and went back to scouring the mirror for errant grains of cocaine, which he rubbed on his gums.
“Big prison time, Norman,” Clover said, “killing a guy for hire.”
“Shut the fuck up,” he said. “You don’t know anything about it.”
“I know enough. I know you killed that guy, beat him up. Look at your knuckles.”
Norman looked at the back of his hands like he’d never seen them before. They were skinned and bruised.
“And you got enough money for it to drug yourself all the way to hell. Somebody’s going to jail for that, you know, and it isn’t going to be the person who hired you, unless you tell who that was.”
“Nobody knows.”
“Hell, Norman, even I know, and I’m nobody. Wait until the police get hold of the train’s passenger list.”
“You shittin’ me?”
Clover shook her head slowly.
“Fuck me,” he said softly. Then he stood up, grabbed a shirt from the floor and put it on. “I gotta get out of here.”
“What’d he pay you?”
“Shut up.”
“Just tell me, Norman, and I won’t say anything to anybody. If they sniff out your involvement, they’ll have to do it by themselves.”
Norman buttoned the two buttons that were on his shirt, and ran his hand over the front of it. He dipped his fingers into the front pocket, and pulled out a tiny plastic bag full of white powder. “Ha,” he said. “There you are, my pretty.”
“Tell me, Norman,” Clover knew she was beginning to whine. “Innocent guys are going to get blamed for what you did.”
“Cry over it,” he said, and disappeared back into the bathroom.
Clover followed him, and watched in fascinated horror as Norman put a rubber tube around his arm and tried to slap up a vein. He gave up on one arm and tried the other.
Then he cooked up the smack in a spoon over a candle stub on the window ledge and sucked it into a syringe he kept on top of the medicine cabinet.
“Was it somebody from Fletcher? Somebody from Golim? Who the hell was it, Norman?” she was yelling at him by the time he found a not-so-recently-used vein in his foot and poked the needle in. “Deputy Travis? The railroad guys?”
“Milo Grimes,” Norman sighed as the plunger went in and his head fell back against the filthy window next to the toilet. “Paid me good. And I got proof.”
Clover turned around and bumped into Sylvia who had been watching over her shoulder. “Jesus fucking Christ,” she said, then burst into tears and ran out of the house.
Clover caught her and got her to stop a block away. She tried to comfort Sylvia, but Sylvia would not be comforted. She was hurt and angry and scared and heartbroken to see her brother like that, and there wasn’t much Clover could say or do that would help her through the experience.
“Let’s go back and make sure he’s okay,” Clover said. “Maybe we could get him into bed or something. Tidy the place up a bit.”
“I don’t want to go back there,” she said. “I’ve got to talk to my folks. We’ve got to get him into treatment or something. He’s going to die! See what I mean, Clover? We’ve got to get out of here. You and me, we’ve got to escape before this place takes us down with it.”
“I’m going back,” Clover said. “I’m going to make sure he’s all right. C’mon. Come with me.”
With slow coaxing, Sylvia eventually took a step back toward the house, and then another, and a few minutes later, they were walking in the front door.
But it was too late for Norman. He was dead on the toilet, saliva dripping in a long stream from his chin to his chest, the needle still stuck in his foot. Clover went to the neighbor’s to call 9-1-1 while Sylvia stood in the living room and screamed.
~ ~ ~
Denny got out of the pickup truck, waved his thank-you to the Mexican farmer, then walked down past the path to Yorktown, all the way to the county motor pool. He thought about going down to check on Sly and York, but he didn’t have the stomach for it. Those two guys were losing it, and Denny had to stay focused if he was going to survive the night.
The motor pool was only a couple of blocks away, and there was a place in the chain link fence that a skinny guy like Denny could shimmy through. Used to be when it rained at night, Denny and Sly would bundle up York and walk him up to the motor pool, where they’d all three get a good dry night’s sleep in one of the county vans or trucks. But it had been a long time since they’d done that. Now they just threw tarps over themselves and dug little trenches around their sleeping blankets so the runoff wouldn’t soak them.
They got soaked anyway. Good thing they were where they were. They’d never survive up in Seattle or someplace like that where it rained a lot. Or the Midwest, where the climate was always out to kill ya.
Denny made it through the fence. The motor pool had already closed for the night, so all he had to do was find an unlocked truck. It wasn’t hard. The county guys thought that the place was secure because there was a fence around it. They hardly ever locked the trucks, and sometimes they even left the keys in the ignition.
Denny climbed up into a big pickup truck and with teeth and his pocket knife, opened the stiff plastic that enclosed his new light and its recharging cord. Then he plugged the cord into the cigarette lighter. He didn’t know how long it would take to charge; probably not long.
It was a good time to take a nap. The pain pills he’d taken earlier were making it hard for him to keep his head up, so he lay down on the seat in the truck for a short nap.
~ ~ ~
“You gotta stop ripping those newspapers, York,” Sly said. “You’re about to make me crazy.” Sly felt like his skin was the wrong type of material to keep his innards under control. It didn’t stretch enough; he felt way too big for it. It itched. He could not remember feeling this restless. It’s like Christmas Eve when you’re a kid, he thought, only a bad one. This is like Christmas Eve in hell.
“Blood on the path,” York said.
“What?”
“Blood on the path. Blood will be shed tonight. I seen it all in a dream.”
“Not your blood,” Sly said. “Not mine, neither.”
“Full moon,” York said, and ripped another long piece. “Anything can happen.”
“Their blood, York. The enemy’s blood. They’re the aggressors. Their oppression will not last.”
“We’re on the side of righteousness,” Sly said, jumping to his feet and starting to pace. Action gave momentary relief to his anxiety. “Ain’t nobody more righteous than those who live free and do good. Like us, York. That ain’t something you have to worry about, righteousness. We’re righteous, all right. You especially.”
He stopped pacing and went to York, knelt at York’s side, and gently removed the newspapers from the old man’s hands. “Listen to me, York. About tonight. Silence is what we need. Absolute silence. I’ll give you the command by touching your elbow with my foot. I may have to rearrange you a little bit. Let me do that. But don’t talk. Don’t say a word, okay?”
York took a deep breath that ended in a little strangled cough. “Yeah,” he said. He pushed the strips of smelly newspapers off his legs and said, “Help me up.”
Sly knew that York was as agitated as he was, only York didn’t have enough energy for it. “You ought to sleep this afternoon,” he said. “Tonight’s going to be busy.”
“I’ll sleep when I’m in my grave,” York said, and shook the cobwebs out of the veins in his legs. “That’ll be soon enough. Help me to the latrine.”
~ ~ ~
Steve was just straightening his desk before going home when the call came in about a drug death. He had no idea where Travis was, so he had him paged, grabbed his hat and keys and went to see for himself. On the way, he called Athena on his cell and told her he was going to be late.
He was surprised and a little disconcerted to find Clover standing in front of the house, talking with another girl. A uniformed police officer was standing next to them.
“What are you doing here?” he asked as he walked up.
“This is Sylvia,” Clover said, and Steve looked into the swollen eyes of a young woman who looked like she belonged in this part of town.
“My brother–” Sylvia choked out and then started to shudder and sob.
“Who found him?”
“We both did,” Clover said. “I called nine-one-one.”
“Good girl,” Steve said. “What happened?”
York's Moon Page 17
