“I think Lorraine took it. She took everything.”
“There wasn’t any Lorraine. You dropped it, you bullshitter.”
“Give him the fucking sleeping bag already,” the driver says, crushing his smoke under his boot.
“But he keeps throwing them away.”
The driver has one black eyebrow that lifts in the middle. “Look at him. He’s a spaz. That’s why he’s out here.”
“No more sleeping bags,” the guy says, lowering his head to glower at you. “You hear? You’re not the only person who needs them. I can’t keep wasting them on you.”
The driver rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you tell him.”
Turn to walk away. The man behind you glares. He wears a black eye patch, like a pirate.
“There was a Lorraine,” you insist.
His eye could burn holes. The man swallows hard, making the dragon tattoo on his neck ripple. He shifts on his aluminum crutches, moving closer to you. He has a snow-white cast on his right leg from his thigh to his foot.
“Hey,” the guy in the van says to Eyepatch. “What can I do you for?”
Eyepatch swings his head and focuses his venom on the guy in the van. Eyepatch shuffles out of line and grabs your arm, holding it tight.
“You set me up,” he says.
Eyepatch has a bruise gone green showing under the eye patch. He has a shaved head which shows other bruises going yellow and green. You’re sure he has the wrong person. You’d remember the dragon tattoo. It’s large, vermilion with yellow eyes. Shake your head. He watches you for a long time and then lets you go.
“Where’s your sick fuck of a cousin?” he says.
A car honks. Duck.
“See! See, he dropped it again!” The guy in the van is ecstatic to have caught you in the act. “You bullshitter!”
Pick up the sleeping bag. Hold it tight. The floor of the crash church will be hard without it. “I’m sure there was a Lorraine.” Think about it. “I’m almost sure there was a Lorraine. She was nice, but she took everything. I think she was real. She must have been real. I don’t know why I’d make up a wo –” Realize you are babbling. Bite your lips shut.
Eyepatch stares at you and stares at you. You can’t move when he’s staring at you.
“Don’t get hung up on what’s real or not real,” Eyepatch says. “That’s just another straitjacket.”
A man stops beside Eyepatch. They are the same height, the same weight, and have the same beer-coloured eyes in the same face. They are like before-and-after pictures: before the eye patch and after; before the leg cast and after. No-Eyepatch has the same tattoo, but on the other side of his neck.
“This him, Willy?” No-Eyepatch says.
Willy shakes his head.
No-Eyepatch says to you, “Do you know this kid named Tom? Tom Bauer?”
Wonder if they’re real. Ask, “Are you real?” just in case you are standing on the sidewalk staring back at nothing.
“Are you a schitz?” No-Eyepatch says. He turns to Willy. “Do you know this guy?”
“I thought I was Tom,” you say.
“You’re not the Tom we’re looking for,” Willy says.
“If you were the other Tom, I’d kick your ass to Kingdom Come,” No-Eyepatch says. “No one sets up my bro and gets away with it.”
Crawl back up the drainpipe. Move backward in the logic of dream time. Crawl back through the window. Look up then down the street as you back into your bedroom in your mother’s apartment. Your hands draw blood from the curtains. Your feet pick up blood from the carpet as you creep through the hallway. The shadowy figure of a man in all black examines something through the front-door peephole while someone pounds on the other side of the door. Back into the bathroom where another man in a black ski mask lies on the floor, one arm stretched over his head, the other over his chest. Your hands steady as you place them on his neck and find no pulse. His burly chest rises suddenly. His bright blue eyes flutter open. Blood runs off your feet. Blood streams back into his face, back into a hole where his brains show through.
The lid of the toilet tank flies from the floor into your hands. The centrifugal force of your fear spins you. The bits of hair and skull on the lid leap to the man in the black ski mask, who slides up the wall, his face snapping forward. Knight him again, closing the rip in the mask that will hide his brown hair. Each time the tank hits him, he stands straighter. He tucks his snub-nose six-shooter back in his waistband. Replace the tank lid slowly, sitting down. Water streams from the floor back to your hair, back up your nose, you suck it in in great gasps. The other masked man jogs back into the bathroom.
“I’ll go check it out,” he says. “Watch him, Rusty.”
But he grips you, pressing a semi-automatic to your forehead, his attention caught by pounding on the front door.
“Bauer! Bauer, you motherfucking set me up!” Willy Baker screams from the hallway. “Bauer!”
They lift you off the toilet. Water streams back into the bathtub, off your shirt, off your face as they grip your arms and press you into the overflowing bathtub.
The pounding is distant and steady like a heartbeat. It kicks you out of sleep so you’re sitting, shoving the blankets back.
Shout, “Mom! Mom, wake up! Mom!”
“Shut up, you fucking doorknob.”
Mom is hard to wake. She might not hear them kicking in your front door. Go wake her up. Run around the apartment trying to find her.
Shake her hard. “Get up, get up. I hear something.”
There’s a man in your mother’s bed. Sometimes they sleep over.
“Where’s Mom?” you ask him.
“Get this freak off me!” the man says.
The room is full of beds. Men flinch from the lights as they go on.
“I’m going to have to ask you to calm down,” a large man in blue overalls says. “You can’t go around screaming –”
They’re coming down the hallway. You hear them marching down the hallway. Run for the bedroom window and crawl out. Run. Run down the street and hide.
4.
Open one eye.
“Tom?” the voice says again.
The tree above you nods, agreeing with the breeze. The sky is army-blanket grey. The grass itches your cheek. The clouds have rolled in, and you are hearing voices.
A girl squats down beside you, her knees showing through her ripped jeans. She has long, reddish-blond hair falling around her shoulders in big curls. She takes off her sunglasses. Her eyes are dark blue.
If you’re going to start seeing things, pretty girls are always a bonus, even if they look at you sourly.
“Do you remember me?” the girl says.
Shake your head.
“What do you remember?”
Men in black ski masks. Water running. Dreams. Streets. Nothing that makes sense. “Nothing.”
“This way,” she says.
She makes move-along gestures like a traffic cop.
“A traffic cop, huh?” she says.
“Did I say that out loud?”
“No, I’m psychic,” she says.
“Oh.”
“What’re you on?” she says. “Are you stoned?”
Stop. If you go up to Lorraine’s room, she’s going to roll you. When she found you lost on the street, she acted all friendly but she took everything, even your shoes.
“I’m Paulina,” the girl says. “I don’t know who this cunt Lorraine is. I’m bringing you to your apartment.”
“I don’t know,” you say. They haven’t exactly been combing the woods for you. Doubt they want you back.
“Big old mama’s boy like you? Shit yeah, she wants you back.”
The girl leans against the driver’s door, one hand on the steering wheel, the other supporting her head. She glances at you. The rain makes patterns on the windshield.
“This is your street. Anything look familiar?” she says.
Shake your head.
“Maybe something will
come back when you get to your place,” she says. She sits up, alert. The car has turned a corner, and there’s an apartment building at the other end of the street. Half of it is still brown with white trim, although the black shadow of flames has been burned around the windows. The other half rests at a lazy tilt, the walls burned down to struts and supports, a cobweb of black wood bending in on itself. She stops the car in front of the lobby doors, which have been boarded shut and crisscrossed with yellow tape that flaps in the wind.
“Crap,” the girl says.
The girl parks her car in front of the only house on a block filled with boxy warehouses. The downstairs windows are boarded up.
“This way,” she says. She walks around the side of the house. Follow her up steep, creaking fire-escape stairs. The stairs shudder as you walk.
The room has a single bed on a rusty white frame. Beside the bed is the kitchen, a cocktail fridge, a sink, and a hot plate. The bathroom is separated by a shower curtain, and the counter is a dresser. The kitchen window has a view of an empty parking lot.
Repeat her name. She gets annoyed if you call her Lorraine. She is not Lorraine, although Lorraine seemed nice and offered you a towel just like the girl is doing right now. She pulls back the flowery shower curtain separating the bathroom from the living area. The shower is a grey stall with a blue shower curtain.
“Scrub everything,” she says.
The nurse at the Emergency admissions desk has a toy train on her desk. Stop staring. It’s hard, because you remember something: the blue train with the sunny face is Thomas the Tank Engine, and the fat conductor thinks Thomas is really useful. The nurse picks up the toy.
“I’m having a harder time letting go than my son is,” the nurse says with a wry smile. “He’s moved on to Power Rangers.”
“Uh, yeah,” the girl says after a long silence.
“Anyhoo,” the nurse says. “Do you know what kind of drugs your friend gave you, Tom?”
The girl nudges you.
Say, “I don’t know.”
“I think it was mushrooms,” the girl says. “It might have had a sprinkling of acid, too.”
“Hmm,” the nurse says.
“I’m remembering things better now,” you say. “I don’t think I need to do any tests.”
“Better safe than sorry,” the nurse says.
You can see only their eyes. They’re wearing ski masks.
“Where’s the coke?” one of the men says.
“I don’t know,” is not the answer they want.
Don’t scream. They slug the side of your head when you scream. Mrs. Tupper must have heard you by now, must have heard something and will call the police. Your downstairs neighbour complains when you cough too loud. She has to have heard something before they made you stop screaming.
The man with the deep voice whips the shower curtain open. The bathtub is filling.
“I don’t know. Jer took it. When he left. I don’t know where it is.” This is all you have to say. They aren’t going to believe you yet.
“Tie his arms, Rusty,” the guy to your left says as they bend you over the side of the tub. They press your face toward the water.
“You dumb fuck. You used my name,” Rusty says. “Now we’re going to have to kill him.”
“Shh,” the girl says. “Shh.”
She lowers the railing of the bed, lifts the sheets, and crawls in beside you. Her arm is heavy on your side. The nurses whisper in the corridor. The man in the bed beside you groans.
“Shh. You’re okay now.” Her breath tickles your neck as she speaks.
Believe her. For the first time in your memory, let go and believe that someone is watching out for you.
“Shut up,” she says.
5.
You are on the floor in the upstairs room of a rundown house. Handcuffs pin your wrists behind your back. Your fingers fall asleep under the combined weight of your body and Jeremy’s as Jeremy straddles your waist. In your peripheral vision, underneath the bare bulb that hangs from a yellowed ceiling, Paulina crawls near the camera tripod, her dress transparent, wet from the rain, one side of her blond head matted with blood from Jeremy kicking her head and kicking her head and kicking her head. As Jeremy lights the first cigarette, you’re flooded with disbelief so strong, feel sleepwalking calm. Jeremy tenses like a sprinter waiting for the gun, his hand pinching your neck as he holds you still.
“Did you think you could get away with it?” Jeremy says.
Remember the first time you felt this way. You were ten. On a small hill near your school, you hit a patch of black ice and the bicycle tires slipped sideways. You hurt your wrist trying to break your fall, but it didn’t matter because a very large truck was behind you. The truck came to a stop on top of you, but it had monster wheels that lifted it high enough so nothing touched you. If you had moved, if the driver had tried to swerve, you would be under the wheels. Stare up at the undercarriage and – in the same calm – crawl out, dragging your bike behind you.
Move back an hour before you entered this room. Remember instead how Paulina’s hand felt as she led you up the stairs, how you could make out the line of her thong, the dress cotton and light blue, mid-thigh. She wasn’t wearing a bra and her nipples were hard, dark points. A bulge pressed against your jeans, sudden awareness of your own skin, anticipation made you light-headed.
Move ahead a few hours. Jeremy will press you to have pancakes as if that was going to make everything all right. Jeremy will take you home in a cab. He will chat and laugh like you went to a movie together, like you grabbed a bite to eat. The cab driver will not speak during the trip, nervously examining you both in his rear-view mirror. You will try not to bleed on his seat.
But the moment you start to believe that you could die is like a lighthouse. The searchlight circles back and back to that moment when Jeremy takes the first cigarette from his mouth. Jeremy’s face shadowed by the light from the bulb, the tip of the cigarette a red dot in the dim room.
You hate getting your cavities filled, hate the moment when the chunks spattering your mouth are bits of your tooth, when the smell from the drill is you, burning. This thought does not go through your head while Jeremy lowers the cigarette tip. This thought comes later. Before the tip touches your skin, feel a pinpoint of warmth on your shoulder, sudden like sunlight through the clouds.
If you had a time machine, you would go back to the moment when you agreed to wash Jeremy’s silver 1992 Jaguar XJS coupe for quick cash. You would not take any money from Jeremy. You would not tell Jer about Paulina, and Jer would not seek her out and you would never see them kissing in the Jag at school.
Better yet, you would not deke out on a family dinner to go downstairs with a set of spare car keys. You would not hand the keys to Willy. You would not tell Willy the security code to the car alarm and Willy would not say, grinning, “Your own cousin, hey? Fuck, you’re cold, man.”
October 9, 1993
Paulina-baby,
I imagine you wrapped in a quilt. My granny and my aunties would make quilts and every time me and my sisters were scared or hurt they’d wrap us up tight and hug us and we’d be warm and safe.
I’m not your judge. You aren’t sitting in my court, and I don’t pass my punishments down to you. You did the best you could with what you had. The things that keep you confused and miserable you put into the hands of your Higher Power. Let go and let God.
Hugs and much respect,
Jazz
October 12, 1993
Dear Tom,
I can’t stop thinking about you. Not in a sexy way. Not that you aren’t. You’re cute, but, you know, you’re goofy. It’s not a bad thing. But I don’t find that sexy. I don’t want anything from you. I’m not writing to
crap
Hey Jazz,
Thanks. I needed that. I wish you could come every day. I don’t get anybody here. Or they don’t get me. I don’t know. I’m only here because my ex-friend from high school Carrie Fucking
Lanstrum thought I was hot for her useless boyfriend. Her lame-ass Barbie gang in matching mini-Ts and belly-button rings tried to swarm me at the Broadway Sky Train station. Had to laugh, hahahaha, save me! I’m being threatened by stick figures.
We’re going to teach you a lesson you are going to carry on your face forever, bitch. Carrie Fucking Lanstrum, spouting bad trash talk, flashed her dinky switchblade. Her anorexic Barbie gang moved in to grab me.
Hahahaha. God, it felt good to laugh. Everything felt good. Kind of buzzed. First hit after three sober days. Slummed it in a McDonald’s toilet stall. Snorted off a steel Never Out toilet paper holder. Never Out. Never Out. Never Out. It meant something deep, and I was the only one who knew. Finally felt human after three days of trying to go straight. Late-night streets wet and black and shiny and dazzling. The escalator taking me up to a higher plane. Carrie Fucking Lanstrum, at the other end of the Sky Train platform, whispered to her friends. Last train for the night due in five minutes.
Missing my Chevy. What a piece of shit that thing was. Wasn’t even worth the coke I got for it. Busted up and handed down through all the Mazenkowski boys until it got to me. You couldn’t make that car cool to save your life. Jake’s big loser flames on the hood – took three cans of spray paint to cover that mess. Matthew’s big-boobed mud-flaps and playboy dice. Dan stuck a huge muffler on it, trying to make the engine sound mean.
Jake had two surviving eight-track tapes, Dr. Hook and The Best of CCR, and one or the other’d be playing as we tooled around the driveway. Jake’s crabby-ass car-care lectures: Your oil’s filthier than your mouth. When was the last time you fucking checked your fluids? Don’t fucking laugh. This is serious. Your tires are flatter than Dad’s ass. What’s your pressure? Fucking get a gauge, you cheapskate. This is your fan belt. Faaaan. Belt.
I heard you blew Brandon for a dime bag, Carrie Fucking Lanstrum said. Is that true? Are you a whore?
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