Low (Low #1)

by Mary Elizabeth

  “Where do you want me to go?” the lady at the front of the lane yells out her window. She throws her hands up and blows her long bangs out of her eyes.

  I keep my pace behind the pair of girls who still whisper about how weird I am and step on to the sidewalk when the light turns green. Impatient traffic surges forward, scarcely missing my heel. The police cruiser turns in my direction, silent and slow moving. Stepping over cigarette butts and chewed gum, I swallow my pulse and grip on to the car key burning in my pocket.

  Reminding myself that they’re looking for two people dressed in black, driving an orange Ferrari, and not a single man in white on foot, is the only thing that keeps me calm and my gun concealed. When we reach the end of the next block, the cop car speeds up and drives away, taking the sense of strangling paranoia with it.

  PARKED ON THE street along the backside of the parking garage, I put the Mazda into park and jump out to help Poesy over the short cement wall. She pushes the duffel bag of loot over and waits for me between two oversized shrubs, colorless and holding her shoulder.

  “I told you I’d be back,” I say as she slides her good arm around my neck.

  My girl tucks her face between my shoulder and throat and exhales slowly, warming my skin with her hot breath. I carry her to the car and cover her with a blanket we put in the backseat when we packed. Before I close the door, Poe reveals a flask I’ve never seen before in the waist of her jeans. She screws off the top and swigs, wincing as the fiery liquid paints her esophagus.

  “He had a shitload of pills in the glove compartment, too,” she says. Drunk and in love blinks lazily over her bloodshot eyes and smirks. “I was shot, and it doesn’t even hurt. Don’t say I never did anything for you, Low.”

  “I would never.” I laugh and close the door as she starts to ramble about writing a rap song about taking a bullet and making it big in the hip-hop game.

  “We’ll never have to rob a bank again,” she says as I toss the duffel bag into the trunk. Her voice is muffled. “I’ll be the first female white rapper.”

  Poesy’s asleep by the time I get inside and start the car, with her face pressed against the window and her mouth wide open. The glass fogs as she breathes, and saliva pools at the corner of her mouth. I check her wound, happy to see the bleeding has stopped, and close the flask before it spills.

  As she begins to snore, I look at the empty road ahead of us and decide that when she wakes up, it’ll be somewhere she’s never been before. Somewhere safe, somewhere warm, somewhere we can start over.

  Somewhere I won’t be a felon, and she won’t be the girl stupid enough to love one.

  Even crooks see the bright side.

  MAN AND WOMAN DUBBED THE “FOUR-FOUR BANDITS” WANTED IN MULTIPLE BANK ROBBERIES

  WEST LOS ANGELES, CA — An investigation is underway into a violent bank robbery at First Division Bank in West Los Angeles Monday morning.

  Police say two suspects—dubbed the “Four-Four Bandits” because of the .44 Magnum revolver used during the robbery, described one as a white male and one as a white female—robbed the branch in the 1600 block of Laurel Canyon at 9:45 a.m.

  The suspects, between 20 and 30 years of age, who witnesses say were wearing ski masks and dark clothing, burst into the bank, taking a hostage and wounding the security guard before making off with an undisclosed amount of cash. According to detectives, this is the third robbery from the duo in eight months.

  "It’s important that we find them before they strike again," said Los Angeles Police Lt. William Ro.

  The suspects fled in a stolen Ferrari 458 driven by the male. They were last seen heading westbound on Laurel Canyon onto southbound Laurelmont Drive, according to LAPD.

  "The male suspect is reported as having a cross tattoo beneath his left eye, and we believe the female was injured during the robbery. They are considered armed and dangerous. Citizens should not apprehend any suspects, and should call the LAPD with any information that can lead to the arrest of anyone involved in today’s brutal robbery,” Ro said.

  The LAPD is working with the FBI and reviewing the bank's surveillance cameras.

  Anyone with information about the suspects is urged to contact LAPD at (310) 755-3333.

  POESY WOKE ME as we approached Baker, in pain not even booze could dull. As much as I wanted to get out of the state, a shower, a meal, and a bed helped my girl feel more comfortable, and it gave me a chance to get a better look at her injury after a night’s sleep.

  “This is going to hurt,” I say, spinning the needle under a match. The tip turns charcoal black before I blow out the flame. “Tell me if it’s too much.”

  She nods, looking away from her prepaid phone to watch me thread the needle. A single drop of blood drips from the exit wound, painting a red line down to the small of her back.

  “Why didn’t they release our names?” she asks, exchanging the phone with the online news article for a bottle of spiced rum I bought from the liquor store. Dark liquid swooshes around the glass bottle as she brings the bottle to her lips.

  “Witnesses only saw our faces. They don’t know our names. But it’s only a matter of time before our pictures are released and we’re identified,” I answer, setting the needle on the bed. I soak a cotton ball in rubbing alcohol and clean the blood from Poesy’s skin. The cutting scent stings my nose and burns the small cuts on the tips of my fingers. “Hopefully we’ll be out of California before that happens.”

  My girl’s face reddens with the booze, and tears spill from her swollen eyes. She crosses her legs in the center of the bed, dressed in nothing but a pair of white underwear. Stringy blonde hair is tied into a loose bun atop her head, and Poe’s voice is thick with intoxication.

  “Have you talked to your mom or Gillian?” she asks, licking sadness from her lips.

  “We can’t talk to anyone, Poesy.” A wave of despair moves through me, and I’m glad Poesy can’t see my face. She’d know how much this kills.

  “Oh, yeah,” she drops her head, slurring, “let’s get this over with.”

  I pour a capful of rubbing alcohol over her torn skin, disinfecting it once more before I stitch the wound closed. Poe cries out and grips on to the bed sheets until her knuckles turn bone white. She curls her toes and inhales heavily through her nose, exhaling through her teeth.

  She’s in pain I can’t suffer for her. My heartbeat skips each time she whimpers and tenses as I pierce a sewing needle through her injured flesh. Poesy drinks herself into near unconsciousness, but continues to cry as blood seeps from the half-sewn hole.

  “Tell me a story, Poe. Say something important,” I whisper, pulling another stitch through her skin. The tips of my fingers are blood-soaked and numb.

  “There’s a boy who loves a girl,” she says, hyperventilating at this point. “He might think he loves her more than she loves him, but the truth is they love each other the same.”

  I smile, rounding another stitch.

  “The boy doesn’t realize he saved the girl, because before she met him, she was trapped, kept by parents who never cared.” Poesy sobs. Her small frame shakes, and blood streams down her back like exposed veins. “This boy was the first person to ever make the girl feel beautiful and needed and loved.”

  I close the wound and let the needle hang on extra thread as I press my forehead to the center of her spine, soaking in her heartbeat and sorrow. She continues to talk, and her fragile voice soothes my conflicted soul.

  “She tells him over and over she doesn’t want to go, but the boy is always trying to get rid of her. ‘It’s for your own good,’ he says. But what the boy doesn’t know is that by sending her away, he would kill the girl. The girl knows what’s best for her, and that’s the boy. Even when she cries. Even when she’s in pain. The girl knows, Lowen, and I know what you’re thinking, but you can’t send me away. Please, don’t leave me alone again.”

  Poesy falls forward, burying her face in the blankets. Spiced rum and burnt needles triggered
her tears, but her fear is legitimate. It’s a fright we share equally.

  Gathering fragile and drunk in my arms, I position our heads on the pillows and circle my arms around her like a cage.

  “The boy won’t,” I whisper into her ear. “He knows.”

  I WAKE UP the next morning to a knock at the door. My stomach growls, and all feeling in my arm is gone because Poesy’s used it as a pillow all night.

  “Housekeeping,” a woman calls through the door in a Spanish accent. She knocks again.

  Blinking dreamless sleep from my eyes, I pull my limb out from beneath Poe’s head and step into a pair of jeans. Unzipped and unbuckled, my belt clinks as I walk toward the door, and my heartbeat speeds up as I remember I placed the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the handle when we checked in two days ago.

  While Poe snores lightly, I grab the gun from the small table in the corner of our room and pull back the hammer, sliding a bullet into the chamber. I look out the peephole in the door to see a distorted imagine of a short Hispanic lady in a pink maid’s uniform.

  “Not today,” I call out.

  “Housekeeping,” she replies, accompanied by another round of thuds.

  “No clean,” I say, lowering my gun. I picked up a few Spanish words between prison and the recycling plant. “No limpie el cuarto.”

  “Okay. Sorry.” She rolls her rickety cart away.

  I wait until the maid knocks on the room next door before setting my gun down. Deep-seeded paranoia wraps a gluey web around my heart, tightening its beat. I pull the curtains back and squint against the early sun, searching the parking lot for suspicious vehicles or lingering bodies. In a town populated generally by people on their way to somewhere else, it’s hard to determine which cars belong here and which don’t. People check in and out of this dirty hotel all day long.

  Nothing belongs here.

  “Anything new reported?” Poesy asks in a tired voice.

  “Haven’t checked yet.” I let the curtain drop and turn toward my girl. “How are you?”

  She sits up, holding a blood-stained sheet to her chest. Sleep lines mark the side of her face, and her hair is knotted around a black hairband. For the first time since she was shot, color warms her skin and the bullet wound has scabbed.

  “Hung-over, but better,” she says. Poe rubs away dried blood on her arm and winces as she tries to rotate her shoulder.

  “We need to leave tonight. Three days in one town this close to home is pushing it.” I sit in a dirt-scented chair at the table. Dust particles whirl around me, watering my eyes. “Now that you’re feeling better, we should decide where to go.”

  “Is Vegas out of the question?” Poesy asks. She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and blushes, eying me under her long lashes.

  The right side of my mouth curves up, and the sincere sensation of love fills me, burning away wariness and fuss. A flash of heat dampens my palms, and the back of my neck prickles. Marrying this girl has always been the end goal, but I imagined it under different circumstances. Poesy shouldn’t have a bullet hole through her shoulder the day she legally becomes a Seely.

  Blood shouldn’t be on her dress.

  “Bobby and Chloe are already married, but we can’t,” I say regretfully. I should have slipped a ring onto her finger the day I met her between grass clippings and rose thorns.

  “That’s who we are now, right?” She shrugs her shoulders and picks at a loose thread on the beige blanket. “I don’t want to spend another day not being your wife, Low.”

  In our silence, the maid vacuuming the room beside ours is audible through the thin walls. She hums and sings a song in a language I can only pick words out of, unaware of how far her voice carries. Poesy lies back and plucks the dried blood from under her nails, picking up the maid’s tune.

  While their melody calms my restless nerves, I search the Internet for updates on the First Division robbery and come up with short summaries of yesterday’s article. No names or photos have been released in the last forty-eight hours, and if the LAPD does have more information, they’re not distributing it to the press.

  “We can’t leave until tonight, but let’s grab some food,” I say, powering off my cell phone. “We could both use some fresh air.”

  “Really?” Poe asks. A smile lightens her hazel eyes. “Do you think it’s safe?”

  “As safe as it’ll ever be.”

  She braids her hair and wears sunglasses large enough to disguise her face, and I hide under the golf tournament cap and cover my tattoo with Poesy’s concealer. We act as natural as we can during breakfast, and make up a story about traveling to a sports convention in Las Vegas when our waitress asks where we’re headed and comments on my hat.

  “Sounds fun,” she says, blowing a bubble and popping it over her nose. She sucks it back into her mouth before announcing she’ll return with a fresh pot of joe.

  My girl straightens her utensils, looking at me over her large frames. “Am I crazy, or is everyone looking at us?”

  I sip cold coffee from my mug and quickly roam my eyes over the diner. Every table is occupied, and more customers stand by the door, waiting to be seated. Waitresses with pencils holding their hair up and busboys with stained aprons run back and forth, refilling drinks and clearing booths, too busy to pay attention to us. Everyone’s preoccupied filling their stomachs and getting upped on caffeine before they hit the road. Some complain about the traffic, and others savor every second of their vacation. No one is concerned with the quiet couple in the corner, but mistrust quickly became our third wheel.

  “Try to relax,” I whisper, setting my cup down.

  After French toast and strawberry waffles, we pick up a US map from a convenience store and walk to the center of town. Poe was in so much pain when we arrived she didn’t have a chance to see exactly what Baker has to offer.

  “Is that what I think it is?” She laughs out loud, lifting her sunglasses to the top of her head.

  One hundred thirty-four feet up stands The World’s Largest Thermometer, displaying today’s temperature in bright red lights: seventy-seven.

  “Gateway to Death Valley,” Poesy reads the sign at the base of the landmark with a smirk on her lips.

  “Fitting,” I say.

  Growing up poor, I never left Los Angeles County. Our idea of a vacation was going to the park on the Fourth of July with jelly sandwiches and sliced oranges. Mom would let Gillian and me buy freezer burned Big Sticks from an ice cream truck, and we’d watch fireworks from the edge of the pier as they exploded from the water.

  Baker isn’t paradise, but Poesy’s smile makes me feel close to heaven.

  Settling on the concrete stoop around The World’s Largest Thermometer, I open the map of the United States across our laps and point to our current location. An entire country, fifty states, countless cities, towns, and neighborhoods are ours for the taking. We have the opportunity to make any place a home. The possibilities are endless.

  “We’re not far from Vegas,” Poe says, tilting her head onto my shoulder. “I want to go there first.”

  With a pen I pinched from the store clerk, I draw a circle around Las Vegas and mark a line toward Grand Canyon National Park. After circling our second destination, I trace the highway leading to Denver. From Colorado, Poe chooses cities that will take us across Oklahoma, Texas, and Louisiana.

  “I can’t wait to see New Orleans,” she says as I loop The Big Easy.

  “What about New York?” I ask, sketching a line through Mississippi and Alabama, across Kentucky and Ohio.

  “We should buy a home in the Hamptons and mingle with important people. We’ll host white parties on the beach, and say we’re successful bankers from the West Coast looking for East Coast fun. We’ll wear fur coats and drink rare wines.” Wanderlust giggles at the ridiculousness of it. “I’ll spend all day at the spa, and you’ll smoke Cuban cigars. The help will raise our kids. That’s the life, Low.”

  “What about here?” I ask, pointing to C
anada. “They can’t get their hands on us if we go that far.”

  Poesy shakes her head. “If we’re going to leave the country, let’s go somewhere with white beaches and light, where it never gets cold. We could live the rest of our lives sunburnt, shaking sand out of our shorts.”

  I see her under a setting tropical sun, brushed in vivid pinks and oranges an LA sunset could never truly offer, veiled by pollution and obstructed by skyscrapers. Her skin is golden, and the ends of her hair are starved for moisture and lighter than the rest. We live on the beach, in a house naturally cooled by the sea breeze, hidden from society in our stolen bit of bliss.

  We can be happy, and when the law forgets our trespasses, maybe my mom and Gillian can share ecstasy with us.

  “But first Vegas,” I say.

  “But first Vegas,” she repeats.

  It’s easy to forget we’re on the run with till death do us part on my mind and the hypothetical taste of sea salt on my lips. For the first time since our arrival, I don’t feel heavy with burden―optimism is weightless. We left First Division Bank with over eighty thousand dollars, but in neighborhoods like West Hollywood with the rich and famous clientele, maybe it’s not worth immediately pursuing.

  What if Rick realizes I’ve skipped town and can’t care less? In a county that birthed gangbanging and rots with bodies of drug addicts, losing a petty thief is an improvement. The crime rate will decrease with my absence, and I’m one less felon my CO has to collect piss samples from.

  After a lifetime of living on the wrong side of the tracks, this could be luck giving us a chance.

  “I’m going to get some sleep before we leave,” Poesy says, stepping out of her shoes as we walk into our hotel room. She slides across the mattress and bunches the pillow under her head.

  I set the map onto the table and then turn on the television, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. The picture on the old dial TV takes a moment to show up, and when it does, I know that I was completely wrong.