Low (Low #1)

by Mary Elizabeth

  “The police are asking for the public’s help in locating two people, nicknamed the Four-Four Bandits, responsible for a deadly strong-armed robbery at First Division Bank in West Hollywood Monday morning.”

  Surveillance photos of Poesy and me appear on the screen as the news anchor continues reporting.

  “Lowen Seely and Poesy Ashby, both of Inglewood, entered the Lauren Canyon branch at approximately 9:47 a.m. and demanded money. A gunfight ensued where bank security guard, Jonathan Henning, age 35, was shot multiple times and brutally beaten by the male suspect.”

  Our pictures fade away, and a candid photograph of the guard I shot appears. He’s smiling, knee deep in a dark lake with a fishing pole in his hands and a trout hooked to the line.

  “Henning suffered extreme head trauma and later died from his injuries, leaving behind a wife and young daughter.”

  I drop to my knees in front of the television.

  “At a press conference held this morning, Los Angeles Police Lt. William Ro offered a one hundred thousand dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of Seely and Ashby. They are considered armed and extremely dangerous and believed to be heading out of the state. Fox 11 News will continue to follow this story and report new details throughout the day.”

  “IT WAS AN accident, Lowen.” Poesy shifts her attention from the highway toward the rearview mirror. Daylight reflects into her glassy eyes. “He shot me. This wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t shot me.”

  Covered by my hoodie, shadowed under the bill of a cap, and hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, I tilt my head back against the seat. Unshed tears assault my eyes, and metal-heavy guilt fills my stomach and chest as the image of Jonathan Henning, cracked and bloody on the bank floor, floods my mind.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” my girl continues, unable to hold back her emotion. Sadness rolls down her cheeks in streams. “You’re nothing like your father. This is different.”

  My stomach constricts, and I swallow a mouthful of sick spit. Sweat pools above my top lip and melts down my temples. Poe cracks the windows, but no amount of air can squash the tightening claustrophobia closing in on me.

  “I killed a man, Poesy. I am my father.”

  My dad was on the run for eleven days before he was arrested in a crack house two blocks from home. The piece of shit didn’t have the guts to leave town after he abandoned his family and murdered a pusher over a bad drug deal. SWAT surrounded his hideout for six hours before they blew out the windows and forced him out with flashbang grenades.

  Now, he leads the Aryan Brotherhood in San Quinten, where it’s always killing season.

  “No,” she says, shaking her head. Poe blinks tears from her lashes. “I couldn’t love a person like that.”

  Dad’s standoff was covered live on the morning news, and nothing could tear my mother away from the television set. He’d left us years earlier, but she sobbed when she saw weapons drawn and screamed when they kicked down the door.

  “How can I love a person like him?” she asked herself, unaware that my sister and I were listening.

  She continued to ask herself the same question during his trial and sentencing, and again when word about the AB traveled through the block. Time dulled her pain, but every now and then, when a letter would arrive in the mail or a collect call from Inmate C-81693-098 would disturb the day, her walls came crumbling down.

  “This is my fault. I should have stayed in the car like you told me to, but I heard sirens—”

  “Poesy,” I say, unable to look at her. “I need you to stop talking. Please.”

  Driving into Nevada provides no sense of safety like I assumed it would two hours ago. The hunt for a murderer isn’t bound by borders, and our new identities will only get us so far. A person upholding the law was killed in action. Those kind band together like blood brothers, even for the lowest man on the totem pole. Jonathan Henning was merely a bank security guard, but the manhunt for his killer will be ten times as strong as the quest for a thief.

  “Low…”

  Miles of sandy desert are suddenly disturbed by a break on the horizon. Tall hotels reflect the golden sun off polished surfaces, shimmering like a mirage in the center of hell. Billboards advertising everything from escorts to cheap prime rib clutter the side of the highway, promising to be the best in Vegas. Traffic builds as we approach the city that never sleeps, and it’s hard not to look at the wizard in the window of the Excalibur or the roller coaster around the New York-New York.

  Slowing to a crawl past the heart of Las Vegas, I’m able to bury my heartache long enough to read the names of hotels I’ve only seen on TV. I catch glimpses of a water show, a pirate show, and a Ferris wheel that stretches for the sky.

  There are suddenly more yellow cabs on the road than anything else, and billboards promoting tickets to concerts and boxing matches instead of all-you-can-eat shrimp cocktail and hot dates.

  “What should I do?” Poesy asks, staying in the slow lane closest to the exit ramps.

  Electric energy discharges from this place, even during the day. The air smells like a mixture of cotton candy and nicotine, money and sex, lowering inhibitions and drawing me in with the possibilities of jackpots and fame.

  I’m dizzy with lust and ready to tell Poe to pull over when an advertisement for a 24-hour wedding chapel shoves bitter tasting reality down my throat.

  Las Vegas: The World Wedding Capital.

  “Keep driving,” I say, turning away from glitz and gluttony to watch the lines on the road. As we pass the Las Vegas Strip, traffic thins, and we’re able to accelerate.

  There’s no reason to explain to Poe why we can’t stop and get married. It’s easier to pretend I don’t hear her cry and allow madness to consume regret. Flashy hotels and fake Eifel Towers soon disappear, wrapping our surroundings in barren desert once more.

  “Don’t stop,” I say anytime we pass a new city.

  Soon, desert environments fade to canyons and thick patches of trees. Poesy flips the headlights on when the sun finally sets, illuminating the Utah highway in yellow-orange light. Shrouded by darkness, I take off the sunglasses and pull the hoodie over my head. The cool air kisses my sweat-sticky skin, forming goose bumps from my shoulders to wrists.

  The gaslight flashes outside of Hurricane, Utah, a small town three hundred miles from Salt Lake City. With not much more than run-down motels and a super discount store to offer, it feels safe enough to pull over for the night.

  Alone at the four-pump, generic fuel station where hotdogs are buy one, get one free, the only way to pay is to go inside the small store where a fat man shoves his face with pork rinds behind the counter.

  “I’ll go in,” Poesy says. She pulls her hair out of its braid and uses her fingers to separate the loose waves. After checking her eyes in the mirror behind the sun visor, my girl shoves four twenty-dollar bills into her pocket and exits the Mazda. “It’ll be fine. Stay here.”

  I place the .44 on my lap in case the station worker happens to recognize Poe and watch her wave to him as she enters the gas station. The employee looks up, wiping grease on the front of his shirt, and says something I can’t hear. As if she’s walking on sunshine and we’re not wanted for murder, my partner in crime saunters up and down every short aisle, gathering items against her chest. Five minutes later, she reemerges with two bags full of junk food, drinks, and a box of hair color. Big man behind the counter watches her every step, licking his oily lips.

  Shoving my weapon into the front waistband of my jeans, I get out of the car and make eye contact with the fat fuck. He swivels his chair around, turning his back to us, and continues to feed his face fried pig skins.

  “Get in.” I kiss Poe’s temple and open the passenger door.

  Once the gas tank is full, we check into a hotel that lets us pay with cash at the hourly rate.

  “If you want to stay more than a few hours, I need a credit card and ID.” The hotel manager flicks her cigarette into
a dirty ashtray. She has yellow bleach-blonde hair and leather skin.

  I drop two hundred dollars onto the counter and take our room key. Criminals gravitate toward other criminals, and our home for the night is trashed with Utah’s worst. Selling bodies and buying love, hookers and Johns are in and out of the room beside ours, treating it as a revolving door. The air is tinged with the skunky scent of marijuana, and there’s a man sitting beside the green pool with a bottle of clear liquid, drinking away his woes.

  “Help me with this, boy.” Poesy’s in front of the large bathroom mirror, barefoot and half-undressed.

  Stepping away from the sun-bleached curtains, I cross the small space and help her out of her shirt. White cotton sticks to her injury, and it starts to bleed when I pull it free. My girl sucks in a sharp breath, but smiles when I meet her eyes in our reflection.

  “It’s healing,” I say, scoping out the threads I sewed through her broken skin. I can’t break the stitches yet, but redness around each wound has lessened.

  “It feels a lot better.” She rolls her shoulder and doesn’t flinch.

  Poe pulls her hair from a loose knot on top of her head. Long strands fall to her waist, smearing blood across her shoulder and tinting blonde spots pink. She parts it down the middle and runs a black comb from her dark roots to her near translucent ends, smoothing tangles. It hangs heavy over each shoulder like a blanket.

  “It’s so long, baby,” I say, leaning against the wall and crossing my arms over my chest.

  “I can do the sides, but I’ll probably need your help for the back,” she says, running her hands down the length of her locks.

  There’s not a chance to ask what she means before she gathers a handful of tresses in one hand and kitchen scissors with the other. Without hesitation, Poesy chops into her hair, unevenly and without skill.

  “What the fuck?” I laugh nervously, unable to help myself.

  “These are so dull,” she replies, cutting away jagged strands near her chin. “These are the only pair they had at that piece of shit gas station.”

  I take a step forward, over a mound of hair fallen around Poesy’s feet, when she starts to hack the other side. Set on the bathroom counter is a box of red hair color, mixed and ready to apply, and two pairs of clear plastic gloves.

  Poesy draws her bottom lip between her teeth, narrowing her thick eyebrows as she concentrates on snipping every last strand. Relieved of waist-length hair, my girl exposes her shoulders and neck, slimming her slight figure and sharpening her strong features. I watch her expression soften as if she chops away burden, simultaneously flooding my chest with warm affection.

  The left side of her cut sits an inch higher than the right, but my girl smiles at her reflection, shaking shorter locks back and forth across her face.

  “How does the back look?” she asks, meeting my eyes in the mirror. Poesy bounces on her toes.

  Unable to kill her joy, I don’t tell her she’s missed entire sections, and a blind person could have done a better job. The right side of my mouth curves up, and I circle my arms around her shoulders, careful for the bullet hole. She melts against me, tilting her head back and sighing.

  “It looks amazing,” I say, kissing the tip of her nose.

  “Liar.” She laughs. “But I had to do it while I had the nerve.”

  I stand back as she squirts hair color onto her head, turning her blonde strands deep red, until her shoulder starts to hurt and she asks for help.

  “Am I doing this right?” I ask, smothering dye into her ends. Drops of tint drip down her arms.

  “Your face is priceless,” Poe responds, unconcerned with how I apply the color on her hair.

  Forty-five minutes later, my girl kneels over the mustard yellow bathtub while I rinse her hair under a gold-polished spout. Red-tinted water sprays onto the white walls and coats the bottom of the tub, mimicking a violent crime scene. Poe screams when shampoo runs into her eyes, and we laugh after I climb into the tub to make sure the soapsuds wash out.

  “Wow,” she says, standing in front of the mirror.

  She no longer looks like the girl Fox News broadcast on the television earlier today. Fresh pigment is jarring against her pale complexion, but complimentary to her eye color. Poesy leans toward her image as pinkish streams of water cascade down her back, staining her white bra. She inspects her new hair color that’s stained around her hairline.

  “I did a horrible job on the cut.” She wipes water from her forehead. Eyes gone greener look to her lips, to her nose, to the wound on her shoulder. “Do I look older?”

  “A little.” I towel dry her hair.

  Poesy stands tall as I scrub itchy cotton around the back of her neck and over her ears, cleaning the artificial pigment away. I comb her hair to the sound of our neighbors’ fucking, crushing bedsprings and slamming the headboard against the wall. Once Poe’s hair is smooth, I take the scissors and straighten the cut, using her jawline as a guide.

  “You’re beautiful,” I say once I’m done, kissing the top of her shoulder.

  We leave inches and inches of cut hair on the bathroom floor and don’t bother to douse the red color from the walls and bathtub. Poesy and I climb into bed, slipping under dust-scented blankets and threadbare sheets. We eat Hershey’s Kisses for dinner and share a bottle of orange juice spiked with cheap vodka.

  She falls asleep, sprawled across my chest. As our hearts beat together, vibrating through my bones, ink-like guilt slowly blackens my insides. I can’t close my eyes without seeing the guard’s face, spitting thick blood the color of Poe’s hair from his swollen lips. The butt of the gun is coated in it, locked in the Mazda’s trunk.

  I run my hands down my face as the sound of his skull cracking echoes in my ears. A thin sheen of sweat covers my body, pooling heavier above my lips and in my palms.

  The truth is, I don’t know if killing Jonathan Henning was an accident. Breaking his face was purposeful, and in that moment, I wanted him dead for hurting my reason for living. Uncontainable rage fueled my blinding aggression, and the sight of his life source spilling at my feet didn’t haunt me during the robbery—it was a gift.

  “Are you okay?” Poesy asks, sleep dreary and far away.

  “Go back to sleep.” I kiss the top of her head, rolling my partner in crime over so I can get up. She curls up and drifts back into the land of dreams.

  The frigid midnight air bites my perspired skin. I welcome each stinging breath and the bone-chilling cold for slowing my murderous thoughts and gruesome flashbacks, even when my teeth chatter and the tips of my fingers numb.

  “Lonely?” The whore from the room beside ours steps out, cupping her hands around a cigarette between her lips to light it. Her thin eyebrows come together, and an orange glow from a purple lighter casts harsh shadows across her face.

  “No,” I answer.

  “Too bad. You’re cute,” she says, blowing dense white smoke into the night’s air with a smirk.

  Clad in a short jean skirt that’s twisted to the side and a stained tank top, my hallway companion rests against the stucco wall. Her dark-brown hair is shampoo-starved, and her knees and elbows are rubbed raw. I look away and lean against a blue chipped railing, keeping me from a short fall to the parking lot below.

  “Want a smoke?” the prostitute asks.

  “No, thanks.”

  “I like your ink,” she says with a lungful of toxins. “Face tattoos are bold. Are you religious or something?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, you wouldn’t be in a place like this.” She flicks her cigarette butt over the railing. Red embers burn bright before turning to ash. “We’re all monsters here.”

  “LOWEN, WAKE UP.” Poesy shakes my arm, looking over her shoulder toward the door. “The police are downstairs.”

  I sit straight, kicking the tangled bed covers from my legs and jump up. Dizzy and disoriented from sleeplessness, my feet feel like they’re made of lead, and I stumble toward the window. Six black and wh
ite police cruisers jam-pack the small parking lot, blocking the only way in and out from the street.

  Panic is guilt’s favorite companion, tag-teaming sanity and heart until I can’t think clearly or rationalize. The criminal in me dictates muscle movement, and I reach for a weapon, checking for ammo and pulling the hammer. Determined to shoot our way out of this hotel—ill with intent and strong with the will to defend the innocent—until Poe steps into my line of sight with a pistol in hand, not so guiltless and entirely protecting.

  “Do you think this is it? Are they here for us?” she asks, half-dressed and ready for a gunfight. Hazel eyes burn recklessness, and her hands don’t tremble like mine.

  Her willingness to die saves us from a suicide mission. I lower my weapon and take the deadly steel from the blind bravery before she hurts herself.

  “How long have they been out there?” I ask, pulling back the curtains. There’s not an officer in sight.

  “Not sure. I went to fill the ice bucket, saw them, and woke you up.”

  “Pack your things,” I say, noticing that the police cruisers are positioned in a semi-circle around a lone Town Car parked in front of a room below us, but a few doors down. “This has nothing to do with us, but we need to get out of here.”

  “Are you sure?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I lie.

  I keep watch as Poesy scurries around the room with a toothbrush in her mouth and unlaced shoes on her feet. She spits blue bubbles into the sink and wipes her mouth on the sleeve of her shirt. My girl moves with grace, panic-less and precise, confident in the turn our lives have taken.

  “Did I bring my phone charger in?” she asks, tossing blankets and dropping to her knees to look under the bed.

  I envy her indifference as I stand guard, swallowing searing dread that blisters my esophagus like the worst kind of heartburn. The only thing that keeps me from shaking sense into her is watching Utah’s finest stride into view, guiding a man in cuffs toward a cruiser.