Fierce Pretty Things

by Tom Howard

  “Okay then,” I say.

  “Or Orchid.” Hildy looks up at the ceiling. “Some kind of plant or flower name, I’m thinking. Is a fern a plant or a flower?”

  “Goddamn it,” I say, “there’s like a billion streets with flower names here.”

  “Well, can’t we just replace everything anyways?” she asks.

  That sets me off. I don’t even know why, but it does. I let her have it. I tell her it’s a big deal even if she doesn’t think it’s a big deal. I say she’s not the one who’s going to have to replace everything, and she’s not the one who has to be responsible for both of us, because she’s never responsible for anything. Not for herself, not for me, not even for Reggie because he doesn’t want to have anything to do with her. Which is a rotten thing to say. Then, getting more rotten by the second, I yell at her for spending her time writing stupid letters that nobody’s ever going to read because everybody’s dead, while I’m stuck worrying about everything and trying to figure out how we’re going to eat and how we’re going to stay alive long enough to make it through the goddamn fucking fuck winter.

  I don’t have any reason to leave, but I feel like I need a dramatic exit. So I run off. Rain’s still coming down and I don’t have anywhere to go, so I just storm around like an idiot, getting soaked. I walk to the Ferris wheel even though I hate that damn thing, and I stare up at it and let the rain fall in my eyes. By then I’m not angry anymore. Just stupid and wet.

  Hildy’s gone when I get back. I find her letters, the ones I yelled at her about, all torn up in the garbage. Her bike’s gone too.

  For the next half hour I ride through the rain looking for her. I figure she’s gone south, toward Fern or Orchid, but I don’t know if Hildy even knows where those streets are. She could end up anywhere. I head down Atlantic Avenue and cut over every two blocks to go up and down the side streets before coming back to the main strip. I figure she probably crashed her bike and she’s lying in a gutter someplace. Probably with her head cracked open. Probably she’s looking up at this stupid gray sky and rain’s falling in her face while her head’s split open, and she’s cursing my name as she dies. I don’t even blame her.

  Two blocks from Orchid, I find her bike propped against the wall next to the empty hardware store. She’s standing under the awning and looking in at the empty shelves.

  I pull my bike up and lean it against hers. First time I’ve actually been in front of the place, even though I’ve watched it through the telescope every night.

  “Why’d people just take everything,” she says.

  “They could get away with it,” I tell her.

  “But they just died anyway.” She turns and looks at me. “I know you’re mad because she gave you that backpack and I lost it. But you don’t gotta say those things to me.”

  “I know,” I tell her. “I don’t know why I did.”

  “You were just scared.” She walks down the street a little ways so she can look at the graffiti. “What’s it mean,” she says, touching the wall.

  “Kids say it when they’re done playing,” I say. “To let the other kids know they can come out now. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  She drops her hand but keeps staring at the wall for a long time.

  “Oh,” she says.

  * * *

  Hi there. I know it’s been a while but I wasn’t feeling great. It’s been raining a lot here. Reggie’s dead. I guess his name wasn’t Reggie though. He was just a dog. Me and Woody were on the beach yesterday morning and we saw the dogs all fighting over something under the boardwalk, and turns out they were fighting over Reggie. He just went in there to die. Isn’t that funny that he’d want to go hide somewhere when he died? I don’t know, maybe it’s not funny. Anyway, they tore him to bits. I’m trying to think of something good to say about that.

  Woody had another fit the day after that. But he’s okay I think. He said for me to say hello.

  You ever read some poem about being a pair of claws? And you’re scuttling over the floors of the silent seas? You should read that.

  Yours, Hildy.

  * * *

  Something wakes me up later. Maybe it’s because the clouds have broken and the moon’s shining down, full bright. Maybe it’s something else. Beside me I hear Hildy’s breath rattling in her chest.

  Standing at the edge of the roof, I look out toward the sea. And something catches the corner of my eye.

  Takes me a while to get the telescope set up because I don’t want to wake Hildy by turning on the flashlight. At first I don’t even know what I’m seeing. Just a flash of reddish-orange light bobbing up and down on the shoreline.

  Then I see somebody walking along the beach holding a torch.

  My heart’s racing. I never thought I’d see anything else alive through that telescope. No matter what I ever said to Hildy.

  Once my eyes adjust I see that he’s a kid, no older than me. He’s just dancing along the beach with this crazy torch, skipping back and forth like he’s leading a parade in the middle of the night. In the gloom behind him I can see some others too.

  “Hildy,” I call out, but she doesn’t wake up. I’m about to yell her name when my eyes adjust and I get a better look at who’s coming our way.

  Two men with long beards trail right behind the boy, and then a little farther back there’s a line of women and a couple of kids, moving single file. I can’t figure out why they’re walking single file like that, and then I see the moonlight glint off the chains between their feet as they shuffle along the sand. Something small, Hildy-sized, is dragging along the sand at the very back, still chained to the others.

  I watch them till they’re past.

  “What is it,” says Hildy a couple minutes later, when I lay down next to her.

  “Go back to sleep,” I say.

  * * *

  Couple mornings later, I wake up and Hildy’s gone.

  I go out to the boardwalk and sweep up like always, and then I go down to the beach. I find her hunched over at the end of the pier. Next to her, the sand’s splattered with blood.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Thought I’d feel better by now.”

  At least I know why we’re almost out of amoxicillin. I tell Hildy to get some sleep and then I head out to look for more.

  Since we’d come to the beach we always avoided the houses with the red X on the door. But I know where they all are. First two houses I check are locked and the windows are barred. But the back door of the third house is unlocked. Some foul smell breathes out, like I expect. I try to go through the rooms quickly, figuring there can’t be anything too good in here. Even if the rooms are empty and I find some antibiotics, there can’t be anything good in a house with an X on the door.

  The door to the last room on the top floor is pulled shut. For a second I think about leaving and going on to the next house, which maybe doesn’t have something awful waiting for me. Because I think that most likely there’s a clown in there. A dead clown, holding some rotting flowers or something. I don’t know why I think that.

  There’s no clown, though. Just three bodies on the bed that aren’t exactly skeletons, but they don’t look like regular dead bodies either. Two little bodies and a bigger, longer body, a mom or a dad, beside them. All wrapped up together on the bed, like they died that way. Or like the two little ones were put there at the end, once it was over, and then the mom or the dad just lay down next to them to die. Which I figure is pretty horrible, but maybe there are more horrible things than to die like that, with your family next to you.

  I wish I could do something for them. Somebody ought to do something for everyone when they die. But all I do is go through the medicine cabinet and steal things.

  Later I wake Hildy up and hand her some pills.

  “Hey,” she says. “You can eat me if you got to.”

  “What the hell,” I say.

  “I mean if I’m dead and you don’t have any choice. I don’t mind if you eat me. I won’t haunt you
or anything, Woody.”

  I hand her a cup of water. “Thanks,” I tell her.

  * * *

  Some days I think she’s doing better.

  She doesn’t write letters anymore, or at least I don’t find bottles on the beach when I go out in the morning. I’ve taken to writing letters myself, just because I don’t want whoever it is to get worried. I don’t have a lot to say. Mostly I just say that Hildy’s feeling better and we’ll see them soon. Once I wrote about seeing that word on the wall, Ollyollyoxenfree, and what it meant. Hildy would have told them about that.

  * * *

  We’re out on the beach in the dark, and the ocean is restless and strange. Hildy sits next to me and puts her head on my shoulder.

  “I’m glad to be here, Woody,” she says.

  I tell her I’m glad too.

  “I just mean I’m glad I got to be with you.”

  “You shouldn’t talk like that,” I tell her.

  “I know,” she says. “But I’m glad.”

  We just sit there for a while, listening to the sea. I like having her head on my shoulder, I guess.

  * * *

  It’s a strange thing. Usually I know pretty soon when it’s coming on. But this is different. Maybe it’s a fit, or maybe it’s something else.

  I’m with Hildy on the beach. We’re pushing a sailboat into the water as the sun sets behind the mainland in the west.

  Jump on, I tell her.

  I’m trying, I’m trying, she says.

  Like I said, it’s a strange thing. Because I can see them, Hildy and me, and I can hear them. But I’m back on the shore. I can’t say anything. I can only watch them set off, and hear them speak, until they’ve sailed too far for me to hear them clearly. Then all I hear are a few words here and there, whatever the wind carries ashore. Eventually the words run together and I can’t make out who’s talking, or what the words even mean.

  … was cold, I remember …

  … ran off and made her so mad …

  … said the mainsail, right there, goddamn it …

  … that dumb song but I still think about it …

  … hard alee, now …

  … like in a million years when it’s just fish …

  … even read that sailing book anyway …

  … course I remember …

  … would hold my breath but in a good way …

  … and pipe tobacco and something else …

  … imagined everything, Woody …

  … said starboard, damn …

  … and I was glad, too, even though …

  … I know, Hildy …

  … like indigo and blue and something else…

  … and the whole time we were…

  … yes …

  … just one more…

  … just the beginning, pages are getting wet…

  … I know, I know…

  … let us go, then, you and I…

  … yes, yes, Woody, yes…

  And then the words are gone.

  Behind me the lights are going out. I’m still here, though. Just waiting. Keeping my eye on things. Until the lights go dark and the sand settles over all of it, over every last inch. I’ll be waiting right here on the shore. Just in case they ever come back home.

  3

  Temple & Vine

  Cameron’s doing the weird eye-rolling thing when Ruby snaps him into the car seat, never the best sign. She takes the notebook from her purse and scribbles weird eye-rolling thing, Sat. morning, on way to Bon Soir. Then she slides the notebook back into her purse and backs the Ghost out of the driveway.

  The Ghost is Bill’s nickname for the Chevy, which he picked up last year at Mason’s Auto Paradise for two hundred dollars on account of it having been the scene of a double murder. “Double murder or murder-suicide?” Bill had asked, but Mason assured him it was just double murder so Bill bought it. It’s a good car when it isn’t making odd noises, including the horrible wet sighs it makes just before it breaks down.

  “Glub-glub,” says Cam.

  “No glub-glub,” Ruby says. “Let’s hope not.”

  “May-bee,” he sings. And then, hopefully, “Booger-man?”

  Ruby says, “We’ll see.” She’s given up explaining that Burger Man is gone, that he’s dancing on some other corner now. Cam doesn’t know the other corner is across from Vine Street Park, and she has no urgent need to tell him this, given his recent interest in street maps. He still puzzles over the names, but he knows the little green blobs are parks. Someday soon he’ll put his finger down on the green blob that is Vine Street Park and notice it’s pretty close to the house and ask why he’s been to every other park within ten miles except for that one. As if Ruby has been intentionally avoiding it for his entire life, ha ha.

  “We’re going to pick up the curtains,” she says. “Remember?”

  “Gold,” he says, drawing the word out with oddball delight. He says “Gold” again, and then again and again, louder each time, until finally it gets weird and Ruby turns up the radio to block it out.

  But yes, gold. And thin, and delicate. With a kind of flower pattern thing that she can never remember the name of. Bill would know, something French. The flower pattern thing is so subtle you don’t even notice at first. You—if you’re someone who notices curtains, for example, Bill’s mom, Candice—you might think nice curtains, what with the gold. And well now, you got this kind of flower pattern thing happening, don’t you?

  She rolls onto Calvert and climbs a corkscrew turn that makes Cam giggle. Not the most direct way to Chez Bon Soir, but it’s still five minutes till the shop opens and she likes to build a healthy surplus of goodwill before taking Cam out in public. She’ll still be able to run in and pick the curtains up right as they open, then be home with plenty of time to hang them before Bill wakes up.

  Sweet Bill. Pulled the blanket over his head last night when he got home and wouldn’t speak, even though she knew he was lying there awake forever. Had one of his black days yesterday so she didn’t see him much. Spent a lot of time locked in the shed yesterday. But today will be different. He’ll wake up and wander into the living room and see all this gold light streaming in through the curtains. And he’ll turn to Ruby and shake his head and give her that weird look that she loves, kind of a surprised flinch, or maybe it’s some kind of brain damage, but whatever it is, she loves it because she thinks it means he’s happy. Not just happy but kind of aware of the goodness of the universe? Which makes her aware of the goodness of the universe. She hopes that’s what will happen. Hopes he’ll give her that flinch, and then maybe he won’t say anything for an hour but it’ll be the good kind of not-saying-anything, not the I’m-gonna-go-out-and-spend-six-hours-locked-in-the-shed kind of not-saying-anything.

  Nine thirty-two. She parks the car and unsnaps Cam from the seat. “Fifteen minutes,” she reminds him. “Easy.”

  “May-bee,” he says again. Sounds doubtful. Eyes do a little pre-roll.

  The shop is empty except for a tall, pretty blond taking photos of some vintage furniture with her cell phone. Cam finds a Lego roller coaster set on the floor in the corner and crab-walks over to inspect it. Another thing for the notebook. Ruby waits at the counter with her hand hovering over the bell.

  Last time she was in the shop hadn’t been great. She’d asked about the curtains and Genevieve, the owner, told her the price was two hundred fifty, and Ruby tried hard not to have any visible reaction, except she realized right away that she wasn’t blinking, which wasn’t normal, but by then she’d gone too far and had to commit to it. Finally with watery eyes she asked about layaway, and the word kind of dropped between her and Genevieve and landed on the counter with a gross thud. “I’m sad and horrible,” it cried, and Cam picked that moment to announce that he’d just pooped a lot, “an awful lot,” and was in fact still pooping. Genevieve said, “We do have a store credit card if you’re unable to pay the full amount now.” Ruby concentrated on becoming invisible, really
nailing it too, so that Genevieve was able to look right through her and start chatting with another customer. Ruby was left holding an application for a store credit card called VIVA!, which she pretended to read as she floated ghostlike to the door, anchored to the floor only by Cam and his potent smell.

  That was two months ago. There’s room on the credit card now, and Cam is preoccupied with the coaster. Even so, her stomach clenches when Genevieve appears.

  “You came in looking at the curtains, right?” Genevieve smiles brilliantly and nods toward the Lego corner. “I remember the little guy. Pooper.” She flashes another hundred-watt smile.

  “Yes,” says Ruby, off-balance. “Yes, the curtains, I mean. And yeah, he’s a handful.” She grins and rolls her eyes.

  “Think you asked about layaway.” Genevieve leans in as if they’re sorority sisters, or at least the way Ruby imagines sorority sisters might lean in to each other. She says, “Not our regular policy? But I can probably make it work, sweetheart.”

  Ruby flinches. Just barely, but it’s definitely a flinch, the first she can ever remember. She wonders if this is like Bill’s flinch, if it comes from the same place.

  “I’m okay,” she says, “I mean I have the money, it’s okay.”

  “They’re pretty curtains,” says Genevieve. Ruby blushes, and then when Genevieve goes to find the curtains Ruby is overcome by a weird dumb gratitude. Not for Genevieve really, but just for the universe slipping this moment in, giving her this.

  She’s too negative, that’s the thing. Always misreading people and thinking the worst. What does she know about Genevieve, anyway? Maybe she was having a bad day last time Ruby came in, or maybe she just has that kind of face that looks bitter and disapproving and she can’t help it. She probably looks at puppies and babies with that same face and doesn’t get why they cry and shrink away in horror, and it makes her miserable. Which makes her, Genevieve that is, think the world is a sad place that doesn’t make any sense at all, and then here comes Ruby to prove her right by clenching up when she walks over, expecting the worst, and all because Genevieve was born with this face that can’t do normal face things.