Blues for Zoey

by Robert Paul Weston

  “Did something happen to them?”

  A-Man almost smiled. “That’s the problem with pinion gears. The machine’s too big. It’s too complicated. Sometimes you find your pinion, but you don’t know you found your pinion. You see what I mean?”

  “I think so.”

  I was about to suggest B-Man was A-Man’s new pinion, but that was stupid. B-Man was a pretty poor substitute for a whole family.

  A-Man turned away from the photograph. “Guess I’m back to rattling around.”

  It was odd how there were no pictures with all three of them together. Just ones of the woman and the boy. It made me happy to know I still had the photograph of Dad and me, on the courts at DeWinter Hills.

  “So B-Man wanders off sometimes?” I asked.

  “All the time.”

  I nodded.

  “He wasn’t always like that.”

  A-Man pulled back the door to his bathroom, revealing a framed photograph of a group of men standing together on a brown, rocky slope. They all had guns: large, automatic assault rifles. A-Man was standing at the edge of the group. His goatee was the same, but everything else belonged to a different person. His body was broader, thick arms bursting out of a tight green T-shirt.

  “That’s B there beside me.”

  I never would have known. B-Man’s face was round and healthy. All his teeth were there, polished white. He showed them off with the beaming grin of an actor.

  “No way ... ” But once you looked, it was obvious.

  “Like I said, a previous life.” A-Man stood beside me, arms folded and gripping his sides. “You make one bad decision, or in B’s case, one good decision, and the whole machine’ll flip.”

  “What decision?”

  A-Man squinted at me. “I never tell you?”

  I shook my head.

  “B took a bullet for me. Right here.” He tapped his head, just behind his ear. “Only grazed him, but he was out cold for three months. When he came to, he wasn’t the same person, and neither was I.”

  B-Man never pulled down the hood of his bomber jacket, even in summer. I had always assumed it was part of his craziness, and maybe it was. Or maybe it was his way of disguising the wound.

  “He saved your life.”

  A-Man nodded. “After that, I lost the stomach for it. He was my best friend till then, and now he’s … ”

  “He still is,” I said, cutting in. “He’s B-Man.”

  A-Man didn’t say anything.

  I wanted to tell him I had found the die in the alley, but I didn’t want him to worry. I wanted to believe B-Man was just wandering around somewhere, disappearing for a few days like he always did. But there was another reason I left the die in my pocket: for the money. I wanted to keep my job going, just a bit longer. I was so close.

  “You’re right,” I said, as if A-Man needed reassuring. “He’ll be back soon.”

  Walking back from the Center, I felt numb. What snapped me out of it was my phone, vibrating against my leg. The display said it was the library where Mom worked, but when I picked up, it wasn’t her.

  “Is this … ” There was a pause while whoever it was tried to make sense of my name. “Ka…zoo…oh Barrett?”

  “Kaz,” I said.

  “Your mother is Aiko Barrett?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m afraid your mother’s had some sort of an … episode.”

  44

  Hairy-Terry

  In the hospital bed, Mom’s face was pale and damp. Her hair clung to her forehead in sinister curls, like she was floating through weeds in a lake.

  “Is she okay?” Nomi asked.

  “She’s just sleeping.”

  “She looks hot. She’s sweating.”

  I brushed back Mom’s hair, smoothing it away from her face.

  “Do you think we’ll get it, too?”

  “Get what?”

  “The disease.”

  “It’s super rare. You don’t need to worry.”

  “But she’s our mom. Katie told me she had an uncle who got cancer from his father, who got cancer from his father. She said it’s hairy-terry.”

  “Hereditary. Somnitis isn’t like that. It’s not contagious, either.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I’ve read a lot about it. Nobody knows why it happens.”

  Nomi covered her eyes. She never liked watching Mom asleep.

  “You shouldn’t worry about that stuff,” I told her.

  “Can I stay at Jenn’s?”

  “What? Tonight?”

  Nomi nodded. “Until Mom gets home.”

  “It could be a couple days. I don’t know if—wait, who’s Jenn?”

  “Jennifer! I told you, she plays violin! And they have an upright.”

  “A what?”

  “An upright piano!”

  It stung a little that my kid sister didn’t want to hang out with her big bro, but only a little. If Nomi wanted to have a slumber party with Jennifer and an upright piano, it’d mean I’d have the house to myself.

  “Okay, well, if Jenn’s parents are fine with you staying over, then … ”

  “I already called them from home. They said it was fine.”

  “Great,” I said. “So we’re all set.”

  45

  Simple

  While Nomi packed for the sleepover, I skulked off to my room and called Zoey. She didn’t pick up, so I left a message saying I hoped we could hang out soon and, in case she wasn’t doing anything that night, it looked like my mom would be away, so maybe after I finished work, around ten or so, maybe we could … et cetera. It was one of those rambling messages you regret halfway through, at which point it’s too late to turn back, so you just keep going.

  When Jennifer and her mom came to pick up Nomi, I noticed how strikingly this other mother differed from ours. She was a plump woman, with stylish, thick-rimmed glasses and brightly colored clothes.

  “Oh, Jennifer’s so excited!” she kept saying. “She’s been talking about this all day!”

  Jennifer, meanwhile, sat in the back of the minivan, waving at my sister with all the enthusiasm of Becky Leighton.

  As soon as they were gone, I went into the Sit ’n’ Spin. I didn’t see Mr. Rodolfo, meaning he was either out back or in the basement. Sliding by the counter, my jeans rubbed the wood and I felt something dig into my thigh. It was the die.

  Even though I’d changed into a fresh pair of jeans, I couldn’t help transferring it into the new pocket. Like with B-Man, it had become my talisman.

  Mr. Rodolfo must have heard me come in because he creaked up from the basement. “I’m taking off. You close up, okay?”

  I nodded and watched him go. After that, I kept checking my phone, looking for a call from Zoey, but there was nothing. I made some change for a young couple who came in, wanting to put a drenched canvas tent in one of the dryers. I let them, even though I was pretty sure Mr. Rodolfo would have said no.

  Later, I went out back and crouched in the alley. The ground was dry. I couldn’t see anything that looked like blood. I opened Ol’ Betty’s mouth and peered down her throat. She was wiped so clean she sparkled. I went back to the counter and stood at the top of the stairs, swaying on the threshold of the basement.

  The Arbitrator hung on the wall as always. It was black and shiny, as if it had been recently polished. Then again, I had never examined it closely before; maybe it always shined like that. Either way, there certainly wasn’t any blood on it, at least none I could see.

  I stood on the stairs for a long time. I remembered what Mr. Rodolfo had told me when I first started working there. Down there’s my space, understand? Upstairs—your space. Downstairs—my space. Simple, yeah?

  Simple.

  I tiptoed down the steps.

&nb
sp; At the bottom was an open area, a medium-sized room with the walls exposed, showing off struts and wiring. Under the stairs was the door to Mr. Rodolfo’s office, while on the far side was the door to the poker room. I tried that one first.

  To my surprise, it wasn’t locked. The walls of the room were pasted over with fake wooden pressboard. In the middle of the room was a large round table with metal legs, surrounded by chairs. The tabletop was marred by the sticky, overlapping circles left by coffee mugs and beer glasses. The only other piece of furniture was a low white bookshelf, featuring a plastic tray of poker chips, some weathered notepads, and two DIY books about washing machines and bathroom tiling. That was it. Mr. Rodolfo’s poker fortress was basically just a room with some chairs and a table. If there was anything to find down here, I thought, it would be in his office.

  Which (of course) was locked.

  46

  I ♥ NY

  After my shift, I went out into the street. A wet, gloomy warmth rose off the pavement. It was that mysterious time on a summer night when you can walk from inside to outside without any perceptible change in temperature. There’s something eerie about that. Eerie, but intriguing. Maybe that was why I didn’t go upstairs right away. Instead, I wandered across the street and stood in the place where Zoey played.

  The tiny clipping from the Chronicler was still taped up in Dave Mizra’s window. Now that I knew he had made up that story, it looked smaller, shabbier, the tape fading to a sickly yellow. It was becoming clear that although Dave Mizra dressed like a hipster, listened to cool music, and had pretensions of being an artist, his store was basically a pawnshop.

  I put my forehead against the glass. Inside was a trio of glassed-in counters arranged in a U-shape. It looked like a conventional jewelers. The only difference was the large, framed, black-and-white photograph on the back wall. Why had I never noticed that before?

  It was a framed poster of a thickly bearded man with wild hair and narrow eyes. He was wearing an I ♥ NY T-shirt, standing in an alley with one arm raised above his head, fingers hooked into the grill of a fire escape. From the dim glow of the street lamps out front, he almost looked real, like he might step off the wall, smoke spiraling from his cigarette.

  It was Shain Cope. That same image was in the French liner notes of Freudian Slap.

  “Planning a robbery?”

  Startled, I pulled away from the window.

  It was Zoey. Even with the rattler slung across her back, she had somehow snuck up on me. I must have been really out of it. She was back to her goth-slash-punk look: black skirt, black shirt, and black leggings, with the silver and leather jewelry that seemed to be an extension of her instrument.

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  “About a second.”

  My forehead left a foggy oval of grease on the glass. I tried wiping it away, but it only smeared. “What did you just ask me?”

  She laughed. “I asked if you were planning a robbery. You looked pretty suspicious, staring in the window of a closed jewelry shop.”

  “I was just looking.”

  “That’s cool. I got your message. Am I too late to hang out?”

  “No, I think my mom’s gonna be gone … all night, probably.”

  “So what do you wanna do?” she asked, glancing across the street at the Sit ’n’ Spin. “Were you just gonna hang out around your work?”

  “I was hanging around because—well, that’s where I live.” I pointed to the windows above the laundromat. Most of the time, our apartment embarrassed me, but after seeing where Zoey lived, it didn’t seem so bad.

  “A while back, my dad and I lived in an apartment like that, above a row of shops. That was in Prague.”

  “Where?”

  “The Czech Republic. Over there, it’s called a konírny. It means ‘mews,’ a row of apartments that once had stables under them.” She pronounced it ko-neer-nay, with a curl to her tongue that sounded authentic.

  “Is that where you’re from? The Czech Republic?”

  “We just lived there for a while, but yeah, in a konírny.”

  “Because of your dad’s work?”

  She nodded sadly. “I’ve lived all over. Europe, Mexico City, Montreal, New York, California—LA was crazy! I hated it. You couldn’t walk anywhere.” She shook her head, recalling something amusing but something she didn’t care to share. “Sorry I freaked out the other night. I don’t think it’s cool my dad keeps a gun in the house, but I kind of understand. He just wants to protect us.”

  “I’m the one who freaked out. I thought you wanted to give it to me.”

  “What, like a present?”

  “You said you ‘had something for me,’ and then when I opened the drawer … ”

  “Well, yeah, but not a gun!”

  “This is gonna sound weird, but for a second I thought you wanted me to kill somebody.”

  She threw her head back and laughed. It came out in a juddering machine gun of HA-HA-HAs. “You’re crazy!”

  She was laughing so hard, it got me started, too, but then it hit me that we were cackling away about killing somebody.

  A picture of B-Man flashed in my head. I couldn’t keep the laughter going.

  Zoey stopped too. “My dad pulls stupid shit sometimes.” She looked across the street again, at the two front windows of our apartment. “It’s all dark.”

  I nodded. “My sister’s sleeping over at a friend’s.”

  “Then I guess it’s your turn to give me a tour.”

  47

  You Always Remember Your Second Time

  So I finally got it right.

  What surprised me most were the things that stuck in my head: The way Zoey’s instrument made the softest noise in the world when she propped it against the wall in the entranceway. How, for no good reason, my tour of the apartment ended in the laundry room, which was where we started to kiss. How we made out going up the hall and finally into my bedroom, and how exciting it was to leave the door open—just a crack—because no one else was there. How, when Zoey was naked, her body was so white she looked frosted in ice, and how the illusion was foiled by a bruise on the outside of her leg, just smaller than a fist. How natural it felt to finally know what I was doing. How it wasn’t until afterward, when she rolled onto her stomach, that I noticed her tattoo: a rectangular criss-cross of black lines, spreading across the small of her back.

  It was a single bar of music.

  “What is it?” I asked her, running my fingers over the notes.

  “You don’t recognize it?”

  I tried to hear the song in my head, but I had never been very good at reading music.

  “I played it for you. On piano.”

  “ ‘Claire de lune’?”

  She nodded.

  “Is it your favorite song?”

  “Maybe. It’s so, so beautiful.”

  “Then how come you never play it? On your instrument, I mean.”

  “I do, but only sometimes.”

  She rolled over and put her head on my chest. Her dreads were smoother than they looked, but they still tickled. I picked up a strand as thick as my thumb, twirling it against the skin of her arm.

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Depends,” she said.

  “On what?”

  “Duh. On what the question is.”

  “You ever think about love at first sight?”

  She laughed. “You mean like seeing me walk past a laundromat and thinking, ‘check it out, it’s the new messiah’? Because trust me, you’ve definitely got the wrong person.”

  “Okay, but that wasn’t really the first time I saw you.”

  “I thought it was.”

  “It was and it wasn’t. When you walked past, I noticed you, but I didn’t see you. What I saw most was the instr
ument. And your clothes, your hair, but not you. Not your face. That wasn’t until we were out back at Toph’s, under the gazebo.”

  “So you’re saying you believe in it?” She sounded surprised.

  “I don’t know. I’m just asking.”

  “I’m sure it happens sometimes,” she said in that older voice of hers, the one that seemed to come and go at random.

  “Is this what you want to do? Like, forever?”

  “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

  “Not this-this,” I said. Then I reconsidered. “I mean, sure, screwing forever would be—well, yeah, nice—but I’m fairly sure there would be unforeseen ramifications.”

  “Chafing, for instance.”

  I laughed. “I meant the question in a more general sense. I mean moving from school to school, playing music on the street. Don’t you ever want to play somewhere else? Like somewhere, I dunno … better ?” I regretted how much it sounded like an insult.

  Zoey didn’t seem to mind. “As long as I get to play, I don’t care about anything else. I don’t care what the music is, I don’t even care about the instrument. I’ll make one myself if I have to, like I did with the rattler. That’s the deal, get it?”

  “What deal?”

  “The one I have with my dad.” Her voice turned harder than I’d ever heard it. “He drags me around, but no matter where we go, I always get to play my music. It’s the only thing that keeps me going.”

  We were silent again. It didn’t feel right to keep toying with Zoey’s hair. I let the one thick dread drop on the pillow.

  “Okay, maybe you’re right. If I had my choice, I’d go to Europe. To London or Paris or Rome. They have some crazy music schools over there. Classic, ancient places. I’d go there and study.”

  “You should,” I said, but I realized I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want her to go anywhere. I stared at my jeans, lying in a puddle of denim on the floor. “Maybe for now, your dad could get you into classes at Falconer. They must have a decent program.”