M.I.A.

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  She hadn’t locked the door. She was waiting where I’d left her, leaning against the wall, hugging herself, rocking.

  I knew it wasn’t me she wanted. But I’d wanted her since I first saw her. I was content to have what I could get.

  We tore the clothes off one another and sank onto the floor.

  I barely got the rubber on before she was on top of me, and I was in. She rode me till I thought I would explode. Then, at the last minute, she rolled us over, clinging to me with hands and legs like we were welded together. She planted her feet against the floor and arched her back and screamed, “Come, please. Come!”

  I felt as if all my life had been aimed toward this perfect moment.

  Afterward, I rolled on my side to keep from crushing her. She stayed with me, resting her head on my arm. Every cell in my body had relaxed. The air in the room was chilly. Rhiann’s body and her breath against my chest were hot in contrast. But we no longer fit together as perfectly as at the climax. I could feel myself slipping away from her. She acknowledged the loss with a little sigh.

  I began to notice the rough fiber of the rug beneath me, the plastic surface of the urethane floorboards against my feet. I reached to retrieve the spent condom and felt for my shirt to wrap it in.

  She kissed my chest and whispered, “Thank you.” Then she sat up. Silhouetted against the dim light spilling through the window from a distant streetlight, she said, “Let’s go upstairs.”

  I didn’t trust my voice. I nodded.

  She stood and tugged me to my feet. I felt around for the unused Trojans, then I followed her.

  She led me to a room with a dresser, bedside table, and double bed, a guest room, I surmised—too clean to be the kid’s, too small and impersonal for the room she’d shared with Mickey. She lit a candle and turned down the bed. She led me to it and sat me on the edge. She knelt between my knees. There was a sort of sadness in her movements; I had a déjà vu of the first girl I ever bedded.

  We made love slowly, gently this time. She was newly widowed, still with Mickey; and I knew better than to compete with Mickey’s shade. It was a ménage à quatre. We each brought an old love to the tryst, which should have made a crowd but didn’t.

  She opened to me in almost every way a woman could. She begged me to come in, to come. How could I refuse her anything?

  I wanted to tell her that I loved her. That I had always loved her. And that I always would. But I was scared that I would frighten her, or that she’d see me as another Rory Sinter.

  I had time. I gave her what she needed. I played the rock in a landscape of quicksand.

  And if it wasn’t perfect, it was good enough.

  Rhiann

  I came to my senses beside a perfect stranger—perfect because he was beautiful and too good to be true. I felt a tiny pang of guilt. Mickey had been dead less than half a year. But Mickey left me alone and grieving. He wouldn’t have begrudged me the relief.

  I looked at the naked man asleep beside me. He lay on his back. The slightly bemused expression he habitually wore had vanished. In the candlelight, he seemed younger. And sad. His white hair had fallen on his forehead, his perfectly trimmed beard looked gray in the candlelight.

  I had never seen him without a shirt before, not even when he was cutting the grass on the hottest days. The tiny white scars on his forearms extended to his shoulders—he must have worn sleeveless shirts to weld. A line of dark fur ran down his torso to his belly button. His lower body was hidden by the sheet. But for the scars, he might have been a male model.

  I kissed his shoulder, and he rolled over, with his back toward me. So I could see the other scars. And the tattoo.

  I pulled the cover down. I recognized the archangel Michael on his back—a brooding guardian, stretching down his right side from his shoulder to his upper thigh. It wasn’t the dashing hero from the stained-glass windows, but a more brooding saint. The snake curled round his feet was dead, head pierced by a Samurai sword. The angel’s expression was guarded, and a single tear graced its right cheek. Beneath the figure, John’s skin was striped with whiter scars. As were his thighs and butt cheeks.

  He came awake suddenly. I could see him start, then relax as he remembered where he was. He rolled over smiling.

  His smile faded as he focused on my face. “What’s the matter?”

  “Why is the angel crying?”

  He rolled onto his back, pulling the sheet up to his waist. He stared at the ceiling. “It’s a long story.”

  “Is that a polite way of saying ‘none of your business’?” I was propped up on one elbow facing him. I lay back, shoving my right arm under the pillow so I could watch him comfortably.

  “No. I let you see the tattoo. I guess you have a right to ask about it.”

  I waited.

  He said, “I went to prison when I was nineteen. I’d been in trouble before, but never in jail. It’s a rough place for a kid. I knew enough to keep my back to the wall and act mean—a sympathetic deputy warned me to do that. But nothing prepared me for the constancy. Guys join gangs in stir just to have someone to watch their backs. I didn’t want to do that, so I tried to go it alone. Pretty soon I wasn’t acting. I had a hair-trigger temper, and was psychotic for lack of sleep.”

  I tried to imagine him at nineteen—just two years older than Jimmy, trapped with gangbangers and pedophiles. I shivered.

  John didn’t seem to notice. “I’ve always read a lot. I noticed the prison library was quiet and there was never any trouble in there, so I started spending as much time there as they’d let me. I was supposed to be researching my appeal. I wasn’t planning to appeal, but I did research—for other inmates. I made friends with the librarian, Carl, an old guy doing three life sentences for murder. He’d been in for thirty-eight years. I must’ve reminded him of himself.” John shrugged. “For whatever reason, he took me under his wing. Gave me pointers on how to get by, let me sleep when there was no one else around. He encouraged me to get my GED and to draw.”

  John reached around and felt his back, where the angel’s head faced into the sheet beneath him. “I drew this one day—the guardian angel I wished I had. One of the worst bullies in the cell block happened to see it and started ragging me about it. So I told him it was a design for a tattoo I was planning on getting. That shut him up for a while, but when we had a jailhouse tattoo artist transferred to the wing, I had to let him have a crack at it. He did a pretty good job—made the face just eerie enough to freak out anybody sneaking up behind me in the shower. I started telling people my guardian angel had my back, and pretty soon I had a rep for having eyes in the back of my head. There were enough superstitious idiots who believed me and spread the word, so pretty soon the guys were leaving me alone.”

  John stole a glance at me, and I touched his arm to let him know I wasn’t put off by his story. He went back to staring at the ceiling.

  But he hadn’t answered my question. “Why is the angel crying?”

  “A fight broke out in the cafeteria one night, just before my release. Carl tried to break it up and got shanked for his trouble. I grabbed the guy who did it and nearly beat him to death before the guards showed up. Oddly enough, no one ratted on me. To a man, they said my victim fell down and hurt himself.

  “It was obvious Carl wasn’t going to make it. They let me stay with him. I was too close to breaking down to talk, so I made a tear on my face with his blood—Here…” John put a finger to his cheek below the outer corner of his eye. “Where the bangers put tattoos to mark their fallen homies. The last thing he did before he died was grab my hand and say, ‘Don’t brand yourself a con. Swear it.’ After I got out, I had a professional redo the tattoo and put the tear on the angel’s face. For Carl.”

  “Could I see it again?”

  He rolled on his side. I moved the candle for a better look.

  The figure was skillfully drawn with black lines and blue and purple shading—an Art Deco comic book hero in Levi’s, with traditional wing
s, a Samurai sword and a garbage can lid for a shield. Somehow the odd elements fit together.

  I had to touch it. John’s skin was warm, and he flinched as if it tickled. I pulled the sheet down to see the angel’s feet. The serpent curled around them was a giant diamondback. The candlelight brought the figure to life and raised the scars surrounding it in bas relief.

  I pulled the sheet back up and put the candle on the night-stand. “Did you get the scars in prison, too?”

  “No.” His tone made it clear the scars were not a subject he’d discuss. He reached over me to pinch the candle out. He lowered his weight onto me, as he whispered in my ear: “Let’s talk about something else.”

  John

  The next morning, I left Rhiann sleeping and went in to work an hour before anyone else was due to show up. I needed time to think.

  Didn’t get it. A state police car was parked in front of my shop when I got there. The driver was reading a newspaper, but he spotted my Jeep and put the paper down as I pulled up. When he rolled his window down, I recognized Sergeant Crowley.

  I got out and walked over to lean against the car. “What can I do for you this morning, Sergeant?”

  He got out and leaned against the front fender. He folded his arms. “I haven’t gotten too much cooperation from Jimmy Fahey. I was wondering if you could help me out.”

  I shrugged. “If I can.”

  “He works for you.”

  “Yes.”

  “He have problems with anyone here?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. He’s a pretty friendly kid. Modest. Helpful. Most of my guys appreciate that.”

  “Most?”

  “A couple don’t care one way or another.”

  Crowley wasn’t taking notes, but I got the impression he wouldn’t miss or forget anything. “He work on his own car?”

  “Yes.”

  “What kind of work?”

  I wasn’t sure what he was getting at, so I just went with the truth. “Oil changes, filter replacements, tire rotations—simple stuff. I helped him with more complicated things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Carburetor adjustments. Timing.”

  “He ever do a brake job?”

  “Not here.”

  Crowley nodded. “He ever tell you what he does on weekends?”

  “He didn’t spell it out, but I gather he got his weekend job to be close to his girlfriend.”

  “He tell you about her?”

  “Said she’s ‘perfect,’ and that her father won’t let her date.” Apparently that hadn’t put a damper on their relationship, but I left it to Crowley to discover that for himself.

  “He tell you about any problems he had with anyone in Greenville?”

  “Just that he had a couple run-ins with some football players from Greenville High—bullies he tries to avoid.”

  “You think they sabotaged his brakes?”

  “Whoever did this just loosened the bleeder screw. Right?”

  Crowley nodded. “Unsophisticated but effective.”

  “From what Jimmy said, I gather they’d be more likely to take baseball bats to his car.”

  “The Alva police tell me you’re a poster child for the Illinois correctional system.”

  I waited for his point.

  When I didn’t respond to that, he added, “So maybe you could help me out.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I gotta interview those football players. Don’t have their names, but I got information that the car they drive recently suffered some rear-end damage. There was a police report, so it shouldn’t be too hard to run them down. I thought maybe you’d like to get in on the interview.”

  “Why me?”

  “You got a rep for being good with cars and tough kids. And you got an interest in seeing this thing solved.”

  “What about your hypothetical defense lawyer?”

  Crowley shrugged. “I don’t necessarily have to mention you in my report. And if nobody asks, neither of us has to tell.”

  I hadn’t been to Greenville in years. The last time was on business, and I was driving. No time for sightseeing. Riding shotgun with Crowley gave me the chance to really look.

  The city hall and library were vintage but the high school was new and big, with a billboard in front advertising the football team. No mention of chess or drama, or National Merit Scholarships.

  We stopped at the police station—renovated inside—so Crowley could give the locals a heads-up and get a copy of the police report.

  Back in the car, he said it didn’t add much to what he’d gotten through channels. “Mrs. Fahey told me her son works for the local veterinarian. Maybe we should talk to him before we go to the school—see if he can give us the name of Jimmy’s girlfriend.”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “Said he couldn’t remember. He tell you?”

  “Beth. He didn’t mention her last name.”

  “Well, we need one. So let’s go talk to the doctor.”

  Rhiann

  John was gone when I awoke. I lay for a long time, trying to sort through the mare’s nest of feelings overwhelming me.

  Last night had been orgasmic, a bonding, a replay of almost-remembered events. I felt relief that John was gone. Gratitude that he’d come last night. Hope. Fear of another abandonment. Confusion. That maddening sense that I’d lived this moment earlier and forgotten it.

  I lay very still, willing the feeling to condense into something I could grasp.

  And then I had it.

  After months of unofficial courtship, I felt a huge sense of loss the first morning Mickey didn’t come in for breakfast. I’d gotten used to seeing him. By lunch, I was near tears and so out of sorts that Henry told me to go home.

  “PMS ain’t good for business.”

  I used my upset up on housework. By suppertime, the house was spotless, Jimmy bathed and fed. And I was asking myself—for the umpteenth time, How could he do this to me? Playing the devil’s advocate, too: He never promised you a rose garden. Or even a bush.

  Mickey showed up as I was putting Jimmy to bed. Ma let him in and sent him up to Jimmy’s room. Mickey was the first man in my life that Ma truely approved of.

  “Did you miss me?” he asked—only half kidding, I’d’ve bet.

  “Why do you ask?”

  He looked disappointed.

  “I did,” Jimmy chimed in.

  “I missed you, too,” Mickey told him, though I think he was speaking to me, as well.

  “Read me a story?” Jimmy said.

  “That’s why I came.” Mickey gave me a so-there look. “Which one?”

  “Harold and the Purple Crayon. It’s my favorite.”

  “My favorite, too,” Mickey assured him.

  After the story, Mickey kissed Jimmy good night and left me to tuck him in.

  Mickey was waiting in the living room, visiting with Ma when I came down.

  Ma looked from him to me and said, “I think I’ll make coffee. Anyone want any?”

  I shook my head. Mickey said, “No, thanks,” and Ma disappeared.

  Mickey looked at me and asked, seriously, “Did you miss me?”

  I looked at him for a long time before I said, “Yes.”

  He nodded as if that was the right answer. “I was applying for a job.”

  “Did you get it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I want to ask you something first.”

  That made me suspicious. “What?”

  “Will you marry me?”

  It wasn’t what I expected, but I said, “Yes!” without hesitation. He’d set me up with Harold and by kissing Jimmy good night. “Tell me about the job.”

  “I won’t take it if you don’t want me to.”

  “Tell me!”

  “I got accepted by the state police.”

  I knew instantly that I was marrying another soldier, that I could be widowed again at any time. But I could see how muc
h the job meant to him. I threw my arms around him and squeezed with all my strength.

  “Mickey, that’s wonderful!”

  The office was twenty minutes from our house and, though I didn’t have a set starting time, I usually got to work by eight. Frank was always in before me. Today was no exception. He glanced up when I came through the door and said, “Good morning.”

  “Good morning, Frank.”

  I think he did a double take: I wasn’t paying close attention. He said, “You’re chipper this morning.”

  “It’s a beautiful morning.”

  He looked out the window as if he might’ve missed something coming in. “It’s gonna rain.”

  “My roses will be so happy.”

  “You been drinking?”

  “No, Frank. I’m just high on life.”

  He was quiet for a moment, regarding me suspiciously. Then he said, “You’ve fallen for Devlin, haven’t you?” From the look on his face, he’d guessed that we’d gotten as far as sleeping together.

  In spite of his disappearance this morning, John still seemed too good to be true. I wasn’t sure I knew him or if I was just infatuated with some idealized stranger, if what I felt was love, or just relief from loss and loneliness.

  But Frank was so different from John or Mickey, almost timid. I didn’t see my feelings for Frank changing. Ever. So I said, “Yes, Frank.”

  “He could be dangerous—there’s something about him. I can feel it.”

  I could feel it, too, in the quiet confidence he projected. He could be dangerous but…“He means me no harm.”

  “For now.”

  “Now is all I have, Frank. Mickey’s death taught me that.”

  John

  Dr. Pulaski’s appraisal of Jimmy was pretty much like mine: “Good kid. Hard worker. Nuts about Beth.” Beth’s last name? “Wilding.”

  I wondered how closely she was related to the birth father Jimmy’d mentioned. Not out loud. Not my place to bring it up.

  By the time we finished at the vet’s, it was nearly noon. We headed for the school.