I wonder what she did to make him mad.
I clicked off the radio with shaking fingers. Well, fuck.
I could almost hear his voice oozing like pus from some hidden corner of my brain: I’ll find you, Hannah. Don’t ever doubt it. And the weasel was back, sprinting around in my chest like he was on meth. I squinted through the windshield, waiting for his snarling face to appear against the glass, his nose irrevocably twisted from the lumber yard accident, his eyes that looked just like … mine.
Get it together, Hannah. He would have found you by now if he was looking.
I glanced down at my purse, searching for protection. I needed to pick up more pepper spray, though someone in my apartment building would surely complain; the last one dropped and broke in the stairwell, leaving everyone with runny eyes for days. Could lip balm be a weapon? Maybe if he startled me in a parking lot somewhere I could whack him over the head with my journal. My therapist thought writing was a good way to get in touch with my feelings—had the woman known more about my history, she might have prescribed more than a pencil and paper.
I pulled a deep breath into my lungs and held it. I will always be broken.
Broken but funny. Well, maybe.
Dominic laughed at my joke.
On my dashboard, a one-armed panda bobble head gave me a jiggly nod as I veered off the freeway. Litter-strewn residential streets crackled and crunched with empty Faygo pop two liters and broken beer bottles. Beside the shelter loomed an abandoned school, plywood windows surrounded by crumbling red brick.
The shelter itself was a lump of gray, but the back facade was covered with bright, lewd graffiti—as if a deranged city planner with a can of spray paint had walked up and said, “You know what this place needs? A giant orange dick.”
I parked in front of the tangerine penis and got out, surveilling my surroundings for crooked noses hidden in the shadows.
Crack! Something snapped at the back of the lot, where trees were steeped in evening dim.
My elbow smashed against the car door and I pressed my back against it, trying to do that hold-your-keys-between-your-fingers-like-a-weapon thing. It didn’t help. An icicle shuddered up my back. I squinted into the trees.
Not a movement, except for a few rustling leaves.
I locked my car with my key-claw, dashed into the building and punched in the code to quell the alarm.
“Hannah!” Ms. LaPorte’s swishing eighties pantsuit almost glowed, the electric blue and white as unabashed as their wearer. A whitish-blue perm rose from the top of her head like a snow-capped mountain peak.
The ice in my back thawed. “Hi, Ms. LaPorte. How are things tonight?”
“Good. We have a few new girls, but it’s been pretty quiet. I was just getting supper on.”
“I’ll help you. Brandy still sleeping?”
“Yes, dear.”
Brandy Lovelle was Ms. LaPorte’s one full-time employee; green hair atop a thin, bird-like frame, wiry arms sleeved in tattooed ink, lip ring glinting when she pulled her mouth into one of her ready smiles. She worked the overnights, starting around ten o’clock when Ms. LaPorte left to go home. Brandy was usually asleep in the evenings when I came by, which was a bummer because I suspected she was all kinds of awesome.
I followed Ms. LaPorte down the narrow hallway and into a tiny but functional kitchen outfitted with scuffed appliances. One wall had a hole cut in it for serving food, the chest-high opening finished with a large piece of plywood and covered with a floral tablecloth.
“How’s Mario?” I asked.
“He’s fine, dear. Just watered him.”
I stepped to the makeshift counter and ran a finger over one waxy leaf of the philodendron. Mario was poisonous inside, but if you just admired him from the outside, he was beautiful. Kinda like some people.
I’ll find you, Hannah.
I shifted my weight, let go of the leaf, and peered down the hallway toward the back door.
Ms. LaPorte hustled to the stove and cranked off the heat. The huge pot spluttered protests and speckled her shirt with reddish-orange. “Chili night. I should have known.”
I grabbed the faded apron from the hook on the wall and held it out. “You take it, Ms. LaPorte.”
“No, dear, I don’t want you ruining your pretty sweater.”
“I have a backup.” I tugged off my sweater like a bored stripper just trying to get to the point, revealing a long-sleeved T-shirt underneath. Bow chicka bow wow. “Problem solved.”
Ms. LaPorte’s smile was cut short by wailing coming from the front room. I handed her the apron and walked through the open doorway into a space that resembled an elementary school cafeteria, right down to the row of metal cafeteria tables that cut through the center.
Dragging those tables from the school next door in a moment of anarchistic fervor had been my proudest episode of vandalism. Then, in a decidedly un-thief-like way, we had painted the walls a sunny yellow, knowing full well the nature of our work meant that the place had never felt truly friendly. Still, we tried, and that’s what mattered.
Around the perimeter of the room, women talked in groups of two of three. A few had small children clinging to their legs. Two little boys sat on the floor running matchbox cars over the linoleum, their mothers looking on silently.
A tight mewl sounded near the front door—another little boy, about six. He gave me a sidelong glance and buried his face in his mother’s leg. She watched me with a mix of desperation and practiced suspicion.
“I’m Hannah,” I said softly as I approached. “Do you need a doctor?”
The woman poked gingerly at her head. Her black hair would have been lovely had it not been caked with dried blood. “No.”
“Do you need the police?”
Her features twisted in anger. “They’s the reason I got this.” She gestured to her head. “Trey didn’ like that I called ‘em on his ass yesterday. Shoulda never done it. Wasn’t even that bad.”
The child sniffled again, and the woman bent and whispered in his ear. He wrapped his bony arms around her and she picked him up and cradled him against her chest, his head resting on her unbloodied shoulder.
I waited, feeling like an intruder, heart aching. There was so much hurt in that embrace, but there was love too. I envied them that even as I reminded myself that I was there trying to help people not get their asses kicked. We didn’t receive state funds and weren’t under obligation to report, but seeing guys get away with hurting these women made me stabby. She looked back at me and I realized the other women in the room were watching me too.
I swallowed hard. “It’s up to you,” I said. “We won’t force you to file a report. We’re here to provide temporary sleeping quarters and a nighttime meal.” I lowered my tone. “But if you need to get away from someone, a police record may be helpful.”
The woman shook her head. “It ain’t gon’ do no good.”
“Down here they never show up until it’s too late anyway,” called a gruff voice. Behind me, the short, squat woman who had spoken sat with her hands folded over her protruding abdomen. “Then he’s back at you before the next day is done.”
The other women nodded their agreement and I resisted the urge to nod along.
Ms. LaPorte emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on the apron tied to her waist. “Thirty-three minutes is no kind of response time at all,” she said. “Let’s have a look at you, dear.”
The words echoed in my ears. It was the same thing Ms. LaPorte had said to me nearly five years before when I had arrived at the shelter with two T-shirts, a pair of jeans and a fluttering in my abdomen that wasn’t nerves. Do you have a game plan? She had asked. I’d nodded. Yes. And it needs to happen soon.
Let’s have a look at you, dear.
My knees wobbled. Relax, Hannah. No one knows who he was. Not even Ms. LaPorte.
If he knew where you were, you’d be dead already. My hand shifted to my stomach as if the kid was still in there, waiting to eat m
e from the inside out like a fleshy Pacman.
The woman and her son disappeared with Ms. LaPorte into the communal bathroom. I trembled all the way to the kitchen. Deep breaths, Hannah. Deep breaths.
I ladled chili into bowls and placed them on the counter, trying to still my shaking hands by repeating to myself, “I’m not cold, I’m just a little chili,” but the mantra helped very little. When all had been served, the women sat and talked amongst themselves in solemn camaraderie connected by an unspoken need for peace. They were almost friends, the pain they shared a tenuous alliance that still left them disconnected enough to feel lonely.
I understood. In high school I’d hung out with an eclectic mix of misfits: Marianne with her sausage arms and cherry red eyeglasses, Jillian with her flaming orange hair, and Monique who wore long sleeves in the summer and a smile even when her eyes were bloodshot. All of us had been hurting, but hiding it, while we tried to belong somewhere. The best thing we had going was when I’d tell them the jokes my dad taught me.
“Why don’t cannibals eat clowns?” I would ask excitedly. “Because they taste funny!”
Thanks to my father, I also knew all the dirty jokes. Without other prospects for friendship, my mismatched group wouldn’t tell on me. But I still kept the nastiest ones to myself. The cleaner jokes I told with an air of conspiratorial secrecy.
“An airplane is about to crash, and a lady jumps up and says, ‘If I’m going to die, I want to die feeling like a woman,’ and takes off all her clothes.”
I would pause, gauging how effective the joke was by the vibrancy of Jillian’s cheeks.
“When she’s naked she says, ‘Is there someone on this plane who is man enough to make me feel like a woman?’ A man stands up, removes his shirt and says, ‘Here, iron this!’”
Their giggles always made me smile. But our relationships were as fragile as those in the dining room now, especially since we never saw each other outside of school. These women would never see one another again. Did they have someone at home like I did back then? When my mother put in extra hours at the dentist’s office where she worked, I at least had my father to play Monopoly with, though he never gave me any indication I was good at the game.
“Don’t worry about it, darling. You’re just not quite smart enough,” he would say, and I would nod, sure he was right. And when I would admit my hurt over never seeing my friends outside of school, he would smile knowingly and put his arm around me. “I understand, honey, but no one can ever really love you the way I do. You don’t need anyone else but your old man.”
And I would giggle and tell him that he wasn’t old. It was also true that his protection and love would never have an equal. My friends did not appreciate me the way he did, and the rest of the school didn’t even know I was there at all. So I would throw my arms around him and kiss him, vowing never to disappoint him.
It was a vow I had broken. Terribly. Irreparably. But I had real friends now, or at least one.
I should get Noelle a present. Maybe new earrings. She had been there for me from the day she started at Harwick Technical Solutions. She’d probably even listen if I ever got the guts to talk to her about anything important. Friends mattered, even when they had awesome torpedo tits and hated puns.
I watched as the women pushed aside their trays, cold, faraway expressions barely disguising the hopelessness they probably felt at the thought of leaving the shelter, or maybe at the thought of leaving their mates.
They weren’t good enough. They had disappointed someone. Probably themselves.
I grabbed a rag and attacked the counter. I will not turn into this.
Driving from the shelter to my apartment was usually the most relaxing twenty minutes of my day. In fifteen miles, downtown caved to suburbia, with libraries and apartments across the street from professional buildings, all decorated with only moderate amounts of penis graffiti. Signs for gas stations and fast food restaurants twinkled on either side of the road, the colors on the signs crisper than they’d been in the heat of summer when they had to compete with the fog of muggy air. I passed the comic book store. Lucky’s pizza. A cell phone repair shop. And there it was: the little apartment building that could.
Somewhere along the way I’d gotten stuck in five stories of red brick, six units to a floor, a place that just about screamed “I’m here for now but not forever”— at least that was what I’d told myself when I moved in. The building sat on a residential street across from some kind of second hand kiddie clothing store that I had never ventured into and probably never would. In the back, the parking lot bordered another road and yet another gas station. Because what city is complete without four gas stations per block?
I parked in the back and ran up the cement steps, the October air chilling my bones even after the heavy door had swung shut. The smell of onions and old socks permeated the stairwell and hallway on the third floor, much better than my pepper spray, but still gross. I hoped the smell wasn’t coming from my apartment.
The door latch clanked. On the television, tires shrieked and a woman yelled something unintelligible. Steam rose from a pot on the stove.
“Hey, babe!” Jake said from the couch. “I was just going to make some of those noodles you bought the other day. I brought pasta sauce from my mom’s.”
I scanned the apartment, mildly concerned his mother might jump from behind a chair, howling like a banshee, dripping cigarette ash all over the carpet. I glanced at a burned spot on the rug. Like mother like son. “Thanks for starting the water. It’s been a long day.”
Jake nodded, his eyes on a reality show about wrestling crocodiles. A plume of smoke billowed from his nostrils. “Yeah, sure. Hey, I was talking to my mom and she says we should move down by her after we get married.”
“We can’t afford to move right now, Jake.”
“Well, yeah but one day we might be able to.” He didn’t raise his eyes from the screen.
“It takes time to move up at work,” I said to the back of his head. Plus you could get a job, too. You know, like you’ve been promising to do for months.
“Yeah, I guess. Can you get the plates? I’m beat.”
I slid dry noodles into the water, poured the sauce into a pan and set the table. Jake kept his gaze on the TV. I resisted the urge to hurl a plate at his skull. Sometimes I hated the way he acted, but having someone next to you made you harder to strangle; at least I assumed that was true. I stalked back to the kitchen to test the sauce. Hot, but store-bought.
Jake was at the table when I returned with the meal.
“Thanks, hon. I love you, ya know.”
“I love you, too.” I clutched my fork tighter than necessary.
He’s always been there for me, even when I was difficult and crazier than I am now. Maybe I should just agree to marry him and get it over with.
What was I waiting for, anyway?
Mr. Harwick’s smiling face popped into my head, telling me I was a great worker, helping me pick up the stuff from my purse. I tried to distract myself from the warmth in my lower body by shoveling pasta into my mouth.
I did the dishes alone, half listening to the murmur of Jake’s television program.
I love him. I need him.
The pasta did a nervous dance in my abdomen. Jake’s mother was probably trying to poison me. Very Snow White-ish except I didn’t have any knee-high friends to mine coal or help me with the goddamn dishes.
I dried the last dish and walked into the living room. My mouth was dry.
Jake stared at the screen.
I love him. I love him. I love him.
Prove it.
I sat and put my arms around him. He turned, gripped my shoulders and pushed his mouth onto mine, prodding my tongue like an imbecilic iguana. His tongue tasted like stale cigarettes and Pabst Blue Ribbon. I fought a gag and waited for a tingle, heat, something. I felt nothing. Not that I ever did. Not that I had any reason to expect better.
I wondered how much that case o
f beer had put me back.
When Jake came up for air, I pulled off his T-shirt and felt a twinge of guilt when Dominic’s face flashed in my mind again, helping me, complimenting me, smiling at my lame jokes … No, not Dominic. Mr. Harwick. I grabbed Jake harder.
I love him.
Jake pulled away and yanked at our clothes, tossing them into a pile on the floor. His member jutted from his body like a thick diving board. Well, not that thick. Let’s not get silly.
You’re going to poke someone’s eye out with that thing.
I wanted to giggle, but couldn’t because he was pulling my head toward his crotch. I tried to plaster on a seductive smile but only managed a muted sigh. Not that he would have noticed either way.
I bet Dominic would be better at this stuff.
Mickey Mouse would be better at this stuff.
Nothing sexier than bestiality.
Shut up, Hannah, and get it over with.
I closed my eyes and opened my mouth.
Even after all these years, Robert could hear the priest’s voice in his head, louder than the girl’s anxious breathing: —and the sinners shall pay for their transgressions, the adulterers, the fornicators, the scourge of the earth in their filthy enterprise burning for all eternity … But the priest was not there now, and, if he were, he would be on his knees screaming unanswered prayers to the heavens.
The girl sat on the bed, her legs wrapped around Robert’s hips. Her ash-blond hair was demurely braided over one slender shoulder, resting at the top of two perfect breasts the color of cream. He imagined her skin would taste like cream as well, rich and velvety on his mouth, her sweetness intensifying as he trailed his tongue lower, seeking the heat of her being, each flick making her moan in ecstasy—
The priest’s voice got louder, accelerating in pace, like a crescendo toward damnation—the heathens who do not know God are doomed to succumb to earthly sin, to embrace lust not honor, passion not holiness, Hell not Heaven—
[Ash Park 01.0] Famished Page 6
