by A. J. Downey
“Since when?” I asked.
“Since my granddad died. I mean, it’s been a long time, okay? Plus, you don’t even really know me so I guess I just don’t get why, you know? Like, why you would.”
“Maybe I just got a good feeling about you,” I said with a shrug, moving past her around the dresser and kitchen counter into the kitchen itself. I had a giant ass T-bone steak in the fridge I’d planned on doing up with some instant mashed potatoes. It was more than enough for two and should go pretty quick cooking-wise, too.
“You’re serious about me staying here tonight?” she asked softly, following me and standing in the kitchen entryway, leaning a shoulder against the wall, arms still crossed defensively over her chest.
I straightened with the steak in my hand and turned, swinging the fridge door shut.
“Yeah, I’d like to help you get back on your feet – at least here, I know you’re safe.”
She gave me an almost shy smile and timidly tried some dry humor on me when she said, “This is all so highly irregular.”
“It is,” I agreed, “and I must be some kind of nuts putting it on offer, but it’s out there now and I don’t ever go back on my word.”
She lost that smile of hers and got real serious.
“You’re one of the good ones,” she said and there wasn’t a question at all in there so I didn’t try to answer one. I didn’t argue, either – even though I didn’t feel like I was anything special. I mean, I was just a guy standing in front of a girl who had it way worse than I ever had. I just wanted to help. I didn’t know why, and sometimes you just didn’t question things like that.
I wasn’t particularly religious, even though I’d been raised with religion. My parents had dragged me to church every Sunday and I’d admittedly hated it. They’d stopped taking me when I was eleven after Pastor Steve got caught diddling a bunch of Sunday schoolers. Mostly boys. While I’d been groomed, he hadn’t sealed the deal with me. Probably because my dad was a cop.
Still, even though now I could appreciate how lucky I’d been to not be one of the pastor’s chosen ones – I didn’t exactly escape without issues from the experience. I’d gone through therapy as a teen, had been pretty mistrustful when it came to sports and had, unfortunately, been on the receiving end of a lot of fucking high school bullying.
Even so, I was one of the lucky ones with no real lasting effects from my brush with evil – except knowing that evil was out there and wolves really did wear sheep’s clothing.
Anyway, even though I wasn’t religious, I had to maybe think I’d been put in Saylor’s path for a reason. Maybe I was some good karma finally coming her way and maybe my history was what was really rubbing me the wrong way where Saylor’s situation was concerned. She was petite, pretty, and a prime target for traffickers. Indigo City had a seedy underside like most urban centers and I don’t want to say that where she’d come from didn’t too, but there she’d found her way and had people she could trust.
Here, not so much. Clearly, if what’d happened with her boyfriend was any indication.
“I’m just a kid who followed in his dad’s footsteps,” I said. “Not good, or bad. I’m just a dude trying to find his way as much as anyone else,” I finally told her.
“Your dad was a cop?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“My dad was a drunk, but I already told you about that.”
“Yeah, you did, and I’m sorry that happened to you. Just like I’m sorry you got all the way out here and the one you were supposed to be able to trust, shut you out so completely. I feel like you were fed to the wolves, so-to-speak.”
“Yeah, maybe,” she said with a shrug. “That doesn’t make me your responsibility, though.”
“No, true, it doesn’t,” I said, melting a pat of butter in my cast-iron skillet and getting some water started in a pot on a separate eye of the stovetop.
“I don’t want to seem ungrateful,” she said, shifting uncomfortably on her feet. “What I mean to say is ‘thank you’ but I’m notoriously bad at accepting help.”
“Why do you think that is?” I asked.
Her eyebrows shot up. “Adding amateur shrink to your repertoire?” she asked lightly, amusement coloring her voice.
I chuckled and said, “Touché, touché. To be fair, you kind of have to be as a cop. You have to be a human lie detector at the very least.”
“I bet,” she said. She sighed and shook her head slightly and went on with, “In all seriousness, that part of me is all my granddad’s doing. He raised me to be smart and to stand on my own two feet. He raised me to breathe fire if I needed to and taught me self-reliance like no other.”
“Sounds like a stand-up guy.”
“Oh, totally! He was. He had some adventures leading up to meeting my gran. I think he went a little overboard with me and the ‘you can’t depend on anybody but yourself’ because of what happened with my mom. He didn’t want me to be like that, you know? Dependent on a man, or whatever. I think he felt like he made some kind of mistake with the way he raised her, you know? He wasn’t the kind of man to make the same mistake twice.”
“Is he the one who taught you how to play?” I asked as the meat sizzled in the pan.
“Yeah, actually. He did. I’ve been playing music since the time I went to live with him. Started when I was five or six.”
“Bet you’re pretty good by now,” I said absently, stabbing the steak with a fork to flip it in the pan, spooning melted butter and runoff over it.
She chuckled and nodded a little. “I’d play for you, but I think your neighbor might have something to say about that after last night.”
“Ah, yeah.”
“I guess that brings me to my next question.”
“Aw yeah? What’s that?” I asked.
“What’re the rules? If I’m going to be staying here for a few more days or whatever…” She shifted again and I smiled, flipping off the burner for the potatoes and looking up.
“I know it’s tight quarters,” I said, “and because it’s tight quarters, I insist things be kept neat and orderly. I like a clean space, obviously.”
“That’s easy enough,” she said. “Is there, uh, anything under the bed?”
“You didn’t look?” I asked amused.
“Probably the only place I didn’t,” she said and blushed a faint scarlet. I laughed.
“A few low, flat, plastic storage bins,” I said. “I think there’s enough room for your guitar at the foot of the bed. Your suitcase can be tucked in the bottom of the closet, and your backpack can fit in the cubby under the end table on your side of the bed.”
“My side of the bed, huh?” she asked amused.
“You picked it,” I said, plating half the steak and dishing up mashed potatoes beside it. “It’s yours,” I smiled and held the plate out to her.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
“You’re welcome.”
“So, uh, where do you eat?”
“Sometimes standing here at the counter, for the most part on the bed with the TV on.”
“God, I haven’t watched TV in so long.”
“What do you watch when you do?” I asked, plating up the rest of the food for myself.
“You know, it’s honestly been so long I don’t even remember. What do you watch?”
“Honestly, I watch a lot of war documentaries.”
“Seriously?”
I laughed and we went over to the bed which I’d made that morning. She carefully sat on her side with her plate and silverware and I sat on mine, picking up the remote on my way over from where it was chillin’ by the television on my dresser.
I switched it on, whatever was on the History channel playing through. We surfed channels for a while and finally landed on one of the Harry Potter movies.
She smiled and I could see the nostalgia in her eyes, her features softening. We ate and enjoyed the movie but I had info we needed to trade, so as soon as it hit a commercial break I
started the process before I had the chance to forget.
“How long were you out there before I got home?” I asked.
“Couple of hours,” she answered, taking another bite of meat.
“Okay, see, that’s not cool. You got a phone?”
“Yeah, but it doesn’t work as a phone. I mean, it’s not hooked up.”
“How do you make calls and what the hell do you use it for then?”
“Wi-Fi, and I make calls through messenger and that.” She shrugged. “It works.”
“Okay, we got to work something out for tomorrow so I can get you a key.”
“Um, I played outside this café a couple of blocks down and across the street from the courthouse at lunch time today. It was a good spot. Made close to thirty dollars in an hour.”
“You plan on playing there tomorrow?” I asked.
“That’s the thing, playing the same spot like that multiple days in a row can be dicey.” She made a wincing face and got up, taking her plate to the kitchen, scraping it into the trash underneath the sink and running the water to wash her plate.
“How so?” I asked. “You did good today, why wouldn’t you tomorrow?”
“People get too used to seeing you in one spot and they stop tipping,” she said.
“I have a buddy in the prosecutor’s office across the street from that café,” I said, a plan forming. “If I can get him a key to my place before lunch tomorrow, do you think you could be there for him to give it to you?”
“Yeah, sure. That works. You’re sure you trust me with a key though? I mean, I could wait out front like I did today – it’s no big deal.”
“It’s not the best neighborhood,” I told her honestly.
“Really? But you live here.”
I laughed and got up, joining her in the kitchen. She automatically took my plate and utensils from me and I murmured thanks before letting her in a little bit more.
“I live here because it’s a dirt-floor poor neighborhood which means the rent is dirt cheap. I’m saving my ass off to buy a house with the biggest down payment I can put together so that I don’t have a mortgage hanging over my head for thirty years.”
“Oh, that’s really smart…” she said trailing off and then she took a breath and asked me something that had me cracking the hell up. “So, you’re going to tell your girlfriend that I’m staying with you – right?”
I laughed until my sides hurt and tears gathered at the corners of my eyes.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” I said when I got my shit together. “If I did, as much as it would have pained me, I would have taken you to the shelter last night.”
She was blushing pretty hard and wouldn’t look at me.
“I just figured you had to be taken,” she stammered awkwardly.
“Yeah? Why’s that?” I asked, leaning back against the counter, crossing my arms and tucking my hands under my armpits, a habit I’d had since forever.
“Never mind,” she said. “Just forget it.” I chuckled and she changed the subject with the speed of light. “Were you going to take a shower?”
“Yeah, I was planning on it, but if you wanted to –”
“Oh! No. I was just thinking it was getting pretty late.”
I nodded slow and smiled. “Yeah. Good lookin’ out, you’re right it is. Be out in a snap.”
“I’m happy to finish the dishes. You cook I clean, I cook you clean?”
“Sounds fair to me,” I said. I grabbed my things to take them into the bathroom.
“I promise I’ll get back on my feet as soon as I can and you can have your space back,” she rushed out just before I shut the door.
I looked back out at her, peering into the kitchen over the dresser, between the cupboards and the counter and said, “Seriously. No rush.”
When I got out of the shower, she was curled on the far edge of the bed, the lights out, the television off, the silence cloying where I had already grown fond of hearing her light and lyrical voice. I silently slipped into bed behind her and laid on my side, staring at her back. She wore a girl’s tank top. One of the fitted kind. Her hair was shorter in the back, and I let my gaze travel over the knobs of her spine that showed under her delicate skin.
She was too thin, fragile looking, and I turned over and over in my head just why I had taken such a special interest. I didn’t know. I couldn’t fathom, but something was there just beyond our conscious reality telling me that I was absolutely doing the right thing.
One thing was for sure, I knew she was grateful. By the time I’d gotten done with my shower that could have only lasted five minutes, all of her things were stowed where I’d suggested.
I closed my eyes and fell asleep to the deep and even cadence of her breathing in the dark.
6
Saylor…
A small man in a well-tailored suit stopped to listen to me outside the café near the courthouse the next afternoon. His dark eyes were lovely but cynical as they roved me from head to toe and I made it my mission to make him smile, his stern look off-putting. I made eye contact and smiled as I sang. It was one of my original songs with sea shanty like overtones. The beat was happy.
He stood still and watched me, hands buried in the pockets of his slacks, mouth a thin line nearly hidden by his perfectly trimmed dark beard.
It was a solid two minutes of my singing and his standing in silent witness before the song came to an end and I could still my playing. There was a smattering of applause and the clink of coin in my guitar case but the tailored man made no move… that is until he asked, “Are you Saylor Grace, then?”
“I am. Are you Jeremy Poe’s friend?”
A slight smile edged its way onto his lips and I returned it freely.
“I’m Yale.” He held out his hand. “I’m one of Poe’s brothers. It’s nice to meet you.”
“Ahhhh.” I transferred my pick into my other hand and held out my right to shake his. His grip was firm, but kind. Gentlemanly.
“It’s nice to meet you, Yale.”
“Likewise,” he said, cocking his head slightly.
“You have something for me, then?” I asked after an awkward silence.
“I do.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew a key on a metal ring, the key chain reminiscent of a dog tag in shape, only a little longer, a little wider, and shiny.
“Thanks,” I murmured.
“I’m guessing you realize just how much trouble Poe could get into if anyone found out how you met,” he said dryly.
“What? At the coffee shop?” I asked, recognizing the blatant lie of it by staring Yale right in the eyes. He smiled genuinely then.
“Exactly. At the coffee shop.”
“The one by Bayside Park with the French pastries.”
His smile grew and he looked at his shiny professional shoes.
“The one with the French pastries,” he echoed.
“You really shouldn’t worry,” I said, smiling as kindly as I could manage to mask the vague hurt his questioning had wrought – I understood that he was worried for his friend and I also understood he didn’t know me from Eve… but the vague hurt was there nonetheless. I finished my sentence, “I’m not that kind of girl.”
“I’m starting to see that,” he said with a wink. “A piece of unsolicited advice?” he asked.
“I’m all ears.”
“Try ten-thirteen Muller St. around the dinner rush. A restaurant called The Cormorant. They’re always busy and you might have some luck there. Ask for Skids at the bar, tell him Yale sent you and I’m sure he’d be happy to let you play out front.”
“Thanks,” I said softly. “I’ll try that tonight.”
“Be safe, Saylor Grace.”
I smiled. “I will.”
He tipped his chin down in a graceful nod, turned and went into the café behind me. I looked at the tag on the single key ring and smiled. Embossed on it in full color was the logo that was on the back of Poe’s leather jacket.
I pocketed the key in the breast pocket of my leather jacket, switched my pick back into my right hand and launched into my next song.
Lunch was still pretty lucrative, but not as much as the day before. Still, that was okay – especially for only two hours of work. It beat working minimum wage plus tips in some diner somewhere. Not that waitressing wasn’t good honest work. It was. It just wasn’t for me.
I loved what I did. I had always been a free spirit, and rather than stifle that impulse, my granddad had nurtured it. Of course, they say it skips a generation and if that were true, then I had definitely gotten this way thanks to my granddad’s genes. It was my grandma that’d given my granddad his roots. He always told me he’d had no desire whatsoever to settle down until he laid eyes on her.
He’d said she was what’d made working a regular nine-to-five bearable. He’d always told me he’d walk through fire for her and my mom. Then, at the mention of my mother, he would get so somber, so quiet, and would get this far away look in his eyes. Sometimes, his features would tighten with anger. Sometimes, it would simply go slack with despair. Every time he would blink the tears away, refocus on me, and he would smile… and it was like a rainbow on a cloudy day. Every time he’d looked at me like that, I felt invincible – like nothing bad could ever happen to me again.
Of course, reality was always there lurking around the nearest corner waiting to hoof me right in the front butt.
I stood on the edge of Bayside Park hours later, the sky darkening, the wind cold off the water and breathed the salt and thought to myself that it was so weird how the Chesapeake smelled so much the same as Elliot Bay back home.
Except it didn’t feel like home. It never really had, which is why the adventure of coming here had been so appealing. Nothing and nowhere had felt like home after my granddad passed and I struggled with that.
“Maybe someday,” I sighed and turned around. Muller Street was a block past the boulevard in front of Bayside. I’d found a waterfront tourist map today marking out ‘Old Town’ or Indigo City’s version of Seattle’s Pioneer Square. The historical district, I guess you could call it.
