Blackbird (3 page)

You know you’ve done it a hundred times before. It was too easy, too quick, your hands so steady and sure. You return to the thoughts from the car:
You have done something wrong.
There’s no other reason for you to know what you do. There’s no other reason you’d instinctually reach back, using the end of your shirt to wipe the knob clean, to work away any fingerprints that might still be on the frame.

The door opens and you half expect to see someone there, sitting behind the desk or in one of the chairs lining the wall. The room is empty, the computer screen dark. Magazines are fanned out on a kidney-shaped table.
The Economist
,
National Geographic
,
Time
.

The desk is covered with a blotter and a gold cup crammed with pens. There’s a framed photo of two blond children sitting on a dock. Their feet splash in the water. You take a few steps beyond the sitting room, turning past a frosted-glass wall with
GARNER CONSULTING
written in metallic script. You turn the knob and an alarm begins to wail.

You cover your ears and look around. Cash is strewn across the carpet. A safe sits in the corner, its door half open, the lock scuffed and broken. The desk chair has been turned on its side. The drawers are emptied over the floor, papers and folders everywhere.

You remind yourself that you haven’t taken anything, haven’t even touched the safe or the cash. You are here because you were told to come. Still, you think only of the security camera downstairs, the knife in your pocket, how easily you broke in.

Outside, in the hallway, several people have already emerged from their offices. A man in a three-piece suit stares at you over his wire glasses. “I don’t know what happened,” you say, looking at two women hovering beside him. One is on her phone. “I didn’t do anything.”

The man looks at your knapsack, then down the hall, where a few more workers huddle together. You wonder how long you have before they move toward the elevator or the stairs, blocking the exits. There are only seconds to decide: try to explain, or run.

You run.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

THE SALESGIRL IS
watching a cartoon when you walk in, her eyes on the small flat-screen television in the corner of the room. Three dresses are slung over her arm. As she sorts through them she turns to you, studying your face.

“Can I help you?” she calls out.

“Just looking.” You disappear down a side aisle.

She takes a few steps so she can see you. It must be your stained jeans, the dirty, sweat-soaked T-shirt. You look like the type of person who would shoplift, and you can’t help but feel she’s not that far off. You are already gauging how easy it would be to pull a bunch of shirts from the rack, slip two or three into your bag when she’s not looking, and just leave. You start down another aisle and she finally turns away.

You spent nearly twelve hours across the street from the office building, crouching in the back of a parking garage, hidden behind a pickup truck. You watched the police come and go, the building empty out as the sky went black. It was nearly two in the morning when you found a cab, the driver off duty, parked and sleeping around the corner, directing him to take you back north.

You spent the night beneath a playground. Sand is still everywhere—embedded in your socks, gathered in the pockets of your pants, hidden behind your ears. You still wonder if you should call the police. You can’t explain yourself to them. Ever since you left you’ve been thinking about your hand on the doorknob, the knife pushing against the lock to break it open.

You move through the rack, picking up a black T-shirt with a faint logo on it. A snake is coiled around a rose. There’s a tight tank top, some jean shorts, their pockets visible through the ripped fronts. It’s easy finding the things you like. You’re cradling them in your arms when you notice the alternative—plain cotton shirts and khaki shorts, a belt with a metal sunflower for the clasp. You ditch the armful and go for the more basic things, feeling as if you’re constructing a costume.

The phone on the counter rings. The clerk picks it up, says hello to some guy named Cosmo. She tells him about an audition as she begins ringing you up.

“No, it’s for the part of the acupuncturist,” the girl says, the phone pinned to her shoulder. She pulls a T-shirt across the glass counter, her gaze dropping again to your stained pants.

On the TV behind her, the commercials end and the morning news begins. The anchor looks plastic, with a straight, shiny nose and brows sewn up toward his forehead. He introduces a segment about a bear on the loose in Agoura Hills. Cut to another story about school budgets. The salesclerk fumbles with one of the shirt tags. She gestures to a rack as if to say:
I have to get a price
.

She is epically slow, pausing every few moments to talk on the phone, her hand
darting in and out of the rack. You lean both elbows on the counter, careful to keep your right arm under your left, the wound out of sight. You can feel the raised skin inside your wrist, where the tattoo is. It’s still tender to the touch. FNV02198. It’s possible it’s your birthday, that February 1, 1998, would put you at sixteen years old, turning seventeen in a few months. It could be your initials. Farrah Natasha Valente, Faith Neely Vargas . . . the guesses are comforting. You wonder if the bird holds some special significance.

By the time they show the picture you are only half there. You recognize the lobby first, the empty podium and the square windows above the entranceway. “Police are looking for information regarding a robbery in Downtown Los Angeles.” There’s the shot of you looking into the security camera. Another from outside the office suite. You have the knife wedged in the door, in the process of breaking open the lock. “Police say the thief made off with over ten thousand dollars. If you have any information regarding this robbery please contact Crime Stoppers.”

The girl returns, glancing at the television, then at you, her eyes lingering for a moment on your hair, then your shirt. You turn to the shelf behind you, grabbing a pair of vintage glasses, covering them with two blouses you swipe from another rack. When she glances away you tuck the glasses in your back pocket and add the shirts to the pile. She looks again at the television but the news program has gone to commercial.

As you pass the sales clerk a hundred you try to keep your hand steady. It was stupid of you to come back here, only blocks away from the subway station. You returned last night because it’s the only place you know, but it can’t be long before someone recognizes you. For the first time since you awoke you feel your throat tighten, your eyes so wet you have to turn away, afraid the girl might see.

When she hands you the bag you keep your gaze on the floor. She is still on the phone as you leave, pushing into the sickening heat, the chimes jangling overhead.

The motel room is quiet. The window faces a brick wall. You stand there, staring at your new reflection in the mirror behind the door.

You showered, combed your hair out, toweled off the dirt and grime. Your blunt-cut bangs sit right above your eyebrows. The lenses in your glasses are thin and plastic, the frames a clear Lucite. The long-sleeve shirt you bought has purple flowers on the collar and sleeves. It’s something a woman in a nursing home might wear.

It’s not you—not the light-wash jeans or the belt you pulled from the rack. Not even the plastic watch. You know this, even if you don’t know anything else. You are playing a character. Nondescript Girl. A little homely, a little prim. Even your reflection is unfamiliar.

In the distance, someone leans on a car horn. You try to lie down on the bed but it feels too soft, too strange, so you arrange the sheets and blankets on the carpet. You pull on a T-shirt and take off the glasses, stretching out beside the bed. Your back feels good against the floor and you close your eyes, imagining that if you stay like this for long enough the world outside might be different when you open them. You could wake up knowing who you are, the scar in the mirror at once familiar. You will wake up and know. . . . You might wake up and know. . . .

You lie there, listening to the sounds outside. You sling your arm over your face, covering your eyes with the crook of your elbow, blocking out the light. You shift, you curl to the side. Sleep still doesn’t come. A few breaths and reality is forcing itself back in. You worry that the desk clerk downstairs is having second thoughts about giving you a room without an ID. You worry he saw you fumbling with the roll of bills in your bag. You worry, you worry.

You run through the list again, turning over the facts, sorting them out like tiny precious stones. You woke up on the subway tracks in Los Angeles. You were led to an office downtown that was set up to look as though you’d robbed it. You know how to open a door with a knife blade, and you’ve probably done it many times before.

Whoever drew you there didn’t just want you to stay away from the police, they needed to be certain you couldn’t go to them, no matter how desperate you were. They meant for you to get caught . . . but why?

You don’t want to turn on the TV, afraid you might see the photo again. Instead you pick up the motel phone and dial the number from the notepad. The number of Garner Consulting. It rings and rings and rings. You hang up and try again, then again, but still no one answers.

When the silence becomes unbearable you open the nightstand drawers, going through them, looking for something to occupy your thoughts. They’re all empty except for the top one, which contains a black leather book. The words
Holy Bible
are embossed in gold letters. You can’t stop looking at the red ribbon that marks the page. You pick it up, running the thin strip of satin between your fingers. You flip to a page and the memory rushes in, the smell of incense coming back.

The sound surrounds you, that sad, hollow clank of your dress shoes against the marble floor.

It’s all so clear. As you move up the aisle you don’t dare look at the pews beside you. Instead your gaze remains on the coffin. It sits just in front of the altar, on a metal accordion-spring riser with wheels on the bottom. It’s shrouded in a white linen sheet. As you pass you set your palm on top of it, imagining that your hand could sink right through, down through the wood and stuffing and fabric, until it was on top of his. It
wasn’t his body, his face, it was just an empty shell, as if the life had crawled out of him, leaving for some better unknown. How long had you knelt by the casket? Who had come and pulled you away? Then there was that sound—that shuddering, awful sound of the lid as the attendant closed it. A woman had hunched forward, face in hands. She hadn’t been able to watch.

Don’t look at them,
you think, stepping onto the altar. You grip either side of the podium, trying to steady yourself. The church is empty except for the cluster of people in the first row. You can already feel them watching you, their full eyes waiting, and you know if you look up for even a moment your throat will close. You won’t be able to speak. Instead you glance at the pews in the back, a quick acknowledgment before staring down at the book.

You play with the satin ribbon that marks the page. You take a long, thin breath. The last thing you hear is your voice, somewhere outside your body, the words practically a whisper.

“A reading from Ecclesiastes.”

Then the motel room rises up around you. You are back, sitting on the edge of the bed, the sights and sounds of the memory gone. You drop the Bible back into the drawer and close it. Your face feels foreign and strange, and for a brief moment you’re so relieved to have remembered something you actually smile.

It’s a passing moment, swept away by a sudden flood.
Someone has died, someone has died.
You don’t know who he was or how it happened, but it feels as though some crucial organ has been cut out of you and life will be harder now, more perilous. You fold in on yourself, the tears hot in your eyes.

He’s dead,
you think, not knowing who, only that he mattered.
You loved him and he died.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF–NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

YOU PICK APART
the donut. The slushy orange drink is too sweet. The DJ’s voice on the radio rises and falls in endless, annoying cheer. As you sit at the table in the back of the diner, you only notice the high-pitched, cackling laugh of the cashier, the incessant buzzing of the lights overhead.

Beyond the glass window, cars speed down Vine Street. The heat is so intense you
can see it, the air taking on an undulating, liquid quality. You rifle through the knapsack, finally locating the notepad. You write the events of yesterday, feeling better when you are doing something, anything. You try to remember the exact words the news anchor used to describe the robbery. You pull the receipts from your pocket, jotting down the totals from food and the thrift store. Even after paying for the motel room you still have over seven hundred dollars.