“Do you know the shit that comes out of your mouth when you’re dreaming?”
“I’ma kill you,” he snarled. “Lupe!”
“Lupe’s dead,” I dryly proclaimed. “Want to guess who’s next?”
He tried to lunge at me. His body, slowed from the blow to his head, came to an abrupt halt when his cuffs reached their limits. I watched his body spasm, then fall back onto the bed. Amusing.
He went with another strategy.
“Look . . . I’m sorry. I’ll give you whatever you want. I’ve got lots of money. Just let me go. All right?”
“You can’t give me anything. But you did take something from someone I love.”
“Henry?”
“No. Bianca.”
“Who?” he remarked. “Who the fuck’s Bianca?”
“Never mind. Don’t worry your head over such matters.” I leaned over, kissing the large naked man on his forehead, just to the side of the deep bleeding gash I’d made. He tried grabbing me with the closest hand, but I backed off too quickly.
I picked up a batch of tablets I’d gathered. Lists of bets, lists of debts. I ripped a few pages out, sprinkling them over the bed.
“What the fuck are you doing? I need those!”
He still didn’t get it. I didn’t answer, leaving the low hissing sound from the kitchen to greet his ears.
“Wait. Wait. What’s that smell?”
I tore out several more pages, repeating the step. A final sheet, showing the mind-boggling amount owed by Henry, I rolled up into a semitube. Kash’s still-lit cigar was used to ignite it. As the paper fed the flames, blackness rolling over the field of college-ruled white, I took a drag.
Exhaling a cloud of sweet smoke, I answered, “I think that smell is barbecue.”
I dropped the sheet of paper, now fully engulfed, onto the bed, where the fire began to spread. Kash kicked frantically, succeeding in knocking the flaming records onto the floor, but I’d already encircled the bed with several torn tablets before he awoke. He’d just given the flames more fuel.
“Let me go! Please!” he screamed as he thrashed about wildly. Still the cuffs held. Similar cries had been made by someone earlier that night. And like his, they had fallen on deaf ears.
My answer was a smile. “In your next life, be careful who you fuck with,” I offered in parting.
He began shouting at the top of his lungs. Nobody was coming, though. Ironic. The same thing that allowed him to operate in this neighborhood untouched would allow me to walk away just the same with no witnesses.
He’d be left here to panic . . . and burn . . . then die. Alone.
The escaping gas from the line I’d ruptured in the kitchen was bordering on overwhelming. Coughing, I quickly exited Kash’s lair.
I stood across the street again, witnessing the billowing smoke with the gathering crowd. Over the murmur, I imagined hearing Kash’s screams.
Then it erupted.
An all-consuming ball of fire as the windows on his place exploded. The roof disintegrated, dropping its flaming remnants all across the yard and driveway.
Some of the crowd backed off to safer positions, fearing a larger explosion. The warmth of my creation was soothing in the biting night air. I stood my ground until I was sure the monster was consumed.
“Godzilla ain’t got nothin’ on me,” I joked to myself.
As the fire trucks began arriving, I took my leave.
33
HENRY
M
y apartment.
A dwelling like anyone else’s.
A smashed vase. Pillows overturned. Scuff marks on the hardwood floors. A cigarette extinguished with somebody’s foot. And the smell that permeated everything no matter how many windows I opened to the frigid night air.
A dwelling like no other.
The symbol of my ascendancy in life was now a mark of shame and sorrow. The place felt used . . . or misused, more accurately. A large, festering sore of how low I’d sunk. I could no longer enter my own bedroom, knowing what I’d allowed to go down.
Pumpkin was Tanner’s wife.
No matter how many times I repeated it in my head, I couldn’t accept it.
After Mr. Reyes helped me bring her to the hospital, I’d remained seated on the couch. Same place I’d sat like a good little lapdog for Kash.
Dog. Bitch. Interchangeable as far as the definition applied to me.
Being fucked so much, somewhere along the way, I’d forgotten how to be a man.
I could’ve run, like I planned to initially. Kash and his boys would be gone awhile. Plenty of time to make my escape.
Instead I waited for the police to come and arrest me.
“Mr. Reyes, I appreciate your help, but you have to go now. I don’t want you getting in any trouble on my account.”
“Uh . . . I can stay around, Henry. Really. I saw those men prowling outside your door. I could tell the police that you tried to stop them. You did try to stop them . . . right?”
My cast was beginning to itch. I’d just noticed. I banged it on the edge of the coffee table.
“Right?” he asked again.
“Yeah. I guess.”
“Okay,” he said with a sigh. He didn’t say it, but my stature in his eyes was diminished . . . tarnished. “Well, I’ve read up on these sorts of things. You can get a lawyer and—”
“Really. It’s okay. I’ll face whatever’s coming alone. Thank you. It’s been . . . nice having you as a neighbor.” I stuck out my good hand, waiting for him to shake.
This was a debate he didn’t want to engage in.
“I see,” he said.
We shook; then he left with his Yorkie under arm.
Time elapsed as I sat there, all silent except for the tick-tock of my clock. No police sirens. No knock at the door. Not even the shuffle of footsteps in the hall.
They weren’t coming for me. At a moment when I prayed not to be alone . . . not even the cops would honor my desires.
“Damn,” was all I could summon in the end.
What Kash had in mind for me, I knew I couldn’t do. I got up, steeling myself for what I’d come to do originally when I came back: Grab some shit and run.
I made my visit to the bedroom a short one, grabbing whatever I could add to my already over-filled bag. I took the sheets, as awful as they were, off the bed and rolled them up into a ball. I would toss them in the Dumpster downstairs. When I got to the bus terminal, I would be on the first thing leaving town.
I cast a backward glance, flipping the light off a final time. But turning it off wouldn’t turn off her screams. Pumpkin or whoever the fuck she was. Like her lovin’, good mornings were in my rearview mirror.
My eyes blurred as I left the bedroom. I clenched my teeth in an effort to fight back tears. I wiped the one that escaped as I opened my apartment door.
“Boo.”
“Ahhh!” I yelped, jumping back over the threshold.
Heart racing, I dared looking into the abyss that was my apartment hallway.
And the abyss looked back.
There she was. Really.
Not a figment of a guilty conscience.
It wasn’t the woman I’d left at the hospital.
Don’t ask me how I knew. I just did.
“Running somewhere, you piece of shit?”
I dropped my bag as well as the sheets I was to dispose of. I wanted to grab her in my arms, tell her how glad I was to see her. And how sorry I was for what I’d done. Instead I stood frozen, unsure of what would be appropriate.
She came in, a feat of incredible strength on her part. I don’t know how she was able to function. Other than looking exhausted and cold, the woman seemed healthy. While that was the physical aspect, the mental was seriously in question.
“I was leaving. For good.”
She saw the wig on the floor. I hadn’t touched it. She bent over, picking it up and inspecting it curiously. Satisfied, she then affixed it without missing a beat. When she turned to me again, I saw the dried blood on her face. As she took one step forward, I did the opposite. She smiled.
“Maybe you should’ve been scared sooner,” she growled. No purr in the kitten.
“I tried to stop it. Believe me, Pump—” I caught myself. “Who are you? I mean . . . really.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes. It does.”
“Maybe before.” She sighed. “But you fucked that up. It’s over, Henry. I just came to bring you something.”
“Huh?”
She reached in her pocket. When I saw something glistening, I flinched. It was too small to be a gun, though. She threw it up in the air.
I snagged my watch, realizing the implications of how she’d gotten it.
“No need to run. Your debt is canceled. That fat piece of shit won’t be bothering you anymore,” she huffed.
“No way. I don’t believe it.”
“Go see for yourself. Dead men tell no tales. And ghosts can’t hurt you. At least, yours can’t.” Her eyes gleamed at the end. Just before she turned to leave.
“Wait.” She paused. “Thank you,” I said, daring to touch her shoulder.
She kept her eyes fixed on her exit. I wished she’d looked at me, allowed me to atone somehow. In that moment, I knew that I no longer cared that she was Tanner Coleman’s wife or what her actual name was. I wanted to take that final gamble—that I could turn myself around and make her proud of me. That I could be her man, in deeds rather than mere ethereal words.
“Henry?”
“Yes,” I answered, hoping.
“One other thing,” she commented as she glared at my hand. “If I ever see you again, I’ll kill you.”
My hand was still there.
But the shoulder on which it had rested was gone.
Good-bye, Pumpkin.
34
BIANCA
T
he last thing I remembered was being at the hospital, beaten . . . violated. And questioned unmercifully by the police. On the face of the male officer, I read his unspoken accusations.
You must’ve done something to be in this predicament.
You had to know those men.
What
really
happened?
And why aren’t you telling us where you were? Probably somewhere you shouldn’t have been. Little Miss High Society went looking for some excitement and things got out of hand?
Are you on drugs? Are you selling your body for a high?
We’ll find out. So you might as well tell us now.
I was glad when the medication granted me solace.
Now I was home. Bathed and resting peacefully in my bed. With no clue how’d I gotten here.
And losing my mind, so it appeared.
“Bianca!”
My husband’s scream carried from the front door to the third floor, commanding me to attention. Had he brought me home? What they gave me at the hospital must’ve been strong.
Another mystery before me as I struggled to rise from the bed. Tanner sounded enraged. Maybe he’d found out about that man Henry’s involvement. And about how I’d kept that fact from him and the police.