Girl in Pieces (18 page)

I keep gulping air, only now I'm hiccupping, too, and tears are pouring down my face, which is the last thing I want.

“Jesus, honey,” Riley says, suddenly serious. “I'm sorry.”

I swipe at my face angrily. Fucking
hell.
Fucking
people.
Crying in front of him.

Riley stares at me, the circles under his eyes like black half-moons. Whatever caused those dark stains, it wasn't just alcohol, I'm sure of it.

“I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. I'm an asshole, I am. Don't cry. I didn't mean for you to
cry.
” His voice is different now, softer.

We look at each other and I see something pass across his face, very gently, a sadness, some realization of
me
that makes me want to cry even harder, because he
knows,
he knows it now, that something happened to me, and grabbing me like that wasn't okay.

He looks ashamed.

“Linus…Linus says get your ass to work.” I turn and run out of his room. I'm out of the house, slamming the door behind me, and then peeling away on my bicycle as fast as I can.

On my way back to the coffeehouse, as I pass through the Fourth Avenue Underpass, somewhere in that sudden flash of darkness that replaces the impossibly white sunshine of this city, it occurs to me that he knew Linus wouldn't be able to come herself. He knew I was going to be working at the coffeehouse, that I would have to come instead.

He wasn't sleeping at all. He was waiting for me. I thought he was a nice person and now I remind myself:
People aren't nice,
people aren't nice,
you should know that by now.

I stop my bike. I could just turn back, go back to Mikey's, shut the door, push the trunk in front of it, rescue my kit. Not go back to Grit. Not have to see him. Not have to deal.

But then I will lose what little I've gained. I take deep breaths, close my eyes. Blue comes back to me. Was what happened cereal?

A car honks at me, jolting me out of myself. Before I can even process what to think, I'm pedaling to the coffeehouse again.

Outside True Grit, the sidewalk tables are already full, Go players scowling at empty cups of coffee, people fanning themselves with menus. The high drone of customers erupts as I rocket through the employee screen door and rush to get into my apron.

Linus throws down the spatula and swears when she sees me by myself. “Shit. I knew it. Usually, he's just drunk, but if he's late like this, like
this
late? It means he's been using. I knew it.”

Before I can ask her about
using,
a guy with neck tattoos bursts through the double doors and calls out “Order!”, slamming the green sheet on the counter in front of Linus. He runs to the front to ring people up as Linus hustles around the grill, sliding eggs onto plates and toasting bagels. I turn back to the dishwasher, steam coating my face. What Linus said about Riley using echoes in my head.

Before he face-planted in the craggy stream in Mears Park and almost drowned, DannyBoy had started trolling Rice Street, looking for a lean-faced man in a black vinyl jacket with purple piping. Whatever DannyBoy took, it first made his face gray, his stomach clench; after that, he was like a baby.

But Riley's weird smell, the forceful way he grabbed me. Whatever he was on wasn't what DannyBoy was on. DannyBoy became all heat and sighs. Whatever Riley did last night turned him mean.

The rush of breakfast has died down and I'm up to my elbows in dishes and coffee mugs when the screen door swings open. I look over to see Riley slouching in just ahead of a wide woman dressed like a kind of female tepee in long, loose brown fabric. She looks around, shaking her head at Linus behind the grill, who promptly finds an apron to cover her dirty shirt. Riley has showered: his hair is less matted, and his clothes, though again a white T-shirt and brown pants, appear to be a
cleaner
white T-shirt and brown pants.

He looks at me, amused, with a glint in his eye. “Well,” he says cheerfully. “Looks like you're going to have that job interview now.”

He says it like nothing happened at all. There are still faint red marks around my wrists from where he pinned me so tightly.

The woman nods toward the long hallway, and I follow, not taking off my damp apron. Halfway down the hall, I turn around to face Riley, who is loping after me. I hiss, “You suck.”

“Not the first time I've heard that, sweetheart.”

The woman collapses in a swivel chair behind a desk mountained with papers, receipts, folders, cups full of pens and pencils, and a bowl of luminous blue stones. She puts her forehead down on the desk. “I'm so tired.”

On the grayish wall behind her, there is a framed portrait of a girls' softball team, sunburned faces, sun-bleached hair bunched under green caps. I look at the dark road map of freckles on the woman's face. She's easy to locate in the photograph, far on the right-hand side, bat against her shoulder, thighs straining the hems of her shorts.

Her hand feels around the desk for something, pat-pat-patting. She seems confused, but in a kind of funny, nice way.

Riley has stretched out on the couch and closed his eyes. I don't know what to do, so I stand by the door, pressing my back against the wall.

“You didn't bring in any coffee,” she tells Riley.

“You didn't tell me to bring in coffee.”

“Well, go get me some.”

She lifts her head in my direction. “Julie. Julie Baxter. And you are?” She lays her head back on the desk and whimpers.

I wonder why she and Riley don't have the same last name. Maybe she's married?

“Riley? Why are you not getting my coffee?” Julie's voice is muffled on the desktop.

Riley shuffles up from the couch. He pauses next to me. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

I shake my head. I'm still angry, and weirded out, by what he did. His face seems tired, yet he's kind of jittery, walking out the door in a funny way. I wait until he's through the door before I turn back to Julie.

Softly, I say, “My name is Charlie.”

Julie is sitting up now. She seems to not hear me. “Huh,” she says mildly. “That's curious.”

She gazes at the ceiling, her mouth slightly ajar. Then she says, looking directly at me, “You see, a
normal Riley
never would have asked if you wanted coffee. A
normal Riley
would have just brought back coffee for you, probably something extravagant, like a mochaccino with extra whipped cream and strawberry sprinkles. Because
normal Riley
must flirt with every female person. Young, old, in between, fat, thin, middling. Doesn't matter. He would have brought back his pretty gift for you and you would have fluttered and giggled and he would have assured himself of another ally. Though, to be fair, you don't seem the fluttery type.”

She pauses and folds her hands. “Not a conquest, necessarily, but certainly an ally. He thrives on mass affection, even as he appears to want to push it away. So this is interesting. Very interesting.

“Something has passed between you two.” She rolls a pencil between her hands. “I can tell. I have real intuition.”

Her hazel eyes dart across my face, but I keep it blank. I'm not going to tell her what happened. She might not keep me around. I'll just try to steer clear of him.

She opens her mouth to say something else but Riley has come back with two cups of coffee. She gives him the same searching, intent look she gave me.

“What?” he says crossly. “What are you looking at me like that for?”

“Intuition. I'll have to develop my thesis further.” She twines her hands greedily around the coffee. “Anyway! So. Charlie! See? I was listening. I bet you thought I wasn't. You have an awfully painful-looking scar on your forehead and you're wearing overalls in the desert, two things that strike me as both interesting and sad.” She takes a long sip of her coffee. “Why are you here?”

I look at Riley without thinking, but he only shrugs, settling back down on the couch, resting his coffee mug on his chest.

I flex my fingers behind my back. “Money?”

“No, why are you
here
?” Julie closes her eyes briefly, as though very annoyed.

“Like, on the planet type of thing?”

“Just in Arizona
.
We'll talk about the planet at some later date. That's a much more complex conversation.” She crinkles her eyes at me as she sips her coffee.

“I moved here? From Minnesota?” What more am I supposed to say?

“For a boy, probably,” Riley laughs.

“Shut
up,
” I snap. “Why are you so stuck on that? It isn't even
true.
”

Julie says, “Then what
is
true?”

And before I can stop myself, because this whole morning has been a clusterfuck that now includes this weird
job interview,
I blurt out, “I tried to kill myself, okay? I messed up, and here I am. And I'm fucking hungry, and I need money. I need a stupid job.” As soon as I say them, I desperately want to gather the words up and shove them back inside my mouth.
Freak,
she's probably thinking. Instinctively, I feel for my shirtsleeves, making sure they're pulled down far enough.

I can feel Riley staring at me, hard. It's all I can do not to look over at him.

Abruptly, he gets up from the couch and leaves the office.

Julie squints a few times, like she's trying to evacuate unexpected dust from her eyes. My stomach flip-flops. She's going to tell me to get out. There's no way she's keeping me now. I start to untie my apron.

Instead, she cocks her head at me. Her eyes are kind and sad. “There's a lot of
stuff
in here, isn't there?” Like a bird, her hand flutters before her chest, near her heart.

She nods to herself, touching the bowl of blue stones on her desk. “
Yes,
this is what I
do.
I like to
talk
to people. It gives me a much better sense of them than wanting to know if they've ever washed dishes or brought out a plate of food or handled a mop or what they studied in school.” She looks right at me, her freckled face open, her eyes clear. “Come here,” she says.

I step forward and she takes my hands in her own. Her eyes are little ponds of warmth. Julie's hands are sure and smooth,
motherly.
Pat, pat, pat. The scent of lavender oil drifts off her skin.

She closes her eyes. “Right now, I'm really
feeling
you.”

When she opens her eyes, she lets go of my hands, reaches into one of the bowls, and presses a stone against my palm, closing her fingers around it. The stone has a curious heat.

“Lapis lazuli,” she tells me. “They have such an amazingly strong healing ability, do you know? Their power is to carve a deep path through confusion and emotional turmoil. Really helps me work through shit sometimes. You into stones at all?”

“I don't know anything about them,” I say. My voice feels small. How can a little stone have so much power? I close my fingers around it. “Do you, like, pray to it, or something?” Talking to rocks. Blue would have a field day with that one.

“If you want.” Julie smiles. “Or you can just hold it, and close your eyes, and let yourself really feel its energy, and trust that the stone's energy will feel
you.
”

She starts writing on a pad of paper. “It's some really beautiful knowledge, stones. You should think about it. Tomorrow I'll bring some aloe vera for that scar on your head. Keep the stone. It's yours.”

She slides some forms across the table. “Here. You need to fill these out for taxes and payroll. Bring them back tomorrow along with your ID and we'll get you on the books.” I take the papers and fold them, putting them in the pocket of my overalls.

She hands me a piece of paper, with days and hours written down. Four days a week, seven a.m. to three p.m. “That's your schedule, Charlie. My brother can be a real prick, but he's my brother. He falls down, I pick him up, he shoves me away, he falls down, I pick him up, et cetera, et cetera.”

The phone rings, and she swivels away to answer it.

I stand there for a moment before I realize it's my signal to go. I walk down the hallway slowly, the stone still in my hand. When I see Riley in the dish area, wiping the counter, I look away quickly, slipping the stone into my pocket.

I start unloading coffee mugs from bus tubs, trashing the soggy napkins and bent stirrers. Riley comes over and picks up a mug, tilting it so I can see inside.

“You'll want to soak these, see the coffee stains? Soak them once a week or so, with a couple capfuls of bleach in hot water. Just fill up one of the sinks or an empty pickle bucket. Whenever you notice, really. Julie likes them nice and clean.”

I nod without looking at him.

Riley whispers, “I'm a lousy person. But you've learned that already.”

When I don't say anything, he presses a finger against my sleeve, just above my wrist. He leans closer to me. “You didn't have to lie to me about a cat. I'm no stranger to fucking up.”

“Riley!” the tattooed guy yells from the wait station. “Tell us about the time you threw up on Adam Levine's shoes!”

“Oh, that's a good one.” Linus laughs hard, like a cartoon horse. I turn around and she winks at me.

Riley lights a cigarette and inhales deeply, smoke sidling from his nostrils as he walks back to the dish area. “Now, now. Vomiting is not uncommon in rock and roll. It's kind of a staple, actually. I was not the first and I am sure I will not be the last to vomit on Mr. Levine. But I'd like to remind you, it was not just his shoes, it was Mr. Levine himself that was the unsuspecting target of my sudden digestive vulgarity. The story begins like this….”

I go back to the dishes, still listening to Riley spin his story, following the lilts and cadences of his cigarette-gravelly voice, but I'm also thinking about what he said:
I'm no stranger to fucking up.

Even though I don't want it to, what he said kind of touches me. What he said: I should have it printed on a fucking T-shirt, because it's the motto of my life, too. Which means that however horrible he was this morning, and however kind he's being to me right now, and very funny, with this story, he and I are closer than I'd like to admit.

My face flushes. I slip a hand into my pocket and wrap it around the stone, will it to tell me to stop thinking what I'm thinking, but the stone stays silent.

After work, I take some of the cash Riley gave me and buy a bag of chips and an iced tea at the co-op. I'm so hungry that I rip into them right away, stuffing my face while looking at the
FOR RENT
s on the community board outside.

It doesn't look promising. My heart kind of sinks. Most of them ask for first, last, and security. Even for a one-bedroom for six hundred dollars, that's eighteen hundred dollars up front, plus utilities. How do I get utilities? Do I have to pay up front for those, too? I do some math in my head: with what True Grit will pay, I'll hardly have anything left over for rent anywhere, not to mention any extras like food or gas or electric.

I ride around downtown for a while until I find the library. I head to the bathroom first, and wait until a woman leaves before I take one of Mikey's empty water bottles from my backpack and fill it with lemony hand soap from the dispenser. I can use this for the shower, but I'm going to need to find a toothbrush and toothpaste. I bundle toilet paper around my fist and stuff it in the pack. There aren't any more rolls left at Mikey's.