When It All Comes Down to Dust (Phoenix Noir Book 3) (12 page)

“Yeah, fine,” David said. He went to the restroom, took a piss, then left. He didn’t take the newspaper with him.

On the walk home, he became dizzy. He’d driven this route so many times, and never really understood how far it was. He found himself craving a root beer float, a drink he had no particular fondness for. He kept on walking. The dizziness faded, and he felt stronger. As he reached the corner of his street, he saw two men standing by a payphone, waiting for something. He wondered what, but it wasn’t his business to wonder anymore.

In his living room, he peeled off his clothes and lay on the couch. He felt sweat pouring out of him, soaking the fabric under him, so he got a towel from the bathroom, spread it on the couch and lay down again. He had a paycheck in the bank, some savings. No health insurance now. His car insurance had just lapsed and he’d been about to renew it, but now he knew he wouldn’t for a while. 

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A
s Laura walked to her car on her way to lunch, she turned on her cell phone, intending to call David. There was a voice message from Pat, asking her to call him as soon as she could.

“Yo, it’s Laura. What’s up?”

“I thought I’d better let you know – a letter for you was delivered here, and it looks like it’s from Frank del Rio.”

“You’re kidding.”

“You know I’m not.”

“What does it say?”

“You think I open other people’s mail? I can look now if you want me to.”

“No, I’ll just come down there and get it.”

“Fine. When?”

“Now, if that’s okay.”

“Sure.”

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G
ood days and bad days, and Frank didn’t know what kind of day it might be until it was there. Most days were good, but sometimes it was as though all he could see was people’s pain. Yesterday had been like that. He’d sat in the Denny’s, and two young women got talking to him. One of them told him about how she was a single mother, how she was fifteen when she got pregnant and was now twenty-four and how she was going to get her G.E.D. and then go to college just as soon as she could save up the money and her life would be better once she had an education. Her friend told him about how she was living in a motel and working at Wal-Mart and trying to save enough for a deposit and first month’s rent on an apartment but her wages were so low and the motel cost so much that she couldn’t save hardly at all and she just wished she could have a job that paid enough, not even a lot, just enough, and where she was actually allowed to go to the bathroom when she needed to...

As Frank talked with them, he felt like he could see their lives, see all the hopes that would die from lack of money to do anything. He saw all the men they would put their trust in and who would let them down, saw their bodies turned old and fat by booze and bad diet, saw the slow, lonely years that would end their lives. He saw it all, and he wanted to hold them and tell them he was sorry about everything that had happened to them, and everything that was going to happen to them.

After they left, Frank watched a man come in, sit down and order some food. As the man waited, he sat there looking at nothing, his face empty. He took a magazine out of a bag and looked at the cover, but didn’t open it. He put the magazine away again, and got up and walked out before his food arrived.

But that was yesterday, and today wasn’t like that. Today was good. Today he was eating a ham sandwich for lunch, and watching a young couple eat voraciously together at a nearby table. He was bespectacled and serious-looking, wearing dark jeans and a sweatshirt. She had blonde hair and full lips over smiling white teeth, and wore a brightly-patterned sweatshirt in various shades of blue. She was so full of cheer that she seemed to bounce up and down. They were with each other entirely.

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L
aura couldn’t find a parking space outside the Federal Public Defender’s office, and she didn’t want to pay to park in the garage. She drove around the block and found a space on Monroe Street, just across from McCaffrey’s Irish Pub, a favorite hangout of her former colleagues. Rather than walk round the corner to his office, she called Pat and asked him to meet her in the bar.

She was sitting at a table when he walked in. He sat down and, with an apologetic look, handed her the envelope. She took it, looked at it, saw Frank’s name on the top left corner, and dropped it onto the table.

“Aren’t you going to open it?” Pat said.

“Yeah, later. I want to eat lunch first.”

“Makes sense.”

Pat got shepherd’s pie, and Laura got fish and chips. They ate and tried to have a conversation, but they were both aware of the envelope lying there like a body bag containing something unspeakable. Laura put it in her purse so they wouldn’t have to look at it, but it made no difference. It was still present, still felt, and their talk was flat and distracted. When Pat had finished eating, he said, “I have to get back to work. And you probably need some privacy.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“Call me if you need to talk about anything.”

“Thanks.”

“Say hi to David for me. He seems cool.”

“I will. He is.”

“Later.” On his way out, Pat stopped at the bar and paid their bill.

Laura took the envelope out of her purse and looked at it again. All at once, the bar felt claustrophobic and unsafe. She left, feeling the heat and light slam into her as she walked out the door, and crossed the street to her car.

She sat in the car without turning the engine on, sat looking at the dizzy sprawl of the city. For so many years Frank had not been a part of it. She had known where he was, always, miles away, in Florence, locked behind walls and guarded by armed men. She could look at the city and know he was nowhere in it.

Now she looked at it, the buildings and streets, the afternoon, and she knew he was there, part of it all. The envelope in her hand hadn’t come from behind the guarded walls of Florence Prison, it had come from somewhere in the place she was looking at, the place she was in, the place she called home.

She tore it open, not the usual way you open an envelope, but from the bottom, keeping away from the flap that sealed it, because she couldn’t stand the thought of touching anything that might contain Frank’s dried saliva. She pulled the letter out of the envelope, her sweat dripping onto it and making the ink run while she sat there and read it.

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D
avid’s editor called, but again David didn’t answer. It was late afternoon, and he was flipping through a recipe book, trying to find something he could cook for Laura when she came over after work.

“David, it’s Jerry. Well, I got your email. I wrote back, so I guess you’re either not checking your email, or else you’re ignoring me. I think you’re making a big mistake, but that’s your problem. I’m not going to try to argue with you. I’ll pay you through today, and I want you to hand in your keys and clear out your desk by a week from now. Sorry it didn’t work out.”

David smiled.

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L
aura sat at her desk, trying to look busy but doing no work other than answering the phone. She could think of little else but Frank’s letter, which she’d left on the passenger seat of her car. She pictured it lying there, and wondered if it would curl in the heat. She imagined someone breaking into the car and stealing the letter, not knowing what it was, what it really meant. She kept wanting to call David, or email him, but she didn’t, and she didn’t know why not.

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D
avid looked around his house. It really was a nice place, he thought. Not in the sense of being luxurious, but of just being a good place to be. A place to be every day, to read and cook and eat and talk with friends. He’d never had time to really live there before.  Most people he knew were like that. Many of them had houses they spent a lot of money on, but they never really got to live in them. So much of their time was spent working, their houses were just places to quickly eat, bathe and sleep. They’d have been as well just to rent a cheap room. In the service of their egos, they spent their lives making money for corporations, while they themselves got paid money they had no time to spend, had families they had little time for, friends they rarely hung out with.

He’d once dated a lawyer, a young associate at one of the city’s big firms. She’d faced a dilemma when she was offered a teaching fellowship at Georgetown University. While the idea of living in D.C. was appealing to her, the decrease in salary wasn’t. She’d told David how much of a cut in pay she was facing, and he’d burst out laughing because the amount of money she’d be losing every year was the exact amount of his annual salary. What made it less funny was the knowledge that she had more money than he ever aspired to, and yet she was the most unhappy person he’d ever known. All she did was work, visit various therapists, and obsess about whatever man she was dating.

And then there was Laura. He thought about how different he and Laura were. Her apartment’s stark functionality reflected who she was – it was a place to eat and sleep. She didn’t like to be there otherwise, she always wanted to be where things were happening, where the action was. David had been living that way too, but it wasn’t what he wanted.

He didn’t know what he wanted to do next, but he knew what he didn’t want. He didn’t want to spend most of his time doing work he didn’t like in order to make money he didn’t need in order to pay for a lifestyle that didn’t interest him.

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“S
o what are you going to do?” Laura asked him that evening, as they ate the stir-fry he’d made.

“I don’t know. I’ve got a little bit of money saved, so I don’t need to make any decision right away.”

“How long can you coast?”

“If I’m frugal, maybe three months.”

“Are you sure about quitting your job?”

“Yeah.”

“Are your co-workers having a going-away party for you?”

“I doubt it. People in the business are pretty into themselves. I don’t think they’ll want to do anything like that unless they think I might be able to do something for them.”

When they’d finished eating, Laura said, “I want to show you something. I didn’t want us to have to look at it until after dinner.”

“Uh-oh. You gonna tell me what it is?”

“A letter from Frank del Rio.”

“Shit. He knows where you live?”

“No, he sent it to my old job.”

“Still, he must have been checking up on you.”

“Yep.”

“Okay, show me.”

“I’ll have to go get it. I left it in my car. I don’t like even having it in the same room as me.”

He walked outside with her, and stood watching as she got the letter out of her car. She handed it to him, and they went back inside the house.

David sat on the futon and Laura sat beside him. He looked at the letter in his hand. Outside in the darkness, it had seemed like an artifact from some charnel ground, something to avoid touching, but now it was just a folded piece of paper. The message was neatly handwritten in blue ink that somehow made David imagine a cheap plastic pen.

Dear Laura,

I’m very sorry for writing to you because I know that getting a letter from me might upset you and I don’t want to upset you or make you feel bad or angry or anything like that.

I’m writing to you just to say I’m very sorry for what I did to you. I know you hate me and I don’t blame you but  I want you to know that I would never want to bother you, and I’ll never contact you again after I send you this letter. I just want to say I’m sorry, and I wish you all the best and hope you have a very happy life.

Best wishes,

Frank del Rio

David tried to hand the letter back to Laura, but she didn’t take it. He folded it and put it on the coffee table.

“Well,” he said. “That wasn’t as bad as I thought.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought it might be nasty, but he doesn’t sound scary. More like pathetic.”

“Glad you don’t think he’s scary.”

“I know that was a stupid thing to say. I know it’s easy for me to say that when I didn’t go through what you –“

“Don’t humor me.”

“I’m not. I guess I’m just relieved that he didn’t say any of the things I was afraid he might say.”
Like taunt you about what he did to you. Tell you he wanted to do it again.

“You don’t get it.”

“What don’t I get? Do you think he’s bullshitting about being sorry?”

“No, he’s probably sincere. It doesn’t matter. Even if he doesn’t want to, he’ll do it again.”

“What? Hurt you?”

“No. He’ll find a little girl.”

“How can you know that?”

“Because he doesn’t have a choice. He didn’t have a choice about what he did to me. To most people, it was a crime. To him, it was a failed relationship. I think he might even have meant well to start with.”

“Okay... the reason I’ve never asked you about it is that I thought if you wanted to tell me about it, you would. But you must know I want to know.”

She nodded.

“I’m not interested in pushing you, but if you want me to understand what you just said, you’re gonna have to tell me.”

“I know,” she said.

And she told him.

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T
he first time Laura got drunk, she was seven years old. The beer was dark and heavy, and it was given to her by her father. Her parents had some friends over, and they all found it funny to watch the little girl get more and more messed up, going from talking loquaciously through throwing up in the bathroom to passing out on the living room floor, while the party continued all around her.

Earlier in the evening, they had tried to get her stoned, but she thought smoking was gross, and she couldn’t figure out how to draw on the spliff once it was in her mouth.  She liked the beer – it tasted good, and it made her feel good, and even when she was puking in the toilet she still felt better than she felt most of the time.

Her parents were from the boondocks of Idaho. Her father had proposed marriage to the best-looking girl in town, and her mother had accepted the proposal from the wealthiest boy who had offered. They got married in their early twenties. Within a year, he knocked up his wife without ever deciding to, and they went ahead and had the baby without thought or investment. To them, procreation was something that just happened, and then the child was there, and you kept living your life. Her father saw his role, beyond sperm provision, as that of bill-payer. To that end, shortly after Laura’s birth, he decided to move to Phoenix and get into real estate.