“But Lille can fix that for you, right? She can mend flesh, no? You’re in Root, for Christ Sakes. Why keep it scarred? Even on the other side, there are things they can do.”
She looked up at me, her chin firm, a cold fire blazing in her one visible eye. “This is me,” she said. “This is who I am. Why I should change? If you don’t like my look, why do you move my hair?”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that. I was just curious. I wanted to see your eyes.”
And her face became a storm all unto its own, her features racked with chaos, precipitation flooding down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry.” I took her hand and squeezed it. “Forgive me?” She tensed her fingers almost imperceptibly. Her sobs calmed. She wiped her face on my sleeve.
“What if … what if I came and found you?”
“Find? What is to find? I am here.”
“On the other side, I mean. What if I came to see you?”
She released my hand and pushed me away. “No. That is not possible. Do not even think of this.”
“Why not?”
“My … circumstance. My father. It is not possible. It will ruin everything. It will … destroy … everything if you came to me.”
I chuckled nervously. “How so? I mean, if living with your dad is such a drag, then run away. I could meet up with you. We could go somewhere … together.”
“You don’t understand. It is not so easy. On the other side … I am not like this. I am not like you see here. I am not … me.”
“What? I don’t get it.”
“Just forget about finding me, please. Leave things be. I have worked hard to make these things … my surfing … sustainable. Please. Just forget. If you come, you will destroy everything.”
“I hate this never knowing for sure if I’m ever coming back here … if I’m ever gonna see you again. It’d be a heck of a lot easier if … on the other side … if we could—”
“Forget it!” she shrieked. “Please, just forget. Please.”
“Okay! Calm down. It’s okay. It’s … forgotten.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Whatever.” I stared up at the dove, my determination unabated, but I would have to keep that part to myself.
“James, you must understand. My lives in Root and on the other side are separate. It is how I persist. The only way I can exist.”
“But … why come here at all, if we can make the other side better? I might be able to help you if you gave me a chance.”
She shook her head. “It is impossible. Some damage cannot be undone.”
A tingly feeling started to spread through my extremities, and not the good kind. “Oh crap. It’s happening.”
Karla took my hand and examined it, spreading my fingers, turning my palm. Translucent blotches had appeared in my skin, like oil soaking into paper. “It is true. Your storm, it is passing.”
“What if I don’t want it to pass?”
“Silly James.” She placed my hand against her sternum and gave me a feeble smile. “You cannot control the weather.”
Chapter 23: The Pits
I awoke fully clothed and panting, my face pressed against a cold puddle of drool. Both pillows were strewn on the floor beside the tangled top sheet and quilt. The instant I realized I was in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, a flood of deep despair washed over me.
Nothing against Beaver Falls. I’m sure it’s a lovely place. But the mellifluous tones of Karla’s voice still resonated in my head. I could still feel the press of her cheek against my shoulder, smell the soft lanolin musk of her hair. I wanted to be back in Root with her.
My own stink rose up to smother any traces of Karla. I sat up on the edge of the bed and struggled to adjust my eyes to the light.
My undies clung like an unshed snake skin. I peeled them off and picked through the plastic shopping bag holding the last bunch of T-shirts and boxers that remained clean and relatively dry.
I dragged myself into the shower and let the flimsy spray scald and melt the crud that had accumulated on my skin. I lathered up twice, let steam fill the room and breathed in deep the essences of the floral soap.
I didn’t bother shaving, figuring whatever beard I managed to grow might help conceal my identity from my pursuers. Though, it might have been more effective if I could actually grow some stubble on my cheeks.
I pulled on a black and silver Oakland Raiders T-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts that had gotten baggy on me. I had to cinch up the belt an extra notch.
I needed food. Out the window, across the main road, I could see some golden arches next to a Holiday Inn. I trashed my dirty clothes, checked out of the hotel and crossed the street on foot, leaving the pickup hidden behind that big old Ryder rental.
I ordered two Egg McMuffins, one side of hash browns and an orange juice. I skipped the coffee. Some people seemed to like it, but I couldn’t stand the sour dishwater they served. Mom had spoiled me with her French Roast cappuccinos. Mostly, I had done without coffee since we lost the house. I was plenty alert and wary; my nerves jangled just fine on their own.
I started wolfing that crap down even before I was out the door, my body telling me in no uncertain terms how many calories I’d been depriving it. I was halfway across the Holiday Inn parking lot, gulping the last of the hash browns when I saw something that made me choke and nearly heave up my whole breakfast.
There was an Escalade parked in the lot—charcoal grey with tinted windows—just like the one that had pulled a u-ey and come after me the day before. To top it all, it had Ohio plates. What were the odds?
I stood there and scanned the lot, staring down some poor guy standing just inside the glassed-in lobby of the Holiday Inn, who was probably just waiting for a cab.
Was it just my paranoia rearing its nasty head yet again? Grey Escalades with tinted windows just might be popular around these parts. As for the plates, the Ohio border was only ten minutes away.
I went over and peeked into the window, seeking some clue that would either confirm a threat or ease my worries. A child seat or some tourist brochures would have done wonders to calm me down.
It was hard to see through all that tint, but the back seat was clearly empty. On the dash there was this black box with wires and antennas coming out of it. I didn’t know what to make of it. It didn’t look like any radar detector I’d ever seen.
I pressed my face up against the glass and there on the floor, peeking out from under a newspaper, was an empty shoulder holster. Chills took hold and I shook.
Some voices startled me. I dropped to the pavement. It was just some girls laughing as they passed through the lot behind me. I waited for them to go by.
As I knelt there on the pavement next to those sparkling white walled tires, the fancy chromed hubcaps with the spinners, my fear frittered away and transformed. A slow burn of annoyance of ignited.
These punks would have been out of my life already if they hadn’t decided to stiff me. What was the deal with that? The truck broke down. It was not my fault. Not like I had missed some scheduled maintenance for radiator hoses.
Three hundred bucks meant a lot to me, a lot more than it meant to them. To these guys it was peanuts. They probably lived a lifestyle beyond anything I could imagine. Served them right that I had made off with their haul. They might think twice about screwing with the help next time.
I had this urge to mess with them. All I could think of was scraping my keys against the door. I went as far as to pull the key ring out of my pocket. I fingered our old house key, the one that didn’t open anything anymore, except my heart and the well of memory. It was my talisman.
But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Why aggravate them any more than I already had? These guys had enough reasons to torture me.
I got up in a crouch and started to move away, but I caught a glimpse of the license plate and figured it might be worth noting for future reference, in case there were more grey Escalades in my future.
I felt around but found no pens in my pocket, but the vanity plate was easy enough to remember—8XKLD8. And then I spotted that blue 2012 Ohio registration sticker in the top left corner. I still had my keys in hand. On impulse, I reached over and scraped it off. Maybe some cop somewhere, some day would give them a hard time.
Two guys exited the Holiday Inn. My heart lurched, until I got a good look at them. They had black suits on. One of them had a comb over. They looked like Mormons or coffin salesmen. No way did they drive this Escalade.
Next time I might not be so lucky. I had to get the heck out of here and there was no stealthy or graceful way about it. I just stood up straight and walked away fast. Who knew who might be watching me from that wall of windows?
I probably looked culpable as heck. But thankfully, druggies slept late, because when I did sneak a glance, there was still nothing going on in the lot.
Across the road, however, that Ryder truck that had screened dad’s pickup from the main drag had pulled out. There was my Ford, scraped roof and smashed tail light fully exposed to the world. That wouldn’t do. I had to get the hell out of here quick. I was glad I had already checked out.
I ran across the street, dodging delivery vans. I went straight for the driver’s side door and unlocked it. I looked back across the road and no shit—there were a couple of dudes walking up to the Escalade with a pair of duffel bags.
I got into the pickup, started it and pulled behind the hotel, hoping there might be a back exit. There wasn’t. A chain link fence separated the Super 8 from some garden center. The only way out was through the front, directly across from the Holiday Inn.
I was tempted to turn off the engine and hang out a while, give those other guys a chance to clear out. But what if they had seen me? There wasn’t much room to maneuver between the back wall of the hotel and the fence. They could corner me back here and I’d be at their mercy, like a raccoon in a tree.
Panic and claustrophobia got the better of me. I had to get out of the lot and onto the road. I pulled around the side of the Super 8 and there was that Escalade, still in its space, backup lights on. They were taking their sweet time getting rolling. That was a good sign and all, but I had to get the fuck out of Dodge.
I pulled out the lot without even looking. I didn’t care where the road led, I just had to put some distance between me and that Escalade. Though, I wondered if it mattered. If they had another freaking GPS stashed on the pickup somewhere, they could take their sweet time catching up with me. How else did they get so close to me last night? Luck?
I followed Big Beaver Boulevard south along a river, spending more time looking in the rear view than through the windshield. Maybe it was a false sense, but I felt less conspicuous and safer on the smaller roads. I veered onto the first side street I came to and it led me to another less traveled road overhung with trees that sort of led in the same direction.
Those tree limbs overhead felt like arms shielding me. Their embrace combined with the lack of traffic helped calm me down. From the knots of fear curdling my gut, it was safe to say that my death wish was gone. I guess I had something to live for now.
The idea that Karla was real kept throbbing through my brain like a pulse. It didn’t matter how thorny her situation; I don’t care what she said. I had to find her—on this side of life. I knew if I did I could help her. Whatever her situation, I could bust her out.
Together, maybe we could salvage something out of our screwed up lives. There would be no need for either of us to mess around in Root. We could carve out some niche in this world that would make getting up in the morning every day worth our while, not to mention … growing old.
Synapses began clicking in ways I hadn’t felt in a long time. The possibility of finding Karla filled me with a buzz I hadn’t known since Jenny invited me to the beach. But this one went way deeper—to the roots of my soul.
But she lived pretty far away, if my hunch was right. I would need a lot more cash to reach her. I knew exactly how to get it, too. I was driving a freaking gold mine.
***
I weaved my way into Beaver Falls proper, traversing its checkerboard of squared off blocks of the town through blue collar neighborhoods cheek to jowl with light industry and office parks.
My path was still mostly random but had a distinct southward tug. I had Pittsburgh on the brain, but only because it was the biggest, closest city that had a market for what I was hauling.
I was in no hurry to get there by any obvious route. I avoided highway entrance ramps like the plague. I still clung to the hope that the guys tailing me had only their instincts to guide them now, no more freaking satellites.
The whole business about getting stiffed still simmered in my craw. What was the deal? I had gotten to Cleveland almost on time. It wouldn’t have hurt them to give me the whole five hundred.
Why punish me? Because they could. They thought all their money and guns gave them privilege and power. But I knew better. I knew that beneath all that attitude, that bling, those wigger clothes, they were losers like me.
Starting out, they had probably been twerpy suburban potheads like Jared, only now they had a few years in the biz under their belts. They had no clue what losing a proposition it all was. It was only a matter of time before they all got their chests ventilated with lead or were socked away to rot in some prison. I was happy to take some of the evidence off their hands.
About an hour out of Pittsburgh I drove through an obscure little state park with these turn-offs with graveled lots for hikers and dog walkers. I waited till I found one that had no cars parked and pulled in. There was a nice row of scrawny hemlocks between me and the main road that gave me the privacy to do what I needed to do.
I got out my tool kit, hopped into the bed of the truck and went to work on the screws holding down the liner. I still had no idea what exactly I was carrying, how it was packaged or how much there was of it. It was most likely cocaine, but what kind? Crack went for ten-twenty bucks a rock in Florida. Powder, cut, fetched twenty bucks a gram on the street, maybe a hundred bucks for the pure shit. Even if I carried only a kilogram cut, what was that? Twenty thou? Enough to get me pretty dang far, if only I could figure out how to sell it.
But first I had to find it. I undid the first dozen screws in the bed liner and there was nothing but air and dust in the spaces closest to the tail gate. As I worked my way back, though, I struck gold.
I reached under and pulled out a long strip of heat-sealed polyethylene packets of pure white powder. There were more strips running down the grooves between the reinforcing ridges of the bed liners. Maybe twenty strips altogether that I could see. I pulled out the one and guessed it was probably a half a kilogram. So, ten kilograms total, that I could see. And the stuff looked pure—raw material for further processing. This was quite the pricy treasure I was hauling.
I stuffed that strip under my shirt, screwed the liner back down and sat there in the bed catching my breath, waiting for my heartbeat to wind back down.
***
I made it to Pittsburgh by mid-afternoon. I had no idea where to go, I just cruised around until I found what seemed like a promising neighborhood—a place called the Hill District.
I couldn’t park the truck on the street, not just because of what it carried but because all the damage made it noticeable. Any cop cruising by would be curious, especially with my Florida plates.
It took a while, but I found a parking garage, wound my way to the tippity top, parked on the roof and made my way down the urine-scented stairwells to the street.
Weird place, this Hill District. Few streets led into it. It was ringed off like a quarantine zone, the roads surrounding it forming barriers lined with high stone walls. These effectively sealed it off from the body of the city, like scar tissue around an infection. I had to climb tier after tier stairways to enter its heart.
I’m not sure what made me come here to sell my wares instead of some fancy suburb, but I m
ight have been guided by my prejudices. The place certainly fit the clichés. It had the right critical density of graffiti. Everywhere, there were these abandoned shops with crumbling brick and boarded up windows.
Together, these things told me there were desperate people living here. But it made me wonder how folks so poor could afford to supply a drug habit. Maybe they were so desperate, they couldn’t afford not to.
Though, to be fair, as I wandered through I could see plenty of ordinary family activity going on. There were grandmas out shopping for beet greens and yams, first graders at recess playing kick ball in a paved lot.
Old men stared at me as I passed by their front stoops. Knots of younger folks checked me out as I passed, their conversations squelching or shifting into whispers. Most of these cliques were teens, way too young for the kind of business I had in mind. I was looking for middle men not end users. I wanted gang-bangers and small time pushers.
Down the street I saw a cluster of twenty-somethings loitering around the side of a Dominican grocery. I thought about using my old ‘lost my wombat line’ to break the ice, but thought better of it. From the looks of these guys, they might not even speak English.
They certainly noticed me coming, their eyes flitting my way as I approached. But I sensed no danger. They were just big kids goofing around on a corner.
“Polly wanna cracka?”
“What’s this white boy doing here? Lose his way from Pitt?”
“He looking to buy some shit,” said a lanky, light-skinned guy whose forehead was a wasteland of pimples. His baggy clothes seemed to float over his slender frame.
One of the other guys giggled. “Yeah. He probably thinks we deal. Sees some brown skin hombres on a street corner and he thinks we got the goods. Shit.”
“Actually,” I said. “I’m looking to sell.”
That got them all stirring like wasps in a nest that had been poked with a stick.
“Say what?”
“You know what’s good for you, get your ass out of here,” said the pimply guy. “Nobody slings rock around the Hill but Crips. Do yourself a favor. Get the fuck out before they grab your ass.”