Loose Ends

CHAPTER 2: BOBBY

  In my heart? He shot me through my heart.

  Darryl and I to the motel. His bullet in my heart, and Darryl and I are walking to the motel.

  It’s not like watching a movie. It’s like remembering a movie. It’s like remembering a movie in order but also at once, the voice in my head on the soundtrack. The I. The I cannot die. I’m not dead. I’m dying. Am I? Whatever’s happening, it’s not flashing before my eyes. They lied. Before my eyes, everything’s going blurry.

  The sun was cooking the litter, and the heat and the stink kept nearly everyone inside. Darryl was hungover and quiet.

  The school had air conditioning. The school had friends, at least Wendy. It was Darryl’s fault I wasn’t there. I don’t mind saying that. Even now.

  He trailed me. “Shouldn’t be this hot.”

  I waited for him to catch up.

  He swung the black duffle bag over his shoulder. “How’s come no one offered us a ride. That’s some rude ass shit.”

  We walked on. “You still don’t get it. This is a test.” He was behind me already.

  “I know.”

  “So of course we’re not getting a ride. Thanks to our promotion, we can expect less help.”

  Besides, when did we ever get a ride, Darryl? We knew the COTA routes like we knew our way around our apartment.

  He said, “Duh,” but he didn’t get it. Not really. “Whatever. No biggie. Cooper brothers unstoppable. Slow down.”

  “I wouldn’t have to if you pulled up your pants and walked normal.”

  “I walk normal.”

  “You walk like a mo-fo gangsta.”

  “I am a mo-fo gangsta. It’s the bag.”

  “You got me into this, you have to carry it.”

  “Whatever.”

  He didn’t get it. I don’t think he got very much. I know I didn’t. There’s a logic bigger than my own that I could never follow. Maybe now it’ll all spread out before me and I’ll be able to make sense of it, if only once. Is this why this is happening? A parting gift from life? The last chance to get it?

  I stopped in front of a payday advance place. An old lady in leopard print tights was giving heck to the cashier. I wondered if the sad girl’s job was worse than ours. Our job was as meaningless and unfulfilling as that girl’s must’ve been. We had to deal with jerk customers, too. But our boss was crazy. Hers was most likely just mean. And even between Darryl and me, we didn’t earn enough to help out Mom. She works two jobs without any support from dad. Not fair. The paydays wouldn’t let me be the man he never was. If I ever had any romantic illusions about the job, actually doing it snuffed them out. I decided the girl had it better. Now I’m sure of it. She got to work behind bullet proof glass.

  “What you looking at?”

  We walked on. “Nothing.”

  Darryl leaned back and looked inside the store. “That ho? Wendy not doing it for you anymore?”

  “Watch it.”

  “You hit that shit yet?”

  “You don’t hit a girl.”

  “That ain’t-- Man, you will never be cool.”

  Yep. Point for Darryl.

  Three blocks away, he stopped and leaned against a brick wall.

  “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

  He looked like it. So pitiful, I didn’t give him crap about drinking with the boys, even though that was what made him sick.

  “It’ll be okay. We’re almost there.”

  “Why don’t we quit?”

  “And go back to school?”

  “No. You did good in school. Not me. I was thinking McDonald’s. Suppose Marcus’ll give us a good reference?”

  I thought that was funny. I still do.

  “We’d make more.”

  “Nah. Know how much Sampson makes?”

  “No. Neither do you. Besides, you’re fourteen. How many years you want to wait to be second-in-command?”

  He thought about it. Or didn’t. The color returned to his face. He pushed himself from the wall and we walked on.

  “Know what Marcus’ first words were? ‘Fuck you, ma.’ Swear.”

  I get that Marcus is a legend with the crew and I get how stories grow up around legends. It helps that Marcus stays locked in his office all the time and sends messages into the world through Sampson. Makes him more mysterious. But the stuff the guys tell each other and sometimes believe is amazing to me. Like, the one about how Marcus chewed off his sister’s ear because he worried her earrings made her look easy. Never happened. Or how he cut off a debtor’s foot; how Marcus decapitated the car dealer who sold him a lemon; how he killed this woman and her kid and then burned them in a warehouse for I don’t know what reason. Sick stuff out of slasher movies. Except unlike those movies, the stories were all kind of plausible. Lies, sure, but not the worst lies I ever heard.

  We were getting close. Darryl moaned about the heat again. I told him to take off his cap.

  “You don’t like the Reds anymore?”

  “It keeps the heat in. You’ll stay cooler if you take it off.”

  “You learn that in school?”

  “Doesn’t matter. What if I learned it from a show? Thing is, it’s true.”

  He took it off and tested the difference. “Can’t tell me what to do.” He put it back on.

  The sign for Lucky’s Motel loomed ahead. We didn’t speak the rest of the way.

  I should’ve said something. I don’t know what. Maybe I should’ve admitted I was scared. I bet he was scared too. Or maybe I should’ve told him I loved him. He’d come back with a joke but that would’ve been okay. I loved him for his jokes.

  I remember how I said it once, years ago. All I wanted for Christmas was a skateboard because everyone else had one. Darryl bought one for me. Mom told me he had shoveled snow in front of a few businesses near our place. I’m sure they didn’t pay him much but he was determined and shoveled a bunch. I unwrapped the skateboard and got so excited I told him I loved him. He smiled so wide it stretched his face and he had to squint. I think. Mom cried, I remember. I had to wait till it got warmer before I could use the skateboard, but even then there weren’t many places I could skate. I wasn’t very good. I hurt myself a lot. I blamed the skateboard, which must’ve been the cheapest one on the market. I can’t remember what happened to it.

  So I said it once, but maybe I should’ve said it again.