Loose Ends

CHAPTER 6: BOBBY

  I had five dollars in my pocket all morning, less after I paid the bus driver to drive me across the city. Older passengers shuffled off and young kids hopped on as the bus approached the OSU campus. Most played with electronic toys, except for these two girls talking fast and loud about a party they went to or were going to. I couldn’t tell.

  Out the window, students shouldered thick bookbags as they hurried in and out of buildings and across lawns. We passed some dorm buildings I had been inside. They were always profitable and the customers were nice enough. They never invited Darryl and me to hang out though. And they weren’t impoverished. They bought more bags than I could ever afford. It’s a lie students don’t have money. The exact same painting of water or whatever that hangs in Marcus’ office hung on many dorm room walls next to posters of aliens and Bob Marley. I don’t know what it means.

  Seven months ago, I was sure I’d be one of the students some day, like it was a given. Five months ago, the prospect became iffy. Now, I’ll never be one of them. I don’t care. It doesn’t matter that I’ll never be one of those spoiled rich idiots who’ll stumble through four years of expensive college so they can work a meaningless job they’ll hate. I missed out. Boo hoo.

  I breathed easier when the bus reached the campus’ end. We passed shops and stores that rely on the students’ food, drug, and entertainment desires. The stores seemed so desperate for attention with big, bright signs, all promising the best deal on whatever they sold.

  Then the shops gave way to houses and apartment buildings. The people on the street got fewer and older, walking with a hunched back, and less urgently and more depressed that the swarm of smiley kids a few miles back.

  I got off and wandered until I found this two-story box. So quiet. I didn’t pass or even hear a single resident as I roamed, looking for this apartment.

  I opened the door and a thick wall of heat fell on me. I pushed my way in and messed with the dial and buttons on the thermostat. Something behind the wall clicked and whirred and a cold draft flowed from the vents.

  This u-shaped place has been give and take. Those three paintings on the living room wall are relaxing. Or could’ve been if I had been able to empty my mind enough to sit back and let the nature scenes work some serene magic on me. But those ducks in flight on the lampshades are corny kid’s stuff.

  I turned right, into the kitchen. Well-stocked, but with none of my favorites. More give and take.

  Through the kitchen, the bathroom. Small, but with a tub. And all the soaps and moisturizers I could want if I ever wanted any.

  It’s not the apartment I’d pick for myself. The stranger’s tastes didn’t match my own. Not that there’s anything wrong with the apartment. In fact, there must be a million apartments that are personalized in the same was this one is, and that was comforting. It just wasn’t very cool.

  But just when I felt safe, when I thought how this must be how normal people live so it must be okay, I opened the bedroom door. In the dim dusty light coming through the closed curtain, I made out a bare mattress on the bed. I opened the closet door. Empty. A small dresser was empty too. Nothing. I flipped on the light. There had to be more in the room I couldn’t see. There was. Is. A thin red line, a few inches long, streaked across the far wall. Scarier than a room drenched in red. I’ve tried to pretend it’s lipstick or ketchup. It’s never worked. The mark shouldn’t be there, but it was and it was there because of violence. No way to pretend away that fact. I killed the light and slammed the door, and I’ve never opened it again.

  I went to the front door and gripped the doorknob. I couldn’t turn it. There was no point. Six billion people on Earth and I couldn’t go to any of them. I let go of the doorknob.

  I looked over the living room again, this time with reigned eyes. I went to the stack of DVDs. Mostly chick flicks. It was very hard to tell if a man or a woman lived here. I saw signs for each.

  I wiped a thin layer of dust from the top of the cable box. I sat on the couch. The TV angle was perfect and my body sank into the downy cushion. I had to stay, no way around it. As long as I physically and mentally avoided the bedroom, this place wasn’t so bad.

  That clock, shaped like a fluffy cloud, the second hand taking days to move, said Wendy was home from school. I called and asked her to visit. She had to work. She asked a bunch of questions about my new apartment. I ignored them and promised I’d stop by. I washed my hands and face with soap that smelled like aloe, then picked a handful of quarters from a change jar in the living room. It must be nice to have so much money you can throw change in a jar and forget about it.

  Ten feet from the stop, the bus pulled off. Twelve to fifteen minutes till the next one. An old woman holding two bags of groceries sat next to me on the bench and tried to make idle conversation, but I didn’t say much back. An “uh huh” or two seemed to satisfy her. By the time the bus arrived, my eyes were wet and heavy. A small headache was swelling behind my eyes. The driver opened his mouth to say something to me, but turned away. The bus was full. Everybody watched me try to find a seat. I told an older man with a walking cane between his legs to scoot over. After a moment, he did.

  Wendy’s work shirt, bright yellow with a goofy cartoon chicken logo, didn’t look right on her. It never did. She knew it, too. She thinks she’s above it and maybe she is. Her parents told her to get good grades and she did. Then they forced her to get a job after school and keep her grades up and she did that too. She became more responsible, which is what they wanted, and she always had spare cash, which I’m sure they wanted too. But her commitments also made her depressed and sometimes a total bitch. Still, maybe her parents were on to something. I can’t deny they know how to forge a normal life out of whatever’s available. The entire neighborhood has that knowledge. They have more pride than money, but pride’s all they needed to turn a not-so-good part of the city into a pleasant turf to raise a family. Wonder where I’d be right now if any of them had been my parents.

  She said, “Bobby, what is it?” like she already knew and just needed me to confirm it. On the couch, I laid my head on her shoulder, on a bone. I moved to a softer spot.

  “Darryl’s dead.”

  Brutal. Two short syllables riddled with hard d’s. She asked me to repeat them. I couldn’t. She asked how and when and I gave one word answers.

  “But what happened?”

  Weren’t one word answers enough? Why was she getting miffed? What more did she want? I wasn’t going to break tradition and discuss my job, so what did she want? “I don’t want to heard about it,” she said when we were on the same couch and again I was using her shoulder for a pillow and I told her Darryl got in. That’s how I put it. “He’s in.” Then a week later, again on the couch, again my head on her shoulder, I had to tell her, “I’m in.” Our whole relationship was spent with my head on her shoulder.

  “I told you what happened,” I said.

  Her shoulder tightened. I lifted off her and leaned back into the couch’s corner. Her shoulders relaxed. She was staring at the floor.

  “Least it wasn’t you. God made the bullet miss you.”

  Which means He made it hit Darryl? Wendy’s religion makes her say stupid things, mean things. “God’s plan.” That’s what she trusts when she’s stressed or hits a roadblock, when she wants to give up. A plan in the sky helps her with crap down here but it scared me because what she’s saying is God makes bad stuff happen. Wendy, what if God’s plan is a lifetime of suffering? Are you okay with that? Can you trust that plan?

  “He’s with Jesus now.”

  Yeah. They’re both dead.

  Her body made a quick convulsion. A fat tear fell. I sat up and brushed it away. Or tried. I smeared it. She kissed my hand. It must’ve tasted yucky.

  “Is that aloe?”

  I described the apartment and everything in it, except for the bedroom which she wouldn’t want me to describe anyway. She dropped my hand.

  “You have to go home
. To your home. See your mom. Oh my God. She must be devastated. Then you have to go to the police.”

  “I tried to sell coke. That’s like, thirty years.”

  She stood and lectured me on responsibility and not facing up to my problems. As if she understood my problems. As if they were normal problems with normal solutions. If my life was normal, Wendy, I would have sued Marcus for millions. Instead, I owed him three grand. Actually, if I was normal, I would’ve never heard of Marcus Webster. She looked silly, a know-it-all who knew nothing. But she spewed her bullcrap so fiercely, I sank deeper into the couch.

  And by the way, why on earth did everyone treat me like a bad guy? Because of Darryl, I worked for Marcus. Because of Sampson’s bad contact, Darryl got shot. Because Darryl got shot, I owed Marcus. There’s a lot of blame to go around but none for me, but that’s all I received. No sympathy. Just blame.

  I sat up. Coins jingled as they fell from my pocket. “You act like I wanted to work the streets. I didn’t. I had to.”

  “Bullcrap. You want to talk about have to? I have to go to work. I have to come home dead tired, covered in grease. Then I have to do homework. I have to make something of my life. God, I can’t believe I wasted all my free time on you. I don’t have any friends left. You know I wanted to learn the piano? That’ll never happen. My life’s been work, school, and you. You were doing so well in school. Why’d you drop out? I told you this was bound to happen.”

  “I had to protect Darryl. And I never used the stuff.”

  “You’ve told me. A million times. But it could’ve been you today.” She mumbled, “Poor Darryl,” and walked to the closet.

  There was no “Poor Bobby” coming.

  She put on a blue jacket and opened the front door. “I have to go to work now. You have to leave.”

  I collected the coins. “I was leaving anyway.” But as I approached the door, I softened. “I’ll call you later. Meanwhile, why don’t you call my mom?”

  I reached for her hand. She jerked it away. I stepped on the porch. She slammed the door.

  At the bus stop, my headache was now driving a nail into my skull. Sweat seeped out all over me, from my scalp to my feet. The bus couldn’t come soon enough to take me back to the apartment that had cool air and TV and, I prayed, aspirin.

  “Antsy?” The strong breath from a rotting mouth struck my nose. A few feet away, a crusty old man in rags pointed to my legs. I hadn’t noticed they were twitching.

  It was hot out like the world was under a magnifying glass. I dreamed we were burning, but so slowly we didn’t notice at first. Then it would be too late. Buildings and cars would explode. The ocean would boil. Fields and forests would burst into flames. We’d turn to each other, terrified and confused, but no one was any safer or smarter than anyone else. We’d have to watch each other melt away and everyone in the world would eventually collect into a pulpy soup of humanity.

  “Hey kid. I say something funny?” The man took a step towards me. He moved like a zombie.

  “No.”

  “Then what’s with the smile?”