The Blue Pen

CHAPTER THREE

  Parker grabbed a twenty-dollar bill and a few bus tokens, putting them in his back jeans’ pocket. He crammed some Doritos into his mouth, knowing he should have dinner, even if just a bachelor’s meal. He slipped his keys in his front pocket after locking his home and he walked down to the corner bus stop. He didn’t feel like driving in traffic and caught a bus to Little Point, arriving there just after dark. He had not wanted to go so late, but his unexpected nap dictated otherwise. He didn’t want to wait until the next afternoon to go to Knockout, and decided to risk the unknown territory.

  Little Point was crowded and noisy, like a little city in itself. Parker sat on a bench and watched the area for thirty minutes. He saw the very rich and very poor mingle like fire ants on a disturbed anthill. A woman in diamonds and a black evening gown rudely brushed shoulders with a woman in fake jewelry and a red skirt that showed butt cheek. Neither one appeared to care. Two men in suit pants and thick overcoats got into a loud fight over a cab. Parker could smell butter and shrimp each time the Filet O’ Yea’s door opened behind him. Cars cruised slowly in the traffic, many of which blared popular music and rap from closed windows so that he could mainly make out suffocating bass lines.

  He stood up and went in search of the abandoned subway entrance. He was a good writer; he could remember exactly what people said to him, word for word, for at least two years. His memory was like a book that simply needed to have the pages flipped to the mental tab marking an event.

  He found a boarded up piece of sidewalk next to a bar called Crystal’s. He looked beyond it and saw a dark alley, although a car would have to be sawed in half to fit down there. Parker stuffed his hands in his pockets, stood thinking for a moment - perhaps checking a note about the dangers of dark alleys in his memory book - and then held his cold, black-leather gloved hands out in front of him. He proceeded into the brick-lined alley with ears alert. He heard nothing but the cars behind him and the mingling, muffled voices coming from the second story, closed windows of Crystal’s on his right. He thought of an old saloon from a movie as he left the bar behind and entered the alley. Once his eyes adjusted to the weak light, he put down his hands.

  He walked for half a block, looking behind him every few seconds. There was nobody around. There was not even a door or window to be seen, but he kept walking. A light blue door came into sight on his left suddenly, then another light blue door about ten feet after the first. He paused outside each and listened, rubbing his glove on the wood and squinting to make out the color. He heard nothing, but thought something looked strange about the doors. He continued on until another blue door carved out a piece of building. He listened, rubbed the wood and reached for the doorknob. His gloved hand brushed air. There was no doorknob. He thought that there must not have been any on the other two doors, as well. He watched the door for a minute, and then pushed it like a schoolboy poking his head into the girls’ bathroom.

  A long hallway stretched out in front of him, lit only by the orange light coming from the glassless window at the end of the hall. The sounds of the street still reached him, but they sounded lonely, like the office at night when Parker worked late. He thought he could almost hear the floor polisher sweeping the hallways, as though unmanned and working on its own, without pay.

  The floor thumped as he walked, and he pushed his shoulders back, thinking of Cleo’s mysterious blue eyes. He muttered, “Remember why you’re doing this.”

  He reached the end of the hallway and faced a blue door on his right, the shadowy light from the window above his head brushing his hair and tapping his cheek. There was no doorknob here, either. He could hear soft male voices coming from the cool air above. He pushed the door open. The talking stopped.

  Parker stepped out into an L-shaped alley. He saw cardboard boxes and black trash bags in front of him, but could not see what lie around the corner to his left.

  He said, “Hello? Hello, can someone help me?”

  A man’s deep voice answered from beyond view. “Who are you?”

  “I’m looking for someone.” He walked around the corner, but saw nobody, only small, cooling red coals from a fire set below the window from the hallway. “Where are you?”

  “Come on in a little closer.” It was the same deep voice, but he heard a woman laugh gently after he spoke, as though she were trying to hide it from a priest.

  He hesitated, and then took a step forward.

  He felt a hit, a sharp sting on the top of his head, and saw a flash of white light behind his snapped-shut eyelids. He let out a gasp as another hit came from above. He opened his eyes to see the coals somehow coming closer to his face. He realized he was falling in time to roll to the ground to the side of the dying fire. A shoe hammered into his gut and he felt the Doritos he had eaten spill out his mouth with an acid back-taste. He could not see. Warm blood was filling eyes. Another blow fell on his crown, and then everything was a dark dream.

  He awoke with his cheek freezing on the cement. He cracked his eyes open. Everything seemed disproportional, like an alley-themed funhouse. Folding chairs and cardboard boxes seemed to float and twist in the city lights reflecting off the hazy clouds above. His eyelashes were stuck together, and he heard them crackle as he widened his view. Groaning and no longer able to be afraid, he slowly sat upright. He had cottonmouth, as though he had hit the whiskey rather than been hit by the bottle. In the movies, they always break, he thought. His left ribs ached, and when he sharply gasped as he touched his head, his entire left side screamed at him in shock and pain.

  He cursed, but pulled himself up the wall. He jerked and breathed in shallow breaths, then used the wall to support himself as he rounded the corner. He reached the door and held out a shaky hand...but there was no doorknob.

  Parker moaned and ran his bare hands over the wood. It was cold and splintery, and he realized he hadn’t felt it before. They had taken his gloves. He rubbed his arms, noticing for the first time that his jacket was gone. He slipped his hands into his pockets, and found in one a black coal, nothing else.

  “Damn it.”

  A woman’s voice came from the darkness. “You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”

  He turned his head too quickly and saw a white glare for a second. “Who said that?” His voice sounded crackly and adolescent.

  “I did.”

  He saw no one. “I didn’t use the Lord’s name.”

  “Every damn damns Him.”

  He felt dizzy and leaned against the door. “Are you going to tell me how to get out or are you going to take my teeth, too?”

  “I didn’t hit you. That’s not nice.”

  He shivered as he let out a dead laugh. “I guess I know why this place is called Knockout.”

  He looked around again. The voice was coming from above, from one of the shadowy windows. Keeping his back to the wall, he edged around to the window above the hot coals. He hoisted himself through the window, his left ribs keeping him warm with pain. He was sweating by the time both feet hit the hallway floor. He sped up as he lurched toward the exit door, and leaned his shoulder against it once he got there.

  He whispered to the dark, mold-stained walls, “No doorknob.” He slumped and touched the cut on the top of his head, then straightened and dug his short fingernails into the crack between the door and the door jam. He felt it give a little bit, so he braced his heels and pushed his nails deeper into the soft, old wood. He let out choking grunts as pain chased up his fingers and knuckles.

  He heard a yell behind him, sounding like it was coming from the alley he’d been robbed in, and he felt all his aches tingle as though shocked by a live wire. He worked harder. The light blue door slid open in fanning intervals until he could wrap his fingertips around the outside corner. He pulled the door open and ran like a deer, forgetting his pain and replacing it with marble fear. The other two blue doors flew by on his right, and he saw the traffic and bright lights of Little Point before his brain registered that he
heard it.

  “Hey, man, are you okay?” He saw a small teenage girl with cheekbone-length hair in front of him. He had stopped and was catching his breath, college track years far behind him.

  She tossed her bangs back over her pierced, yet bare ear. “You look beat up.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “Whatever,” she said.

  “What time is it?”

  “Dude, you should call the cops or something.”

  He rubbed dried blood off of his forehead and felt the chill of his drying sweat. “Time?”

  She pointed across the street to a red digital clock high above, set into a building, as glaring as a naked woman. It read, 1:34. He had been unconscious for nearly five hours.

  “Thanks.” He turned away and walked into Crystal’s. The people near the door only gave him one look, and then went back to their bottles and cigarettes.

  “Beer for you?” Her appearance was so sudden to Parker that the waitress seemed to come out from under a table.

  He yelled over the jukebox and voices, “Bathroom?”

  She took a better look at him and lowered her painted eyebrows. “You alright?”

  He nodded without looking at her.

  “Poor thing, no need be ashamed,” she said into his ear. “I can tell looking at you. Just go to the back on your right.”

  The bathroom was clean, but old. A man hunched over the urinal. Parker thought to himself that he was lucky they didn’t literally beat the piss out of him. He cursed when he looked in the mirror. Blood reached over the front of his head and onto his face like a red, crumbly hand trying to scratch his nose from atop his skull. His eyes were neither blue nor gray, but yellow in the faded light of the small room. As he took a towel from the dispenser and filled it with water, he saw that the skin under the tips of his fingernails was the deep pink of raw salmon. He washed his hands and used the towel to scrub his face clean. He dabbed at his head, cursing again.

  The man at the urinal finished up and gave Parker a rolling-eyed, fearful look as he left.

  He cleaned the back of his neck and pulled up the front of his shirt. Purple and blue filled his skin like shimmering oils. He coughed and gagged as he poked it with his aching fingers. He tasted cheese.

  He left the bathroom and walked to the front door of the bar with his head down. Smoke on the Water hit his ears from all sides.

  He felt a hand on his elbow. He looked over to the cocktail waitress, who held out a glass filled with almond-colored liquid. “This will help you,” she called into his ear.

  He nodded and took the glass. “I wish I could tip you, but,” he shook his head.

  She put her hand on his arm again, and said, “You get to feeling better.” She walked back into the full crowd.

  He sipped the drink slowly, without pausing, like a dog licking a wound in the middle of the day.

  It took him twenty minutes to hail a cab. None of them wanted to stop for a dirty, coatless maniac whom all the other curbsiders were standing far from. One man finally stopped, and Parker realized halfway home that he wouldn’t be able to get inside his house to pay the man. His keys had been taken.

  “Can you stop at a gas station on the way? I need to make a quick call.”

  “Sure, yes.”

  Parker wondered where the foreigner was from, but thinking hurt too much. He leaned back and waited until the driver pulled over at a convenience store. Chills shook him as he walked to the blue and white phone stand. He picked up the black receiver and dialed many numbers, having memorized his calling card for instances such as this.

  A sleepy woman’s voice answered, sounding like she was squinting at an alarm clock with her lips. “Hello?”

  “Hi.”

  He imagined he could hear her sit up. Her tone changed from butterfly to wasp as she talked. “Parker? What the hell? It’s five in the morning here. I need all the sleep I can get. What is it?”

  “I need to know where you put the extra key.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Are you drunk?”

  He pushed his forehead against the cold, skinny metal and squeezed his eyes shut. “Look, it’s been a really long night, Missy. I can’t talk now. The cab’s waiting for me, but-”

  “Cab? What the hell are you doing? You lose your keys when you’re drunk and you want me to bail you out to be able to pay the cab fare?”

  He raised his voice like he was talking to a spoiled child. “I got my ass kicked in an alley, and everything was stolen. Now, can you tell me where you put the spare key?”

  She sucked in her breath with a quick, swoooop. Then she let it out just as fast. “You were working on a story, weren’t you? Almost got yourself killed again. When are you going to...” Behind his closed eyes he could see her sticking out her pointed chin and shutting her eyes as she stopped herself. “It’s under the flowerpot on the fire escape. The one that had the aloe plant in it.”

  “Yeah.”

  Like saying thank you for a Valentine’s Day present she didn’t want, she told him, “I’m glad you’re okay.”

  He thought of the brown ringlets that must be tickling her cheek. “Thanks. I have to go.”

  “Parker—”

  He hung up and dragged his feet back to the cab as though he were already asleep.