Black sunglasses on the dresser, neatly folded, left lens spiraled with spidery letter-shapes written in white. Spidery letter-shapes inked across the mirror above it, an elegant shambles of a paragraph, each line cramping, curling downward to the right, and the last of it trailing in curlicues down toward the bottom of the glass. Behind those lines his reflection, the massy bulk of him fitted in a black T-shirt, his beard a matted mahogany bush in the flat white light of the room, his hair, loosed, eaves of faintly waved curls still crimped from long confinement, all of it a leafless thicket about the upturned plug of his nose, round hillocks of his cheeks, the narrowed eyes, red and brown. “You didn’t tell me,” he says, a rusted croak.
“You didn’t want to know,” he says.
“How can you say that,” he says.
“You turned away,” he says.
“That’s a lie,” he says.
“You know that’s a lie. How can you say that.”
“You said that.” The tempo of his breathing’s picked up, tendrils of beard and mustache lofting, fluttering with each blowsy exhalation, until it catches, with a hitch. “You did it,” he says, a thready whisper, and his breath seeps from him in a slow settling sigh. “You did it,” he says. “You kept doing it. You knew. You always knew. You just didn’t want to know.”
He stands. He’s been sitting on a narrow bed, discreetly made, a threadbare blanket, beige, folded neatly at the head of it about a single pillow. The walls a dark green rumpled by old over-painted cracks and sagging plaster, the single window bare, warmed by pulsing neon light outside, then off, then on again, and when it’s off the weaker, palely yellow streetlight. Through that shifting scrim can just be seen the unlit windows set in other buildings. “You should’ve said,” he says, looking back and forth, his reflection, his shadow, on the glass.
“You stayed,” he says, stepping to one side. Away from the window, hand against the wall. There the bed, there the dresser, there the door, before him. “You didn’t leave,” he says. Another step. “You did not leave,” he says.
Those sunglasses tremble on the dresser, bounce, flip over as an arm springs up. His hands up pressing back his stiffly outright hair, as he watches the sunglasses rocking, slowing, stop.
“You need to get out of here,” says Philip Keightlinger.
Wings flutter and settle, a chirrup, a chime, the crackle of straw, a shift of weight, seed scatters to the floor. “Boy?” says a gruff voice. Hootings erupt, whitterings and clucks, a crowing whoop, chains rattle, wood creaks, shadows coil and lurch and spread, like wings. “Boy, it’s after six. I already got the coffee.” Hunkered over a figure shuffles under the low-hanging cages swaying, settling. Seed crunching under a heavy step. At the end of the sleeping porch a low table, a sleeping bag neatly rolled beside it, and on it a radio alarm clock, silent, unplugged. He rubs his bare head darkly bald over a crisp circle of white curls. “Right,” he says, turning, “he isn’t,” and stooped, shuffling, makes his way back through the sleeping cages.
Outside the susurrus of fallen rain, the dripping trickles, crinkling seep, the plops and chimes and a shivering gust-blown spatter from the trees, over the fence. By the door a cardboard box, under that flight of stairs bolted to the back of the old brick building. He leans out from under them, hand out, palm up, looking up, into the soft dark starless sky. A sullen haze, off that way, the lights of downtown. He squats, mindful of the mud, wrestling up the rain-soft box, squelch and plep, duck-walking back, pulling him upright, groan and glower.
Inside, through a cramped kitchen all scarred linoleum and dark cabinets, down a narrow hall lined with shelves, partitioned into cubbyholes, stuffed here and there with mismatched pairs of shoes. Clatter of a beaded curtain and up to a worktable mounded high with more shoes, where the old man sets the box. Brushing down the front of his coat. He gingerly pries up a soggy flap, reaches in to pull out a shoe, a black and brown leather football shoe, filthy, the collar of it worn to shreds above the heel. He tosses it on the pile, pulls out another, a cognac-colored wedge-heeled pump. Someone’s tapping at the door.
“Here,” he says, unlocking the door, swinging it open with a jingle of the bell, “here,” switching on the lights in the front window, George’s, say the letters painted in red and yellow in an arc across the glass. Shoes Repaired. A man in a brown and orange ski jacket pushes through the doorway, dingy red cooler in his hands, followed by a woman in a green rain slicker, carrying a plastic storage tub lined with custard-laden ramekins. “Over there,” says the old man, “on the counter,” as he steps out onto the sidewalk, “Hita!” he calls, to a woman coming down the sidewalk, brown coat wrapped about blue coveralls, long black hair under a kerchief. “Lend a hand?” He’s shaking out a ring of keys to find the one that opens the door of a powder-blue town car. The light of downtown off that way fading into the lightening overcast. He lifts a cardboard box from the front seat, printed over with little running coffee cups, and a spigot on one side. Hands it to the woman in the kerchief, and leans in to fetch out another. “I’ll get the donuts,” he’s saying.
The front room of the shop’s now filled, raincoats and overalls, uniforms brown and taupe and beige, styrofoam cups a-steam. “Better than ever I can remember,” says a man, his navy workshirt blazoned with a white patch, Atlas Facilities Maintenance, it says, under a stylized globe.
“First flush,” says a woman with grey-tinged curls, lifting a bar-shaped pastry from a big pink box. “It’ll all settle down, soon enough.”
“She’s been flushed all winter,” says a man in a denim jacket, munching something darkly chocolate under a white piped-icing pentagram, and “Have you seen the Bride?” says a man in brown and orange polyester, and “She’s no Bride,” says someone, and “No one sees the Princess,” says someone else, and “I hear she likes butterflies,” says a woman in a white formal shirt, bow tie unclipped about her neck. “I hear she’s beautiful,” says the man in brown and orange.
“Course she is,” says the old man to himself, filling a cup with coffee from one of the boxes on the counter.
“How are you, Gordon,” says the woman in the kerchief, her hand on his. He grunts, a gesture of his cup at the work table back there, the shoes, the half-open box. “Too much to do, and more on the way,” he says.
“You need some help,” she says, and he snorts. “Don’t we all,” he says, but the door’s opening again, the bell’s jingling again, and the laughter’s dying, sentences falter, stop, they’re looking down, away from the four men pushing into the front room. “Gordon,” says the one at the head of them, short and wide in a bulky cardigan, bald head ruddy.
“Dogstongue,” says Gordon. “You’re with the Gaffer now?” A man in a pea coat nods once, crisply. “Moving up in the world,” says Gordon.
“We just got done, putting a rose garden back together?” says Dogstongue. “For the Duchess?” He isn’t looking at Gordon, but about the room, the men and women in coveralls and uniforms, cups in hands, napkins, donuts. “And while I know you prefer the company of domestics,” he says, and none of them meet his gaze, “well.” Dogstongue smiles, then, at Gordon. “You always did have the cheapest coffee.”
Gordon looks about the room, at all of them silent, looking to him from the corners of downturned eyes. He sighs, turns his back, stumping around behind the counter. “Free country,” he says.
He isn’t the first person off the bus. He isn’t the last. Right there in the middle of them, coming down the steps, brown dungarees and a jacket of army-surplus green, an emaciated duffel slung from his shoulder. Rain loud on the great awning over them, and another bus snoring in the stall beside, all dark blue and grey, a leaping hound painted on the side. Seattle, says the sign on the front of it. Portland, says the sign on the front of the one they’re disembarking.
Around the corner of the low brick terminal, the flat roof extending out over the red brick sidewalk, glassy wet in streaks. He runs a hand through his black hair, looking about, greyly morning light, a woman dragging away a wheelie suitcase draped with a plastic garbage bag, somebody sitting over there, on a dry patch of brick, faded black denim and mud-caked boots, a big black broad-brimmed leather hat. A pale grey scrap of kitten tumbles about a bit of string before a cardboard sign. So he turns up the ragged collar of his jacket, heads down the sidewalk to squat, hold out a hand, wriggle his fingers. The kitten rears up paws spread to fall back against the sign. Letters carelessly scrawled across it say, Will Drink for Money.
“Cute cat,” he says.
“Oh, hey,” says the kid in black denim, looking up. Under that floppy brim a round face fuzzed by a sweep of ginger beard. “Thanks.”
He leans back, reaching into a pocket of his jacket, army-surplus green. Under the beak of his nose a pointed smile. He’s pulled out a pale green nylon wallet, ripped it open, the inside of it black, card slots empty, nothing tucked in the photo ID window. Slips from it a crisply single twenty-dollar bill and holds it up between them, his smile sharpening as the kid’s eyes widen.
“Nice hat,” he says.
Shining in the rain a silver egg of a trailer, there at the back of the mostly empty parking lot. In her long black coat she’s knocking at the door of it, rattling the aluminum shell, “Luys?” she says. Red hair a vivid shock in all that grey-white light. “You home?”
The handle turns, the door jerks, opening enough to reveal him big and brown, black hair, blinking, “Your grace?” he says.
“Breakfast,” says Jo. “Remember?”
Inside it’s dark, the only light from without, and hazed by gauzy curtains over slender windows there and there. “I called,” she says. “Your phone must not be on.”
He’s stepping toward the back, out of the way, sitting on the low bed there in a sort of alcove, umber comforter rucked over yellow sheets. His black hair wet, chest bare, a white towel about his hips. “I suppose,” he says.
“We’ve talked about that,” she says, latching the door shut. Head bowed, against the curl of ceiling.
“Yes, your grace.”
“I need to be able to get a hold of you guys whenever I, might, need,” she says.
“Of course, your grace.”
“That’s not what I,” and she steps into the middle of the trailer. Behind her a booth in the nose of it, two benches, a table bolted between them. “Well. Breakfast.”
“Of course,” he says, leaning forward, opening a cabinet at the foot of the bed. Pulling out a neatly folded pair of pants. “Wait,” she says.
He looks up.
“Before,” she says, “you know. I don’t know.” Hands at the buttons of her coat. “I thought, maybe. Unless you’re hungry, I mean.”
“I just, woke up,” he says, brow furrowed.
“I shoulda got some coffee,” says Jo, undoing her buttons, one by fumbled one. “Or tea. Tea. I should’ve brought some tea.”
“My lady,” he says.
“I just figured,” she says. “You have the food carts next door.” Looking over her bared shoulder at him as she lets the coat slip down her arms. “Whatever we decide to do.”
“Jo, I don’t,” he says, as she lays the coat over the table, “what are we,” he says, as she turns to face him, hands on hips wrapped in a short kilt, black plaid shot through with red and white, between a sleeveless black turtleneck and black knit stockings. “Are we,” he says, “to go dancing?”
She hikes up the hem of the kilt an inch and there, the tops of the stockings, bare skin above. Her lip-bitten smile, eyes wide, brows up, uncertain, “You like?” she says. Luys blinks. “Borrowed ’em from Ysabel,” she says, letting the hem drop. “Not that I have her legs.”
“I like the legs you have, your grace,” says Luys.
She blows out a little laugh. “I cleared the morning,” she says. “Nobody on deck. Nothing on tap. Just,” a little shrug. “You and me.”
“Yes,” he says. “Breakfast.” He shakes out that pair of pants. “Luys!” she says, and he halts, pants a-dangle, frowning. “I,” she says, and then, a deep breath, eyes squeezing shut, she grabs the kilt again, lifts the hem again, up and higher up. He drops the pants, his jaw, eyes widening, “My lady,” he says, “you came, all this way, here, like, like–”
“No,” she says, rolling her eyes, “I yanked ’em off in the parking lot, where anyone could see. Luys, I just,” letting go of the kilt, a shake of her head, looking away, “I wanted to be sexy,” she says.
He leans forward, elbows on bare knees. Looking softly up. “Your grace,” he says, “does not need to be sexy.”
“My grace is horny,” says Jo. “We got,” she says, “I just thought, we were interrupted, last night, so I thought, we could take the morning, we could, jump each other, we, and I tried, to call, and you opened the door in just a, a towel, and that was, that was,” her hand up, weighing the next word.
“I had just,” he says, hoarsely, “woken up.” Looking to the narrow stall that alcoves off the bed. “I took a shower.”
“Which, is fine!” says Jo. “Just what I would’ve– thought. But then, you,” that hand, lowering. “Walked away.”
“I,” he says, and he swallows, “I didn’t mean,” but “Ah, fuck it,” says Jo, reaching for the kilt, yanking something, and it swings loose, falls open, down, she lets it go. “My lady,” he says, but one step, two steps, three down the cramped length of the trailer lifting a knee to plant it on the bed leaning to lift the other kneeling a-straddle him kissing, kissing his mouth, his head in her hands, her fingers in his thick black hair, his hands a bit of leather tied about his wrist on her bare hips, brown thumb along the blued shadow of her belly just above an edge of dark curled hair, lifting away as she yanks away his towel, “Oh,” he says, and she kisses him again, pushing him back, down, leaning over him, “oh,” he says, she’s kissing his hairless chest, tilting to run her teeth along the firm undergirding of a pec, he hisses, her hand about lifting the flop of his cock which stirs and swells in her fingers and his head lolls back against the pillow blue and both hands high and “Hanh,” he says, and “hup,” slapping his forehead sweeping back what little hair he has left and grinning, he’s grinning, opening his mouth to let out a whoop, drinking the air in, “ha, heh,” the rise and fall of his soft chest sparsely haired, “whoa,” he says, looking down, to those grey mustaches between his knees. “Now this,” he says, says Arnold Becker, “this alarm clock I could get used to.”
“What, every morning?” Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, dull beads of pewter at the ends of his mustache swaying as he pushes to his feet, his belly a thin softening of fat laid over muscle, chest fuzzed with iron-colored hair.
“We could take turns,” says Becker, sitting up on his elbows. “I have no qualms about waking you up. I mean, I owe you one,” and Pyrocles smiles as he stoops to pick up a salmon-orange towel. “Actually,” says Becker, frowning, “if we take last night into account, I’m pretty sure it’s two. At least two.”
“We’ll settle accounts tonight, or tomorrow,” says Pyrocles, wrapping the towel about his waist. “Or the day after. But today, this morning, I have a valve adjustment, I have two tune-ups, I have a fifty-year-old Galaxie that needs a new suite of belts.”
“What,” says Becker, flopping back on the bed, “no swords to forge? No, no breastplates to pour?”
“Cast armor would be too heavy,” says Pyrocles. “And much too brittle.”
“It was a,” says Becker, rolling over, “it’s a joke,” pulling the heavy blue blanket over himself. “My jokes have to be technically accurate?”
“You have to be getting up,” says Pyrocles, “you’re going to be late.” Padding away from the bed there in the corner of the white-painted loft, and all that light cascading down from the clerestory lining one long wall. “Not today!” calls Becker, snuggling under the blankets. “Finals are over. New term begins next week!” At the other end of the loft Pyrocles draws back a white curtain, behind it a toilet, a sink, a glass-walled shower stall. “But,” says Becker, sitting up, as water starts to fall in the shower. “Oh, shit.” Lunging over the side of the bed, reaching around for a pair of pants in the tangle of discarded clothing, coming up with a phone. He thumbs it on. “Shit,” he says, hauling himself out of bed.
Pyrocles soaping himself turns with a jerk as Becker opens the dappled glass door to the stall, crowding inside, “Sorry,” he’s saying, “sorry,” ducking to wet his head as Pyrocles leans back, blinking water out of his eyes, and the pewter weights swaying and tocking together. “I just,” Becker’s saying, “I have a shift, at eleven, but I was gonna do some shopping first–”
“Becker,” says Pyrocles, hands on his shoulders, water streaming over them both. “Forget the shopping. Take it easy.”
“We have,” says Becker, “maybe two lemons left? I could make omelets for dinner. Very plain omelets. A little salt,” and Pyrocles leans close to kiss Becker’s forehead, and then his lips. “Forget dinner,” he says. “I’ll take care of dinner.”
“You’re not cooking again, are you?” says Becker, and Pyrocles laughs, sluicing suds from his arms, his back, “Go to work,” he says. “Meet me at the garage when you’re done.” Leaning close again. “Trust in me.”
“I do,” says Becker, smiling. Kissing him. “Of course I do.”
Four of them about a round table, and in the middle a dull grey lily pad of a speakerphone. It’s saying, “What? Who was that?”
The man in the striped shirt sits forward. “It’s David, George,” he says. “That’s a list, of key terms, we’re gonna want to–”
“What?” says the phone.
“Key. Terms,” says David Kerr. “We want to salt ’em in any upcoming statements, go over the stump, then a couple of weeks, we get new numbers, we can assess performance and tweak and tune going into the City Club debate–”
“You don’t handle communications,” says the phone. The woman by the door, in her pearly grey pantsuit, folds her arms at that. “This is based on Bob’s work,” says Kerr, and the man leaning against the table might’ve shrugged at that.
“Avery handles communications,” says the phone.
“I’m gonna talk to Avery about this,” says Kerr.
“Avery’s right here,” says the phone. “She’s not happy with the list.”
“And I’ll talk to her about it.” Kerr looks at the watch on his wrist, heavy and gold, a big flat dial. Twenty of ten. “This is the Barshefsky polling, George, and the social media analysis. It’s, it’s impeccable.”
“The corpus is solid,” says the man leaning against the table. “Nothing more than two months out across the Twitter, the Facebook, the comments sections, message boards, it’s,” he opens his eyes, looking for a word, “actionable.” His suit a dour brown, his shirt ecru, his tie burgundy.
“Avery thinks it’s stilted,” says the phone. “Awkward.”
“Avery,” says Kerr, leaning over the phone, “wants to swing for the fences every time you step up to the plate, George.” The stripes of his shirt are slate and gold on white, the collar and cuffs starkly white, his carefully loosened tie of white and blue. “She wants the three pointers, no net, every damn time. But you don’t get those hero moments without the grunt work. Without paying your dues. That’s what this is. These are the dues.” Dark circles under his dark brown eyes. “Every time you use one, you remind them out there, whoever’s listening, of that term, that phrase, that thought, they’ve already had. You’re saying, we’re on the same page. Making a connection, but wholesale, not retail.” Cheeks hatched with stubble, untrimmed, black. “Long run? Makes her job easier. Makes you a winner.”
“I suppose,” says the phone, “it’s hard to lead, if no one’s following.”
“That’s right, George,” says Kerr.
“And you’ll talk to Avery. Convince her, David. Don’t steamroll her.”
“I’ll talk to her.”
“I need her buy-in.”
“Understood, George,” says Kerr.
“All right,” says the phone, and a click, and a burr. The fourth of them, a woman in a frilled white blouse, shuts the speakerphone off.
“Okay then,” says the man in the dour brown suit. “Ms. Upchurch, I hope that was– enlightening?”
“Of course,” says the woman in pearly grey, her voice at once rich and hoarse, but she’s looking down at her folded arms.
Out in the main room of the office Kerr sits at an empty glass-topped desk, white-framed platter of a phone in his hand, scrolling through messages, swiping, tapping, sweeping them here and there. “Give me just a minute,” he says, without looking up, as the woman in pearly grey looms behind him. She plants a hand deep brown against the white vinyl back of his chair, and he sighs, “Okay, okay,” he says, swiveling the chair around against her grip, and she lets go, lets her hand fall away as he looks up at her, phone still at the ready. “It’s gonna be like that,” he says. Looking past her to see the woman in the white blouse busy with the printer on the other side of the office. “There is no way in hell,” he says, quietly, “your name’s really Frances Upchurch, and if you actually have anything at all to do with the Democratic Party of Oregon, I’ll buy a hat just so I can eat it.”
She steps back, looks about. Pulls a chair from the desk across the way and lowers herself into it, nodding to herself, leaning forward, leaning close. Her hair all tiny corkscrew curls, brown and gold, swept back, pinned up. Squeak of the wheels of the chair as she pulls a little closer, even. “What you should ask yourself,” she says, “is this: how does a woman, that is so large, enter in through the eyes that are so small?”
Whatever he was preparing to say melts in his mouth as his shoulders sag. He turns away, to set his phone down on the desk. “If this is about that call,” he says, very quietly, “it’s just a simple objuration. I have some clients, some other clients, who want to change the city’s temperature on a couple of issues? If you want, if you want a cut, if you want in, on the wording, we can talk, we can negotiate that.”
“Tell me about Charles Leir,” she says. Her lips carefully painted the color of brick.
“Leir?” says Kerr. “Dabbled a bit. Fixed things, for powerful people.”
“Did he ever fix anything for you?” A thread of startling blue limns each of her eyes.
“We did, favors, for each other, yeah.”
“You speak in the past tense.”
“Well,” says Kerr, and a hint of a shrug. “Haven’t heard from him since December. End of November. Now you guys are asking questions? Doesn’t seem unwarranted to assume, well.”
“The worst?” she says, and she pushes herself to her feet. “Stay out of our way, Mr. Kerr.”
“You, your,” he says, as she turns, as she’s walking away, “what way?”
“You’ll see,” she says, over her shoulder. He watches as she nods to the woman pulling pages from the printer, as she says something genial to the man in the brown suit, as she opens the door to the office, as it shuts behind her, and then he lets out the breath he’d been holding with a “Shit.” His hand trembles as he picks up his phone.
“Excuse me?” says the woman behind the counter. “Sir?” A couple of people look up from their plates of waffles, scrambled eggs, the woman at the corner has a half-eaten burger in her hands, the man there at the end in a ragged jacket, army-surplus green, only a cup of coffee. “You’re gonna have to step outside,” says the woman behind the counter.
“It’s,” says Mr. Keightlinger, “cold.” He shakes his head. “Wet,” he says.
“Go on,” says the woman behind the counter. “You find some shoes, maybe some pants, you can come on back.” Eggs sizzle on the griddle before her, and the ring and scrape of her spatulas as she stirs them about.
“I,” says Mr. Keightlinger, “I left, in a hurry. Not now,” he snaps, to his right. He’s wearing a black T-shirt, and pale blue boxer shorts, and his legs and his red raw feet are bare.
“Go on now,” says the woman behind the counter, and then she points to a man in a blue meshback cap, a phone in his hand, “I’d rather you didn’t,” she says.
“What if he needs help?” says the man, a finger poised over the phone’s keys.
“I don’t want to involve the cops if we can at all help it,” says the woman behind the counter.
“Look, I really think we,” says the man, and “I asked you nice,” says the woman, and “No,” says Mr. Keightlinger, shaking his brown shaggy head, and the man in the ragged green jacket’s getting up off his stool, and Mr. Keightlinger turns back crashing through the red-framed door to the diner with a wordless bellow, out onto the sidewalk, under the rain, wheeling about and about again, “What?” he’s saying, “I can’t, what?” Out in the street a primly nondescript white sedan is slowing to a stop, turn signal blinking, and bouncing off a Willamette Week newspaper box he lurches from the curb, grabbing the handle of the door of the sedan, wrenching it open as someone inside screams. “Sorry,” he says, as he falls into the passenger seat, “this isn’t, I don’t, you have to,” as the driver’s screaming “What the get the fuck out of my car,” a woman, black hair, intricate tattoos crawling up her neck, one hand held up curled in a fist a blow that doesn’t land as he’s looking at her, as she’s looking at him, his draggled hair, his rain-wet beard, “Ell,” he’s saying, and a look of such wonder passes over him, “Ell,” he says again.
“Jesus,” she says. A car behind them honks once, curtly. “Jesus fucking Christ. Phil. Is that you?”
“Berlin,” he says, huddled unbelted in the passenger seat, head against the window, loose hair stirred by the howl of a heater on high, his bare legs, bare arms pricked with gooseflesh, wet bare feet clutched one over the other on the floorboard.
“I thought it was Dubai,” she says.
His head rolls side-to-side against the glass, “I was never,” he says, and then “stop it,” and “What?” she says, the car, slowing. “Not you,” he says. “Not you. I was never in Dubai.”
“I could’ve sworn,” she says.
“The abandoned,” he says, “limousines. Himmelblau. Ellenellenellen Ell,” he says.
“The show, right, that was the summer Katarci had that amazing,” and “Please,” he says, quietly, “that sublet,” she says, “down by Yaam Beach.” Clack and swipe of windshield wipers. She’s made a turn, they’re sweeping up a ramp. “You’d just met that guy, what was it– that obnoxious little fucker?”
“Charles,” says Mr. Keightlinger.
“Really?” Her black hair’s spiky short. Her hoodie’s black, of some rubbery felted stuff. What can be seen of her tattoo, stretched up along her throat toward the point of her jaw, leaves, branches, a songbird’s beak, all sharp black lines. “I thought it was weirder than that.”
“No,” he says, folding his arms about himself. “It was only ever really Charles.” They’re going across a bridge. Through the rain-smeared glass behind his head the city, stood up about a curl of river, and more bridges, there and there and there.
When he opens his eyes, he says, “Why.”
She’s shutting off the engine. “We’re here.”
“No, there,” he says. “Why were you there.”
“I want to get you inside,” she says.
“At that moment, at that corner,” he says, and then, “shut! The fuck! Up!”
“Phil,” she says, pulled back, pressed against her door, and “Sorry,” he says, “I’m sorry, that wasn’t, I didn’t, but why. Why then. Why there.”
“Three years,” she says.
“Why now,” he says.
“Three fucking years,” she says, “and you, you’re a, you, you don’t even have any goddamn pants.”
“Someone’s after me,” he says.
“Jesus,” she says, sitting up, peering at him. “Who?”
“All winter I spoke to no one,” he says, “and then this morning and now that, then, and I, I need to know. How. Why, you were there.”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I wasn’t paying attention, I got turned around. I just, happened to be there.”
He’s tipped back his head, looking up at the finely nubbed beige ceiling, under the faint patter of rain.
“It’s not my car,” she says, handing him a steaming mug. He’s sitting on the bottom steps of a grand staircase, dull dark wood the color of his beard, a green towel about his shoulders, legs wrapped in a rainbow-colored God’s eye afghan. He takes the mug in both his hands but doesn’t lift it to his lips. The staircase climbs the side of a low broad room columned and beamed with more dark wood. Over there a sofa, a beanbag, a couple of chairs, all crouched before a big black flatscreen television, snarled in a nest of cables and consoles and decks. “Okay,” he says.
“It’s my cousin’s,” she says. “He lives out in Gresham.”
“Cousin,” he says.
“Ben?” she says. “You never met him.”
“In Khartoum, it was your aunt.”
“Yeah,” she says.
“Great-uncle, in Quito.”
“Jusshi’s more my grandmother’s, ex’s,” she’s waving a hand, “what’s the point? Here?”
“You got family everywhere.”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
His mustache lifts a little, under it his lips spreading, in a, almost, but he ducks his head, a chuckled cough. Lifts the mug, and sips. “Might,” he says. “Be okay.”
“You don’t mean the tea,” she says, and he shakes his shaggy head. “No,” he says. “Tea’s good.”
“Good things do happen,” she says. He takes another sip. “Anyway. I borrowed Ben’s car because I had to haul some stuff out to Metro to recycle. Today’s, like, my Saturday? And I got turned around, on the way back, trying to remember how to get on the Steel Bridge. Which is why I was there, when you were.”
“What,” he says, and then, “I am,” and then, “what was it? You were taking back?”
“Paint,” she says.
“Paint?”
She holds out her hand. “Come,” she says. “See.”
Up those stairs, and up another flight, up under the very peak of the house. She opens a door for him, the top of it cut at an angle to fit under the slope of the roof. “Go on,” she says.
“What is this,” he says, wrapped in that green towel, the tea mug in his hands. “Gonna,” he says, and then, “yes,” he says. “Okay. Good.”
“Go on,” she says.
The room within, stretching half the length of the house or more, the plaster of the attenuated walls and the long angled ceilings above, the evened planks of the floor planed smooth, all of it painted a flawless eggshell blue, a clear plain cloudless blue, seamless, depthless, clean and gleaming, fresh, the only shadows from the pallet in the middle of it, and the mattress atop that, pillowed in white. Hung to one side a photograph, out in the air of the room, a picture of a hand, the back of it roped with veins in rich greys, crisp blacks, reaching for something, or warding it off. “Oh,” says Mr. Keightlinger, stepping into the room, “oh, Ellen,” turning about, and again, “Yes,” says Phil. “Yes.”
A large squared-up white tent over rows of ruddy picnic tables, lit against the midday gloom by strands of yellow lights, each in its own bead-strung little copper-wire cage. Murmurs and low converse here and there, swaddled and slicked in rain gear, the clink of forks and spoons, the clack of chopsticks, white paper cartons of noodles, wraps bound in foil, and sprigs of cilantro and sprouts popping from their seams, red and yellow plates of waffles, fish tacos, slices of pizza yellow and white, studded with mushrooms, bacon, shriveled kale, neatly rounded heaps of mac and cheese. There in the back, by a table fixed up with taps, sits Jo in her black coat, short red hair pressed back, tearing a bite from a sloppy big-bunned sandwich. Looking up as she chews, swallows, waves him over, Christian in his grimy hoodie, carrying a paper bag, eyes narrowed over those hunched-up cheekbones. “You’re late,” she says, as he climbs onto the bench beside her.
“Busses,” he says, stashing the bag down between his feet as she takes another bite. “I see you went ahead and tucked in.”
“Yeah, well,” she says, chewing, swallowing, “the day I’m having. You want something?”
“Nah,” he says.
“Because the food carts here, anything you could want.” Putting her sandwich down, shreds of pulled pork glistening on the wrapper, “I swear,” she says, “I’m fine with the whole vegetarian thing, but every now and then?”
“I ain’t hungry,” says Christian.
“Big breakfast? You sleep all right?”
“Well enough,” he says. Looking about the tent. She’s taking a drink from a plastic cup, “He’s got this,” she says, gesturing at the table fixed up with taps, “beer? Brewed with chamomile, which, I mean, you’d think, but it’s great.”
“Hippy-dippy foodie crap,” says Christian. “Why’m I here, Jo-Jo.”
“Thought you might like some lunch,” she says, scooping up some loose pork.
“I work for you now, is that it?”
“You been working for me,” she says, licking her fingers clean. “I want to make good on that.” She reaches into her black coat, pulls out an envelope, manilla, thick, a little longer than her hand. Holds it out to him. After a moment, looking down at it, he takes it. Reaches in, pulls up a roll of worn bills, then tips out a phone and a slither, a chime, a key on a red plastic tag bouncing out that he manages just to lean over and catch.
“How’s that for good,” says Jo.
He’s shoving the roll of bills back into the envelope, quickly, “What is that,” he’s saying, “two hundred?” Dropping the envelope to the table, over the phone, the key.
“And a place to stay,” she says, shifting the envelope over, nudging the key. “It’s kinda easier, covering room, and board, than cash? This is just, walking around money. Buy yourself a coat or something.”
“You know me,” he says. “I like the rain.” He’s looking about the tent, at each cluster and knot of diners in turn. “Hey,” says Jo. “Christian. Christian.” He looks at her, those darkly narrowed eyes. “What’s in the bag,” she says.
A sheepish look, almost a grin, he looks away. Sucks his teeth. “That suit,” he says.
“It’s yours.”
“Nah,” he says. “It ain’t.”
“Christian,” she says, but he’s saying, “How was this going down, in your head? You buy me a suit, you buy me a beer and I just, hang around, do whatever?”
“And a place to stay, with a bed, and a shower–”
“I can get that shit whenever I need it,” he says.
“You can’t just, keep doing favors for Sweetloaf, or whatever,” she says.
“Why, because you say so?”
“Pretty much,” she says. “Yeah. What I’m talking about, listen, you know how, like, Luys has a title? The Mason?”
“Jo,” he says.
“We’re talking about maybe getting, giving, giving you one.”
A snorted laugh, shaking his head, “You’re trying to, this, this is how you give somebody a promotion?”
“I’m trying to do you a favor,” she says.
“By dragging me into this, whatever this,” he says.
“It’s a better deal than I ever got.”
“And look at you now.”
“The hell is that supposed to,” she says, but he’s leaning back, spreading his hands, “What are you doing here,” he says. “Jo-Jo. That shit, last night, your roommate, the Queen, whatever, and this, the fuck is this. It’s all like, I went on a run up the Stadium Fred’s, come back to find Bambi’s the jefe now or something.”
“I am not some goddamn Bambi,” says Jo, her hand to her chest, her black turtleneck under the long black coat.
“Everybody’s Bambi, in the right woods,” says Christian. “And you sure as shit ain’t no fucking Duke.” He’s pushing up, off the bench, but she reaches for his arm, “Frankie’s dead,” she says.
“I heard,” he says, braced there, half off the bench, her hand on the sleeve of his sweatshirt, “Dammit, Christian,” she’s saying, “this isn’t a game. This is for your own–”
“And how deep in it did he get?” says Christian, tugging his arm free, stepping away from the picnic table.
“Christian,” she says. “Christian!” People around them looking up at that, watching as she tosses the envelope flopping at him, and he just manages to catch it. “At least take that,” she says. He’s glaring, but he’s folding the envelope, twisting it about, stuffing it in a pocket of his dungarees. “Come back in a couple weeks,” she says, “I’ll have more.”
“If you’re still here,” he says.
“Fuck you,” says Jo, as he turns and walks away, through the tables, toward the open door of the tent. She looks down, at the paper bag on the pavement beside her. Sweeps the phone and the key off the table and drops them both inside.
Christian heads toward the back of the bus, standing room only, hooks a hand about a pole there by the rear door, lowers his head as they get under way. When the bus says Southeast Belmont and César Chávez Boulevard, transfer to the 66, the 75, the crowd shifts, moving toward the front door, the rear door, and Christian worms his way through them, up into the elevated back end, swinging into a seat by a window. Two Brothers Cafe & Grill, says the sign painted on the red wall outside. Homemade Balkan Food. The envelope’s in his lap. That roll of bills in his hands. He’s skinning the rubber band off it, undoing and unfolding them, turning them about and folding them up again, all the while looking over the depleted crowd of passengers as the bus trundles on. The man, up front in the feathered trilby, loudly asking the driver about the MAX. Two women just below, draped in red abayat, black cloth shopping bags nestled at their feet. Christian’s shifting about, dipping a hand into this pocket, that. The bulky guy across from him, one hand holding a ribbon-bedecked hoop upright in the aisle, long grey socks and a corduroy kilt. Christian leans over to adjust the fit of a filthy blue running shoe, sits up, clapping dust from empty hands. The man in the oilskin duster, laid out across the last row of seats, eyes closed, lips pursed. Christian reaches into one more pocket, pulls out something clamped between thumb and palm, quickly covered by his other hand. One more look about, and then he parts them just enough to reveal a glimmer of gold, lighting the shadows cupped in his hands, a fingertip of dust, caught in a small plastic baggie.
His hand, back in his pocket. His eyes, closed.
It isn’t raining when he steps off the bus, onto slick wet brick, under the corner of an office tower. Slender grey columns and the glass sweep of a lobby, Key Bank, say the signs here and there. Over across that street a Chase Bank, and he makes his way behind the bus, jogging through stalled traffic toward awnings that say E-Trade Financial. On down the sidewalk, past the Sterling Bank, the Red Star crowded with diners and drinkers, a piano showroom, nearly empty, mannequins in the windows of a department store, neon-slashed running togs, dresses and skirts in pastels that froth about clean-limbed plastic, business suits in a bewildering variety of greys, stone and cloud, ash, herringboned water. Around a corner, across a street, a nod for a man sitting on a white plastic bucket, blurred sticks whipping a rattled tattoo from the white plastic buckets overturned about him. A bit of greensward slopes up sharply behind a wrought iron fence, and a grey stone pile of a courthouse, and then, there, opening out under the high grey sky a brick-paved plaza, hemmed by low walls and more wrought iron, the wide steps climbing the far side, the cyclopean blocks of a low concrete bunker at the head of it. People dot it, here and there, most of them clustered about food carts at the top of those steps, Shelly’s Garden, Cheese Steaks & Burgers, The Completo, say the signs above and about them. Christian turns about there on the corner in his grimy hoodie, jostled against a sudden rush, a dozen or so setting off as the light changes, but he’s looking off down the sidewalk after someone turning away, setting a broad-brimmed black leather hat in place, a narrow back in a ragged jacket, army-surplus green, an emaciated duffel, swinging from a shoulder. Christian frowns, shaking off a notion. Sets out across the bricks.
Up the steps to the far corner of the square, a low brick wall under glass awnings. Slouched back against a pale stone column a man in a fur-hooded anorak, dappled in a chocolate-chip desert camouflage, and his face brightens as Christian comes toward him, and he leans up holding out a hand for Christian’s hand held out, a slap and a clasp, “My drow!” he bellows, settling back against the column as Christian’s cheekbones hunch. “The hell are you?”
“Okay,” says Christian, sitting back against the brick wall.
“Yeah?” says the man in the anorak. “How long’s it been? Six months? How long you been back?”
“A week?” says Christian, with a shrug. “I figured, if you was still here, you’d be here.”
“You know it,” says the man in the anorak. “You got a place to stay? You doing all right?”
Christian shrugs. “Could be better.”
“I hear that,” says the man in the anorak. His jaw salted with stubble, along the one side a white stretch of skin, a scar that skews his smile. Under his anorak brown denim overalls and a faded pink Henley shirt. “Don’t know what to tell you, though. Might want to stay put.”
“Sorry,” says Christian, looking at him squarely now. “Thought I was talking to the XO.”
“Hey,” says the man in the anorak. “Hey. You go away, you come back– you’re in early, and that’s good, but you’re still at the back of all the lines. And everything’s all shook up, fuck knows where it’s gonna end up. You like boosting bikes?” Christian shrugs. “Kids over, down by the Esplanade? It’s what they’re working, these days. Open-air chop shops under I-5. How about the Copper Boys? Foreclosures, man, it’s a goddamn growth sector. Though I can’t keep straight who they’re turfing with anymore. Guy gets stabbed over some fucker’s drainpipe.” That scar dragging at his mouth as he squints. “Pity you was never any good at the double-tap game, no offense.”
“Yeah, fuck you,” says Christian, looking away.
“I’m not,” says the XO, lifting placatory hands, “I’m just saying. I’m not a racist here. You draw attention, is all.”
“I don’t need to be told,” says Christian.
“It’s all unsettled, is what I’m saying. They’re trying to pass another law to make it illegal to sit on the sidewalk, you know? And meanwhile damn near every empty lot in town it feels like, somebody’s started to build something. Where you gonna go?”
Christian’s pulled some money from a pocket of his dungarees, a few bills folded together and folded about again, and the XO his lips pursed, tautening that scar, sits up to take them, unfolding them and turning them about, counting them ostentatiously, one, two, three, four twenties. “Okay,” he says, slipping the bills into the bib pocket of his overalls.
“I know it’ll be safe,” says Christian.
“And I know you’ll be back for it,” says the XO, nodding. “Oh, hey,” he says, as Christian gets to his feet. “You hear Moody’s back?”
And Christian steps back, steps away, half a turn, looking back down along the plaza, “No,” he says, and then, “no. He,” looking back to the XO, “he got, like, ten years.”
The XO shrugs. “Angie Lil saw him getting off a bus from Salem this morning. The Dread Paladin, his own damn self.” That lopsided smile. “Man. Talk about the bad old days.”
