Empty Pockets (15 page)

Romance

W
e used to see them in the District when all the small-time dealers were working psychedelics on the Avenue. You would be sitting in the Hasty Tasty having a late-night coffee and you would see them glide by the windows like a ballet of luminous spectra. And sometimes their appearance would upset people.

One night a young, long-haired guy in a leather coat stood up and challenged them. They had just come in, and this guy said, “Why do you do that?” He had been sitting down, relaxed, before they came in.

“Do what?” the white-faced guy nearest him said.

“Put that crap on your faces?”

“What crap? What's wrong with my face?”

“The white stuff,” the longhair said.

“White stuff? What white stuff?”

“Ah, shit,” the longhair said. He sat down and stumbled.

They laughed.

“You're all ridiculous,” the longhair said.

“No,” a girl seated at a table in the corner said, “you've all been to a party, right?”

“No,” said the Botticelli-looking girl of the two white-faced girls, “we're out exploring, you see.” Her smile was genuine under the dusty white of her face, and I thought, Ah, Christ, look at her. She was right out of
Children of Paradise,
1900 Paris, her beauty as precise and ethereal as that of the film, but one going even further back than that, past classical film, classical painting, past all education.

“Ah, you're all fucked up is what you are,” the longhair said. He was standing up again.

All four of the white-faced people laughed and turned away, looking for a table of their own. The long-haired guy sat down again.

That was not an unusual response. They nearly always caused some kind of response, and you never knew what direction it would take.

The last time I saw them was several months later. It was the Hasty Tasty again. They came in and went into the back. I took my coffee to a table by theirs. The Botticelli-faced girl was telling the other white-faced girl a simple thing about eye contact. She was looking back and forth at me, her green eyes constantly checking when I looked back into them.

“One of the first things private detectives learn when they are assigned to tail someone,” she said, “is to never establish eye contact, eye contact unsettles the soul, you make eye contact with a man on the street and he thinks you desire him, or,” she said, “if you're a male, and make eye contact with an older woman she'll feel flattered, think rape, and hurry away clutching her purse tightly against herself. Can you see me as an older woman clutching my purse to me?”

She was looking at me as she said this, and she stood up and pantomimed scurrying out the door.

It was a few seconds before I, along with everyone else, realized what had happened.

She was gone.

Then the other three got up, and went out after her, all of them looking very happy.

Harrah's Club

“H
eart attack at forty, a massive one. Then a second one. Hell, it was the first one that damn near got me. Now it's atrial fibrillation. I get that. You know what that is? Your heart skips. It beats without rhythm. I'm living on pills. Heart pills. Blood pills. Nerve pills. I did it to myself, too. No one else. I decided the only thing in life was money and went right for it. And I got it, too. First as a service manager for Toyota, and then with my own agency. Worked twice as many hours as I should have. Drank. Smoked. Did coke. Yeah, that's right, did coke and dropped like a rock right on the showroom floor. Right on the floor. The second one I spent ninety hospital days on. They had to operate twice. I threw off some clots and they had to go in and get the clots and a fucking staph infection set in in the incision. Isn't that the way? Yeah, well, it gets pretty damn rough sometimes. 'Cause I just get out and over that and then my wife took it. Went into a coma. Comatose thirty days, then she went, tumor under the brain. That's why they couldn't find it, they said. They couldn't see it.
Under
the brain. So what can you do? Nothing. Not a goddamn thing. You just get over one thing and something else goes. Sometimes it gets me. We had a lot of plans. There was nothing wrong with her. We both agreed I had to slow down and do something else. It was headed that way. We'd finally worked a lot of things out. Nothing wrong with her. Nothing at all. So what can you do? The kids pretty much have lives of their own. They seem to forget about poor old Dad. I set the oldest one up in business, too. They're good kids, though. Can't blame them. I wasn't any different myself at their age. Who does care about old Dad? Ah, what the hell. I don't know. I really don't. I don't know one good reason why I'm still here. It's already over. Some goddamn primitive instinct to survive, I guess. Hell, that's all the past, isn't it. You can't think about that crap. You do, you might as well go upstairs and get it over with.”

How It's Done

“Y
es, sure, he doesn't challenge, he just sits and listens. He's just easy to be around. And when I talk, if what I say doesn't make sense, well, it just collapses away on its own. And he doesn't
not
understand. Because if it's a true thought, he
laughs.
I really love his laugh. Did I tell you how we got started? He took me to Olympia and to the hotel downtown and then upstairs after we ate. It was the nicest room they had there, and he sat me in this big velvet overstuffed chair and listened to me the rest of the afternoon, never once trying anything sexual. It was snowing outside, you know, and I talked and talked and then we watched some
TV
and got in bed together and went to sleep. Isn't that nice?”

Immaculate Conception

“I
‘ve blown it, I know I have, I've shown you, I've told you, I feel love when I see you're stronger, you make me love you when I see you're stronger, you do and I hate it, I want to wreck it, I can't stand it, I do, I want you to want me, that's how I know I've lost.”

EMPTY POCKETS AND OTHER STORIES

Dear Anthony

Dear Anthony,

A
nthony, I am tired of this bullshit between you and Angela Ramirez. Thursday when I came to school people was telling me you are still talking to her and in the bathroom it says
I Love Anthony Washington
in big black letters and when you are walking out it says
ANGELA RAMIREZ—XO—ANTHONY WASHINGTON
.

Anthony, I really don't know what to do about you. Then your ass gets all mad when I'm with Aaron or talking on the phone to him. I hope you have a lot of fun with Angela because she doesn't do the things I do. And you know what I mean. I hope she makes you very happy, even though I don't because I keep on making you mad all the time.

Anthony, if you do like her let me know now, I don't want to find out from someone else, I want to see your face when you say it.

So has she asked you to go to Grad Night with her? If you aren't still talking to her, or going with her like you say, why is everyone talking you are, or are they trying to matchmake?

Anthony, how do you think I feel when they are telling me this shit? You think I am just going to let it slip on past? Is that who you gave my
bunny rabbit
to? Because I don't have it. Or is it at the store like you said?

Anthony, the reason why you didn't get this letter a long time ago was because I wasn't finished writing it. If I was, you would have got it a hell of a long time ago. The reason why I crossed out your and Angela's name in the bathroom was because I like you too damned much. That's why I crossed it out.

And I guess I should stop coming over to your house when your folks are gone, stop calling you, and stop having you know what I mean with you.

And nothing is going on between me and Aaron Robinson, no matter what you say! That's all I have to say! And I am going to stop liking you! You don't think I can, but you are in for a great big surprise! Well, I am about to end writing this. I will probably talk to you later.

Love Always,

Me

The Prowler

M
ichael folded the rug over and pushed it up against the door. He had the bed already made, the pillows shaped like a body under the quilt. He came back and got up on the bed and carefully opened his window. It didn't make any noise. He held still and listened. He didn't hear anything.

He stepped up on the bed, then slid his body out the opening. Turning back around, he eased the window down, and listened.

Crickets droned from somewhere in the backyard. He could smell his mother's jasmine. His Ford sat mute next to his mom's vw and his dad's Chevy.

He walked to the bicycle leaning against the carport post and pushed it down the driveway and walked it, going left up the nighttime street.

The houses along both sides of the street were all dark with only the Keplar's bedroom lights on.

Viola Keplar was his mom's best friend and very weird.

One afternoon she had come out of her house in a bathrobe just as Michael was coming home from school. As he got out of his car she called him over and asked him what she should do about her husband. Michael had said, “Excuse me?” She said, “I was told you had the highest
IQ
in the high school so I thought maybe you could help me figure out what to do.”

Her bathrobe had been partially open and he saw a rounded curve of her breast that was definitely bigger than Beverly's, and he didn't know what she wanted, so he said, “I don't know how I could help you,” and thinking about it now he thought about Gunderson whose thirty-year-old neighbor was sleeping with him every noon hour, or so Gunner said, which was at least partially true, true that she was sleeping with Gunner, but was that what Vi Keplar had in mind? And the real truth was that he and Beverly had not really had sex, had sexual intercourse, and Vi Keplar scared him.

Michael wondered what Vi Keplar was doing behind that lighted window. Don Keplar's car was home. He was probably in the bedroom with her. Of course he was.

Then Michael was past their house, and he got on the bike and began riding down Winnebago toward Modoc and on Modoc turned left toward town. Beverly was babysitting the Monahan kids on Cherokee Street and by going down Modoc at this time of night there was far less chance of anyone seeing him.

So far there had been no cars. He looked at his watch again. Ten minutes past one. The night air was cool. The bike moved silently. Headlights appeared down the street and Michael quickly turned up a driveway and got off by the parked car and waited until the car passed by. A dog started barking two houses over.

Michael got back on the bike and rode it out onto the street and headed toward Cherokee. Beverly's dad, Glenn, was known to drive by and check on her when she was babysitting, sometimes sitting inside his big Buick down the street, watching. The sound of the barking faded away. Then Michael was turning left along Cherokee and he didn't see any cars parked where they shouldn't be. The Monahans had a nice cat that Michael liked. The cat was very friendly to Michael and would always appear when Michael showed up. It was a gray-and-black-striped cat with yellow eyes and would arch its back when Michael rubbed the fur on top of its head right above its eyes. He wondered if it would show up tonight.

Michael coasted up the driveway, dismounted, and walked the bike into the shadows at the back of the house and placed the bike there.

He heard the cat purring at his feet and he reached down and picked her up. She lifted easily, and he cradled her with his left arm crossed along his stomach and rubbed her head and neck with his right hand walking her along the back of the house to the sliding glass doors that opened onto the brick patio and the backyard.

The cat was purring heavily when Beverly came to the door and opened it.

“I didn't think you were coming,” she said.

“I had to make sure that my folks were asleep.”

“Well, it's really late,” she said, “and I don't know what time they're coming home. They could be here any minute.”

“I love this cat,” Michael said. He put the cat down.

Beverly took his hand and led him through the kitchen into the living room.

“What do you want to do? Should we watch
TV
?”

“I don't know,” Michael said. “What were you doing before I arrived?”

“Sleeping,” Beverly said. “I tried staying awake, but I fell asleep. I don't know what woke me up.”

“Maybe it was the cat,” Michael said. “When did you let her out?”

“Just before I went to sleep, I guess.”

“C'mere,” Michael said, and he put his arms around her and she stepped into them and put her head on his chest, and then turned her face up for a kiss. It was a good, long kiss with his tongue going into her mouth and her lips firm and wet against his, and he felt her tongue going into his mouth and he started getting really excited and he felt himself getting hard and they sat down on the couch and the cat jumped up on the arm of the couch and Michael felt it brush itself against the back of his neck and then it was gone and his hands were up inside Beverly's shirt and he was cupping her breasts and getting even more excited, girls were so wonderful and so strange, how they were built, and how they felt and tasted and smelled, so different, and yet so familiar, and she helped him undo her brassiere, and lifted her shirt and pulled her bra off and offered her left breast to him while she guided his mouth to it with her fingers pulling his head lightly down to it and then it was in his mouth and he thought he was going to come and he pulled back.