Untouchable (24 page)

It was strange to see her naked outside of the bedroom, outside of the bathroom. Just standing in the kitchen with the phone to her ear. He didn’t know how long she’d been out there. It was cold in the kitchen; the linoleum must have been cold beneath her feet. He could see the goosebumps along the backs of her arms, the backs of her thighs.

He stood in the doorway, afraid to make a sound, afraid to move. He was afraid he would upset the delicate balance he had stumbled into, that he would tip things one way or the other. She held her ribs with one hand, her bitten nails pressed into her skin like she was holding something in, like she was worried something would come spilling out.

He could hear the howler tone from the phone, the rapid-fire stop-start bursts. No one was on the line. He wondered how long it had been since someone was on the line, how long she’d been listening to the loop of permanent signal.

He was trying not to move. He didn’t want to upset the balance in the room, even though he knew now which way it was going to go. He didn’t want to tip it too far too fast.

She set the phone down on the counter, opened the refrigerator, took out a beer. Popped the tab, took a long pull. Another. She turned to him like she knew he’d been there all along.

“Earl’s dead,” she said. “They found him in his car about a mile from his office. One of his guns in the front seat.” She was staring hard at Darby while she said this. She was not wearing her glasses and her eyes were dull, unfocused. He had not moved from the doorway, even though the room had tipped, the room was capsizing.

“Dolores said it’s all over the news there. It happened yesterday morning and by noon it was all over the news. She said the reporters can barely contain themselves.” She took another long pull from the can. “She doesn’t want us to come out. She made that very clear. There won’t be a funeral. There won’t be anything to come out for.”

The phone was still howling. She picked up the receiver and searched for the right button. Nearly blind without her glasses. She did this slowly, precisely, an exaggeration of a normal action. She found the button, silenced the phone, placed the receiver back down on the counter.

“It happened yesterday morning and she’s just calling now. I asked her why it took her so long to call and she said,
This is a disgrace
. That was her answer. That tone in her voice that she’s perfected, that she owns so completely.”

Lucy’s face was tight. Her whole body was tight, motionless. It didn’t look like she was breathing. Darby was breathing so hard that the sound seemed to fill the room. He watched her ribs, her breasts for a sign that she was breathing, but nothing moved until she spoke again.

Darby took a step into the kitchen, the slightest movement.

“Don’t,” she said. She lifted the hand quickly from her ribs, held it palm out, keeping him away. “Just don’t. Please.”

He stepped back, his hands hanging at his sides. The room lurched, tumbled around him.

“Don’t you know, David?” She lowered her arm, clasped her hand around her ribs again, fingers pushing hard into her skin. “This is a disgrace. You shouldn’t get too close.”

The morning was raw, gray-blue and clear after the night’s rain. Darby stood alone in the motel parking lot, facing the long row of numbered doors, one hand pressed to the side of the van, the cold metal against his palm, his fingertips. He checked the pager again, the ninth time, the tenth time, but there was no record of a call.

He had spoken to the night manager in the motel office, an older black woman at the end of her shift. She didn’t know why he had come. She hadn’t called for any cleaning service, hadn’t spoken to anyone on the phone for hours. She eyed Darby warily, watched his hands, waiting for him to pull something, a trick, a sales brochure, a gun. She watched his hands, watched his eyes, kept a safe distance back from the counter, close to the phone.

He stood out by the van, trying to remember the order of events, why he’d driven there alone from the Everclean garage as if this were a one-man job, which he knew to be impossible. There was no such thing.

He was holding the old cell phone, the phone he thought he’d lost. It had been lying in a corner of the motel parking lot, half-covered by a stray newspaper. He picked it up and had no idea how it had gotten there, when he had been there before to drop it.

The sign in the parking lot showed the nightly rates, advertised color TV, air conditioning, free local calls. The rooms’ numbered doors were all painted Halloween orange. The paint was chipping, peeling.

He’d cleaned countless motel rooms. Many of their jobs were in places like this, anonymous spaces near used car lots and liquor stores, freeway entrances. A night clerk in the office who stood a safe distance back from the counter. He didn’t recognize this particular place. He didn’t think he’d ever been to this place before, but he really didn’t know for sure.

He tried not to think of Bob in the closet in Inglewood. He tried not to think of the apartment in Chinatown, the rabbit on the dresser, the pull of the unfinished room.

There was a newer pickup parked in front of one of the rooms, Texas plates. A plastic shopping bag filled with empty beer cans sat outside the room’s orange door. The door opened and a man stepped outside, long-haired, barefoot, ten or fifteen years younger than Darby. He wore jeans and a white undershirt. He squinted in the light and stepped out onto the walkway, carrying a plastic ice bucket. He left the door open as he disappeared around the corner of the motel. The room was dark except for a bedside lamp. A woman sat up in the bed, the same age as the man, blond, shirtless, lighting a cigarette, shaking out the match. She lifted her arms above her head, stretched. Her breasts lifted with her arms. A pink woman in a dark room. The man padded back around the corner, yawning, carrying a bucket full of ice. He took one last look around, scanning the few cars in the lot, the white van, the street beyond. He didn’t register Darby or Darby didn’t concern him or Darby wasn’t there. He stepped back into the room. The orange door closed, locked.

Darby checked his pager again, the eleventh time, the twelfth time. No record of a call. He lifted his hand from the side of the van, his fingers numb, tingly at the tips, the rushing loud in his head. He thought of the Chinatown apartment, tried to shake the thought. He shook his tingling hand and tried to shake the thought. He opened the door of the van, climbed inside. His head loud enough to break open. He put the old cell phone in the glove compartment, covered it with the van’s repair manuals. He focused on what was in front of him, he focused on his hands, got his hands to work somehow, turning the key and starting the engine, pulling to the parking lot exit, out onto the street beyond.

He waited for Arizona in the courtyard before school, standing by the front gate so he could catch her before Brian did, before Rhonda did. He decided it was worth the risk. He wanted her to know that he wasn’t a bad guy, despite what had happened with Rhonda. He didn’t want her to think that this was how he normally was.

He held an issue of
Extraordinary Adventures
close to his chest, the last one he’d been able to find under his bed. It was from a year or so back, and in it Smooshie Smith went forward in time to interview The Kid’s parents. The Kid’s mom was an old lady in the future, her glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose, her gray hair pulled back in a bun. The Kid’s dad stood stooped beside her, smiling contentedly, bald except for tufts of white hair sticking out above his ears. They answered all sorts of questions about their life, about the adventures they’d had, the things they’d done and seen. Working on the house, watching ballgames. Then there was a part where Smooshie asked The Kid’s mom about The Kid, about how he’d grown up, and The Kid’s mom answered that The Kid had grown up just fine, that he was a great guy, a famous talk-show host in his own right. The Kid thought that maybe Arizona would read this and be convinced, see that The Kid might turn out okay.

She came in through the gate and The Kid hustled over, walking alongside until she turned and noticed him.

“Oh,” she said, “Hello, Whitley.” She didn’t look thrilled to see him. She looked like she wasn’t entirely comfortable with him walking so close.

He juggled the comic and his pencil and his notebook, getting to a blank page, keeping an eye on Brian, now approaching from the other side of the courtyard.

I brought you something. I thought you might like to see this.

It sounded stupid as soon as he wrote it, but it was out there now, she was reading it, he couldn’t really cross it out and start over. He tried to smile with his mouth closed so his bad breath wouldn’t be quite so bad.

“Thank you,” she said, still hesitant, but smiling a little.

He kept up alongside her, holding his notebook and pencil and trying to find the page in the comic where his mom explained how The Kid had turned out, where his mom went to bat for him.

Brian about halfway across the courtyard now, coming fast.

You should read
, The Kid wrote, running out of time to explain.
You should look at—

But then Brian was there, just steps away, so The Kid just shoved the comic at Arizona, pushing it into her hands and turning to walk the other way, fast, as Brian intercepted her, as Brian walked her the rest of the way into school.

The pickup was in the driveway when The Kid got home, but there was no sign of his dad. He stepped up onto the porch, unhooked his backpack from his shoulders. Heard something from around the side of the house. A weird noise. Kind of like a moan, but kind of like a growl. He put his backpack down and took a few steps toward the corner of the house. Heard the noise again. Definitely a growl. He didn’t go any further. He’d have to find his dad, get his dad to come out and look around the side of the house. That sound didn’t sound good.

The Kid moved back toward the door and heard the growl again, and then another noise, sounded like something running, something coming from around the corner of the house, fast, so he picked up his backpack and grabbed the handle of the security door and heard the sound turn the corner and so he turned and then he was face to face with it, a growling, wheezing thing, a giant hairy mass of teeth and claws and wild eyes.

A dog. Almost as tall as The Kid. The biggest dog The Kid had ever seen.

The Kid jumped back, stumbling on the porch, and the dog jumped back, too, startled, shooting his legs forward like a stubborn donkey. The Kid scrambled to get to his feet before the dog could regroup, before the dog could lunge again, but then his dad was there, out from the house with his hands under The Kid’s arms, lifting The Kid to his feet, holding him steady.

“It’s okay, Kid,” his dad said, his voice low in The Kid’s ear. “He’s not going to hurt you.”

Was his dad crazy? How did he know this dog? How did he know this dog wasn’t going to hurt them?

The dog was trembling now, swinging his great head around, looking for a way to escape. He was wearing a new blue collar, was attached to a long blue leash. The Kid tried to catch his breath, get his hands to stop shaking. He wanted to ask his dad who the dog belonged to, why he was tied to their porch.

His dad extended a hand toward the dog, palm down, letting it dangle a few inches from the thing’s wet mouth. The Kid imagined the dog lunging again, attacking his dad, mauling and disfiguring his dad, leaving his dad for dead, then turning on The Kid. The dog was shaking like a leaf. He looked at The Kid, looked at The Kid’s dad. The Kid knew that look. He was familiar with that look. He’d seen it in the bathroom mirror at home, the bathroom mirror at school. The look when he was so scared he didn’t know what to do.

The dog didn’t sniff his dad’s outstretched hand, didn’t lick his dad’s hand, but he didn’t bite it either. He just stood with his snout a few inches from the hand, legs locked, eyes wide, shaking so hard The Kid thought he might rattle apart.

The Kid fumbled in his backpack, pulled out his notebook, wrote with one eye on the page, the other on the dog.

Where did he come from
?

“They found him in the sewer under the manhole cover,” his dad said. “Right outside the house.”

Who does he belong to?

His dad crouched down next to The Kid, kept a hand on The Kid’s shoulder. “He needs some help,” his dad said. “He needs a place to live.”

The Kid didn’t move, just stared at the dog. His dad wanted to keep this dog? He wanted this dog to live with them?

“We’ll train him,” his dad said. “We’ll feed him and train him and pretty soon he’ll forget all this, he’ll forget any of this ever happened.”

The dog was still shaking, looking at The Kid and The Kid’s dad and back again. The Kid was pretty afraid of this dog, but he also knew that look. He knew what that look felt like.

“He needs some help,” his dad said. “What do you think, Kid?”

They sat in the driveway, eating drive-thru hamburgers and fries. The dog sat on the porch, on the end of its leash, watching them. The dog hadn’t touched the food or the bone his dad had bought for him. Hadn’t picked up the new green rubber ball with the little bell inside.

His dad said the dog would live out on the porch for now, until they got him cleaned up and housetrained. The leash was long enough that he had plenty of room to move around, stretch his legs, could get down the steps onto the front lawn to do his business.

The Kid wasn’t sure he liked the idea of that big rambling thing sitting on the porch all the time, but his dad said that the dog would get friendlier as time went on, as the dog got healthier and learned to trust them, as the dog forgot about the sewer, what had happened to him down there.

What happened to him down there?
The Kid wrote.

“Nothing good,” his dad said.

The Kid’s mom had never let them have a dog. She’d been bitten by a dog when she was a girl, she had little tooth-mark scars across her left cheek and so she was afraid of dogs, didn’t like them anywhere near her. The Kid had always thought that his mom overreacted around dogs, but now he wasn’t so sure, not with that big thing sitting on the porch, watching them.