Romeo is Homeless (4 page)

August sat on the curb outside the ice cream shop. That old lady must still be living in her youth – ice cream hadn’t been fifty cents in a long time. She turned her ball cap backwards, bit the end off of the cone, tipped her head back and sucked the sweet, melting butterscotch out the bottom. She started eating them that way years ago when Sara challenged her to a race - to see who could finish their cone first, from the bottom up. They did that just last week. August won. As usual. There were some things she just didn’t want to grow out of.

August crunched the last of the cone, licked her lips, and wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She pulled out her money and counted what was left.

“Shit.” Less than sixty dollars.

She grabbed her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. Not counting sleepovers at Sara’s, this would be her first night away from her family. Dusk was coming fast and the pending gloom of darkness pushed her faster down the street.

After several blocks she came across a hotel. With most of the sign’s lights burned out, the Royal Arms became “al Arm.” A homeless man was crouched next to the doorway, his unwashed body stinking even from ten feet away. Bits of food were stuck in his unkempt beard. At the grunt of his deep-sleep snore she skirted around him and darted through the doorway.

She inched up to the check-in counter. The grey laminate was worn through along the edge where thousands of people before her must have leaned. She didn’t touch anything, and resisted the urge to plug her nose against the dust and the earthy smell of mold.

Iron bars prevented her from attacking the middle-aged man behind the counter. If the bars didn’t work, the rifle resting against the desk next to him would have done the job. He looked down his nose through tiny reading glasses, absorbed in the thick newspaper in front of him, and reached between his legs to scratch himself.

“Excuse me, sir?” she mumbled.

The man didn’t hear her. Or ignored her, she wasn’t sure which. She smacked the top of a chrome bell, jumping at its shrill chime.

The man’s head snapped up and he glared at her. “Geez, I’m right here for God’s sake. Don’t ring that damn bell, gives me a headache.”

“Sorry, sir.” She watched him haul his ample backside out of the chair, his huge belly hanging over his low-slung pants, his mustard and sweat stained undershirt straining against his navel. “Can I get a room please?”

“Yeah, yeah, sign here. Its twenty-eight dollars for a full night, or four dollars an hour. How long you stayin’?”

An hour? Who would stay for an hour?

“I need a place to sleep tonight. Is it clean?”

“Clean? What’s more important, sleepin’, or sleepin’ in a clean room?” He leaned close to the bars and looked her up and down. “You sleepin’ alone, darlin’?”

“Yes!” She counted out the exact amount of money and signed the register.

“All right, all right.” He smirked, showing crooked teeth stained darker than the mustard on his shirt. ”Room two-oh-four, one flight up, turn left. Check out is ten sharp, or I’ll charge you by the hour after that.”

She took the key he slid under the bars without looking up at him again.

At the second floor landing she turned into a dim hallway. Fewer than half the wall sconces had functioning bulbs and she could just make out the keyhole in the door handle. Once unlocked, the door swung open at the slightest encouragement, hitting the wall behind it with a dull thud. The room was drenched in darkness. She ran her hand along the wall until she found a switch and flicked it on. Harsh white light from a bare bulb filled the cramped entry.

She turned the deadbolt and drew the chain, then leaned against the door, surveying the tiny room.

A small bed, the dull grey of the metal frame peering from behind chipped white paint, rested uncomfortably against the wall, sagging so much in the middle that it looked more like a hammock. Its worn bedspread could have been white at one time but it, too, was dull grey, with large spots yellowed from age and stained with who knows what. A little window with no curtains let a gentle breeze blow over the bed, whiffs of garbage and dirt riding in on each current. Street sounds invaded the room through the open screen.

August dropped her backpack on the only chair in the room, and it creaked under the small weight.

At the entry to the bathroom she turned on the light just in time to see two cockroaches scurry into the drain on the floor. She didn’t flinch. Bugs were no big deal, but she didn’t want their company. Sleeping with the lights on would keep the crawly buggers at bay.

The bathroom smelled like her father had just read the Sunday paper in it. The toilet looked okay from her doorway vantage point, but leaning in for closer inspection proved it was just an illusion. The autumn gold of the plastic seat was camouflage for the gold of the dried urine that lived there. Disgusting. She could survive without peeing for a while.

She brushed her teeth and eyed the sink, crusty with filth and stinking of rust. She decided to skip her nightly washing ritual. She wasn’t getting her face anywhere near that crud.

She sat on the edge of the bed and took off her jacket, rolled it into a lumpy cushion and shoved the thin pillow aside. She lay down on top of the aged bedding and rested her head on the jacket. It was a lousy replacement for the softness of her down pillow at home. The clock radio on the nightstand blinked twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock, twelve o’clock at her. She pressed buttons to set the right time, but it just kept blinking.

“Shit.” She stared at the plaster ceiling full of spider-web cracks and dark brown stains like so many puddles of chewing tobacco Grandpa used to spit on the pavement. This wasn’t at all what she’d imagined a hotel would be like, nothing like in
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
Then again, their farm wasn’t exactly like the one on the tape her mother bought of that dumb old show,
Green Acres
either. She’d figured she would get to the city and start living the glamorous life, figured the movie was a real depiction of what she would find. God, she was an idiot.

She closed her eyes and pretended to be curled up in her own bed, her mother rocking her and singing her to sleep in that off-key but comforting way. That habit had ended a few years ago around the same time she discovered boys didn’t all have cooties and it was more fun to hang out with friends than play dollies with April or stare at the stars with her parents. Tears escaped the corners of her eyes and her lower lip trembled.

“Now I lay me down to sleep,” she whispered. She hadn’t spoken that out loud since she was ten. She told her parents she was too grown up for it, but what they didn’t know was that she just said it in her head instead.

A loud demonic wail interrupted her prayer. She sat up with a start then kneeled on the bed and peered out the small window. In the alley fifteen feet below, two cats clawed at each other, screeching and howling. She glanced as far in each direction as she could through the tiny porthole. To the left was the same homeless man that had slept in the hotel entrance earlier. He was asleep again, under newspaper and next to a Dumpster, oblivious to the caterwauling just five feet away. To the right, the alley beat a dirty path to the sidewalk, glowing yellow under tall streetlamps. With her forehead pushed up against the screen she could barely glimpse the people out for the evening. They looked more like otherworldly shadows than actual human beings.

She lay back on the bed and hummed to drown out the sound of the cats, then pulled her jacket over her head, searching her memory for something comforting. A mental video of the first time June discovered the pigs played behind her closed eyelids.

Just over a year old, June had crawled through the fence of the pigpen. Her mother was trying to wean her sister from breastfeeding at the time, thanks in large part to Grandma’s objections to the whole matter. Grandma didn’t think it appropriate for Caraleen to nurse a child that age, even though it hadn’t done August or April any harm. June teetered through the muck on new walking legs, plopped down next to the sow that was feeding a newborn litter and shoved a dirty teat in her mouth. The sow just looked up and grunted, then went back to sleep. Dad had run for the camera and taken pictures before August’s mother, failing to subdue an amused smile, fetched June from the pen.

August drifted into exhausted sleep with a small grin on her face.

Angry yelling shattered the silence, shocking her to consciousness. It was so loud and close, in the initial fog of waking, she thought someone was in the room with her. She peered out the window again and down into the alley below. Two men flailed at each other with their fists. One of them kicked the other between the legs, dropping him to his knees. August slumped down onto the mattress. If she turned out the light, no one would know she was there – but then the roaches would come out to play.

A deafening pop-pop-pop cracked the night. It sounded like her old cap gun but sharper and louder. Oh, Jesus – those men were shooting at each other. Right outside her window. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

A scream split the air and running feet pounded against the pavement. Then nothing – just silence. Even the cats shut up.

She lay there for what seemed like hours, unable to close her eyes. The eerie calm was even more disconcerting than the noise. This couldn’t be what every night was like here, could it? No way, this had to be just her bad luck. Tomorrow she would find a nicer place to stay, a better neighborhood. Better people.

There was a sharp snap and pop as the hotel shifted on its foundation, settling in for the night. It sounded just like home – familiar and comforting. There, in the dead quiet of a country night, the house would crackle and creak for hours. She would imagine she was floating in some huge bowl of puffed rice cereal. It helped her drift to sleep at home, and it worked now.

Caraleen returned the receiver to its cradle. Another dead end.

“Damn, damn, damn!” She slammed it down three times fast, her curses punctuating each crack of black plastic on chipped chrome. The old phone yelped little rings in protest with every impact. She’d called all the families on the school’s emergency phone tree. No one had seen August since the bus emptied before classes that morning.

“Don!” she yelled from where she stood. She stretched out her leg and hooked the toes of one foot under a kitchen chair, pulled it closer, then dropped onto the cracked vinyl seat.

Dirty dishes littered the counter, dollops of peanut butter and grape jelly dotting it where April and June had fended for themselves for their evening meal. The sandwich her daughters had made for her, cut into sloppy quarters and crusts trimmed off, sat untouched.

“Any luck?” Her husband stood in the doorway bearing the telltale signs of bath time with June – soaked to the elbows, an abstract of wet spots all over his shirt and jeans, and bubbles in his thick brown hair.

“Nothing. How can a teenage girl just disappear without someone seeing her?” She put her head in her hands and began to sob.

Don gave her one of his reassuring over-the-shoulder hugs. “We’ll find her.” He breathed a deep sigh. “We have to.”

“Let’s drive into town. If the police won’t look for her, can’t we?”

“Honey, it’s late. Everything is closed and the girls are finally settled. I’m trying not to panic them any more than they already are.” He rubbed her shoulders then ran his hands through her cropped blond hair like he did for their daughters when they needed consoling. “We’ll go to the sheriff first thing in the morning. It’ll be almost twenty-four hours by then. They’ll have to listen.” He bent back her head, leaned in and kissed her forehead. “Come on up to bed. You need some rest.”

“I’ll be up in a while.”

“All right then. Don’t be long.” Don moved toward the stairs, his gait silent but self-assured. His hands were large and callused, forearms tanned and sinewy from a lifetime of hard work. His wiry frame was clad in denim from head to toe, cleaved in the middle by a weathered brown leather belt his father had worn.

She’d had many arguments with Don these past years. Almost all of them were about raising August. All the big decisions got tested on the first born like some Parenting-For-Dummies guinea pig. But she was still head over heels for that gentle man. He could do anything – everything – with ease and grace. He’d have his hand shoved elbow deep into a cow’s uterus in the morning, then be reading story books to June and April come nightfall. They squealed with laughter when he did the voices – deep-throated ogres, British-accented charming princes, even high-pitched fairies. He was unabashedly silly if he thought it would make his daughters laugh. He was her knight in faded dungarees.

Caraleen took the mug of herbal tea Don had made her hours ago and dragged her feet into the living room. She dislodged a dusty photo album from a shelf buried in videos and books and curled up on the end of the overstuffed sofa. The night air sent a chill through her. She drew a loose-knit afghan over her shoulders, the one her mother had crocheted years earlier, and sipped the cold tea.

With each worn photo, each reminder of the past, she questioned the decisions she made as a mother. She was so strict with August, so protective. To be sure her daughter avoided the errors of her own past there had to be rules. No dating. No parties. No bad movies. Caraleen sighed. No fun.

Don had other ideas. He allowed his oldest daughter, the apple of his eye, some indiscretions. This presented the biggest rift between husband and wife – makeup. As soon as August started wearing it, she changed. Her daughter matured, grew up. Or so August said. But to Caraleen, August was still just a little girl. Mascara didn’t make one worldly, didn’t make one an adult. Only living did that. But did she allow that girl to live a full life? Or just a toned down, caged in version of one? And what did it matter now? She just wanted to know where she was, wanted her to be home.

August’s beautiful, innocent face shone from the last picture in the album. It was a posed shot they had taken in town more than a decade ago. She sat on a stool, Don standing behind with one hand on Caraleen’s shoulder and one on August’s. Just four years old, August sat in Caraleen’s lap smiling to beat the band.

Her chin trembled and her chest tightened. She closed the album and hugged it to her breasts, sobbing. She sank down into the softness of the sofa and clenched her eyes shut.

She was awakened by a kiss on the cheek and opened one eye, squinting into the rising sun that sliced through the curtain.

April looked down at her, her brow knit.

“I couldn’t find you. I thought you went away. Like August.”

She pulled April into her arms and hugged her. “I’m not going anywhere. And August will be back. I promise.”