All the Roads That Lead From Home (8 page)

“This
morning. Why?” she asked.

“He owes
me money.”

She leaned
over the bar. “You’ll get it.”

“I
better.”

He drank
his drink and she pulled back, towel over one shoulder, held by what he was
about to say. And when he did she didn’t have to agree. That’s how it worked
when you were there for the taking. Nothing had to be said.

***

“Ramon says he’ll drop it
to a grand and call it even,” said Kevin. Angie went on washing the dishes. In
the dark window over the sink he stood reflected, hands on hips. He was a
handsome man, with a fine square jaw, not at all like Ramon. Ramon’s nose was
broken, his skin was pocked, and his nails were filthy, but he trembled when he
held her, even once cried out her name, and then talked of bad dreams, bad
things remembered.

“That’s
good,” she said, looking at the tall image behind her.

“I just
don’t get it, though. He was so hot for me to pay up.”

“I know.”

“He even
went looking for me, down where you work.”

“I was
there.”

He shifted
his long, lean weight. She had to move fast, before he added it up. She turned
off the water and rubbed her wet fingers on her worn-out jeans. The blood
rushed in her ears, down her back, all the way to the soles of her feet. She’d
crossed more than half the distance between them by the time he caught her by
the shoulders. They made it all the way into the bedroom with her mouth pressed
into his.

***

Kevin had a plan. He knew
two things: where Ramon kept his money, and where he kept his coke. “Cash in a
coffee can, right there on the shelf. And the coke’s sitting loose in an old
box of laundry soap.” Ramon also had a gun which he kept in his bedside table
drawer, and another one in the kitchen, inside an empty fruit bowl on the top
of the refrigerator.

“Sounds
risky,” said Angie.

“Only if I
get busted, so I don’t lift the coke. The cops won’t ask about the money if
they find it on me.”

“Still.”

“Come on,
he’s got at least a couple of grand. Plenty to go somewhere new. By the ocean,
maybe.”

“He’ll
know you took it.”

“That’s
just it. There’s this girl he used to live with, this Marcy something, and
she’s bad news, let me tell you. She comes in and helps herself to everything.
He’ll have to figure she took it. She’s always after him for something. Major
sleazeball. No surprise there, given the kind he likes.”

He dropped
off and she was left to take one deep breath after another until she finally
gave in to sleep.

***

In the rain she made her
way down the block. The street was brown with dirt. Her skin was brown, too,
and always had been. The big secret. Her father not her father. Her mother a
woman who loved brown men so much she got knocked up by one, then left her
husband for another.

The driver
of a car honked because she was walking in the street. “Fuck you!” she yelled.

She loved
him anyway. The drunk who took her into bars.

The rain
bent her face down, and when it lifted up there was Yolanda coming around the
corner with a wastebasket she must have emptied into the dumpster. Yolanda
said, “I remember you.” She had cornrows for hair, violet half moons for
fingernails.

“You
looking for a piano?” said Angie.

“Not me,
the Father.”

Angie
didn’t like the sharp stare she was being given.

“All
right, then. Don’t be standing around in the wet,” Yolanda said.

She
followed Angie inside and set the wastebasket on the floor. She went down a
hall and knocked on one of the doors, then leaned her head inside. She closed
the door and called back to Angie, “He be right out.”

Yolanda went
down another hall while Angie waited. The quiet was broken by the quick tapping
of a radiator that slowed, stopped, and resumed like a sick heart not ready to
quit.

He came
out the door Yolanda had opened a moment before, a short, round man wearing black
pants, a priest’s collar, and a ratty gray sweater.

“I’m
Father Mulvaney,” he said and extended his hand. Angie didn’t take it. “I
understand you have a piano.”

“I can let
you have it for fifteen hundred,” she said.

He nodded,
rubbed his hands together, and stared into space just beyond her shoulder, as
if he’d forgotten what he was going to say.

“Hm. Now,
what kind of instrument is it?” he asked.

“Old and
banged up.”

“An
upright?”

“Uh, huh.”

“Out of
tune, I suppose?”

“Probably.”

“Why are
you getting rid of it?”

“What do
you think?” Angie had put a few paces between her and the Father by then. He
took her in with one long hard look.

“I think
you could use a hot cup of tea and a sandwich. I’m just about to have one,
myself.”

Angie
hadn’t eaten breakfast that morning because she’d forgotten to get to the store
the evening before. Sometimes she ate at work, if her boss left early. Last
night he didn’t, and she’d had two bags of M&M’s for dinner.

“Nothing
fancy. Just ham and cheese,” he said.

His office
was small and full of books and papers. The radiator’s paint peeled gray flakes
that showed a darker gray underneath. She sat in the chair opposite his,
separated by an old wooden desk. On a smaller table were a plate with several
sandwiches, a teapot, and a number of cups, most of them chipped. Angie looked
at the amount of food, wondering.

“Yolanda
always finds a guest or two for me at the last minute. Saves the kitchen
trouble by just having something made in advance,” said the Father.

“You must
feed a lot of people,” she said.

“The
mission down the street had to close its doors, and the economy hasn’t picked
up as much as we’d hoped.”

Angie
finished her sandwich quickly and the Father offered her another. She took it,
but refused any tea.

She looked
through the window into the courtyard where a man swept bits of paper into a
dust pan. His arms reached beyond the too short sleeves of his shirt.

“What is
it?” the Father asked.

“Why is
that guy working in the rain?”

The Father
looked through the window, too. “Francis? Well, I expect he needed to get some
fresh air. He’s not overly fond of being indoors.”

Angie
watched the man some more and wondered what it was like not to mind getting
wet. When she turned away, she found the Father leaning on his elbows, watching
her.

“You pay
cash, I’ll drop the price a little,” she said.

His smile
showed tiny uneven teeth. Above them his eyes were warm. “I’m afraid I can only
offer something very nominal.”

“Like, how
much?”

“Can’t
really say, until I have a look at it.”

“Sure. You
come by any evening. First-floor apartment, end of the block going that way,”
she said, tossing her head over her right shoulder.

Three days
later Angie came home to find two bags of groceries by her door with a note:
Sorry
to have missed you. I’ll come again. Father Mulvaney.
She took the bags
inside and went through them. One had milk, eggs, butter, bread, frozen pizza,
soup cans, spaghetti, even some coffee. In the other were flour, sugar, salt, a
bunch of pretty fresh bananas, three oranges, and a can of peaches in heavy
syrup.

“Who the
fuck wants that shit?” said Kevin. “Why doesn’t he just cough up for the
piano?”

“He will.”

“He
better.”

That night
Kevin was going to rip off Ramon. He’d say to meet him at the bar where Angie
worked, and then she’d keep him there with a free drink or two. Angie’s boss
didn’t let her give away drinks. She’d have to put her own money in the till.
Kevin didn’t think about that. He only had a twenty on him.

“I can
make change,” she said.

“Forget
it, will you?”

Ramon
didn’t come into the bar at all. Angie called her apartment once, twice. At two
a.m. when her shift ended she went home. Marta hadn’t been let out. Angie
cleaned the dog shit off the floor, walked her around the block, breathed in
icy air.

Angie’s
stomach was tight with hunger. Marta danced when the bowl of dog food descended
from Angie’s hand.

The phone
rang when she was fast asleep.

“Babe,
listen, I messed up.” He sounded funny. He was crying, she realized.

“What
happened, Kev? Where are you?”

“Ramon was
there. He tried to get tough.” It would have taken a lot more than a slap in
the face to put Ramon down. Kevin would have had to finish it.

“Kev,
what—”

“I can’t
believe it. I don’t know what the hell happened.”

“Where are
you?”

“Never
mind.” He was quiet for a long time.

“Kevin,”
she said.

“I have to
go. Oh, and look in the piano. It’s yours.” The line went dead.

She got to
her feet and padded along the floor. The living room was given over to
moonlight from the curtainless window.

The piano
lid took some lifting. The envelope inside contained one thousand dollars and
the note,
You don’t know anything.

The night
was clear, and the violet sky thrown with stars.
Take one down
, her
father used to say.
That’s what they’re there for. Just reach up and take
one.

***

The morning light seeped
over the window ledge, then flowed like clean water into the room. Marta lay
warm beside her. Kevin could be anywhere by then, though if Angie guessed right
he was at his father’s in Indiana, the place he hated so much he described it
with a fist to his head—the blue twinkling pool, the big white barn in the
middle of fifteen rolling acres, the yellow forsythia hedge. His father would
take him in, because money took care of its own. And he’d never get caught,
because Ramon was just some drug dealer from Tijuana who’d had nightmares about
the truck he crossed the border in, the sealed-up heat of it, the days without
water.

Angie
opened the kitchen door and let Marta into the little yard to pee. Marta
squatted, then ran her nose through the dead winter yard until Angie called her
back inside.

After she
had dressed and sipped a reheated cup of yesterday’s coffee, Angie took Kevin’s
expensive wool sweaters, heavy flannel shirts, and three pairs of good leather
boots and put them in a green garbage bag. She put his books on the sidewalk in
front of the house with a note, written on an old grocery sack,
Free.
His toothbrush she threw away. The toothpaste he’d used was hers. She wasn’t
surprised by the wetness of her eyes, or the tightness in her throat. Ramon had
made her feel more at home than Kevin ever had.

Her
neighbor, Joey, was sound asleep on a thrown-out sofa two doors down. He wasn’t
homeless, but seemed to have trouble staying in his apartment at night. Angie
nudged him with her foot and he opened his gummy red eyes.

“You want
to make twenty bucks?” she asked.

He sat up,
spat on the sidewalk, and scratched his head. His fingernails were filthy. “For
what?”

“Helping
me roll a piano down the block.”

“You
nuts?”

“You want
the money, or not?”

Joey was
several inches shorter than Angie, but strong. He had no trouble keeping the
piano under control as it rolled back down the ramp. She took the other end and
kept it from veering off.

The day
was overcast, the air calm. They pushed past parked cars, one with someone
asleep in the back seat, another with a broken out windshield, and another up
on blocks.

Every few
minutes Joey stopped to clear his throat. When they reached the church Angie
gave him his twenty.

“How come
we brought it here?” he asked.

“That’s my
business. Now go on.”

The front
door of the church was locked, and a side door, which gave on the alley between
the church and the grocery store next to it, was locked, too. There was a light
on the second floor, and Angie threw a pebble at the window there, then
another. The window lifted, and Father Mulvaney’s head appeared in the open
space.

“Who’s
making that racket?” he called down.

“It’s
here.”

“What is?”

Angie
pointed to the piano, which was being closely examined by an old man pushing an
empty shopping cart.