Blood Sports (16 page)

A fat fly bounces off the window. A silver suncatcher spins, a winking happy face hanging on a white thread tacked to the window frame. Your nose drips again. Bright red drops splatter the rim of the mug. Black gunk under your fingernails. Dirt or old blood.

“You need fresh clothes. There’s a T-shirt in the pile by the
door.” She’s wearing a light blue sweatshirt with soft-focus kittens on the front. The kittens are rolling around in a basket, playing with a ball of pink yarn.

Even if you get stared at, at least the bloody shirt looks tough. “I’m good.”

She sips her hot chocolate, staring. “At least wash up. You look like hell.”

“I’m sorry,” you say. “I forgot your name again.”

“Lorraine.”

“Thanks, Lorraine.”

“Bathroom’s down the hall. Towel and soap are in the hallway closet.”

Lock the door and sit on the toilet. Take the raggedy pink towel hung over your arm and a small bar of cheap hotel soap and put them on the edge of the sink. Peel off your shirt to wash it. Pause to touch the footprint-shaped bruises around your ribs. This explains the stitch when you take a deep breath or try to lift your right arm. Two patches of gauze are taped to your shoulders. Lift an end to peek. It’s been feeling like someone’s got their fingernails and they’re digging them in and wiggling them under the skin. Peel off both patches and scratch the scabs oozing sticky, clear fluid. The burns are small and round, cigarettes most likely. They’ll leave raised scars. Your mother has one on the back of her hand.
Brand of a love gone bad
.

The bathroom is humid but you’re cold. Stall over your mother’s name. Cindy. Carol. Cathy. Memory skitters away.

Touch the side of your head. You have an egg. Look in the mirror above the sink. You have a Fu Manchu moustache in varying shades of dried and drying blood.

Scrub your face until the water runs clear. Take a shaky breath. Hold what you have and wait for the past to come crawling back from its bender. Your mother has terrible taste in men. Lorraine has terrible taste in clothes and you’re drying yourself on her pink towel.

“You got a stash, baby. Let’s see what you stashed.” Lorraine reaches down through the hole under the armpit of the jacket you handed her. She pulls out a thin wallet.

“Let me see.”

She’s opened the wallet. Three crisp one-hundred-dollar bills are inside. Lorraine whistles. “Baby’s flush.”

Take the wallet and pull out the I.D. The student card has a picture of a sullen boy with lank, shoulder-length blue hair hiding his face. He’s wearing a plaid shirt. Thomas Eugene Bauer is in Grade Ten and his bus pass is going to expire at the end of June.

“What month is it?” you ask Lorraine.

“Did you get clocked and good. It’s June, honey.” Lorraine says, continuing her search of the jacket lining. She pulls out a little baggie. “Maybe you owe someone money.”

“You think that’s me?”

“That’s you, baby.”

“Maybe I jacked Thomas. Maybe Thomas kicked the crap out of me.”

“Uh, yeah.” She doesn’t roll her eyes, but the sentiment is clear on her face and it irks. “Thomas or Tommy or Tom? What’d’ya think?”

“Tom.”

“Hello, Tom. Pleasure to meet you.”

“The pleasure’s mine.”

“And this is Sheldon,” Lorraine says.

Force your eyes open as the parade of school pictures continues. Sleep is heavy on your shoulders. You can barely remember your own name, and she is giving you the lowdown on her grandkids. She has this tentative smile that makes you fight sleep.

Taste something metal. The hot chocolate isn’t sitting too well. The room goes tilt-a-whirl. Lorraine stops talking and watches you. She does not appear surprised when you face plant the floor.

Realize Lorraine hasn’t been telling you about her grandkids at all. She’s been explaining that she is not all bad. She’s going to roll you now, but she’s got her reasons.

3.

The crash church lets you sleep it off. People leave, arrive, settle down, wake up, scrounge, and just plain chat, a background hum punctuated by belligerents. Take comfort from the noise. Grow uneasy during the lulls. The crash church has many exits, many rooms, and a maze of dark corridors with hidey holes, but most people crash in the pews. Hide in the middle of everybody. Cover your head with a sleeping bag even though the day is hot and the sleeping bag reeks.

“Rick?” a man says. He shakes shoulders, turns back blankets and sleeping bags to look at faces. “Rick?”

Examine the man. He’s very clean, which makes you suspicious. He’s wearing black jeans and a black windbreaker.

“Has anyone seen Rick?”

“Fuck off,” someone grumbles.

They are coming for you. They are coming down the hallway. Sneak behind the pulpit and crawl into it. Listen to the man
make his way through the pews calling out for Rick. Even after he leaves, do not move. You’re spotted by a woman who is cutting through the pews to get to a corridor. Put your finger to your lips and soundlessly shush her. She speeds up to get away from you.

“Get out, get out, get out,” the woman says, shooing you out of the corner store. “Don’t come in my store.”

“Someone’s following me,” you say.

“Someone always following you. Scare away my customers. Get out, get out, get out. Go take a bath.”

Just in case you weren’t sure she meant it, she locks the door behind you and flips the sign from “OPEN” to “
Sorry
, We’re Closed.”

The grey car is gone. Make a run for cover. Ignore traffic, ignore cars honking, cross the street while the grey car is gone.

Across the hall of the drop-in centre, the
TV
in the seniors’ room blares the evening news. Tammy-Lynn is missing. She lived two blocks from her school and hasn’t been seen since yesterday. Her parents weep on
TV
. Volunteers sweep the nearby woods, calling out her name. They comb the ground for clues. A police chief faces a media scrum stoically. A hotline has been set up, and a reward for information leading to her return. Tammy-Lynn is thirteen. Her school picture shows a buck-toothed girl with braces, crooked bangs, and large, green eyes.

Sip your coffee and turn your attention to the guys playing pool. Time is a slippery fish. But you’re sure it’s been a while since you were home. They aren’t exactly breaking out the sniffer
dogs for you. No one holds your teddy bear on
TV
, sobbing for your safe return.

“I gave you a sleeping bag last night,” the guy says, peeved. He stands in the back of a black van with a big red cross on the side. He holds a green sleeping bag out of your reach. “What did you do with it?”

He doesn’t look familiar at all. “Are you sure it was me?”

“Don’t give me that,” the guy says. His blue T-shirt sleeves are rolled up to his shoulders, his jeans are creased, and his brown hair is short. He has a bulgy red nose that you believe you would remember.

“Lorraine took everything,” you say. “She even took my shoes.”

“Bullshit. I saw you drop it. That’s the third sleeping bag I gave you this week.”

Frown. “Are you sure?”

“I have eyes. I’m not stupid. I’ll give you a sleeping bag this time, but don’t let me catch you lying again.”

“I think Lorraine took it. She took everything.”

“There wasn’t any Lorraine. You dropped it, you bullshitter.”

“Give him the fucking sleeping bag already,” the driver says, crushing his smoke under his boot.

“But he keeps throwing them away.”

The driver has one black eyebrow that lifts in the middle. “Look at him. He’s a spaz. That’s why he’s out here.”

“No more sleeping bags,” the guy says, lowering his head to glower at you. “You hear? You’re not the only person who needs them. I can’t keep wasting them on you.”

The driver rolls his eyes. “Yeah, you tell him.”

Turn to walk away. The man behind you glares. He wears a black eye patch, like a pirate.

“There was a Lorraine,” you insist.

His eye could burn holes. The man swallows hard, making the dragon tattoo on his neck ripple. He shifts on his aluminum crutches, moving closer to you. He has a snow-white cast on his right leg from his thigh to his foot.