Broken (2 page)

If someone is watching her, they can see she’s not scared.

At least that’s what Laila hopes they see.

•   •   •

Lex studies the blonde’s face as she passes him. She’s oblivious, probably used to this type of gawking from men on a daily
basis. Lex looks at the picture he printed off the Web and knows it’s her. Something in her eyes gives her away.

He slips the photo into his shirt pocket, stands up, and starts walking. His butt is numb from sitting on the cement wall
in the square for the last hour waiting. Waiting and hoping she would be coming this direction just like the guy told her
she always did. Sure enough, she stepped over a Manhattan curb, crossed the street, and entered the square on the way to her
job, passing right by him.

As he follows her he wonders where this is going to lead him. He
knows this is the start, but he fears it will also be the end. He might get nowhere and find the journey he just started
is over.

Lex waits for a few minutes, then enters the outside seating area of the wine bar. He’s given a menu and glances at a couple
enjoying wine and cheese as a nice happy-hour appetizer. When she comes up to his table, the woman has no idea he’s here for
her.

“How are you doing?” she asks.

“Good, thanks,” Lex says, hearing the nervousness in his voice.

She asks him if he’s interested in a special Shiraz that just arrived. His mouth waters, and he smiles and shakes his head.

“No, no wine for me, thank you.”

The blonde gives him one of those looks people who sit down here but don’t order wine surely get. She already starts to glance
at other tables, already giving up on him.

“Look, this is going to sound strange, but I need to talk to you about Laila Torres.”

The eyes grow cold fast. “I don’t know anyone named Laila.”

She says this too quickly, yet it doesn’t surprise him. She’s moving away from the table when he asks her to stop. “Here,
just take a look at this.”

He produces the photo and shows it to her. When she sees it, tears come to her eyes.

“What do you want?” She looks around to see if anyone is watching her.

“Just a chance to talk.”

“Look, I have a job to do, and I really can’t talk right now, you know?”

“It’s fine,” he says. “I just—here’s my card with the number of the hotel I’m staying at. I could meet you here after work.”

“I don’t think so,” she says quickly, almost defensively as if she’s heard this before a hundred times.

“Then I can meet you anywhere. Anytime. I don’t care.”

She studies him, then takes the card and puts it in her apron. She walks off without saying a word.

•   •   •

Laila feels watched. Like a warm whisper in her ear, a nudging finger against her side, an insect crawling over her skin.
The feeling makes her want to claw at her flesh to tear it away. But instead she stands still like everybody else as she listens
to the strangers around her sing the song about turning someone’s darkness into light.

Laila breathes in. Something presses against her, the weight pounding her head. Dizzy and stuck, Laila forces her eyes to
remain open. She wants to curl up and drift away. But she knows the darkness only brings layers to the pain. Memories are
brighter when the dusk falls.

She glances around the church. She’s not like them and never will be. The scars aren’t the reason why. It’s this life. A couple
in front of her holds hands. A teenager sways to the song. An elderly man closes his eyes in what appears to be a prayer.
All while she stands feeling watched.

The room is full. Yet it is nothing like the Sunday mornings of her youth stuck in the sweltering heat of that tiny church
with people in their church clothes, sitting in the same pew as always, singing from hymnals and shouting an occasional “Amen”
or “Hallelujah.” Here the dress is casual, the lyrics are printed on two big screens on each side of the podium, and the meeting
is set in a temperature-controlled room that doubles as a gymnasium with its basketball rims hoisted up.

She wants to scratch her arms, her neck, her back.

Shelley gives her a smile that Laila returns.

The petite blonde lives a few doors down from her. After a couple of months of coming up with excuses, Laila finally gave
in and went with her to church. It’s hard to tell the vibrant woman no. But standing and listening to the others singing,
Laila wishes she had been honest with Shelley. As honest as she could be.

Just as she turns her head to glance down an aisle of people in front of her, Laila sees him.

The man turns around. And he smiles the same way he smiled at her right before she shot him.

It’s a sickly smile, the kind a ravenous dog might give after ripping out someone’s throat, then sucking in air as the blood
drips from its mouth.

Laila stops breathing.

She closes her eyes, then opens them again. He’s still there. Not smiling but leering, his eyes narrow steel, their color
lifeless.

“What is it?” Shelley asks her.

Laila sees something in the man’s teeth—something starting to cover them. Blood. Blood covering them like it might smother
a fresh wound.

Laila rushes out of the aisle toward the closed back doors and goes into the lobby and still finds it hard to breathe.

She looks out the glass doors and thinks about running through them and not stopping.

She feels the emotion coming to her face. The tears ready and waiting. Yet they remain in holding, in a cell in the darkness
of some deep lodge in her soul.

Laila knows she needs to leave the lobby before someone like Shelley finds her.

Before she sees the ghost again.

She rushes to the bathroom downstairs in the section where the classrooms and nurseries are. This isn’t a place for her. She
doesn’t belong here. She breathes in and out and feels dizzy.

She closes her eyes and can see him again.

“That was not real,” she says.

She goes into the stall and stares at the ceramic tile on the wall. Laila knows she is being haunted by a demon. That she
is being hunted for what she’s done. And that there is no way of ever taking it back.

She shakes her head and feels her legs weaken and then falls to the floor into a sweet and rich velvet darkness.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m some helpless child.”

Shelley laughs and takes a bite of the pizza on the paper plate. “I wouldn’t say child. But helpless, well—”

“I told you it was my low blood sugar.”

Shelley doesn’t seem to believe the lie. She was the one who found Laila on the floor of the bathroom at church. Thankfully
it was her and not the spirit or whatever it was that she saw with the glistening blood teeth.

“And that’s why you left the service so quickly?”

Laila nods as she sips on the soda and stares at the half-eaten piece of pizza.

“You should eat more than that.”

“I know.”

“You know—you looked pale when we first got there. I was thinking you were sick to your stomach.”

“I wasn’t feeling great.”

“Sorry,” Shelley says.

“What for?”

“I was the one who kept asking to bring you to church. Doing the ‘neighborly’ thing, you know. Nice first impression, huh?”

“Shelley, listen to me. Don’t ever apologize for doing something out of kindness. Ever. Okay?”

“Yeah. Just—how’d you like those bathroom floors?”

Laila laughs. “A bit hard on the head.”

“You sure took a tumble.”

“I should just take better care of myself.”

“Yes. Definitely. Stick around with me and I’ll show you how.”

Shelley finishes off her piece of pizza and takes another slice. It makes Laila smile to see such a little thing with such
a big appetite.

“You want to hang out here today?”

“Sure,” Laila says.

She doesn’t want to see what’s waiting for her a few doors down in her apartment.

Laila awakes with a cough and the feeling of something snapping inside of her. Something in her stomach, a muscle or tissue.

She opens her eyes to the darkness of her apartment. It is quiet. Even with the window open, it is still. For a second she
feels a pain tear at her midsection as though something she ate isn’t agreeing with her.

She places a hand on her stomach.

Then she feels it.

Her T-shirt is warm and wet. Her hand moves to her thighs and she can feel something sticky and moist.

She gags and coughs and fights the pain in her belly.

She pulls back the cover and feels her shirt again, her underwear, her legs. They’re soaked. Her hands are wet. She wipes
them together and then against her shirt as she searches to find the light.

She turns it on expecting to find crimson stains but instead she sees nothing.

Just what she wore to bed. The T-shirt still white. Her legs still pink.

The pain in her stomach is still there, however.

She closes her eyes and wonders what is happening to her. But she can’t get rid of the image from six months ago. The blood
seeping through his buttoned-down shirt and even onto his pants. There was so much blood. Her hands grabbing at him to see
if he was alive and then feeling his chest and feeling nothing and then looking at them all wet and soaked exactly like they
just felt.

She stares out a window and wonders if the image will ever go away.

I wonder about them. Often. I wonder what it would be like, the sights and the sounds. The sweetness of coming back home.
Sometimes I’m reminded. Sometimes the most random, simple thing reminds me of a distant, faraway place that’s mythical and
magical. I see the beard, the roughness of the hands, the wrinkles under the eyes. I can hear the music in the background.
I can see the life I left and the life I imagine I loved and that I could love again. But all of that is the dream, the myth.
And all of that evaporates to show the isolation of this island I am on, this place of my own making and choosing, this prison
that I will never be able to leave.

J
ames Brennan sits in his car and closes the cell phone. Then opens it again and snaps it in two, throwing the pieces against
the glass. He beats his palm against the steering wheel, then against the seat next to him. The stale, hot air suffocates
him. But he doesn’t turn on the engine. He just sits here, his back and buttocks wet from sweat. He tries to close his eyes
hard enough to shut them permanently.

He then reaches in his back pocket to find his wallet. He opens it and looks inside. There are a few bills inside, a few credit
cards, not much.

James takes out one of the cards and slowly, deliberately bends it in half. He folds it back and forth until he’s able to
tear it apart. Then he unrolls the window and lets the two pieces drop on the street.

There is a glare from the beating sun that causes him to squint.

For a moment, his hands wrap themselves around the wheel again, and he pulls to see if it will move, to see if he can tear
it off.

He lets out a loud curse.

Then James leans over and puts his head against the wheel.

And he stays like that for a long time.

•   •   •

“It’s okay, you know?”

Laila glances at the man sitting next to her on the stone wall lining the sidewalk. For the first time since meeting Kyle
months ago, she doesn’t question what’s behind those eyes. They’re not like most glances, examining and exploring and wanting.
Kyle looks at ease, patient for her response.

“What’s okay?” She plays with her half-empty iced coffee bought half an hour ago.

“Okay to say yes,” he says.

“I didn’t say no.”

“Your silence says enough.”

She nods at him, then shakes the clear plastic cup in her hands to make some sort of sound. It still seems like yesterday
when Kyle offered to buy her a coffee at the end of a particularly horrible day that punctuated her first week at the bank.
Laila had been too flustered and tired to say no to her coworker, too guarded to say much during that first afternoon together.
It had become a sort of tradition, something they did a couple times a week, something with absolutely no strings attached.

So far Kyle had remained content to let things stay the way they were. Until now.

“It’s okay to have dinner,” he said.

“What does dinner mean?”

“It can mean a lot of things.”

“I know,” she says.

“First off, it means food. You do eat, right?”

“Yes.”

“I’m just saying—don’t give me that look. I just never see you eating at the bank.”

“That’s because I work.”

“You get breaks, you know.”

“I eat plenty.”

“So prove it.”

“I don’t have to prove anything to anybody.”

Kyle gave her an amused glance, her comment surprising him. “I know that. I just—it’s just dinner. It’s not a date. We can
go up the street. I thought—we both get off work at the same time. And it is dinnertime, you know. Unless you eat at ten or
something like that. There’s no pressure. It can be spontaneous. It can be Subway.”

“It can be another time.”

“That’s what you said last time.”

“I thought you said you weren’t asking last time.”

“That’s because I got a no and my male ego was feeling trampled upon.”

She tries to hide the amusement creeping on her face. She doesn’t want her resolve to crumble because of his amiability.

For a moment Laila sees this scene without seeing anything else.

Kyle Ewing is a good guy. At twenty-nine years old his boyishly handsome features say he hasn’t sold out to the establishment
just yet. Wavy brown hair short enough to not get in trouble at the bank but messy enough to say there’s something more. Brown
eyes that show both resolve and mischief depending on the moment. A lean, athletic frame that says he keeps active, keeps
himself out of trouble and bad habits.

But another part of her wipes that all away like an eraser on a chalkboard. A voice deep inside her whispers that behind those
eyes probably lurks something dark and twisted. The smile, the glance, the simple question. There is always something more.