Broken (4 page)

“How can I help you?” she asks again with more attitude.

He gives her a slip of paper with a name, address, and time written on it. He makes sure he speaks very slowly and carefully
so she hears every single word he’s saying.

“I know where you live and where you work. And if you try to run
again, I’ll get you before you leave this city. And trust me—I’m not going to end up like my brother.”

Her eyes widen, and she stares back in silence.

“Don’t disappoint me.” James walks out of the bank and into the sunshine of the day.

•   •   •

The silence creeps over her, its hairy fingers caressing her exposed skin trying to find a spot to burrow into. As much as
she tries to act normal and nonchalant, a panic is simmering deep inside. She knows she needs to do something and do something
fast.

Even though the walk home from work proved uneventful, Laila still felt like she was being watched the entire time. Now, restless
in her quiet apartment, she wonders if she’s being watched or listened to this very instant.

At least she knows for certain who put the bag in her bathtub.

She’s already searched the entire apartment to make sure she is alone, a habit she’s becoming accustomed to. She spent a few
moments looking at the contents of the refrigerator and the pantry, both paltry and proving to offer nothing worth eating.
The call to Shelley produced only an answering machine that Laila doesn’t feel like talking into. She finally finds a fashion
magazine and attempts to read it, but even that brings with it tiny barbs of the past.

On the sixth page, Laila is halted by the arresting image of an ad. A sad smile covers her face.

She knows the girl’s name, a young sixteen-year-old when they first met in New York lifetimes ago. It’s a major ad with a
major label, a life Laila knows well. She finds herself happy for the girl and hopeful that ten years from now she’ll end
up in a better place than Laila did.

It’s difficult reading magazines like this. They are reminders of a life once lived, of a major dream once fulfilled.

What happens after dreams come true? That, Laila knows, is the story never told.

She is contemplating throwing the magazine away when the door slams open. She jumps off her couch. For a second she’s bewildered
because the sound doesn’t come from the doorway to the apartment but rather from her bedroom.

Laila looks down the hallway where she had walked just a few minutes ago. She remains silent, waiting. Listening.

A sound rips again through the apartment. She can feel the rattling on the floor.

It sounds like someone is slamming the door against the wall as hard as he can.

She stands.

Another bang rattles the floor. She can not only hear it, but can feel the banging too.

For a moment she goes toward the hallway, then she holds still.

The violent racket continues, as if whoever is doing it is daring her to come back and see.

She didn’t imagine James Brennan this afternoon, the man who left the address and time for her to meet him this night.

But Laila is more afraid she’ll go back to her room and find nothing.

She is afraid she’s imagining this just like so many other things.

She rushes into the kitchen, digs out a small sheet of handwritten names and numbers. Then she grabs her cell phone before
leaving her place.

The number she dials isn’t just for her protection.

It’s for her sanity.

“This isn’t a practical joke, is it?”

“No.”

Kyle stands and for a moment doesn’t know how to greet her. She
gives him a friendly hug and then sits down. The Mexican restaurant is packed. The scent of lime and salsa makes her mouth
water.

“Thanks for meeting me here.”

“You know—when I said maybe another time, I didn’t think it would mean the very next night.”

“I hope you didn’t have any other plans.”

“None that I couldn’t break.” He laughs and rubs his day’s worth of stubble. “I didn’t know you had my cell number.”

“You gave it to me a while ago.”

“Ah. I don’t think you’ve ever used it, right?”

“No. Look, Kyle, I really appreciate this.”

As she orders a drink, Laila glances around at the strangers sitting at the other tables. She knows she hasn’t been followed—as
much as she could spot, that is.

Laila wonders if James Brennan decided to forget about the time and location and simply terrorize her in her own home. Yet
if that was the case, how did he get into her place without making a single sound?

“Did you come straight from work?” Kyle asks.

“No, I went home. Obviously I didn’t have a chance to change.”

“You look great. You always look great.”

The margarita takes a few moments to kick in. Laila forces a smile, forces herself to eat a few chips and salsa. The music
and the people and the motion all around her feel comforting. Unlike their usual conversations over coffee, their discussion
feels forced and awkward.

Just like always, Kyle doesn’t waste time and shares exactly what he’s thinking.

“What changed your mind?”

“Maybe you sold me.”

“On what?”

“On you.”

Kyle nods, smiles. It’s the sort of face and smile that can be told secrets. That can probably keep secrets.

But hers are not for telling and not for keeping.

“So you’ve never been here before?”

“No.”

“How long have you lived in Greenville?”

“Six months.”

“Six months and you’ve never been here? Seriously?”

“You sound shocked.”

“Best Mexican place in town.”

“Now I know.” Laila takes another sip of the margarita.

“Okay, so do you ever go out at night?”

“Sometimes.”

The sound of his laughter is comforting.

“Vague as usual. Do you know that every single time I try to ask you a question about yourself, you’re vague? Like where you’re
from. Your family. There a reason why you never give me a straight answer?”

“There a reason you don’t take hints?”

He is quiet, long enough for her to reach over and touch his hand. “I’m sorry. That was rude. I’m just—what is it you want
to know?”

“You. That’s all. I just want to get to know you. Like people do. You know—where are you from, what do you do for fun, what’s
your favorite color.”

“White.”

“What?” Kyle obviously thinks she is kidding.

“My favorite color is white.”

He laughs. “Does that even count?”

“Of course it does.”

“Not extremely exciting. Your favorite flavor vanilla?”

“You’re not supposed to mock my answers.”

“That’s right, you gave me a straight answer.”

“I moved here from Chicago six months ago.”

“Right when you got the job.”

“I’m not trying to evade your questions.”

“Okay. I’ll just—I’ll just try not to ask so many.”

“Sounds good to me.”

“We just often spend a lot of time talking about the bank. Or about me.”

“I enjoy hearing about you.”

“I have no idea why, though I know I certainly don’t mind talking about myself.”

“Perhaps, but you don’t brag,” she says. “You talk about the things you see, the questions you have.”

“How bad of a teller I am.”

“At least you know.”

“Just don’t tell anybody,” Kyle says.

They both laugh.

During the next hour, Laila allows herself to stop worrying. With the help of the noise and a couple of drinks and conversation
with Kyle, she actually manages to forget everything for a little while. It feels like someone paddling a canoe in the lake
while their town burns to the ground behind them. They’re talking about favorite places and dream vacations when Laila becomes
more honest than she has been in a while.

“I’d like to go back to New Orleans,” Laila says.

“Really? What for?”

“It’s such an intriguing city.”

“I had some buddies go there for Mardi Gras. Sounds crazy if you ask me.”

“Not—not for any of that. It just has this mysterious and melancholy personality attached to it. I went once. Long time ago.
And after Katrina, I don’t know. It’s like I feel like I have to go back.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It’s like—it’s like a family member being in the hospital. I know that sounds bizarre, but that’s how I feel.
It’s just—since I moved away from Texas, I’ve never really had a chance to go back. Not that I ever saw myself living in the
places I have.”

“Like Greenville?”

“Among other places.”

“New Orleans seems just so—so dirty.”

“It’s a good place to hide from the rest of the world. I thought that once, and I still do. Especially now, since it feels
like the world has sorta abandoned it.”

Kyle stares at her.

“What?” she asks.

“This is the most real I’ve seen you be since you started work.”

“Amazing what a couple of margaritas will do.”

“It’s okay to be yourself,” Kyle says. “At least with me.”

She nods.

“I’m not—I’m not one of them, Laila. I know. It might sound like a line. I’d bet you’ve probably heard them all. But it’s
just—I’m not a guy with lines. I’m just this, right here, sitting across from you with salsa spilled on my shirt.”

“I wondered if you noticed that.”

“You don’t have to worry about being yourself around me.”

“I wouldn’t call it worry.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s called safety. It’s called learning the hard way.”

Her eyes drift away from his and concentrate on a distant piece of art on the wall. It’s an acrylic painting that looks as
if it’s on fire. It’s a bold picture of a lake at sunrise, with red and orange and yellow creases in the waves floating toward
black underneath a large explosion of white and blue in the sky.

For a moment she’s suddenly far away, lost in a painting just like that, in a place she wonders if she’ll ever be able to
find again.

Laila jerks awake.

It feels like someone just touched her face. Gently, the way a parent might stroke the cheek of a child.

For a moment she pictures Kyle, then remembers him saying good-bye at the entrance to her apartment a few hours ago.

Another image comes to her mind. It’s the painting she saw in the restaurant with a slight change. A young couple stands on
the shore looking into the heart of a smoldering sky, holding one another as if their very lives depend on it.

Laila erases the thought as she looks for anything in the room, any sort of shape in the shadow.

Her eyelids want to stick together. She forces them apart.

And there, in the doorway—the open doorway which is normally shut—stands a figure. Tall. Slender. Hovering.

Laila doesn’t hesitate but recoils out of bed and hits her knee against the wall as she slips into the bathroom adjoining
the room. She turns on the light of her closet and rips through a pile of dirty clothes to find the shoe box. She opens it
and finds the revolver inside underneath a pair of tennis shoes she hasn’t worn since buying them three months ago.

With the light blurring everything after flipping the switch, she aims the gun outward toward the door, then toward her bedroom.

“Who’s there?”

She holds the gun and waits for a moment.

She waits to hear anything.

“I said who’s there? I’ve got a gun in my hands in case you’re wondering.”

Eventually she turns on the light in her bedroom.

The blank, stale room greets her.

She looks at the doorway and sees nothing.

She walks down the hallway to the apartment entry.

Nothing.

She checks the door. It’s locked. She continues throughout the rest of the apartment.

Everything is the same as it was when she climbed under the sheets.

She slides open her patio door and can hear the music still playing
in the distance. She’s on the third floor, and she steps out onto the balcony.

The cool night air makes her calm down.

The gun in her hand makes her feel even better.

Laila stares out onto the street below for a long time, thinking, wondering what to do.

She knows she needs to leave and leave soon. The only question now is how to leave without anybody finding out.

•   •   •

“We need you down here, Lex.”

His wife sounds tired and concerned over the phone. They haven’t even been married for one year, yet Dena talks to him as
if they’ve been together for twenty.

In many ways it feels like they have.

“I know,” Lex says in a subdued voice.

“Then when are you comin’ back home?”

“When my business is done.”

They didn’t both agree on this trip he’s taking. It was more like Lex telling Dena that he was leaving, that he needed to
find his sister, that something was wrong. There are things he can’t begin to get into with his wife about Laila. There are
things that nobody knows. Not even Laila.

“Where are you?”

“Drivin’.”

“It’s almost eleven o’clock.”

“I can see that.” He watches the highway through speckles of rain periodically wiped away.

“Drivin’ where?”

“To Chicago.”

“What’s in Chicago?”

“Stop with the interrogation. I’m not one of your students.”

“You’re sure actin’ like one.”

Dena’s Texan accent always seems more pronounced when she’s angry.

“What do you want?”

“I want you home. I want you to stop this.”

“I’ll stop when I’m finished.”

“When what’s finished? How is it going to be finished?”

“Don’t yell. You’re going to wake her.”

“No thanks to you. It took me an hour to get her to bed.”

“Just hush now.”

“You need to come home, Lex. We need you.”

“I know that, and I will be back soon. You’re not workin’. You can handle things.”

“Neither are you.”

“I told work I’d be out for a while.”

“You have work here, at home,” Dena says. “You have duties.”

“Not now. Don’t give me the fatherhood guilt. This is already hard enough as is.”