Broken (9 page)

Kyle stands and takes her glass, bringing both to the kitchen and washing them out. Then he stares at her for a moment.

“You sure you’re going to be okay?”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I don’t need to go. That couch looks very comfortable.”

“Thank you, but no. I’m fine.”

“You have my cell, right? And home number?”

She nods. “Want to give me your blood type too?”

“You better not need anybody’s blood type, okay?”

“I won’t.”

As Kyle stands at the door, looking so cute and awkward and speechless, Laila leans over and gives him a kiss on his cheek.

“Good night.”

She locks the door and stands there in silence, wondering what’s outside waiting for her.

Wondering if they’ll come lurking when her bodyguard is gone.

•   •   •

Lex dumps the bag on the hotel bed. Scraps of his sister’s life stare back at him. He looks at them again, wondering if there’s
something he missed, wondering where to go from here. His head still hurts from being rammed into the leather headrest. He
is just thankful he was close enough to a gas station to call a cab back to his hotel. He knows he needs to leave.

His family needs him back home.

Yet a lost member of that family needs his help too.

None of these things help him. A tank top. An empty journal. A ticket stub to
Wicked
from a couple of years ago. Random little bits of nothing.

He goes through the journal once again and finds the same thing he found twice before. Empty, blank pages.

Even the couple of bills don’t help. Too bad there’s not a cell phone bill. That way he could get some more names and numbers.

“Yeah, that’s probably all you need, Lexi.”

He smiles saying that name. That’s the name Laila always used to call him. The more he told her he hated it, the more she
called him by it.

He picks up the three photos that were in the journal.

One is a shot of her, except only the top of her hair and one of her eyes is shown in the corner of the photo. He can tell
she is laughing, however. She’s got that look about her. She still looks the
same. Beautiful, exotic, haunting. Strange to think in those terms because she’s his sister, but she is nevertheless. He
can’t tell where this shot was taken, but it looks like she was trying to avoid the picture and managed to just slightly get
in the shot. The next is a photo of a man—maybe in his thirties, good-looking, wearing a tie and a coat. Something about the
glance makes Lex think this man is in love with the person taking the picture. And something about the glance makes Lex believe
it was Laila behind the lens, snapping it. There is no name on the back of the photo, no date, nothing.

The third picture is of a boat, probably in Lake Michigan. It looks like the photo was taken on a pier looking out.

“
Precious
,” he reads from the side of the boat.

He thinks of the
Lord of the Rings
saga and of Gollum fondling the ring and whispering that word in his very unique way.

The pictures are interesting but again don’t give him anything to go on. The man in the picture and the boat (probably both
related) are somehow meaningful enough for Laila to have kept. So why didn’t she take them with her?

It’s early Monday morning, and soon the sun will be rising. He will need to call home.

He’s unsure what he will say.

I was baptized in fourth grade. It was after my father’s big conversion, his big On-the-Road-to-Damascus saga that changed
our lives. Changing it enough to make us move and have him go in search of the Almighty somewhere in Texas. Believe me, if
the Almighty exists, He sure isn’t hanging out in Texas.

It’s funny. So many people I came to know in New York and Chicago would probably look at me in complete bewilderment after
saying a phrase like that: on the road to Damascus. Papa took us to so many churches that I grew to know the stories well.
I can still recite them. But knowing the stories doesn’t get you far at all. It just reminds you of what you’re supposedly
missing, or how deluded some loved ones are.

I always wondered after our family got baptized in that little church whether I was a different person. But inside, deep down,
I still had all these questions. “Okay, God, if You’re there why did You take our mom?” And, “Okay, God, if You’re there,
why would You continue to allow things to happen again and again and again?” Soon I stopped saying “okay, God,” and I finally
began to simply say “okay,” and I moved on.

I guess that baptism was supposed to mean something, but if you don’t have the faith and the belief, then it’s nothing more
than warm bathwater being poured over your head and that’s that.

B
y the seventh or eighth blow, it’s no longer any fun. There’s no more information to get because the guy doesn’t have any
to give. He’s pathetic. He’s wailing with his nose gushing and spit slobbering all over his shirt and chest and hands, and
he’s just a complete mess. James has seen many men resort to becoming blubbering mushes after the pain sets into something
worse. A fear of more. A fear that perhaps this is it.

“Just shut up for a minute already,” James tells him.

He hands the young guy a towel. His name is Kyle Ewing. He works with Laila and has been trying to get her to go out with
him for some time, and it’s only been a few days since she said yes. She’s in trouble, and she wanted company. That’s it.
That’s all Kyle said and by now James believes him. The guy is confused and bewildered and blabbers nothing at all, and James
tells him he’s not going to kill him.

“Please, look, I don’t know what else to say, and I didn’t do anything wrong—”

“I know, I know, just shut it for a second.” James curses. “Laila owes me something, and this is a nice little way to remind
her. I just want you to remember something—you have nothing to do with any of this, you got that?”

The beauty of the country is that a nice twenty-minute drive can bring complete and utter seclusion. Enough to where a man
can get a kid held by gunpoint on his knees at the edge of a dirt road, and then he can pummel that kid into telling him whatever.

“I’m going to take you back to our little friend’s apartment, and I want you to send her a very specific message, you got
that?”

The guy nods, blood staining the towel he wipes his face with.

“I don’t want to hurt anybody,” James says. “I don’t like hurting people.”

The guy just looks at him. No clever lines, no bravery, no nothing.

James likes that. It’s easier when they don’t decide to try and be brave.

His cell phone rings, and James picks it up.

“Right on course. Now leave me alone.”

•   •   •

The soccer ball looks ordinary, scuffed, still solid enough to be used for a game.

But as Laila looks at it, a wave of terror fills her.

It was right next to her on the bed when she awoke a few moments ago.

More than anything, the terror she feels comes from confusion. She doesn’t get it and wonders whether she’s supposed to. If
the ball is supposed to be a message, a threat, she doesn’t understand what he’s trying to communicate. Was he that lacking
in creativity and simply wanted to show that he had slipped inside her apartment last night?

The thought of James standing at her bedside watching her in the darkness makes her skin prickle.

Laila continues to wonder if someone is still there. She searched every place in her apartment that somebody might be hiding,
but still she has doubts.

She hates having any kind of doubt.

And the ball isn’t about to provide any answers.

Even though there’s nothing scary about it, she can’t help shivering as she touches it. She wants to make sure it’s real.

Her buzzer sounds, causing her to jump slightly. Laila goes to the monitor.

“Hello?” she calls in.

But the buzzer just keeps going off.

She walks out on her deck and looks over the railing. She calls out to see who is there.

“It’s me. Let me in.”

She sees Kyle.

She doesn’t ring him in. Instead she bolts down the stairs and
opens the door and rushes to see it up close. She curses and asks him what happened.

“Just let me in, okay.”

“Who did this?”

“I think you know who did this. Let’s get off the street.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Yeah, I’m hurt. But I’m not gonna die or anything. Let’s just get in.”

Inside, after cleaning up in the bathroom, Kyle leans against the kitchen counter and says it again. “We need to call the
cops.”

“No.” Laila has been in action mode, helping Kyle wash his face and stop the bleeding and also giving him one of her T-shirts
while she’s soaking his bloodstained shirt in the sink.

“Laila, just listen to me for a minute.”

“I’m listening.”

“Then stop running around.”

She pauses and breathes in and doesn’t want to tell him the truth.

All of this will hit her eventually if she slows down long enough to think about it.

“Listen—if he did this to me—someone he doesn’t even know—what in the world is he going to do to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Who is he, Laila? And why did he do it?”

“Let me see if I can find you another T-shirt. That one looks too tight on you.”

“Stop—please.”

She turns and looks at him. She can see it all over his face, and she hates herself because she’s the reason the fear is there.

“I’m sorry that you had to get involved.”

“Involved in what?” Kyle asks, the swath of paper towels filled with ice pressed against his temple.

“I can’t tell you.”

“Not even after this?”

“Kyle—just—you have to leave me be. Okay?”

“Leave you to what?”

She sighs.

“Leave you to what?”

“This will all be over very soon.”

“And what’s that mean?”

She doesn’t answer.

“He told me this is just a little ‘taste’ of what’s to come if you don’t help him out. Where’s your family?”

“I told you—they’re in Texas.”

“If I were you, I’d call them.”

“You’re not me, and you don’t understand. And I’m sorry to have involved you in any way, I really am. I just—I can’t say anything
more.”

“I almost got killed out there,” he says.

“That was not my fault. I didn’t do it.”

“You can at least tell me why.”

She curses. “I’m not going to tell you, so you can stop asking. And all this will be out of your hair in just a short while,
and then you can do whatever you want.”

“I’m just trying to help.”

“Well look where that got you.”

He goes to say something but then pauses. She can tell his left eye is swelling. For a moment she feels protective, and all
she wants to do is hug him and tell him it’s going to be okay. But that would be a lie.

“Did he say anything else?” Laila asks.

“No.”

She stands there looking at Kyle. Light seeps in from the window and makes lines over the floor. A bird on her deck is singing
away.

It’s just another day.

She looks at his bruised face.

“I’m not responsible for you,” she says.

“I never said you were.”

“Okay.”

“But give me a little more responsibility. Let me help you, Laila. Please. I don’t want anything—I don’t want this—to happen
to you.”

“It already did and it’s already done and there’s nothing you can do. There’s nothing anybody can do.”

“We can get help.”

“Help isn’t going to come, and believe me—just please, believe me. And get it out of your head. You and I both know that if
I wasn’t some chick you wouldn’t be so obliging and helpful.”

He shakes his head. “That’s unfair.”

“It’s true, and you know it. So you need to take that big, kind heart of yours and spend it on some other girl who surely
deserves it. Okay?”

Kyle puts the ice in the kitchen sink, and he cleans his hands again. He glances at her, waits to see if she’s going to say
anything, then he opens the door and leaves.

•   •   •

“You need something to drink, honey?”

It’s been a while since somebody called Lex that. “Just a Coke.”

“That really all you want?” the waitress asks him.

“That’s all I better have.”

“What about something to eat?”

“I’m still debatin’. Let me keep the menu.”

Lex notes the Budweiser logo on the wall and thinks about how long it’s been. That’s what Dena’s scared of most. Not that
he’s gone and missing household chores but that he’s going to do something stupid just like the ten thousand times before
and leave Dena alone. The thought of a cold one is nice. It’d be nice to just have one and relax. But he’s never known what
it’s like to have just one and probably never will.

He rubs his eyes and sips on his Coke and wonders about lunch
when his phone rings. He quickly opens the cell phone. “Dena, where you been? I’ve tried calling you half a dozen times.”

“Lex?”

For a moment he can’t say anything, and he turns because it’s as if the voice is just behind him, taunting him. Haunting him.

“Lex, is that you?”

“Laila?”

“It’s really you.”

“My God, Laila, where are you?”

“I’m in trouble.”

Lex marvels at how prayers can be answered. Rather than finding her, she’s found him.

“Let me come get you,” he tells her.

“No. I just—how are things back home? I’m worried.”

“Where are you right now?”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah, it matters a lot. You need to come home.”

“How’s Papa?”

“Laila—it’s been four years, right?”

“Tell me.”

“It’s complicated. It’s been—a lot has happened that you need to know about and I can’t just—I’m not going to just tell you
on the phone.”

“I need to know.” Her voice is vulnerable, and he can almost hear the ache throughout it.

“I’m lookin’ for you—you know that?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m in Chicago. Or I was. Laila, what have you been up to? What sort of men you been hangin’ around?”