Broken Monsters (4 page)

He shakes his head and guides his board over to the car. He grabs onto the side mirror to bring himself to a bumping stop and leans down to greet through the window. “Hola, Mrs. V.”

“It's
Ms
.,” her mother says. “And I prefer Detective Versado. Or ma'am. As in, ‘No, ma'am, that's not marijuana you can smell coming off me like I've taken up residence inside a bong.'''

“Legal in several states now,” he grins.

“So move to Colorado.”

“Mom!” Layla winces. “Leave off. Please.” She opens the door to climb in the back.

“Don't you want to sit up front?”

“Nah. This way I can pretend I'm one of your perps. You treat me like a criminal anyway.”

“Well, if I catch you smoking that stuff…”

“You
won't,
” Layla retorts. Catch her that is. Especially if she can lurk in the backseat and shut down the conversation. Then she can lie down in the back and watch the streamers of lights out the window, like she used to when she was a little kid when they went out for dinner and she fell asleep in the back and her dad would lift her out and carry her into the house to install her in her bed, smelling like cigarettes and sweat and the sharp aftershave he always wore for special occasions. She feels a burn of nostalgia for that little kid and that happy family.

“Later,” Dor says now, kicking away.

“Bye,” she says, going for casual disdain, which seems to work on boys like him, along with lots of eyeliner. And tits. And being three years older, and not such a colossal dork. God, she's so screwed.

Her mother is watching her in the rear-view mirror, with that little crease tugging downwards at the corner of her mouth, the one that didn't used to be there. It's a PD thing. “You know, there are studies that show—”

“Yeah, yeah, I
know,
Mom. Weed corrodes the brain, I'm gonna be sorry when the only job I can get is flipping burgers. Or worse. End up po-lice.”

“Sure wouldn't want that,” her mother says mildly, but Layla knows she got to her by the way she pulls away, jerking the steering wheel into a hard U-turn toward the freeway.

“I had a weird case today,” she says. Opening gambit. Layla's not falling for it. She engages super-surly mode from the drop-down menu of emotional options in her head.

“I wish you wouldn't talk to my friends.”

“Don't worry. The feeling's mutual. Dorian, anyway. I like Cas, though.”

“And don't rate them either. This isn't the friend Olympics. They don't get a score out of ten.”

“Do you
want
to walk home?”

“Dorian could have given me a ride.”

“I suppose he is cute, in that deadbeat stoner way.”

“Mom!” Layla dies inside. If it's that transparent to her
mother,
then the whole world knows. Which means it's obvious to Dorian as well, and that's too hideous to contemplate.

“All right, all right. Truce. I bought you some lipgloss.”

“Swell,” Layla says. She sits up, pulls out her phone and starts typing a text to Cas.

“I had to use some of it,” her mother says. “Hope you don't mind.”

“Mom, this stuff's a con. It dehydrates your skin so you have to keep applying it.”

But the thought of the soft, sweet slick of the gloss is suddenly very appealing. She presses her lips together to see how dry they are. Pretty dry. She runs her tongue along the edge of her incisors, which makes her super-aware of how her teeth are part of her skull. She feels a little queasy at the thought of the exposed bone, right there in the open. The inside out. She drags her mind back to the last thing her mom said through the warm blur of the weed. Lipgloss. Right. “What flavor is it?”

“Cherry. Don't you want to know what I used it for?”

“Putting on your lips?” Layla says. Drop-down menu: maximum sarcasm.

“To cover the smell of a body.”

“That doesn't work. I saw it on the crime channel. Anyway, gross. I don't want to hear about some dead person.”

“You sure? Not even the part where I punked the rookie? Who, unlike you, does not watch the crime channel.”

“If you're so desperate to talk about it, go ahead.”

“I shouldn't tell you. It was messed up.”

“Or don't. Whatever. I'm not your therapist.”

“I'll give him this. He turned green, but he didn't spew.”

“That's pretty cold, Mom.”

“Poor guy. Guess he should watch more TV.” She turns thoughtful. Enough for Layla to lower the phone. “Poor kid, too.”

“It was a kid?”

“Like I said, it was messed up.” Her mother glides away from the conversation like Dorian on his skateboard.

“Someone I know?”

“I don't think so, baby. And you know we don't talk shop.”

“I thought we just were.”

“Yeah, I know. That was indiscreet of me.”

“So be indiscreet. Who am I gonna tell?”

“Layla, we haven't even notified the family yet.”

“Fine. Whatever. You started it.”

“It's been a rough day. Sorry.”

“Me too.” She throws herself back in the seat and picks up her phone again. A force shield against parental stupidity.

He heard
Louanne was back in Michigan, but it took Clayton the better part of two weeks and a lot of driving to find her. You got to concentrate driving at night, but it keeps your mind occupied.

He downs those Monster energy drinks to keep him awake and to counteract the effect of the OxyContin and some kind of super-strength Tylenol in red gel caps he buys from a dealer in Hamtramck, who gets them from Mexico, because he's wrecked his back and doctors are all full of shit.

And even though he doesn't sleep, he has dreams. Crazy dreams. Sometimes while he's driving, his brain summons shapes up out of the darkness. Like tonight. He drove through a pile of wet leaves, and it was like a mush of crows, all rotten feathers and pointy beaks.

He wonders if his old man ever saw things on the road when he was trucking long-distance across the country. He never asked him. Sometimes he would take Clayton with him on the shorter hops, to Chicago or Buffalo. They didn't talk on those trips. Clayton was too scared to say the wrong thing, in awe of the man who chewed gum nonstop because tobacco would give you the cancer, and they'd drive for hours like that, both of them silent, watching the miles peel past. Eventually his old man stopped taking him because he couldn't miss school. But when he graduated and said he wanted to make art, his father shrugged and said, so do it then, long as you can feed you and yours.

When the cancer got him anyway, forty-eight years old, younger than Clayton is now, hiding in the recesses of his pancreas, he left his son the house and enough money to do some courses and live for a while just working on his art. For years he made the visions in his head, dragged them out with paint or an acetylene torch, and even sold some of them. He used to work in the early hours, carried by inspiration and the dwindling supply of banknotes from whatever scrounge job he'd done last. Better than any clock, those banknotes, ticking off the days until he'd have to put down his brush or his chisel or his torch.

His versatility comes from doing jobs that could feed his art. He learned how to weld working on armor-plated cars right here in Detroit before they were shipped off for the first Iraq war. Learned woodwork in a sign factory. But the last while he's had to take anything he can get to bridge the gaps, which seem to be getting shorter and shorter, because the money doesn't last as long, and the guys doing the hiring look past him to younger, stronger men. Everyone's always looking for the new thing, as if his age and experience count for shit. He's only fifty-three. He's still strong enough to work, any job you like, and he's just as good as those kids. He's got perspective.

It's what he told that shrimpy little curator Patrick Thorpe. Practically begged him for a chance to be included in the group show—got down on his knees like a marriage proposal, in the middle of Honey Bee supermarket. Patrick hemmed and hawed and said he'd have to talk to the others, but why didn't Clayton make something and they'd see.

It paralyzed him, of course. Everything he tried seemed like a dead thing under his hands. Until he heard Lou was back. Lou and Charlie. It's good to be driving with a purpose, but that's the easy part.

The talking was hard. Asking people if they'd seen a redhead in an old silver Ford Colt with a kid with her. He had to make up stories. They didn't like that he was just a dad looking for his kid. Because that came with a big ugly question mark: what did you
do?
Nothing. That's the problem. He let her go.

He went to the diner where he and Lou first met, and the manager said that she'd been back working her old job, but he had had to let her go when he caught her stealing singles from the tip jar. He heard she was living out of her car now, a real shame, but what was he supposed to do?

It gave Clayton a lead though, because there are only so many places a woman with a kid and no home but a car can go. He tried all the RV parks around Detroit, and then further out. In Muskegon, he found a lady who'd been renting her a trailer who said she'd got a letter from Lou promising to pay the month's rent she skipped out on if she'd forward her mail to a Mail Boxes Etc. in Traverse City. She gave him the thin wedge of envelopes (bills, all bills) to pass on to her direct. Such a sweet little boy, the landlady said.

He tried to josh with her, about how he wanted to teach Charlie to use a welding torch, when he was a little older, of course, because a little kid might burn his own face right off, but the words came out wrong, and the woman frowned and said maybe it wasn't Traverse City, maybe it was Grand Rapids. And she should probably hang on to the mail after all, but it sure was nice to meet him and good luck finding Lou, and could he please remind her about the rent.

After that, it was easy. The Mail Boxes Etc. was right next to a Walmart and there, in the parking lot, was the silver Colt, nestled up next to a shiny new RV with lace curtains and cream trim parked next to a row of trees clinging to their last leaves.

Across the lot, the glass storefront beckoned, a shining portal into the land of anything you want, 24/7. Come in, come in, it's all in here.

Clayton knows you can camp overnight outside a Walmart, no trailer-park fees required. You could see the whole of America that way. A pilgrimage for the restless and the lost.

He pulled in next to the shopping carts corralled between the railings and turned off his truck. He sat there for a moment, under the corn-colored lights, listening to the engine tick over, noticing how the dark puddles were full of reflected neon.

Sleeping in cars, he thought. That's no good for anyone. They could come home with him. Her and Charlie. He'd have to tidy up, but he's got the room to spare.

He swung open the door of his truck and climbed down. Her car still had a crumpled bumper, same as when he met her. Both of their vehicles were a little battered, he thought, just like they were.

Lou was in front, her seat tilted right back. Funny how you can recognize someone just by the shape of their head. He thought he spotted the kid in the back of the car. Mop of curly hair among the rubble of their life. Boxes and blankets and crap. A CD boombox on top, the blue LED display the only light in the vehicle.

He tapped on the Colt's window. Once, twice, his knuckles freckled with white scars and the beginnings of liver spots and old cigarette burns from back when he thought that might help.

“Hey Lou,” he said. “It's me.”

She shifted, then sat upright in alarm. The stripe of light across her face and her wild red hair made her look like a girl in a music video, only not as pretty.

“Roll down the window,” he said and she did, but only a thin slice, enough for him to hear the kids' lullabies playing on the CD.

“What are you doing here?” she whispered, probably harsher than she meant to.

“I came to say hello.”

“Oh no,” she said, louder, tilting her chin to get her mouth closer to the crack of the window. “Get your ass out of here. I don't want to see you. You hear me, Clayton Broom?”

“I was in the area.”

“Detroit's four hours away.”

“Maybe I live here now. It's a nice place, Traverse City.” He'd only seen what he drove through to get here, the night lying heavy on the empty streets. That's when the borders are the most porous between the worlds, and unnatural things leak out of people's heads and move freely.

“You're lying again.”

“I joke around a little, I'm a joker.”

“Ain't funny, Clayton. Wait.” She struggled with her seatbelt. He thought that was a strange thing to do, clip yourself into a parked car. Maybe it was to hold her in place for sleeping. Like men strapping themselves into bunks on ships.

She yanked up the knob of the lock and eased the door open so she could slip out. The light inside was busted. She was wearing tracksuit pants, a green sweatshirt, and woolly pink socks. She was going to get them filthy out here.

She took his arm in a C-clamp grip, and steered him away from the car, right under the light, so he could see how much the color in her hair had faded. She used to dye it deep red, like hotel carpets, but the henna was growing out, showing brown and gray roots. Calico cat. Like the one that used to live with them when he was squatting with all those young artist kids in the building overlooking the kosher butchers in Eastern Market.

“Why are you here?” Lou demanded. “Middle of the night.”

“It's not okay for a man to look up an old flame?”

“Flame.” She laughed, but the sound was as brittle as the neon light of the store logo. “What we had was a matchstick, Clayton. Burned out, like that.” She snapped her fingers.

He tried again. “I wanted to see how you are.”

She put out her arms and performed a clumsy pirouette in her socks. She stumbled, which made his heart break a little more. “You've seen,” she said. “Now you can take off.”

“You're living out of a car, Lou.”

“Only for now. I had a place. I'll get one again. I got a job interview here next week.”

“Here?”

“You never met someone who worked in a Walmart before?”

“How is Charlie?”

“Fine. He's fine.” She turned cautious.

“I want to see him.”

“You don't got no business with him. Besides, he's not even here.”

“Where is he, then?”

“Around. Visiting.” Her eyes skipped to the car. One blue, one brown, the most striking thing about her sharp little face. Just like that calico cat. It used to claw and bite if you tried to pick it up. He shut it up in the cupboard above the sink once, as a joke. It broke plates. Scratched one of the girls when she opened it. Hard to say who was more mad, the girl or the cat. He was sorry she got hurt, but it was funny as hell.

He tried again. “I brought him a present.”

“What kind of present?”

“
Now
you got time for me?” He smiled, even though he was annoyed by the flash of greed that lit her up. She saw that he'd noticed, and got pissy.

“You want to come here, get me up in the middle of the night? Best you have something to make up for that.”

He felt sorry for her. All this need in the world. He tried to remember when he last slept.

“It's in the truck,” he said, still hoping he could save this. “Lemme get it.”

She rubbed her arms and stared out across the rows of empty bays to the store entrance. A street-cleaning machine was chugging along across the road.

“You want my jacket, baby?”

“I want the present and then you can go.”

He pushed her a little. “No ‘how are you? Good to see you'?''

“You wanna play like that? Okay. How are you, Clayton?”

“Well, to tell you straight, Lou, I'm doing pretty bad. It's the dreams again.”

“Not this fourth-dimension shit again.” She pinched down her arms, as if checking she was still there. “Ain't nothing but your messed-up head.”

“I don't even have to be asleep. Sometimes I dream with my eyes open. I see things. Maybe some people are more open to it. I think some places the walls are thinner, like a cheap motel.”

“You should probably go find one of those. I'm tired of talking. It's late. I want to go back to sleep with my boy.”

“No, wait, please, Lou. Lemme get his present, okay?
Please
. I came all this way.” He went over to the truck and lifted it out of the footwell: a stout metal barrel made from an old muffler, with stumpy legs and a pointy head with pert ears and a snout. It still made him laugh to look at it. He turned, expecting her to share his delight. “Here. I made it specially for Charlie.”

“What's that s'posed to be?”

“A dog. Every kid needs a dog. Look, it can bark and wag.” He demonstrated the clever hinge he put in the jaw that opened and closed, the bouncy spring of the tail.

“That don't look like no dog I ever saw, Clayton Broom. That'll put the fright into him. Probably cut himself on it, too.”

“I smoothed off the edges, don't worry. I wanted to let it oxidize so it would look like it had brown fur to match Charlie's hair.”

“He got red hair.”

“You got red hair, baby.” He laughed. “Right out of the bottle. Charlie takes after me. My hair was brown before it turned white.”

“Don't you know nothing?” Her eyes went silvery with tears.

“Hey, hey, baby, it's okay.” He tried to put his arms around her, but she shrank away.

She used to laugh at his jokes. He was sure she did. He told her the story about the cat in the cupboard and she laughed and laughed. The prettiest waitress at the diner, he told her, even if it was a lie. He offered to drive her home one night after work, stuck around until her shift was over, even helped her mop up the floor, turn the chairs around. He took her back to her place, where she knocked back a half-jack of vodka and cried on his shoulder about her shit-heel ex-husbands. Two already and her the wrong side of forty. He told her about the world under the world, and that scared her a little, but it made her come closer too. They were both lonely and afraid and there's nothing wrong with what happened next. Only natural.

“I want to see him, Lou,” Clayton said.

“He's not here.”

“Who's in the back of the car then? Yoo-hoo, Charlie-boy!” He waved at the little boy shape sitting up among the boxes and the lumpy bags. Two years old. Exactly the right age. He and Lou were together before she took off for Minneapolis with that Ryan guy. He'd done the math.

“Mama?” The car door swung open, and Charlie slid out, rubbing his eyes. Clayton filled up with unbearable pride at how beautiful he was, this little boy. Better than all his art. The masterpiece of human biology. It's a goddamn miracle is what it is.

“Charlie, it's all right, sweetheart. Get back in the car. Go back to sleep.”