Compromised (14 page)

“Weird.”

“Yep,” I say, and peel off my shirt. “Yours?”

Nicole pauses, then takes her shirt off, too. Her belly is covered with cigarette-tip–size scars. She points to one right above her belly button. “This one. One of Mom's boyfriends.” She starts to soap up her stomach. “I think I wet the bed or something,” she says.

“How old were you?” I ask.

“Three. I dunno.”

“Wow,” I say.

Nicole shrugs.

“Did it hurt?” I look at the countless circles all over her stomach. “I mean did it hurt the same every time?”

Nicole turns to me. “Every fuckin' time. You know what, though? Every time one of her fuckhead boyfriends got on me or something, after she sobered up, she'd tell me about my dad. How he's on the run, you know. He's big in the organization. And Yerington. Fucking Yerington is too small for somebody that big.” She scrubs her body and says over the sound of water, “Those stories, the postcards—they're the only real things I've ever had, you know?”

My stomach flip-flops. “What about your sister?”

Nicole shoots me a sharp look. “She's gone now. What does it matter?”

“In Heaven?” Klon asks.

“I don't know about that Heaven and Hell and stuff,” Nicole says. “Are there rules?” She looks at Klon like she's waiting for a definitive answer.

“All children go to Heaven when they die.” Klondike strips off his shirt. The scar continues down his left shoulder all the way to his waist. When he takes off his pants, we see
how it covers the entire left side of his body. He blows on his fingers and croaks. “But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.” Klondike jerks his head. “Heaven—no matter what—because children's souls are immortal.”

“You think?” she asks. “And when, um, do the doors to the Pearly Gates close? Like, um, when we turn eighteen? Sixteen? Do God and Peter and Gabriel and all those other guys have a legal adult age?”

I can see her doing the math in her head. Klon stares at her for a while. “I don't get it.”

“Never mind,” Nicole says. “But you think she's really in Heaven? Is that possible?”

“I know,” he says. “You'll see her again when it's time.”

She turns away from us. “Maybe,” she mutters.

We're quiet, listening to the whine of the bathroom pipes. I swallow. “And your memory, Klon?”

“Water. My baptism in the icy waters,” he whispers. “Everything except for that and the fire is gone. Except the hate. How she looks at me with hate,” he says. He taps his head and shrugs, making that low croaking sound again. “Fire and water. That's why I had to go. Ma's eyes and the demons.”

The three of us stand in the bathroom—everything exposed. The only sound is the rhythmic drip of water from a leaky faucet.

“Hey. You okay?” I ask. Klondike's side has started to swell—a light bluish color is spreading around his ribs where one of the snakes kicked him.

He nods and tries to pull his too-small shirt over his head. I fish a semiclean one out of my backpack and throw it at him. “Wear this.”

“Thanks,” he says, shivering.

“Colder than a well digger's ass in the Klondike?” I ask.

He grins.

I hand him my coat. “Keep it. We'll find another one.”

“Find?” Nicole asks.

I shrug. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah. I know.”

We finish cleaning and try to comb through each other's hair. No lice or nits yet, as far as I can tell.

“So what's the plan?” Nicole breaks the silence.

The plan? It's totally ad hoc. Every time I try to create a hypothesis and procedure, anomalies come up and I'm scrambling to make sense of everything. Maybe a good scientist would be able to come up with methods to work
with the change in elements. Maybe I'm a really bad scientist.

Finally I say, “I think we need to get out of here. That kid, you know. He could be pretty hurt. I think, um, that I could probably get in big trouble for that.”

Klondike taps my shoulder. “It's okay.” He croaks four times.

“Yeah,” I say, trying to ignore that sick feeling I have in my stomach.

W
e walk through the casino unnoticed. That's a good thing about a border town. People come and go and nobody pays any attention at all. We find the diner. I pull out all the cash we have left. “Five dollars and sixty-seven cents,” I say. I'm trying to remember where we've spent the money: coffees mostly, I guess.

“We can dine and ditch,” Nicole says.

“Yeah. But then a waitress gets stuck with the bill. That's not cool.”

Nicole rolls her eyes.

“Just because people have been bad to us doesn't mean we have to do the same,” I say.

“Oh. The scientist is into karma?”

I shake my head.

“Okay, Girl Scout. How do three people eat with five dollars and sixty-seven cents?” she asks.

I look around the casino floor for nickels, quarters, anything. The swirly red design makes me dizzy. Some old lady spends the last of her change and slips off the plastic stool. I watch her black silhouette against the morning light. All alone. She has no one else but a stupid nickel slot machine.

“The feeding of the five thousand. Luke nine, verses ten to seventeen,” Klondike says, and then lowers his voice in that creepy Darth Vader way, “Asswipe.”

People look up from their slot machines and then go back into their gambling daze.

“Nice, Klon,” I mutter.

Nicole scowls. “What the hell is he talking about?”

“You know, when Jesus multiplies the bread and fish,” I say.

Klondike clenches his fists. I look where he's looking.

His hand lifts up to touch the nickel slot and I slap it away. “We'll get in major trouble if you touch anything here.” I turn to Nicole. “You know that story—when Jesus has one loaf of bread and five fish or something and five
thousand people eat. But it's just a dumb story. Miracles don't really happen in real life,” I say. Unless you pay for them, I think.

Klondike recites the Bible verses, tic free. He balls his fists. It's as if an electric current runs from his toes up to his head. We watch as he twitches, coughs, croaks, and taps both of us when he finishes. Every time he coughs, he grabs his side. His coughs are more wheezes now than croaks.

“Miracles,” Klondike says after a fit of tics, “aren't really miracles at all. Tallywhacker, asswipe. They're just people doing what they should. At one time or another, we all get to have one. I can't wait. ASSWIPES!” he says in that freaky deep voice. Loud. Again people look our way.

“Geez, Klon,” I say. Nicole drops her head.

He jerks his head and blows on his fingers. “I can't help the demons. I don't mean to.” He clenches his jaw. “Sorry.”

“It's okay,” I say.

Nicole sighs. “No big deal. We all have our weird shit to deal with. Jeopardy here, she's a walking Discovery Channel, you know. She spurts out science facts about
anything from the reproductive cycle of tsetse flies to belly-button lint.”

I clear my throat.

“What?” Nicole asks. “You have no interesting facts about belly-button lint?”

I refrain from telling them that a professor in Sydney, Australia, conducted a thorough study of navel lint. He found that most lint migrated up from underwear as opposed to down from shirts. It has to do with the frictional pull of body hair dragging tiny fibers
up
to the belly button. I wonder who
that
character would be in Nicole's mobster bar. Maybe I should tell her. Just to find out.

Nicole laughs. “I know you do. That can be another theme of the day: Everything you know about belly buttons.”

“Yeah.” I turn to Klondike. “And Capone, here, is a walking Mafia-freak tape recorder. And a kleptomaniac on the side.”

Nicole curtsies. “I must say I'm pretty good.” She holds my locket in her hands. I touch my neck.

“When?”

“Ahh, that's the beauty. You'll never know.” She smiles
and dangles the locket in front of me. “Your auntie Em.” She smirks.

I snatch it from her. “Cute. Don't take this, okay?”

“Just trying to prove a point.”

“Point proven.” I put the locket on and tuck it in under my shirt.

The corners of Klondike's mouth curl up. “I'm hungry,” he says, ending with just one cough. He looks more relaxed, like being weird is our normal. So that makes things okay.

“C'mon. Maybe we can get something to eat,” Nicole says. We leave the diner area and stare at the grocery store across from the casino. “Lesson one, Jeopardy.”

“Okay.”

“You like magic. It's like being a magician.”

I glare at her.

“Really. Just a different kind. Maybe you want to trick some cells in someone's body. I want to do a little trick of the eye. You have to misdirect the audience. They'll be looking at what you
want
them to look at while you lift what you really want, okay? Grocery stores are easy,” Nicole continues. “They're big. Not a lot of security. And they have lots of small things, easy to pocket.” Nicole
nudges me. “What are you waiting for?”

I stare at the store and the people going in and out. It would be easy. No problem.

Half an hour later I come out.

“What'd you get?” Nicole asks.

I shake my head and hand her the latest grocery store ads. “Look. With some of the money we had left, I got us a bag of generic cereal and powdered milk. That should last us a while. We still have some change left over.”

Nicole rolls her eyes.

“I'm sorry,” I say. “I couldn't. I got scared…”

How can I explain to her that I just don't want to become my dad? It's one thing when I can pretend the food is from a legitimate source, but another when I can't.

I shrug. “Maybe you could hone your teaching skills a bit. Or maybe I should do some practice shoplifting beforehand.”

“Practice shoplifting? Christ,” Nicole mutters.

I should construct a procedure. A procedure for stealing. I ask Nicole to go through the steps again.

“There are too many scenarios,” she says.

“Just humor me. Give me one.”

She does, and then I construct the plan in my head.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm making the plan—procedure. To steal.”

“Huh?” Nicole asks.

“Listen, you've got your bar. I've got my hypotheses. It helps. Just let me think.”

“Okay,” I say. “I'm ready.”

“So your hypothesis and procedure make it okay now?” Nicole asks.

“Kinda.”

“Well, let's eat first. You can steal lunch.” She laughs. It's like she knows I can't. “It's not like you can go back into the same store.”

“Oh. You didn't say that. I could've, um, changed my plan.”

“Common sense, Jeops. Open up the cereal.”

We open the cereal and the powdered milk. I find an old coffee tin and pour in the powdered milk. Then I go to the grocery store bathroom for water. I pass by the cereal aisle and go through the procedure in my head. But I don't have the jacket. I didn't ask Nicole for it before coming in.

Improvise, I think. I've got to stop being such a
coward. I have to prove that I can do it. So I shove the bars in my shirt and tuck it in. Just as I'm to the door, a man taps me on the shoulder.

I untuck my shirt and the bars spill everywhere. I turn to get away, sloshing the milk all over me, running out to Nicole and Klon. “Run! Run!”

I try to run without spilling any more of the milk. When we get a few blocks away, my front is covered in gooky powdered milk substance. And half our cereal has fallen out because Klon ran with the bag open.

Klon, Nicole, and I look back at the trail.

“Hansel and Gretel,” says Klon.

We nibble on the rest of the cereal, licking the crumbs from the palms of our hands. We take some side streets, backtracking, walking through Jackpot's neighborhoods. “What happened back there?”

“I dunno,” I say. “I tried.”

Nicole says, “Part of success is getting over the initial fear. That's good practice.” She laughs. “But God, I'm hungry.” We walk in silence for a while. Even Nicole can't find anything to say at the moment. “Where are we going?” Nicole finally asks.

“We need a map,” I say. “A road map.”

“Yeah. Like that's gonna be a real help with your sense of direction. What happened to the MapQuest paper, anyway?”

I pull it out, soaked with milk. I've been keeping it under my shirt—a safe place. Now all the roads and numbers look blotchy. I take off my shirt and pull a warm sweater on. It's like cold and lack of food have frozen my brain. I wad up the shirt and shove it into my backpack. “Stupid. Stupid,” I grumble.

“Nice striptease, Jeops,” Nicole says.

“I'm cold,” I say. “And we need a new map.”

“Well, I can steal one from a gas station,” Nicole offers. “Or do you want to?”

“Ha. Ha.” We walk for a while. The sun is up and it's not as cold as before. I rub my arms, glad to have at least a sweater on.

Then I see it. “That's what we need.”

The three of us stand outside the doors. I almost want to go and hug them.

“Another library?” Nicole asks.

“Yep. Maps. Internet. MapQuest. Google Earth. Warmth. Everything.” I turn to Klondike. “Do you think you can keep your croaks to a minimum?”

He shakes his head, and his body jerks in a series of movements. “Probably not.”

I shrug. Nicole sighs. Klondike croaks and says, “Tallywhacker, asswipe.”

“It doesn't matter,” I say. “Ready to go in?”

“Another library,” Nicole mutters and pauses at the door. “Goddamn, these places make me nervous.”