Girl in Pieces (35 page)

Temple passes me the phone. “Hurry up, okay?” she whispers. “We want to make it to the Tap before last call.” I look at her enviously; all the girls here go out together at night after work, to bars, to parties; they never ask me to go along. I've been trying to talk more with them, but their group seems tight. I'm too young, anyway, to go to bars. Only Linus seems interested in me, mostly in a motherly way, pushing plates of potatoes and bowls of lentils to me across the grill island. Linus does not go out with the girls. Sometimes she'll tell me she's headed to a meeting after work. “Addiction isn't nine to five,” she'll call out cheerfully. “You can feel like shit twenty-four seven. That's partly why I work all these shifts. Have to keep busy, keep the demons at bay.”

“Charlie. Sweet Charlie.” It's a woman; her voice is throaty, assured.

I twist the phone cord between my fingers. “Who is this?”

“Charlie Davis, soul sister, after all the time we spent together, all that time sharing our blood stories, and you don't recognize my voice?”

My heart drops clear to my feet; my entire body goes up in flame. “Hello, Blue.”

I can't be myself

I can't be myself

—Elliott Smith, “Needle in the Hay”

On the phone, Blue said she'd been out for three months and living in Madison with her mother. They weren't getting along, she said, so she thought maybe she'd take a trip to Kansas to see Isis until things cooled off. Isis had wandered to Kansas from Minnesota with a man; now she was selling bags of jerky and jack-off magazines at a truck stop. Isis and Blue were sitting in a bar nursing gin and gingers when they thought of me, and the warm place I'd gone to, and my mother. “I called Creeley and talked to Bruce. He gave me her name—very thoughtful, Bruce, and not one for patient confidentiality. I know you two had your moments, but Bruce is a good sort, underneath all his bluster.”

Blue called my mother. “She's actually very polite! Thought she'd be some kind of monstertron the way you kept clamped up in Group. Keeps abreast of you through the boyfriend. Or, should I say, not-boyfriend.” She paused on the other end of the line and I heard the click of a lighter, the yappy dog-squawk of Isis saying
Oh, you shut your mouth
to someone in the background. “He told her where you worked and, well, I found that number, too. Isn't the Internet wonderful? It's like a big old rock. All sorts of shit crawls out once you kick it over.”

She breathed in a long, almost relieved rush. “I miss you.” She began to sniff. “It's so hard, Charlie. It's just so
hard.
I need a freaking break.”

And now I'm waiting for her at the Greyhound bus station, ignoring leery looks by men with mullets and yellow teeth. I paw the ground with the toe of my boot. Riley wasn't at his house last night when I went over. He wasn't home when I woke up in his bed this morning, either, which made me a little worried. The day is warm, cooler than it has been, but still bright and lovely. It's the beginning of November, and in Minnesota, people are already in winter jackets and boots, huddling against the wind.

I have to be at work in an hour. I buy a Coke from the machine and watch the parade of gray buses pull into the lot. The Coke makes my mouth sticky, too sweet.

She's the last one off, tripping down the final step. She catches herself, blinking in the sunshine, shading her eyes with one hand.

Blue's almost thirty but still looks like a teenager in her tight cargo pants and Lady Gaga T-shirt. It's only up close, like now, that you see her hard life in her face, at the edges of her eyes.

Blue drops the duffel, grabs me in a tight squeeze. “Charlie! My favorite Bloody Cupcake.” She steps back, her eyes grazing every inch of me.

“Holy shit, you look good, Silent Sue. Your hair got so long! Tell me his name.” She lights a cigarette.

“Your teeth,” I say, surprised. “You fixed your teeth.”

“The Lumber King of Madison forked over the cash. He felt guilty, I guess, for fucking me all those years. And I can't fucking tell you how fucking goddamn painful it was, either, getting these teeth. Anyway.” She digs in her purse again. “Shit. I'm out of cigarettes. Where's your car? Can we stop and get some on the way to your place?”

Blue's teeth used to be blunted little nubs. The meth had scrubbed them down, filmed them, made them as soft as Play-Doh. Now she has a full, gleaming set of square, white teeth. Her face is no longer blotched and bloated from meds, but smoothed out by facials and foundation and powder. Her hair is a rich gold color.

“I don't have a car, but I don't live very far, just a few blocks away. Here, I'll carry your bag.”

Blue stares at me. “Are you serious? No car? In this heat? I'm freaking dying, Charlie.” She snaps on large black sunglasses. I shrug.

“Why didn't you fly?” I ask. “I'm sure the Lumber King could afford it.”

Blue snorts. “Oh, no. No planes for me. Scared shitless. No way. We don't belong in the air. That's my personal opinion.”

She taps carefully alongside me in her heels. I sneak a look down: she still has the rings on her toes. For some reason, this makes me more comfortable. I point out things like Hotel Congress and the tiny movie theater that serves cayenne-and-Parmesan-flecked popcorn and shows black-and-white films featuring people with deep, sorrowful accents.

“So, where's this rock star live? Can I meet him?”

We're at the corner of Twelfth; I point vaguely down the street toward his house. “He's not home now.” At least, I don't think he is. Maybe he's back now, sleeping whatever he did off.

“We'll meet up later?”

“Maybe,” I answer noncommittally. I'm not sure why I'm uncomfortable with Blue meeting Riley, but I am. I wave wanly to Hector and Leonard on the porch. Hector sits up straight when he sees Blue and brushes at the sweat pool on his chest. He raises his eyebrows at me. Blue says, “I'm just a little nervous, you know? I need something to
drank,
” and I point to the liquor store next door, even though the thought of Blue drinking fills me with dread and disappointment. I was hoping she'd be clean. Cleaner than me, anyway.

“Gentlemen,” Blue says sweetly. She clicks off to the liquor store.

Leonard's fingers tremble as he packs his pipe, bits of tobacco fluttering to his jeans. Hector helps him.

Leonard rasps, “No trouble, Charlie. Remember? I don't mind your friend, but I don't want any trouble.”

Oh, Leonard,
I think.
I'm in a heap of trouble.

Blue flips through my sketchbooks and drawings. “Oh my fucking God, Charlie.”

She traces her fingers over the faces. “This is amazing. I didn't know you could draw like
this.
Holy moly. And look at your crazy wall.”

She glances at the toilet. “There's no door on that.”

“I wash
dishes
for a living, Blue. You don't get doors for that. There's a locked toilet down the hall, but the guys use it. Don't forget toilet paper if your modesty gets the best of you.”

Blue lights a cigarette and paws through the paper bag from the liquor store, extracting a bottle. She cracks the top, hunts for glasses in the sink, pours three fingers of vodka into each, and hands one to me.

She raises her glass. “You in? This place is fucked up, Charlie. Is everybody here like those guys on the porch?”

I take the glass, easy as pie, and drink it down, not even caring that I have to work in half an hour. It's just that easy now. “I was kind of hoping,” I say softly, “that maybe you weren't drinking or anything?”

Blue purses her mouth. “It didn't take long for me to start up again after I got out, you know? Drinking, I mean. Not anything else.” She shrugs but won't meet my eyes.

“Have you been…good?” My voice is careful. Blue is kneeling on the floor now, flipping slowly through another sketchbook. Her shirt rides up her back. The skin there is tawny, tender-looking.

Blue winces through a plume of smoke. “I really only ever did the bad shit when I was using, you know. I would lose total control. I'm a real pussy with cutting and burning unless I'm high or something.” She looks at me sideways. “You? You cutting again?” Her eyes flick along my sleeves.

“No,” I say. “Nothing like that. It's just…”

What would she say about the drug runs? I drop my eyes to my lap.

Blue cocks her head. “You okay, Charlie?”

I'm kind of in a mess and I can't get out.

But those words jam in my throat. I swallow hard; they drop back down my throat.

She looks at me for a full, pulsing second. “What about the rock star? He treating you okay? Some guys,
musicians especially,
have a real knack for crapping on women.”

I busy myself with cleaning my glass, finding a clean work shirt. “It's good. It's okay. You know.”

“He's a little older, huh?”

“Yeah. Twenty-seven.”

I turn my back to change into my shirt. I can feel Blue's eyes on me.

“Charlie, have you ever
had
a boyfriend before?”

I slide my shirt down over my face quickly so my mouth is muffled. “Not really. No.”

Under her breath, she says something I can't catch.

“What did you just say?” I turn back to her.

“Nothing,” she says quickly, getting up and dousing her cigarette in the sink. “No worries.”

Then she says brightly, “Well, show me the television and the computer and I think I'll be good to go until you get back.”

I pretend to smile, even though I'm wondering what she said that I couldn't hear. “Oh, Blue,” I say. “I have some bad news for you.”

All night, the girls at Grit are talking about something called All Souls and the burning of an urn. It's a big parade along Fourth Avenue to honor the dead, with people dressing up and painting their faces like skeletons and lots of weird stuff.

Temple says, “It's the best. We get super busy, no matter what, and everyone who comes in is just stoked to be alive, ready to do some positive energy work. And the costumes! Brilliant as shit.”

The café is empty; they have nothing to do. At one point Julie calls to ask how busy we are and when Temple hangs up, Randy nods knowingly and assembles her things and goes home. Tanner's been cut from the day and put on just one night a week and Julie's still washing dishes. The pastry case has been dusty and empty for over two weeks. Bianca got tired of never getting paid.

Temple fiddles with the espresso machine. “Last year, I built wings with Christmas lights and some asshole fell into me and ripped them off. And my friend fell into a fire dancer, so that was crazy.”

She tugs at the filter and it suddenly gives, slopping espresso sludge all over her fluttery blue skirt, the one I secretly like because it has tiny bells at the hem. Temple swears. I bend down with a rag to swipe at the dark grounds on her skirt.

Linus comes out from the grill area, wiping her hands on a towel. “It's Day of the Dead, Charlie.
Día de los Muertos
? Fucking twenty thousand people in a human chain walking downtown and burning wishes for the dead. All that shit in the air, you'd think it would do something, right? Community energy and all that jazz. But the world still sucks, doesn't it, Temple?”

“Don't knock it,” Temple says. “My parents used to take us to sweats all the time. Positive energy is a powerful force.”

“Do you have anything like that back home, Charlie?” Linus asks, gazing at the empty café. Linus always refers to Minnesota as back home when talking to me.
Do you have tortillas back home? You must miss the snow back home. Are you going back home anytime soon, Charlie?

I glance up at them. “We aren't much for death. Once you're gone, you're gone. We don't like things that interfere with our ice fishing.” I say this lightly, because I don't want to think of my dad right now.

They stare at me. “Kidding,” I mumble.

Temple airs out the steamer. “It's a real trip, Charlie. You might dig it. It's a giant art party in honor of the human spirit.”

I brush the last of the grounds from Temple's skirt, flick one of the little bells so it
tink-tink
s. The human spirit. My dad. Where did his spirit go? Can he see me? What about Ellis, that part of her that disappeared? Is something of her left somewhere? These thoughts scare me.

I think Temple is wrong. I don't think I'd dig that kind of art party at all.

Blue shows up at True Grit at closing time, having changed into shorts and sneakers and a hoodie. Her eyes are fuzzy. I wonder how much of the vodka she drank. I mop the main floor furiously, wondering what she's talking to Linus and Temple about. Blue's arms are covered, but can they see the lines on her calves? Sweat erupts on my forehead. In gym once, a girl busted the toilet stall door down, catching me in only my bra, my gym shirt in my hands. I changed in the stall, away from the girls, and always wore a long-sleeved shirt under my red-and-white gym shirt. She laughed and then covered her mouth with her hands. After that, everyone inched away from me when I came into the locker bay and drew out my gym clothes. They gave out sharp hisses as I took my things and went back to the toilet stalls. Temple is chatting amiably with Blue. Who was Temple in high school? Was she a hisser or a retreater? Did Linus ever push a girl's head into the toilet, or did she keep her own down, just trying to make it to three o'clock? People have so many secrets. They are never exactly what they seem.

As we walk home, Blue says woozily, “Leonard told me how to get here, so I thought I'd meet you. Hope you're not mad or anything. I don't want to intrude on your space or anything, you know?”

She cranes her neck at the palm trees. “This place is totally weird. All this vegetation is some real Dr. Seuss–looking shit, you know that, don't you?” We walk in silence for a while until she finally asks, “Bar?” She has a hopeful look on her face as she looks up and down Fourth Avenue.

I hold up my hands. “Eighteen. You want a bar, you're on your own.”

She reconsiders. “Let's go see if the rock star is home.” She gives me a big smile.

I can't avoid it any longer, I guess, so I say okay. I wonder if he's come back since last night. I hope he's come back since last night.

We can hear him a block away, strumming, voice lifting and falling as he works through a passage. I'm surprised; he hasn't played for several weeks now. A dreamy look passes across Blue's face. “That's him? God, that's fucking awesome.”

He's on the porch when we approach, smoke lifting in gentle circles from the ashtray at his feet. “Charlie.” He's curiously cheerful. “And Charlie has…a friend.”

“Blue.” She reaches over, takes a drag from his cigarette. That move sparks an ugly wave inside me—immediately, Blue is a million times more comfortable and familiar with Riley than I ever was. I don't understand how she can be that way. What is it about me that
can't
? And is she—flirting?

“
Blue.
Well, that's a beautiful name, Blue. I'm Riley West.” He leans the guitar against the porch railing.

Is he flirting back? I can't read his signals.

“Thanks,” Blue says. “I mean, it's not my real name, but I like it better.”

I look at her in surprise, distracted from my anger. “What? Really? What's your real name, then?”

Blue takes another drag on the cigarette and exhales slowly. “Patsy. Patricia. Do I seem even remotely like a Patsy to you?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head and smiling. “You don't seem remotely like a Patsy at all.”

Riley laughs heartily. He must be a few down already, because he seems happy. I wish Blue wasn't around. If Riley's going to be happy, I want that all for myself. Lately, it's taking him three or four just to smile. He bows to Blue.

“A refreshment, ladies?” He goes into the house. Blue giggles. “He's cute,” she whispers.

She looks out at Riley's neighbors on their porches, drinking wine and rocking in wicker chairs, fanning themselves with newspapers.

“He must like having his own audience. Besides you, I mean.” She strums the strings on his guitar lightly. I bat her fingers away, irritated that she's being so friendly with his things. She glares at me.

Riley reappears with icy bottles. Briefly, he nuzzles my cheek, then holds out his beer. Hesitantly, I clink bottles with them.

Blue downs half of hers in two gulps and wipes her mouth, looking from Riley to me and back again. She giggles. “You guys are funny.”

“Why?” I take a sip of my beer.

“I don't know. You just are.” Her face is shiny. “You guys can kiss or whatever. Don't mind me.” I can feel my cheeks heat up.

Riley crosses his legs and offers her a cigarette. “There's a story here somewhere. Something tragic, I'm guessing, in the way you two met?”

Blue snorts and blows out a series of perfect smoke rings. “God, I love unfiltered cigarettes,” she breathes. “
Love
them.” She takes another large swallow of her drink. “We met at the cutters' clinic. I was there the longest.” She sounds almost proud. “Isis came after me, then Jen, and then Charlie. Louisa, though, she was
always
there. Wait. Hey, are you okay, man?”

Riley's face is very still, like he's holding his breath. Blue looks at me. “
Charlie
. Didn't you tell him about Creeley?” She looks at me warily.

Riley clears his throat. “Charlie's been a bit reticent about her history. But it's not a problem. We all have our secrets.” His voice is mild. He reaches out and pulls me closer to him. I feel better that he does that. Relieved.

Blue nods. “I used to call her Silent Sue, she was so quiet for a while. What did they call it, Charlie?”

I click my teeth together, weighing whether I should answer her.

“See-lective mutism.” Blue suddenly remembers, sliding up on the railing, her legs smooth and gleaming. “Like, in certain situations, you just clam up, I guess. I'm a little bit of everything, myself. A mental mutt, if you will.”

“Interesting,” Riley says. “Hospitals are interesting, aren't they? Everybody you meet is like a little mirror of you. I've done my time, so I know. Very unnerving.” The corners of his mouth twitch. I'm beginning to feel panicky, out of step with the way they're talking about me and getting along so easily. I grit my teeth and shoot a look at Blue.