Love in the Present Tense (8 page)

“What have you got to say for yourself?” he says. His voice sounds different. He is scared and upset. I can hear this and feel this all, right now, and I feel sorry for him. “You tell me the truth, right now. Then we'll go over what you say in court.”

“I'll tell the truth in court,” I say.

Maybe he will hurt me for saying that. Or even kill me. But he already wants to put me in jail for all my life and that's worse. That puts me even farther from Leonard. Nobody keeps me from Leonard. And, also, nobody gets my dignity.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh, you're a cold-blooded little skank, aren't you?”

Right now, yes, my blood feels very cold.

“Here's what I see,” he says. “You came on to him, you lured him up to your place, laid him, shot him like a dog for his credit cards and the money in his wallet. Took advantage of a weakness in him. That's what I see. A wife and three little kids at home. Three little orphans.”

I think, who are you telling all this to? There's nobody here but us. I think, that's wrong. You're not an orphan until both parents are dead. Leonard was not an orphan when his father got shot. I hope he won't be by the end of tonight. But I don't say that. I don't say anything.

“What about the guy who went down for this?” he says. He is sounding scareder now, talking in more of a hurry. “That Julius Banks. Was he the guy in charge? Did he force you to do this? If he did, you better tell me fast.”

“Little Julius didn't have nothing to do with it,” I say.

I wonder if he will go back now and let Little Julius out of jail. But he won't. Still, he knows and I know that this is more or less okay, because Little Julius did lots of stuff he should go to jail for but just did not get caught. Now he got caught for something he shouldn't go to jail for. It kind of works out in the long run.

“Well, whether you like it or not, you'll leave out what happened between you and Len when you go to court. His family is never to know. You lured him up there to rob him. That's all there was to that.”

“I'll tell the truth in court,” I say.

I'm not trying to make him mad. Not when he has the gun and all. But I will never have my sweet little boy thinking his mother would kill somebody for some credit cards and money. It will never end like that.

“You can't say that to me,” he says. He sounds like he is so mad he doesn't even know what to do with himself. Like he can hardly talk. “I got the gun.” He pokes the gun harder into that little hollow of my neck. I guess to remind me who's got it. It hurts but I don't say ouch. “You'll do what I say. You got no choice.” He sounds like he will turn inside out if he can't make me see that. If I won't agree. I think he forgot to make a plan for if I won't agree.

“I got a choice,” I say. I choose not to let Leonard think I killed some guy on purpose for credit cards. No matter how upset it makes anybody. No matter what.

“You got to the count of three,” he says. His voice sounds like he is crying. I didn't know big men cried. “I'm going to count to three.”

“Benny?” The blond man is getting really scared. “Benny? You're still just trying to scare her, right?”

“I'm not letting her run this show. I'm not letting her hurt his family any more than they been hurt already. He wasn't your partner. You in or out? You tell me right now. Whose side are you on?”

“I got a kid nearly her age, Benny. Don't let that temper of yours make you do something you can't ever take back. Please, Benny.”

Nobody says nothing for a long time. I'm sorry to hear the man with the gun has a temper.

“Go wait in the car why don't you?” Benny says.

“Benny—”

“Go wait in the car. I mean it. Stay out of this for a minute.”

“Jesus,” he says again. But he goes and waits in the car. I was hoping he wouldn't.

I look up at one of the stars. A big one hanging over that big slope. That star looks strange. A ray of its light seems to come out in my direction. That's how I know I am crying, too. The way the tears bend that light. Make it do something I don't think it otherwise would.

“One.”

I think it's sweet and sad and maybe kind of strange, too, that we are crying, both of us, together, like this is something we can share. Like as far apart as two people can get, there is still something they can share.

I'm still pretty sure he isn't going to do it. That he's just so sure I'll give up and say what he wants when he gets to three. But I won't. And I think we might be getting close up to this line where he's so mad that even
he
doesn't know what he'll do when I don't. I can feel him come up to that line. I can hear it in his voice. And even in the silence. I can hear something important in the silence. As he comes up to that line. His temper is bigger than he is. It gets big and then he can't tell it what to do.

Then I think I should have told Doc all about Leonard's health stuff. How will anyone know about his eyes? Twice every year he is supposed to have screenings for his eyes, on account of this condition he has because of being borned too soon. There could be problems later on, and someone needs to know to check. Who will know this? I wonder. While I'm in jail. Or whatever.

“Two.”

I think about that song we used to sing, me and Leonard, that little nonsense song, and I sing it again. But loud now, not under my breath. I really fill up my lungs now and sing it nearly loud enough for him to hear. Except I know it's really not loud enough for him to hear. I am only pretending that. But I bet the blond man in the car can hear me. I wonder if it makes him cry.

“Three.”

The light from that star reaches out like it wants to touch me. And I know that in just a second I will be able to jump out and meet it halfway.

I hear the hammer click back on the gun.

The first thing I will do when I get out of here is head on back to my boy.

MITCH,
age
25:
breathe

“It's raining again,” she said. “Why is Leonard still here?”

She was standing in that narrow space between my bed and the window, trying to get her dress unzipped. I could smell the rain and her perfume, or so I thought. She seemed slightly disheveled, her hairstyle flattened by the moisture, which suited me just fine. The more disheveled the better. When fully dressed and made up, she seemed a little too…I can never find the word I'm searching for. Conservative? Feminine in that very traditional sense? Old?

Goddamn me. Bite my tongue.

The most exciting image I ever held and nursed was a moment I spent in the shower with her, the hot water rushing over our faces, running into our mouths when they came together or apart, her hair plastered onto her face, makeup down the drain. All that other crap I was just trying to find the words for, down the drain. I nursed that one for months, but it faded. In time they all do.

“I don't know,” I said. “Some kind of emergency with Pearl.”

She was taking off her panty hose standing up. She could do that without falling down or looking the least bit undignified. Good thing I was not born a woman. There are skills involved. I'm not sure I could handle them.

“What if she comes back now?”

“She won't come back in the middle of the night,” I said.

“Why not?”

“All the lights are off. She'll come in the morning.”

“I suppose.”

She still hadn't managed to get her dress unzipped.

There's a skylight over the bed. And a streetlight on a hill above, so that even on nights with no moon I had a little glow of light to help me see her. We made love every possible way except with the lights on. That was out of the question for her.

The rain beaded up on the skylight and reflected onto her face and her dress as she took off her half-slip. “What if he wakes up?”

“Why should he wake up?”

“Kids wake up.”

She had raised two to maturity, so who was I to argue? “Tell you what,” I said. “As a concession to young minds, we'll do it under the covers.”

She came over and sat on the edge of my bed—faced away—offering me her zipper, though it took me a moment to get the hint. “That would be different,” she said. “For us that would be almost kinky. You want to unzip me?” She held her hair aside.

Right. Of course. “I live to unzip you,” I said.

I got up on my knees behind her and then sank down onto my haunches, so I was sitting on my heels. One knee on either side of her, close up against her back. I had to lean back a little to undo the zipper. Then I slipped the dress forward over her shoulders. Unhooked her bra. She leaned back and made a small, comfortable noise. My hands traced a path up her rib cage, finding her small breasts from underneath.

I was naked, for two reasons. Because I'd known to expect her. And because that's how I do bed, even alone. Well, three reasons. I'm not as adept as she is at peeling out of my clothes with grace.

“Those banquets are so intolerably boring,” she said. “All I could think about was getting out of there and getting over here to you.”

Then she attacked me. In a good way, I mean. She had a habit of sudden sexual aggression. She turned all the way around and threw me back down on the bed in one sudden motion. Which I would not have minded except that I ended up with one ankle pinned painfully underneath me, and the weight of my body being thrown back really twisted it hard. For a minute I was actually distracted by that pain.

“Ow?” she said. “Ow what?” I didn't know I had said that. But she was straddling me at this point, both of her small, graceful hands wrapped around a key body part. We were both willing to accept “ow” as a good thing.

That touch. The one I'd been waiting for, falling back on in my mind every 6.7 seconds for the past nine days. Hard to imagine there could be a downside to it. But there was. She hadn't taken off her ring, and I could feel it.

I know she always thought I made too much of that. But a guy has a right to feel the way he feels. I took hold of her left hand. Held it up between us. Removed it for her.

“Oh, that,” she said.

“Yeah. That.” I put it on the bedside table.

“Do
not
put it there,” she said. By then I should have known better. “I'll forget it. Damn it, Mitchell, what if I get home and don't have it with me? What the hell am I supposed to say?”

I don't know. The truth?

I picked it up and dropped it into her purse, which was conveniently located on the floor, right where the night-stand met the bed.

She leaned over, peered off the edge of the bed into her purse like she was looking down a bottomless pit. “Great,” she said. “Now it's in the Bermuda Triangle. It may never be seen again. Well, never mind. At least it goes home with me.”

And with that she did something strangely un-Barb-like. She stretched her body the full length of mine and lay on top of me, up on her elbows just enough to look down at my face. She touched my cheek.

Every now and then some barrier would break away or break down, and she would reward me with a moment smacking of something like romance. And all I had to do was run a couple of thousand miles and swim an ocean or two to get it.

The rain-mottled light from above was good enough to allow me to see her mouth, which so defined her, and a trace of the laugh lines at the corners of her eyes. I loved them, but had long since given up saying so. Or trying to touch them. Though I wanted to, badly. I couldn't really see colors, though, so the impact from her eyes got lost. She has fabulous eyes, Barb. So dark blue they're almost navy. And hair moving from dark blond to gray in a natural, unimpeded progression.

This was all very important, you see, because it was part of a process by which I memorized these visuals, to hold me over until she next came back to see me.

She tucked her face against my neck, and I could feel the warmth of her breath between my neck and collarbone. The moment continued.

“Don't go home tonight,” I said. “Stay with me.”

I'm a suicide bomber when it comes to love.

I could feel her sigh. Feel the air on my neck, and her chest expand against mine. Her back rise and fall under my hands. I could feel my ankle throb.

“Oh, Mitchell,” she said. “Why do you always want the one thing you know I can't give you?”

“Never mind. Forget I asked.”

Amazingly, we both managed.

It was such an intense moment that the lines blurred between pain and pleasure, and I'd begun to think my ankle had become an erogenous zone. Every bit of friction seemed to radiate into that ache and radiate back as a desirable feeling.

I heard the scratchy breathing, but it never occurred to me that it didn't belong. The room was full of every kind of breathing, anyway. No sound could really surprise me.

Then I felt that little hand touch my shoulder, and I jumped. And Barb jumped. And we ended up side by side, on our backs, the sheet pulled up under our chins.

“Leonard,” I said. “What are you doing up?” No answer. Just that catchy breathing. I wasn't putting two and two together right. I thought it was an emotional thing, like crying. “Leonard, you need to go back to bed. Come on. I'll take you back to bed. Well, in a minute. Give me a minute, I'll tuck you in.”

“Mitchell,” Barb said. “He can't breathe.”

“Oh, my God.” She was right of course. Everybody knew these basic things except me. “Leonard, buddy. Where's your inhaler?”

He shrugged desperately, an apparent pantomime for “Help!”

I shot out of bed. Grabbed him up and threw him under my arm. I was uncomfortable with being naked around him (his mother thinks maybe I molest little boys), but I didn't feel like that was important now. Or, at least, I was not willing to prioritize that over his oxygen supply. I navigated the treacherous ladderlike steps from my loft to the downstairs, favoring my twisted ankle but still using it in a way I probably could not have without the adrenaline.

I put him down, turned on the light, and looked around. He was right. It was nowhere.

I panicked. Threw couch cushions around. Shook blankets. Threw magazines off the coffee table.

A minute later I felt Barb's hand on my back and I turned around. She was wearing my khaki shirt, which came down almost to her knees. She pointed to the birdcage. Pebbles had the inhaler. Holding it in one monstrous talon, using her beak to try to separate the tan plastic from the shiny metal cartridge. The prize.

“Goddamn it, Pebbles,” I said. I ran at her with such panic and intensity that she dropped the damn thing and backed into the corner of the cage. And Pebbles was afraid of nothing. I grabbed it up, but it was filthy. I couldn't give it to him in that condition.

“Shit,” I said. “Shit, goddamn it, this has bird shit on it. He can't put this in his mouth. Shit.” This from the man who said “language” in a conservative tone every time one of my employees swore in front of Leonard.

Barb grabbed it out of my hand. “Go sit with him,” she said. “Talk to him.” She gave me a little push.

I sat down on the couch with him. He'd been sitting with his arms wrapped around himself. Like he was holding himself until I could get there. I pulled him up onto my knees. He was wearing a T-shirt I'd given him to sleep in. A floor-length dress to him. But at least one of us wasn't naked. I took over for him, wrapping my arms around him and holding him tight. “We gotcha covered, buddy,” I said. “We're just about to work this out.”

I knew that if Pearl were here she'd say, “Okay. Leonard can't stay here anymore. I've decided it's not okay.” She would have no patience with my poor skills in crisis.

Barb came back out of the kitchen, drying the now clean inhaler with a dish towel. She sat on the coffee table, her bare knees bumping up against mine. Held it up for Leonard to take.

“Know how to take it from here?” she asked him. She sounded calm; how did she do that?

Leonard nodded. Took the inhaler in both hands, held it facing himself. I could see the dents Pebbles had made in it with her beak. I could feel the jump of his tiny back as he gasped it in. I waited, but he still didn't seem to be breathing.

Barb must've read my mind. “It takes a minute,” she said. She put her hand on my arm. Her left hand. I looked down at it. I could see a tan line where the ring had been. “Mitchell,” she said, to pull my attention back. “Don't hold him so tightly.”

“What?”

“You're holding too tight around his chest.”

“Oh. Right.”

“If you panic, he'll panic,” she said. “Breathe.” I thought she meant Leonard. I thought that was callous advice. If he could, he would. “Mitchell,” she said. “Breathe.”

I pulled a deep chestful of air. I hadn't noticed that I hadn't been breathing. I loosened my grip on Leonard's chest.

Barb turned her attention down to Leonard's little face. She held up one finger. “Grab hold of this,” she said, and he did. “Pebbles took your inhaler. Bad Pebbles, huh?”

Leonard nodded. Tried to say something. Tried to say “Yuh,” I think, but it came out sounding like a needle pulled across an old phonograph record.

“What kind of noise does Pebbles make, Leonard? Do you know?”

He nodded again. Didn't try to talk. But she had his undivided attention. His attempts at breathing had grown less gaspy, more shallow.

“Mooo. Is that what Pebbles says?”

A funny sound came out of him, and I felt his little body shake. I thought he was in some kind of pain or spasm. Then I realized he was giggling. “Nah,” he said, and I could make the word out.

“Quack quack.”

More giggling, deeper and happier this time. “Nah.”

“What does she say, then?”

“Squawk!” His breathing had morphed into that of a runner at the finish line of a marathon. Normal but depleted. Taking in air, but with a serious debt to repay.

“Sounds right to me,” she said, and she ruffled one hand through his hair.

I set my chin down on Leonard's shoulder and just watched her. How did she learn all this? What the hell would I have done if I'd been here alone?

She looked up and caught my eye. “Don't look at me like that,” she said. “It makes me nervous.”

In a rare display of acting in my own best interests, I didn't ask her to define “like that.”

“Why don't you go put some pants on?” she said.