Nothing to Lose (16 page)

Hurry up, and wait.

I’d stood by Walker’s car for more than an hour by his dashboard clock. It was seven thirty and the parking garage security guard eyed me when he passed the second time.

“I’m waiting for my stepfather,” I explained. “Mr. Monroe?”

“Monroe. . . .” The security guard was an older guy, and after a second he gave me a knowing smile. “Ah, your mother’s the…”

The secretary. The gold digger.

“She used to work here, right? Pretty blond girl.” He nodded. “How’s she doing?”

She’s been better.

“Fine. Walker’s supposed to be driving me to … track team practice.” I gestured toward my clothes. “Guess he forgot.”

“Go up to his office, maybe. He sometimes stays until nine or ten.”

I shook my head. I wanted the element of surprise. To go up, I’d have to call and be let in. “It’s after hours. I don’t think he’d answer the phone to get me into the building.”

“I can let you in the lobby.” The guy patted the keys in his pocket.

I nodded and followed him into the elevator. The place was almost empty, and the night air was cold against my damp T-shirt and hair. We reached the front door, and he let me in.

The lobby was empty. I waited for another elevator, wondering what I’d find when I reached the top. The bell rang, and two lawyer-type guys got out.

“I hated having to tell him,” said one. “He hired
me.
I was so impressed with him then. He built this firm from the ground up—they say he comes from nothing too.”

“Hey, it ain’t over ’til it’s over.” The second guy loosened his tie. “Maybe the old man will shape up. But there’s no room here for deadwood.”

The elevator door closed in front of me.

I rode to the twenty-fifth floor, which was entirely devoted to the offices of Monroe, Reyes, Friedman, Geerling, and Nicholson. I remembered the firm name had changed last year, when they’d merged with that guy Reyes’ office. We’d heard an earful about that.

The receptionist there was gone too, so I sat on the steps that went up to the rest of the firm’s offices, in the penthouse. I waited. It was dark and getting darker, but I curled up on the hard step, listening for sounds. I had to. If Walker decided to take the elevator from the top floor, I could miss him. I didn’t intend to miss him.

I heard the AC go off. It began to get warm. I stayed there. Half an hour. An hour.

Finally I heard shoes on the steps above me. I looked up. It was Walker.

I don’t think he saw me there in the shadows. He carried a briefcase, and his tie was off, his shirt rumpled. He looked tired. I listened to his footsteps on the spiral staircase. When he’d almost reached bottom, I made my move. I stood, grabbed him, and threw him against the wall.

“You and I are going to have it out right now!”

He looked dazed at first, not seeming to understand who I was. I pulled him back, then slammed him against the wall again, so hard my hands vibrated and hurt from the impact.

A second passed.

He said, “Have what out?”

His voice was strangled.

“You know what!” I let go of him. He stumbled on the stairway, almost falling. I would have let him, but he caught himself, so I took hold of his collar again. He was heavy, but I shook him. “What you do to her, you asshole! What you’re doing. I’m not putting up with it anymore. Hit her again, and I’ll kick your ass!”

I tightened my grip. He wasn’t fighting back. Why hadn’t I seen it before? He was old. He was old, and I was strong. There was nothing he could do to me. I was in charge.

I looked into his eyes, at the crow’s feet around them. I loosened my grip just a little.

He said, “Why don’t you do it now?”

“What?”

“You want to beat the hell out of me? Do it. I won’t even put up a fight.”

I stared at him. I realized then that I was only holding him because he was letting me.

“Really,” he said. “It’s the quickest way I can think of to get rid of you. Building security will call the cops. They’ll stick you in juvenile with a bunch of guys just waiting for a piece of your pretty, white ass.”

He slipped out of my grip and stood straight.

“You wouldn’t do that,” I said. “I’d tell them. I’d tell them what you do. Everyone would know.”

“Think they’d believe you? You think anyone would believe you over me? I’m a respected attorney. You—you’re a punk.”

I stared.

“You still going to hit me?” He smiled. “Don’t let me stop you, tough guy.”

When I didn’t move, he said, “Didn’t think so.”

His fist was like a blade to my stomach. I fell into black redness. Then he was gone.

The next day I took Mom’s beeper with a sort of awful relief. Relief because I knew nothing would happen. Walker’s hang time always extended at least twenty-four hours. He’d hit something in the past day, so she was safe. But awful because it was a lie. She wouldn’t beep me if something happened. I couldn’t do anything anyway. I was weak. I hated being weak almost as much as I hated Walker.

I brought Karpe with me to the fair that night. “Do you mind?” I asked Kirstie.

“Nah—he’s a sweet guy.”

I shrugged. It was a weird thing to say.

“I’ll get him a date,” Kirstie said. “It’ll be fun.”

The date turned out to be Ni-Jin, the contortionist. We sat at tables by the food tent, except Ni-Jin (whose real name, it turned out, was Tiffany), who sat on the ground in the lotus position, smoking a cigarette, while Karpe, obviously starstruck, quizzed her about her career.

“Did you always want to be in show biz?” he asked. “How long have you done this? Is it hard? What’s your favorite position? I mean … you know what I mean.”

And Ni-Jin explained that her family were circus performers for generations. She’d hoped for Ringling Brothers, “but those assholes don’t know a great act when they see one.”

“Maybe Cirque du Soleil,” Karpe suggested.

The girl brightened. “I was thinking about that, too. Hey, I’ll show you something cool.”

“What?”

“Get me another cigarette first.”

“You shouldn’t smoke,” Karpe said. “My dad’s an oncologist, a cancer doctor. If you saw the photos I’ve seen of people’s lungs after they’ve smoked for years, you’d never do it.”

I nudged him. “Yeah, Karpe, that’s a turn-on. Talk about diseased lungs on a date.”

“’S okay.” Tiffany crushed out her cigarette, then lifted first one leg, then the other over her head. While Karpe’s eyes popped, she said, “My dad says that too. He worries about me, says it’ll stunt my growth.”

She was maybe four foot nine. She crossed her legs behind her neck. Gross. I looked away.

“How about you?” I asked Kirstie a second later. “Anyone worrying about you?”

She shook her head. “No one but me cares whether I live or die.”

“I care.” I leaned to kiss her.

“Ouch!”

We looked over. Tiffany had Karpe on the floor now. She held his leg, trying to bring it over his head.

“Looks like they’re having fun,” Kirstie said. “What if we went someplace else?”

I nodded. “I know the perfect place.”

“Are you okay?” Angela asks in the parking lot of the Miami-Dade Detention Center.

“Fine.” I try not to look at the barbed wire. I’m thinking, instead, that in a few minutes maybe I’ll have my answer. Maybe my mother will tell me what to do.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Angela says, minutes later. We’ve gone through the metal detector and a guard is frisking me, even under my clothes.

“Hey, watch it, buddy!”

The guard doesn’t stop. “You at the jail now.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” I tell Angela. Though I don’t know exactly what I’m saying I’m sure about. I think about leaving. All I have to do is turn around. No one made me come here, and no one will ever make me come back.

But I know I can’t go on like this anymore, with this falling feeling, like I stepped off a moving skyride and there’s nowhere to go but down or darkness.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I tell Angela.

“You’re done.” The guard brings us to the door, unlocks it, then opens it. The door leads to a hallway with another locked door at the end.

“I can’t believe she’s here,” I tell Angela. “I mean, it smells.” It smells like nothing I’ve ever smelled before, sweet sourness, like years of sweat.

The first door clangs shut. The sound is hard and permanent. The guard unlocks first one lock, then the other, on the second door. He brings us into another room, which is full of people, mostly women, but there are even little kids and a baby being carried by an old lady. So many people it’s almost hard to breathe. They’re all on phones, talking to people on the other side of a piece of thick, dirt plastic. Angela grabs my wrist, and we take an empty chair in front of the window. She keeps touching my hand after we sit.

I nod toward the wall phone. “God, there are really phones,” I say. “Like on TV. I thought maybe I could just … talk to her.”

The words are still in the stinking air when Mom walks in.

She has on a blue jumpsuit and stares straight ahead. She’s lost weight, even though she was always thin. Now she looks barely real. Her hair is shoulder length and brownish. The guard turns her toward us, directing her to a chair. That’s when her eyes meet mine.

Her eyes are the same, but she doesn’t blink. She doesn’t flinch. She doesn’t recognize. I feel myself reach for her, but I know it’s dumb, so I sit on my hand.

“Can she see us?” I ask Angela. I’m thinking maybe it’s a two-way mirror or something because she doesn’t look at me. But on the other side of the glass, a woman prisoner reaches out to the baby, so I know they can see.

Angela wipes the wall phone on her skirt, then hands it to me. The guard pushes my mother into her chair, not roughly, but like a parent with a little kid. He hands my mother the phone.

She is so thin. When she starts to speak, I can’t hear. Everyone’s shouting around me. I yell, “I can’t hear you!”

“Please go,” her whispery voice says in my ear. “Please, Michael. There’s nothing you can do here.”

“I can’t leave,” I shout. But part of me is thinking,
Why not?

“You have to.”

“I can’t do this anymore. It’s not fair. I can’t stand—”

“Go! Don’t you see? This…” She gestures around her. “This is what I want, what I deserve. I was a bad mother. I failed you. This is the only way I can make it up to you … please, Michael. I don’t want this. I don’t want them even to know you were there when it happened. I don’t want…”

Beside me, the baby is screaming. I look around, trying to see if anyone else heard my mother’s words.
I don’t want them to know you were there when it happened.
No one did, and I don’t know whether I’ve dodged a bullet. Part of me wants to repeat the words loud and long so Angela and everyone can hear. To tell the truth: I was there when Walker died.

“I want to tell them,” I say into the phone. “This was a bad idea. I can’t pretend anymore.”

“Please go,” she says again. “Please let me do this for you.”

“But—”

She hangs up the phone. I see her speak to the guard, then rise. She walks ahead of him to the door. He unlocks it. Then she’s gone.

Angela stares at me, and I want to tell her, but I still can’t form the words.

“She told me to leave,” I say.

“And will you?”

“No.”

“That’s where I threw my first touchdown pass,” I told Kirstie later that night. “First time I played quarterback.”

I pointed. We were at the football field at the park near the fairgrounds. It was empty except for Kirstie and me. Football season was long over. It was three
A.M
., and Kirstie lay in my arms in the cool grass. I’d decided this was going to be our night, the night I made my move with her. It had been a week since I met her, but I felt like I’d known her a hundred years. In some ways, maybe I had. So sleeping with her seemed inevitable. I wanted sleeping with her to be enough.