Untouchable (20 page)

One of the cards was from Rhonda Sizemore, a store-bought card with a painting of a jack-o-lantern on the front. Inside, she’d written,
Whitley Darby, I appreciate your perfect attendance
. It didn’t make any sense. It didn’t mean anything. The Kid didn’t have perfect attendance. He had terrible attendance. He could picture Rhonda and her mother reading the list of students in the class, writing out a card for each one, saying something nice and meaningless rather than saying nothing.
I appreciate your perfect attendance.
It made The Kid feel worse than if he hadn’t gotten a card from her at all.

Miss Ramirez told them to finish up with their cards and candy. A procession began to the trashcan at the front of the room, kids throwing out candy wrappers and foil and envelopes. The Kid popped his chocolate pumpkin into his mouth, crumpled the wrapper, made his way up to the trashcan. Backpacks were zipped, chairs squeaked and settled as the kids got ready to switch classes for science. The Kid opened his fist and let the wrapper fall into the garbage, on top of the other wrappers and empty envelopes and old test papers.

There was something else in there, piled with the trash. Something with the wrappers and envelopes and banana peels and wads of bubble gum. The Kid’s heart was pounding. He moved a chocolate-stained envelope out of the way. His cards were in there. What seemed like the entire class’s worth, crumpled and thrown away. He recognized them all. The pirate ship cards, the tall city building cards, the Smooshie Smith cards, all the drawings of his characters and his dad’s tattoos. Some of the cards torn, some of the cards balled up, some smeared with chocolate fingerprints, wrapped around half-chewed suckers. His cards were in there. All of the time he and his dad had spent working at the picnic table, all wasted now. He heard giggling, Razz and a couple of boys from the back of the class. The Kid turned, looked out into the room, blurry-eyed. Some of the girls stopped whispering and looked away when he looked at them. Other kids were holding their noses and smiling and they didn’t look away, they pinched their noses tighter and smiled wider when he looked at them. They didn’t care if he saw them or not. Why should they care? The Kid was garbage, just like his cards.

He looked over at Matthew but Matthew looked down at his science book. Where was his card, the card The Kid had made with the black crow with
X
’s for eyes?
I’m glad that you’re my friend.
Was that card in the garbage, too?

The Kid walked back down the aisle toward his desk, past the sniggering and pinched noses, past Razz gagging. When he got to Rhonda Sizemore’s seat, she looked up at him, her nose wrinkled in disgust. He felt the same way he’d felt at the mall, ashamed and embarrassed that his dad had seen Rhonda not wanting to sit next to him, angry that she looked at him like he was a piece of garbage. He forced himself to look at her, look her in the eye, and when her expression didn’t change, he took a quick, backhanded swing and knocked the crown off her head, just like that, and then he had a handful of her hair and was pulling, hard, Rhonda screaming, the kids around her screaming, The Kid yanking Rhonda out of her seat, some of her hair coming out into The Kid’s hand, and then Miss Ramirez was there, grabbing The Kid roughly by the arm, prying his fist open, dragging him out of the classroom into the hall. Miss Ramirez’s face was bright red. She shouted at him in a raspy whisper. She didn’t know what the hell had gotten into him. He was to stand out in the hall until she checked on Rhonda, and then they were going directly to the vice-principal’s office.

Miss Ramirez went back into the classroom. The Kid could hear Rhonda sobbing, other kids yelling, the room in an uproar. His whole body was shaking. Loose strands of Rhonda’s hair were stuck between his fingers. His face was wet. He must have been crying, but it didn’t feel like he was crying, he was too angry and upset. He was worried what Arizona thought of him now, if she thought all the other kids had been right, if she thought he was an untouchable. He wanted to go to Mr. Bromwell’s office, use the phone, type in the Morse Code
S.O.S.
, have his dad come and pick him up. He wanted to go to the drive-thru, sit in the parking lot with their burgers and fries, listen to a game on the radio. He wanted it to be baseball season. He wanted everything to be different.

He stood in the hallway, really crying now, fists balled at his sides, what sounded like screaming in his head, so it took him a second to hear it, a high-pitched whine coming down the hall, the grinding and groaning of shifting wood, and then the sound turned the corner and they were upon him, passing in front of him in a rush, blue and green woodcut waves sliding down the hallway, rising and falling, shifting back and forth, the little woodcut rowboat coming his way, tossed by the waves, the woodcut men paddling, their arm hinges squealing with the strain, and then an even louder noise, an incredible grinding racket as it appeared around the corner, the massive pirate ship filling the hallway, skull and bones on its wooden flag flying, the ship bearing down on the doomed rowboat, splinters spraying as its prow crashed through the waves, the cacophony filling the hall, the school, The Kid’s head, and he turned just in time to see another wave coming right toward him, hard wood, the wave coming down the hall with terrific speed, twice as tall as The Kid, almost upon him, ready to crush him or sweep him away if he didn’t move, if he didn’t run and get out of the way.

The Kid blinked away tears, stood and watched the wave lifting above him, reaching the top of its height and then curling over, its shadow covering him, the wave ready to crash back down.

The Kid plugged his nose, closed his eyes. Didn’t move.

She was sitting on the steps outside a Pico Boulevard apartment complex when Darby first saw her. A Saturday afternoon in early fall. He was working floral delivery at the time, a job he’d held for the better part of a year, driving a purple van with a painting of a group of smiley-faced, slightly unhinged-looking flowers waving on the side. He drove slowly, twisting his head under the windshield, searching in vain for house numbers, something resembling an address, and then there she was, sitting on the steps, reading a newsmagazine, smoking a cigarette. Jeans, white t-shirt, glasses, blond hair tucked back behind her ears. Barefoot. The magazine in one hand, cover folded back, the cigarette in the fingers of her other hand. Legs crossed, foot dangling. Looking bored, annoyed, a little put off. He knew the flowers were for her even before he saw the number on the wall above her head. He double-parked the van, climbed into the back, checked the name on the card.
Lucille
. Made sense, somehow. She looked like a Lucille. He opened the box. Six roses, the industry-standard peace offering. He opened the card. An apology from someone named Roger. He hopped out onto the street, headed up the sidewalk. Took another glance at how she held the cigarette, how her foot dangled, that formidable look on her face as she read the magazine, the cigarette in the corner of her mouth as she turned the page, squint-eyed in the smoke. Lucille. Darby crumpled, then pocketed, the card.

She lifted her head when he got closer, looked him over, the long white box in his hand, the tattoos, the purple polo shirt with the smiling flowers on the chest. He was suddenly, abnormally self-conscious, wishing he had something else to wear in the van, a jacket, something to cover up that ridiculous shirt.

She took a drag on the cigarette as she watched him approach.

“Hey, look,” he said. “I’m at the end of my shift and I’ve got this unclaimed delivery.”

She lifted her eyebrows over the rims of her glasses, nodded, not particularly interested.

“They’re just going to sit in the van, die on the way back to the shop.”

“Are you offering them to me?”

“I’ll trade you. You got another cigarette?”

“What are they?”

“Roses.”

“What color?”

“Red.”

She thought about this, took another drag on the cigarette. Reached for her pack on the step behind her, shook one out, handed it to Darby.

“That happen a lot?” she said. “Unclaimed delivery?”

“You don’t believe me?”

She passed him a lighter. “I just don’t want to take somebody else’s flowers.”

“Unclaimed delivery,” he said. “Happens more than you’d think.”

He blew off the rest of his shift. They sat and talked for the better part of an hour, and as he left they made a date for later in the week. The next day, he came up with maybe the first-ever mental catalogue of the all the clothes he owned, everything crammed into his closet or heaped on the floor of his apartment. T-shirts, jeans, work pants, boots. He couldn’t think of anything he wouldn’t be embarrassed for her to see him in. He went to the Sears on Santa Monica Boulevard, made his way through the tight paths between clothing racks, looking for he wasn’t quite sure what. Something suitable. Finally found a sale shelf with a yellow, short-sleeved button down. It fit, it looked sharp. He wore it the night of the date, feeling that maybe it was good luck.

They went to dinner, went to a movie. They sat in a diner in Echo Park, drinking beer and then coffee until three or four in the morning. She talked nonstop. She told him about her school and her students. She told him about her love of the Dodgers, which was passed down from her estranged father, some kind of con man in Chicago from what Darby could gather. She told him what she liked to cook. He sat and listened mostly, amazed at her level of investment, how deeply she cared about each thing she told him. He sat and listened and watched, happy to do so, the sound of her voice blanketing everything.

Darby considered it a perfect thing, that night, one of the two perfect nights of his life. Sitting in that diner listening to her talk.

He’d just come back from the restroom, right after the waitress dropped off the check, right before they drove back to Darby’s apartment, and Lucy leaned over on her side of the booth and pulled a camera out of her overstuffed purse. She fired a shot across the table, the flash blinding Darby, popping white and gray spots in front of his eyes. He would forget all about it until years later, until one day it was there on the bulletin board above her desk in their house, an image of that night, Darby in his lucky yellow shirt on the other side of the booth, eyes wide in the flash, looking stunned and happy.

The animal shelter was a half-mile south of downtown, a concrete building with a bronze plaque out front listing the dogs and cats that had been adopted and subsequently starred in movies and TV shows. Famous rescues. Darby walked down a long fluorescent-lit corridor. The corridor smelled like a restroom, wet fur, some kind of pine-scented disinfectant. There were pens on either side of the corridor, dogs behind the cage doors lunging, snapping, whining, cowering. Chows and terriers and Chihuahuas, pit bull, pit bull, pit bull, every other dog a pit, seemed like, slant eyed and broad shouldered, pink-nosed faces like raw steaks.

Every pen had a clipboard hanging from the bars, a dossier on the dog inside with a list of ailments, vaccinations, warnings if the dog was hostile or unpredictable or both. The staff had given every dog a name, all at great odds with their physical realities, dignified names of childhood pets in good homes: Charmer, Caesar, Ranger, Scout.

The sewer dog was at the end of the corridor, last pen on the right, laying on his side against the rear wall. He opened his eyes when Darby stopped at the bars. His fur was still patchy and matted, but the sores along his backside had begun to scab over. A bowl of dry food sat untouched a few feet from his head. Darby looked at the clipboard hanging from the bars. Diagnosis of his skin condition, malnutrition. He weighed fifty-two pounds, and there was a seventy-five in brackets next to that, probably his ideal weight. Someone had drawn a question mark next to
Breed
. The space next to
Name
had been left blank.

Darby crouched by the bars. The dog lifted his head.

“They found him in the sewer.” A short, husky woman was standing behind Darby. An animal control officer. She adjusted the waist of her slacks, jangling a brace of keys clipped to her belt. Her uniform was too small. It had shrunk in the wash or she had put on some weight since its original issue.

“They found him near my house,” Darby said.

“Our officer said he’d been living down there for days. A week, maybe. Could have gone down at almost any point in the city, maneuvered his way around. Chasing rats or whatever for food.”

“Do they know how he got down there?”

“The odds of a dog willfully crawling down into the sewer are slim to none,” she said. “Which means he was pushed in there, shoved down into one of those openings in the curb.”

“Inlet.”

“Pushed down through an inlet. Big dog like that, had to be somebody bigger who shoved him through. Imagine that, wandering around there in the dark. Who knows what else is down there. Rats would be the least of my worries.”

The dog watched them warily, his eyes moving from Darby to the officer and back again.

“Is he going to make it?” Darby said.

“He’ll make it. He didn’t pick up anything particularly nasty down there, except for the skin condition, which we’re treating. He’s been given his shots. Just needs to eat, rest.”

“What happens to him now?”

“If no one takes him home, we put him down. Four days from date of entry.” She looked at the clipboard. “Meaning two days from today. Business days.”

“Anyone come to look at him?”

“People come to look. We tell the story of how he was found and people come down to look.”

“What are the chances of somebody taking him home?”

“About the same as his chances of crawling into the sewer unassisted. Dog that size will eat you out of house and home if he ever starts eating again.”

The dog lifted his head higher, slowly, then got to his feet, tall and unsteady, wobbling on his toothpick legs but standing nonetheless, upright under his own power.