Untouchable (23 page)

He could imagine what Brian was saying.
Don’t look now but here come those monsters, here come those pigs.
The Kid hated this, suddenly and fiercely, hated whatever Brian was saying and hated walking with Michelle, hated Arizona seeing them together. He thought that they probably did look like pigs, Michelle stuffing her face, talking about how much she hated her mom’s boyfriend, using all sorts of curse words, little bits of chicken spraying from her mouth. The Kid guilty just by association. Arizona laughed at whatever Brian said, put her hand on his arm to keep steady, he was that funny. Her hand on Brian’s arm like she’d put her hand on The Kid’s arm. Brian didn’t stop stretching the whole time, pulling one leg up behind his back.

“I bet they’re going to start doing it soon,” Michelle said, mouth still full.

Doing what?

“You know what. It.”

You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“She’s his girlfriend. That’s what happens.”

She’s not his girlfriend.

“How do you know?”

I know.

“How? Is she your girlfriend?”

Michelle said this with a real mean twist at the end, like she already knew the answer. Like of course Arizona wasn’t The Kid’s girlfriend, like she couldn’t think of a crazier idea.

The Kid closed his notebook, watched Brian and Arizona while he walked, wondering what Brian had told her, what secrets he gave out. Things Mr. Bromwell had told his family at dinner, probably, secrets about The Kid from his thick file, from his test scores and paperwork. He imagined the Bromwell family laughing at their dinner table, heads back, holding onto the sides of their chairs because they were laughing so hard. The Kid thought of Mrs. Bromwell, Brian’s mom, laughing hardest of all, and The Kid thought about how unfair it was, somebody’s mother laughing at him when things were so different at The Kid’s house.

“Anyway,” Michelle said, “I’m going to ask Miss Ramirez if I can take apart that computer in the back of the classroom. I bet I can probably fix it. You want to bet?”

Brian leaned into Arizona again, said something that made her scowl and punch him playfully in the arm.

“Five bucks says I can teach the computers that next year is going to exist.” Michelle took the last bite of her gordita, dropped the paper wrapping onto the sidewalk. “You want to bet five bucks, Kid? I’ve got five bucks at home if you want to bet.”

Michelle’s apartment was in a large, whitewashed brick building a few streets from the school. Makeshift curtains of blankets and sheets hung out of some of the open windows on the upper floors. Other windows were stuffed with plants, with newspapers. Other windows were so grimy that The Kid couldn’t see what they were stuffed with. There were spiked metal bars on the top of the gate behind the building, and twists of barbed wire connecting the spikes. Michelle pulled open the gate and they climbed a few cement steps to a heavy steel security door. The door was maybe twice the size of The Kid’s front door, a serious piece of work.

Michelle shoved her hand down into the front pocket of her jeans. Her jeans were too tight, and she struggled to get her hand in and out again with a keychain. She unlocked the door, pulled it open. They walked in through the back hall, down a long cool corridor, past closed doors on both sides, TV noises coming from behind the doors, game shows in Spanish, talk shows in Spanish, cooking smells coming, chicken and onions, cigarette smells, and another smell, close to cigarettes but not quite, a sharp, strong tang.

“Smell that?” Michelle said. She took a deep sniff. “Somebody’s smoking bud. Somebody’s blazing.”

They climbed the carpeted stairs at the end of the hall. Michelle was out of breath when they reached the top. She coughed a few times, pounded her chest with her fist.

“Too much smoking,” she said. “What do you think, Kid? You think I smoke too much weed?”

The Kid didn’t know what to think. He never knew if what Michelle talked about was true or if she was just bragging, trying to seem even tougher than she was.

“If my mom’s boyfriend is home, just ignore him,” she said, “If he’s drunk, he might try to talk to you, ask you all kinds of stupid questions. You’re better off not even answering. If he sees you answer in your notebook, he’ll just start goofing on you.”

They stopped at a door halfway down the hall. Michelle singled out another key on her ring, unlocked both locks, pushed into the apartment.

The room was hot and stuffy. A yellow sheet covered the windows, filtering the sunlight, giving the room a feverish feel. There was a couch against the far wall, made up as a messy bed with a sweat-stained pillow and another yellow sheet. A tin ashtray sat on the arm, a half-smoked cigarette still burning inside. Michelle’s mom’s boyfriend was nowhere to be seen. The TV was on loud, a soccer game with excited announcers yelling in Spanish.

“My mom’s boyfriend sleeps out here most nights,” Michelle said. “My mom doesn’t want him in her bed because he smells like booze. So he sleeps out here most nights unless they’re fucking.”

She looked at The Kid, the shocked expression on his face.

“Don’t even think about it, Kid. It’s gross. Don’t even picture it.”

Michelle turned to the TV, the sprinting soccer players, didn’t bother to turn down the volume.

“My sisters sleep in with my mom, unless her boyfriend’s in there, and then they sleep in my room,” she said. “They’re real little princesses, real girly, not like me at all. That’s because my mom’s boyfriend is their real dad and he treats them like princesses. He treats me like shit because he’s jealous of my real dad. He’s jealous that my dad doesn’t have to put up with my mom’s bitching anymore now that he lives in the Twin Cities. I’ll be out there with him as soon as I get enough money for the bus. I’m pretty close. I could save that much pretty quickly. You know how much a bus ticket costs, Kid?”

The Kid shook his head.

“A fucking lot of money.”

A toilet flushed from behind a door at the other end of the hallway. The Kid could hear a man’s groan from behind the door, the sound of gagging, the man throwing up into the toilet.

“He’s drunk,” Michelle said. “That’s the sound of him being drunk.”

They walked down the hall toward the bedrooms. On the wall across from the bathroom was a framed painting of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The Kid knew about the Virgin because she was all around the neighborhood, painted on the side walls of banks, convenience stores, gas stations. His mom had once explained that she was Jesus’ mother, and people who believed in her believed that she’d appeared in Mexico many years ago and performed miracles. In the painting on Michelle’s wall, the Virgin was wearing a blue shawl that covered her head and ran down past her feet. The shawl was full of stars. There was a shining golden crown on her head. Her hands were pressed together in prayer, and she was looking down and smiling a little. A small brown boy was emerging from under the bottom of her robe. The Kid couldn’t tell if he was hiding under the robe or holding the Virgin up or what. Multicolored rays of light flowed out from behind her toward the edges of the painting. There was a light bulb attached to the bottom of the frame, an electric cord stretching down to an outlet at the bottom of the wall. Michelle clicked on the light as they passed. The shining bulb began to turn in its socket and the painting caught the light in such a way that the rays flowing out from behind the Virgin seemed to move, shimmering and pulsating, turning and reaching outside the painting and the frame, across the walls and the ceiling of the hallway.

They passed the bathroom door and the gagging noises, into a darkened bedroom. Michelle’s mother’s bedroom, The Kid guessed, a messy room with a big unmade bed and two smaller unmade beds, the sisters’ beds, the twin princesses.

Michelle told The Kid to stand watch at the door. She told him that if her mom’s boyfriend came out of the bathroom, he should make some kind of loud noise to warn her, he should knock on the wall or stomp his feet or something. The Kid stood in the doorway, listening to the loud gagging and throw-up sounds from the bathroom. It reminded him of Rey Lugo walking down the school hallway with that faraway look on his face. Rey Lugo looking at The Kid and throwing up in his tiny hands.

The Kid heard Michelle behind him, rummaging through some clothes on the floor, cursing under her breath. The Kid looked over his shoulder and saw her digging in the pockets of pairs of jeans, in the pockets of what looked like the baggy green pants that nurses wore. She flattened herself out as much as she could on the stained carpeting and reached her arm underneath the bed, pulling out old tissues and balled-up socks.

He looked back up at the painting of the Virgin. The colored light radiated out from behind her, reflecting on the opposite wall, yellow and red and purple. He wondered if the Virgin knew about the Covenant. He walked over to the painting, stood underneath. He could feel the colored light shining warm on his face. He wasn’t sure how to ask, so he recited the Covenant in his head again, reminded the Virgin what he was asking for, what he had given up. Reminded her that he had stuck to his end of the deal. He recited the Covenant and waited for something, some kind of sign that she’d heard, a change in the type of light, or more light, maybe, a different glow, something. He watched the painting, watched the light, but he’d been staring at it for so long that it was hard to tell if anything was different. He lifted his hand, slowly, the light covering his fingers, his forearm, his elbow.

“Got it,” Michelle whispered from back in the bedroom. “Fucking A.”

The Kid looked over his shoulder. Michelle was on the other side of the bed, holding something she’d pulled out of a drawer in the bedside table.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go.” She rushed around the bed and banged her elbow on the corner of a dresser. “Fucking A,” she yelled, holding her arm, and then the toilet flushed again and the bathroom door opened and Michelle’s mom’s boyfriend lurched out into the hallway. He stopped short when he saw The Kid, squinting down with red, puffy eyes.

The Kid couldn’t tell if he was white-looking or Mexican-looking or both. Kind of both. He was tall and chunky, with shaggy brown hair and a thin brown mustache. His lips and the hairs of his mustache were wet, and the hair on his head was sticking straight up, like he’d just gotten out of bed. There was a bad smell coming out from the bathroom.

“Who’s this?” the boyfriend said. His voice was slow and thick. It sounded almost like he was talking more to himself than to anybody else in the apartment.

The Kid waited for Michelle to come out from the bedroom and explain what was going on. The Kid looked up at the boyfriend, waited. Finally, he looked back over his shoulder. Michelle wasn’t there. She was hiding someplace, behind the dresser or back behind the bed.

“Who the hell is this?” the boyfriend said. He was definitely talking to The Kid now.

The Kid opened his notebook. He remembered what Michelle had said about not answering the boyfriend, but there didn’t seem to be any other way around it.

The Kid wrote in his notebook, held it up for the boyfriend to see.

It’s The Kid.

The boyfriend read the line, read it again, looked at The Kid. He was unsteady on his feet, weaving a little in the hallway. He put a hand against the wall to brace himself. His breath was terrible.

“Are you some friend of Michelle’s?”

The Kid thought about this, about Michelle hiding back in the bedroom, about the ashtray in the living room, the burns on her stomach.

Michelle doesn’t have any friends.

The boyfriend let out a deep, wet belch, the kind that signaled something else coming soon.

“Then what the fuck are you doing in here?”

The Kid pointed up to the painting of the Virgin, to the turning lights. The man looked at the painting and the lights for quite a while, rocking woozily on his feet, then he looked back at The Kid.

I’m here to see her,
The Kid wrote.
I’m here because I have a deal with someone she knows.

The boyfriend belched again, closed his mouth quickly. He shut his eyes tight and opened them again. He looked surprised to see The Kid still standing there. Then his face blanched and he turned and rushed back into the bathroom, fell to his knees, vomiting violently into the toilet.

There was a rough hand on the back of The Kid’s neck, pushing him into the hallway, through the front room and out the door into the corridor of the building. They ran as fast as they could, down the stairs, out the back security door, through the iron gate and onto the sidewalk. When The Kid finally stopped and turned around, he saw Michelle about a hundred feet behind, sitting on the sidewalk, out of breath, holding her stomach. The Kid walked back, squatted down beside her.

“That fucking asshole,” she said. It seemed like she was going to cry. The Kid had never seen her like this before. Scared. She held her fist out to The Kid, opened it. Inside was a wad of dollar bills.

“You hold on to this,” she said. “We made a bet, and to keep it fair you hold the money on retainer. That’s how you make bets. If I can’t fix the computer, then you get to keep the money. If I can fix it, then you have to give the money back, plus five more bucks of your own.”

The Kid didn’t want to hold the money, but Michelle pushed the bills into his hand and closed it into a fist.

“That fucking asshole,” she said. She punched the sidewalk, reopening the scrapes on her knuckles. “I hope he chokes on his puke and dies.”

In the warm light of early morning he saw her standing naked at the kitchen window, her back to him, the phone receiver pressed to her ear. One arm was crossed under her breasts, her hand holding her ribs. A Saturday morning, almost two years before. Still a while before The Kid would be up, before Darby should be up. A job the night before at a nursing home in Whittier, a bathroom in the nursing home, a long job, six hours in a small room. He could still smell the disinfectant in his nostrils, the latex on his fingers, the rubber of the gloves.