Killing Time in Crystal City Read online

  “Well, that’s not exactly what . . . hey. Was that shock I just heard? How come you said it like that? Like her being with me was such a bizarre idea?”

  “Well, ah. You know . . .”

  She doesn’t have a ready answer. Stacey doesn’t have a smart-ass, hard-boiled retort to stop me in my tracks there and I am not pleased about it. Am I that bad?

  “So, I’m that bad.”

  “No, no, you’re not. Not at all. I didn’t mean anything like . . . wait a minute. Did you do the God thing? Oh, for shit’s sake, Kiki, tell me, please, tell me you did not do the God thing just to make this happen.”

  That sounds so truly awful. I didn’t even do it and I feel like a scumbag just for making it into the conversation.

  “Should I be offended, Stacey?”

  “I would hope so.”

  “Well, I am offended.”

  “Oh, thank God. You are the good one, aren’t you, Kiki?”

  “Now I’m unoffended. I like that. Not even one-of-the-good-ones, but the . . .”

  “Oh, too right. You are the only one. If you are.”

  “Harsh.”

  “Yup. So where’s our girl?”

  “Right now, she’s in my bed.”

  There’s that dead air again.

  “Hello? Stace—”

  “What’s she doing there if you didn’t God-up, Vandeweghe?”

  Yikes. It’s only a phone call and still I feel in physical jeopardy.

  “She’s sleeping, Dimbleby.” I figure she has to respect my standing up to her that much.

  “Tell me you didn’t really believe my actual name was Anastasia Dimbleby.”

  I should probably just take the Fifth on this one.

  “That answers that, then. So tell me, what are you doing, while the princess slumbers?”

  “I . . . well, if you must know, I was doing her laundry.”

  “Her lau . . . ? Are you lying?”

  “Why would I lie about that?”

  “So you did take her home, you slithery male serpent, you. But then you did her laundry.”

  I give that statement a quick once-over and decide it is sufficiently factual-based that I can sign off on it without elaboration or detraction and it will do my reputation no harm whatsoever on all counts.

  “That is correct,” I say, trying to sound like this is just another day at the office for me.

  “Well,” she says, “now I’m not sure whether to slice you up from ’nads to neckline, or find a way to clone your strange ol’ self.”

  “Do I get a vote?” I say.

  “No. But I’m sure I’ll have it figured out one way or the other by the time I see you.”

  “Oh good. That’s a relief.”

  “Is she really sleeping?” Stacey asks.

  “I’m pretty sure. I could check in.”

  “Yeah, you probably should. If she misses any more curfews she’s gonna lose her place here and be back out on the street. And also I don’t know how I would last here in Godtown without Molly to draw all their repent-and-be-saved fire.”

  I walk toward my bedroom, still whispering.

  “Well, Sister Stacey, she’s feeling much better and she’s got her uniform all washed and nice for school again.”

  “Did you remember to use fabric softener?”

  “Actually, I did.”

  “Of course you did, weirdo. Good thing. That outfit was getting kinda rank.”

  “Not as rank as the cast, though.”

  “Arggh, I know. I think she was supposed to get it off something like three weeks ago, but she’s got some kind of peculiar mental emotional attachment to it. We’ll work on it somehow.”

  “Good,” I say, gently pushing open my door.

  “Did you just tell me I’m good?” Molly says, looking up all dewey-eyed at me. She appears sincere in her question. She also seems sincere with the tears welling up.

  “Absolutely,” I say to Molly.

  “Absolutely what?” Stacey says.

  “Absolutely, Molly is good,” I say. “And she is awake.”

  I hand the phone to Molly. She is all sniffles as she takes it and then shushes me away sternly.

  “Listen to this, Stacey,” she says, the bubbles rising in her voice and falling from her eyes as she starts to read.

  Christ. The poems.

  • • •

  When Molly finally comes out of her room, she’s wearing the white fluffy bathrobe and great, puffy, sore, saucer eyes.

  “You all right?” I say.

  “Sure. Just crying.”

  “Stacey, right? She can be tough. Don’t take it so hard. She nearly made me cry just before you—”

  “Stacey didn’t make me cry. I made her cry if you wanna know the truth.”

  “Stacey?”

  “Stacey.”

  “You. Made Stacey. Cry. Stacey?”

  “Stacey. Except it wasn’t me, really. It was your dad.”

  “Aw shit,” I say, and jump back as she draws the poetry book out of the bathrobe. “He’s toxic. Like ammonia mixed with whatever it is you’re not supposed to mix ammonia with. He makes everybody cry.”

  “You don’t have to be such a guy about it,” she says, eventually laying the book on top of the washer-dryer. “They’re stunning. I read every one. Such a soft soul. They have great spirituality, really. Do you have a favorite? You must have.”

  “Ah, yeah, the one that goes, ‘There once were three twins from Toledo . . .’”

  She goes into full scold now, with the wagging finger and everything. “That is just sad and pathetic, that you have to hide behind jokes instead of allowing yourself to really feel.”

  I can only guess from her response to the literature that Dad has slipped some more recent, more serious offerings in there among the goofy rhymes he made up for us when we were three, and seven, and ten, and twelve, and fifteen.

  “Sorry, Molly. Didn’t mean to be hiding.” Except that I did. “Emotion and feelings and stuff can be hard, y’know?”

  She points at me, and smiles a smile of one who truly believes she has the answer to the question.

  “You should come to church with me, Kiki. It helps, it really does, to unlock a person, and open them up to . . .”

  She trails off when she sees my own smile and, I suppose, my jackass back-of-class body language.

  “Did I say something funny?” she says, grim as God.

  “Well . . . yeah, come on, Molly. Jesus saves? Please. Jesus, just save it, is what I feel like telling him. You believe all that stuff, do you? You feel as if you are saved, yes? Got yourself all sorted out, have you?”

  There is nothing cute about her great big eyes narrowed at me right now.

  “Are those my clothes?” she asks without gesture.

  “Yup,” I say too brightly. “Here you go, ma’am.”

  She comes up to take her clean clothes out of my hands. I hang on to them tightly. As if we are playing. She tries for a couple of seconds to tug them away but then refuses to play.

  “At least Jesus isn’t an asshole,” she says.

  “Well, the jury is still out on—”

  “Shut up,” she snaps. “Just because you are proud to be emotionally retarded, that does not give you the right to trash my beliefs.”

  “I prefer, ‘emotionally subnormal.’”

  “Shut up. No, I am not all sorted out. I know that. But yes, I do feel saved, and I do get something from the communion of souls, and the beautiful and positive and healing messages of the church, and the forgiveness that is always there if I have honest sorrow for the things I’ve done. And if my church, my community, my belief system does that for me, why should the likes of you think you have a better idea when it is so obvious you don’t have any idea at a
ll? Mockery and criticism of everybody else is a shit religion, Kiki.”

  God. And I mean that sincerely.

  I blink forty times before speaking, just to get some moisture back in my eyes after Molly’s sandblasting.

  “I was out of line,” I say quietly. “I really am sorry. Forgive me?”

  Now she snatches the clothes away from me. “Of course I forgive you. That’s what we do,” she says, with the old smile and bright big eyes back in place. “But now I have to go to confession for all that scolding I just did. Thanks, jerk.”

  “Sorry. Hey, that sorry thing gets easier the more you do it.”

  “But you have to mean it or it doesn’t . . . Wow, you folded these. And”—she sniffs—“fabric softener.”

  “See,” I say, “how’s that for a real man. Pretty butch, or what?”

  She spins back in the direction of my room. “I don’t know if I’d call it butch, but it’s not half bad, either. Still, you could learn a lot about expressing yourself from your father.” She slams the door on that one.

  Oh, yes, back where we started, the poetry. Why do all roads lead back to that man?

  “Okay, I have to go,” Molly says, sweeping back into view, sniffing the sleeve of her freshly laundered blouse as she does. Her hair, after the shower and good long sleep, looks precisely as it did before, and precisely as it has every time I’ve seen her. Browns-helmet perfect, Browns-helmet tough.

  Even her hair is resilient.

  “How come you have to go?” I ask, and before I can even register, she has marched right on up and into me and is squeezing me hard around my waist and reflexively I am squeezing back, hugging her close to me and it feels lovely beyond what words could ever convey. Take that, poetry.

  “Stacey and I have work chores at the hostel. Cleaning and stuff. Pays our way. Can’t say no when they ask. Sometimes they send us out to other places that need us, but today we’re just staying home. I’ll never get it as clean as this place, though, that’s for sure.”

  She hugs me quietly for a bit more. I absorb it, with every available nerve ending, for several silent seconds.

  “Thanks for being uncommon,” says the broken mold herself.

  “See, didn’t I tell you I wasn’t like those other guys?”

  “No, you’re just like them. But you’re uncommon for at least trying not to be.”

  Cover blown. Do I hate being seen, being known like that? Do I love it?

  “Could I walk with you?” I say. “To the hostel?”

  “Sure you can,” she says, stepping back and hooking my broken arm with her probably formerly broken one.

  It stinks like she’s been hoarding shrimp tails and chicken bones in there.

  • • •

  Stacey is at the top of the creaky wooden steps that lead to the front door of the old Victorian that is now the St. Cecelia Youth Hostel. Stacey doesn’t look saintly or even youthful but does look like a mean hostile old lady as we ascend the stairs toward her. Feels like a lot of stairs.

  “Did you ball my innocent and trusting young friend, you wicked thing?”

  I am about to protest the language at least, when Molly turns to me, asking loudly, “Is she talking to you, or me?”

  Not that it changes the honest answer in either case, though if it’s me, I plan to make a little ambiguity go a long way in a good cause.

  No matter, since Mother Stacey is grinning at us by the time we reach her anyway.

  “I see,” she says, poking me in the ribs with a finger like a hockey stick that almost sends me tumbling backward whence I came. “The old, would-you-like-to-come-up-to-my-place-and-see-my-father’s-book-of-poetry ploy, eh? Had a lot of success with that one have ya, studley?”

  “A one-hundred-percent success rate so far, now that you ask.”

  “Ahh, that’s sweet.” She pokes me again, and it’s even harder.

  She can poke me all she wants, because nothing that’s happened today is doing anything to lessen the whole experience for me. I feel like I’m living, here, with these two, reputation enhancement or not. Living more than I did in the past, and I’m loving it and too grateful to tell them.

  But I am starting to wonder if Stacey is seriously displeased, or playing, or some of both, and why? Not that I could ever say it, but with Molly’s track record, what do I matter, in the overall scheme of things?

  “Well, we’ve got sins to scrub away,” Stacey says, pulling Molly under a big protective paw and hauling her inside.

  “See ya later, Kiki,” Molly calls over her shoulder, a sort of wrestle going on just for her to get an angle to wave back at me properly. “It was really wonderful. You were really wonderful.”

  “Oh jeez, stop it already,” Stacey barks at her.

  She is clearly getting all kinds of wrong impression there.

  I just might have the beginnings of a reputation, a life, and a tribe that will let me be an insider.

  For my next trick, I’m thinking I may walk on my hands all the way back, to my home, from theirs.

  WHERE THEY DON’T HAVE TO TAKE YOU IN, BUT THEY DO

  Maybe there was a reasonable explanation,” Jasper said as he led me down the abandoned train tracks again. We were not walking back to school, just walking to walk, leaving Michelle the Renter on the steps waiting for the Homeowner. And walk we did. The six miles almost to the school, and then turning, without break, in the direction of home again.

  His home, that was. Because he had one.

  “The explanation is, he’s a selfish, cowardly bastard,” I said. We had just made the pivot point onto the return leg. My phone rang, again. There were only two people who would be likely to call me, and one of them was right beside me, urging me to answer.

  “Perhaps, if you hear what he has to say, the answer might have a little more complexity to it than that.”

  “Whose side are you on here, Jasper?”

  “Side? Jesus, Kiki, does everything have to be like that? You have a gift for seeing these imaginary forces always aligned against you. Of course I am on your side. But can’t I be for you without being against your father?”

  I was walking at a good clip now, breaking a sweat. He was keeping up but hanging a couple of steps behind as we talked. Probably trying to unsettle me.

  “No!” I said, with the ringtone as accompaniment. “And don’t call me Kiki.”

  “Grrr,” he said. “Grr. Right, right, you know what you are? I just realized, you know what you are?”

  “I’m pretty sure nothing that started with that question has ever ended well, so I’m just going to not answer.”

  It was a pretty flawed blocking strategy.

  “You are like an opposite Walter Mitty character. You’re an inverse Walter Mitty, is what you are. You know the character, Walter Mitty, who fantasizes his way into all kinds of fantastic situations where life is exciting and he is the star?”

  I did not have to entertain him if I chose not to.

  “Never met the man,” I said, walking just a bit faster.

  “Doesn’t matter. You are the inverse, because you spend your time constantly imagining that everything is terrible and everyone is conspiring wickedness and you are the victim. You are the Walter Mitty of self-pity.”

  Sometimes you hear something and immediately recognize it as something evil that needs instant extinguishing.

  “Hey,” he said, all chipper all of a sudden. “Did you hear that? The Walter Mitty of self-pity. Oh, that has wheels, that one. Don’t you—”

  “No!” I snapped because I very well heard it and did not love the thought of hearing it for the rest of my life. “Just go back to calling me Kiki, that’ll be fine.”

  He was laughing robustly when my phone rang again. He didn’t tell me to answer it this time. Instead, he scooted right up behind me and snagged the th
ing right out of my pants pocket.

  “Hey!” I shouted as he raced past me and up the tracks.

  “Hello,” he said, running hard to stay just out of my reach. “Yes, sir. Jasper. His friend. Yup, I’m the one.”

  “Give me that,” I said, grabbing the phone and giving the side of his head a well-earned smack at the same time. Jasper stopped running and started laughing as I addressed the caller.

  “So, your new roommate is all moved in now, I guess. Excellent. Have a good summer, and stop calling me.” I hung up on him.

  Jasper and I resumed walking, but at a more reasonable talking pace.

  “He’s trying to discuss it with you,” he said.

  “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  “I don’t care what you think.”

  “Well, ah, yes you do. More likely, you are afraid to hear him out because he might say something perfectly reasonable and then that’ll blow the Good Ship Boo-fucking-hoo right out of the water. Then where will you be?”

  I couldn’t be sure but I was getting the impression Jasper had the stamina to keep up with this indefinitely. I knew I couldn’t.

  It was already exhausting me. I was exhausting me.

  “Okay, okay, okay,” I said, stopping and grabbing him desperately by the collar. “You might have some points in there somewhere. Maybe. But you know, Jasper, it’s been a pretty shit couple of years, parents breaking up—twice. Coming to live with my dad, feeling like this was going to be an awesome new turn in both of our lives until he welcomes me as if I had come to audit his taxes for the last ten years. I haven’t been able to get my feet under me for long enough to believe I’m not a total cripple, and the only person I have been able to make any real contact with at all is you. And you’re an asshole.”

  I felt like I had already kind of tested my limits there with Mr. Jasper as he stood silently, looking me in the eyes. Then he looked at my hands still clutching his shirt.

  “This actually makes you seem almost kinda manly, this thing you’re doing with the grabbing.”

  “Sorry, man,” I said, letting go and for some reason brushing my hands off quickly on my own shirt. “I just can’t talk to him today, all right? I’m way too angry to even listen to him. I mean, whatever he has to say, it doesn’t change the reality that that woman takes over our house—sorry, his house since obviously I don’t own squat—next week! And I didn’t know anything about it until she told me.”