Читать книгу Down in the River - Ryan Blacketter - Страница 5

The square beside the boulevard was indeed crowded with statues. A man of iron, holding an umbrella, rested on the edge of an iron bathtub, and this statue waved and became Martin. Lyle crossed the square. He was relieved Martin hadn’t seen his mom drop him off on her way to work, earplugs tied to the size adjuster of her ball cap. He asked her for a ride home later, but she wasn’t getting off until two in the morning.

An iron boy and girl sat in the tub. In the lights of the passing cars their wet bodies seemed to shiver. Martin thumbed an empty cigarette pack into the drain, pressing it until it made a plug, and led them out of downtown, away from the sounds of laughter coming from the bars and restaurants. As they crossed a windy bridge, Martin’s tiny umbrella flapped and rattled above his head, then snapped inside out behind him. He cursed and threw it flapping over the bridge, then leaned over the railing. “Fall to your death!” he shouted at it. They continued along the bridge. Martin caught Lyle’s eye and smiled to show he was only having a laugh.

Lyle turned to him and galloped along sideways for a moment, grinning. He wished he hadn’t made plans with Rosa. They were meeting at ten. He would have to cut his time with Martin short.

Across the bridge were long blocks of industrial buildings—a neighborhood he’d never seen. As they turned onto the second street, the rain and wind lessened and the air blackened. He saw only the edges of things. Martin loped to the end of a loading dock and stepped onto a deep window ledge. Lyle collapsed his umbrella and followed him, feeling the ledge with his foot to make sure there was a place for him. They stood resting their backs against the bricked-over window, the ground below them falling into black space. Lyle’s sight came to him in pieces. A dumpster yawned out of the void below, a rancid smell rising from it—urine, mildewed fabric. A mattress lay on top of the other garbage inside of it. Buildings across the street shone dimly in patches of wet brick.

From his bag Martin lifted the bottle of Schnapps.

“I have you to confirm that I shot out the lights. Instead of going to Devon’s with everybody else, I rode these streets with my gun. Must have put out eighty lights. Bad idea, I’ll admit it. I was a bit messed up in the head. Maybe you noticed.” Martin tipped the bottle, keeping a wide eye on him, then spat in the dumpster. “A certain dark gypsy, named Monique, fucked Devon in his bed while she was going out with me.”

“Did you love her?”

“Liked. But not enough to shoot out all the lights. Half of them, maybe. It’s never good to shoot out all the lights.”

“I like to run around at night too.”

“Not sure who I hate more, Levi or Devon. I swear to God they’re a father-son Mafia. Levi has done some bad things.”

“Maybe he’ll let you back. If you tell him you won’t drink.”

“I’m glad it happened, all of it. It’s actually fun. All the really moral people are kicked out and burned alive. Look at Joan of Arc.”

A spotlight tilted into the sky and vanished, then appeared again. While Lyle drank some of the bottle, Martin groaned and cursed and laughed out loud, as though his thoughts harassed and entertained him at once. He sailed through an episode of cackling. He shook his head, whispering to himself mysteriously. It was clear that this was the moment Lyle was supposed to say, “what, what, tell me,” and promise never to breathe a word to a soul, and he did so.

“If you did tell,” Martin said, “we’d both get in a lot of trouble. Are you sure you want to be involved?”

“Yes.”

Martin was a gray shape beside him.

“Last night a memory kind of exploded in my head. Something bad, and great. Oh, God!” he breathed wetly and sniggered again. He drew fiercely on his cigarette. “Did I mention that my mom and Levi are friends? They used to be community activists—bleh. Ladies in my church actually help poor people; my mom and Levi held signs downtown. Well, Levi’s daughter … Devon’s sister …” He dropped to a squat and laughed hard. He rolled his forehead back and forth on his knees. He stood, breathed. “It’s just nerves. I’m trying to remain … okay, Levi’s daughter is buried in a mausoleum in the campus cemetery, which, if you don’t know, is a problem. Levi’s a Jew. Mausoleum burial goes against Jewish law. Levi’s hippy wife left him five years ago—she left when he went back to being a Jew, after their daughter died—and for a while there he wanted to rebury her. He talked to my mom about it. I remember him being miserable at our kitchen table after the divorce. I listened from my bedroom, sometimes from the hall. They talked a lot about it for, like, weeks. He kept saying that his wife wouldn’t let him move her body, but that God’s law was greater. But he was pissed. I was only twelve, but I knew even then that it had nothing to do with God’s law and everything to do with fighting with this bitch he hated. He just wanted to mess with his wife. Want proof? After she moved back east the issue went away.

“As far as I know, the blizzard girl is still in that mausoleum, feeling pretty unkosher, I bet. Levi is shunning pork and going to temple while his daughter rots up there outside of God’s law. And he’s dictating rules to me? He kicks me out of my club for breaking one fucking rule, while he’s breaking the rite of burial. That’s crazy. It’s insane! By the way, as a Catholic I admire Judaism a lot. I have so much respect for it, in fact, that I think somebody ought to save that girl from her family.”

Martin took too much into his mouth then, his cheeks ballooning. He bent over and spilled some onto the mattress, liquor dripping from his chin.

“I’m going to save her,” he said. “I’m going to rescue her from that place, because it’s the right thing to do. I should have done it a long time ago.”

The wind lashed whorls of rain against them. His words swept through Lyle’s head like a storm of crows. As though somebody nearby were listening, he whispered, “So, you’d steal the kid’s bones?”

“No. I’m not stealing anything. I’m not in this for personal gain. I’m doing this out of morality.”

“You’d bury them in a Jewish graveyard or something? You’d touch them, with your hands?”

“It’s only Americans who can’t deal with bones. Monks in France used to collect each other’s skulls. And Cézanne—ever seen pictures of his studio? Skulls all over the place. Also, Michelangelo. He dug up bodies and dissected them. I think he was the one.” He raised his chin. “Did I tell you I’m an artist? A painter.”

He was serious. He wanted to rob a grave.

“You don’t think she’s at peace?” Lyle’s voice was shaky and nasal. He coughed hard twice, to make his voice right. “Was she Jewish when she died, when she was put in the mausoleum?”

“Levi was her father.”

“But she wasn’t Jewish when she was buried, right?”

“You can’t stop being a Jew. No—this girl was born a Jew, and she died a Jew.”

“But Levi seems like a nice guy.”

“Yes, he seems very nice, very gentlemanly. But who’s the guy behind that? A man who used his daughter as a pawn against his wife, then abandoned her to hell when she wasn’t useful anymore. This isn’t a Jewish town—Levi can hide here. You know what would happen to him in Chicago? Brooklyn? There would be people calling for justice. I’m with the Jews, I support them—Jews and Catholics are old school. I care about the laws of religion. What if Levi had shot her? We’d call the cops. And not just because it’s against the law, but because it’s wrong. To a Jew, what Levi has done is a crime.”

Lyle took thoughtful sips. Maybe it was wrong to bury her in a mausoleum, but she was there now, so maybe she ought to stay.

“Do you really care about this girl?” Lyle asked.

“Would I be considering this if I didn’t?”

“It’s not just because you’re mad at Levi and Devon?”

“That’s part of it. A small part, I’ll admit it. But what pisses me off more is that he doesn’t care about a little girl! His own child! Mostly, I want to save her from eternal darkness. Even if I’m not a Jew. You’re supposed to take care of people when they die, to take care of your family. It’s important. The ceremony, the burial—it all has to be just right. You don’t just slop them someplace. It ruins their memory, it disrespects their life.”

Lyle blinked at him hard, as if he could see him clearly in the dark. “You’re right. I think that, too.”

“Sure I’m right. If we still care about people in this world.”

Martin didn’t seem like a teenager, with his baldness and double chin, his talk of art and religion, his worry and concern for a little girl who died so long ago.

“By the way,” Martin said, “did you know Devon said you’re a ridiculous redneck? He said his dad said so too. They say the same things.” He paused. “You know where I’m from? Grants Pass, Oregon. Home of the Cavemen. There’s actually a statue of a caveman, downtown.”

“Sounds like where I’m from. Marshal, home of the Savages.” He was pleased his friend was willing to own up to where he was from. Martin was no redneck.

“Let’s walk,” Martin said. Lyle hopped onto the loading dock and stepped aside for him to lead, and they continued up the street. The air howled around them. Gutter water hissed on a crossroad. Martin produced his BB pistol and shot ahead of them at nothing.

On the next block a street lamp burned. “I missed one.” He shot five times and the lamp darkened. “I forgot, I should have left that one burning. I’ll be more generous next time.” It seemed they were leaving the conversation on the loading dock behind them. Lyle was relieved, though he still felt giddy. It mixed nicely with the booze.

“You want to blow something up?” Lyle said. “I have pipe bombs and duct tape.”

“I used to play with those. How many do you have?”

“Three.”

“They’re noisy—that’s the problem. But maybe we’ll think of something,” he said. “I told Devon I shot out these lights, but he refuses to check my work—he’s jealous.”

“Let’s shoot out some more. I have an hour before I meet Rosa.”

“Rosa?” he said. “Little Rosa? Immature, superficial, slutty Rosa?”

All at once Lyle felt defensive of her and worried Martin knew something that he didn’t. “She’s all right,” he said.

Martin seemed to walk faster now. “I only date extremely bright girls who are also traditional. Hard to find. That’s why it didn’t work out between me and her sister.”

“Rosa’s just a kid. It doesn’t matter.”

“You’re welcome to her, my friend. So you’ll be hanging out with her all the time, huh?”

“No. Once in a while.”

“Well, now that Dimitrious is done with her, somebody else might as well climb on. You know him, the black guy?”

“She’s not with him anymore, is she?”

“Who knows.”

“I don’t think she is.”

“Not that she’d tell you.” He drank. “Dimitrious is friends with Devon—you know what that means: they share each other, all around. They have their main partner, but it’s okay to sleep with the rest of the group. Boys on boys, girls on girls—whatever.” He slapped Lyle on the back. “I hope you know what you’re looking at.”

Lyle made a disgusted noise. He’d never heard of that kind of thing before.

“I doubt Rosa goes in for anything like that,” he said.

“We’ll see.”

“Monique, sure. But not Rosa.”

They turned onto a broad street that went along fields, toward the river. The telephone poles in the fields were like half crosses, shouldering heavy black tubes like grim bunting.

The odor of beets hovered in pockets of warm mist in the rain. A high gray building faced the water and they went alongside it. The windows near the sidewalk presented a basement network of conveyor belts where the workers on night shift stood in hairnets and earplugs, the bsh bsh of canning machines battering the air. It was his brother’s night off. He didn’t see his mom. Though Craig had shown them where he worked days after they arrived in town, Lyle hadn’t realized he was in the cannery part of town until now.

They crossed the river on a different bridge. In the grass on the other side, along the river path, a train engine hulked behind iron bars. A light flared above windy branches, patterns skipping across the engine, rain streaming down its rounded black sides.

“Let me shoot out this one,” Lyle said. He shattered the lamp’s casing in three shots.

“Excellent.”

They walked. Lampposts followed the curve in the river path, going out of sight around a bend. Martin popped out most of the lights along the way.

A footbridge crossed the river. There were many bridges. They took turns sipping at the bottle and smoked, leaning on the railing, the water giving back the bridge lamps, white moonlike circles quaking in the rain. After a while, Martin crossed the bridge on one side then came back on the other, putting out several of the lights. It made Lyle think of a military execution.

“I live with my mom right up the bike path, past the rose garden,” Martin said. “She runs a day care and I live in the house next door.” He sniffed. “She started voting Republican a few years ago—after years of journaling about her spirit animal. Now she reads Ayn Rand. She goes to gun shows. My mom’s a right-wing lesbian extremist.”

“You’re getting soaked.”

“This coat has a waterproof lining, and I have an extra shirt in my bag. Wish I’d brought my hat, though.”

Martin found the end of the bottle and threw it bouncing down the length of the bridge. It disappeared over the edge into the water.

“Have you ever noticed that when you drop something on accident it shatters, but if you drop something on purpose it doesn’t even crack? It’s what I call The Great Fuck You. The world knows who you are and it goes against you. When I used to ride a bike, for instance. The wind was always in my face, constantly. Never at my back. It was like this hunting, tracking force. There are currents of bad shit in the air. But sometimes it’s like you can get them flowing in the opposite direction. I know evil has to exist and blah blah. Levi and Devon are, like, part of this force field of hate. All I want to do is turn it back on them and make at least one of their wrongs right. That’s why I’m going to take the skull.”

“How did you get so smart?”

Martin chuckled and raised his chin. “It’s embarrassing to be a genius. I wish I were normal. My life would be easier. I probably wouldn’t have the moral compulsions that I do.”

The water had gone darker below. Lyle was buzzed, but his head felt very clear. Martin had said he wanted the girl’s skull. “You wouldn’t take the whole body? Jesus. You should take the whole body if you’re going to do it.”

“Listen to your voice. You sound like a kid. What are you so worried about?”

“If you’re going to bury her, you should bury all of her. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I’d be respectful about it. To me, the girl’s skull represents her soul. Cézanne didn’t have skeletons lying around his studio; he had skulls.”

Lyle held his breath, picking out visible places in the water.

“Okay, I’ll bury the body,” Martin said. “To show respect. Which Levi obviously did not do. I am going to do it, though. It’s all planned. I can steal bolt cutters from my mom’s tools and buy a new padlock. The mausoleum gate is locked by a chain. It’ll be easy. I’m taking care of everything tomorrow, all the preparations.”

Lyle stared into the water and pictured feeling the smoothness of the skull, rubbing where the nose and ears had been, stroking the curve down the back of the head, thumbing the eye sockets. He let out the air he was holding and stepped back from the rail to shake off the image.

“Look,” Martin said. “What am I?” He took smoke into his mouth. Instead of inhaling he shut his eyes, tipped his head, and let the smoke drift from his lips. “I’m a dead soldier. Let’s do it at the same time, but keep our eyes open. Sometimes dead people have their eyes open.”

“No. You go ahead.”

Martin deadened his eyes, smoke slipping from his mouth. He grinned and fell out of the pose, laughing. Lyle chuckled and shook his head. They hung on the railing and shared one umbrella.

Martin told him he was going to walk to his house and change, then go read at a café if Lyle wanted to come. Lyle thanked him for the invitation, but he had stayed too long.

“I was supposed to meet her twenty minutes ago.”

“You’re not going to start hanging out with her constantly are you? I know that idiot thing that happens to new couples.”

“We’re friends.”

“Rosa goes boy to boy, parting her knees every time. Watch out. Somebody like us comes along—honest, monogamous. We fall in love and get herpes—or AIDS. I’d rather wait for a girl with morals.”

“I probably won’t see her much after tonight.”

“Here’s my number.” Martin took a book from his bag and crouched over it in the light rain, writing on a receipt. “Stop by the café later if you’re bored—it’s by the train station. Paradise Café. It’s open till midnight. Hey, best night I’ve had in a long time.”

Martin seized his hand and Lyle returned the grip.

“I was starting to feel depressed there for a while,” he said. “And I don’t care one wit about the Larios whores. You can tell Monique if you see her: any guy in the club could have her, and I would laugh and laugh. Say hi to Levi, the great enforcer. Tell him I miss him. Tell him I long for his old white beard.” He smirked then, and leaned toward Lyle. “Listen, what did you think of that story I told you? About his daughter. Want to help me rescue her?”

Lyle didn’t answer that. “I wouldn’t mind having a few more nights like this one.”

Martin said they would have more than a few, and told him to call. Lyle raised his hand in parting.

He recognized none of the faces in the window at Levi’s Café. A boy with long hair, in a green velvet shirt, squatted on the porch. He had black lipstick and purple fingernails and dragged on a cigarette holder. The boy was younger, and Lyle asked if he knew Rosa and Shanta. The boy waved his holder like a wand.

“They tumbled away, my friend. The wind blew them into the forest.”

“Where’s all the people from the club?”

“They have flown from this castle.”

“That’s a dumb way to talk.”

The boy went still, then drew on his cigarette. “You’re on a bad journey, my friend.”

“I’m not on a journey. I’m just walking around.”

Lyle pushed down the boulevard into the wind. When the fun of hanging out with Martin had passed, the booze took a turn in him, souring his mind as he felt himself alone again. The spotlight moved in the sky and the clouds broke and flew apart, as if the light operator were stirring up the heavens.

A far train cried like a mournful thing. He turned right toward downtown and scraped the tip of his folded umbrella along a brick wall. Blocks ahead, on high, the cross on Skinner Butte leaked bits of sickly light. The faces of church people smiled up at him from the wet sidewalk. They gazed sympathetically from the branches of trees and harassed him with whispered prayers from passing windows. He saw his brother smiling, Bible in hand.

His sister hated the concrete cross on the canyon wall above Marshal. She offered it displays of her finger. The cross was like a hand flipping off the world, Lila said. She wanted it covered over with a glowing neon whiskey bottle. “Jack Daniels would pay for the advertising,” she said.

His stomach twisted, and in his mind, his fists rained down on his brother’s head.

At Paradise Café, he hovered at the little windows in front. Martin, looking away from Lyle and grinning, shared a table beneath the espresso machine with Devon and Monique. He seemed trapped behind the wide smile. When Lyle moved a hand and caught Martin’s eye, he gathered his book and sketch pad into his bag and laughed out to the sidewalk. “Let’s walk,” Martin said to him, still grinning, his voice strained. They went up the short road toward the station where passengers were stepping into a silver, high-windowed train.

Devon’s shoes came slapping the pavement behind them. “I know you and Monique tried to sleep together, but you couldn’t do it.”

Martin laughed, staggering to one side at the accusation. Then he skipped up to the platform, smiling stiffly, and hurried along the windows of the train, Lyle in his wake. Devon followed at a jog, while Monique walked slowly at a distance on the platform.

“You couldn’t get it up,” Devon said. “Like five different times.”

At the far edge of the platform Martin stopped and turned, and the three boys faced each other.

“Maybe I wasn’t interested,” Martin said.

“Not interested in that perfect body?”

Martin’s grin was now a mere exposure of teeth. Lyle didn’t want to look at him.

“Go look at North District! I shot out every light!”

“Now you have something to brag about.”

Monique approached. “Jesus, you guys—big drama.” She raised her hood in the drizzle. Behind her, a conductor helped an old man onto the train, watching them.

“So that sexy, beautiful girl didn’t appeal to you. I don’t think so. You’re impotent, and I’m telling everybody. You forced me too.”

“Would you let up on him?” Monique said.

“I can’t stand up for myself?” said Devon. “The whole school thinks I have herpes now. He spread it all over town.”

“That doesn’t mean turning around and laughing at a person for …”

“I’m not laughing.”

“Go look at North District!” Martin said again. “I do the things I talk about. I jump trains and make art and fuck girls, lots of them. Traditional girls. They’re the only kind I—”

“You were always too scared to jump on the train,” Devon said. “All last summer.”

“Martin, I’m sorry,” Monique said. “I only told Devon after you made up that stupid story. But we won’t say anything, as long as you tell people you made it up.”

“I didn’t make it up. A girl told me she got herpes off him.”

“Who?” Devon whispered hotly.

“I’m keeping it a secret whose life you wrecked. Believe it or not, she doesn’t want everybody to know she has herpes. And I’m not surprised you feel the same way. Has Monique been tested yet? Have you?”

“There’s no need to,” Devon said.

“He refuses to get tested. Interesting. All he has to do is show people a negative test. But he won’t do it. I wonder why.”

“I don’t have anything,” Devon said.

“This girl I know, she seems to think you do. Well, you two will figure out how to work around those little flare-ups.”

“There’s no girl,” Devon said.

“Oh? Lyle met her.”

Monique veered her eyes at Lyle. He nodded that it was true.

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Devon told Monique. “Hey, don’t look like that. He’s lying.”

“Is he lying?” she asked Lyle.

“Well, I did meet the girl,” he said. “She was pretty upset. She thinks her whole life is ruined, and she’s in love with him. So …”

“Don’t believe them.”

“We’re getting tested,” Monique said.

“Okay. If you want to.”

“Don’t worry, Devonian,” Martin said. “I want you to take a deep breath and rest easy. Your overreaction to my telling the truth is totally understandable. But people with herpes can lead normal, happy lives—especially when both people have the disease.”

Martin hopped off the platform and strode along the strip of gravel running between the tracks and a chain-link fence. Lyle caught up to him. Beyond the lights of the station, Martin curled his fingers into the chain-link and rattled it before plodding ahead. He called over his shoulder, “Don’t follow me!” Then, “Call me tomorrow.” Instead of turning at a break in the fence at the next street, he continued down the tracks, his shape fading in the rain.

Lyle felt bad for him. Devon was enough of a scum to tell everybody. A guy like that was dangerous.

He left the station and walked along an empty department store building. There was nothing but dust on display in the windows. The spotlight beam flashed again in the sky, then vanished and appeared, seeming to speed up with the approach of midnight. He was pointed toward the apartment, but he still had plenty of wildness in him to throw at the night. He’d find a phone and call Rosa to see if she was home yet.

Between the Hilton and the high glass wall of the performing arts center, Rosa glided down the walkway on her bike in the fine rain. He stood near the hotel’s side entrance, beneath an awning. The umbrella she held, elongated and transparent, was shaped like a candle snuffer or a champagne glass, and only kept the rain off of her head. Riding up to Lyle, she lifted the umbrella and held it to one side. Her plastic raincoat swam with light and her face was small nestled in all that hair. She locked her bike at the rack in front of him.

“I took my little sister’s umbrella by accident. This thing has ducks in the plastic. You can tell I’m very cool—I’m all style. Sorry it took so long. My mom came upstairs when you called and I had to wait for her to go to bed. I told her it was Shanta. Why are we meeting here?”

He stepped out to the rain and tipped his head back, and she did the same. A red mist dragged across a corner of the Hilton roof.

“We could go up there,” he said. “On top.”

“On the roof? Why?”

“I don’t know, stand in the clouds.”

Inside, they took the elevator up to the bar on the top floor and were turned away. They went back to the eleventh floor and walked down the hallway and out to a balcony off the stairwell. Three spotlights moving on the low clouds, looping in separate circles and then rushing at each other and colliding, seemed to celebrate their arrival. This balcony was high enough. Downtown was busy with people out walking in noisy groups. They were awkward and silent for a minute.

“I’ve been seeing one of those spotlights all night,” Lyle said.

The girl was quiet.

“Have you ever heard of the backward language?” he said. “My sister and I used to speak it, but I’m not sure if she invented it or not. She filled part of a notebook with backward words.”

“Does it sound like a record playing backwards?”

“Not weird-sounding like that. Here, say, ‘Eramthgin gnikcuf.’”

“Eram …” she began, and he coached her till she got it right.

“That means fucking nightmare. My sister used to say that all the time.”

“Eram-thgin gnik-cuf,” she said, and laughed.

“Good.”

She pronounced the phrase once more. “I can say that at the dinner table and nobody will know. Are you, like, fluent yet?”

“I’m only a little ahead of you.” He leaned out and glimpsed the flashing red pole in the south hills before a sinking cloud blotted it away.

“Did you hang out at Levi’s for a long time?” he asked.

“No. I don’t like any of my friends. They act like they’re twelve instead of almost fifteen. Or maybe I’m the one who acts older. I have complicated thoughts. Does that sound dumb? I guess it does. All I mean is, when Shanta talks, she doesn’t seem to understand anything. I understand some things, that’s all I mean. But I also know there’s a lot I don’t understand. What about you? Do you get things? Can you tell me something I don’t already know?”

His voice had a tone—tough and wise—that he hoped she would believe: “You have to come close to dying once in a while, or you’re not really alive. That’s one thing I know.”

Her eyebrows pulsed as she smiled, as if she was worried and amused at once.

“My great aunt must really be alive then,” she said. “She gets pushed around in a wheelchair with an oxygen tank in a home in San Diego.”

“I don’t mean old people,” he said. “They don’t count.”

“What, then? Russian roulette type stuff?”

“No, that’s sick. One thing I like to do is come up here and climb out to the other side of the rail. I hold onto the bar, then I let go and fall backward and catch myself at the last minute.”

“No you don’t! When?”

“All the time. Once a day.”

As he placed a foot up on the railing, she pulled him down. “Stop it! Why would you do that?”

“I like to hold onto the rail one-handed and swing, looking up at the sky.”

“Alone? That’s kind of weird.”

“Martin and I come up here sometimes. I brought him up here. It was my idea. We also jump trains a lot.”

“Promise me you won’t do it anymore. Jump trains, okay, if they’re going slow, but don’t step outside the railing.”

“Have you ever read anybody’s mind?” he said. “My sister and I used to read each other’s. She could do it better than me. Ask me a question about your thoughts.”

“What’s my favorite color?”

“No, something about your family.”

“What’s my dad’s job?”

“Okay, I have to concentrate.” He touched his head with both hands for a moment. “Not sure what he does, exactly. Is it stressful? Does he drink a lot?”

A dark line appeared between her eyes.

“Nope—wrong,” she said. “He’s really nice. He’s a pretty happy person.”

“Who said he wasn’t?”

She leaned against the rail and squinted. She seemed to be scrutinizing the cars passing on the parkway one block up. “He’s highly successful. He’s a lawyer.”

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” he said.

“God, there’s so many trashy cars in this town. It seems like everybody’s favorite car is a twenty-year-old Subaru.”

“I like people whose parents drink a lot. I don’t know why or anything—I just do.”

“He doesn’t, okay? Besides, it’s a weird thing to say, you like people whose parents drink a lot. It doesn’t even mean anything.”

“You’re right.”

“What time is it? I guess we’d better go.”

She opened the door and they walked back to the elevator. In the lobby, they went out the front door and tacked across the road, to a gravel lot across the street. Lyle picked up a rock and sailed it past the high red H on the sign in front of the hotel. “You see that? I threw it clean over the Hilton. Hey are you still mad? I only said that about your dad as a guess. I don’t know anything about him.”

“No, I’m not mad. Wait. I forgot my bike. Which way is my house? I’m turned around.”

“You can’t stay out a while?”

She looked up at the red H. “What else do you do, besides hang off of hotel railings?”

“Everything, anything. Steal booze. Run at night. I like to go around, see what I can see. Hit me somewhere—hit me in the stomach. I’m in great shape!”

“See what you can see, huh? No, I think I’ll go home.”

Her eyes were narrowed, as though with understanding. She went sullen, a very touchy girl. She crossed the street and he followed her, where she unlocked her bike at the side of the hotel. After walking two silent blocks, they entered the square of statues from the opposite side, across from where he had arrived six hours before. In the iron bathtub where Martin had plugged the drain, water covered the children’s waists. He imagined the iron children a few days from now, hair swirling about their heads.

He considered staying out, running town, but sleepiness moved in him. Maybe it was disappointment with the girl’s silence. His mom was getting off at the cannery at two, and he might try to catch a ride with her instead of walking to the apartment. At the boulevard Rosa got on her bike, ready to go on alone.

“You’re the one who peeked in our house,” she said. “Where’s my sister’s bike?”

“I’m meeting my mom across the river. I’m late. Why does everybody always blame me?”

“Maybe it’s because you do things.”

“What things?”

“You were the one, right? Tell me the truth or I won’t talk to you again.”

A stain on the sidewalk held his gaze. “Okay it was me, but I liked you and wanted to see where you lived.”

“Thanks for snooping around like some pervert homeless.”

When she peddled off, he turned and walked through the square.