Burning Blue

“Never.”

“Then it’s Hackers, Hitters and Hoops. I’ll laugh anyway.”

“Your house.”

I hedged.

“What?” she said.

“No, nothing. Let’s go, I guess.”

Somebody left half-eaten takeout just outside the lobby. The rats were congregating. They didn’t move, either, when we walked by. Waddling up to the party, one of them looked more like a possum. He eyed me like, No, you move. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“About what?” Nicole said. “We had a mouse once. He was cute.”

“Stuart Little versus Bubonic Plague.”

We played Skyrim, and then she went to the piano. She was great, of course, even with Band-Aids on two of her fingertips.

“You know that song ‘How Soon Is Now?’” I said.

She played it. “Sit with me,” she said. She showed me the very simple top part of a four hands version of the song. “The squeeze bottle,” she said. “When it came up to your face. What were you thinking when the splash hit you?”

“It happened too fast. Start to finish in less than a second. I was like, okay, this psycho just squirted acid in my face. It was weird. I wasn’t thinking about me. I was thinking about him. How screwed up he must be to do that. Even after he told me it was water.”

She stopped playing. She looked at me.

I wanted to brush the hair away from the left side of her face. I didn’t. Instead I did something I didn’t want to do. Something I had to do. I said, “Dave.”

“What about him?”

“He said you broke up with him.”

She looked away, tapped the low end key. “I did.”

“You told me he broke it off.”

“I said the words, after he gave me an ultimatum.”

“As in?” I said.

She squinted at me, and I realized I was squinting at her. It hit me: She didn’t trust me either. Not fully. Not yet. She turned back to the keys, tapped out a very sad, slow version of “How Soon Is Now?” “He made Emma a bouquet once,” she said.

“What, he bought her mixed deli flowers or whatever?”

“No, he made them. From paper.”

“Like origami?”

“Exactly origami. He Kindled a how-to book. She loves sweetheart roses, the tiny ones, but they die after a day. He wanted to give her something that would last. Paper fades too, though. It curls in the sun. I wonder if she knows she has six months to live.” She leaned her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her. I was supposed to kiss her now, and I wanted to, but I didn’t, I’m not sure why. So we just stayed like that for a while, until it was clear I’d let the moment go, and she got up to get her coat.

“Stay,” I said. “PS3. Bootleg tennis. I’ll let you kick my ass.”

“Gotta get home. My dad. We have a Skype thing scheduled.”

I walked her to her car. She checked the backseat before she opened the door.

“Look,” I said, “I-”

She cut me off with a hug that was as tight as it was short. She slipped into her Saab and drove out of there a little too fast.

I watched her car disappear into the sharp red sunset. As I was heading back into the building, an engine revved, and a battered old-model Civic, black, eased out of the lot and swerved into the empty avenue. I was about to call Nicole to warn her, but the car turned west, away from where Nicole’s Saab had gone. I grabbed the tag off the rear bumper with my phone camera. Pete had advised me to take pictures every time Puglisi or one of his guys showed up. That maybe the police would get on him for stalking if we gathered enough evidence. I realized that the tag numbers weren’t Puglisi’s. And the car’s color was different. I remembered Puglisi’s Honda as less black, more gray. The windows were up, but I could make out that the driver was a woman, short with long hair. She was wearing dark sunglasses, almost as if she were copying Nicole.

Battered Civic, short girl with long hair: Starbucks Cherry?

I scrolled to the last text she sent and replied: We need to talk.

It didn’t take long for her to get back, of course, fifteen seconds, about as much time as she would need to pull over and grab her phone. We most definitely do. When?

Now.

Come to my house.

Someplace pubic. My JKL key was lame half the time. I’d already hit SEND.

Took her a while to reply to that one. Mall?

Apple pkng lot 20 min

Glad you figured out how to text.:o)

I called Angela.

“What’s up?” She sounded a little out of it.

“You drinking?”

“Just straight vodka.”

“You at your computer?

“Where else would I be?”

“Need you to run some plates.”

“You can’t tap the lousy DMV yourself?”

“I have to check on something else right now.”

“As in?”

“Why after two years of knowing me a certain girl is all of a sudden crushing on me.”

THIRTY-FIVE

Took me fifteen minutes to skateboard to the mall. I scanned the parking lot entrances for Cherry’s Civic. Somebody tapped my shoulder. I spun with my hand up to cover my face. I almost didn’t recognize her out of her Starbucks getup. She wore a tight pink hoodie, tight jeans. Her hair was lighter than I remembered. She always had it in a ponytail, and I’d never seen it loose. She’d gone heavy with the lip gloss. “Hey,” she said, big smile.

“Why are you stalking me?” I said.

“Okay, wait, stalking? I texted you like three times. You didn’t get back to me, so I let it go.”

“Cherry, coming to my building? C’mon.”

“Dude, I don’t even know where you live.”

“I saw you, okay? You almost got T-boned, swerving out of the lot.”

She put up her hands like I had a knife out. “This is messed up. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She backed away toward a row of parked cars.

“Unless you come clean, right now, I’m calling the cops. I’m serious.”

“I know you are. I’m definitely sensing seriousness.” She backpedaled to the driver’s-side door of a Honda Civic that was at least ten years older than the one that had pulled out of the lot in front of my building, not to mention that this one wasn’t black but yellow. “Take it easy, Jay. I don’t know what I did, but I’m leaving now, okay? I don’t want to hurt you.” She opened the door and barked, “Step away from the vehicle,” as if she’d Hulu’d one too many