I looked back over my shoulder, heard distant gunshots. What could I do to help those people who’d only gone to look at art? Nothing. I could do nothing. I could save myself.
I was afraid to go back for my bike, so I ran as long as I could, then I walked. As I got close to home I stopped at a table set up in the alley off Drayton and bought a bottle of home brew with my three dollars. The guy didn’t ask why I was shaking so badly, or why I stank of piss. The alcohol washed some of the rancid taste out of my mouth.
Colin and Jeannie weren’t home. I didn’t want to be alone; I couldn’t even bring myself to go inside to change, because our apartment was dark and I was afraid. I headed toward Ange’s.
The pattering of water behind a wrought-iron gate caught my attention. I stopped and peered through the gate at a perfectly manicured garden. The shrubs were trimmed in perfect arcs; there was an oval reflecting pool in the center. In the pool was a statue of a woman perched on the edge of a fountain, drinking, sharing the flow with birds in flight. It was so calm, so beautiful. I would have given anything to spend an hour in there.
I kept going, swigging from my bottle every few steps.
When I reached Ange’s house I pounded on the door with the flat of my fist.
Chair, the guy in the wheelchair, opened it. He called to Ange. She took one look at me, shouted my name, and burst forward, tilting off-balance. She’d been drinking, too.
“What happened? Are you all right? Are you hurt?” She touched my arms, my sides, looking for wounds. I didn’t know how to describe what had happened. I did, but I didn’t know how to make it not sound humiliating. I felt like I’d been raped.
Ange led me to the bathroom, past roommates trying not to stare, which was worse than if they’d stared. She reached behind the shower curtain and turned on the water. I got in, still dressed, and splashed water on my face. The water at my feet was sewer brown as it slid down the drain.
“Do you want to tell me what happened? It’s okay if you don’t,” Ange said from outside, her words a little slurred.
I ran my fingers through my filthy hair. “I stopped at an art opening uptown,” I began. I unbuttoned my shirt with trembling plastic fingers, peeled it off and let it drop.
“Go ahead, honey,” Ange said. “I know it was bad. You’ll feel better when you tell it.”
I told it. I gagged and almost vomited when I got to the part about being forced to eat the fetus. I opened my mouth to the precious water, let it spray my gums and teeth, then rinsed and spit.
The shower curtain drew back, and Ange stepped in. She was naked.
She pressed her face into my neck.
“This is just a thing, okay?” she said. “A little distraction. Just some grown up fun. Okay?”
“Okay,” I said.
We stumbled out of the tub, letting the water dribble onto the ancient Formica, our legs moving in step like slow-dancers. We fell onto Ange’s mattress soaking wet.
Maybe it’s shallow and male, to be able to set aside something awful because a woman takes off her clothes, to forget that retching death-gag echoing through the alley and instead focus on erect nipples. I don’t care. It worked. Ange transformed those first hours from hellish to tolerable.
And I think it worked like an aspirin administered right after a heart attack, minimizing the long-term damage. There was going to be damage—no one sees what I saw and walks away clean—but Ange slipped an aspirin under my tongue just when I needed it most.
I knew it would cost us later. Some women know they can’t do the friends-with-sex thing without getting emotionally attached. Other women think they can do it, but they really can’t. That’s it—all women fit into one of those two categories. But I wasn’t totally opposed to the possibility of it turning into more than friends-with-sex, so maybe it would turn out okay, for a while, at least. Right then I didn’t care.
I dragged myself out of Ange’s bed at six a.m., feeling the grit of old wood under my feet. I’m not good at mornings. The dog-eared posters covering Ange’s walls were not quite perceptible in the hint of gray light filtering through the blinds.
Ange rolled over, opened her eyes.
“I have to get to work,” I whispered.
She nodded, took a big breath and let it out. “You doing okay?”
“I’m good,” I said. I got out of bed, headed for the door.
“Bye, sweetie. I love you, but I don’t love you.”
“I love you, but I don’t love you, too,” I said. I considered kissing her goodbye, decided that was a bad idea, and slipped out.
Two of Ange’s roommates—Chair and an Indian guy named Rami—were in the living room, hunched over the coffee table, which was covered with charts and notes. Chair blocked my view of the table, gave me a look that made it clear I should keep moving. They always seemed to be working, but they didn’t seem to be students. I had no idea what they did. I needed to remember to ask Ange what these guys were doing.
I walked in the street; it was easier than navigating the homeless asleep on the sidewalks, hugging their possessions.
On York I passed an emaciated little girl sitting on a stone curb, her chin on her knees, ten feet from a woman selling walnuts out of an old doorless refrigerator tipped on its back. A woman appeared around the corner of Whitaker Street and waved to the little girl. The woman had just swallowed something. She ran her tongue over her teeth, then smiled at her little girl, held out her hand for the girl to grasp.
I cut through Chippewa Square, rounded the corner onto Liberty, and stopped in my tracks.
The front of the Timesaver was a sea of broken glass. I broke into a run, flew into the Timesaver and found Ruplu sitting on the counter, staring at his ransacked store.
“Amos is dead, they’ve already taken him away,” Ruplu said, gesturing at blood streaked across the floor by the window. He turned and looked at me with red-rimmed eyes. He’d probably been there half the night. “Can you work a double shift and help me get things back in order?”
“As long as you need me, I’m here” I said. Work was just what I needed right now; something to get lost in. I went to the supply closet and pulled out a broom.
“Can I ask you something? Do you think they did this because I’m Indian?” Ruplu asked.
“Yes and no,” I said. “People around here hate foreigners, so your store becomes an appealing target. They also hate rich people—”
“But I’m not rich,” Ruplu interrupted. “My family lives in a six-room house, nine of us. This store doesn’t make that much.”
I swept loose chips of glass wedged under the beverage cases that long ago used to be refrigerated. “I know, but they don’t understand that. They don’t want to understand it. They wanted what was inside your store, so it becomes a handy excuse.”
I stopped at the puddle of blood. Both the broom and the mop would only smear the blood. I looked around, spied a busted bag of kitty litter on a low shelf. I retrieved the bag and poured it over the blood. Poor Amos. He probably didn’t even get a chance to draw his gun. I realized now that he was just for show, that when someone really wanted to rip off the Timesaver, all it took was a few sweeps from an assault rifle.
“I pay the local Civil Defense people eight hundred dollars a month to protect the store,” Ruplu said, piling cases of soda that the thieves had not had time to cart away. “Do they offer to make reparations when I tell them my store was shot up while it was supposed to be under their protection? No. They just remind me that my next eight hundred is due in four days.”
“I think Civil Defense is starting to be more of a problem than a solution in this city,” I said.
“I think you’re right. And they’re not my only problem.” Ruplu sat on the stack of soda cases. “Every week, there’s less and less merchandise I can get delivered. No more coffee. Pepsi doesn’t distribute this far south starting in November. No aspirin in months.” He shrugged his helplessness. “What can I do?”
“I’ve been thinking about that,” I said. “Maybe you should look into making deals with locals to sell their things—peanuts, preserves, home-made blankets, things like that.”
Ruplu nodded, thinking. “The problem is locating these people and arranging all these separate deals. It takes all the time just to run the sales end.”
“I could work on that end—”
Ruplu shook his head. “I can’t afford to pay you for that many more hours,” he said.
