As I drew the shower curtain closed, I felt safe in a way I never will outside, and as I washed, I considered how I’d always thought of the scars as something I
Memories are the history we carry around with us, a history that’s mapped out upon our bodies, pressed into the very folds of our minds. So that night I remembered. Just as I go back to the mall at every opportunity, an immigrant returning to the homeland, and feel safe there.
What no one understands is that, lying in the box under Danny’s bed, miraculously I was able to stop being myself and become so much more. I could feel myself liquifying, flowing out into the world. I became numinous. Sometimes, though ever less often as time goes by, I’m able to recapture that.
“Thanks again for touching base with Cheryl,” Jack had said as we settled in. The restaurant, Italian, was Mama Ciao’s on McDowell, recently relocated to the abandoned shell of a Mexican establishment and demonstrably in transition.
“I only hope that eventually it may do some good.”
“What we all hope. You never know.” He sipped a couple ounces of draft. “Have to tell you this one thing.”
“Okay.”
“I have an ex-wife—not really
I waited.
“Just wondered how you felt about it,” he said, “that’s all.”
“What’s your daughter’s name?”
“Deanna.”
“You see her often?”
“I used to, when she was young. Had her for weekends, half the summer. As she grew up, less and less.”
“Just how long has this divorce been in the works?”
“Little over ten years.”
“You check with Ripley, see if that’s some kind of record?”
“Think I should?”
“Probably.”
His eyes were bright with good humor.
“We all have to decide what’s important to us and fight for it, Jack. Sometimes the best way to fight is to do nothing.”
“Friends I have left say I’m living in the past, trying to hold onto something that’s no longer there.”
“The past is what we are, even as we’re constantly leaving it.”
“You know what? I have no idea what that means.”
“Neither do I,” I said, laughing. “But it sounded good.”
“What’s important to you?” Jack had asked as we walked out. Night was settling in, last tatters of daylight become pink banners riding low in the sky. When he took my arm to gently guide me left, our eyes met.
“Everything,” I told him.
VALERIE
BY KURT REICHENBAUGH
All I had left was that look on Valerie’s face as she watched Cooper bleed out onto the stained motel carpet. That’s the last picture of her.
My mind worked like that when it came to Valerie. A mental slide show of her. Snapshots that I’d arrange in ways that pleased me differently each time. And this was the last one. The one of her standing above Cooper, legs apart, that cut across her right cheekbone, a teardrop line of blood trickling from it.
My arms and legs were cold.
I couldn’t move.
It hurt to breathe.
I never thought much about how I’d go out. I wanted another turn at things. Another go-round to see if I could make things different.
Instead, I just had this picture of Valerie and the sad knowledge of just how stupid I’d been.
“Dude, they got a vending machine that sells pussy shots in the men’s room!”
I remember looking back over my shoulder at the guy bragging about his find in the john. That was my first sight of Cooper. Healthy, early thirties, a tad overweight, cheeks showing the first blush of hypertension. Wardrobe from Abercrombie & Fitch, with attitude from Scottsdale.
Valerie told me she’d be meeting him at the Bikini Lounge. Said I should come also and get a look at him before the job, you know, get a feel for the target. Her words:
Well, I’d gotten my look. I wasn’t impressed.
“Two PBRs,” Cooper told Sally, pressing up to the bar next to me.
Sally eyed him with tired patience. “I’ll need to see some ID.”
I watched as Cooper dug out his wallet and slid an Arizona license and credit card across the rutted wood bar. Johnny Cash began singing on the juke. Always Johnny Cash. I liked Johnny Cash enough, but sometimes it would be nice to hear someone like Duane Eddy for a change.
“Cash only,” Sally said, setting the bottles down in front of him. “No cards.”
“No cards?” Cooper looked at her like she was crazy. “Shit, hold on a sec.” He went back over to the table where I knew Valerie was waiting for him.
Sally looked at me and rolled her eyes.
Cooper returned with his money and took the bottles of beer. He gave me a dose of stink-eye as he did.
I hate guys like him. Too many phony pricks like him all over Phoenix. And he had to come here, my turf, and turn Valerie’s head.
The Bikini Lounge had been on Grand since late 1947. It would have remained a forgotten dive until hipsters like Cooper discovered it. I liked it anyway. It was close to where I lived. Started coming here after the Emerald Lounge closed down. Either here or the Alaskan Bush Company, just a piece further down Grand.
Grand Avenue slashed diagonally through Phoenix’s grid-lined streets. Certain streets in the city are sunburnt. This stretch of Grand had gone on to skin cancer. But lately the neighborhood had seen something of a revival. Artists found the rents affordable and the setting appropriately retro-beat and moved in, luring adventurous suburbanites in with them, pushing the hustlers, vagrants, and addicts deeper into the shadows just off the main drag.
I’d been to most of the galleries: Red Door, Perihelion Arts, Art One. I didn’t know art from Shinola but I’d gotten used to the boho scene. I figured galleries were better than payday stores.
I once saw a hell of a good Rockabilly band from Tucson in one of the galleries. Can’t remember their name anymore. But that’s what I liked about Grand. It wasn’t lined with phony bullshit you’d find in Scottsdale. Now
Phoenix had grown on me. I liked the cowboy skies as the sun exploded against the western clouds, the pomegranate sunsets. The dead streets at night downtown. The lingering mid-century postcard architecture, motel dives, and plazas. I wished the rest of the world would just leave Phoenix alone.
I lived on McDowell, near Seventh Avenue, in a bungalow apartment. I moved there after the Air Force. I’d been stationed at Luke and when my time was up I decided to stay.
Back when I moved into my apartment one of my favorite places was the Emerald Lounge on Seventh Avenue. I’d seen the Hypno-Twists play there a handful of times. Great place to see a band.
The Emerald Lounge was gone now.
