kids. Tino wasn’t getting rich, but kept his head out of water.
Rebar followed my look. His neck was stiff; he had to turn in his chair. Tendons came to the surface. He said, “Your boyfriend’s here.” He rapped a foot against the leg of the table. It might’ve been more of a kick, but those Sketchers softened the blow.
I caught the table, stopped it from rocking. “He’s not my boyfriend.”
If Rebar hadn’t been there, just out of the psych ward, working hard to not drink and keep his head together, maybe I would’ve walked over and reached for Tino. Maybe I’d call him a boyfriend, or close enough to it.
I never did get the dating thing, where it stopped and started.
Tino saw us. He said, “Hey. What’s up?” He looked tired, his eyes ringed with circles. His top lip was chapped, cracked in a brown spot of dried blood.
Rebar said, “When do I get my Dr. Martens back?”
Tino half-laughed, blew it off.
I said, “Criminey. Not the shoes again.”
Rebar’d lost his Dr. Martens to Tino in a minor drug deal. Rebar made his dough in construction, old houses, but that didn’t always come through. He’d been broke that day. The shoes, as a trade, were a compromise. Rebar couldn’t let it go.
He said, “Serious.”
Tino said, “I’m not a hawk shop, friend.” He was wearing the shoes.
I said, “Rebar’s fresh out of the funny farm. Trying to put a life together. Those shoes might be part of the picture.”
Rebar’s house was a bigger part of that picture.
Tino said, “Down here, or up on the hill?”
“I was up on the hill,” Rebar said, and he said it so quiet his mouth barely moved. He shook his head, like he didn’t get it himself.
Tino said, “I’m headed to Good Sam.”
Rebar said, “You going nuts too?”
“Going to see Eileen.” He turned a chair backward, sat on it that way, then lit a cigarette. “She had an aneurysm in her brain.” He pointed to his head with the orange tip of the smoke, his thumb aimed at the ceiling. His hand was like a gun, at his own head.
I said, “No way.”
Rebar said, “Who’s Eileen?”
I said, “Waitress at Chang’s, dyes her hair.”
Tino said, “Living with Ray Madrigal.”
That was the part I didn’t want to say, and didn’t want to hear, the reason I knew who Tino meant-Eileen and Ray. Ray, who I’d lived with, before. I pulled the ashtray out of my purse, kept it hidden by my palm, and put it back on the table. I didn’t need that ashtray. But I couldn’t let go. I moved it to my purse again.
Tino said, “They cut her head open and clamped a vein or something shut. She’s fine, but she’s bald.”
I slid a salt shaker into my purse and said, “No shit?” Ray’s new girl, with hardware in her head.
The bathroom at the Marathon was down a glowing turquoise hall, like a pool drained of water, and it smelled from mildew. It was the hallway to the rooms for rent upstairs. Just outside the women’s bathroom somebody had written in black marker,
I came out of the bathroom. Tino was in the hall. We went out back, to the alley between buildings, beside the dumpster.
Tino pulled a pipe from his coat pocket.
Pot smells good in the cold. There’s the density of it, that soft sweetness. I’d like to find that same sweet edge in something solid.
Tino passed the pipe to me. I didn’t reach for it. “You shake down a freshman for that herb?” I said.
“Maybe.” He was still holding smoke in his lungs. “What’re you doing with Rebar?”
“Helping him out.” I shrugged.
Tino said, “Watch him close. I don’t want to lose more teeth.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“They don’t come back.” He smiled, to show a gap at the side near the front. His eye tooth, his dog tooth. A fist, a party. Like two years before, but it seemed forever. I put my lips to his cracked lips, kissed his gap-toothed mouth, breathed his secondhand pot smoke. I held onto the fake sheepskin of his Sears corduroy coat. Tino’s skinny body blocked the wind. One time, when he was still underage, Tino’d been busted for dealing and his folks sent him off to boot camp in Idaho. He broke out, hitched home, and hid in Forest Park at night when he couldn’t find a place to crash, until he hooked up with me for a while. I don’t know what happened to him out there in Idaho, but now, best thing about Tino was he wouldn’t leave the neighborhood. He said it himself-he’d never go anywhere he couldn’t walk home from.
One of these days I’d go as far away as I wanted, and I knew he’d be there, home, when I got back. Tino was home, and he was mine.
We went back in the tavern. Rebar worked his muscled jaw. Maybe it was time for more meds, I had no clue.
Someone said my name,
Tino said, “Come see Eileen. She’d like it.”
My hands were light and far away with the cold. I rubbed them together. “I don’t think we should visit Eileen. I’m fine here.”
Rebar said, “Jesus, Vanessa, she had brain surgery.”
I said, “Hospital-land. It creeps me out. All that mortality.” Then again, the bar was lined with vulture fodder.
Rebar said, “I started to like it.”
Tino said, “Ray won’t show up.”
I said, “You going?”
Rebar shook his head.
I said, “Okay.” So I’d shake off Rebar. Maybe I’d get lost on the way too. Except when I stood, Rebar stood. He said, “Swap shoes with me, man.” He kicked off a Sketcher. Tino ignored him. Rebar worked his shoes back on and hustled to catch up, snagging my arm to hold me back.
The hospital halls were miles of white, somebody’s idea of a sterile heaven, broken by red emergency phones and inset shrines of faded saints. Rebar put his arm over my shoulder. I hadn’t shaken anybody. He stooped to bring his face closer to mine and said, “Where I was, we had big rooms and new carpets. We had coffee machines.” His big feet swung out, ready to knock things down.
I heard my name again, in a whisper:
Tino skipped the reception desk.
“You been here before?” Rebar asked me.
“I was born here, but never been back.” The hospital was its own world, all clean, creased green uniforms. Aluminum carts, Formica. It was a different place from the world outside. In the hospital, pretty much I didn’t know anybody.
Rebar, Tino, and me-we were a walking cloud of tavern air, smoke, and beer breath. I reached a hand, laced one finger through Tino’s belt loop.
