Break the Skin (28 page)

It hurt me to think of the hours he’d be gone and no sight of my name, but I explained how a tat is a wound and he had to keep it bandaged so bacteria wouldn’t infect it. I told him how to care for it after the bandage was off. I gave him some A+D Ointment. Then I remembered
the day Slam Dent beat Pablo and Lester put his shoulder back into its socket. I imagined Pablo back at Emma’s, furious because Lester and I were gone.

I started to tell him there was money on his head, enough to square Pablo with Slam Dent. I was that close to asking Lester to let me turn him in and collect the reward money.

Then he said, “I don’t have anything to hide. Really, Baby. I don’t.”

I felt ashamed because I’d been wanting to make him guilty. “Are you sure you don’t?”

“I don’t think so. Not that I can remember.”

WHEN WE STEPPED
outside my shop, Slam Dent was waiting for us. “I want your brother,” he said, “and I want him right now.”

It was coming on dawn, the sky brightening in the east. The wind was up and the branches of the live oaks were shaking their leaves.

“I suspect you got your money,” I said.

“Money’s one thing,” he said. “Revenge is another.”

That’s when Lester spoke up. “I want you to leave her alone.” His voice was flat and edged with temper. “I want you to stop messing with folks. You’ve done enough of that.”

Slam stared at him awhile. Then he broke into a low, throaty chuckle that was laced with danger. “Mister, you’ve got no idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Maybe I do,” said Lester.

He put him to his knees with a heel kick to the inside of his thigh. When Slam was on his knees, his head bowed, Lester clasped his hands together to make a bigger fist, and he brought it down onto the base of Slam’s skull. I heard something crack. It was a sickening sound, one I’ve never been able to forget, just like I can’t forget the way Slam toppled forward, his face smashing into the sidewalk, and Lester bent down to press his fingertips to his throat and feel for a pulse.

“Did you kill him?” I asked.

“No,” said Lester, “but I could have if I’d wanted to.”

I let him go. Lester Stipp, my Donnie. I let him walk off into the weak light just before dawn, knowing that he’d go back to my house. He’d get in my car and drive east, back to Illinois, back to her. I didn’t want to be around when Slam came to, not even as close as the inside of my shop, but I didn’t want to follow Lester to my house, either. What would I say as I watched him get ready to leave? What would be the last words between us other than what we’d said just before he left me standing there on Oak Street? “Thank you,” he said to me, and I knew that was all that could pass between the two of us now that he’d made up his mind to leave.
Thank you for taking me in. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for letting me go
. I told him to take care. I told him to remember me. I told him not to go into my house and give Pablo a chance to latch on to him. “Just get in my car and drive,” I said.

Then I did the only thing I could. I watched him go.

I couldn’t bear to be anywhere in the world just then, but I knew I couldn’t stay where I was, so I started walking. All the way up Oak, toward the west, away from my house. Every time a set of headlights swept over me from behind, I held my breath, hoping it was Lester in my car, hoping he’d pull to the curb, throw open the passenger-side door, and tell me to get in. Fairy tales can turn out like that, at least the ones I love, but this was my life I was in the middle of, and I made up my mind, as I watched the cars shoot past me, that once I was home, in the glare of day, I’d gather up all my fairies into a trash bag and toss them out for good. It was time to get on with facing the reality of my life. Lester wasn’t ever coming back, and there I was, alone.

Once, I turned around to look behind me. The faintest glow of the sun tipped the horizon in the east. Then I just kept walking, heading north, out past the open range where the longhorn cows were beginning to stir from their night’s sleep beneath the mesquite trees. The lights
along University Drive were ahead of me, and beyond that, on a hill, the dark houses taking shape in the coming light.

Then I realized where I was headed. I was going to someone who’d understand. I was going to Carolyn. In one of those dark houses, she slept, and I hoped she wouldn’t mind too awfully much when I woke her and said, “I didn’t know where else to go.”

SHE LET ME IN
. I was cold now, shivering, and she said, “My word, Baby. What’s wrong to bring you out here this time of morning?”

I told her everything. I told her about going to Deep Ellum to get the money we needed to save Pablo and how Slam Dent showed up, and now he was laid out on the sidewalk in front of my shop because Lester put him there.

Lester was gone, I told her. He was on his way back to Illinois, although he swore he hadn’t killed anyone. His girlfriend had been arrested. He was going back for her sake. “You knew it from the start, didn’t you?” I asked Carolyn. “You knew something was fishy.”

Her face was slack, her cheek creased with sleep marks. She had a pink chenille bathrobe on over a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt. This could have been the moment when she asked me what else did I expect, doing a fool thing like I did, taking a man into my house and persuading him we were a couple, but to her credit she didn’t. I suppose she knew what it was to hold on to a dream. I imagine she was still hoping there might be a future for her and Pablo.

She put her arms around me. She said, “My goodness, Baby. You’re almost frozen to death.” She asked me if I loved this Lester Stipp, and I told her I did. “Then it’s no lie.” She pressed me to her, and I felt the tears start to come. “What you feel in your heart can’t ever be a lie.”

I was sobbing. I was choking out the words. “I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.”

“Who’s to say, Baby? Look how crazy the world can get.”

She was right. No one could predict the wild bounces and turns a life could take, even a life like mine that appeared to be all played out to a most unsatisfying end. Lester Stipp was gone, on his way back to that girl in Illinois. Slam Dent was either still lying on the sidewalk in front of my shop, or else racked up in the hospital, who knows what broken under his miserable skin. And Pablo? I called Emma’s house, and she said, “Miss Baby, you better talk to him. He’s in a state.”

He got on the phone, and the first thing he said was, “How could you let him get away?”

I was wondering the same thing, of course. Why hadn’t I put my foot down? Why hadn’t I said the only way I’d let Lester have my car was if I came along with it? I knew the answer, of course. Because I wanted him to be the one to say he wouldn’t go without me. Because I wanted to hear those words from him to convince me that we were meant to be together. Because I didn’t want to be like my
mami
, always chasing after a man.

“I’m tired,” I said, and it was true, I was worn to the bone. I was tired of all the ways people could manage to screw up their lives. Me included. I was tired of how needy we all were. I was tired of all the drama, and the please, Baby, please. So much so that I said to Pablo, “It’s time we all stand up and face what we have to face. All of us. Even me.”

“What do you have to face, Betts?”

“The same thing you do,
mi hermano. Esta pinche vida.
”

Pablo chuckled. “
La vida loca.
”

“That’s right,” I told him. “As crazy as we’ve made it. This life. That’s what we have to own up to.”

So that’s what I did. I let Carolyn drive me home. It was daylight, another sunny day, the first day without Lester Stipp, and I did what I’d promised myself. I shook out a big plastic trash bag, and I went through my house throwing away every fairy figurine I had.

Pablo watched. Once he tried to stop me. He took my arm. “Betts,” he said, but I shook free and kept at it.

Emma was there, and she said, “Miss Baby, my lands.”

“Let her be,” said Carolyn. “Let her do what she has to do.”

Emma kissed me on the cheek. “You know where I am, Miss Baby, no matter what you need. It’s all right that you made up that man, that Donnie. I don’t hold it against you.”

She went back to her house. Carolyn and Pablo slipped into the kitchen and left me alone. I heard the murmur of their voices. They were talking in low, private tones, the way they must have done countless times when they were married. It was the sort of give-and-take I was sure I’d never have. I was convinced that Lester Stipp had been my last chance, and I was ready to face a life alone. I took fairies off shelves and tables and ledges. No more Otherworld for Miss Baby. No more living in Wonderland. I carried the trash bag to the curb, where the next day the garbage truck would cart it away. All those fairies tossed into the landfill. Good riddance. I was Betty Ruiz, no different from Emma Hart—two women on their own.

When I came back inside, Pablo and Carolyn were waiting for me.

“We’ve been talking,” he said, and she nodded.

I could tell, like me, they’d made decisions. Something was winding down for all of us.

“The thing is,” she said. “Well, Baby, even if that horrible man, that Slam Dent, won’t bother us anymore, Pablo’s still in trouble with the law.”

That much was true. He was still a wanted man.

“I’ve been thinking about what you said, Betts.” He gave me a sad smile. “What you said about owning up. I figure it’s time.” Carolyn took his hand. “I’m going to call the police,” he said. “I’m going to tell them I’m here.”

But he didn’t have to. Just then, someone knocked on my front door, and when I looked out through the glass, I saw that it was the policeman with the red mustache, the man who’d found Lester Stipp’s driver’s license from which I’d cut his name and address. The policeman had let me keep that cut-up license. He’d said he had everything he needed. Now he was at my door.

“Well, now, that’s convenient,” Pablo said, and he nodded for me to let the man in.

He was already yakking as soon as I opened the door, and at first he didn’t even register Pablo and Carolyn. “Miss Baby, I’ve come for that sweetie of yours.”

“Lester Stipp,” I said.

“So you knew his real name?”

“How’d you figure it out?”

“I wrote down that driver’s license number,” he said. “I made a call to Illinois and found out who had that number. Lester Stipp. Do you know he’s wanted?”

I nodded. “Found that out last night, too. Right before he told me good-bye and left. Now, why don’t you tell me something I don’t know?”

It was like the ends of his mustache sagged a bit more. That’s how disappointed he was. Then he puffed up his chest. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? I’m going to have a look around.”

“Es verdad,”
Pablo said.

For the first time since he stepped inside my house, the policeman realized who was standing in front of him. “This is quite a day,” he said.

Pablo kissed Carolyn. “It’s the day they give babies away,” he said. Then he stepped forward, his hands held out, ready for the cuffs.

AFTER THE POLICEMAN
took Pablo away, and it was just Carolyn and me in my house, she said, “It’s about the saddest thing there is, isn’t it, Baby? A house you live in by yourself?”

“It is,” I told her, and I understood this was our way of saying we were both sorry for whatever hurt we had caused the other since our story began. What’s more, we were saying the future was now ours to own. Pablo would certainly go to jail. His drama would go out of our lives.

A few days later, I’d see two Rangers easing Slam Dent into an unmarked car on Oak Street. Slam Dent with a cane in his hand, a bandage on his head. He’d look at me for a moment and then turn away. I’d feel the relief of knowing he was done with me.

Maybe it was a blessing to have Lester Stipp gone as well. At least in my strongest moments I’d be able to tell myself that. After all, I was guilty. I stole him off the street. I brought him home and spun a life for him. I made him believe that he belonged with me, that we had years to come, all because I was lonely, all for a chance at love, which doesn’t excuse what I did.

Standing there with Carolyn that day, about to face the rest of my life alone, I thought back to the woman I was when I saw Lester Stipp on that street corner, and I said to him, “You’re Donnie. You’re my sweet Donnie.” I was ashamed of that woman because she was so desperate, and yet I loved her for that same reason, loved her because she took that chance.

“Whenever my
mami
got all turned around because of some fool thing,” I told Carolyn, “she always said,
‘Necesitaba hacerlo.’
 ”

“What’s that mean?”

“I had to do it.”

Carolyn nodded. “Some things are like that. They sure as heck are.”

“She always believed everything would be all right.”

I remembered the other thing she always said.
“Me encamina
mi corazón a mi hogar.”
She had faith that, no matter how reckless or starry-eyed she was—no matter the mess she made of her life—she’d be fine. “Don’t be sad,” she said to me seconds before she died.
“Mi corazón …”
She didn’t have the breath to finish, but I knew the rest. Her heart. Her heart would lead her home.