The report ended. “Isn’t it weird that you know those people now?” Zoey said. “I mean, when they talk about firefighters on the radio. You actually know them.”
“Yeah, it makes it different. It makes me worry.”
Her eyes darkened. “If you went to work at the station, you’d be in danger, too. Every time there was a fire.”
“Would you worry about me?”
I meant to make it sound light, in keeping with our “just friends” status, but it came out with a rush of feeling that I hadn’t known was there. My face went red.
Her voice was cool and cautious. “I’d worry about anyone I knew who was in danger.”
I set myself up for that one. Who was I kidding? Zoey thought I was interested in Kat. She had a boyfriend. And even if she didn’t, no way would a girl like Zoey Singleton date a dropout with two bucks in his wallet and a convicted felon for a dad.
The guests were getting in line at the serving table, while Charlotte and Terra and the other girls stared over at the two of us, waiting for us to stop our intense one-on-one conversation and go to work.
“Break it up, you two!” Johnnie yelled, his smile punctuated with missing teeth. He cackled as if he’d said something hilarious.
As I ladled out the carrots and broccoli and lugged trays of roast beef, I cursed the fact that I’d bombed out with the one girl who’d ever really interested me.
“Travis!” Charlotte said. “You’re so quiet today!” She gave me a hip bump.
“Gotta get this one.” I grabbed an empty tray and started to lift it.
Charlotte pouted. “I need to visit the little girls’ room.”
“Gimme a minute and then you can go.” As usual, I would cover Charlotte’s station, in addition to my own, while she escaped on one of her twenty minute breaks. Once she never even came back from break, and I did all her work that day.
“Wait your turn, please!” It was Terra, her voice sharp with fear and anger. A guest, one I’d never seen before, had pushed his way into the middle of the line. The hands that protruded from his tattered shirt were black with grime, and he reeked of liquor.
I put down the tray I was holding.
He had a broad, red face, with hair that he somehow managed to grease and comb back, despite the fact that no soap or water seemed to have touched his body in a long time.
“More cornbread!” he growled.
“That’s all we give,” Terra explained, cowering a little as she pointed to the two pieces on his tray. “That way there’s enough for everybody.”
“Summa bitch,” he grumbled, his voice carrying halfway across the room. He wasn’t interested in my vegetables, but homed in on the roast beef that Charlotte was serving. Pushing his way forward, he rammed his tray into the one ahead of him in line, spilling the woman’s drink over her food.
“Aaaah!” The woman, who had horrible scaly patches all over her face and arms, began to wail. “No, no, no, no!”
“Button your lip!” In one motion, the man knocked the woman’s tray to the floor.
The wailing increased in volume as the woman rocked forward and backward. “No, no, no, no….”
Zoey and I both got there at the same moment.
“It’s okay Martha. We’ll get you a new lunch,” Zoey said. Fastening a stern look on the man, she drew herself up to her full five foot two and commanded, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
“I know my rights!” he hollered, as he sent his tray flying in Zoey’s direction. I waded into him, twisting one arm behind his back and forcing him to pivot while I pressed a hard forearm against his windpipe. From the side of my eye, I saw Zoey holding her head.
“The lady asked you to leave,” I told him. His sick, drunk body was no match for my muscles of steel, honed by weeks of back-breaking labor. I dragged him out the door and toward the center of the park, allowing him just enough air to stay alive. At one point he went limp, his feet dragging loosely behind him, but I knew he was breathing and kept walking. I’d carried heavier rescue dummies up and down fifty-foot ladders.
We passed alongside the Monday farmer’s market and reached the fountain, where there were fewer people. I turned him around to face the way we’d come, jerking him unnecessarily hard, my wrist still pressed against his windpipe. “You see the Community Center?” I asked him. “See how far away it is? This right here is the nearest you’ll ever come to that building again, you got it?”
He tried to lunge out of my grip, but yelped in pain when I twisted his wrist up behind him, hard.
“Say yes, you understand.”
“Okay,” he grumbled. “Yes.”
I spoke in his ear, which was tough to take given the state of his hygiene. He had black grime all over his neck and disappearing down into his shirt.
“And another thing. If I find out that you hurt that girl in there just now, I will come back and I will hunt you down. And I will hurt you ten times worse, got it?”
I released him. “Have a nice day.” I sprinted back to the Community Center, thinking I needed another shower after holding that guy in a clinch for ten minutes. As I passed the Center’s rest room, I started to duck in to wash my hands, but then, wanting to check on Zoey, changed my mind at the last second. I reversed direction, almost bumping into a guy about my age, who was walking in behind me. “Sorry,” I said and ran to find her.
She was sitting on a chair holding a bag of frozen peas to her head. I skidded to a stop next to her, squatting down to her eye level. “You okay?”
She nodded. “The corner of his tray hit me in the temple. But I’m fine. I’m so glad you were here,” she added. “I don’t know what I would have done without you.”
“Aw, you could have brought him down. It just would have taken you longer.” I studied the strands of hair falling out of her ponytail around her face and then the angry red mark on her temple, thinking how beautiful and fearless she was. “You’re going to have a bruise tomorrow. Maybe even a black eye.”
Her lips twitched. “I’ll have to make up a good story to go with it.”
We both laughed, and I would have kissed her right then if I could. “Seriously, though,” she said, “Thanks.”
“Zoey?” A guy stood a few feet away, checking me out with undisguised hostility. It was the one I’d seen going into the men’s room.
“Josh! Is it… why are you here? Shouldn’t you be at work?” Zoey took the bag of peas off her head and tried to stand, then sat back down quickly.
“What happened? Who did this to you?” His eyes flicked over at me as if he half believed I was the culprit. He walked over to her and snaked his arm around her shoulders, which made me want to go and remove it. Immediately.
“One of the guests threw a tray and it hit me. But I’m okay,” Zoey said.
“I told you those street people are dangerous. You need a security guard.”
“Travis took care of it. He got the guy under control and took him away.” She smiled at me and asked, “What did you do with him, anyway?”
“Let’s just say he’s under a permanent restraining order.”
Josh looked like he’d swallowed part of a cactus. His eyes went from my torn jeans to my old boots. “Who are you?”
The faintest trace of annoyance crossed Zoey’s face. “Joshua, this is Travis. He and I work together. Travis, this is Josh. My boyfriend.”
The competition. I shook Josh’s soft lily-white hand. “Nice to meet you. I work with Zoey.”
“Yeah. She already said that.”
Silence.
I was glad to see the guy was shorter than me. I registered khaki pants, an expensive-looking jacket, a more expensive-looking watch, and the strong, unmistakable scent of entitlement. Girls would think he was good-looking, which I guess he was in a smug, my-dad’s-richer-than-yours-is kind of way. I reminded myself that girls thought I was sexy in my old t-shirts and jeans—good thing, too, because they were all I had to wear.
“But why’re you here, Josh, instead of working?” Zoey asked him, looking back and forth between me and him.
“I
am
working,” he said. “I’m here to inspect the facilities and make sure they’re sufficient to support the influx of people from today’s event. The farmer’s market in the park.”
So he’d been in the men’s room on official city business. Probably checking the toilet paper supply.
Turning to me, he added, “I work for the mayor. I’m kind of like his eyes and ears, going out into the community and reporting back on groundswells of public opinion.”
“Sounds interesting,” I lied. “Catch any groundswells there in the john?”
“Uh, no.”
I didn’t think so.
Zoey spoke up. “Travis is in training to become a firefighter.”
He sighed, as if his boredom was beyond endurance. “Ah, the hero type.”
“If you say so,” I said pleasantly. I gave Zoey a slow, intimate smile, just for the hell of it.
“Travis is friends with Kat,” Zoey said. “They plan to get together.”
We did? Where had she gotten that idea?
“And I was thinking,” Zoey went on, “it might be fun to all have dinner, the four of us, at my house. I’ll cook dinner and we can hang out.”
“Wait a minute! You’re
that
guy?” Josh’s shoulders came down a little from up around his ears, where they’d been. “Kat said she’d met some guy recently. Here at the Center.”
Jeez, Kat was talking to people about me? To this dude? “You know Kat?”
“Yeah, we’re old friends. I met Zoey through Kat back in the ninth grade.” Josh’s scowl had gone from ferocious to just suspicious. “She was even talking about the four of us double dating sometime.”
“Right,” Zoey interrupted, “so why don’t I throw a dinner?”
Considering I’d never once called Kat, it was pretty surprising news. Before I could answer, Josh was making plans. “How about Friday? But let’s go out to eat.”
Shit, no. I didn’t care anymore about being with Kat. I didn’t want to spend an evening watching Douchebag paw Zoey. Not to mention how much money it would cost. No matter where we went, I couldn’t afford it.
“Can’t,” I said quickly. “Sorry.”
“What about Saturday?” Josh said. Had Zoey told him I worked for food from the soup kitchen? The thought of him knowing that made me want to put my fist through a wall.
“We can go to Rivers,” he went on. “That new seafood place in San Marino.”
Yeah, right. I would just spend our next rent installment on crab cakes. No problem.
Zoey pulled on Josh’s elbow. “Why don’t I cook? It’s more relaxing to just hang out at my place.”
Something in her voice reminded me of that social worker tone she used with Johnnie and Hilda. I suddenly got it: she knew I couldn’t afford this and was bailing me out. That’s when my internal temperature control went haywire and I heated up to boiling. I could deal with her tight ass boyfriend and even handle a flat rejection from her.
But I was not her charity case and never would be.
“No,” I snapped. “Rivers is fine. Saturday night.” We agreed on seven o’clock.
Man, was I in trouble now.
Scrambling
I learned it from Johnnie, who I overheard talking to a couple of the other guests at lunch. There was money to be made by selling your blood at the donation center at Santa Alicia Hospital. “But you have to take a test,” he said in disgust. “So … nothing in it for Johnnie!”
It figured they’d want to test you for disease before they started siphoning your body fluids into other people. I knew I was clean. I was careful about stuff like that.
On my break, I called the donation center. Thirty five bucks, they told me, was the going rate for a blood donation.
What a windfall. Even just twice a week would give me seventy extra dollars a week. With that, I could eventually get our power back and get then get caught up on the rent. I wondered if Mom could give blood, too. Maybe not. She was always so tired.
They paid me in crisp, new bills but also served out the crushing news that I could only donate blood once every two months. I contemplated this problem as I sat on a chair afterwards with a cotton ball on my arm. How much did I need for Saturday night? Was this a date or just hanging out? I still hadn’t called Kat; Zoey and Josh arranged the whole thing, and I was meeting the three of them at the restaurant. Was I expected to pay Kat’s way?
“Is there anything else I can do for you?” asked the volunteer who brought me juice and crackers. She walked back and forth with refills, showing off her curvy hourglass body. Her name was Lucy. No question she would have met me later for sex, but right now I needed money fast and couldn’t deal with even the chance of meeting another crazed Suki type. I left, payload in pocket, trying to think of other ways to bring chunks of cash into my life. I barely had the energy to wonder what was wrong with me, that I would turn down an easy and pleasurable lay without thinking twice.
Maybe I was catching whatever Mom had.
##
By Thursday, desperate, knowing thirty-five bucks was not going to cover my Saturday night expenses, I called DJ. I hadn’t seen him in a while. We were both busy—DJ with his new girlfriend and me, just trying to survive.
“Listen, dude, I gotta ask you a favor.” It killed me to do this. I owed him so much already. Damn that asshole Joshua anyway for getting me into a situation like this.
“Speak.” DJ chewed on something as he talked, probably his favorite brand of beef jerky.
The truth was just too lame. I couldn’t believe I’d gotten myself into this mess. “I’ve… my mom is having health problems, and, well, even The Free Clinic isn’t completely free…” A silence followed as I tried to get up the courage to get myself in even deeper. It lasted a while.
Finally, “You need money?”
Pause. “Well, yeah.”
Longer pause. We were both having a hard time spitting it out. “Are you in trouble, Travis?”
I swallowed hard. “Just momentarily short on cash.” Short on cash, as in dead broke, maxed on credit cards, rent past due. And going to Rivers Bar and Grill.
I could tell he didn’t believe me.
“Okay. Come on by today and I’ll spot you some.”
“Man, I owe you. Big time.”
“Listen, I don’t mind loaning you money, but I can’t do it forever. If you guys are in big trouble, you need to get help somehow.”