There was a fire.
“Was anyone hurt?”
The Kid nodded. It was getting late. Arizona would have to go home soon. He looked both ways for traffic then jogged toward the house, motioning for her to follow.
On the porch, he showed her the photos wedged into the security door. The color had faded and the pictures were curling in at the edges. The Kid wondered how much longer they’d be there, how much longer until they just fell out onto the porch and the wind blew them away.
Arizona took some time looking at them, studying the faces. She kept her hands clasped behind her back as she looked, like she was trying to keep herself from touching the photos, like she was looking at something in a museum or an expensive store.
After a while, she said, “Do you know her?”
The Kid wasn’t sure how to answer. He’d never seen the red-haired woman while she was alive. He’d never talked to her. But now he saw her quite a bit, now he’d spent quite a bit of time with her.
The Kid nodded. He guessed that he knew her. Guessed that he knew her at least enough to say so.
Arizona looked back at the photos, the picture of the red-haired woman smirking in front of the gas pump. “She’s beautiful,” she said. “She’s not really pretty, but she’s beautiful.”
He led her into the front room. The glass crunched under their sneakers. He showed her the cracked, blackened walls, the smashed furniture. They started walking again and then he felt her take his hand, felt her fingers laced with his.
He needed to show her everything. He led her into the kitchen, the bathroom. They stood in the bedroom doorway and he watched her eyes following the black trail from the bed up the wall to the ceiling, and he could tell by how she squeezed his hand that she knew what had happened in this room, that she was picturing the red-haired woman and that she was seeing the flames and hearing the screaming.
In the living room, he heard her take a quick breath when she saw the walls. He showed her the pirates on the open water, the school, the other kids in the schoolyard, the streets around The Kid’s house, Steve Rogers on the front porch, and then the center of the mural, the angel lifting up toward the hole in the roof.
“Did you draw this?” she said.
The Kid didn’t know if she could see him clearly, but he nodded anyway.
“It’s beautiful.”
He held out his notebook, flipped back to the pages of hand drawings. Michelle, Ms. Ramirez, the lunch lady. He gave her the notebook, then pointed to the angel so she could see what it was missing. She looked at the angel, up at the hole in the ceiling, the sky above. He didn’t tell her why he needed to finish the drawing. It seemed like she understood that it was important without him telling her anything. She walked toward the wall, holding The Kid’s notepad with one hand, letting her other hand hang at her side, the way that the angel’s hands were hanging. The Kid picked a piece of white chalk off the floor, walked over to Arizona and started to draw.
They hadn’t exchanged so much as two words since what had happened at the supermarket. The night before they’d eaten dinner in silence, absolute silence, not even the sound of The Kid’s pencil in his notebook. Darby had tucked The Kid into bed and then sat in the pickup, waiting for daybreak. When The Kid left for school, Darby filled the dog’s food and water bowls, taped a note to the front door. He didn’t think he’d be home by dinner and he didn’t want The Kid to worry.
He drove out of the city into the uncorrupted desert, north and east, one hour, two hours, the landscape flattening and spreading, going from green to brown, grass to dust, and it felt right, this movement across familiar terrain, it felt like going home.
He stopped at a gas station just inside Barstow and looked for Greene’s name in a phone book. He went inside and asked the woman behind the counter for directions to the address. She said it was an apartment complex just off the freeway, just about the last thing you saw before you left town.
The complex parking lot was poorly paved, nearly empty. There were five or six two-story buildings, first floor doors opening onto the lot, second floor doors opening along a narrow walkway. A dry, kidney-shaped pool sat behind a fence in the center of the complex. A boy with shaggy brown hair who looked a little older than The Kid was standing on a skateboard on the rim of the pool. He took a step forward and disappeared down the side, wheels grinding on the concrete, then he reappeared over the opposite wall, up and out, two or three feet into the air, turning in flight, then dropping back down into the pool.
Darby sat in the pickup. It was midafternoon, hot and bright, quiet except for the skateboarder, a familiar long-dead desert time. He remembered skipping school with friends and this being about the time of day they’d wondered why they’d bothered, the thrill of the morning gone and the afternoon stretching on endlessly, longer even than if they were sitting in a classroom watching the clock.
He was wearing the lucky shirt, the faded yellow date shirt, because he felt that it gave him strength, that it would keep him from turning back. He felt that it would keep him from sitting in the pickup all afternoon and then just driving away, leaving without getting what he’d come for.
The skateboarder disappeared down one side of the pool, came up the other. Darby got out of the pickup, walked to a small building on the other side of the lot. The laundry and mailroom. One of the washers chugged along, filling the room with the smell of hot detergent, soapy water. He pulled the chain on the overhead bulb. There were two rows of mailboxes on the wall above one of the dryers, the last names of the residents embossed on small labels. He found it in the second row:
Greene/Piniero, 23
. Piniero must be the girlfriend with the baby. Darby hadn’t even considered the possibility that she could be there, with or without Greene. That she could be home right now. He hadn’t even considered her on the drive out, hadn’t considered the baby. He’d only thought of Greene.
He walked back across the lot. Twenty-three was the last door on the top deck of the furthest building. There was a passageway that cut through the middle of the building, a couple of vending machines, a cement staircase. Up on the second floor, he could see across the complex to the scrub brush and sand beyond, the glinting asphalt of the freeway in the far distance. He could see down into the pool, where the skater sat beside his deck, rubbing his knee. Darby went down to the end of the walkway, stood beside 23, listened. There was a large window next to the door, thick blackout curtains drawn against the sun. The sound of a television from the apartment next door, a daytime talk show, muffled voices and audience laughter, but nothing from 23. The walkway continued around the corner, where it ended abruptly, the rusted metal railing turning in and bolted to the stucco wall. There was another, smaller window on this side of the apartment, the same blackout curtains drawn. Darby placed his fingers along the sash, pushed gently. The window slid open to the side. He stood, listened. No sound from inside the apartment. He pushed the window further, opening it completely. Still no sound.
The skateboarder started up again, wheels grinding in the empty pool. Darby stood by the open window, touching the blackout curtain. He couldn’t wait any longer. He lifted one leg up and into the apartment, ducked his head and pulled the other leg through.
He saw her in the school courtyard and thought she was a ghost. He thought he was seeing things, spirits in the morning light. The Kid wanted to blink to reset his vision. He wanted to rub his eyes like a cartoon character in disbelief.
Michelle Mustache, coming across the courtyard from the back gate, dragging her backpack, her ratty sneakers flapping on the blacktop.
The morning bell rang. He wanted to stay back and wait for Michelle, but Miss Ramirez had been keeping him close since the fight and she led The Kid into the building before all the other kids, losing Michelle back in the crowd.
All morning he kept turning in his seat to look at her, to make sure she was really there. She sat at her desk at the end of the row, head down, doodling in a notebook. No one said anything about her return. Miss Ramirez didn’t make any kind of announcement. It was like nothing had happened, except The Kid couldn’t stop turning in his seat, looking back at her to make sure what he saw was true.
She wasn’t at lunch. The Kid figured she was probably in Mr. Bromwell’s office. He sat alone, chewing the sandwich he’d made that morning. Matthew was back, and sat at a table with Miss Ramirez and some of the other teachers. Arizona was absent. The Kid wondered if she’d gotten in trouble for not going straight home yesterday, if she’d gotten caught somehow. Her dad the military man. The Kid wondered about the mural, the completed angel, how long it would take for the signal to go out and reach his mom.
Michelle didn’t come back to class after lunch. The Kid didn’t know if she was still in Mr. Bromwell’s office or if she’d been sent home or what. At the end of the day, he stood out by the front gate as the courtyard emptied, waiting. Matthew walked by and nodded before getting into his father’s car at the curb. The last kids were coming through when he finally saw her trudging his way, head down. He stepped in front of her and she moved to walk around him and he stepped in front of her again until she stopped and looked up.
“Get out of the way, Kid. I’ve got to go.”
The Kid shook his head. He opened his notebook, but she was talking again before he could write anything.
“My dad’s coming to pick me up and I’ve got to be out there when he comes. I can’t walk home anymore.”
The Kid wasn’t sure what she was talking about. Her dad had come out from Minneapolis?
She looked past him to the street. There was a line of parents’ cars and trucks idling at the curb. Michelle was anxious, chewing skin from her lower lip.
“The cops found me that last night,” she said. “They just kicked in the door like they thought they were tough shit. They said neighbors had seen the candles the past few nights and called. They didn’t handcuff me, which was pretty dumb. They just put me in the back of the police car and drove me home.”
She didn’t look at The Kid as she talked. She watched the street, chewing her lip.
“I didn’t snitch you out, don’t worry. I didn’t tell them anything. I said I didn’t know anything about the drawing you made. I said it was already there when I found the house.”
She unzipped her backpack, dug around inside. Came up with something in her fist, held it out to The Kid.
“Here’s your rabbit. See? I didn’t lose it.”
The Kid took the rabbit, pressed his thumb into the worn wood.
Michelle saw something she recognized on the street. The Kid turned to see a monster of a truck pull up to the curb, beetle-black and shining in the sun. The passenger window rolled down and The Kid could see Michelle’s mom’s boyfriend stretching across the seat, looking out at the kids on the sidewalk. He started calling into the crowd, barking Michelle’s name.
Where’s your dad?
“He’s here to pick me up, Kid, I told you.”
The Kid didn’t know what to write. The Kid didn’t know what was going on.
“I’m a fucking liar, Kid, okay? I’m a liar about everything.”
Michelle’s dad was still scanning the crowd, barking her name. He hadn’t seen them yet. It seemed like Michelle’s feet were stuck to the sidewalk, like she was unable to move. She watched her dad and her face started to fold in on itself, her cheeks and her chin and her eyebrows all pulling in to meet in the middle.
“I want to be able to go back, Kid,” she said. “Even if they tear it down, even if your drawing is gone. Okay?”
The Kid didn’t know what she meant. Tear it down? He couldn’t write fast enough. He was reduced pairs of words, fragments of sentences.
Tear it
What do you
She wasn’t looking at his notebook anyway. She was looking at her dad and then she was looking at The Kid and she was crying.
“They’re going to tear down the house. That’s what my dad said. But you can just draw it again in your notebook, right? You can just draw it again and we can look at it whenever we want. You have to promise, okay?”
The Kid couldn’t believe it. They were going to tear down the house?
“You have to promise, Kid. You have to promise.”
He could barely understand her, she was talking so fast.
“You have to promise.”
The Kid couldn’t believe it. What about the angel? What about the signal? But Michelle was still waiting for an answer, watching him, crying hard now, her face wet with snot and tears. He turned to a new page in his notebook.
I promise.
Her dad called her name again and she turned to go. The Kid grabbed onto her shirtsleeve. When she turned back to him, he handed her the rabbit. She looked at the rabbit and shoved it down deep into her backpack. Then she was moving again, hurrying past The Kid to the passenger door of the truck, climbing up and in, disappearing behind the rising tinted window.
The Kid stood on the sidewalk, stuck in his spot like Michelle had been stuck, his notebook still open in his hand. The sidewalk emptied slowly, the rest of the cars and trucks pulling away from the curb. He didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know what to do.
They were going to tear down the house.
Darby stood in the dark apartment. He kept the curtain closed behind him, the edges glowing with the exiled outside light. One main room with a double bed and a crib, a dresser with a TV and a boom box against the wall. Baby toys spread across the carpet, blocks and a rubber ball and a pair of plastic dolls. There was a kitchenette built into the wall leading to the bathroom, a half-fridge and microwave and hotplate. There were clothes on the floor, on the unmade bed. Toothbrushes and coffee mugs around the kitchenette sink.
He moved into the room. Loose change and haphazard piles of rap CDs covered the top of the dresser. Posturing men on the covers with tattoos and jewelry and firearms. A starburst of unframed pictures was thumb tacked to the wall by the TV. Greene flashing gang signs, a joint burning between his fingers. Piniero, hugely pregnant, her face defiant with dark slashes of eyeliner. Then a newer picture, Greene and Piniero standing by the empty pool of the apartment complex, holding their baby.