Glow in the Dark_Stories Read online

  I have a new woman now, Marty said to Thomas after a meeting. Thomas shook his head, as he lit a cigarette. Marty's breath was thick in front of him, as thick as the smoke Thomas blew to the side before he responded, What did I tell you about women? I know what you told me, Marty said, But I wasn't born this morning. No, Thomas said, you were born a little over a year ago when you took your last drink. Maybe so, Marty said, Nevertheless, this isn't about sex. This is something entirely different. I'm feeling as new and as pure as I did before I ever had a filthy thought in my head. Is that so, Thomas said, laughing. Well, my friend, if that is truly the case, you're going against everything in the program. You aren't tough enough to lick this thing overnight. Get it into your head, my man. You are an alcoholic. And after only little more than a year of sobriety, you are nowhere near knowing one from two, much less twelve. Be careful, Thomas said, as he turned to walk off. Then he stopped in his tracks, looked back at Marty, and called, And consider this woman, my friend, she deserves someone who still has his head! Marty flipped him off, and Thomas brought up his hands, like, What else can I say? then kept walking.

  It was early summer by the time Leila could trust Marty longer than twenty minutes alone with her girl. He was in her room, and she was showing him her latest action figure, which went with the one he just gave her. Leila would only be an hour getting her hair "touched up" at the salon. She had someone fast, she said, yet she said this more to bolster her own confidence, it seemed to him, than to reassure him of the shortness of any babysitting duties. The girl had him laughing over the toughness with which she fought his doll with hers. The games in her head seemed complicated to him, and it brought him back to his little sister Baker, but instead of squeezing it out, he tried to remember how it was when it was good and natural between them. He relaxed with it, laughed, and enjoyed himself, and so it caught him by surprise when she said she had to go to the bathroom, and he found himself following her. I don't need help, she said, as she started to close the door. But when he put his hand there to stop her from closing it, startled, she looked up at him.

  He couldn't hear whatever he said to her so that she would just relax and go ahead and pull her pants down and "go potty," that part he did hear himself say, but he couldn't see himself, or he couldn't imagine himself doing what he was doing, as he was taking off all of his clothes to be completely naked while the girl wasn't looking but busying herself with the toilet paper. She had pulled off too much of the toilet paper, and when she saw that he was nearly naked, she asked too loudly what he was doing, so he moved over to her to cover her mouth. Oh God, he thought, because his mind was trying to catch up to him, something didn't feel right, as everything was clearing up and he began to see a bit of himself, and the terror was starting but he had to rush on through. The girl was struggling with all she had in her, and so when he heard the door open, a part of him was set free and the other part panicked, trying to push his body against the bathroom door, trying to keep it closed, while trying to hold onto the girl's mouth, and her body, while he heard Leila wailing and kicking at the door, and everything all slippery with his sweat. There were stomps on the floor and then Leila was back again. She got the door open, and there she stood with a gun, pointed at his nose, while she yanked the child from him, threw her out of the room and closed the door behind her. Yes, Marty heard himself say, as she cocked it.

  Holiday Confessional

  The girl is not dead. She is coughing blood as Pup and Zasu bolt from the lot where she lies. Slowing up, they turn the corner, begin humming in harmonic thump, keeping steady pace.

  In that hat ribboned with the print of grasshoppers, is Olga. She's in her usual spot, and just as drunk. She nods, they nod. A freak July flip of wind lifts her hat, and it jumps the curb. Olga bends the wrong way as they pass, and she won't remember seeing them. They speed up two beats down Grand Avenue, reach Zasu's door.

  Pup pats his heart.

  "You comin' in?" Zasu asks, merengue pumping down the hall.

  "No way."

  "Just don't do anything stupid, Pup man."

  "Catch you tomorrow."

  Pup waits for the click of the lock, then he runs.

  On the payphone seven blocks from Zasu's, Pup dials 911, tells them the cross streets, Driggs and Fillmore. He hangs up, heads for the L. Hurting his brain is the hot pink of her gums, the knob of her throat going up and down, her face not matching what he'd heard blast the air from a few yards away, "You'll have to kill me first!"

  To catch the train he vaults the stile, jumps four steps a time, shoves his arm in to the elbow, pries open the doors. The old woman, probably Polish, swallows heavily and touches her lizard neck. She holds her bag closer, stares up at the ads. She glares once again at him; he sits too narrowly in her vision. He looks down at his hands folded in his lap, and then he too is afraid of himself.

  For the first time in months, Pup thinks of heading to the Port Authority for the Jersey bus to see Millie. She'll slick her impeccably straightened hair in place as he follows her into the kitchen. She'll feed him something with lentils, unless she's obsessing on another protein. She'll ask few questions because she hasn't wanted to know for years. She'll bitch about not being promoted beyond director of personnel. She'll show him the news in her garden, praise the quality of her dirt. She'll protest little when he says he can't stay. Before he leaves, he'll grab from her stash of almond M&Ms, and he'll call her Mama to hurt her, drum up regret.

  Pup and his twin brother Pace, twelve years old then, living with their father in LA, spending most holidays with their mother Millie in New York, and this particular summer, Millie nine months pregnant with a half sister the father eventually took away. The night before, Millie crying over his and Pace's father. How much she still loved him, she said. She mentioned nothing about wanting Pup and Pace back. Then the next day Pup coming in on Millie, their mother, and Pace. She hungrily caressing the half-circle of his cheek to his sharp jaw to the cushion of his lips. His lips were on her nipple, and she was squeezing it. Later she gave Pup a separate talking to. What you saw, she said, was nothing. Pace was just curious about the taste of milk. But what I'd like from now on is for you both to stop calling me Mama. That's what I'd like, she repeated, before they left.

  Looking up at a zit cream ad, Pup feels the train rumble and squeal to a halt. He doesn't hear why they'll move again in a minute, because he's hearing the girl again, seeing the girl lying there. Zasu yanking him by the shirt, and yelling in hot whispers to him, the girl holding her throat, turning her head from side to side and it's hypnotizing him, her one thigh jerking up and down with the shakes. The panties are in a delicate twist on her ankle, like a bracelet.

  Pup hard now, a nasty taste takes his tongue, and he won't throw up. The train snaps him into shame, and he jolts up, unnecessarily crowding the door, waiting to get out. His eyes flit from one First Avenue sign to the next. Finally the doors slide open and he flings himself free. He flies three steps a time into city-lit dark and he imagines trying to get through another night. Loneliness knits his gut into knots, and he yearns for day and the shape and strength of his father's arm pointing out the sun dog on the horizon. He hears his father's voice, telling him to look at the metal, wire, crack vials, and broken glass in conscious argument with the sky. Lately he's found himself on the same corner around four in the afternoon to watch the pigeons circle the roof, the light hitting their wings golden so that they look like individual churches.

  Down First, passing through pockets of dealers and the ruthless howls of sirens, Pup kicks the shreds of clothes lying on the sidewalk, squints his eyes until lights collapse into clusters. He puckers his nose at the pulpy stench of trash, turns the corner at St. Marks, and descends the steps of the Holiday Bar. Two girls sit at the end. They are laughing with the bartender who's drunk. One is black with platinum blonde dreadlocks, the other white, neither of them really fine. Then again, neither is he. Pup never shined like Pace. Pup was named for his father, Paul; Pace, for their grandfather. Both Paces are dead now.

  After Pup's second beer he moves to the empty seat next to the white girl. The air doesn't change. She's too thin, pale with long dust-colored hair, her breasts lost in an oversized short-sleeved polka dot shirt. Her arms glow as she scribbles from one long list on a napkin to another.

  "What are you writing?" Pup asks, trying to control the nervous habit of opening his eyes wide then blinking rapid fire.

  "An ex-boyfriend's mother's recipe for spinach enchiladas," she answers, not looking up.

  The blonde dread takes a sip. He can't see her body with the white one in the way. She moves her hair back, there is a mole moments under her left cheekbone, her eyes widely spaced apart. She takes him in softly, then lets him go.

  "So how do you make spinach enchiladas?" Pup asks, staring at the white one's knuckles as they vibrate.

  "Just a second, I'm recopying it. Can barely read my own writing."

  A guy pushes in between Pup and the white girl. He asks the bartender for a beer, but the bartender ignores him and moves to the other side of the counter. Knocking into Pup, the guy leaves to follow the bartender before Pup can flirt with his anger. The blonde dread watches Pup ready to spring, then she puts her elbow on the counter, rests her chin in her hand, as if it were him, and it calms him down.

  "So your ex-boyfriend's mother . . ." Pup begins again with the white one.

  "Yeah, I called her a few minutes ago, she owns two restaurants in LA, and since we're having a party tomorrow—"

  "I grew up in LA," Pup cuts her off, hurrying a bit more excitedly than he'd meant. "Long Beach. My father still lives there. He's an artist."

  "Really," she says lazily, looking up at him finally. Her eyes are corraded silver. "I've prob
ably been to Long Beach once."

  She turns to the blonde dread, moves the lock back that has slipped into her drink, then lovingly touches her earlobe. It is fat, with no rings, no holes, and he would like to suck it.

  "Get me another one, will you, when he comes this way," the white one says, leaning into the counter to stick the napkins in her back pocket. She gets up and he won't turn to see her ass.

  "My name's Paul," he says, offering his hand to the dread. Her highly arched, comic strip-like eyebrows suddenly meet, perched for flight.

  "Paula," she says, and laughs. She shakes him once firmly, her hand wet from the glass.

  "Nice to meet you," he says.

  The dread flashes her teeth, he sees her dark gums, and then he sees the hot pink gums. Pup squeezes his eyes shut, his head again tracking that voice, You'll have to kill me first!"

  "Something wrong?" the dread asks him. Pup opens his eyes.

  The white one is back, the sound as she slips onto the chair reminds him of butterflies.

  "Something wrong there, handsome?" the white one says. Pup's nostrils involuntarily flare because everything the white one says comes off like she doesn't mean it.

  "His name's Paul," the dread says.

  "How sweet. Paul and Paula. Let me see your profile Paul," the white one says, grabbing Pup's chin with her cold hand. She is smiling with those silver eyes that now flicker. "This profile should be on a coin, don't you think? Or at least on a stamp."

  "Buy me a beer and I'll forget you touched me without asking," Pup says.

  " Ooooo. That's fair," she says, waving her hand at the bartender. "My name is Virgie, by the way, and it's a pleasure."

  The blonde dread crinkles her nose then lets it smooth with her mouth into welcome. Pup looks at her then back at the white girl who is softening as she tilts her head to the side. The polka dots ricochet from her shirt as she moves toward him to steady herself on her seat. She suddenly becomes pretty in a way that says, Trust me.

  "I had my first flying dream in a long time," Pup says, taking a swig of the beer.

  "I hate my flying dreams," the white one says, "they usually end with me in some auditorium giving class instruction. I make it just over the audience then someone pulls me down."

  "No one ever sees me," Pup says. "I take off from a different bedroom window each night. It's hard at first to make the height. I scrape trees then I make it over buildings, struggling the whole time. It's never weightless, the flight. And when I land I'm cut up and bruised, and I've got this yellow cornmealy shit in my mouth that I end up digging with my hands because it's not enough to spit it out."

  "You should keep your mouth shut when you fly," the white one says.

  "Like I said, I haven't flown in a long time," Pup says, putting both hands on the counter. The color of dirt, his hands. He thinks of Millie in her garden, praising the smell. I have good dirt, Millie says, Look at it, so dark. The darker the soil the richer, she says.

  The girls are talking to each other, the beer grabbing at his head. The song on the jukebox stutters, somebody kicks it back in place.

  Look at me Pace, Pup whispers to himself. He wonders what Pace could have said before they beat him to death. He remembers that night how he felt it. One of the few times he'd slept the last few years in a comfortable bed. He woke up to the chorus of blood rushing the sockets of his eyes. His head buried in the pillow, tears sizzling his ear.

  "Want another one John Paul?" the white one says.

  "Who said my name was John Paul?"

  "No one. I'm thinking of the Pope, I'm thinking of my father. Bartender, hit us again!" the white one says, slapping the counter. She raises a brow at Pup, then smiles. She leans back so that her hair is dusting the waist of her jeans. She leaves a view to the dread's body, unforgivably lush, and suddenly together they look like a billboard. The dread smiles too, looks at Pup, then back at her friend.

  Against his blue Hawaiian shirt, and brass white hair, the bartender's liver shows on his face. His forehead and brow in a permanent claw of concern, he pours the dread more water, more whiskey, puts down two more beers. Pup looks up at the deer head with candycane, buttons, Mardi Gras beads hanging from its antlers. He can't hear what the white one tells the bartender. The bartender puts up his arms as if she might shoot, then walks away.

  "Now, tell us something good, John Paul," the white one says, bumping the barlight with her face.

  "Okay. My mother was a Black Panther," he answers.

  "Oh really," the white one says, her thin bottom lip curling as if she had rolled her eyes. "Lot of children of Panther mothers running around these days."

  The blonde dread laughs, and tenderly with one finger wipes the corner of her mouth.

  "Don't be like that," Pup says, not knowing why he lied. He stares at the shape of her skull.

  "Okay, tell us about your mother."

  "Forget about my mother. Forget I mentioned her. Let's talk about my father. You would both love my father," Pup says.

  "Is that right? Is he as handsome as you?" the white one asks.

  Pup directs his attention to the dread.

  "If he were here right now, he'd take us above . . . the dirt."

  "Well not my father," the white one interrupts, "the Jesus freak. He nearly killed me."

  "Don't knock Jesus. Jesus was cool," Pup says.

  "Oh please," the white one interrupts, "do not explicate."

  "My partner's named for him, Hay-soos, but since his baby sister pronounced it Zasu, the name stuck."

  "Zasu, huh?" the white one grabs his hand, squeezes it. "I love what babies do with a name. I had a baby. Oh you can't imagine what it feels like to be pregnant," the white one exclaims, letting go of his hand to put hers up in the air in the shape of a V. The dread straightens her back and looks at the counter as if waiting for her friend to finish quickly. "It's beautiful, you know. When the baby kicked it felt like waves instead of blows. Like I had this ocean inside me. But then there was him, the Jesus freak."

  The guy that had knocked into Pup returns to ask the bartender to spot him a five. The bartender's eyes go navy and slit. Pup watches his brass white hair whiz under the counter as he rabidly growls at the guy to get the fuck out of his bar. The bartender is small and packed tight in a bundle in the guy's face as he appears to consider whether he might hit the guy. Pup gets up to back the bartender. The dread grabs his arm, her nails sinking into his skin.

  "You just stay out of other people's shit, Paul, if you know what's good for you. Just leave it alone," the dread says, taking an evil tone.

  "Oh really, is that what I should always do?" Pup says, matching it. "And what's your story anyway? You haven't said a fucking thing this entire time."

  "Nevermind all that, and don't curse at me. I only said don't start any shit around me, okay?" the dread says, putting her hands up, the nails long and fake and ready to be plucked.

  The white one's face is fraught with interest.

  "Listen, don't pound on me, tonight." Pup says, his eyes blinking too fast.

  "Pound?"

  "Don't pound on me," he says, working his spit.

  "Simmer down there John Paul," the white one says.

  "You say to me, 'Stay out of other people's shit,' and that's exactly what I've done tonight," Pup says, both palms slamming the counter.

  "What the hell is he talking about?" the dread says, expanding her chest.