City of Rose Read online

  I point myself south and get going. I’ve got to pass the club on the way home anyway, so I figure on heading there. If it still feels like something has rattled loose, I’ll grab some cash from the drawer, call a cab, and take that the rest of the way home.

  Though I’m sure I’ll end up walking the whole way there. Even when I’m tired, even when my face is throbbing, it’s nice to walk.

  There are a lot of things I miss about home. Big things, like my friends. Little things, like the shawarma at Mamoun’s. One of the little things I miss that turned out to be a big thing is, I used to walk everywhere. It was the only reliable kind of exercise I got.

  Here, you can’t do that so easy. The neighborhoods don’t link up. Sidewalks disappear. Expressways spring up suddenly and without warning, cutting you off from where you’re going. There are so many goddamn bridges.

  The public transit isn’t so bad, but New York spoiled me. I could step outside the door and find six ways to get anywhere. Here there are bus routes to learn. There are trolleys, which are weird. The public transit does not run constantly and everywhere, so I deem it subpar and not worthy of my patronage.

  You want a cab? You can’t step to the curb and raise your hand. You have to call ahead and then you have to wait an hour. It’s barbaric.

  I haven’t bothered to do much besides walk. I don’t spend a lot of time outside the mile between home and work. Maybe one day I’ll get a car. Until then, I walk. Walking is good. It gives me time to think.

  I’ve got a lot to think about.

  Someone shoving a gun in your face does a lot to change your perspective on things.

  Naturals isn’t even supposed to be open yet, but Hood is standing on the sidewalk outside, having a smoke, dressed in dirty jeans and a paint-streaked sweatshirt. I nod at him and he pats me on the shoulder. He drags on his cigarette and exhales as he gets a good look at my face. “The fuck happened, yo?”

  I stop, think hard about asking for a smoke. But no, I’m not going to slip, and anyway, he’s smoking Newports. That makes the decision not to bum from him a little easier.

  “You look like you got knocked around pretty good,” Hood says.

  I press my fingers to my face and wince. It feels bad. Probably looks worse.

  “Motherfucker, say something,” Hood says.

  I laugh at that. “I’m okay.”

  Hood is a nice guy. People think he gets called Hood because he’s black. That’s racist. The truth is he gets called that because he’s the size of Mount Hood, the snow-capped mountain floating off the horizon line. His neck is bigger than my thigh and spreads out from there. If I had to take him down, I wouldn’t even know where to start. He reminds me a bit of someone I knew from back home. The main difference being that Hood is nice, whereas Samson always seemed to be considering whether he should break my nose.

  Hood also speaks with the kind of affectation goofy white people would call “ghetto.” Truth is, he’s a giant nerd. Dare to bring up Doctor Who around him and you will get a twenty-minute rant about why the revival series isn’t as good as the original. I saw a guy get sucked into that once. He had a look on his face like he was about to die for some unperceived slight. Hood is also the closest thing I have to a friend in this town. I say that while acknowledging I don’t even know his last name. Or his real first name. Unless it actually is Hood.

  He asks, “The guy last night do that to you?”

  “Different guy.”

  “How many people want to fuck you up, son?”

  “Too many, it seems. What are you doing here so early?”

  “Crystal wanted to talk to me about something. She’s on her way over. I got some repair stuff to do anyway.”

  I scratch at my face, wince again when it stings. “Listen… this is going to sound weird, but why don’t you let me talk to her first? I think I know what it’s about.”

  “Whatever, man, I asked her to meet me here because the electrical in the dressing room is fritzy and shit. I want to get that done before tonight.”

  “I’ll get things sorted with Crystal.”

  He shrugs, tosses his cigarette to the curb, and we head inside. There’s some science fiction show I don’t know on the television over the bar. Robots and spaceships. “What’s this?”

  “Battlestar Galactica. How do you not know that?”

  “Easily.”

  “Shit, man, it just came off Netflix. You can borrow the box set.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Dude, fucking Battlestar, man. You don’t even know.”

  “I’m good. Don’t watch much TV lately.”

  “Whatever. I’m bringing it in for you. You’ll watch it and you’ll like it.”

  It sounds like a threat. Maybe he means it like a threat. That accomplished, he disappears to the back. I go behind the bar to make some coffee, hunting for Tommi’s secret stash of good grounds, when the phone rings. I grab it off the cradle. The tiny orange LED screen says BLOCKED NUMBER.

  “Naturals,” I say.

  Silence on the other end of the line.

  Then a high-pitched male voice says, “I thought I was going to get the voicemail.”

  “It’s your lucky day.”

  “Well… just… listen, I’ve got a message for your owner. Tell her to get her dyke ass out of town before something bad happens.”

  “I can relay that message. Though I’d prefer if you could come here and say it to her face. It would be fun to watch her choke you dead with your own intestines, you fucking coward.”

  Click.

  Huh.

  The front door scrapes. Crystal comes in through the velvet curtain that blocks the light and the view from the outside world. She sees me, and her face drops. “Where’s Hood?”

  “Can we talk?” I ask.

  There’s some noise from the back and Crystal heads toward the kitchen, ignoring me. I come around the bar and get in front of her and she gets a look at my face. She stops short and furrows her brow, asks, “What happened to you?”

  “After we talked last night someone threw me in a trunk, threatened to kill me if I helped you, and pistol-whipped me. That’s what happened to me.”

  She freezes.

  “Ashley…” she says.

  “Ash,” I tell her.

  “What?”

  “Ash. Call me Ash.”

  She nods, not sure how to take it.

  The thing I don’t want to explain to her is the only person who can call me Ashley—besides my Ma—is dead. And Chell only got the privilege because I made the mistake of telling her that everyone always called me Ash.

  “I have no idea who that could have been,” Crystal says. “Dirk is an idiot but I think he would piss his pants if he saw a gun.”

  “The guy who grabbed me was only half an idiot,” I tell her.

  “So what does that mean?”

  “It means I’m going to find your daughter. Let’s go someplace and get a cup of coffee to hash out the particulars.”

  Crystal narrows her blue-green tempered glass eyes at me. “What’s changed?”

  Shrug. “Motherfucker broke my cell phone. He owes me a new one.”

  Crystal slides her empty ceramic coffee mug around the table, having finished her story, letting it settle.

  Pretty simple. The kid was in day care. Dirk showed up and there was a new girl working who didn’t know not to hand the kid over to anyone besides Crystal. Crystal’s daughter, being four, didn’t know better and was excited to see her dad. And here we are.

  The coffee shop is quiet, just us and a couple of kids tapping away on laptops, three out of four of them wearing headphones. I take Crystal’s cup along with mine up to the self-serve urns and pour some more coffees, bring them back to the table. She goes at hers with the cream and sugar. I keep mine black and let it cool.

  “Tell me more about Dirk,” I say. “So he’s an idiot.”

  “I was young, and I was stupid…”

  I put up my hand.
“You don’t need to defend yourself. I want to know if this guy is someone who could be a problem.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t think so. He’s mostly talk. You’re bigger than him, so he wouldn’t raise his hands to you.”

  “Any idea why someone would be warning me off this?”

  “None.”

  I take a sip of my coffee. Too hot.

  “I have money,” she says. “Not a lot. How much would it cost to hire you?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  Crystal shakes her head. “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “I’m not licensed. This isn’t a job. Call it a favor. I’ll find him, look angry, chances are he’ll hand the kid back.”

  “What about the guy with the gun? What if he’s there?”

  “I know what his car looks like. That’s a start. And he probably thinks I’m smart enough to fuck off after he threatened me.”

  “But you’re not smart enough?”

  “Nope.”

  Crystal picks up a discarded sugar packet and folds it once, twice, and lets it drop to the table. “This is a little heavy. Maybe we should call the cops.”

  “Chicken Man said not to,” I tell her. “He said he had hooks in with the cops. He could have been full of shit, but better to err on the side of caution.”

  “He threatened you with a gun. That doesn’t bother you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m cool under pressure.”

  She takes a long sip of coffee and puts the mug down. She brings her eyes up to mine, a smile pulling across her lips. “The girls were right.”

  “What girls?”

  “The girls at the club. We wonder about you. You sit around all night in your cowboy hat and make a couple of smart comments, but no one knows anything about you. Everyone gets a good feel off you. Like you’re a nice guy.”

  “I’m not a nice guy.”

  She squints. “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  “Nothing to sell. If you want the truth, the reason I don’t want you to pay me is because I’m hoping I’ll earn a little karma. I’m in debt. Some might call that selfish.”

  I take a sip of my coffee, put the mug down. Crystal is still staring at me, like I’m a painting she’s trying to understand.

  “Got a pen?” I ask.

  As she pulls one out of her purse, I get up and grab a napkin from another table, put it in front of her. “I’m assuming you don’t know exactly where he is. How about someone who does know? A place I can start.”

  Crystal scribbles on the napkin and slides it to me. I don’t know the name of the street. She says, “He hangs out at this house a lot. Northeast side of town. He crashes there sometimes. Someone there should have a better idea. It’s off Martin Luther King. Need directions?”

  “I get the gist.”

  “They’re drug people.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “I don’t know,” she says. “I don’t know if they’re dealers or what, but there’s something about that house that’s tied up in drugs.”

  “Got it.” I fold up the napkin and stick it into my pocket.

  “I would offer to come but there’s a lot of… emotion there. I don’t trust myself for what I’m going to say to Dirk and I don’t want my daughter to hear that.”

  “There is also a dude with a gun. Better that you’re far away.”

  Crystal balls up her fist and presses her thumb into the space under her lip. “Are you sure about this?”

  “Gun is a coward’s weapon. And he hides behind a mask. He got the jump on me. The trick is to not let that happen again.”

  Crystal exhales, stares off into the distance. The look in her eyes like she’s short-circuited. Her thumb comes up again and she chews on the nail. Her eyes get a little softer when she does this.

  Her other hand is on the table. That thumbnail is white and jagged around the edges.

  “I don’t have a car, so I’m going to call a cab,” I tell her. “I’ll go up there, scope it out.”

  “Do you want to take my car?”

  “That sounds better. Sure.”

  She takes out a heavy fistful of keys and drops them on the table, then shakes her head. “I hate this. I just… I love my daughter. And I try so hard to keep her separated from this.”

  “It’ll be fine.”

  We get up from the table, walk to the door. I hold it open for her. “You know, I should have asked,” I tell her. “I can’t believe I didn’t ask. What’s your daughter’s name?”

  “Rose,” Crystal says. “Her name is Rose.”

  The car is a beat-up white sedan with stuffed animals lining the rear window, the passenger side full of discarded coffee cups and receipts and fliers. I climb into the driver’s seat and can barely fit, fumble underneath for the lever to push the seat back.

  I look into the rearview mirror as I’m adjusting it. There’s a car seat behind the front passenger seat, fabric navy blue with white flowers, holding a pink teddy bear, like the bear is waiting to be buckled in.

  So, this should be fun. Despite being a born and raised New Yorker, I do have a license, and I do know how to drive—but I haven’t done it a long time. Everything goes smooth when I pull away from the curb. The brakes are a little loose and the steering column a little tight. But the feel of it comes back easy.

  Two blocks later and I nearly get into an accident, swerving to the right because the guy in the oncoming lane drifts over the double-yellows. I brush a row of parked cars and fantasize about ramming this car into his.

  At the next green light the person in front of me comes to nearly a complete stop in order to make a right turn, which inspired more fantasies of death and destruction.

  I’m not used to this. I’m used to speed limits and traffic rules being polite suggestions, and other than that it’s a melee. This is like everyone else on the road keeps forgetting where they are.

  Maybe I don’t have the right temperament for driving.

  Control your anger before it controls you.

  Inhale, exhale.

  It takes me a little while to get where I think I’m supposed to be. A couple of wrong turns, and for a while I think I’m going in the complete wrong direction, but once I find MLK it’s cake. The town is starting to imprint itself on me. Still, I’m sure if I knew where I was going, it wouldn’t have taken half as long.

  I stop the car when I find the street I’m looking for. Better to not turn onto it. If Dirk is in there he might recognize Crystal’s car. I park and get out, flooded with relief to be off the road, and walk to the corner. Chicken Man was driving a dark sedan. Something close to an Impala. I don’t really know cars. But nothing on the block matches.

  I’m about to head for the house when I realize: What if Rose actually is there? She’ll have no reason to trust me over her dad. I go back to Crystal’s car and grab the pink teddy bear. Better than nothing. I probably should have insisted on Crystal coming. Even if she waited in the car.

  The house is a rustic one-story ranch with some shrubbery out front and a bike sitting in the driveway, about the same as every other home in this town. As I get closer, the truth becomes a little more apparent.

  This area is the Portland version of a bad neighborhood. The homes around here are generally unkempt but this is a mess. One of the windows is broken and has a board blocking it from the inside. The paint used to be purple, now faded to lilac. The yard is overgrown where it’s not bare and brown.

  No car in the driveway. No lights on. It’s quiet. The whole block is quiet.

  I open the chain-link gate and it creaks, make my way up the concrete walkway, and stand in front of the door, my boots echoing in the hollow under the porch. The pink teddy bear bounces against my leg. The whole walk I’m wondering how to handle this. I’ve never had to find a kid before. And truthfully, guys like me are in a poor position to pick up kids they don’t know.

  Sorry, officer, this kid belongs
to someone I work with. No, I don’t want to tell you who. No, I don’t want to tell you where I got her or where we’re going. Can’t you trust a strange man with a kid who doesn’t belong to him?

  Dammit.

  I press the doorbell and don’t hear anything so I knock and wait. Silence from inside the house. Could be no one is home. Great. It’s not like I can ring up Crystal and ask for another lead, because my phone is broken. Another thing I should have considered. I’m rusty. Making mistakes. I put my ear against the door, call out, “I’m here for Dirk.”

  Something thumps on the other side. There’s definitely someone home.

  “It’ll take a minute,” I say.

  There’s another sound.

  Metal on metal. Chunk.

  The sound makes me think of movie shotguns, like how when someone cocks it, using the hard metal clank of it to punctuate a sentence.

  That’s exactly what that sounds like.

  Fucking fuck.

  I dive to the side of the porch as a blast tears a hole the size of a basketball in the front door.

  Some amount of time goes by. I can’t measure it from my spot in the corner of the porch. The world has frozen in the echo of the blast. I’m on the left side of the door, Rose’s pink teddy bear is on the right. There’s a puff of white stuffing coming out of its flank. I think it got clipped. Poor little bear.

  The noise didn’t seem to rile the locals because the block is still empty. Nobody outside their homes, nobody peering out of their curtains. At least not that I can see from my vantage point all the way in the corner. I could get up and run, reevaluate this whole thing. I think shotguns aren’t supposed to have an effective range past a certain distance, but that’s not something I’m ready to gamble on.

  And yet, no one has come outside. No one has said anything. Just silence. Shotguns tend to foretell bigger problems.

  I crawl back toward the door, staying under the windows, trying to keep quiet, every creak of the wooden porch echoing across the stillness like a shockwave. I come alongside the door and hold my breath.