Broken (17 page)

She finally slips back out into the night with her memories following. On the sidewalk she loses her way and goes in the opposite
direction of her hotel. It doesn’t bother her. She enjoys walking in the city. It’s still alive late at night. The block she
walks down has trees that hang over the sidewalk. She feels damp from the humidity but the air blows, slightly cooling her.

As she begins to cross the road, she sees him again.

The young boy, perhaps ten years old.

He smiles at her again and sprints down the sidewalk.

Laila looks around and doesn’t see anybody and wonders what the boy is doing out here alone.

For a moment she’s looking, and then she spots something that terrifies her.

It’s a blue and red backpack.

The exact same kind she found resting in her bathtub a few nights before James showed up.

The backpack she tossed out the window of her apartment without looking inside.

Laila wonders if it’s James and Connor playing another trick on her. Yet that doesn’t prevent her from following the boy into
the beating heart of darkness.

She crosses the street and follows him down a shadowed block.

“Hey, you! Stop for a minute.”

The boy keeps going. He is still sprinting as he heads toward a busier intersection with cars passing at the light.

“Come here for a minute.”

But the boy doesn’t stop. And he reaches the curb with the light saying not to cross. He turns around again ever so briefly
to make sure she’s looking.

Then he steps out into the busy lane with the oncoming traffic, and the taxicab speeding down the street plows into him and
cuts him down like a dropped watermelon splattering over the hard pavement.

Laila screams.

She runs toward the intersection as the taxi screeches twenty yards away. Another car behind it honks and veers around it.

Laila reaches the edge of the intersection and the light turns green and she glances down the street and sees the cab stopped
with its lights blinking and the driver getting out looking shocked.

For a moment she just stands there, unsure of what to do.

But then she rushes across the street and gets to the cab.

She braces for what she’s about to see, for the death matted in the grill of the car.

The cab driver stares at her with a pale, scared look.

Laila holds a hand over her mouth and nose as if it might help. She glances at the front of the car.

The cab driver still looks at her dumbfounded.

There is nothing on the hood of the car.

Nothing on the bumper.

No sign of the boy in the red T-shirt and blue cap. No sign of the matching backpack.

“Where is he?” she asks.

The driver shakes his head.

“You saw him, right? You saw that boy. The boy that ran right in front of your car. You saw him, right? You hit him. I saw
it.”

He says something to her in a foreign language that sounds like a curse.

“I saw him. I know I did.”

As he opens the door, Laila stops him and shakes her head and tells him not to go.

“What happened to him? I know I saw him, and I know you did too.”

The driver gets into the car and shuts the door even though she’s holding onto it and then he drives away.

The only sign of anything are the skid marks the cab made on the road.

Laila walks up and down the sidewalk next to the road, then crosses the street to see if the boy made it across. She knows
she saw it with her own eyes. She saw him sprint across the street and the car ram into him and his body folding up and splattering
over the hood and the window of the cab.

For a moment she closes her eyes and keeps them closed, hoping that when she reopens them they’ll see the truth. But she sees
the same thing.

She eventually leaves the intersection, and a street with a familiar name brings her back down to her hotel. But nothing strange
happens on the way there. No boy. No ghosts. No backpacks.

Nothing.

•   •   •

Amos listens to the political conversation on the radio as he sits in the darkness of the parking lot. He has not seen him
but he’ll be awake when he comes out of one of the rooms at the motel. It’s early morning, and Amos isn’t tired. The open
window lets in the hot breeze. On the seat beside him rests the short and stubby Para Warthog .45 just in case something happens,
but he doubts anything will at two in the morning.

His eyes stay on the darkness of the parking lot, waiting patiently.

This is what he is paid to do. Wait.

Wait and follow.

The question isn’t how this is going to end. It is just a question of where and when.

What did I know about love? What have I ever known about love? It has always proven to be this elusive drug, this hidden crystal,
this deceptive Wizard of Oz–someone hiding behind the curtain. And that someone has always, always disappointed.

When we ran away to New Orleans, it was random. My life had consisted of a series of random choices. There was never any deep
reason for going except that it sounded fun and adventurous. No, it was fun and adventurous, but more than those things, it
was dangerous. Erik was dangerous. And I guess in a lot of ways so was I.

I met him at a college party and made love with him that same night. But something about him was different from the start,
so I believed. I thought it was his special care that he put over me. But I would come to discover that it was as if he viewed
me as an expensive car he’d bought. That was how he cared for me. As if I belonged to him.

For a while I did belong to him.

And in that week in New Orleans, magic happened.

I actually believed that life could be this fiery, potent dream.

It would be easy to say that Erik turned into a monster that week or that I saw things that disappointed me or saddened me.
No. That would come later when it was all
said and done. In New Orleans, I know I loved that man as much as a seventeen-year-old could love.

Yet what did I know about love then?

And what do I know about love now?

I could have learned so much, and I could have grown so much if I had made the right choice. I could have been a better person
and perhaps some of the bad could have been taken away. If only I had done the right thing.

What I know about love is this: you love what you lose. You love what could have been. And even in absence and denial, love
can grow.

H
ello, Mrs. Ewing.”

“Who is this?”

“Sam,” James says.

“Sam who?” the elderly woman asks.

“I work with your son at the bank.”

“He’s never told me about any Sam.”

“I’m relatively new.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Oh, yes. It’s fine. I don’t mean to bother you, but I’ve had a difficult time getting ahold of Kyle.”

“That’s because he’s gone.”

“Well, yes, I know that. I was just wondering how long he was planning to be gone.”

“He didn’t say when he called us yesterday. Do you have his cell?”

“Well, no. That’s actually why I was calling. I was taking over some of his shifts at work, but I’ve had a family emergency
come up so I really need to talk with him.”

The woman gives him a number that he writes down on the square block of paper with the motel’s insignia at the top.

“I’ll give him a call. Hopefully we can figure something out.”

“I assume he’ll be gone a few days since he’s going to New Orleans.”

James pauses for a moment and then draws an exclamation point next to the number. He writes “New Orleans” next to it.

“I’d imagine too. But maybe he can give me some other people who can work for me.”

“Yes, well, tell him to take care of himself.”

“I’ll certainly do that. You’ve been really helpful. Thanks so much.”

James shuts the phone and finishes the coffee he made in the room this morning.

He glances at the empty bed next to him that wasn’t slept in. It’s nine thirty and he hasn’t seen or heard from Connor.

They’re on the border of Mississippi and Louisiana laying low. But Connor went out last night around ten to get some cigarettes
and beer and never came back. James has an idea what his brother might be doing but has no idea where.

Connor’s cell phone sits on the desk right next to the phone James just used.

He waits for an hour and finally there is a knock on the door. James lets him in.

“Where’ve you been?”

“Out and about.”

“What’d you do?” James says.

“Why? I came back.”

“About time.” James curses. “We need to go.”

“Go where?”

“I know where she’s at.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Because I was the one who got the smart genes passed down to him.”

“I’m not going anywhere unless you tell me where we’re going,” Connor says.

“I can smell the liquor on you.”

“Bet you can. Probably can smell perfume too.”

“Did you do anything last night you shouldn’t have?”

“Nothing I would’ve gotten arrested for. Unless she’s not eighteen.”

“You’re sick, you know. You really got a sickness.”

“It’s not a sickness.”

James takes the keys from Connor. “You’re lucky you didn’t get caught.”

“They’re not scanning the whole country for us. We took a rental car and a guy’s wallet.”

“You spend your money?”

“I made some friends. They were more than willing to buy me a few rounds.”

“Listen to me. No more. When I tell you no, you listen.”

“I’m a grown adult,” Connor says.

“That was part of the deal of you coming.”

“No, if you remember correctly, big bro, you needed me for your wonderful little plan. To scare the girl. Guess she got over
the idea of seeing ghosts in junior high.”

“Maybe if she’d been scared of you we’d be set.”

“She’s not scared of you either.”

James nods. “We don’t have much money so lay easy.”

“We have a few credit cards.”

“I’m sure he’s already cancelled them.”

“We’ll get more money soon. We always do.”

“We’re leaving.”

“Where to?”

“Just get in the car and shut up and do as you’re told.”

“I don’t need this abuse.”

“Yes you do. You need that and a whole lot more.”

They climb into the car that Connor just parked and drive off.

•   •   •

As Amos pulls out onto the exit a short distance from the car he’s tailing, he dials the number and gets Danny.

“We’ve got a problem.”

“What is it?”

“There’s two of them.”

The voice on the other end pauses for a moment. “What are you talking about?”

“I thought you said Connor was dead,” Amos says.

“That’s what James told me.”

“I just saw him drive off with James. I’m following them now.”

Danny curses. “Where are they going?”

“Not sure. South, it appears.”

“You follow them and you make sure they get that money and then when you get it, I want them both dead. Both of them. And
I want you to kill Connor first. I want James to watch his brother die. And tell him that’s courtesy of me.”

“Got it.”

He hangs up the line and begins to coast a couple cars behind them on the highway.

Amos isn’t surprised at the order. It usually ends this way.

The only surprise is that the order has come now.

It’ll make his job far easier, wherever they end up.

•   •   •

The coffee is strong and necessary. Laila picks at the breakfast and finds it strange how one might drink the same coffee
and eat the same biscuits and listen to the birds in this courtyard and hold hands with a loved one and have a defining moment
in their life. Yet in the same breath, one might experience the exact same thing alone and feel isolated and afraid.

It’s not life, she thinks, but rather what you do with it.

She finishes a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and licks her lips and thinks about leaving and heading back up to her
room when the woman approaches. Her gray hair is in a ball, and she has round eyes and a narrow jaw.

“This is not the place to come all alone,” she says, looking down at Laila.

“Excuse me?”

“They see you and they know and they will come to you,” the woman tells her in a rickety drawl.

“Who are you talking about?”

Lines that look like leather cut her spotted face. “The dark will swallow you whole here.”

Laila looks around to see if anyone else is here. “Can I help you?”

“No. But I can help you.”

“How can you help me?”

“I see her, but far away.”

“Who do you see?”

“But the others are closer, much closer. And they want to hurt you.”

Laila stands and starts to walk off. The elderly woman grabs her arm and holds her back. Though she appears to be a feeble
old lady, her grip is tight and strong.

“I won’t hurt you.”

“Look—I’m sorry but I just really—”

“The black pit of night won’t rest until it pours its way into your soul,” the old woman says. “You need to leave this place.
This city. You need to leave and go back home.”

Laila pulls back her arm and leaves the woman standing there in the empty courtyard.

She goes inside the hotel and ignores the man behind the desk who made small talk with her earlier. She goes up the winding
staircase and notices the mirror at the end of the hallway. She knows it wasn’t there before. She sees herself from twenty
yards away, the tank top and the jeans and the hair spilling down and the expressionless
eyes. Laila glances down at the white loose dress she’s wearing. The mirror lies and shows a picture that she should know
and know well and now remembers. It’s a picture from an ad that made her famous and sent her all the way to New York. She
still looks the same but doesn’t look anything like that girl.

In the mirror the girl starts to laugh at her. And then as she does, blood begins to drip down the sides of her mouth, then
begins to leak out of her eyes like tears.