Flamethrower (3 page)

On Linden Boulevard, Ruby rode up onto the sidewalk for a few blocks until she reached the side street that led down into the tiny neighborhood known as The Hole.

There had been a lot of rain lately, and most of it had gathered here, in this five-acre dent of land situated a few hundred yards from a long series of housing projects and highways. It was, as far as Ruby could tell, the strangest neighborhood in New York City. To one side was Howard Beach, a white working-class area jutted up against the periphery of unruly East New York. Squat in the middle of it all was a small area known as Lindenwood, where blue-collar home owners shared
land with horses kept in ramshackle barns. The barns weren’t entirely legal, but real estate there wasn’t exactly valuable, so no one had done anything about it.

As Ruby got off to walk her bike through a patch of mud, she saw the woman she’d come to think of as Pee Lady, squatting between two parked cars. She was a fiftyish, reasonably well-dressed woman who, for whatever reason, chose to urinate in public places. This was the fourth time in a month that Ruby had seen her. As far as Ruby knew, Pee Lady had no business at The Hole. Ruby had never seen her near a horse or talking to anyone who kept a horse there, and she didn’t seem to be friends with any of the home owners. No. The woman had wandered over from who-knows-where to pee there, between cars.

As Ruby walked by, Pee Lady looked up. Her pale eyes locked on Ruby’s but nothing showed on her face. Ruby tried to think of something to say. Nothing came to mind.

The stable where Ruby’s horse lived was a squat wooden building surrounded by a ten-foot-tall chain-link fence. Some days, Coleman, the stable owner, left his two pit bulls, Honey and Pokey, to guard the place. The dogs weren’t there now though. Coleman had probably taken them for a romp along Jamaica Bay, or to the posh doggie bakery in nearby Queens where the pits salivated over treats and stared down the designer dogs owned by the wealthy matrons who made up the bulk of the bakery’s patronage.

Ruby unlocked the gate, wheeled her bike in, and leaned it against the fence. She walked into the small dark barn. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness, she involuntarily pictured
Jody’s husband’s leg in the Carnegie Hall tote. She could still see the chunks of gore at the end of the leg. She took a deep breath and shook herself off the way a dog would after a nap.

Ruby’s horse recognized her footsteps and whinnied intensely. As Ruby came closer, the big bay gelding shook his head and lifted his upper lip, exposing enormous yellow teeth. This was his way of asking for a peppermint. He wouldn’t let Ruby do anything with him until she’d produced the requisite piece of pink and white striped candy, a thing he’d gotten a taste for at the track.

“Yeah yeah,” Ruby said. She took off her backpack and dug around until she found a small plastic bag full of peppermints. She usually kept a stash in her trunk in the tack room but had run out. She’d had the nerve to come empty-handed a few days in a row but now, finally, had the goods. The horse kept shaking his head as Ruby unwrapped a piece of candy.

“Here.” She held out her palm, candy in the middle, and the big gelding greedily took it. As he noisily rolled the mint around in his mouth, Ruby got her cell phone out and dialed Jody’s office number. She wasn’t sure exactly what she might say to her psychiatrist. But she felt compelled to call.

The machine came on: “You’ve reached the office of Jody Ray. Please leave a message after the tone.” Ruby hung up. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The horse was still clacking the mint against his teeth. Ruby desperately wanted to call Jane. Ruby had been friends with Jane for close to twenty years, and no one knew Ruby better. But Jane was off in India for the summer, studying yoga and Sanskrit, living in a shack without running water or electricity. She’d been gone
two weeks and wouldn’t be back for another month. Ruby couldn’t imagine what kind of shape she’d be in then. At this rate, she’d explode within forty-eight hours. First, though, there were barn chores to do. Eight stalls to be mucked, eight horses to be groomed. It was monotonous and grueling. Exactly what she needed.

Ruby wasn’t sure how much time had passed when her ass started vibrating. She’d tucked her phone into her back pocket but had forgotten to switch it from Vibrate to Ring.

“Yeah?” She pulled the phone out, flipping it open without checking the incoming number.

“Ruby, this is Jody”

“Hi,” Ruby said. She felt idiotic saying
hi
under the circumstances, but what else was she going to say?

“Where are you?” Jody asked.

“At the barn, doing chores. What’s happening?”
What’s happening
sounded even more stupid.

“Nothing good, I can tell you that much.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing. That’s why I’m calling. To reiterate what I said earlier. Please don’t tell Ed about any of this. Please don’t tell anyone. My husband’s life is at stake.”

“It is? Has he been kidnapped?”

“I cannot discuss any of this with you. And I have to apologize once more for what I’ve put you through. I never intended any such thing.”

“It’s fine,” Ruby said, even though it wasn’t.

“Good-bye,” Jody said, suddenly hanging up in Ruby’s ear.

Ruby hated being hung up on. She was fairly certain that
one of the things most wrong with modern society was rudeness. Hanging up in someone’s ear was inexcusable.

Ruby immediately tried to call Jody back, but the call went straight to voice mail. She flipped her phone shut and put it back in her pants pocket. She stared at the pitchfork she was holding and fleetingly imagined impaling herself through the prefrontal cortex with it. Fascination with brain injuries had almost led Ruby to apply to medical school in her late twenties. But not quite. She was not good at taking tests or memorizing things. So she’d continued on her path as a drifter. And now was shoveling horse shit in exchange for free board for a recovering racehorse she’d never ridden. Ruby was deathly afraid of actually riding her horse. She just kept him as a pet. And worked many hours a week for the privilege of doing so.

The pet in question was out back in the paddock now, and he whinnied, as if sensing he’d been thought of. Ruby put the pitchfork down, walked out of the barn, and went to look at her horse. Jack was standing in the center of the paddock, head high, ears pointed forward. He was looking at something, though Ruby had no idea what. After a few seconds, he lost interest in whatever it was and trotted over to where Ruby was standing. He skidded to a halt cartoon-style, stared at Ruby as if he’d never seen her before in his life, then relaxed, stuck his muzzle out toward her, and carefully nuzzled at her left ear.

Ruby was completely absorbed in wondering if Jack was going to bite her ear, and she didn’t hear Triple Harrison coming up behind her.

“Morning, sunshine,” he said, startling Ruby.

She flipped around.

“Oh. Triple, hi.”

“Skittish today are we?”

“I didn’t hear you come up behind me. You shouldn’t do that.”

“Sorry, doll,” he shrugged and tried to look handsome.

Triple Harrison was a likable drifter who lived in a mold-eaten house across from Coleman’s barn. Like Ruby, he owned a former racehorse. A bay mare named Kiss the Culprit who’d actually won a few in her day but was now fat, lazy, and unspeakably happy to be Triple’s pet.

“How are you?” Ruby asked, knowing it was a loaded question. Triple never gave the expected answer of
Fine
. He liked to report, in detail, exactly how he was. Usually, this involved some sort of drama at his job. He worked as a lifeguard at a swank health club all the way over in Park Slope. For some reason, he couldn’t simply mind his business and make sure no one drowned. He was endlessly tying to befriend the swimmers and, now and then, dating a female swimmer. It invariably ended badly, and Ruby had to hear all about it. Lately, it had occurred to her that Triple told her all these grisly details to invoke pity so that maybe she’d sleep with him. She wouldn’t and had told him as much a few times over, but he never listened.

“I’m fine,” Triple said, uncharacteristically.

Obviously, something was wrong. “What’s the matter?” Ruby asked.

“I’m low.”

“Why?” Ruby asked.

“I’m just low.” He said in a small voice, “Can I have a hug?”

Ruby rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I guess.”

Triple was a hugger. You wouldn’t expect it to look at him. He was tall with gangly limbs he’d never grown into even though he was at least thirty-five. His arms were covered in faded jailhouse tattoos, and his hair was shaggy. Ruby was sure his toenails were jagged and that he liked women who threw plates at him as a prelude to sex.

Ruby let him hug her for a few seconds then took a step back.

“Where’s that boyfriend of yours?” Triple was looking Ruby over head to toe.

She shrugged. “He got a really good two-year-old to train. It’s consuming him.”

“I’m all for being consumed by a horse, but it don’t mean I wouldn’t be keeping an eye on my girl,” he said, his grin growing to shit-eating proportions.

“Shut up, Triple,” Ruby said. For three seconds, she toyed with the idea of telling Triple about the leg. After four seconds, she realized this was an incredibly bad idea.

“Always a pleasure chatting with you, but I’ve got work to finish in the barn,” Ruby said.

“Want some help?” Triple asked.

“I’m almost done, it’s okay. But thanks.” Ruby said. She opened the gate to the paddock and snapped a lead rope onto Jack’s halter. She wanted to get her horse back in the barn before Triple started in on his favorite refrain.

“When you gonna ride that hoss?”

Too late.

“Soon,” Ruby said. She was tired of people asking when she was going to ride the damn horse, for the simple fact was that she had no idea when she was going to ride the damned horse. She was terrified at the prospect. She had first been around horses in her early twenties when she’d worked as a groom for two years outside Tampa, Florida. She’d learned how to ride but would never be a very confident rider. The idea of getting on a Thoroughbred who didn’t know how to do anything other than gallop around a racetrack wasn’t exactly compelling. She was putting it off.

“How soon?” Triple persisted.

Ruby looked right at him. There were tiny snakes of red in the whites of his eyes. He had a pimple on his forehead. “Soon,” she repeated.

“Okay, okay.” Triple put his palms out in a defensive gesture. “No need to get angry.”

“I’m not,” Ruby lied. She was. At herself. Hated her own chicken-shittedness. Usually, she didn’t see herself as a chicken, but then things like this came up. Things that were evidence of cowardice. It was awful.

As Ruby led Jack toward the barn, Triple wished Ruby a nice day. She grunted without turning around.

Once she’d finished her chores, Ruby spent a pleasant half hour grooming her horse. He was an agreeable, friendly horse. His niceness, his very horsiness, soothed Ruby. Almost enough to take away the image of the severed leg. Almost.

It was dark by the time Ruby wheeled her bike out of the stable yard and locked the gate. She stood staring at the little
barn as she tried to remember if she’d forgotten anything. She hadn’t fed the barn cat, but he hadn’t been around and probably had gorged on mouse corpses and passed out on a bale of hay somewhere.

Ruby got onto her bike and started pedaling. Her leg muscles had stiffened during the time she’d been at the barn, and the first few revolutions of the wheels were painful. She was riding up the incline to Linden Boulevard, cursing her legs for aching, when she felt a car behind her. At the top of the incline, she put one foot to the ground and turned around to see whose car it was. She was expecting Triple. Maybe playing at following her home. Mock stalking the way he liked to. But it was just some random blue car with a random dark-haired man at the wheel. There was something vaguely familiar about the man’s broad face, but he didn’t show any signs of recognizing her so Ruby got back on the bike and pedaled away.

Night was coming on like heartache.

R
uby rode home to Coney Island the back way avoiding the madness of Surf Avenue. Its chaos was one of the things Ruby loved most about Coney but not tonight, not at the end of a day that had featured a severed leg in a fish tank. No. Tonight Ruby needed quiet backstreets.

She rode up onto the sidewalk in front of her building and got off the bike. Her lungs were sore and her ass hurt slightly. She liked that. She liked the various pains and indignities she inflicted on her body. Helped keep her mind quiet.

As she fished her house keys from her backpack, Ruby looked up at the recently renovated Stillwell Avenue subway station. She did this almost every day but never got used to it. Not that it was bad-looking. Just slightly futuristic, almost German, and at odds with the decaying community it served. Coney had been declining for a long long time, and for just as long there had been rumors of casinos and Disney and Donald Trump. Now though, it seemed that something major was truly on the verge of happening. Something that very possibly would destroy Ruby’s home. Either literally, if the building she rented in was sold, or figuratively, if Astroland were razed and Mickey Mouse put in its place.

Ruby hoisted her bike onto her shoulder and climbed the
uneven stairs to the second floor. She glanced toward her lone neighbors’ door. Pietro Ramirez and his wife, Elsie, usually left it open, especially in summer when the top floor of the old two-story building was a sauna. Not tonight though. Ruby wasn’t sure if she was relieved over the avoided social contact or not. She liked her neighbors, was sometimes even grateful for Elsie’s borderline busybody-ness that forced Ruby to confess whatever was on her mind. Tonight it would have been awkward. Intuitive Elsie would have prodded and been hurt when Ruby failed to come clean with the details.

Ruby unlocked her apartment door, put her bike against the wall, and nearly tripped when Stinky, her enormous black and white cat, launched himself at her calves.