Girl in Pieces (32 page)

It's while I'm mopping the sloping hardwood floor, listening to the other girls laughing and drinking and smoking, that I suddenly get really lonely. They're a gaggle of girls, together and happy, normal girls doing normal things. They're all going to go out after, find friends and boys, maybe go to the bars. And I'm mopping shit up and smelling like old food.

The bell tinkles on the front door and happy girl-squawks erupt from the counter:
Hi, Riley, hey, Riley, taking us out for drinks, Riley?
My heart sinks and soars at the same time when he answers,
So sorry, ladies, I've
just come to collect my girl,
and then there's an awkward, small silence before Temple says,
Oh, right,
because she, and they, all of them, I know, were really thinking,
But we thought you just
fucked
her.

He said
My girl.

My heart leaps, but I don't want him, or them, to see it. I can feel everyone watching me from behind the counter, so I ignore them, pushing through the double doors to the kitchen area. I dump the grimy, slick water in the sink, run my apron through the washer. There are two tiny white cups of untouched Maker's Mark on the counter by the washer. They're called demitasses and they're for single espressos. Linus has been teaching me the names of cups for coffee drinks. I love them because they're perfect and compact and unblemished.

When I finally turn around, the girls are there, giving me little half-smirks, Riley standing among them, already several drinks down. He wobbles slightly on his feet.

We aren't going to listen to records. He might have said
My girl,
but will he remember that in the morning? I look down at the demitasses. What does it matter if I drink now, too? Would he even notice?

A tiny, tiny part of me whispers: Is there even room for me in what we are?
A cookie, a book, a record on a shelf.

“I'm almost ready,” I say, and turn back to the sink. A wave of resignation washes over me. I down the Maker's Mark and rinse the cups. My throat and stomach burn, but the warmth that spreads through my veins obliterates that. I wipe my mouth and turn around to face them.

“Are you ready?” I ask Riley. “I'm ready to go.”

Outside, I have to push through a gauntlet of bodies to get to my yellow bike. I'm fumbling with the lock when someone shouts, “Hey, Riley, man, is that your girlfrien'?” Slurry laughter creeps from the Modern Wolf crowd. In that moment, looking at the sea of drunken, black-shirted boys with greasy, dark hair and boots with dangerous soles, I know that Mikey has heard, or will hear soon, about what I've been doing. And I don't think I care anymore. I feel heavy and numb.

A rumble of
ooohhh
s seeps from the crowd and Riley takes the bicycle from me, puts my backpack over his shoulders, settles on the seat. “Don't be mad,” he says quietly in my ear. “I came to take you home. I swear I would never hurt you, Charlie, never. You have to let me show you that.”

He angles me on his lap so that I'm facing forward, my hands gripping his thighs, my feet up on the bike's bar.

He tells me to hold on or we'll both die, and we ride to his house.

I think that
slopes
are meant to be
slippery.
I don't know
why
. I don't even know
who
invented the
stupid
notion of them. I don't even know why it
matters.
Who
cares?
Who
cares
about a scarred girl who can't seem to be by herself ? Who
cares
about a scarred girl who mops floors and ferries drugs for her boyfriend? The
scarred girl
should care. But she doesn't know
how
and once you let the
Maker's Mark
in, once you let
anything
like that in, like
kissing,
or
sex, alcohol, drugs,
anything
that fills up
time
and makes you feel
better,
even if it's just for a little while, well, you're going to be a
goner
. And sometimes, once, maybe
twice,
she starts to say that she's thinking of taking a class with this lady artist, and she
stops,
because a little mouse taps her brain and heart and whispers,
But then you won't get to spend so much time with Riley,
and the words, they turn to stone again, fat in her throat, and she can feel little bits of herself disappearing in the large thing of
Riley and me
and and and…

The
slippery slope,
it will never, ever end.

It's so sly, the way it happens. Like a thread through a needle: silent and easy, and then just that little knot at the end to stop things up.

Temple is scrolling through her phone, sitting on the stool behind the counter, as I stack coffee mugs and plastic water cups on trays. The band never showed up tonight, and she let Frances and Randy go early, because the place was dead. Linus is in the back, reading a book.

Temple says, “Didn't you date Mike Gustafson? Or something? I know I saw you guys at Gentle Ben's a couple times.”

“No,” I tell her. “He's just my friend. Why?”

She shakes her head and makes a disappointed, clucking sound. “All the good ones get snapped up, don't they?” She angles her phone. “Check it out. That hot little weasel went and got married in Seattle!”

It feels like moving through mud, making my way to her, bending to look at the image on the phone. Facebook, someone's page I don't know, maybe a band member, and there it is, there
he
is, there
she
is, and they're both smiling insanely, their faces shining. He's wearing a button-down shirt and a red tie with jeans and sneakers. Bunny is wearing a plain and pretty strapless flowered dress, with a crown of tiny, delicate roses in her hair. The roses match Mikey's tie.

All the blood in my body turns cold in an instant. I don't know what sound I'm making until Temple starts shouting to Linus, “I think Charlie's gonna hurl, Linus! Come help!”

I'm heaving, but nothing is coming out. I hold my head over the trash can, make an excuse: “I think I ate something bad for lunch. I have to go, can I go,” and Linus says she'll give me a ride, it's almost closing anyway, but I stumble up and away from her, grab my backpack, leave the coffeehouse in a blur. I forget my bike.

I walk so hard my shins start to burn and then I start to limp. I break into a run at the underpass and don't stop until I'm at his door, pounding.

I'm ashamed that I still feel like I have to ask to go into his house.

He opens the door, pulls me in.
I'm sick,
I tell him, tears coursing down my cheeks.
I'm just sick, so sick.
And then, as though someone pulled a plug in me, everything drains out of me at once, and I fall on the floor.

I can hear Riley swearing and little
Oh, Jesuses, and Oh, honeys,
as he unties my boots, strips off my socks. He picks me up carefully, sliding his hands under me. I'm dizzy. He's a blur.

Riley takes me to his bed. After a time, his sheets grow damp with my sweat and he peels off my overalls, touches the back of his hand to my forehead. He sets water by the bed, a small bin with a plastic bag inside. I throw up three times and he empties the bag each time. He asks me,
Did you take something?
I tell him no and roll toward the wall.
I lost something, I lost some things,
I tell him.
I keep losing things. I'm tired.

Riley says,
I'm sorry to hear that, baby.
But he doesn't ask any more questions. He tells me he'll cover my shifts at True Grit. He draws on his cigarette and his eyes are the slick dark of stones underwater. For three days, he works in the morning and he covers my dish shifts at night. He heats bowls of broth. He sets a cool cloth on my forehead. As he sleeps behind me, his breath is a billowy sail against my neck. On the fourth day, I stagger from the bed when there's a knock at the front door. It's Wendy from the drug house, her red-and-yellow hair mashed under the hoodie of her jacket, scratching at her cheek. She says,
I need Riley, where's he at? He around?
Her skin is like the surface of the moon. When I don't answer, she smiles.
Haven't seen him in a while, is all. We get worried.

You don't look so good, kid,
she says.
Tell him Wendy came by
.

All day Wendy appears in my dreams, long-legged and smudge-faced, smoky-voiced and grinning. When Riley comes home late, late, he's not so far gone that I can't press against him in the dark, work at him with my fingers, make him noisy, make him do things to me that he doesn't know hurt me, all to erase Mikey and Bunny, Wendy at the door, erase the gray turning back to black inside my body. We are such a terrible mess now.

I get up and out of Riley's bed four days after seeing Mikey on Facebook. I walk like a zombie to my own apartment, change my clothes, and walk to the library.

No message from Casper, nothing from Blue.

There are eleven emails from Mikey. I delete all of them, unread.

Door, shut. World, over.