Killing Time in Crystal City (8 page)

WHAT'S YOUR FREAKERY

I
wake up to poking.

“Hey,” says the smart, small voice with the bubble in the throat. “What are you doing here?” She's poking me with the toe of her shoe as I roll over in her direction and see that it's light out. I have definitely been sleeping. My left side is clammy cold, from the sand, which has melded with the drool stream leaking from the left corner of my mouth to form a kind of sand-castle paste that sticks as I get my face upright.

It takes me many seconds of being upright and listening to my special slurping surf to get it all together and answer Molly's question sufficiently.

“I was waiting for you,” I say.

“Oh, get out,” she says, grinning. “You were never.”

It comes clearer to me every second. “Yes, I was.”

“You were waiting for Stacey, maybe.”

“I was waiting for both of you,” I say, and start to scan the beach for clues.

The night has passed, and the day has come. The only conscious residents of Crystal Beach right now are myself and Molly, though there are plenty of bodies splayed around, which may or may not still possess heartbeats and souls. If they ever possessed souls. There is a nice soft-glow peach of a sunrise peaking its fuzzy head above the horizon and making Crystal's backwash backwater look as magical as any real-world beach.

My summer holiday paradise.

I remember waiting. When Mickey and the boys decided to head out for adventures elsewhere and I declined the invitation because I was sure the girls would be here momentarily. I remember the sun getting stronger through the afternoon and into the evening, and the greenflies skewering and lancing me until I hollered, and then Mickey returning with quarts of malt liquor and even bigger spliffs and apples and tortilla chips, and they really were my friends, these guys.

“That's sweet of you,” Molly says, and she appears to get far more overcome about it than necessary. She has to wipe both of her big eyes with both of her little hands. It makes me uneasy enough that I reach out and take both of those small hands in my medium-size ones. Her cast is about ten times as dirty as mine, and it smells a little.

“So, where is Stacey?” I ask.

“Back at the hostel, I guess,” she says.

“Shouldn't you be there with her?”

She inhales deeply, snuffles.

“I was late. Curfew. Locked out. I had someplace to be. And then I didn't. It happens sometimes.”

“Couldn't you call Stacey to let you in?”

“Oh, I couldn't wake her. And I wouldn't want to get her in trouble. It was my fault, so it's my problem. I know the rules—be out of the building between eight a.m. and eight p.m. except on days when they're working you. And ten thirty lockout.”

“Molly? That means you can't get back in until eight o'clock tonight?”

“Well, church is at eight this morning. So, I thought I'd sit in there for a while. It's a nice church. Seats are kinda hard, though.”

Molly looks away, looks even smaller and weaker than her usual self. She starts working herself down into the dirty sand like she's settling in, like a crab hiding in the shallows. It's chilly now, I can feel it in my joints.

“What are you here for now?” I ask.

“Sleep,” she says, and works her way farther down into the ground.

I look all around the beach, at the characters sleeping or just lying in wait, at the orangey sun rising and shining them into view.

“Don't you worry that something could happen to you?”

“You didn't worry when you slept here.”

“I didn't sleep, I passed out.”

“And look at you. You're fine.”

“I'm lucky. You can't always be lucky.”

She continues crabbing herself down into the dirty sand. Then she shrugs. “I'm not new at this, Kiki. I know how to take care of myself.”

I'm sure she does not.

“I'm sure you do, Molly. But you can't control everything. Or everybody.”

“Well, I sort of can. Times before, somebody started hassling me, we just always worked something out. It's just how it goes. It's fine.”

I realize that only one of us is at all disturbed by this, but the one is disturbed about it enough for everybody. Molly has her eyes closed already and she looks like a kid falling asleep in a chair in front of a TV, home, warm, and safe.

How does this happen? How is this in any way
fine
?

And what kind of guy
allows
it to happen?

“My father is a poet,” I say to her quiet face, just as her helmet-head of sponge hair tips back and collects a pound of sand.

Molly perks up, half-emerging from her little nest and looking more interested than poetry should ever warrant.

“Really?” she asks. “Really, he is? That's special. That is a very unusual thing, a father who is a poet. That's something, and I bet you are like, wow, proud about it. He must be gentle, like a poet. That's where you get it, obviously, all that gentle.”

Nobody is gentle.

“You want to see his book?” I ask.

She nods wildly, vigorously, and honestly. I stand up and offer her my good left hand.

•   •   •

I take Molly along the canal route, which she says she normally tries to avoid.

“You better be careful,” she says. “This path can be very dangerous.”

“I know how to handle myself,” I say, not even sure whether I'm joking or not.

Molly is sure, and laughs out loud.

“You don't know how to handle yourself. It's part of your charm.”

“No, it isn't.” I start to pull my hand away from hers, but she grabs tight and she is shockingly strong. The cartilage in my hand crunches.

“Well, it is. You're just so nice. Is that your freakery, the niceness?”

“I'm not that nice. And,
what
?”

“Come on, everybody has their freakery. Their
thing
,” she says, accompanying the word with a shoulder-hunching, lip-snarling, tongue-dangling visual that really requires nothing more for explanation. “Hyper-niceness, some people get off on it, some people get lucky with it. Then you can nicey-nicey girls along the garden path—or the towpath—to the place where the chainsaw is waiting, is that it?”

This is sickening me every which way and this time I do wrench my hand from her grip. She giggles.

“Is that what you think?” I ask.

“I don't know. I don't even know you, do I?”

“And yet,” I say, my voice rising in frustration, “here you are, with me. On the towpath.”

Molly smiles and shakes her head in wonder, like we are discussing some newly discovered life form rather than her own actual self.

“I'm not renowned as a fine judge of character,” she says, slamming us both at the same time.

“No, but you are renowned as a Godfucker,” I say, bitter nasty and instantly ashamed of it.

Her smile drops right off her face, down to her little shoes and into the canal.

Through it all, though, we keep walking.

“I guess I am,” she says. “But hey, I'm
renowned
, right?”

“I'm sorry, Molly,” I say, taking her left hand again. Remarkably, she lets me. Where does somebody acquire such tolerance, forgiveness? “See, I'm not so nice after all.”

“Pffft,” she says, swinging my hand as we approach the trees by the courts and the baseball field. “That's you being not nice? I just thought you were coming on to me.”

She is resilient, I must give her that.

Let's hope I can learn a thing or two from her. Because if Sydney finds out, I'll be ass-whipped
and
homeless.

But he won't. There's no way he will be home for another day or two at least. And this is just a short visit, a humanitarian thing. The right thing. A fine thing.

And I will clean every last spot.

“That's me,” I say, pointing up at my window as we cross the field and scoot through the hedge.

“Sweet,” Molly says, looking up and then all around. “You have a yard and everything. A basement bulkhead. I thought basement bulkheads were outlawed after the one in
The Wizard of Oz
flew up and conked Dorothy in the head.”

Feeling a bit clever, I say, “Oh no, now, would a nice guy like me have an uncle with an illegal basement bulkhead?”

We are standing, admiring my window. It's a one-level ranch house, but the backyard slopes away so it feels like we are looking up at something bigger.

“Did you just say something kinky?” she asks, and does appear to wonder.

Only about my uncle's criminality.

“Ah, no,” I say, and look down. The grass needs cutting. “And I don't believe I've ever met anybody who thinks quite like you do.”

“No,” she says flatly, “you haven't. Now, am I gonna get to see your window from the other side, or is this it?”

I lead her around to the front of the house. I whip out my key and wave it in front of her, as if a mere house key is something mystical and precious to anybody else.

“Um, okay, I get it, Kiki,” she says, then goes all brighty. “Oh, right. Kiki. Key-Key, very cute, very amusing, very sad.”

I hadn't thought of that at all, but I don't have an explanation that'll make me look any better for getting all excited over having my own key, so I leave it alone and open the door.

“This place is amazing,” she says, rushing through the door and doing a dancer's twirl in the hallway. She flits through the living room and kitchen, doing another spin at each stop. “I have never
seen
a place so sparkling clean. And it looks like a diner. This place is killer.”

“Ah, well, thanks,” I say, happy to take any credit available.

She scuttles along, checking all the rooms, and goes for Syd's bedroom before I can stop her.

“This one's locked,” she says.

“Yes,” I confirm.

“Is it
your
room, you ol' kinkster? Does that magic key of yours open this one?”

“No. And no. That's my uncle's room.”

“Right, then, all the dungeon stuff is in there, and your doghouse and choker collar and stuff, right?”

I don't know how to stop her, but I can at least not encourage this.

“No, Molly. Those things are not in there.”

“They're in the basement, then? Behind the
bulkhead of screams
?”

I sigh. “There is no bulkhead of screams.”

She giggles crazily at the sound of me saying the things she made up. I suppose it does sound funny when I say it.

She walks to the bathroom, flips on the light, and reacts as if Jesus himself is squatting on the throne in there.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” she says, so maybe it's the whole family.

I scoot over to where she stands. “What is it?”

“It's so . . . white. It's like, glowing.”

“Well,” I say, looking around, nodding, “it is porcelain and tile.”

“Well, I myself have never seen such clean. It even . . .” She takes a good long inhale. “It even smells better than regular air, never mind toilet air. I think this is a dummy, and the real bathroom is somewhere else because I seriously doubt any assness has ever been done in here.”

I laugh. “It's a clean place. The proprietor takes it seriously.”

“Well, my compliments to the proprietor. Or I'll tell him myself when I see him.”

“I'll tell him,” I snap, edgy enough to draw an arched eyebrow from Molly.

Suddenly, she grabs my arm and starts pulling, pleading. “Oh, Kiki, can I take a shower? Please, please? I would die to have a shower here. The ones at the hostel are old and grotty and the mold doesn't come away no matter how hard we scrub. I feel just as germy coming out as I did going in. And there are no locks on the doors so anybody can come in whenever they want to and I just can't relax because I have the spooks about that and feel the whole time like I'm the star of one of those shower slasher horror movies and I am about to get it in the neck any second. I mean it, I wash myself so fast and furious that sometimes the soap shoots right out of my hand and up and over the curtain rod and I hear it bounce on the floor on the other side. And then, of course, that's it, because no way am I going out after that soap when you-know-who with the big slasher knife is waiting for me to do just that because that was his plan.”

I just stand there, watching her blink and hyperventilate as if she is in fact exactly that slasher shower horror actress.

“Have a shower, Molly.”

I go over and slide the glass door open, work the taps and get it going just right, when I turn back to find her standing naked and staring excitedly, right past me to the glory that is Uncle Sydney's antiseptic temple of clean.

“
Molly
,”
I gasp, like somebody's great-aunt.

“Oh, please,” she says, brushing, nakedly, past me and stepping in, “you're family.”

She smacks the shower door closed and immediately and audibly begins appreciating the moment of bliss.

“Don't get your cast wet?” I say in a voice suddenly unrecognizably high as I step over the small mound of Molly things on the floor.

“Don't get yours wet either,” she says, giggling. Giggling.

I rush out and slam that bathroom door, as confused and conflicted as I have been since I was thirteen. Only then I was slamming from the other side of the bathroom door. And actually I wasn't anywhere near this conflicted.

•   •   •

I am in the kitchen, chopping up apples, nectarines, and kiwi into a bowl, about to pour yogurt over it all, when Molly strolls in. It's been about forty-five minutes. She has a big thick white bathrobe on and the shower has done something remarkable to her skin that makes it look like she's generating her own soft amber light from inside her chest somewhere.