Love in the Present Tense (2 page)

Then the cop car stopped for me.

So much of how it was started when that cop got out and came up to me. But I didn't know all this when it first happened. I guess you never do. I didn't know there would ever be a Leonard, or that this man would be his father, or that anybody would have to die. I didn't know where all this would take me at the time.

This cop, he got down on one knee by the bus bench. “You been sitting here an awful long time,” he said. “You been letting some buses go by. You got a way to get back home?”

I looked at his badge, and his little name thing. It said Officer Leonard DiMitri. I looked past him to his partner waiting in the car. His partner had a mustache and his lip was funny underneath. Like one of those lips start out in two pieces, and later the guy grows a mustache to cover it but you can still see where the split was. He had this look like he didn't like what was starting up here. Maybe it was just the lip but I don't think so. Then I looked back at Officer Leonard, right up into his face, and I smiled back at him, and I saw he had the taste. And I thought, good. Now I can get back to Rosalita's place, and finally this day can be over.

I got in that car with them and he asked me my name, and I told him. First and last both. Right in front of that lip man. I don't know why. I had got happy and forgot to be careful. It was stupid, I knew right away. How stupid, well. I had to wait to know that.

First thing he said—this Officer Leonard, when he saw Rosalita's place—he said, “My oh my. Your mother certainly keeps this place awfully clean.”

I did not tell him Rosalita was not my mother. I did not tell him that I was the one who kept that place so clean. Clean, that is a big thing with me. When I live someplace you can eat off the floor in that place. Off the seat of your chair. Right out the stainless steel sink. There will not be one germ. Not if I have my way. Every place I go, I make that place clean. Turns out that is a good thing, because when you make places clean wherever you go, seems you always have someplace you are welcome. I was trying to decide what to tell Officer Leonard and what to not tell.

He had dropped his partner with the lip back at the station, end of shift, and then turned in his patrol car, and then he had drove me back to Rosalita's in his own car, which was this Corvette with the T-roof and all. Man did I like riding in that car. It was like a whole birthday all by itself. Just before we drove off, his partner, the guy with that weird lip, he gave Officer Leonard a funny look and said something I could not hear. But my friend Leonard, my birthday man, he waved it off like he knew just what he was doing.

“Come upstairs,” I said when he got me back to what I sort of called home.

He didn't ask any questions or anything. In fact we was both real quiet until we got upstairs and he said that thing about the clean.

I took his hand and pulled him at Rosalita's bedroom. He said one more thing. He said, “Are you sure? Are you sure this is what you want?” This is something a man will say when he's feeling a lot of things at once. When he's not the kind of man who would do this if he thought you might not be sure. But I was surprised because we both knew right on that bus bench and it seemed kind of funny to stop to talk about it now. But I was glad that he did. All the same.

He was a big tall man and I think he was Italian. Anyway, he was handsome, with wavy dark hair. He did not have a gold wedding ring but sometimes a guy will be married without one. I wondered if he was married. If he had a kid my age. Even so, I was thinking he might love me. Then things would all change, right from that day on. Even if he was married. Rosalita had a man once who loved her. He was married but he paid her rent and came over three times a week and brought flowers and wine. I thought maybe this was my birthday present. Someone who would love me and pay the rent. I never answered that question he asked. We didn't say nothing more for a long time.

Way later he said another thing to me and it made me laugh. He said, “I never did something like this before.” He said it in this mushy voice from deep inside his chest. He had a hairy chest. Talking so deep inside it, that made me think even more that maybe he would love me.

“What?” I said. “You never did sex before? I can't believe that.” I said, “Now don't start lying to me, just when everything was going so good.”

“No, not that,” he said. “That's not what I meant. Sex, yeah. Just not with somebody, you know. Your age.”

Maybe he was lying about that. I've wondered lots of times. I think about that a lot, was that a lie or was it the truth? Did he really want a younger girl all those years and not do that? Or was that just something you say? A lot of what I have heard in my life was lies. So I really wondered about that. Looking back, it seems a shame that I killed him when I did, and now there's no way I ever get to find out.

After that he got kind of funny and young, like he wanted to play. He even tickled me some, like I was a kid, only we were naked in Rosalita's bed. No place for a kid there. Then he got real serious and brushed the hair off my face and looked me right in my eyes. “I'm so glad I met you.” That's what he said. Right into my eyes, he said that. And I thought, this is how love feels. I know that now. Happy birthday to me.

Then he looked over my shoulder and there was a clock back there. “Shit,” he said. “I gotta go. I gotta get home. Shit.”

That feeling, that thing I thought was love, I just watched it blow away. I thought, you spend so much time looking for it but then it blows away so fast. I wished I had known.

I got up and walked into the kitchen. Rosalita's very clean kitchen. I was feeling bad because I knew I was wrong about the love. He was getting dressed to go away and he wasn't never going to come back with any flowers or wine. He was just looking for something to do for that night only. If that's love, you can keep it.

I was starting to get mad.

His uniform jacket was hanging over the kitchen chair. Under it was the big belt with his gun. I was holding his pants on account of I'd picked them up off the bedroom floor. I was folding them neat to hang up. All I was going to do was hang them up with his jacket. My thought was never to steal nor to kill nobody. It was not supposed to come down like that. Maybe I just took the pants because I hate things to be lying around the floor. Or maybe I wanted him not to be so fast to go. But then there was his wallet. I could feel the lump in his pocket.

Usually I would never take something. I'm not a killer nor a thief. But I was mad at him and I thought I should take enough to buy a birthday present, since he was not it, like I thought.

He came out in the kitchen with no pants on and looked at me funny. “You need money?” he said. “Just ask. I'll give you a few bucks.”

I guess he meant it nice. Looking back I think maybe he meant it nice. But at the time I thought he was catching me as a thief and calling me a whore in the bargain. I am not a whore. What I do I do either for love or what I think might be love. If I am wrong, I am wrong, but I am no whore.

He was walking at me so I took up his gun.

I guess I thought, he has caught me stealing. I'm in trouble now. I pointed the gun at him. It was heavy and big. This all happened really fast. He still had this sweet look on his face, only now he looked sweet but also worried. Scared. Like I might really shoot him. But I never thought I would. But I flipped the lever that lets the gun really shoot, to make him think I would. I was just saying keep away.

But then he reached out fast like lightning and grabbed my hand. The one that had the gun. And it hurt, because it made the metal of the gun press too hard on the bones in my hand. So I pulled really hard, to get my hand and the gun back again. Just to make sure if he got it he wouldn't be mad and use it on me. I was afraid to let him take it. And then there was a big sound. It scared the life out of me, but at first I didn't even know it was the gun going off. I don't know why it went off. I guess when I pulled my hand back I squeezed too hard, but I don't know. It happened fast. Like I said.

Then I was all surprised, because I shot him. I didn't know that was about to happen. Also I was surprised when that little spot came up between his eyes. I thought the gun was aimed straight, at his belly. I guess when I pulled my hand back I pointed it up. Or maybe he was trying to point my hand up so I wouldn't shoot him. Which I never thought I would do. But I don't really know what happened. Just that it all happened fast.

I thought all these different things at once. I thought, that did not make a mess at all. I thought it would make a mess. Then he crumpled down with that same look on his face and I saw the curtains behind, and what was on them. I thought, oh, shit. This place will never get clean, never again. I thought, this is bad, what happened. I thought, Rosalita won't let me live here anymore. I looked down at his face and he still had that sweet look on his face. I thought, what if he really did love me?

I took his credit cards and his money and his gun.

And I went to look for Mama in that last, awful place.

I found her there, too. It was this house, this boarded-up house. But I knew how to get in the back. The people there are terrible but they will not do you no harm. They are too loaded to care. Mama was in the kitchen, leaned up on this stove that something had dripped all down. Like spaghetti sauce that nobody bothered to clean. How can people live like that?

“Hi, Baby,” she said, but the words kind of ran together and her chin nodded around.

There was no place clean I could go. Rosalita's would never be clean and this place neither. But I wanted to stay with Mama now that I had found her. I was feeling strange.

I went down to the corner store and bought a roll of paper towels and that kind of cleaner you spray from a plastic bottle. With the money out of Officer Leonard's wallet. Some of it anyway. I took it back to that awful house and made a clean spot on the kitchen floor near her.

Then I felt better, on account of I was cleaning. I did not want to think too much but I thought real simple things. I thought in the morning I would go see Little Julius and sell him the credit cards and the gun. By thinking things like that I did not think too much else.

Mama passed out before it was clean. So I took her by her coat and I pulled her over into my clean place and I lay beside her. Lay down in the clean and tried to get some sleep. I can't sleep if it isn't clean. I tried not to think about what was right outside that little circle of clean.

I had a baby in me. Just as of that night. Just that night it had happened, and I knew it.

Now, in the time that passed between then and now I have told that to a few people. They said I am crazy and I am wrong. They said you can't know that so soon. They said if a woman could know that so soon they wouldn't sell the little tests you pee on. She would just know. I don't care what they say. I knew there was a baby in me, and I knew a baby is somebody who would always love me. Forever love, that's what you get from a baby. He does not look at the clock and say oh shit. I better go home.