Romeo is Homeless (5 page)

The familiar purr of hunger woke August. She checked her watch, just past seven-thirty. The light bulb in the entry had burned out in the night, but the bathroom light survived.

The sliver of morning sun that shone through the little window was kind to the dingy space. What was dreary and frightening the night before had turned into just a dirty little room. Even the terror of the alley gunfight faded.

Butterflies danced in August’s stomach, and she bounced out of bed with glee, anxious to start her new and exciting life in the city, absolved of chore duty and free of her mother’s tether.

The pressure in her bladder was unbearable and had to be relieved or she wouldn’t make it down to the lobby without peeing her pants. She stacked three layers of tissue all around the seat for protection from whatever might be growing there and squatted, doing her best not to touch her bare ass to the tissued plastic. Surviving that, she eyed the bathtub with suspicion. Nope, not prepared to get naked and step in. She sniffed her armpits and nodded. Good enough. She brushed her teeth, wiped mascara flecks from under her eyes, and then combed the tangles from her hair before cramming her cap down over it. The chair creaked in relief when she lifted her backpack, then she headed to the lobby.

The same man was behind the counter, looking as if he’d slept at the desk. His comb-over from last night was now a mop of thinning curls sitting on each side of his head. He looked like August’s mother had taken two balls of spun fiberglass she used for Christmas crafts, spray painted them dirty and glued them over his ears.

August slid the room key under the bars and cleared her throat. “I’m leaving, sir.”

He looked up, grunted, and waved his hand, shooing her away. “You want a receipt?”

“Do I need one?”

“Well now, how the hell would I know?”

“No, I guess not.” She looked down at her sneakers. “’Bye then.”

“Yeah. Whatever.”

She stepped into the herd of morning pedestrians, joining the flow of bodies headed away from the hotel and the bus station and anywhere else she’d already been.

How does one go about starting a new life in the city? Her stomach answered her with an angry growl – start with breakfast.

A few blocks later, the wave of humanity led her to Starbucks. Back home, Starbucks was like Sasquatch. Folks had heard of it, thanks mostly to Sara who got to go places and do things and then brag about them to her poor friends, but almost no one except the Tugmans had ever actually seen one.

Inside were more business suits than she’d seen in her lifetime. They were ten deep in line waiting for their daily fix of too much caffeine. Her mother ‘just wasn’t herself’ until she’d had her morning coffee. Always seemed the same to August, coffee or not.

She stood behind an older lady dripping in pearls. The woman’s strong, soapy perfume made August’s eyes water. She stifled a sneeze while eyeing every muffin, biscuit, and piece of cake in the baking display. Her stomach renewed its hungry protest, the growl so loud the old lady turned and looked down a bulbous nose at her.

When it was August’s turn to order she asked for the only fancy drink she’d ever heard of, cappuccino.

“Sure, what size?”

“Uh, small I guess.”

The clerk grinned at her. “You mean tall?”

“Oh.” She bit her bottom lip. “Tall,” she said with conviction, then leaned forward and whispered, “Is that small?”

“Yes, honey, it’s small. Is this your first time?”

She blushed. “Yeah. There’s no place like this in my hometown.” She hated herself the second “hometown” came out of her mouth. She must reek of country bumpkin.

“Then I’d suggest a vanilla latte. You up for that?”

“Okay, I like vanilla.” Her mouth watered. “And a blueberry muffin?”

“You got it, honey. That’s six seventy-four.”

August took her breakfast outside and sat at a table on a makeshift patio, part of the sidewalk cordoned off with a portable iron-barred fence. A steady stream of people passed by, like a long line of ants off to spend another day working themselves to their death.

She peeled the plastic lid from the paper cup and took a first tentative sip. The milk and barely-there vanilla flavor did little to mask the bitter coffee taste. She bit off a chunk of muffin, the sweet cake cleansing her tongue. She grabbed several sugar packs from a counter by the door and stirred them all into the cup before trying another sip. Better, but still nasty. Why did people pay for this stuff? She gobbled the rest of the muffin and dropped the almost full coffee cup into the trash bin, then joined the crowd filing past the patio.

Rounding a corner, she found herself at one end of a charming stretch of shops, all red brick and sandstone. She sauntered along and looked in the windows, eyed the clothes on display in one store. The loud patterned tops and low-slung pants were in sharp contrast to her farm-friendly plaid snap-front blouse and faded boot-cut, hand-me-down jeans. Too bad she didn’t have more money, she could de-hick herself.

She ambled to the next shop window and found herself face to face with Buzz Lightyear. She must have watched
Toy Story
a hundred times. The video store window was busy with so many movie posters, some in frames with little marquis-like lights flashing for attention. And on the door, a help wanted sign. Her stomach fluttered. She pulled out her remaining cash and did a quick count – less than fifteen bucks, not even enough for one night in that crappy hotel. She swallowed a rush of panic that rose up in her throat. It was time to be the big girl she kept insisting she was, damn it. Time to get a real job.

Bells chimed her presence as she slipped into the store. She glanced at the guy behind the counter.

He jerked his head up and grinned at her. “Hey! How’s it going?”

She smiled without answering and walked down an aisle filled with family-friendly movies to compose herself. The guy looked decent, clean-cut and dressed well enough, but a large ring through his nose and the lower half of a skull tattoo peeking out from under his short shirtsleeve made her hesitate. That, and she’d never had a job before – not a paying one – and didn’t know how to ask for it.

The movies made her think of her sisters and she touched the special ones with one finger.
The Lion King, Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast
. Even
Dumbo
, April’s favorite. August would hide under her blanket through most of it – the crows, the fire, pink elephants on parade, the clowns – it all scared the shit out of her. Her little sister, six years younger and afraid of nothing, tugged the blanket off and called her a scaredy cat.

The next aisle was full of porn, right there, across from the cartoons. What kind of place was this? At least in Hubble Falls the sex was behind closed doors. She picked up one of the DVDs, read the cover, looked at the pictures and then put it back, a familiar guilt creeping in. It took her back to one two summers ago when she was helping her mother with the laundry. She’d opened her father’s night table where his socks should be and found a dirty magazine. She shoved in all the socks, covering the near naked women on the cover, shocked her father even owned such a thing. When her parents were at Sara’s house playing bridge with Mr. and Mrs. Tugman that night, she sat on their bed and flipped through it. As she turned pages, her belly tightened and her underwear got wet. She crammed the magazine back under the socks. She had run to her bedroom, grabbed a huge stuffed bear and lay on her bed, hugging him tight. She just left her father’s socks on the bed after that.

She peered over the video shelf then glanced side to side, her cheeks burning and her heart beating fast. She breathed a sigh of relief. No one had seen her looking at the movie. Hell, no one was in the store at all.

At the end of the aisle was a sale bin brimming with old videotapes, like the one at the discount store in town. Last spring, she’d gone into town with her mother and they had stopped into ‘Bin There Done That’ to get some summer clothes. She begged and begged until her mother agreed they could find some “new” old movies to watch. That was the extent of their television fare – that and whatever the old rabbit ears might happen to pick up. Most of the time it was just static and snow. Cable didn’t reach their farm and her parents couldn’t afford a satellite dish. They wouldn’t even crack open their bank account to buy a cheap DVD player, so old VHS tapes were all they got. She had scanned the titles, their covers yellowed with age and tattered from years of the cassettes sliding in and out.

“August, look!” Her mother held up a movie then began singing in that off-pitch voice of hers – “The hills are alive with the sound of music.” She drew out the syllables of “music” to sound like a bad impression of a singing cow and crossed her eyes.

“God, Mother.” She rolled her eyes. “You are so embarrassing. Can’t we get something from this century? Here,
Spider-Man.
” She tossed the video across the bin toward her mother.

Her mother took the movie, scanned it for one second and put it back in the bin. Her right eyebrow – the judgmental one – arced in familiar disapproval. Picking up another, her mother cooed, “Ooh,
Breakfast at Tiffany’s.
I’ve always wanted to see this.”

And that was that. They had left with just one old movie, two three-dollar tank tops, and one pair of someone else’s cut-off denim shorts.

August looked up. The guy at the video store counter was watching her. It was now or never
.
She approached him, chewing on her bottom lip and focusing on his nametag. Paul.

“Can I apply for the job?” She stared at his nametag.

“Sure, fill this out.” He slid a form across the counter and handed her a pencil. One letter on each of the four fingers of his right hand announced F U C K in faded black ink.

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Well shit, you should have said so. You have to be eighteen to work here. You know, because of the porn.”

A lump formed in her throat, but she refused to give in to tears. “Really? There’s no way you can hire me? I’ll be seventeen in less than two months. I can pass for eighteen.”

Paul looked around the empty store. “Well, I’ll tell you what. You come in the back room and maybe if you do me a favor we can work something out.”

“What kind of favor?”

“You’re real cute.” He leaned his elbows on the counter, his face just a foot from hers and tugged on a strand of her hair. He looked up at her with just his eyes, the smell of burned rope emanated from his hair. “How about a little head?”

She stared at him. All she could think of was Randy trying to shove her head into his crotch and all she could say was, “Head?”

“Yeah, you dumb bitch. You know, a blow job?”

Bells chimed and a customer walked in.

Paul straightened up and smiled at the man. “Good morning.” He looked back at her and raised one eyebrow in a question mark.

She took a step backwards, then turned and walked out of the store. Unbelievable. Is that all they wanted from her? There had to be one boy out there who wasn’t a complete jackass.

A couple of blocks away she passed a door propped open with a small chair. A wonderful, familiar aroma wafted out to meet her. She closed her eyes and inhaled the scent deep into her lungs. She could almost feel a big fluffy towel wrap around her, her hair wet, her fingers wrinkled like prunes. Oatmeal cookies. Her mother made them every Saturday night. When she was younger, Caraleen would bring her one – sweet, hot, chewy – right out of the oven. She would nibble on it, the butterscotch chips and double vanilla distracting her while her mother combed the tangles from her freshly washed hair. Now her little sisters got most of the cookies and August combed out her own hair.

She looked in the door to find a tiny bakery. Ignoring the fact her money was dwindling, she bought two huge cookies and took them across the street to a sprawling park. Sitting on a bench under the shade of an elm tree, she ate them both, licking every crumb from her fingertips. They tasted like home.

While August sat, the sun stole the elm tree’s shade, so she basked in the heat. A circus of people passed her by, like some kind of travelling menagerie. Wild colors that didn’t match, three-piece suits in the sweltering heat. More than one mother jogged along pushing huge strollers with giant wheels, and a gaggle of nurses in pastel scrubs and weird rubber sling-back shoes hustled by, cramming hot dogs down their gullets as fast as they could. These city people were some kind of weird.

The longer she sat, the more she fidgeted – her childish reaction to a filling bladder. How frustrating that this simple bodily function – one of those things she’d never paid any attention to, never planned ahead for - might undo her quest for freedom and adventure. It was easy to just squat in a field on the farm where no prying eyes could see your naked butt. Not so simple in the middle of a bustling park or on a city street crawling with humanity.

Across the road, an old fashioned wooden sign creaked on its hinges above the door to a deli. Through the window people sat at small tables, eating sandwiches and sausage and pickles. There had to be a bathroom in there somewhere. She jaywalked across the street and went in.