Romeo is Homeless (6 page)

Reese shifted his weight, then leaned against the massive elm that shaded him from the bright morning sun. Wisps of blue smoke rose from the tip of the cigarette that hung from his mouth, and seeped through the curtain of long, dirty bangs. The smoke filtered his vision of the blonde girl on the bench, its swirling stench dirtying her fresh face and naïve-looking charm. It gave her a grimy appeal, made her look like one of them. When he waved the smoke clear and flicked his head, forcing his hair out of his line of sight, she looked too clean. Too shiny. Like a brand spanking new dime that had never been spent. Never been touched.

He had seen her sitting on the patio outside Starbucks, with her purple shoes and ridiculous neon green backpack. She was fresh. She stared like an idiot at every person who walked by, was in awe of everything. She gobbled a simple muffin like it was her last meal. With nothing better to do, he had followed her.

He’d waited down the block from the video store. When she came out, her face was beet red and she stomped away. He fell into step behind her, stayed back half a block. When he passed the video store window, he glanced in. That loser with the lame finger ink who always hassled the girls caught sight of him and flipped him off. No wonder she stormed out. Asshole probably hit on her too.

Now she was sitting there on that bench, eating cookies. She must have one hell of a sweet tooth. Or parents that didn’t let her eat the good shit at home.

He inched closer, going from shade tree to shade tree, and stopped about ten feet behind her. He stood beside another elm, trying to look like he wasn’t staring at her. Or stalking her.

She never turned around, just watched the people who passed in front of her. Then she shifted in her seat and bounced up and down like a distracted little kid. When she turned her head fully sideways and looked down the street, a breeze caught her long blonde hair and blew it aside, revealing a clear-skinned, freckled cheek and perfect button ear.

His heart flipped and a small pang of arousal grabbed his stomach.

What the fuck was that? Had to shake that off. Don’t want to complicate things, to deal with any girl shit right now.

He slid behind the tree and finished his cigarette, staring across the park’s expanse to the wide river far beyond.

He butted his cigarette against the tree, dropped the filter on the ground, then peered around the trunk at the bench.

She was still there, fidgeting and leaning forward, watching something across the street. Then she jumped up and jaywalked, hesitated, and stepped into the deli.

So she needed a bathroom. That’s what all that twitching was about. She’d better buy something or shit would hit the fan.

He jogged across the street and headed for the alley.

Caraleen leaned her forehead against the cool, smooth window of the pickup truck and stared at the familiar scene rolling by. Brick and clapboard houses on the edge of the town, old but meticulously maintained, flicked past her eyes. Their neat little gardens, heavy with pink and white peonies, perfectly trimmed hedgerows, and bushes dripping bleeding hearts were unimpressive on this particular morning. The garden ornaments – gnomes with red cone hats, plastic deer pretending to nibble real grass, wooden bird silhouettes with legs that spun in the breeze – didn’t even catch the attention of June and April. Any other day, they would squeal with delight and beg her to fill their yard with similar silly kitsch.

Don turned the truck onto the paved access road into Hubble Falls. In the side view mirror a plume of gravel dust kicked up behind the truck and dissipated into the still morning air.

On Main Street, the shops and cafes that still survived were readying themselves for another day of scant business. Nestled between the discount store and the barber shop/beauty salon was one of many old establishments that sat idle. Windows that once showcased house wares and bolts of cloth for sale were now boarded shut, the store abandoned. When the six-lane divided highway opened a few years back, travelers were no longer forced through town. They sped past, unaware of the struggling hamlet just two miles to the east. Just one gas station remained and the only motel stood just off the old highway, a specter of the abundance of old.

Don angled into a parking spot between two police cruisers. He jumped out and rounded the front of the truck, opening the door for Caraleen. Without saying a word, he lifted his daughters from the rear of the crew cab, took their hands and led them all into the station.

Sheriff Stone came out of his office to meet them and grasped Don’s hand in a firm shake. “Morning folks. Please sit.” The sheriff pointed to two wooden chairs beside a desk, then motioned to a young officer across the room. “Deputy, can you show these young ladies the lunch room? There’s some paper and crayons in the second drawer.”

“It’s been almost twenty-four hours, Sheriff.” Caraleen’s attempt at firm composure failed. Her voice quavered, hands trembled. “Surely we can look for August now?”

“I’m sorry about having to tell you that.” The sheriff took his hat off and tossed it on the desk, then rubbed a hand over his thinning grey hair. “But there are procedures.” The man rested one ass cheek on the corner of the desk and balanced on one steel-toed, polished black boot. He shifted his belt around his barrel-shaped middle, his gun holster clanging against the metal furniture. “But to be honest, I ignored them.”

“What do you mean, ignored them?” Don pulled a chair aside and guided Caraleen into it.

“Folks, me and my deputy took two cars out after you called yesterday and we went searching. We covered as much ground as we could before nightfall, but we didn’t find any sign of her.” He shook his head and looked from one to the other of them. “Then this morning we started calling around town.”

Don reached over and grabbed Caraleen’s shaking hands, patting them between his own. He looked up to the sheriff. “So, what’s next?”

Hinges squeaked and a deep voice filled the room. “Caraleen? Don?”

She turned to see Bill Tugman walking into the station guiding Sara by the shoulder.

“I think Sara has something to tell you.”

Caraleen rose and approached Sara. She put her arms around her daughter’s friend, giving the trembling girl a reassuring hug.

Sara broke down in tears. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Bailey. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay, sweetheart. Just tell me.” She guided Sara to the chair, easing her to its seat.

“I promised her I wouldn’t tell. She made me pinky swear!” Sara’s eyes were swollen and red rimmed. She wiped snot from her upper lip onto her sleeve. “She said she would call when she got there. But she didn’t call, Mrs. Bailey! Oh God, what if she’s hurt?” Her voice rose in pitch, her face contorted.

“Sara. Honey. Where did she go?”

“To Charlesworth. On the bus.” She looked down at her hands. “To be like Holly Golightly,” she whispered.

Caraleen felt the color drain from her face. She grabbed for Don’s hand.

The sheriff touched her shoulder. “Sara told Bill this morning and he called me. I’ve already called police headquarters there. They’ve put August on the missing children’s list. Do you have a picture of her?”

Don pulled his wallet from his back pocket and slid out a photo. He glanced at it before handing it to the sheriff, his eyes tearing up. “It’s her eleventh grade school picture from last fall. It’d be the most recent.”

“I’ll send this over. I need you to fill out some forms and give as much information as you can. Any distinguishing marks? Scars, tattoos?”

Caraleen sat staring at the sheriff. All she could say was, “No tattoos.”

August had run away. On purpose. Chose to leave home, leave the family. And it was Caraleen’s fault.

August stepped into the deli and peered around. The air was thick and pungent with garlic. A sign at the end of a hall announced a toilet was available, but for customers only. She lingered at the food display eyeing the meats, cheeses, sandwiches and salads behind the glass. She tried to appear nonchalant while she inched toward the bathroom, but quick sideways glances tattled on her intentions.

Another door opened before she got to the end of the hall and a large man with a stained white apron and a hairy neck emerged and grabbed her by the arm.

“What can I do for you, little girl?”

“I just need to use the bathroom!” she squealed, her arm smarting from his grasp.

He smelled of sour meat and body odor and his hand was leaving cheese prints on the sleeve of her hoodie. He pulled her to a door at the end of the hall, just inches from the bathroom she was desperate for, and pushed her out into the alley.

She landed hard on her hands and knees next to a garbage bin.

“Get lost, street scum! Go piss in the gutter! My bathrooms are only for paying customers!” The door slammed shut.

She pushed herself back, sat with her head resting on her knees and let the tears come.

“Ignore him. He’s a fucking asshole. He won’t let any of us use the bathroom.” A teenage boy peered at her from behind the Dumpster.

A shock of blue eyes, like polar ice, shone from behind long, dirty blonde bangs. His hair hung to just below his shoulders in sun-kissed waves. He emerged from behind the bin, the full length of him unfolding like one of those highway road maps her father liked to study – what for she never knew. He didn’t ever go anywhere.

“C’mon.” The boy bent down in front of her and took her hands. His long lanky arms pulled her to her feet with ease. “I know a place you can go. I’m Reese.”

She rubbed her sore hands down the front of her jeans and eyed his filthy clothes. He was a skinny giant, towering over her, a full head taller. A grey shirt hung below the hem of his denim jacket, his jeans torn at one knee. He looked like he had just helped the neighbors give their barn a new coat of red paint and used his pants as a drop cloth.

“I’m August.”

“Cool name.”

“I hate it. My mom named me that because I was born in August.” She pushed stray hair behind her ear and looked up at him, squinting into the sun. “My sisters were born in June and April. Guess what their names are?”

“October and November?” Reese smiled at her and poked her shoulder. “Let’s go find you a potty place.” He picked up her backpack and slung it over his shoulder, then led her to the same park she’d sat in to eat the cookies. They walked the long, winding path for some time and then veered off into a copse of leafy bushes.

“I’ll whistle if anyone comes.” Reese stood guard while she waded into the shrubbery.

Surrounded by thick scrub nestled up against a wrought-iron fence, she looked in all directions, hoping no one would see her as she dropped her pants. Despite the summer heat, a slight breeze cooled her skin where urine dampened it. She stayed squatting after she finished so her panties didn’t get wet. Drip-dry, her mother called it when they were out in the pasture.

Reese whistled.

She stood and yanked up her panties and pants at the same time. Her underwear bunched up inside her jeans. She pushed aside the branches, sidestepped a used condom, and emerged from behind the bush. Her left ass cheek itched from a long scratch a thorny bush had inflicted in its silent protest against being used for a toilet. Her stomach churned from the sight of the condom, its milky cargo dried into a hard yellow lump. It looked a lot different in real life than in health class after being removed from a cucumber during an awkward demonstration by a red-faced substitute.

“Well. That was delightful.”

“You get used to it.” Reese nodded a silent greeting to the elderly gentleman that had caused the alarm. “So how long you been here?”

Oh, God. Was she that obvious? “Since yesterday.” She looked at her feet while they walked. “I stayed at a hotel last night. It was gross. Not at all what I thought a hotel would be like.”

“You’ve never stayed in a hotel before? What planet do you come from?”

Her head snapped up and she glared at him. Was he going to be mean to her too?

He gazed at her through those long bangs and then winked.

“Ha, ha. Very funny. I’m from planet Hicksville. I live on a farm about three million miles from here.”

“Like a real farm? Horses, pigs, cows – all that shit?”

“Yeah. All that shit.”

“That’s cool. And you’re staying in a hotel. Are you rich or something?”

She laughed. “No, definitely not rich. I don’t have enough money for another night. I don’t know where I’m going to go.” She turned her head away and blinked back tears.

“You can stay with me if you want to.”

She spun around. “With you?” She didn’t know anything about him. Except he was cute and sweet, and his eyes made her knees weak. “Where do you live?”

“Anywhere. Everywhere.”

“What? I mean where’s your house?”

He looked down at her sideways, his eyebrows rose. He looked thoroughly amused. Or maybe he thought she was an idiot.

“I don’t have a place, August. I live on the street.”

She stared at him. She had envisioned a nice apartment somewhere downtown, in the middle of the excitement of the city. Why would she think that? He was filthy and he took her to a park to pee. God, she could be so stupid.

She could sleep in the park. Or a cheaper hotel. Or maybe a church. She tucked her hand in her back pocket and fingered the piece of paper. She could find Father Patrick’s ministry, he’d take her in.

“Knock, knock. Anybody in there?” Reese cocked his head to one side, then smiled. “Don’t worry.” He put a gentle forearm around her shoulder. “You’ll be safe with me. I’m not a murderer or rapist or anything. I’ve lived out here for years. And you can always go home any time you want to.”

“No!” she said louder than she meant to. Then took a deep breath. “I don’t want to go home.”

“What’s so bad there?”

“Lots of stuff. The farm. My stupid boyfriend.” She bit her bottom lip and glanced up at him. “Ex-boyfriend. And my mother.”

“Yeah? You got a lousy mother?”

“She drives me crazy. Always telling me what to wear, do my chores, do my homework, don’t stay out late, don’t date. She’s always trying to make me do what she wants. She doesn’t give a damn what I want.”

“Does any mother care what their kids want?”

“None that I know.”

*****

August and Reese sat in a corner booth at McDonald’s. The only restaurant she’d ever eaten at before that was the diner in town. She’d been dying to have a Big Mac ever since Sara told her about it last summer, so she spent the rest of her money and bought them both dinner.

“This is great!” Bits of chewed bun landed on the plastic tabletop. Talking with her mouth full, what would her mother say to that? She reached across and snitched one of his fries.

“Hey! Hands off, lady.” He pushed the fries toward her despite his protest. He smiled, picked up a few fries, dipped them in ketchup and fed them to her.

She chewed the fries and stared at his face. She touched her cheek, then ran her fingers along her collarbone. When he wiped a drop of ketchup from her chin, her cheeks warmed and she looked away.

After dinner they went into the children’s play area, took off their shoes and crawled into the labyrinth of tubes and tunnels intended for much smaller kids. They landed in the ball pit at the end of a slide and threw plastic balls at each other, screeching and laughing.

She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun. She was always working – farm chores, homework, babysitting her little sisters, cleaning the bathroom. Sara got to go to Disneyland. August got to hold the chickens’ necks taut while her mother murdered them with an ax.

“Okay, you two. Get out.” A boy not much older than her stood with his arms crossed. His ill-fitting uniform was splotched with mustard stains, his face splotched with acne scars and pimples.

“Aw c’mon, man,” Reese pleaded. “We’re just having some fun.”

“Fun is just for the little kids.”

Well wasn’t that the truth.

“Now get out.” The boy stood holding his broom in front of him with both hands like a janitorial saber.

They crawled out. Their hair crackled with static electricity, strands sticking straight out from their heads.

August licked her palm and ran it over her hair to smooth it, then did the same for Reese. She glanced at his face to find him staring at her, grinning like she’d done something amusing. Her cheeks got hot under the scrutiny of those eyes, even bluer at close quarters. She turned away and crammed her ball cap on her head.

Reese opened the door for her. At the corner, the pedestrian light flashed an amber warning. He grabbed her hand and pulled her to the other side.

When they were safely across, she relaxed her hand in his, ready for him to let her go. Instead, he held her in a firm but gentle grip. Goosebumps tingled up her arm.

She glanced up at him every few steps. His jacket was buttoned all the way up, even in the summer heat. His Adam’s apple seemed to rest on the collar. No boy she knew had such a pronounced lump in his throat. She couldn’t help but look at it, fascinated by the movement of it as he swallowed, more fascinated by the pangs shooting through her belly when it jumped up and down. Shifting her gaze to the fine scruff of his never-shaved sideburns, her heart fluttered.

“So do you have a lousy mother too?”

“Lousy doesn’t cover it. My mother didn’t give a rat’s ass about me.”

“Is that why you ran away? Because of her?”

“I didn’t run away. My mom’s dead.”

“Oh my God, Reese.” She stopped mid-stride and put her arms around him, hugging him hard. “I’m so, so sorry.” She breathed in his scent. Dirt, sweat, and just a hint of yeast, like the smell of her mother’s bread dough before it baked into fresh, steaming loaves. She felt his rib bones through his jacket. His mother had probably never baked him bread.

He rested one hand on her shoulder for a few seconds, then he pulled away.

“It’s cool. It was, like, four years ago. She OD’d. Smack.” He sounded like he was ordering burgers and fries, no apparent trace of emotion.

“Smack?”

“Yeah, you know, heroin. Wasn’t the first time, just the first time it killed her.” He started walking ahead of her without taking her hand back.

She sped up to catch him, and fell into step by his side. “What about your dad?”

“Never met him.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

He’d lived all alone for four years? Out here, on the street? He had no one to love. No one to love him back.

They walked in silence for a block and then she took hold of his hand.

He looked down at her through his bangs and smiled.

*****

August stood under a massive bridge, the underside looming high over her head. She stared up at six lanes of traffic that roared above, the air filled with the constant hum of tires speeding across the steel deck. The smell of burned paper, diesel fuel and urine permeated the evening. A few yards away a wide river idled by, its movement appearing slow and lazy.

“Here we are.” Reese gestured to his surroundings. “Home, sweet home.”

“Charming.” She poked his shoulder and smiled.

“I do what I can,” he said, with a haughty air and a slight bow.

She giggled.

He led her to a spot under the bridge abutment, sheltered from public view, where the only intruders were the underbellies of the vehicles that passed overhead. He took her backpack, went behind a line of bushes and brought out some newspapers and cardboard, then tossed the cardboard on the concrete.

“Mattresses,” was all he said. “I hid your stuff with mine. C’mere.” He took her hand and led her past a concrete pillar, down a path to the river.

“This is the bathroom,” he said without ceremony. “Just watch your step.”

The bushes and grass were trampled, flies buzzed everywhere. She would never complain about a dirty bathroom again. Oh, to feel a cold plastic toilet seat caress the cheeks of her ass.

She smiled at him. “Do you mind?”

He made his way back up to the abutment while she looked for a lesser-used place to pee.

Across the river, dock workers yelled at each other over the drone of machinery. Barges with massive crates were unloaded by huge cranes. The glow of the dock lights seemed focused on her like a spotlight, the workers probably watching her, laughing, ogling. She backed into a thick bush and dropped her pants.

When she got back up to their spot, Reese had laid out the cardboard mattresses side by side and lit a candle in a tin can. The glow eased the impersonal cold of the looming darkness. It was almost romantic.

They each stretched out on a piece of cardboard and looked up at the bridge. She shifted her weight, adjusting to the solid ground beneath her, but there was no comfort zone. To the left and through some trees, the shape of the moon was barely visible in a small, smoggy patch of sky.