The Return (3 page)

"How much does an abortion cost?" he asked.

"Three hundred dollars. About."

He smiled thinly and shook his head. "That's mucha lana. You were raised Catholic. Could you go through with an abortion?"

She sighed. "I don't know." His next question caught her off guard.

"What do you think he'd look like?" he asked.

She hesitated. "Bueno. Like the two of us. But it might be a she, you know."

"Have you ever seen pictures of me when I was a baby?"

"No. You haven't shown me any." She paused. "I'd like to see some."

"No, you wouldn't. I looked awful. But maybe he would look—better." He stood and eyed the door.

"Let's talk about this later when no one's around. Right now I have to enjoy my twentieth birthday party. It's the only one I'm ever going to have."

"Lo siento, I'm sorry," she said again.

"Don't be sorry," he said as he left the room.

Ninety minutes later Jean was sitting in the living room with Lenny, Carol, and Darlene. After Lenny had left her, Jean had fallen back on the bed and passed out for an hour. She hadn't dreamed, only entered a black void where there was no sound or feeling and slept the sleep of the dead. She didn't even know who she was when she awakened in the dark. The disorientation had lingered.

Who had turned off the bedroom light? She didn't know and it didn't matter.

The four of them were the only ones left at the party. Jean sat on the couch with Lenny. Carol was on the floor, acting bored. Her Russian boyfriend had never shown. Darlene, as usual, paced. Darlene wanted revenge, she wanted blood. Her little meeting was about planning a hit on Sporty's murderers, specifically on Juan Chiato.

Juan was the biggest drug dealer at their high school, although he hadn't been to class in ten years. He was twenty-one years old, high up in the Red Blades, one of the most vicious of the inner city gangs. Jean knew Juan by sight; she had met him twice at Lenny's house. He'd been leaving as she went in. Out of necessity, Lenny said he occasionally had to deal with Juan, although Lenny clearly did not like to be in the same room as Juan, who was known for his violent temper. But Juan had direct contact with Colombian drug lords and practically set the price of cocaine in their neighborhood. His face was badly scarred from knife fights. Jean thought he looked like one of Satan's first lieutenants. She hadn't known Sporty was connected to Juan, but she supposed she'd been mistaken.

"Let me tell you why I know it was Juan," Darlene said as she strode back and forth in front of them, a cigarette in her hand. "The week before Sporty died, he told me about a deal he had going with Juan. You didn't know about it, Lenny.

Sporty told me Juan had sworn him to secrecy. Anyway, Sporty told me about it because he could never keep his mouth shut when he was drunk. It had nothing to do with drugs. Juan had stolen a truckload of Levi's jeans. He had slipped onto a freight company's lot with a gun and put the barrel to the security guard's head and driven away with the trailer. He wanted to use Sporty to sell the jeans to certain stores. Sporty was game. The commission looked good, and he thought dealing with store owners would be a lot more pleasant than the jerks that hung around Juan. But what he didn't know was that Juan was just using him. The stores he sent Sporty to paid protection to the Bald Caps. You know them?"

Lenny nodded. "Cierto. They're a small gang, but they control much of downtown, especially around the convention center and the skyscrapers. Why did Juan want to piss them off?"

"I asked Sporty that," Darlene said. "He thought maybe Juan was trying to set something up between the Red Blades and the Bald Caps. Juan was trying to move up in the Blades, and he was impatient. He wanted some action that he could lead, show the others how strong he was. He wanted a fight. He sent Sporty out, not to sell jeans, but to start a war with the Bald Caps. Right away Sporty ran into trouble. The Caps cornered him and threatened to cut out his heart for daring to enter their territory. They stole his van full of jeans. Sporty went running back to Juan and told him what had happened, but Juan didn't want to hear about it. He gave Sporty an ultimatum—either he got the jeans back or he was going to cut out his heart Sporty yelled at him, said he had just been set up. Then Sporty made a big mistake. He told Juan he was thinking of going to the police to tell them the whole story."

"No," Lenny said, shaking his head. "He wouldn't have been that esttipido. "

Darlene paused in her pacing. "Sporty was pretty stupid sometimes. I can say that because I loved him. I asked him how Juan reacted, and he said Juan didn't say anything, which we all know is not the best response to get from a bloodthirsty son of a bitch like Juan Chiato. I tell you, Sporty was scared. He had a right to be scared." Darlene nodded, her eyes burning.

"That all happened four weeks ago, and now look what's happened. Sporty's dead. Juan killed him, there's no doubt about it. We have to kill the bastard."

The room was silent for a full minute. Jean didn't know what to say. It did sound like Juan was probably the culprit, but who in his right mind would take revenge against someone who had a whole gang at his back? The Red Blades would reearn their name hunting down and slaughtering whoever touched Juan. And if they just happened to murder a few who were only guilty by indirect association, then so much the better.

Jean regretted having asked if Carol could stay for the meeting. Sitting on the floor against the wall, Carol looked full of regrets. Darlene must have been loaded to be talking about such things so openly. Yet she appeared in full command of her senses. It was Lenny who spoke first, and Jean was surprised when he didn't dismiss Darlene's proposal outright.

"I can't understand why Sporty didn't tell me he was having trouble with Juan," he said. "He should have come to me right away, before he tried to sell any jeans. I would have told him to stay as far away as he could from the guy."

"He wanted to make his own mark," Darlene said.

"He wanted to make his own money. Sporty got tired of living in your shadow and wanted to do something about it."

Lenny shifted uncomfortably. "He picked a bad way to go about it."

"We've already established that he wasn't the most intelligent guy on the planet," Carol said.

"Shut up," Darlene said. "I can say those things, but you can't. You didn't love him."

Carol made a face. "I hardly knew him."

"Let's say, for the sake of argument, that it was Juan," Lenny said. "If we want him dead, we have to do it ourselves. Anyone else will talk to someone else.

And if we do kill him, it's got to look like someone else did it. Because the second Juan's Blade buddies find his body, they're going to guess it was either Darlene or me who was behind it because we were Sporty's best friends."

"I hope you're not suggesting that it has to look like an accident," Carol said.

Lenny shook his head impatiently. "If Juan has a dozen bullets in him, it can't look like an accident."

"We could run him over," Darlene suggested.

"It might be better to blow him up," Lenny said.

"The less left, the better."

Jean felt compelled to speak. "Wait a second. What are we talking about here?

Sporty's dead and that's terrible. But we can't avenge his death, especially if it was Juan who killed him. His gang will know who did it no matter how you plan it. They'll kill us all."

"Why would they kill you?" Lenny asked, an odd note in his voice.

"Because I was Sporty's friend, too," Jean said, annoyed at the question.

"Because I'm here with you guys talking about this foolish plan. You can't go up against someone that's high up in a gang. It's just not done. You know that, Lenny. Why are you even listening to Darlene?"

Lenny held her eye before answering, his face dark. He hadn't appreciated her remarks. "Because I was his friend. A real friend doesn't do nothing after his friend's gunned down. I was there. He died in my arms."

Jean returned his stare. When angered, few people intimidated her. "What were you two doing at the projects so late at night?" she asked. "So close to Juan's home ground?"

Lenny didn't blink. "I didn't know about Sporty's problems with Juan. I said that already."

"But that doesn't answer my question," Jean said.

"At night that piece of turf is a death zone."

"No one's asking you to be involved, Jean," Darlene said bitterly. "I just thought since Sporty always told me what a great girl you were that you'd want to be in on the payback."

"What payback is that going to be?" Jean asked, her voice hot "Kill Juan and live in fear every second until they come for us? And who's to say they'll simply shoot us? They might torture us first. You heard about what happened to that teenage bookie that the police found on Main? During the autopsy they found a pillowcase in his stomach. Do you know how scared someone has to be to swallow a pillowcase? Oh, and did I forget to mention that his throat had been cut from ear to ear? That was down on Main, Darlene Red Blade territory, Juan's playing ground."

"Was it a whole pillow case?" Carol asked.

"Oh, would you shut up," Jean said this time.

Darlene glared at Jean. "I thought you were more than a chicken bitch. I guess I was wrong."

Jean turned to Lenny, her boyfriend, the father of her unborn child. He still hadn't answered her original question. Earlier she had been right to think of him as a stranger. Looking at his dark, cold masklike face, she hardly recognized him. And to think, she had made love to him only two days before on this very couch. No, she had had sex with him—there was a difference.

"How can you let her talk to me that way?" she asked. "This is your house. Kick her out. You know she's talking crap. You know this whole meeting is insane."

Lenny took his time answering. Something on the floor between his legs had him fascinated. It must have been the dirt because that was all that was there.

The heavy burdens on his attention—the filth and her request. Finally he spoke, his head still down. "You just didn't care about him the way we did. You can't understand." He shrugged, adding, "We can't let Juan get away with it."

Jean jumped up from the sofa, feeling the blood suffuse her face. "I cared about him more than any of you know! I knew him before any of you knew him! But he's dead, and it's really sad, but why do we have to die with him? Why do we even have to talk about killing people?" Her throat choked with emotion; her voice came out cracked. "Why do we even have to live like this?"

Jean didn't wait for an answer to her painful questions. She ran from the living room, into the bedroom, and out onto Lenny's balcony.

The platform was a haphazard affair, a collection of splintered planks thrown on top of a randomly spaced group of termite-zapped wooden stilts. Yet the drop to the ground was substantial: thirty feet straight down. Jean heard the boards of the railing creak as she leaned against them. The view was pretty at least, if you liked smelly oil wells and rundown houses that doubled as fear-infested fortresses. The downtown skyscrapers were visible, far in the distance; dark towers with dots of light in a bleary haze of pollutants. Really, Jean thought, it was all the same no matter which direction she turned. It wasn't a city, it was a dying monster. She wanted it to die. She wanted the big bombs to fall, the red mushroom clouds to form. She didn't know why she had argued so passionately for life when she felt so little life in her heart.

It was ironic that ever since the seed of a new human being had started growing in her body she had felt more and more like ending it all. Not suicide, no, but something close to it. Something like a contract that could be entered into without serious penalties. Not a devil's contract certainly, more like a person-to-person handshake and a pat on the back and an understanding that it was OK. That it would be all right. I did the best I could, God, but it wasn't good enough. But I don't hate you and I don't hate myself. I just don't know what the hell I'm doing. Help, please, help me.

Standing on the creaky balcony, time passed for Jean Rodrigues. How much time, she didn't know. But somewhere in the sand at the bottom of Jean Rodrigues's fallen hourglass, the colors of the nighttime city altered. The dull yellows turned to blues and the sober reds to fresh greens. The intensity of the light grew as well, as one after another tiny candles were lit in dark corners above homes that had never been built and atop skyscrapers that would never fall.

The shift was subtle at first, and she didn't know it was even happening to her until she suddenly found herself staring out upon a landscape bathed in pulsing light. It was only then that she realized she was back in her dream, being given the chance again to lift up her arms and fly, over the wall and into the land where the wishes and the wisher were one. It was a chance she was not going to pass up twice. There, she thought eagerly, there, make me immortal. Happy at last, still leaning against the railing, she lifted her arms.

But Jean did not fly, the human body could not. The floor of the balcony abruptly vanished from beneath her feet and she fell instead. Headfirst toward a ground that took forever to reach. Yet the plunge was not terrifying, as Shari Cooper's fall from a balcony one year earlier had been. The contract was signed and sealed. It wasn't suicide but an accident. Or at the very least someone else's fault. There would be no penalty for Jean Rodrigues. There would be no more pain.

CHAPTER III

FLOATING DOWNSTREAM in a boat on a river, you can see only a little way in front of you, a little way behind, the nearby shore, and if you're lucky and the river isn't lined with trees, maybe a far-off field or house. But if you go up in a plane and look down at the river, you can see the entire course of the waterway. You can see where it began, and you know where it will end. In a sense, the aerial view is like being given a vision of the future, at least as far as the life of the river is concerned.

Death is a vision that never dies. I am supposed to be dead, but I experience the entirety of my life as if it were all happening at once. I float above the river of personality that was once Shari Ann Cooper. I know her, I am her, but I am something else now as well, something blissful. Even as I poke into the dark corners of my life, my joy does not leave me. It is separate from personalities and events. My joy is what I am and has no name.