This Glittering World (13 page)

A
t work on Wednesday night, Ben tried to imagine what a life living in Phoenix would be like. He thought about getting up every morning and putting on a suit and tie. He thought about the sun beating down on him as he made his way to his sedan. (The truck did not fit into this picture at all.) He thought about car lots, about the barren desert beyond. Golf with Frank on Saturdays. Sara.
The baby.

But no matter how hard he tried, he could not imagine the baby. He had dreamed about it once, about Sara in the hospital, holding the new baby in her arms. But when he looked down to see its face, there was nothing there; it was just a blanket wadded up into a swaddled mess of flannel.

He saw himself and Sara piling into a minivan and driving across the desert to Disneyland. He imagined backyard barbeques, sitting in the bleachers at soccer games in the scorching heat. He imagined the sweaty auditoriums of dance recitals and piano recitals. He dreamed of hot metal swing sets and blistering monkey bars. But he couldn’t imagine the child. It was like the vapors rising off of hot pavement. Distorted, unreal.

“Hey,” Hippo said, coming out of the kitchen with a fresh basket of hot French fries. “Want some?”

“Not hungry,” Ben said.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” Ben said. He still hadn’t told Hippo about Sara being pregnant.

“Hey,” Hippo said. “I was just thinking about that kid you asked me about, the one you found. You said his name was Ricky, right?”

“Yeah,” Ben said, snapping out of his reverie.

“Remember he used to play pool with this other kid from the rez sometimes?”

Ben tried to remember. Ricky was always shooting pool. He couldn’t remember him hanging out with anyone in particular. He didn’t remember him having any friends. Shadi hadn’t mentioned any friends.

“I only remember because the other kid had a tattoo of an eagle on his arm, and I asked him where he got it. I thought maybe Emily did it; it looked like her work.”

“And?”

“Well, he came in the other day and I asked him if he remembered seeing Ricky on Halloween night. At first he looked spooked, but then he said that he did see him on Halloween. He ran into him at the Monte V Ricky came in with some frat guy who talked them both into going to some party. He said he thought they might be trying to hustle another fraternity, and they wanted him and Ricky to be their ringers. I don’t know if that helps at all,” Hippo said.

“Jesus,” Ben said. “That proves that he was there. There must have been a fight at the house. Was he there with Ricky?”

“I don’t know. You know how those rez kids are. Super quiet.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“He calls himself Lucky,” he said. “He washes dishes at Beaver Street too. I think that’s how he and Ricky knew each other.”

“Listen,” Ben said."Is there any way you can cover the end of my shift?”

“I think I can handle it.” Hippo laughed, gesturing to the empty bar. It had been dead since school let out. They’d even been closing early.

“Cool,” Ben said. “I appreciate it.”

As Ben walked down San Francisco toward the tracks, he thought about what Shadi had said about just letting go. But if she knew that he was so close, would she still want him to stop? If he could just get one person who saw what happened to speak up, then he could go to the police. Somebody had to crack.

He knew the Beaver Street kitchen staff hung outside the door by the parking lot for cigarette breaks. When he got there, three guys were sitting on upturned pickle buckets, smoke curling up into the night air.

He approached them and they stiffened.

“Hey, do you guys know a kid named Lucky?” he asked.

“Yeah,” one guy with a greasy baseball cap said. “He’s in the kitchen.”

“Do you think you could ask him to come out?”

“What do you want with him?” the other guy asked. Ben wondered how much other people knew, because this guy sure was acting like a mother hen.

“I just wanted to talk to him for a minute.”

The guy sized him up and then said, “You a cop?”

“He’s not a cop,” the kid with the baseball cap said. “He’s a history prof. I had him last semester.”

Ben squinted; the exterior light was bright in his eyes. “Hey!” he said, offering the kid his hand. The kid ignored him. This was clearly not one of the front-row students.

“Hey, Lucky!” the guy yelled into the open doorway of the kitchen, and the kid appeared.

He was about half Ricky’s size, maybe five foot five. He had a wild mess of hair and a filthy apron tied around his waist. As he approached, the other guys slipped back into the kitchen, leaving only a hazy fog of cigarette smoke in their wake.

“Are you Lucky?” Ben asked.

The kid nodded and sat down on one of the buckets. He motioned for Ben to do the same. The kid pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and held it out to Ben.

“No, thanks,” Ben said, shaking his head.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“I knew Ricky,” Ben said.

The kid nodded.

“And I know that something happened at that party. I’m the one who found him.”

The kid took a long drag on his cigarette and blew a long, skinny stream of smoke into the air, aiming it away from Ben. “Nobody’s gonna do nothing about it,” he said.

“Were you there?”

Lucky looked at Ben, as if trying to figure out if he could trust him or not. It was the same look Shadi had first given him at the hospital.

Ben continued. “Hippo, from Jack’s, told me you guys were playing pool that night. Did you go with Ricky to the party?”

“Man, I told you it don’t matter. Nobody cares what happened.”

“I care what happened. His sister cares what happened. If you were there, we can go to the cops. If there’s a witness, we can get the guys who did this to Ricky.”

Lucky took another drag on his cigarette and closed his eyes. It looked like he might just fall asleep.

Ben sighed and threw up his hands. He stood up from the bucket and was about to walk away, when the kid said, “Wait.”

Ben turned around, waiting. The air was quiet, the air heavy with the promise of more snow.

“You want to know the worst part?” Lucky asked.

Ben nodded. He could feel every inch of his skin tingling. It was cold out already, but it felt as though he’d been doused in ice water.

“After it was over, they locked the doors. Kept on partying. We didn’t even have our coats.”

“Why didn’t you call 9-1-1?” Ben asked. “The police?”

Lucky smiled again. “You think the police gonna help two kids from the rez saying that a bunch of college kids picking on them?”

“He was totally beaten up!” Ben said.

“He was bloody.” Lucky nodded. “But he was walking, standing up. He said he was okay. He said he was gonna walk to his sister’s house and she would take care of the cuts. He said he would be fine.”

Now it made sense. Ben couldn’t imagine what had brought Ricky to his neighborhood. It was miles from campus. But it was just down the road from Shadi’s. He must have gotten lost in the blizzard, passed out in the snow. Only feet from Ben’s door. Only steps from help. From him.

“We have to tell the cops,” Ben said. “Somebody’s got to know this happened.”

Lucky tossed his cigarette down on the ground and stomped it out with his Doc Marten.

“Don’t you think Ricky deserves justice?” Ben asked.

Lucky smiled and shook his head. “You just don’t get it, do you? There ain’t no such thing as justice.”

S
ara made lists. This was always how she had organized her life, and now this was how she communicated with Ben. In bullet points: hierarchical directives and enumerated edicts.
Take the trash out. Call cable company. Get milk.
They didn’t talk about the job at the hospital. They didn’t talk about the move to Phoenix. What Sara did was make lists. To-do lists. Grocery lists. Lists of pros and cons for the move. Lists of things they might need in Phoenix. They hung under magnets on the refrigerator. They were stuck to walls, the insides of cabinets, to the dash of the truck. The self-adhesive instructions inserted like a scavenger hunt leading nowhere.

Today he had the Christmas shopping list.

• Mom—new cashmere scarf (blue)
  
• Dad—new barbeque utensils
  
• George—leather attaché
  
• Melanie—gift certificate to salon (mani/pedi)
  
• Birdy—gift certificate to salon (pedi only)
  
• Veronica—Godiva chocolates and a pound of coffee beans (ground) from Late for the Train
  
• Dr. Newman—Home Depot gift card ($50)
  

His name was not on the list.

He told her that he would take care of the shopping. That all she needed to do was wrap the gifts. She was particular, a perfectionist when it came to wrapping presents, so he knew it wouldn’t help to offer to do this too.

He went to Home Depot first, got the gift certificate and found a nice set of barbeque tools for Frank. He went to the salon next and got the gift certificates. At the mall, he found a scarf at Dillard’s and the chocolates. The only thing left was the attaché case for her brother, George, and the coffee beans. It was only noon.

He grabbed a cheeseburger to go at the food court and figured he’d drive back into town to look for a case for George. They might have something at Gene’s Western Wear. Last would be the coffee beans.

He hadn’t planned on going to the antique store, but then he drove past the shop on 66 and his heart nearly stopped. He yanked the wheel and pulled the truck into the lot. A smile spread across his face. There, outside, next to an iron bed frame and a Ms. Pac-Man machine was an old drive-in movie speaker on a stand.

The speaker looked almost as if it had grown there, an errant sunflower, a chrome weed sprouting from the dirt.

He went inside the little shop, the sleigh bells on the door jingling. He had to search through a labyrinth of junk to find the saleslady, who was crouched on the floor next to a box inside of which was a black Lab that, Ben soon realized, was in the middle of giving birth to a litter of puppies.

“Excuse me?” he said.

The woman looked up, startled. “Hi. I’m so sorry. Molly just started whelping her pups, and she’s having kind of a rough time. Would you mind putting the
CLOSED
sign up in the window?”

“Sure, sure,” Ben said and went back to the front of the store. He flipped the
OPEN
sign around to
CLOSED
and locked the dead bolt.

“Do you need anything?” he asked.

“I’m going to need some towels. They’re in my car,” she said, handing him a large set of keys.

He went back out to the parking lot. He walked over to the speaker to see if there was a price tag. He had exactly a hundred and fifty dollars left, with which he was supposed to get everything left on the list. Sara had swiped his credit card after he told her that he wouldn’t be teaching next semester. There wasn’t a tag; he’d have to ask the woman inside. He opened up the trunk of her car, grabbed the towels, and went back into the shop.

Inside, the mother dog had pushed out the first puppy. She was clearly suffering, whimpering and moaning, ignoring the puppy that slithered and wriggled on the cardboard beneath her.

“Looks like she’s going to need some help,” the woman said and grabbed one of the towels from him. She broke the sac and started rubbing the squirming little pup. And then the next one came out.

“Holy shit,” Ben said. He’d never seen anything like it in his life.

He got down next to the woman. She handed him the blanketed bundle with the first puppy and started to repeat the procedure with the next. He rubbed the puppy, looked at its sealed eyes, marveling that this life had literally just begun before him. It wriggled in his hands, its heart beating hard against his chest.

He’d gotten Maude when she was nearly seven months old, halfway grown. She was a rescue dog, brutalized by her owner. She had welts on her belly, a bullet hole in her ear, though remarkably, she wasn’t afraid of people. She never barked, not even at other dogs. Not when people came to the door. He’d never seen her as a puppy. Not like this.

The puppies kept coming and coming, and Ben and the woman kept rubbing the life into them until the mother, at last, lay back panting. Then, as if realizing for the first time what had happened to her, she began to take care. She nudged and licked, prodded and poked each puppy into place until all of them were finally snuggled in a furry row, nursing on her swollen teats.

“This is her first litter,” the woman said. “Sometimes they don’t know what to do the first time.”

Ben watched as the puppies sucked, and the mother closed her eyes. Contented. Exhausted.

“I am so sorry,” the woman said, wiping a hand on her jeans and then reaching out to shake his. “Not very good customer service.”

“Oh no, I totally understand,” Ben said. “Wow.”

“Was there something in particular you were looking for?”

Ben stood up, his knees resisting after having sat on the floor for so long.

“Actually, yes. I was wondering if you knew where that drive-in speaker was from.”

The woman stood up as well, and stretched her back. She was wearing jeans and cowboy boots. Her hair was the color of vanilla pudding, all spun into an elaborate hive. Her chest was freckled and tan. Her eyes were a shocking blue.

“I believe it’s from the Tonto Drive-In. They tore that place down in 2002. It’s not the original stand, of course, but I’m pretty sure it still works.”

The mother dog was making noise again.

“She’s lucky they all lived. I’ve had eight mama dogs, and almost every litter has had a pup that didn’t make it. No runts this time, though.”

“You said the Tonto Drive-In? Where was that?” he asked.

“In Winslow. I never went there, but my husband, God rest his soul, grew up there. He used to talk about going there as a kid.”

Ben thought about Shadi and Ricky in the back of that pickup, staring up at the pale white screen, waiting for the movie to start. The speaker hooked to the window of the truck. Buttery popcorn, and the air growing cold as the sun went down. He thought about the crackly static of the speaker, about the old mattress in the back. About their grandfather sitting in the front of the pickup, tuning in to the right station.

“
Hush,
Molly,” the woman said to the dog as she whimpered in the corner. “It’s not rocket science, it’s just feeding time.”

“How much are you asking for it?” Ben asked.

“Well, I think I was asking a hundred bucks, but I can give it to you for fifty. A thank-you for helping out today,” she said. “And of course, if you find yourself in need of a puppy in about six weeks, you just come on back.”

Fifty bucks. He wondered if there was any way he could get the rest of the stuff on Sara’s list with only a hundred dollars. He tried to think if he had any tips stashed in his drawer or in the pockets of his coat.

“You mind me asking what you’re gonna do with it?” the woman asked.

“It’s a Christmas gift,” he said. And then, just to try the words out, just to imagine for a stolen minute this glistening impossibility, he added,"It’s for my wife.”

As Ben drove past the turnoff to his neighborhood and kept going to deliver the speaker to Shadi, his phone buzzed on the passenger seat next to him. He looked down as it shook across the seat. A text message. He picked it up and clicked
OK.
9-1-1. COME HOME ASAP

He did a U-turn on Fort Valley Road and pushed the accelerator. The speaker rolled across the bed of the truck. His mind raced with all of the possible scenarios. Something was wrong with Frank, a heart attack or worse. A car accident.

Maybe the house was on fire. Had he turned off the Christmas lights this morning when he left? The baby. God, no.

He thought about the mother dog, about those tiny little puppies. About how small and fragile they were. About the tiny beating hearts beneath the thin skin of their chests as he rubbed them to life.

He pulled into the driveway, grateful to see that the house was intact, and the screen door opened before he could even get out of the truck.

Sara was still in her scrubs. He glanced at his watch. It was two o’clock, too early for her to be home. But she looked okay. Nothing was wrong with her, or the baby, as far as he could tell.

“What’s going on?” he asked.
Shit, don’t let anything be wrong with her folks.

Her eyes were wide and bright, and a slow smile crept across her face.

He ran up the steps to the porch. “Why are you home so early?” he asked.

“I got the job, Ben. The hospital called today. I applied for a position in Rehab, but something opened up in Oncology and they want me. I know it’s going to be tough, but I think this is what I’m meant to do, Ben. I really think I can be good at this. They want me to start right after the new year. I left work early. Please? Can we celebrate this?”