Under the Bridge (13 page)

I smiled again. “Cool.”

He kick-flipped. “Awesome. Thanks.”

“No sweat. Take it easy.”

“Wanna skate?”

“Not today. Sorry.”

He nodded. “You shouldn’t fight with your bro, Tater. That’s stupid.” Then he was skating down the driveway, waving over his shoulder.

When my parents fight, they do everything they can to make it seem like they’re not fighting. When I was little, it was easy, but when your mom and dad talk to everybody except each other, you start noticing as you get older
.

At dinner that night, Mom talked to me, and Dad wasn’t as silent as the night before and asked me how my day went, but neither of them said a word to each other unless it was “please” or “thank you” for passing the mashed potatoes or corn.

There was a huge invisible elephant named Indy Brooks in our house, and nobody wanted to see it. Nobody wanted to see him. Not my dad or mom or anybody who should have. Nobody knew what to do, and it burned me up. After dinner, I grabbed my jacket and board, and Dad looked up from fixing a lamp on the dining room table. “Where are you going?”

“Out.”

“Where?”

“Out.”

He glanced at the clock. Nine forty-five. “It’s too late.”

“What do you care?”

“Well, for one, I saw on the news that a scumbag drug dealer was murdered behind O’Malley’s pawnshop.” He eyed me. “You spend a lot of time down there. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“It doesn’t matter what you think,” I said, my insides quivering.

He set his electrical tester down. “What did you just say to me?”

I shrugged. “I’m going out, and you can’t stop me.”

He bristled, standing. “Don’t, Tate.”

“Oh, so you care about one son but not the other, huh?”

Dark clouds gathered in his eyes. “Don’t start with that, Tate. You know—”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t know.”

He jabbed a thick finger at me. “You are going to sit your ass down right now and we’ll talk about it. Got it?”

“No. We don’t talk in this house. You talk. You just ram it down Indy’s throat until he can’t take it anymore. That’s all you do.”

“That’s not true.…”

I shook my head again. “I saw him today, if you’re interested.” I paused, looking at him. Indy’s words—
Has he asked about me? One single word
—stung me, and anger overwhelmed the fear of disrespecting my father. “He told me to give this to you.” Then I flipped him off.

I hadn’t noticed, but Mom had heard us talking and come
from their room. Dad stared at me, stunned as I held my finger toward him. His neck muscles bunched, but Mom cut in. “You’re going to see him, aren’t you?”

I lowered my finger, my eyes still locked on his. “Yes.”

Her voice was soft but commanding. “Be careful, then.”

Dad stood silent, Mom’s invisible harness keeping him at bay. With one more look his way, I left.

Will’s apartment building, the Coldstone, was almost three miles from our house, and by the time I got there it was almost ten-thirty. The Coldstone sat on Third Avenue on the west end of the downtown area, and it wasn’t known for a welcoming atmosphere unless you were looking for something on the dark side of things. Dingy bars, taverns, run-down porno shops, winos, drunk rednecks, whores, pimps, and dealers littered the streets like discarded and broken junk in a dump. As I skated down the sidewalk, a police cruiser slowly passed by, the cop eyeing three scruffy guys standing outside a tavern called Burt’s.

I made my way to the end of the block, to the Coldstone, and went in the lobby. A huge lady in a flowered muumuu sat on one of the benches near the elevators, and I walked over. She held a Big Gulp, and a basket with a potted flower sat on the floor at her feet. I smiled, not interested in why a four-hundred-pound woman would be carrying a potted flower at ten-thirty at night. “Hi.”

She had a sheen of sweat on her forehead, and she dabbed at it with her wrist. “Hello.” I punched the up button even though she already had. She grunted. “Slow elevators. This building is older than our blessed Lord himself.”

I watched as the dial lowered from floor to floor. “Yeah.”

“I tried to get a ground-floor place because of my condition, but I couldn’t. It’s a glandular thing. Genetical. My doctor said I could probably sue this place under the Americans That Are Disabled Act because I’m handicapped, but they’re nice here. Told me I’d get the very next ground-floor vacancy, they did, and said that old man Kentucky Jim is about to expire. Drunk himself out of a liver, he did. Not to say that I’d want him to die at all, the poor man, but he does have a ground-level.”

I waited. “Cool.” The doors finally opened and we got on, me holding the doors open for her while she waddled inch by inch into the cubicle. “What floor?”

“Six. Thank you, dear.” I pressed six, then three. Will’s apartment was 322. The elevator ground its way up, me looking up like an idiot and the lady staring at me. “Are you new here?”

I shook my head. “Visiting.”

She laughed. “That’s probably a good thing. The last place I lived was worse, though. The water came out brown for the first few seconds when you turned on the tap, and my neighbor, Lordy Lordy, he was always banging around and fighting with his girlfriend. Horrible, horrible. And my gosh, when they would have … uh, relations, it was so loud I almost felt like I was in the room with them. Not that I need a boyfriend or anything like that or would want to be in there, but I’m just telling you.”

“Gotcha. That sucks.” I stared at the buttons, and finally, the door opened on the third floor. We said goodbye to each
other, and as the doors closed I looked at the apartment number across the hall. It was 315. I walked down the hall, realized I was going the wrong way, then turned around, backtracking to near the end of the hall and finding the right number.

I stood there for a moment before knocking, wondering what I was going to find and almost turning back. I’d come this far, and when I got home to Dad ready and waiting to flay me alive, hopefully I’d have Indy with me so I could avoid it. I knocked, covering the peephole with my finger. No answer, so I knocked again. A few seconds later, the door swung open.

An older guy, probably around forty and with tightly parted and thinning hair, answered the door. Clean-shaven and wearing worn slacks and a faded blue polo shirt to match, he furrowed his brow at me. He stuffed a stack of credit cards in his back pocket. “What do you want?”

I looked over his shoulder, trying to see if Will was there. I wasn’t sure I had the right place. “Uh, I’m looking for Indy.”

“Who are you?”

“His brother. I need to see him.”

“He’s not here.”

“Where is he?”

“I’m not his babysitter, kid.” He went to shut the door, and I put my hand up, holding it open. His eyes flashed to my hand. “You don’t want to do that.”

“Sir, I need to find my brother.”

He smiled. “You’d better get your hand off that door before I take it off for you.”

I kept my hand there. “I just need to talk to him. It’s important.”

“He’s out.”

I sighed. This was going nowhere fast, and by the looks of him, he was about to take my hand off the door and most likely rip it from my arm, too. I stepped back. “Would you mind telling him Tate stopped by?”

He smiled again. “Sure thing. And by the way, coming by here again wouldn’t do you too much good. Got it?”

I didn’t want to wait for the elevator, so I took the stairs, quickstepping down to the lobby and walking outside. The night was cool, almost crisp, and I stood there wondering what to do as I watched a lady standing on the corner hustling money. She wore thigh-high black vinyl boots with huge heels, a short denim skirt, and a tight top, and she had the pudgy look of a person who ate fast food every day. A feather boa wrapped around her shoulders fluttered in the breeze.

I put my board down, sitting on it and leaning my back against the brick of the Coldstone.

She turned, smiling. “Wanna good time, honey?”

I shook my head. “No thanks.”

“Your loss.” She smirked, then faced the street, showing her wares.

A few minutes passed before a shiny white SUV with a middle-aged man in it crept past, then braked and backed up. The lady went up to the passenger window as it rolled down, talked to the guy for a minute, then hopped in. Around the corner they went, and I was alone.

Fifteen minutes later, she walked around the corner, apparently finished with her job. She took her place at the curb, then spoke, her back to me. “Waiting for something or no place better to go?”

I looked at her cottage-cheesy butt. “Waiting.”

Her eyes scanned the road as she talked. “What’s your name?”

“Tate.”

She laughed. “I wonder what a boy named Tate would be waiting for in a part of town like this.”

“My brother.”

“Runaway?”

“Sort of.”

She twirled her boa. “I ran away once. Never came back, either.”

I looked at the profile of her face as she watched cars drive by. “Where’d you go?”

She laughed again. “Honey, after two weeks of running through every friend I had, I came here.”

“How long ago was that?”

“Five years.”

I crossed my arms over my chest, cold as the night deepened. “How old are you?”

“Nineteen.”

I looked at her. She’d been a prostitute since she was fourteen. She looked old. I’d thought at least twenty-seven or twenty-eight. “I’m almost seventeen.”

She grunted, waving to a car. “Age don’t matter here, honey. Time does. Get your brother out of here if you can.”

Just then, a police car rolled up and the passenger window rolled down. The cop, with a thick mustache and black hair, shook his head. “Move along, Mindy. Call it a night or I’ll take you in.”

She smirked. “Come on, Jack. One more and I’ll pay my rent.”

“Move it or lose it, girl.”

She sighed, staring down the street, then looked at me. “Hope you find your brother, Tate. Good luck.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I said, watching her walk around the corner.

The cop idled his car, eyeing me. “New to this area, son?”

“No. I mean, I’m just waiting for my dad. He’s working late tonight.” I looked down the street, seeing a plumbing truck parked at the curb in front of Burt’s Tavern.

He stared at me, suspicious. “Where does he work?”

I hitched my thumb to the Coldstone behind me. “He’s a plumber. Some kind of busted pipe or something.” I pointed. “There’s his truck. A-1 Plumbing. Heard of it?”

He shook his head. “Can’t say I have, but there’s no loitering around here. I’ll give you twenty minutes; then you’ll have to go inside when I come back around.”

“Thanks.”

He rolled on then, and I waited. Three drunks rambled out of the tavern, one of them puking on the side of the building before they made their way down the sidewalk, talking about some bitch in the bar with curly hair. I leaned my head back on the brick wall and looked up, wondering how much longer he’d be.

The cop came back on his rounds twenty minutes later, and as I saw his cruiser come down the street, I walked around the corner, set my board to pavement, and skated. Halfway home I kicked my board up and walked.

This late, there was hardly any traffic and fewer people out. As I passed under the humming buzz of fluorescent lights on a pawnshop sign around the corner from the skate park, a guy in a midnight-blue Acura pulled up beside me and rolled his passenger window down. “Got anything?”

I shook my head, not stopping but knowing what he wanted. “Around the corner. Far end of the park.”

He nodded, slowly rolling around the corner. As I turned up toward the park, I watched as the Acura sat in the shadows Under the Bridge, the dim figure of a dealer at his window handing him his dope. Five seconds later, the car drove away.

I crossed the street to distance myself from whoever was there, putting my board down and skating. As I passed, I kept my eyes straight and forward. Night people and street people and partiers were one thing, but if you didn’t treat the dealers like they were ghosts, you drew attention to yourself, and that was a bad thing. Unless you bought dope, that is.

I glanced back as a pickup truck with a broken muffler pulled up. Out of the shadows came the dealer, and I stopped, kicking my board up and turning on my heel. I reached the spot Under the Bridge just as the truck pulled away and the dealer was walking back into the shadows. I raised my voice, and it echoed under the cavernous vault of concrete. “He got it from here.”

Indy turned around, his eyes wide as he stuffed bills in his pocket. He said nothing, just stared at me.

I walked up to him, dropping my board and grabbing the front of his shirt, my face inches from his. “You know it, right? That night. Cutter got his stuff right here from a guy just like you. Scum. Trash.”

His breath was warm on my face as he spoke. “So, you’re going to beat me up, huh?”

A long moment passed, our eyes searching each other, and all I could think of was Cutter. He’d died in my arms, his glazed eyes on mine as his heart took its last beat. I clenched my teeth, shoving Indy back. “You’re not fucking worth it, you traitor.”