The Parker Trilogy Page 33

  He’d woken her, and she was upset. But he didn’t care. She didn’t understand that the chicken leg had come for him. To eat him. To show him what it was like to be chewed and gnawed on.

  Menacingly, it was rocking from side to side now, the fatty base at one end sinking into the carpet, the knotted bone at the other banging against the top of the doorframe, trying to jerry-rig its way in. Stupid, stupid nightmare. He must’ve had Kentucky Fried Chicken that night for dinner. It was funny now, but not really. It would’ve been. Could’ve been if . . .

  If what, Hector?

  “If what happened, hadn’t happened.”

  His mother kept shushing him, but when you’re seven, the possibility that a chicken leg has sharp, vicious teeth hidden just beneath the folds of its crispy, fried skin is just as real as any shush could ever be. So he kept on screaming, and before long the room became smaller, as a deep voice from within his mother’s room shouted out, startled and confused.

  That was when he realized that the Mean Man had decided to stay the night, to have a “sleep over,” as his mother called it. And that Hector had awoken him.

  His room was four walls of dirty paint. The one to his left had posters of Mike Piazza and Raúl Mondesi, his favorite Dodgers.

  Because your father loved the Dodgers, didn’t he?

  “Shut up. I won’t . . . I can’t . . .”

  Hector loved baseball. Sometimes, one of the boys in his neighborhood would play whiffle ball with him and it was great fun. On the other wall was a board with hooks on it, where his jackets and sweatshirts were hung, looking like colored ghosts now with the eerie glow of the hallway night-light as it shone dimly through his half-open doorway.

  Dirty walls. Dirty light.

  “I don’t want to think about this anymore,” Hector mumbled.

  But he did anyway. Because some memories, he knew, were like roller coasters; once they got going, you couldn’t hop off.

  Tufts of frayed carpet stood up on the floor. Their apartment smelled and had roaches that sometimes got into the bread bags and ruined your toast. But none of that mattered now because an argument had broken out in his mother’s bedroom, and well, she was losing.

  She was small. Tough, but small. And the Mean Man was big, like a bear, with eyes that scared Hector.

  Then? Silence, before his mother called out to him. “It’s okay, Hector, honey, go to bed now. We have to get some sleep, okay?”

  That’s when he felt the chicken bone smiiiiling. He couldn’t see the smile, mind you. No. But he just knew, somehow, that it was. And the bone at its top had now ducked and angled its way into the room. Hector watched in dismay as it rocked . . .

  back . . . and

  forth . . . back . . . and

  forth . . . moving a few inches forward at a time. Confident now that no one was coming to save him.

  Hector couldn’t help himself; he screamed out all the louder.

  “No. I won’t remember this. I won’t,” Hector said in a daze, remembering that there was still one thing you could do with roller coasters that you didn’t want to be on: you could close your eyes.

  The room, the moment, the memory went dark.

  The Gray Man was back in his head. That will not help you, Hector. Not in the long run.

  “I don’t care about the long run. I only care about now.”

  And that, my boy, is why you have come to this moment in your life. Now. Open your eyes!

  When Hector did, he saw her coming—his rescuer, his hope. The hall light came on, brightening his room and vaporizing the chicken bone. First, he saw her shadow and then she came, her pretty hair in a tousled mess, her outline dark, before her yellow pajama pants and a white, over-sized “Homeboy Industries” T-shirt came into view. His relief was so great that he almost wanted to cry. Throwing off his covers, he opened his arms and—

  Darkness. He’d closed his eyes again.

  He was grown now. This was silly. It was all the way in the past, and here he was, crying like a fool. “This is stupid!” Hector yelled, looking over his shoulder at The Gray Man, whose arms were spread wide, as if he were holding the incandescent bubble around them in place.

  No, The Gray Man said, sounding sad. This is the truth.

  Hector opened his eyes just in time to see his mother descend on him, her small hands grabbing at him fiercely as her long nails dug into his arms, just below the shoulders. “I told you,” she screamed through gritted teeth, “to shut the hell up!”

  She pushed him backwards, into the headboard, and then she slapped him, three or four times, across his face and on the top of his head, his shock and dismay turning him cold as ice. She’d spanked him before, yeah, but this was worse. Way worse. The blows hurt, badly.

  His tiny voice was piercing and desperate. “Mom? Mom? Stop! Mom, please! Stop.”

  But she didn’t. She kept hitting you, didn’t she?

  Hector leaned against the bubble with one arm outstretched, staring at his childhood in the third person. “Yeah, man. She did. And . . .”

  His mother gave him one last smack, across his face, and that’s when the light from the hallway illuminated the left side of her face and he saw the welt there, just below her eye, fresh and swollen. He wasn’t the only one taking a beating that night.

  Her noticing that he’d noticed it helped nothing. “Are you happy now? Do you see!” she yelled at him, pointing at her face. “Do you see what you’ve done?!”

  And he did.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” he squealed as she forced his covers over him and violently tucked him in.

  “Sorry, nothin’! You go to sleep! And don’t make another sound, you hear?”

  He nodded meekly and watched her storm out of his room. A second later the hall light went out.

  He couldn’t stop crying, so he jammed the Iron Man sheets deep into his mouth as his body shook in the effort to contain his sobs.

  It would be better, he thought, if he could read one of his books. There was The Cat in the Hat and The Giving Tree, which he’d gotten for his birthday that year, and the one his Uncle Roberto had gotten him as a surprise: Charlotte’s Web. But that one was a little hard to read by himself. It didn’t matter anyway, they were all on the small bookshelf against the right wall, near his hanging jackets and sweaters. He didn’t dare get up to get them for fear that he’d make noise.

  So he curled into a ball, unable to sleep for a long, long time, staring at the hallway with a guarded eye, not afraid that the chicken leg would come back, but that his mother would.

  And that’s when Hector Villarosa learned, for the very first time, that it wasn’t safe to love anybody in this world.

  Not even your own mother.

  Chapter Two

  When Father Soltera left Gabriella, it was just past eleven thirty and well past visiting hours. He waved goodbye to the floor nurse, Jessica, who smiled kindly at him, and the janitor, Carlos, who was making lazy eights with his mop as he worked his way down the hall.

  He knew all the staff here and most of them knew him as the kind priest who came to pray for one of the members of his church. Which, sadly, was the same as saying they didn’t really know him at all. He kept his visits short each month, no more than an hour, so as not to appear inappropriate, and the late hours of his visits were easily explained away as church business. Most of the floors shut down at ten, but he got the same nod as any family members who wanted to stay a little longer would.

  Still, leaving was never easy, and always done with a slow, labored walk, his feet filled with the same heaviness as his heart, the image of her continually thinning face weighing on him. Oftentimes, the pumping sounds of the ventilator and muted beeps of the EKG machine would linger in his ears for days, a sort of morbid soundtrack to the flickering images in his memory: the invasive appearance of the tracheotomy tube going down her throat, the IV and arterial lines that wove in and out of her body like sewn threads, the eerie red glow of the pulse monitor on her index finge
r.

  That long, slender finger that seemed to be pointing at him as he stood at the foot of the bed when it was time to leave. Accusingly. Mute, lost in a world of darkness, she still seemed to be reaching out to him to say, “If you’d just been brave enough to love me, I wouldn’t be here.”

  The room was so small. But not as small as her mind now. She was trapped in there, somewhere, her body withering away in a sort of sad grace, still fighting, still holding the line, trying to anchor her to a place where her consciousness could return.

  On the table next to the bed there was always a small pot of flowers, brought by her mother. The staff told him that she still visited every day, but for not as long now. When Father Soltera had first started coming, he would often see sheets on the tiny couch beneath the only window. Her mother used to sleep over. Now, from what he heard, she hardly slept. That was the price, he imagined, of seeing your child this way. Every day.

  He was jarred from his thoughts by the ding of the elevator. The doors opened and he stepped inside, feeling gravity give a bit as he descended back to his life. Or what was left of it. From the lobby he would retrace his path back to church.

  Sometimes he would think of his cancer when he did this. Other times, he’d focus on his to-do list for the rest of the week. But most of the time he would engage with his Lord, in hard-fought debate, over justice and injustice, mercy and cruelty.

  There was a time he thought these discussions to be both shameful and horrid, a complete regression of the development of his faith. But now, he felt differently. Each step on the sidewalk, each passing streetlight that the metro sped by, was another road marker on his journey to greater understanding. Why it took pain to bring greater clarity, either spiritually or intellectually, was a mystery that greater men than he had tried to solve.

  As usual, he stopped at Harry’s, a 24-hour diner that was located between metro stops. Eating this late at his age was nothing but an invitation for heartburn later, but on these nights, he’d usually get home so wired that he couldn’t sleep for hours anyway.

  So, he ordered a short stack of pancakes and a tall glass of milk. He ate and sat for an hour, flipping through a stale copy of the Los Angeles Times while he gathered the strength to go home. This was never easy, because he knew that the minute he got there, the clock would start and the waiting to see her would begin all over again.

  Later, at a quarter to two in the morning, he was halfway down the street, the steps of the church he served finally in view, when he saw a man get out of a parked car across the street and start walking menacingly toward him.

  As he got closer, Father Soltera could make out his face. He realized, with shock and alarm, that it was Felix, the boyfriend of Luisa Garcia, one of his parishioners, who was sixteen and pregnant with Felix’s baby.

  Felix had started off by asking, then telling, then threatening Luisa to get an abortion and was none too happy that Luisa had come to Father Soltera for help. Earlier tonight, Maggie Kincaid, a woman who worked at the women’s shelter that Father Soltera had taken Luisa to for safety, had called him to say that Felix was making threats against everyone in order to try and get Luisa back under his control.

  Father Soltera tensed. It was the dead of night. This was not good.

  At first, he wanted to deny the danger that was before him. Surely the boy’s threats to hurt him were little more than brave talk by a man who was smart enough not to actually do anything foolish.

  But there was a way to Felix’s walk, a gangster-like half shuffle, that foretold his intent. It was a completely inappropriate way to approach a non-gang member, much less a priest. Besides his walk, there was also the way his head was tilted and his shoulders were hunched, his dark blue Dickies jacket tight across his thick chest and contrasting sharply with his white T-shirt, which seemed to almost glow in the dim moonlight.

  Once again, Father Soltera felt his age; he was too old to run, too old to fight. A particularly acute sense of defeat came over him, an empty feeling soaked in frustration. He stopped walking and told himself to think this through. It was okay. He was a man of God. He would talk to this young man and—

  Suddenly, two men grabbed him from behind, one by each arm, and began walking him forcefully toward Felix, who had now crossed the street and hopped up on the sidewalk in one fluid motion. Moving like a young man. A determined man.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Father Soltera protested, before trying to struggle loose.

  The man on his left replied in a coarse whisper “Shut up, old man!” as he clamped a hand around the back of Father Soltera’s neck and squeezed hard.

  It was blatantly obvious what “the meaning of all this” was when Father Solera looked up to see that Felix had pulled out a long hunting knife, the blade dancing up and down as he marched forward. “I warned you, old man. I did. More than once,” he grumbled.

  Father Soltera tried to cry out, but now the man on his right had used a hand to cover his mouth so that his cries were muffled and useless. Struggling with all his might, Father Soltera kicked his legs and jerked his arms, almost slipping away from the man on his left, who cursed in frustration.

  But it was no use. Because some creatures have instincts that are primal, and for Felix, this was the instinct to hurt and kill.

  His shoes gripping the sidewalk as they pushed him forward, Father Soltera had one moment of calm. So, this was it. The wages of sin were death, and this was going to be the price he paid. He was going to be murdered almost right in front of his own church.

  He told himself that no, this wasn’t possible. That surely, His Lord would not let this happen. That somehow, someway—

  And that’s when Felix began stabbing him, over and over again.

  Maggie Kincaid did not know why the dreams had come back. But they had. At first just vague impressions that flitted through her mind upon awakening, then sketches and watercolors, like an art gallery in her subconscious, until at last they became as clear as oil paintings, depicting things mostly harmless but sometimes foreboding.

  They’d come back shortly after she’d moved out of her sister Julie’s apartment and found her own place, which she decorated with an eye toward tranquility.

  Using what was left of her savings, she bought all new furniture from Living Space, her navy-blue, retro couches blending smoothly with the gray carpet of the living room. The side tables were decorated with peace lilies, the theme of nature bringing warmth and calm.

  In one corner she had a potted fiddle leaf plant on a crossbar stand, and hanging from chains near the window were three asparagus ferns of unequal size, from small to large, to remind her daily to focus on slow and loving growth.

  On her glass dining table was a shiny snake plant, surrounded by damp moss in a white pot. Around the table were four modern chairs that left barely enough room to get to the kitchen, which went mostly unused except for breakfast each day. She liked having lunch at work, and most nights she either picked up something on the way home or ordered in.

  It all worked fine until the night. Any night. As soon as the sun went down, she wanted no part of the outside world. She knew this was silly, that Michael was gone now and that no one else was after her. But, still, after so many years of relying on primitive instincts to survive, she was having a hard time letting go of them.

  She was in the hallway, in a thick, blue robe, leaning against the wall. Rubbing her eyes, she focused on her Taekwondo gloves hanging on one of the hooks just inside the door next to a few of her jackets, thankful that her class for tonight had been canceled due to her instructor’s vacation plans. It was good timing, because with as little sleep as she’d gotten the last three nights, she doubted she could’ve handled her lessons.

  In the past four months, she’d proved to be a quick study, though, moving up from white belt to yellow belt with ease, while appreciating both the harshness and the discipline of her instructor’s approach. And she was proud to still be standing, even after a half doze
n of the men who’d joined the class when she did, dropped out.

  Sighing, she used her right foot to take care of a scratch on her left ankle, then contemplated making a cup of tea. She glanced over at her reading chair, tucked in the corner. With its worn, brown leather, it completely clashed with the rest of the apartment and was the only thing she’d brought with her from New York. She’d tried to part with it, but simply couldn’t. Too many pages of too many books had been turned while sitting in that chair, and it would’ve been like leaving behind a dear friend.

  Next to the chair were two stacks of books, all waiting to be read, and hanging over them was her favorite plant of all: a majestic string of pearls, its vines hanging down in full surrender. She didn’t know if it was possible for a plant to have a personality, but this one seemed to always be cheerful and inquisitive, and at times, when she sat beneath it in her chair, she could’ve sworn the plant was reading right along with her.

  “You’re stoned on exhaustion, Maggie,” she said to herself, then giggled.

  She thought about Luisa for a moment, then immediately banished her from her mind. She knew the drill. Her therapist had practically brainwashed her with it. When you had trouble sleeping, the last thing you needed to do was to start ruminating on things. It was worse than turning on the lights and resetting your pupils, which made the sweet, melatonin embraces of sleep even harder to recapture.

  Come to think of it, tea was a stupid idea, too.

  She peed, washed her hands and went back to bed, not trudging there but certainly not floating, either. She would go through her breathing exercises, she would calm her mind and then maybe, just maybe, she would conk out again.

  Taking off her robe, she plunged into her sheets and comforter, then wrapped herself up like a burrito and buried her face in her pillows, which felt good. Really, really good. This was a good sign. Usually, when any chance at sleep was over, her body almost reacted allergically to her bed.

  She thought briefly about work again, then switched her mind to counting out the seconds of each inhale and exhale, focusing on her lungs as they filled and expanded, emptied and shrank, letting the oxygen populate her blood in metered doses. Quietly, silently, her brain’s ability to turn itself “off” again returned.