Anonymity (14 page)

SHE TOOK a little Zoloft. Fifty milligrams every day just to take the edge off. All her friends took something. Everybody did, right?

Barbara popped the little white pill into her mouth and washed it down with a swirl of wine. Who could blame her for ignoring that pesky little alcohol warning on the prescription bottle? If she followed all the darned instructions she'd never get to have a glass of wine or a cocktail. And sometimes she needed a drink more than the pharmaceutical.

Her therapist called it self-medicating. Her daughter called it better living through chemistry. Barbara called it survival.

She wandered back into the office, where Gerald was paying bills.

“So what's the damage this month?” she asked.

Gerald removed the reading glasses from his nose and rubbed the red spots where they had pressed him.

“We'll survive another month.”

She sipped her wine and nodded. No need to discuss their situation. Their life that had started as the typical American success story had ended up as the typical American financial disaster. In the beginning, they rode that big wave of money that washed over Austin during the tech boom. The city's nickname was Silicon Hills because of Dell, IBM, 3M, Motorola, Samsung, Texas Instruments and other companies that fed off the young energy of Austin. Gerald had been in software development in the middle of it all. Barbara had worked at a public relations firm.

They were flush. They bought a house. They bought stock. Emily arrived, so they bought a bigger house. For twenty years they had steadily increasing incomes, so they leveraged their future. A future they had never questioned would only get increasingly better.

Then the market soured, the tech bubble burst, and Gerald lost his job. They were left with a huge mortgage, three car payments and credit card debt that climbed each month.

Gerald was unemployed for nearly two years. A situation that devoured their meager savings and cut a gash in their marriage that Barbara was unsure would ever heal. They continued to wait for the real estate market to recover and prayed that their stock portfolio would rebound.

“So, we're okay? No need to tap the line of credit this month?” Barbara asked.

“No. No. We're good. Really.”

The job Gerald eventually landed was a step down in stature and pay. They discussed moving if he got a good out-of-state offer. But their house was worth half of what they had paid for it, so they kept holding on, hoping for the real estate market to recover. Barbara used to drive around collecting the white sale sheets out of the plastic tubes on her neighbors’ lawns. Asking prices kept declining. Barbara finally gave up and quit torturing herself.

Gerald said the recession hit Austin earlier than other parts of the country. Big boom. Big bust.

He pushed a button and the computer screen went black.

“I'm going to watch a movie. You game?” he asked.

“What movie?”

“Wall Street
.”

“God, no. Thanks, but I'll pass. Why do you beat yourself up with that depressing stuff?”

“I don't know. Guess I like to think it will help me figure things out.”

“Phfffff.”

Sometimes Gerald puzzled her. They had both been downsized about the same time—a double whammy of bad luck. It seemed Gerald had taken the loss harder. Barbara immediately started freelancing and now had a dozen clients. No big accounts yet, but she was steadily increasing her customer base. It was a new phase for her, always on the scramble for the next job, the next injection of money to keep them afloat. She didn't like the stress, but somehow she seemed to thrive when there was more at stake.

But that wasn't Gerald. He was the slow and steady guy—the dependable, methodical worker who liked parameters and knowing what to expect. When he should have been fighting the hardest, he'd given up. Instead of looking for a job, he'd gone into a funk and started drinking. She'd made the mistake of forcing him out the door with his golf bag. He'd just gone to the country club (a contractual expense they couldn't easily shed) and spent money they didn't have at the club bar with equally miserable unemployed members. Even when he was home, he wasn't really present. He'd shut himself in the theater room until Barbara was sure he was going to develop a vitamin D deficiency. That was one habit he had yet to shake. He could shut himself up for hours in that dark room.

Emily had inherited some of Gerald's need for routine and solitude. Neither seemed to embrace change or challenge. Emily had been a mediocre student and her lackluster performance hadn't earned her any prizes in life.

Barbara heard the rumble of the surround sound and she felt sad and alone. It was hard being the one who worried and planned and pushed. No wonder she self-medicated.

She hauled herself up the stairs to Emily's room. She used the handrail to steady herself, but only once. Barbara flipped on the light in her daughter's room. The dresser glittered with costume jewelry and evaporated bottles of cheap perfume. The corkboard still held Emily's photography, strange things she thought deserved to be documented.

Barbara knew it was melancholy to comfort herself with her daughter's life, but she missed her. She missed all the little clues that meant her daughter was still a part of their home—headbands strewn around the house, long shiny hair in Barbara's brush. Her delicate wet footprints fading on the tile after a shower. Her laugh, like sunshine.

Sure, they'd had difficulties, but Barbara chose to dwell on the beautiful aspects of her daughter. Like labor, it was easy to forget the pain of having a disgruntled, rude teenager.

An ache gripped Barbara's chest like an invisible hand. All mothers know these hurting moments when your child burns so strong in your heart that you need them physically. She lay on the bed beside Emily's favorite stuffed animal. The toy had been dragged through the dirt in the park, thrown up on in the car, lost on the floor of the grocery and abandoned when Emily went to college.

“Hello, you old bear,” Barbara said. “Are you lonely up here all by yourself?” Miranda Panda didn't respond, so Barbara tipped her wine glass toward the creature's stitched mouth. “There now, how's that? All better?”

She'd never admit it, but Barbara mourned the days she hadn't been the one to take Emily to the park. They'd splurged on the very best daycare, the one that promised an enriched experience, but Barbara envied the women who got to spend their days with her daughter. She had missed so much of Emily's young life, and now that she was grown and gone, Barbara felt an acute sense of loss. She'd bought her things to make up for not being there for her, things to ease her own guilt. And where were those things now?

Barbara had been torn. She had wanted to work, and she'd felt an obligation to help keep up their lifestyle. The Bryces had grown accustomed to nice things and it never occurred to them to cut back. They simply worked harder.

That's what people did in the eighties and nineties. They embraced the pursuit of wealth. It was exciting and stressful in a good way. Everybody was competitive. Business was fun.

Then it all crashed and burned.

Being an adult was complicated and often not much fun. Every day brought a fresh difficulty. So, while it was frustrating to watch, Barbara found it hard to fault her daughter for being a reluctant adult.

Life is hard.

That's why Zoloft remained Barbara's best friend.

IT SUCKED to leave Emily's house, but Lorelei knew when to move on. She didn't want to burn her chances of ever crashing there again. Emily had developed that impatient look adults get when you've become a drag.

She set off on foot toward downtown on a main road. The van guy who had rescued her had driven it and she knew that path was a straight shot back to Shoal Creek. She crossed a big bridge into the city and stopped to look over the edge. While the water had receded, the corridor below the bridge was still forbidding.

Gnarls of trees amassed against pilings. Odd bits of humanity, clothes and garbage and yard art were twisted into the mix. All the squatting spots by the creek would still be underwater. She reassessed and headed toward campus. She needed to find a place to crash before dark.

Along the way she often stopped to consider some strange result of the storm. People were out everywhere, washing steps and righting muddy lawn furniture.

As she neared campus, she stopped to follow the source of laughter from an alley. In the closing light, she could make out a girl watching two guys chase something. They seemed to snare the small animal. They whooped with victory and stuffed the poor thing into a cardboard box.

She hoped it wasn't a kitten.

“Lorelei.” It was Fiona. “Oh, hey. You're still around.”

“Yeah.”

“You wanna come with us? We're going to hang out with some people at somebody's apartment.”

“Cool.”

“Come on.”

They all headed toward a bumper sticker-strewn old van leaning on the far side of the street. At their approach, a girl turned from the passenger seat. She spilled some liquid into her mouth from a giant beer can.

“Who's that?” she asked, waving her beer at the newcomer.

“Her? Oh, that's Lorelei,” Fiona said. “She's chill.”

Lorelei threw her pack in the back and crawled into the dark depths of the vehicle. It was dirty, what her mother would have called filthy. Fast-food wrappers and paper cups with liquid inside rolled around on the floor. A mangy dog that smelled like death slept in a corner. The others tumbled inside and slid the door shut, cutting off sunlight. It was stuffy and Lorelei began to sweat.

“That's Tweak,” Fiona said of one boy. He raised a beer can to her. “And this is Toby.” This one looked fresh off the farm, but there was something girly about him too. “And that's Malcolm driving, and that's his girl, Ajaicia.”

“How you doin, mon?” Malcolm said. Rasta. No dreads, but his grill was golden. His girlfriend ran her hands down his arm to show he was taken. She looked sort of like Elda, just not as pretty.

“Hey,” Ajaicia said, more friendly this time. “Oh my God, your tat is badass.”

“We're going to my place to hang,” Malcolm said. “You're welcome. Everybody welcome.” He was older. Lorelei gauged him to be in his thirties. What was he doing hanging out with street kids? He was either a social worker or a drug dealer. She bet drug dealer, but either way, a floor where she could sack out sounded fine for now. They would probably even scare up some food.

The animal scratched inside the box. She hoped they didn't intend to eat whatever was in there.

“Have you seen Mook or Elda or anybody from that group?” Lorelei asked Fiona as they bumped along on the hard van floor.

“No, man, they like, took off to Mook's mom's or something,” she said. “That's where he runs off to.”

“What about Freestyle and Minion?”

She scoffed. “What? Those losers. I mean Minion, he's okay. But Freestyle, he's a loser for sure. Crazy foster scare motherfucker.”

Freestyle had never mentioned that part of his background. That explained a lot.

They pulled into a ratty apartment complex with a faded sign that read
Siesta Gardens.
The once adobe-colored walls were streaked with rust leaked from the roof, giving the whole complex the appearance of melting. Empty liquor bottles and cigarette butts littered their way. Tiny faces with round hopeful eyes peeked from behind windows smudged with grime. Malcolm led their group past scarred doors. One was kicked in. The doorframe was splintered where a deadbolt had been.

Lorelei got the feeling this was going to be a flophouse. One step inside the apartment and she knew she was right.

Unlike a community house where things were marginally safe, a flophouse was anything but. These were lousy places where you could get drugs, robbed, laid, arrested, raped or worse. Lorelei knew she wouldn't be staying the night, but she decided to hang around for a while just to see who might arrive. It was surprising the people who showed up at a flophouse.

Before her eyes even adjusted to the darkness, Lorelei was hit with the smell of nicotine and stale beer. Kids were scattered around on an old couch, an armchair, the floor, about a dozen in all now that their group had arrived. A coffee table held an armada of beer cans. A few were stacked into a pyramid among overflowing ashtrays and empty plastic pop bottles.

A grossly thin guy in a wheelchair smoked a cigarette, and Lorelei could feel his eyes on her. It didn't take her long to surmise that Malcolm shared the apartment with him. Or maybe it was this guy's apartment and Malcolm was a squatter. She avoided the thin man's vulpine stare.

A round of applause went up when Tweak arrived with the box. Malcolm emerged from a back room with a giant cage. People grabbed beer cans and cleared the table. He set the cage on the table.

Everyone turned to look at the guy in the wheelchair, and that's when Lorelei noticed the snake wrapped around his arm. He uncoiled the redtail boa. Her brother's snake had had the same pattern that reminded her of chromosomes she had studied in science class. She was creeped out by how the pattern repeated through the reptile's eyes. Glass over yellow scales that made it look as if it could read your every thought. Her brother's snake had made her feel naked, like it could see her in a way impossible to others. She had been glad when the morbid thing slithered into the wilderness behind their house. She knew it wouldn't survive the winter.

The boa slowly encircled Malcolm's arm and inched its way toward his neck. He seemed affectionate toward the animal and was careful when he lowered her into the cage. He turned the cardboard box upside down and a small rat fell out. It looked half-dead and Lorelei figured the boys had stomped it.

The snake didn't move. It seemed almost as if it didn't even realize prey was near. The rat smelled danger and made a feeble attempt to flee, making it to the corner of the cage where it collapsed in terror. The predator inched forward and froze again. The room was silent, everyone poised for the strike. The serpent was patient. It watched, flicking its tongue.

It struck and clamped down on the rat's head. The rodent squealed and struggled. The snake aggressively coiled her body around her prey until only one twitching rat claw flailed outside the spirals of sinew. The predator cinched tighter. There was one tiny squeak and the twitching claw wilted.

The room rumbled. Girls shrieked. Boy's high-fived each other.

“Duuuuude!”

“Oh, man, that was harsh.”

“Wicked!”

Lorelei decided to find a bathroom instead of watching the slow, methodic swallowing process. As she made her way toward the hall, a thin hand with dirty nails reached out and snatched her arm.

“What's your name?” the guy in the wheelchair asked. His teeth were yellow, his eyes roadmaps.

“Lorelei.”

“I can't remember that. I'll call you Phoenix. Do you got any cigarettes, Phoenix?” Cigarettes were a sure way to make friends, and she usually kept a pack in her bag for just such a situation. Unfortunately, she wasn't holding.

“I'm sorry. I don't smoke.”

He let her arm go. “Pity,” he said.

“Dude,” Malcolm said. “I got your foul smokes, here.” He pitched a pack to him. “You ought to give that shit up and just smoke more weed, mon.”

Wheelchair guy became engrossed in opening the cigarette pack, and Lorelei slipped away. Down the short hall she found the bathroom. It was extra large, with sturdy handholds and a shower that a wheelchair could roll into. It was dirty and smelled like men's toilets at gas stations. Cigarette butts floated in old shampoo bottles. The toilet paper roll was empty.

She opened her pack and pulled out her toilet paper stash. She hovered above the seat as she peed. A roach scratched as it climbed between the folds of the clear shower curtain next to her. She heard more people arrive outside. Music cranked—a tune by Everclear that Lorelei loved. People shouted to be heard. There was laughter. She finished and wiped. Before she left, she squished the bug inside the curtain, adding its oozy guts to the soap scum and mildew.

“Hey.” Tweak was in her face as soon as she opened the bathroom door. “I wondered where you went. Here, have a beer.” Lorelei didn't really like beer, but to be sociable she took the offering. She hadn't eaten, and if she drank, she would get woozy, so she sipped slowly while she planned what she intended to do for the night. She couldn't stay. There would be a lot of things going on here all night, but sleeping wasn't one of them. Besides, if she fell asleep in this crowd, she'd most likely wake up to find her backpack taken.

A couple began groping next to her in the hall, but there were so many people crammed into the small apartment that there was hardly anywhere else to go. Fiona pushed past her.

“Girlfriend, come on,” Fiona said and grabbed Lorelei's hand, pulling her into a back bedroom. People squeezed against the walls as she passed, and she realized with a shot of dread that the guy in the wheelchair was behind her. Fiona pushed open a door and the group filed inside—Ajaicia, Tweak and Fiona dropped onto a bare, stained mattress. The bed had handrails, one pillow and a nasty blanket.

“I'm Lawrence,” the guy in the wheelchair said to her. “This is my place.”

Lorelei thought this wasn't something she'd be proud of, but all she did was nod and calculate how quickly she could make her exit. Fiona zipped open her pack and fanned out drugs on the splotchy mattress. The others gathered around. Lawrence pulled a wad of cash from his pocket. Lorelei had thought him needy when he'd asked for a cigarette, but he had a huge roll of bills. He began to count money.

“You know what I want,” Lawrence said. He pitched a worn leather pouch on the bed, and Fiona pulled out his works. Lorelei felt the walls start a slow inward creep. Lawrence lit a cigarette, and she wanted to gag. Her ears buzzed. Tweak had probably put something in her drink. This had happened to her before, and she had awoken to a guy pawing her clothes off, his hot breath in her face. She had tried to push him away, but her arms were heavy. Somebody, Lorelei could never remember if it was a guy or a girl, but some kind stranger had come into the room and stopped him.

She needed to get out, but Lawrence's wheelchair blocked the door. They were on the first floor, so Lorelei looked to the window. It was open, an old screen hung on at the edges, but the middle was busted where somebody had pushed through from outside. Everybody was focused on the drugs arrayed on the bed. Nobody paid any attention to her as she slipped through the shredded spines of metal that frayed the hole in the screen.

She managed to get half of her body through the screen when she got stuck. Thinking her pack was hung on the scratchy screen, she lunged forward to rip herself free. Suddenly, she was jerked back inside the room.

“Hey!” she yelled, grabbing at the screen where ragged edges punctured her hands. One of her legs still dangled outside the window. The weight of the pack held her off-kilter.

“Where you think you're going, girl?” Tweak hissed in her ear.

“Let go!” Lorelei tried to shove him away, but he held tight to the shoulder straps of her pack. “Let go!” Her head felt like it was shrinking, squeezing rational thought out, filling her with fear and anger. She couldn't breathe.

“That's not very nice. I give you a beer and you try and run out on me?”

“Dude, let her go!” she heard Fiona say.

“Please,
please
, stop!” Lorelei cried.

“You got to stay and party with us. You're being rude,” Tweak said.

“I said let her go, motherfucker. You're such a douche.” Fiona again.

Lorelei was being dragged down, backward, onto the floor. She squeezed her arms behind her back and slid out of the pack. She was suddenly light. She heard Tweak hit the floor and curse. The room exploded with laughter.

She had to get out. She couldn't breathe. Lorelei shoved through the screen, scratching her face, lacerating her sweatshirt. She hit the sidewalk on one shoulder, but she felt no pain.

There was yelling inside the room, but Lorelei didn't wait to see the outcome of the fight. She stumbled around the corner and ran past the open front door of the apartment, where the party had spilled outside. She dodged people. Some of them called out to her, but she didn't hear them. She ran to the street outside the complex.

A city bus arrived. She stumbled on. Luckily, she had her zippered money pouch in her pocket. She couldn't count. Her hands felt numb. She held the leather bag open. The bus driver frowned at her and clicked his tongue, but he picked the correct change out and sent the silver tinkling down into the coin slot.

“Don't throw up on my bus,” he said. “Pull the cord if you need to stop.”

Her legs felt like jelly, but her mind was weird and agitated. There was no telling what Tweak had had put in that beer.

Maybe the bus would drive by something she recognized. She needed campus. She'd find that church and sleep in the cemetery like she had her first night in town.

At least that was her plan. She rode for what seemed like hours, fighting to stay awake. She didn't want to wake up to a cop in her face. She felt sick and she panicked and pulled the bell cord. The bus dumped her out in front of a metal-sided restaurant. She barely made it off the sidewalk before she collapsed into a bank of scrubby, sticky bushes. She crawled into the interior of the landscaping, balled herself into a fetal position and passed out.