No More Us for You (4 page)

Ms. Otto scurried toward the entrance. When she stepped outside, she swatted the air before her. The hills were still on fire.

“See you later,” I told Nadine.

“My starling,” she said. “Come back. The key is under the doormat.”

I laughed and headed back to my post.

It was a quarter after four. I looked at the sheet and read the words out loud to myself. I thought about the
mechanical museum guard in the east wing, just sitting there, dozing away the hours, no ambition, no heart, no pain, which all sounded appealing to me at that moment. I set the sign on the floor and placed the Scotch tape on top of it. With my eyes closed, I leaned back in my chair. I saw the ash sifting down, a child's handprint on the hood of a car. I saw Will walking down the hallway by himself. I saw Mira's face. Her big blue eyes. Her hand rising to her mouth when she turned to leave. My throat felt tight, my chin started to twitch. I was trying to make myself stop crying, which only made it worse.

It was the 7th of February, the one-year anniversary of Gabriel's passing, and I was doing surprisingly okay. Yes, I thought of him and of course I got sad, but it wasn't crippling me like I'd imagined it was going to. It helped that I had Heidi and Vanessa at my side.

The three of us were eating oranges on the couch in the living room. It would've been nice to hang out in the backyard instead, to eat our oranges at the patio table under the big umbrella, but there was too much ash floating around, coating everything with fine white flakes. On
the walk home, the air had smelled like burnt cedar. My eyes itched and felt sandpapery.

Heidi dug her fingernail into the navel of her orange, spraying a tiny cloud of mist. Vanessa's orange was already unpeeled, the skin in a mound on the glass coffee table. She thumbed out a wedge and popped it into her mouth. “These are good, Is.”

“We have a ton of them.” I pointed out the orange tree in the backyard. “Remind me before you leave and I'll grab some for you.”

“Thanks.”

Heidi rolled her eyes and smirked.

“You too, Heidi,” I said, sliding a piece into my mouth.

She nodded and ripped off a chunk of skin.

I got the feeling she felt threatened, like all of a sudden Vanessa would swoop in and become my new best friend.

Vanessa slid her napkin over the coffee table where she'd sprayed the glass with her orange. Last night I'd told her about Gabriel, how he drowned, how much I missed
him, and she had listened intently and said all the right things like
Oh, Is, that's so awful, I'm so sorry, I can't even imagine what that was like for you,
her voice a roll of gauze wrapping around a wound. Then she opened up with her own experience with grief, of a childhood friend who'd died of leukemia. It made our bond stronger: A new level of understanding who we were had been revealed. She didn't say much about Wilson and why she transferred to Millikan except that she used to hang out with the wrong crowd.
Drugs and stuff,
she had said.
It got out of hand.
I figured she'd tell me more when she was ready.

Vanessa jerked her head toward the backyard. “Is that your little brother?”

I turned around. Roland was at the edge of the flower beds, crouched and walking sideways with his hands over his kneecaps.

“Unfortunately,” I said.

“He's cute.”

Heidi coughed, nearly choking on her orange.

“There's nothing cute about him,” I assured Vanessa. “Wait till you meet him.”

“What's he doing, anyway?” Vanessa asked.

“Trying to catch a lizard,” I said. “That's all he does. Watch
SpongeBob
and catch lizards.”

“And fart in his hand and lift it to your nose,” Heidi added.

Vanessa scrunched up her face.

I stood up from the couch and walked to the sliding glass door. Roland now had the tip of his foot in the flower beds and his hands out as if he were warming them against a fire. I'm not sure when his fascination with lizards began. Last week while he was watching cartoons, I flipped through the journal he was required to keep for Ms. Pritchard, his fourth-grade teacher. Below the dates, he wrote only one sentence to describe each day:

In the margins, Ms. Pritchard had written with a red pen:
Oh my, you must have lots of lizards in your yard!
Below her comment, Roland had penciled:
Duh.

I opened the sliding glass door and the scent of burning trees blew in. “Don't step on Mom's flowers,” I told him.

He fluttered his hand behind his back, waving me off.

“She's going to get mad.”

“Okay.”

Roland lunged at the ground with his hands out, then turned around and tiptoed out of the flower beds with one arm lifted, a thin tail hanging from his fist. I closed the sliding glass door.

“I used to catch grasshoppers when I was a kid,” Vanessa said. “God, I was such a tomboy.”

Heidi swallowed an orange wedge. “It means you have lesbian tendencies.”

Vanessa scowled.

“I'm only teasing,” Heidi said. “Don't get your panties in a wad.”

I looked at Heidi and opened my eyes bigger as if to say
Be nice,
and she repeated my expression, mocking me.

Vanessa tapped me on the knee. “You need to swing by the museum and meet that guy I told you about. He'd be perfect for you.”

“Oh, stop it,” I said.

“What about me?” Heidi chirped.

Vanessa turned to her. “You have your Matt ‘Massive Forehead' Hawkins.”

“He doesn't even know I exist,” Heidi whined.

Vanessa turned to me. “I'm serious. Come by.”

“Just introduce me at school,” I said.

“I
never
see him there. And when I do, you're not around.”

“Then it's not meant to be,” I said. “I don't like to force things. It just makes the whole thing awkward.”

“Oh, Is,” Vanessa said, exasperated.

That was the thing with me and Gabriel. It happened naturally. In class, we'd tease each other, he'd bump my elbow while I tried taking notes, I'd poke his side with my pen, then after class, just small talk in the hallway, by the lockers, then serious talk, long conversations about our families, what we loved, what we feared, what we wanted to do when we were done with school, then hands, hands and skin, then kissing and love, then he was gone.

While I was watching Heidi break apart her orange, slipping her thumbnail between two pieces, I had tunnel vision—the world through a glass tube again, the sound turned low—and I pictured the three of us as skeletons. Vanessa lifted an orange wedge with a bony hand to her skull, Heidi's chewed piece slid behind the bars of her rib
cage. I wiggled the fingers of my right hand and imagined the tiny bones rattling like dice.

“Is, what's wrong with your hand?” Heidi asked.

I made a fist and stretched out my fingers, again and again. “It fell asleep.”

“That's weird,” Vanessa said.

“It happens sometimes.”

Heidi made a face like she thought I was crazy.

Roland opened the sliding glass door. “Can I bring him inside?” He raised his fist, the lizard's tail dangling from it like a broken rubber band.

“No, Rolo,” I said. “Let him go and come meet my friend Vanessa.”

“Please.”

“I said
no
.”

Roland twisted his face and closed his eyes halfway. “
I said no
,” he mush-mouthed.

“That's really mature.”

“That's really mature,”
he repeated.

“My name is Roland and my parents are big morons living in North Carolina.”

He stepped back from the sliding glass door and slammed it shut, the glass vibrating in its frame.

“My God,” Vanessa said, swiveling her head slowly. “He's a little monster.”

“At least you don't have to live with him,” I told her.

Heidi wiped her mouth with her napkin. “I should probably get going.”

Vanessa stood up from the couch. “Same here.”

“We should all do something this weekend,” I said. “Maybe Shoreline Village.”

“I have to work at the museum on Saturday,” Vanessa said.

I turned to Heidi. “Let's swing by. Then we can go to Shoreline Village afterward.”

“Hopefully Carlos will be working,” Vanessa said.

The sliding glass door opened again and Roland flew inside with his palm up, hollering, “Look, look!” He turned his hand over the coffee table and the lizard's tail fell onto the glass, twisting and squirming like a worm.

Vanessa shrieked and covered her mouth. Heidi jumped to her feet, grabbing her purse.

“Roland!”
I shouted. “Pick that up right
now
and throw it away!”

He was leaning over the coffee table, watching the tail wriggle side to side up close. “Wait till it stops moving.”

“Now.”

“Just a
second
.”

“I have to go, Is,” Heidi said, slipping her purse over her shoulder.

I left Roland by himself in the living room and walked Vanessa and Heidi to the door, apologizing. The sky was still a pumpkin color from the brush fire. At the end of the walkway, Heidi turned around and made the thumb-and-pinkie signal, letting me know she'd call later. I closed the front door and headed back to the living room, fuming. Roland was still hunched over the coffee table. He nudged the lizard's tail with his fingertip.

“Wait till Mom gets home,” I said.

Roland shrugged. He pinched the lizard's tail and tossed it outside, then wiped his fingers on his pant leg.

“You're disgusting,” I told him.

“You're disgusting.”
He was doing that mush-mouth thing again.

“My name is Roland and my parents are—”

“Shut up.”

“My parents are big—”

“Shut up, shut up!” He pressed his hands over his ears.

“My parents—”

“La la la la la,”
he chanted, heading into the kitchen.

“Are big morons—”

“I can't hear you.
La la la la
—”

“Living in North Carolina!”

He swerved toward me and began swinging his arms like helicopter blades. I grabbed hold of one of his wrists, then the other, his body jerking as he struggled to break loose. I could feel the narrow bones of his arms twisting in my hands and I thought about all the bones in his body, lashing and jerking, and for a split second I imagined myself dancing with a skeleton.

Roland kicked my shin, hard, and I let go of him. His
face was pink with hate. “I'm telling Mom
and
Dad,” he threatened.

“Oh yeah? You know their number in North Carolina?”

He said nothing and stormed off to his room and banged the door shut.

I sat down at the kitchen table and rubbed my shin, wondering what sort of bruise I'd get, what shape of scarlet. I looked outside the window and remembered I'd meant to give Vanessa and Heidi some oranges to take home. The tree slumped with the weight of the fruit at the end of our yard. Orange suns glowing under an orange sky.

The neon-sign artist, Richard Spurgeon, showed up at the museum with a pale yellow blanket folded under his arm. I hoped he didn't notice that I'd been crying, that my eyes were pink and swollen, but then I thought I could blame the brush fire, my allergies, all the ash floating around.

His hair was dyed black and was messy, as if he'd just woken up from a nap outside the museum. He wore a wrinkled white T and jeans, his tennis shoes looked like they were mauled by a mountain lion. There was something about his eyes that reminded me of Will's—not so
much the color but how deep-set they were, the arc of his brows. I felt ashamed again for not helping my friend when he'd asked for some money.

“Is Janet around?” Richard asked. It was strange hearing someone call Ms. Otto “Janet.” Like if Snake called me “Mr. Delgado.”

“She had to step out,” I said. “She told me you'd be stopping by.” I picked up the
REMOVED FOR REPAIRS
sign and showed him.

“Shit,” he mumbled. “I really wanted to talk to her.” He bit his bottom lip and dragged a hand through his hair. “Did she tell you when she'd be back?”

“She didn't.”

He laughed. It was the kind of laugh that someone makes when they're really upset. Then he muttered something under his breath that I couldn't make out, some criticism about Ms. Otto's timing.

Richard stood before his neon sign, half of his body radiating pink. The “coit” part of the sign was still sputtering off and on.

“That's my favorite one in the whole exhibit,” I told him.

“Thanks.” He leaned in close and lightly flicked the glass tube. It clinked like a wineglass.

“Too bad it's doing that,” I told him.

“I kind of like that it says ‘No more us for you' every now and then. It adds to the piece.”

“I thought that, too.”

“It's very Duchampian.”

“What?”

“Never mind.”

Richard crouched down and pulled the black cord from the wall socket and the sign went dark. It was practically illegible without the hot pink light burning inside of it. He touched the glass tube and quickly pulled his hand away as if he'd been stung. “I'll have to wait until this cools down a bit,” he said.

“We have rubber gloves somewhere,” I offered.

“That's all right,” he said, chuckling.

The phone rang at the front desk and Bridget, a half
hour late to work, was now there to pick it up on the first ring. Moments later she slammed the phone back down. The museum had been receiving crank calls and I was starting to wonder if it was the urine guy.

“How long do you think before she comes back?” Richard asked.

“Probably ten, fifteen minutes. She's usually not gone long.”

He dropped his blanket to the floor and rolled it up like a sleeping bag. “You don't mind if I kick it here for a while, do you?”

“Not at all,” I said. “Ms. Otto might mind, though.”

“There's a lot of things Janet minds, if you know what I mean.”

At first I didn't have a clue what he was talking about. Then it dawned on me: Something had happened between the two of them. My guess was they used to see each other, that Ms. Otto broke it off. Even the unplugged sign supported my theory.

Richard sprawled on the museum floor, the rolled blanket wedged under his head. His fingers were woven
together on his stomach like fat shoelaces. He scanned the ceiling above him, turning his head from side to side. “I love these pipes,” he said. “I wish I had them in my loft.”

“Where do you live?” I asked.

“Downtown. Not too far from here. Do you know where that Greek restaurant is, right there on Pine?”

I shook my head.

“Well, it's right across from there. They have the best stuffed grape leaves. Ask Janet.”

“Okay,” I said even though I couldn't imagine having a conversation with Ms. Otto in which I'd ask her who has the best stuffed grape leaves in town. I wasn't even sure what they were. I was sure of one thing, though: Richard and Ms. Otto had definitely been together once.
They have the best stuffed grape leaves. Ask Janet.
What else could that possibly mean?

Richard pulled his fingers apart and laid his hands at his sides so it looked like he was imitating the rag doll Jesus on the other side of the room.

“So how long have you been a museum guard?”

“About a week,” I said.

“And all you have to do is sit there?”

“Pretty much,” I said. “And make sure no one touches the work or gets too close.”

He moved his hands behind his head as if he were about to do some sit-ups.

“Some dude peed on the floor a week ago,” I said.

“No shit?” Richard's eyes lit up. “What happened?”

“It was the weirdest thing,” I said. “This guy just walked in, unzipped, and started pissing like it was no big deal.”

Richard laughed loudly, a booming sound that cannonballed from his throat. He clapped his hands once over his head. “Oh, man, that's
good
.”

“I think he was nuts.”

Richard wiped his eyes. “Maybe he was a disgruntled artist.”

“Maybe.”

“Or one of Janet's exes.”

“Huh?”

“Forget I said that.” He cleared his throat. “Where did he do it?”

I pointed. “Right over there, about ten feet from the sand pile.”

“That's wild, man.”

“My first day on the job, too.”

“I'm Richard, by the way.”

“I know who you are,” I said. “I'm Carlos.”

“That's my father's name.”

I didn't know how to respond to that, so I just nodded.

“You in school?”

“Yeah. Millikan.”

“Really? That's where I went.” He sat up. “Say, does Ms. Howe still teach English there?”

“I don't think so.”

“She was pretty hot. My best friend was banging her for a while. Like Mary Kay Letourneau.”

“I don't know who that is.”

“Some teacher who hooked up with one of her
students and got pregnant. He was only thirteen or fourteen.”

I opened my eyes wide.

“I know,” he said. “You've got a girlfriend?”

“I did until this afternoon,” I said. I placed my elbows on my knees and leaned forward. My throat felt tight again. I must've done something strange with my face because Richard sat up.

“I'm sorry, man,” he said. “What happened?”

“Long story,” I said, even though it wasn't. The story was short and simple. It could've been a children's book. Boy meets girl. Another boy meets girl. A taller boy, a more popular boy, a boy with dimples and perfect white teeth. A boy I couldn't compete with.

Richard stood up. “I hear you,” he said. “Whatever happened, you'll get through it.”

I didn't want to say anything. I was afraid my voice would crack.

“Eventually it'll stop hurting.” With one finger he touched the neon sign—cautiously, again and again—as if he were pressing on a piano key.

“Still too hot?” I asked.

“Not really,” he said. “Want to help me take this down?”

“Sure.”

I got up from my post and took off my jacket and hung it over the chair. Richard unfolded the blanket across the museum floor so it lay directly under the sign. I stood on one end, Richard on the other.

“Just lift it off the hooks,” he said. “Hold it by the frame, not the glass tubes.”

“I don't want to break it,” I said.

“You won't break it. Okay, on the count of three—”

“
Wait
. Is it heavy?”

“Not really.”

I blew on my hands. Richard counted down to three. I held my breath and together we lifted the sign off the wall and turned it on its back, carefully placing it on top of the blanket.

“There,” Richard said. “How easy was that?”

“Piece of cake.”

“Now help me take it to my car.”

“Hold on a second,” I said. “I just realized something.”

“What?”

I squinted. “What if you're not Richard Spurgeon?”

He laughed.

“And you're some guy trying to steal his piece. Some disgruntled artist, like you said.”

He continued to laugh.

“Ms. Otto didn't tell me what you look like. Or rather, what Richard Spurgeon looks like.”

“Are you serious?”

I crossed my arms.

He reached into his back pocket and slipped out his wallet. It was brown leather and severely tattered like his shoes. He pulled out a business card and handed it to me:

“Okay, so you're him,” I said. I held the card out for him.

“Keep it. I've got a ton of those.”

Richard folded the blanket over the sign on all four sides until it was completely covered. I rolled up my sleeves. We faced each other on opposite ends and bent our knees until we were sitting on the heels of our feet. Again, on the count of three, we lifted the sign. We headed toward the exit, Richard walking backward, looking over his shoulder.

“I shouldn't be doing this,” I told him. “I'm supposed to look after the pieces, not
carry
them.”

“I really appreciate it,” he said.

Once we were outside, I was reminded again that acres of trees were still burning. The whole city smelled like a giant ashtray.

“When are they going to put that thing out?” Richard said.

We headed toward the parking lot, my arms straining a bit from the weight of the sign, but I pretended it weighed nothing. Ash whirled silently across the blacktop. We had reached Richard's car, a blue hatchback, when a speck of ash flew into my eye.

“Shit, shit,” I said, blinking furiously.

“You okay?”

“I got ash in my eye.”

“Hold on.” With one hand he fished for his keys in his pocket while the other held the teetering sign.

“Hurry,”
I pleaded. It felt like someone was scraping my eye with a toothpick.

Richard opened the back door and maneuvered the sign in. Once my hands were free, I rubbed my right eye with a knuckle, trying to massage the ash out of it.

“Sonofabitch,” I mumbled.

A silver two-door pulled into the parking lot and a young couple stepped out. They held hands as they walked leisurely toward the pathway that curved around to the entrance of the museum.

“I've got to get back,” I told Richard.

“Carlos,” he said, “I owe you one, man.”

We shook hands and I jogged quickly back to my post, rubbing my eye with the heel of my palm.

The young couple meandered to the east wing of the museum, allowing me enough time to tape up the
REMOVED FOR REPAIRS
sign. I placed it right between the
two metal hooks fastened to the wall. I rolled down my sleeves, slipped on my jacket, and sat back down on my chair before the couple entered the room. They split apart to view the pieces on their own—the woman walking clockwise around the museum, the man counterclockwise. I felt that tightening sensation in my throat again. Mira. How could she do it? How could she cheat on me? And how stupid was I to not even notice that something was wrong with the picture?

The young man moved toward the sign on the wall, his hands behind his back as if he were cuffed. He tilted his head slightly to one side and moved closer, examining the silver hooks secured to the wall, then stepped back, taking in the whole thing. He scratched his chin and crossed his arms and tilted his head the other way.

I didn't know whether to laugh at his mistake or feel sorry for him.