Ribbons (18 page)

Thug Guy dialed a number. “You go take care of your nose while I have a talk with boss.”

“What’s wrong with my—”

Suddenly, Matt was on his back. Thug Guy was looking down at him while he talked on his phone. Matt panicked a little when he couldn’t understand what Thug Guy was saying. Then he realized Thug Guy was speaking in a foreign language. He nodded and smiled at Matt as he said something into the phone with a little laugh. That’s when Matt noticed that his nose felt like it was full of crushed glass.

He probably
should
go take care of that.

Once the bleeding had stopped, Matt spent the rest of the morning in the backyard. He brought his toolbox and started working on the shed. He had to clean it out first and return some of the items to the house. He rehung the neon sign, set up the reception podium, and put the gimp-suited mannequin back in its natural habitat.

He was putting a few new nails into some loose boards when someone called his name. He stopped hammering and went around to the other side of the shed, the side that faced the house. Christy was standing there with her hands on her hips. She looked pissed but also a bit sad. Thug Guy was watching them from the back door. He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed.

“It sold, then?” she asked. “I saw they took down the for-sale sign out front.”

“What? No,” said Matt. “I took that down.”

“Why?”

“He is probably making big mistake,” said Thug Guy from behind her.

She looked over her shoulder and then back at Matt. “Who is that guy?”

“Long story,” said Matt. “He might be sticking around for a while, though.”

“Good news,” said Thug Guy. “I already move in. I take your room. You don’t mind.” It wasn’t a question.

Christy stepped forward and spoke so that only Matt could hear her. “Why would he be staying here?”

“Because,” said Matt, “we’re reopening. And he’s our new partner. Well, his boss is our new partner, technically.”

“I’m not comfortable with that,” she said. He knew she was thinking of Adam.

“Neither am I,” said Matt. He glanced up at Thug Guy, who was still leaning against the doorframe. “But we’ll be open again.”

Christy reached a hand toward Matt’s face. “Did he do that to your nose?”

Matt flinched back. “If he’s going to hurt anybody, it will be me.” He gave her a weak smile. “He’s actually kind of reasonable. If you aren’t a big smart-ass.”

Christly looked conflicted. She glanced at Thug Guy and then at the house. Next she looked at the shed behind Matt. “What are you doing out here?”

“I’ll show you,” said Matt. “But I’ll need a ride to the hardware store first to pick up a few things.”

* * *

It was getting dark by the time he was done working on the shed. There was probably more to do, but he supposed it would never be perfect. He closed his toolbox and went inside. He could hear that the TV was on inside the break room. When he opened the door he was relieved to see that he wasn’t welcomed by cold stares. Adam was in his usual spot on the couch in front of the TV, and Christy was at the table looking at something on her phone.

She stopped to give him a smile. “Hey.”

“It’s ready,” said Matt.

“What’s ready?” asked Adam. He hadn’t turned to look at Matt yet, but when he did he added, “You look gross.”

“I’m sure,” said Matt, “but I smell worse.” He looked from Adam to Christy and back again. “Are you coming or what?”

“Where?” Adam asked, standing up.

Matt jerked his thumb toward the backyard. “Outside.”

Christy and Adam followed Matt as he led the way out the back door. Adam stood on the steps trying to figure out what he was supposed to be looking at. Then Matt plugged in the extension cord. The shed lit up like a carnival ride.

“I may have overdone it with the lights,” he said.

Adam’s feet made quick crunching sounds as he ran out onto the pea gravel. He stopped short at the entrance to the shed. A pirate flag hung down from a pole over the door. Instead of a skull there was a big yellow smiley face with an eye patch.

“What is this?” asked Adam.

“It’s a playhouse,” said Matt.

The boy turned to him. Adam looked like he was about to explain something that everybody should already know. “You know, playhouses are for girls. They like to play
house
.”

“I bet they like to play pirates, too,” said Matt. “Your mom would make a great Captain Hook.”

“I heard that!” shouted Christy as she made her way over to the shed.

“That was a compliment,” said Matt. “Everybody knows that Captain Hook is the coolest pirate.”

She looked over to Adam who said, kind of reluctantly, “He’s right.”

“
Playhouse
is pretty weak for a nine-year-old,” said Christy.

“Fine.” Matt rolled his eyes. “Then it’s a clubhouse.”

He stepped forward and opened the door. All the junk had been cleared out. He’d thrown some away but most of it was down in the basement. A bulb in a plastic cage hung from the center of the room, and Christmas lights were strung up across all four walls. They were multicolored so everything had a strange rainbow hue to it. A few mismatched chairs surrounded a flimsy-looking card table in the center, and there was a short bookcase up against one wall. So far, the bookcase was empty except for an ancient CD player. Matt had unearthed it when cleaning out the shed. He wasn’t even sure it still worked. He had also found a dusty old dartboard that he’d hung on the far wall. A few darts jutted out from it at odd angles.

“Decorate it any way you want,” said Matt.

“Cool,” said Adam. It came out understated, but the smile on his face stretched from ear to ear.

Something squeaked and Adam looked around. His eyes widened when they landed on something furry that was staring back up at him from a pile of blankets in the corner.

“Oh, and it comes with this.” Matt pointed at the orange cat as it stretched and yawned. “His name’s Azrael.”

25

Lois sat on her couch looking out the window and thinking about how things changed. There are some who might say people never change. Lois didn’t believe that. She didn’t think that
she
had changed much over the years, but her husband, Neal, certainly had. And she wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Neal seemed pretty happy most of the time. He had his friends on the computer. They chatted all the time and got together to do . . . whatever it was that they did. Lois spent most of her day reminiscing about better times. She had built up quite the collection of happy memories over her seventy-three years, and she had very few regrets. She just didn’t have a lot to look forward to anymore.

They had moved to Las Vegas in their thirties. They’d been on the same page back then. Neal had taken a great job building all those casinos. As soon as one had been finished, a new one would be waiting to be built or an old one would want to expand. The money had been good, and houses had been cheap. Everybody wanted to visit Las Vegas, but most of them didn’t want to stay. So he worked, and she stayed home to raise their family. Their neighborhood wasn’t the best, but all the houses had been new then, and it was far enough from the Strip to make it feel like the typical suburb of any quiet town.

Their kids—two boys and a girl—had enjoyed a good childhood. Lois had taken the time to raise them the way she’d wanted, and she’d loved it. Those years had seemed to stretch out forever, until suddenly they were over and the last of their children had gone off to college. None of them ended up staying in Las Vegas, and only their daughter still lived in Nevada.

They could have moved, she supposed. But life had its rhythms, and starting over seemed like a massive chore. The house was paid for and Neal’s pension let them live comfortably, if not a bit frugally. Their days were filled with the routines they’d made for themselves. They spent half the morning just waking up and puttering around. By the time they were ready to do something, they were starting to think about lunch. After lunch, they might want to take a little rest. After that, there weren’t a whole lot of hours left in the day. And they went to bed pretty early. They had some friends around, and they did try to get together every other week or so. They kept saying they were going to play bridge, but usually when they had folks over they all just ended up chatting and snacking.

If they were able to somehow find the energy to move, she wouldn’t know where to go anyway. Her kids had their own lives with their own rhythms. One even had his own grandson. They were all busy raising their own families and making their own memories. She figured they wouldn’t have much time for her. She would have to change to fit into their lives, and so far she wasn’t very good at change.

“Suck it, newbie!”

Lois knew Neal wasn’t talking to her. His was wearing his headset, and he had his laptop open on his TV tray. He was playing his computer game. It wasn’t exercise, but it did get his heart rate up for a couple of hours a day. Sometimes, the whole tray would wobble when he slammed the keyboard and shoved the mouse back and forth.

“You just got ganked, son!”

He also wasn’t talking to either of their sons. They didn’t play computer games. They had better things to do with their time. No, Neal had his new computer friends, and they were all part of a
clan
or some such nonsense.

She needed a drink. She usually waited until lunch before she had a little something to dull the joint pain, but today she didn’t feel like waiting. She decided to make lunch a little early. She would make the drink first, though. Nothing fancy. Just a gin and tonic.

She finished the first one while she was still making her sandwich. It hadn’t been a full glass, of course. She was pretty sure it was just a splash. She made the next one by the book.

As she laid a pickle slice next to her sandwich, she saw something move out the kitchen window. That window faced the street, and she could see somebody walking down the sidewalk. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence, but this person stood out. His clothes were dirty and stained. His face was grimy, and his hair was wild, like he hadn’t combed it in weeks. But mainly he stood out because of the way he walked. He would walk at a normal pace and then stop all of a sudden to talk to himself. Then he might take a few steps back and cross the street, or he might continue on as if nothing had happened. She had seen him around for several days now.

She called out to Neal in the living room. “That homeless guy is back.”

“Huh?” asked Neal.

“I think he’s heading back to that old condemned school,” she said.

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ve seen him there a couple times. He just sits on that swing. Swinging like he does.”

She heard Neal tap his keyboard and click his mouse.

She kept on talking as if Neal were actually paying attention. “Talking to that toy. It’s sad, really.”

“Yep,” said Neal.

Lois took a sip of her drink and got out two more slices of bread.

“I’m gonna make him a sandwich. What do you think he’d like?”

“Food.”

She poked her head into the living room. Neal’s face was lit up from below by his laptop screen. It made him look uglier than normal. A wizard shot flames out of his hands at a woman with six arms. She wasn’t sure which one was Neal.

“You ought to come with me,” she said. “It’ll do you some good. Get out of the house for a bit.”

He didn’t look up. “I’m playin’ my
Warcraft
. ’Bout ready to ding.” Apparently that meant no.

“Fine. I’m gonna take him an egg salad and maybe a root beer.”

Tap, tap. Click, click.

She sighed and finished her drink. Then she made the sandwich. She put it in a bag along with a can of root beer and an apple for good measure. She put on her sweater and exchanged her slippers for some walking shoes. She headed out the front door, leaving Neal to his fantasy world. She already felt better about her day.

The old school was just a couple of blocks away. It hadn’t been a school, though, had it? No, it had been an orphanage. It used to be run by Catholics, if she remembered correctly. It had closed down years ago when the new cathedral opened up downtown. She wasn’t sure what had happened to all the kids. It seemed like something the state would take care of. Maybe they had a foster program. She wondered if she was too old to be a foster parent. She would ask.

Surrounding the orphanage was an old chain-link fence. It looked pretty run-down. It had those crappy green plastic slats that made a cheap fence look even cheaper. Big patches of the slats were covered in green paint where somebody had attempted to hide some graffiti. It hadn’t made it look any better. The green paint didn’t match the color of the slats, and new graffiti had been added over it anyway.

Lois went around the fence into a weedy playground. She heard something creak, but it was just the old swing set. She was surprised it was still standing. It was such a shame. She could remember walking past, years ago, to the sounds of squealing laughter and jump rope rhymes. Back then, a good jump rope rhyme could predict the future. She tried to remember the words as she looked around.

Ice cream soda, lemonade, punch. Tell me the name of my honey bunch.

Then you would recite the alphabet until the rope tangled you up. The last letter you said would tell you the name of your crush. Lois hadn’t been very good. She’d never made it to
N
.

There was no sign of the homeless man in the playground, and the door to the building looked chained up tight. She was disappointed. She thought about leaving the bag of food by the swing where she had seen him once before, but she really wanted to give it to him in person. She wanted to hear a bit about his story. Maybe she could help him.

He could be around back she supposed.
It would be a nice quiet place to rest, assuming the neighborhood kids left him alone. The cans and candy wrappers on the ground looked pretty old, and even the graffiti was fading, so she figured they didn’t visit very often.

As she followed the fence along the side of the building, another rhyme came to mind.

Johnny gave me apples. Johnny gave me pears. Johnny gave me fifty cents to kiss him on the stairs. I gave him back his apples. I gave him back his pears. I gave him back his fifty cents and kicked him down the stairs.

Then she heard something quack. It was a tinny sounding quack, like a duck using an old microphone. But it sounded familiar.

She stopped and looked around. She didn’t see anybody along the fence, and she was still pretty far from the back of the building. There was some plywood lying on the ground about midway along the building. It was littered with a few fragments of broken glass. She looked up at the building and saw the window that it used to cover. There was a voice coming from the window.

She hesitated for a second, but she wasn’t sure why. She already knew that this poor man probably had some mental health issues. He seemed harmless enough, though. She was more worried that he was so far gone that nobody could help him. She stepped over to the window and looked in.

And there he was. He actually looked cleaner than she’d expected, and his skin was pale, not leathery and tanned from overexposure. He was sitting on an old beanbag chair in a room full of broken toys. The toys looked like they had been put on display rather than scattered around and forgotten. His back was to her, and he held one of the toys in his lap. It was round like a clock but it had pictures of animals on it instead of numbers. There was a big, red arrow in the center that pointed to a duck.

“I know, but how many more?” The man wasn’t speaking to her. He was staring down at the toy. A See ’n Say—that’s what it was called.

He pulled the cord on the See ’n Say, and the arrow started to spin around. It landed on a cartoon image of a sheep. A letter or symbol had been drawn over the sheep, but she couldn’t make out what it was.

The toy spoke with a cheerful but staticky voice. “The sheep says,
Baaa
.”

The man was quiet for a second, and Lois was just about to say something when the man nodded and said, “I just don’t know if I can keep doing it. I can’t sleep. I keep seeing their faces.”

Lois didn’t know what to make of that.

The man pulled the cord again, and this time the arrow landed on a cow. It had a different symbol on it, but she couldn’t make that one out, either. “The cow says,
Mooo
.”

This time he shook his head. “You’re right. They shouldn’t have to sell themselves like that. I know I’ll see them again soon. Maybe we’ll all have a laugh about it. And the blood doesn’t bother me so much anymore. It’s not that.”

“The pig says,
Oink, oink, oink
.”

The man fished something out of his pocket. It was long and rectangular, and a dull gray. He ran his thumb along the side, and a blade clicked out from one end. “It’s just . . . I can’t sleep because their faces are so beautiful. I want to set more of them free. I don’t think I should like it so much.”

Lois’s stomach twisted. She didn’t normally watch the news. It was always so dramatic. Every rainstorm was a hurricane, and every criminal was a terrorist. Still, there were some stories you just couldn’t avoid. Everyone was talking about those girls. Even Neal. His computer had told him about a murderer right here in Las Vegas. A man who killed women. Prostitutes.

“The cat says,
Meow
.” Did he pull the cord that time?

All of a sudden, he sounded very defensive. “No, I don’t touch myself! It’s not like that.”

This time he moved the arrow by hand, pointing it directly at the sheep once more. He pulled the cord. “The lamb says,
Mmbeh
.” That wasn’t what it’d said before.

The man seemed to calm down a bit. “Okay, I can do that. I have somebody else in mind. She tells everybody she’s having a good time, but I think she’s burning out. She seems ready to walk the path.”

Lois’s heart was thumping in her ears. She was afraid the man with the knife could hear it, too. She gripped the bag of food in a clenched fist. She had just wanted a little change of pace. To do a good deed. Feel like she could still be needed. She should have stayed home and taken her nap.

She should be running, maybe screaming. She knew she had to move, but her body was frozen in place. She had to turn as quietly as she could and put one foot in front of the other until she got to the road. Then she had to run. She couldn’t stop. Not until she was in her house, on her couch next to Neal, with the phone in her hand and the police on the line. If she could do all that, she might start playing
Warcraft
.