Ribbons (7 page)

9

There was yelling coming from Christy’s bedroom upstairs. It had started out as a loud, muffled conversation, but Matt missed most of that, thanks to the cop
questioning
Erica. He was pretty sure he was going to jail soon and didn’t know why he wasn’t heading out the door right now. He was working up the courage to leave when the muffles turned into shouts.

“Look, I just need you to sit down and stay calm for a couple minutes!” It was a guy’s voice. Didn’t Christy call him Dwayne?

“I don’t need this. Can’t you tell we’re going through a lot right now? He just died!” That was definitely Christy’s voice.

Matt looked at the front door. All his stuff was upstairs. He hadn’t settled in yet, but he had thrown his duffel bag into Uncle Quent’s old bedroom. His laptop was in there, too, along with some of his “improvised” IDs. On top of that, he only had about twenty bucks in his pocket. That wasn’t much to start over with, and he would be on the run again. He needed that bag.

Maybe he could just claim that he was a customer. They could book him if they wanted to, but they seemed more interested in the employees at the moment. No, that wouldn’t work. They’d probably point him out as the new owner if they thought it would help. He hadn’t exactly made any friends here yet.

He started heading up the hardwood stairs. They weren’t quiet at all, despite his careful steps. Every other one seemed to squeak. He decided to go for it and sprinted to the top, hoping no one would notice over the shouting.

“Isn’t this over?” The cop yelled the question, trying to force it into a statement.

Christy held her own. “Well nobody told the hospital that the whorehouse was closed. Adam’s still sick, and they keep sending bills. So no. It ain’t over!”

Christy’s room was to the right. Luckily Matt needed to go left where Uncle Quent’s old bedroom stood next to his office. In fact, Matt wasn’t sure how much his uncle had actually used that bedroom. The office looked more lived-in. It had pictures of his travels and misadventures, as well as some knickknacks that he must have picked up along the way. Food crumbs hid in the love seat cushions, and the throw rug had a threadbare path worn through the middle. Plus, it smelled like biker.

The bedroom, by comparison, seemed empty. The bed was lumpy and covered with a plain comforter so faded Matt couldn’t tell what its original color might have been. There was a thick layer of dust on the dresser, and he had to rock the drawers back and forth if he wanted to open them. The chair in the corner was missing a pad on one leg that made the whole thing wobbly. He would bet that Uncle Quent slept on the love seat in his office most nights. Matt was tempted to do the same. He grabbed his bag off the wobbly chair and headed back out into the hallway.

He stopped two steps away from the stairs when he saw the boy. Adam must have come up right after him. He didn’t look at Matt. He was standing at the top of the stairs with a notebook in one hand and a pencil in the other. Matt thought he saw math equations on the page it was open to, but the symbols didn’t look like anything he could remember from school. Adam took a step toward his mother’s door but then stopped when the shouting started again.

“I thought we could make another run of it. He’s my son. I can help.” The cop was loud but sounded like he was trying not to be.

Christy, on the other hand, wasn’t trying to quiet down at all. “He’s not your son as far as I’m concerned. You wrote him off years ago.”

Adam took another step forward. He was right in front of the door now.

“I was eighteen!” shouted the cop.

“I was seventeen!” Christy shot back. “Just because you have a badge now doesn’t make you a good father!”

Matt watched Adam as the boy stared at the frame around Christy’s door. It had pencil marks going up one side with Adam’s name next to them. Based on the ages next to the names, Adam and Christy had been here awhile. Adam dropped his notebook, and he reached out a hand toward the doorframe. He slowly slumped down the wall next to it until he was on his knees. He started to shake.

“This isn’t a good life for him.” The cop was almost using an indoor voice now, and Matt barely heard him.

He didn’t have any trouble hearing Christy. “We do fine! Together. Just like we have for nine years.”

Adam’s eyes were closed. He sat on the floor with his back to the wall and his knees drawn up to his chest. He shook harder now. Matt remembered sitting like that when he’d been a boy, trying to cry as quietly as possible. He dropped his bag and went to sit next to Adam.

“Quent’s gone. This place is done,” said the cop.

“We’ll find a new place,” said Christy.

When Matt was nervous, his knee-jerk reaction was to crack a joke or make a smart-ass comment. Things couldn’t be that bad if he could make somebody smile. Even if they were trying to hurt him. Where there was a smile, there could be hope. He didn’t even have to try anymore; the comments came out on their own.

“Lying down on the job?” he asked Adam. He gave him a shoulder bump as he said it.

Through the door, Matt could hear the cop getting louder again. “Well, you’re not leaving Vegas.”

Christy matched his volume. “We’ll go wherever we need to!”

“I can’t just pick up and leave!”

“Nobody’s asking you to!”

Adam didn’t react to the bump at first. Then he started to slowly slide away from Matt down the wall. As he did, his head turned, and Matt could see his eyes. They were squeezed shut but Adam wasn’t crying. Instead, his eyeballs visibly vibrated under his lids and his head nodded to some unheard rhythm. Blood started to trickle from one corner of his mouth as he opened it. There was a long draw of breath and then Adam started speaking? Ranting? Babbling? Whatever it was, it came out in a torrent, and it was in no language Matt had ever heard.

Matt quickly reached for the boy. “Dude! Fuck!” The boy’s whole body was starting to shake now, and Matt had no idea what to do. “Adam!”

Adam’s babbling stopped suddenly, and all at once he was speaking English. It was fast and jammed together, hard to follow, but it sounded like, “Do-not-think-that-I-have-come-to-bring-peace-on-Earth-I-have-not-come-to-bring-peace-but-a-sword.”

Matt leaned down on Adam and tried to hold him still. He reached one hand back and banged on the door. “Hey! Something’s wrong! He’s bleeding!”

“For-I-have-come-to-set-man-against-man.”

Christy yanked the door open. The cop was standing behind her wide-eyed.

“And-a-man’s-foes-will-be-those-of-his-own-household.”

Christy shoved Matt aside and grabbed her son. She sat down and started cradling him in her lap. “His pills! The bathroom!”

The cop ran down the hall and ducked into a room as Christy forced the flat of her hand into Adam’s mouth and rocked him back and forth. Adam’s jaw clamped down hard and his babbling was muffled. “It’ll be okay, baby,” she whispered. “Shh. Shh. Shh.”

The cop hurried back toward them a moment later with a small plastic bottle in his hand. He knelt down beside them. Water sloshed onto the floor as he set down a chipped mug. He was shaking as he poured the pills into his palm. Some of them fell and clattered across the floor. He managed to hold on to a few. “Open his mouth!”

Christy pulled her hand out of Adam’s mouth, and Matt saw a semicircle where teeth had broken skin. She didn’t seem to notice. The cop dropped the pills in Adam’s mouth and then forced it closed. The blood at the corner of the boy’s lips was bubbling as his throat struggled to make sounds. Christy grabbed the mug, and the cop took his hand away from Adam’s jaw. She held up Adam’s head and pressed the mug to his lips. His mouth filled with water, and he was forced to swallow.

“What’s wrong?” Matt asked. “Should I call 9-1-1?”

“He gets these seizures. They were getting better but . . .” Christy held Adam to her chest and started rocking him again.

The cop yelled down the stairs. “Where the fuck is Dani?” Then he turned to Matt. “Go! Call!”

Matt dug through his bag and pulled out his phone. He got to his feet and dialed.

* * *

It was past midnight by the time Matt sat down again. When he did, it was in Uncle Quent’s office. Or his office, he supposed.

He still hadn’t unpacked his duffel bag, but the house was quiet. Christy and Adam were staying the night at St. Jude Children’s Hospital. So was the cop—no, the
police sergeant
. That was a fun fact. Matt didn’t want to think about what that might mean for him. Nothing good. Potentially a special kind of
bad

Matt rubbed his forehead. At least Adam seemed to be doing all right now. The seizures had almost stopped by the time the ambulance had arrived. The blood had looked worse than it was. It turned out that Adam had bit the inside of his cheek rather than his tongue. The paramedics didn’t seem too concerned about that. They did flash a light in his eyes and jab an IV into his arm. He must have taken an ambulance ride before, because Christy seemed to know all the right things to say when the paramedics asked. She even had a card ready listing all the medications he was taking.

Matt had been able to talk to her briefly on the phone to see how Adam was doing. It sounded like they were coming back early the next morning unless there was another episode during the night. Matt hadn’t mentioned the rambling string of words that had come out of Adam’s mouth. He couldn’t really remember exactly what the kid had said anyway. It sounded a bit fire-and-brimstone, but beyond that, it was gibberish. Probably something he had read somewhere.

Needless to say, Matt had turned off the neon sign after the sirens had faded away. None of the girls seemed to mind. Not even Erica. Matt was glad he didn’t have to deal with her again tonight, though he would likely see her tomorrow.

He took a deep breath and looked around the office. He remembered that Erica had taken a picture from the desk right after the reading of Uncle Quent’s will. There were several other pictures on the desk, too. Some of girls he recognized, some he didn’t. He picked up one of the pictures. It was of his uncle wearing an apron in the little kitchen downstairs. He was making pancakes. The apron said
Kiss the Cook
, and Christy was pointing to it while she kissed him on the cheek. It looked like Uncle Quent was tolerating it the way an eight-year-old might tolerate a kiss from a grandparent.

Matt spoke to the man in the picture. “What the hell were you thinking? Did you think this would be funny?” Matt put down the picture. “It probably is. If you’re not me.”

Next to the picture was a wooden cigar box. Matt didn’t smoke, but he was curious. He couldn’t remember ever actually holding a cigar. Maybe he would just put one in his mouth and chew on it. He flipped open the lid. “Whoa.”

Matt reached into the box, and his hand came out holding a pistol. It was pretty for a gun, though he hadn’t seen too many before, and certainly not long enough to take in all the detail. Uncle Quent’s pistol was a revolver. He wasn’t sure if it was considered a big gun, but it seemed like it was somewhere between
Maverick
and
Dirty Harry
. It was shiny. Maybe this was what they meant by nickel-plated. The handle was made of some kind of wood—light, with a fine grain. There was scrollwork engraving on the handle and along the barrel, too. Some of the scrollwork suggested writing, but if it was text, Matt couldn’t make it out. Its design didn’t really seem to reflect its previous owner at all.

He pointed it high and looked along the barrel at the sight. He felt pretty badass. He was tempted to cock the hammer and was wondering if a gun like this had a safety, when he noticed something on the ceiling.

He lowered the gun and squinted up at the exposed rafters.

“What . . .”

He took a step closer. Then rubbed his eyes and tried to blink the image away.

“The . . .”

The image remained. Burned into one of the rafter beams was a symbol—an arrow connected to a cross, connected to a circle, connected to a crescent. The lines were thick like a cattle brand, and some sort of old coin had been nailed to the center of the circle.

“Fuck . . .”

F-bombs were pretty rare for Matt. He usually found it more funny or more clever to come up with some other expletive. But this was the second one he had dropped today.

The marking on the ceiling itself wasn’t that shocking; it was pretty simple, really. The F-bomb had dropped when Matt realize that same symbol was burned into his own wrist.

10

Foster had a habit of mouth-breathing when he was trying to concentrate. The more he focused, the wider his mouth opened. His hand started to shake as he inched it closer to the prostitute’s breast, and his lips parted a little more. She said her name was something like Vicky. Normally he was pretty good at remembering people’s names, but he had been really nervous when they’d first met. His mouth had dropped open almost immediately. He must have looked like a bit of a dork. It hadn’t scared her away, though. Which was a shame. She seemed pretty nice.

“You’re sure this washes off?” asked the prostitute who was probably Vicky.

Foster kept his eyes on his hand when he answered. “Oh yeah. They’re for kids. You could eat them if you wanted to.”

He was straddling Vicky. She was naked, but he was still dressed. His hand held a felt-tip marker, and he was using it to draw a line along her skin. It started at Vicky’s left ankle and then curved, and swirled, and looped, as it made its way up her thigh and over her hip. Then it dipped back down toward her crotch before circling around her labia. From there it traced up her abdomen and spiraled around her belly button. Sometimes the line crossed itself, and Foster drew a more detailed pattern when it did, sometimes it arched in wide, lazy loops like cursive handwriting. It was all one line, though; the pen never left her skin. The Woman in the Garden had him practice several times to make sure he could finish the line without lifting the pen.

He was just about to start a pretty complex flourish on her right breast. His mouth almost made a perfect
O
. It was going to be tricky.

He paused, started, and then stopped abruptly when she said, “Well, they smell tasty. What is that? Strawberries?”

Foster took a breath. “I thought so, too, but the pen says it’s something called Fluffleberry. I don’t think that’s a real berry, though.” He continued his line.

“Smells like it should be real,” said Vicky.

“Mmm. Sorry, this is the hard part.” Foster drew slowly and deliberately. If Vicky was ticklish, she was keeping it under control.

They were in a cheap motel room. It was nowhere near the Strip, but it did have a faded print of all the casinos lit up at night above the headboard. Most of them, anyway. The pyramid was missing, so it was a bit dated. Still, it was a step up from sleeping on the beanbag chair in the orphanage.

The garden was no longer bleeding into the orphanage TV room, but the Woman in the Garden still spoke to him. She had finished the storybook for him while he wrapped up his wrist and sucked down a couple of juice boxes. He was pretty sure he was going insane.

She told the story of how she had given her heart to the first man she’d ever met. How they’d made a life for themselves tending the garden. She made the guy sound like a real tool. The way she described him, he had almost no personality. They hadn’t had a “meet cute” or anything like that. He just kinda shown up and they started farming together.

Foster had still been a bit fuzzy from the blood loss, but it sounded like this guy had just wandered off into the woods one day and had gotten lost. The next day he’d shown up at the garden with another woman, only this one had a name—Eve. And then he started calling himself Adam. He said they were in love and that God wanted them to be together.

The Woman in the Garden had gotten pretty pissed off when she’d been telling that part of the story. She’d gone off on this rant about how
they
had changed the story and how
they
couldn’t stand seeing the man and the woman as equals. Foster wasn’t sure who
they
were, and he was too frightened to ask. And then this new woman had given Adam children. Children! The Woman in the Garden lost her shit then, yelling about how those should have been her children.

              While she had been telling her story, a snake slowly wound its way around her body and up her outstretched arm. It started climbing one of the branches of the oak tree the woman was standing under. When it approached the owl, it flicked out its tongue a few times to smell the bird’s talons. The owl had stared at it for a second with its huge unblinking eyes. And then it grabbed the snake with its beak and ripped the serpent’s head off.

Foster had gone to Sunday school when he was a kid, of course. It had been mandatory at the orphanage. The woman’s story sounded kind of familiar, but he didn’t remember Adam choosing between two women, or being such a tool, or that crazy screech owl in the oak tree. That’s when he’d figured out he was losing it and wondered why he’d bandaged up his wrist at all.

Then the Woman in the Garden had said something that made him have another juice box. “You feel like trash. Me too. Maybe we can help each other.”

And now Foster was in a cheap motel room straddling a naked hooker.

“Is this from, like, a movie or something?” asked Vicky.

Foster had moved on from her breast and was working the swirls on her cheek. She was trying to follow the pen with her eye, but he could tell she was having trouble focusing because she stopped and squeezed her eyes shut for a second.

“Huh?” said Foster.

“Like
Avatar
? Do you want me to wear a tail or, like, cat eyes? That would be cool.” Vicky sounded genuinely interested. It might have been Vicki with an
i
actually. He thought that’s what her business card said. It had been surprisingly easy to find a prostitute. There had been people literally handing out her card on a street corner—hers and dozens of others. The card said she was an “exotic dancer,” but when Foster called the number, the person on the line had been pretty accommodating after asking a few questions. No, Foster wasn’t a cop. No, he wasn’t working for the cops. And yes, he had money. Tips were encouraged.

“No thanks.” Foster clicked the cap back on the pen. “That’s it. Done.”

Foster leaned back and looked down at her. Vicki was beautiful. Or at least young and cute. She was covered with Fluffleberry-colored lines, and Foster was quite proud of his work. Seeing it on an actual woman rather than the orphanage wall made it look exotic and elegant. She didn’t look nervous at all. Her bright, wide eyes and tiny smile made it seem like she was having fun. Foster, on the other hand, was shaking.

“Okay. Ready to go?” Vicki asked. “Don’t be nervous, baby. They’re always bigger than you guys think.”

Foster carefully lifted himself off her and stood next to the bed. He took a step back. “I’m just gonna . . . be in the bathroom.”

Vicki lifted her head slightly and looked at him. She seemed a little concerned. “Okay. Take your time. It’s okay to be nervous.”

Foster took another step back and held out his hands. “Don’t move. I got it just right.”

Vicki gave him that tiny smile. “Okay.” Then she laid her head back down.

Foster cupped his hands under the faucet in the bathroom. The water bubbled up in his fists and then spilled over into the sink. He watched the motion of it for a second before splashing it on his face. Then he looked at himself in the mirror. There was nobody standing behind him, but he still heard her voice. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed.

“You’re nervous. Why?” the Woman in the Garden whispered. “You’re doing a good thing.”

“It doesn’t feel good,” Foster whispered back. The water filled up in his hands again.

“Everybody wants to open the gates of Paradise. And you have the key.”

“Do they? Maybe she’s happy. Maybe she just wants to go home and watch TV.”

The storybook was open on the counter next to the sink. He remembered putting it there, but he didn’t remember opening it. A paper woman stood beneath a pop-up tree. A tiny bunny jiggled on a metal spring in a field of flowers, hopping toward her outstretched hand.

“Pathetic,” she said. “She’s tainted. She doesn’t know what she wants. But I do. She wants what you want. What we all want. She wants to come home.”

“Did you say something?” Vicki raised her voice a little to be heard from the bedroom. “All this ink is making me kinda dizzy.”

The voice in Foster’s ear whispered, “Play her some music and take her home.”

Foster looked over at the storybook. Next to it was his music box. He picked up the box and stared at the lid. Then his eyes flicked toward the bathroom door. He pushed it open but didn’t walk through. Instead, he sank down to the floor and sat on the linoleum. Then he lifted his butt up a little and pulled something out of his back pocket. The blade slid out as his thumb pushed the button on the box cutter.

Three clicks. Full length.

He poked the blade into the carpet just outside the bathroom door.

Then he flipped open the music box. He kept his eyes focused on the clockwork inside as the tune started to play. He pushed the palms of his hands against his ears and mumbled the lyrics to himself.

“Way down upon the Swanee River, far, far away. That’s where my heart is burning ever, that’s where I want to stay.”

The blade moved on its own. It cut through carpet. Then it cut through sheets. Then it cut through flesh. It followed Foster’s line perfectly.