The Cormorant (2 page)

So there he stood in a dingy, cracked-floor pawn shop, the too-bright fluorescents above humming and clicking, neon lights trapped between the pawn shop window and the big metal grate just
inside
the windows, and finally he managed to argue the little Sri Lankan man down to a price he could afford (a price less than half of what he’d pay anywhere else), and then he whipped out his Visa and–

“No credit card,” the little man said.

“I have a debit card–”

“No take, no take.”

“But that’s what I have.”

The little man pulled back the small cloth with the diamond on it. “Cash only. No diamond. Only cash. No diamond.”

So he asked, “Is there an ATM machine around?”

“Is just ATM,” the little man said. “No ATM machine. ATM mean
Automated Teller Machine
. You no need to say extra
machine
.”

This from a man whose store is named
Moneylawn
.

Andrew said fine, fine, just tell me where, and he thought – hoped – that the ATM was right across the street, but no, of course it wasn’t, it was three blocks up and four blocks over and now the sky is really flinging the glops of wet snow down on his head as if to punish him for his bad money management–

So now here he is. Hurrying along. To an ATM in the middle of Kensington. A neighborhood no longer in decline because it can’t decline any further – the car has already crashed, the wreck has already burned out.

Derelict storefronts. A lone pizza joint at the corner, still open. Eyes watching him from under a ratty overhang. Past an alley where a homeless guy in an overcoat sleeps in the shade of a dented dumpster, using a blue tarp as a blanket. Someone yelling a block over – a Hispanic girl in a half-shirt and jeans, no jacket, no hat, bronze hair peppered with white flakes, and she’s screaming at some little thug in a leather jacket, saying something about sucking his dick, something about someone named Rosalita. The thug’s just laughing. Braying, even. Waving her off.

Andrew keeps his head down.

Turn around. Go home. The diamond will be there tomorrow.

No. Tomorrow is Saturday. He and Sarah are going to Wildwood Gardens. She loves that place. The orchid house. The Christmas lights. He’s going to ask her there. Do the whole thing: down on one knee, ring up, maybe in front of a crowd so they have that story to tell.

Just walk. Hurry up. You need to do this. Man up, Andrew. What would her father say?

Her father would say nothing. He’d just stare at Andrew with those dark gray eyes, eyes like bits of driveway gravel.

Ahead – a basketball court. Tall fences. Three courts lined up next to each other. He can shortcut the block, he thinks.

But then–

Footsteps. Behind him. Crossing the street. Splashing in slush.

He casts a quick glance over his shoulder.

A shadow following. Hands in pockets. Dark camo. Hood up.

His heart starts kicking.

He hurries forward. Half a short block to the basketball courts. His foot catches on an uneven sidewalk – he falls forward, just barely catches himself, but he takes the opportunity to shift into a brisk walk, almost a jog.

But the person behind him is coming up fast now.

Faster than he is. A swift step.

The person raises a gloved hand. Points a finger-gun at him.

The thumb-hammer falls.

Andrew hurries. Grabs the pole holding up the chain-link leading into the basketball courts. He ducks in through the gate–

“Hey!” calls a voice.

A woman’s voice.

“Andrew!”

She knows his name?

Thud
. Something hits him hard in the back.

Snow plops.

A snowball. She hit him with a snowball.

He wheels. Holds up both hands, palms forward. “I don’t know who you are or what you want, but I don’t want any trouble–”

The woman hooks her thumbs around the hood, flips it back. It’s some white girl. She shakes free a shaggy ink-black pixie cut, the front bangs streaked with red. She stares at him from raccoon-dark eyes.

“You dumb shit,” she says, baring her teeth from behind a fishhook sneer. “
What
are you doing out here?”

“Wh… huh?”

She sighs as snow falls. “I don’t know why I’m yelling at you. I knew you’d be here. Isn’t that why I’m here?” She taps a cigarette out of a rumpled pack of Natural American Spirits. Cigarette between lips. Clink of a lighter. Flame in the winter. Blue smoke.

He coughs. Fans the smoke away.

“I gotta go,” he says.

“You don’t remember me,” she says. A statement, not a question.

“What? No I–” Wait. The way one she stares from under an arched and dubious brow. He knows that look. A look of unmitigated incredulity. A mean-girl look like she’s saying,
You’d really wear those pants with that shirt?
Sarah gives him that look sometimes. Her judgey face. “Yeah. Hold up. I remember you. From the bus.”

She gestures at him with the cigarette. “Got it in one.”

A year ago. On the SEPTA NiteOwl route home to University City.

His stomach suddenly drops out from under him.

“You… told me…” He tries to remember. He was tired that night. No. Drunk. He was
drunk
that night. Not black-out-and-wake-up-in-Jersey drunk, but drinks with Derek and the other brokers… Did Sarah yell at him that night? No. They were only just together then. Not even living with each other. They’d just met.

The woman vents smoke through her teeth. “You have a ring in your pocket. Left pocket, I think.”

His gaze darts down. His hand reflexively touches the pocket. There the ring is heavy.
The One Ring
, he thinks. On the way to Mordor. Absurd that he’s thinking about that. He doesn’t even like those books.

“How do you…” But then it all hits him. Ice breaking. Water rushing. The memory cold as the slap of the winter air.

On the bus. He’d seen her there before. Sitting in the back. Earbuds in. Then one day she came up to him. Sat behind him. Started talking. He’d had… what were they? A bunch of Long Island Iced Teas. How do they get them to taste so much like iced tea? They turned her into a smudgy blur, a Vaseline thumbprint on the lens of his life.

She just started talking. Like she couldn’t stop, like someone karate-kicked the spigot right off the sink – words spraying everywhere. She was amped, jacked up in the same way he was slowed down, and she told him–

You’re gonna die
.

That’s what she said.

She knows about the ring now because she knew about it then. Didn’t she? She told him he’d have a ring in his pocket, and he said that was absurd. At the time he hadn’t even thought of marrying Sarah, but here he was, with a ring – his dead mother’s own engagement ring – there in his pocket, a modest little circle of white gold,
too
modest…

The girl gave him a date. Told him to “mark his calendar.”

Was tonight that date?

He doesn’t even realize he asked the question out loud.

“Yes. It’s tonight, genius.” You really should’ve written it down. I
told
you to write it down. I said, ‘Whip out your fancy smartphone and write it the fuck down.’ But did you? Mmm. No. You just puked on your shoes.” She suddenly pauses, as if in rumination. “OK, maybe I should have waited till you weren’t drunk to give you the news, though at the time I thought it might soften the blow. I’d been watching you for days. I brushed by you on a Monday, didn’t tell you until Thursday.”

“You’re crazy,” he says, backpedaling.

“Be that as it may, Andrew, that doesn’t change what’s coming.”

He says it again – “You’re
crazy
” – because he can’t find any other words, because his brain is suddenly a snarl of sparking, rat-chewed wires, and he knows he’s being played. Conned, somehow. He takes a step back, turns – starts hurrying across the basketball court.

She’s after him. Like stink on a skunk.

“You’re processing this poorly,” she yells. “Totally normal, by the way. This was all kind of an experiment for me. I’ve run it again and again, and it always runs smack into the same dead end every time.” She clears her throat. “No pun intended until now. Hey. Slow down. Wait up.”

But he keeps hurrying.

“Get away,” he says.

“You’ve got an appointment to keep, huh? Running right toward the reaper’s bony hug. Fate, man. Fucking fate! See? I
told
you how it was going to shake out. I gave you all the details – the date, the ring, the ATM machine–”
You no need to say extra machine
“–and yet here you are, not walking but
sprinting
toward the cliff’s edge. It’s like people
want
to die.”

“I’ll call the police.” He fumbles for his phone. He palms it, turns around while still walking backward and waves the phone at her like it’s a weapon. “I’ll do it. I’ll call 911!”

“Go ahead,” she says, stopping. She sucks on the cigarette. “Call them. I’ll wait. You call them, you might just save your own life, Andy.”

“Andrew. It’s Andrew.”

“Whatever. Ringy-ringy. 911.”

He holds the phone. Hand trembling.

He doesn’t call.

He doesn’t call because he doesn’t have the time. If he calls the police, they might actually show up. Then they’ll want to talk to him. Take a statement. But the pawn shop closes at midnight.

And midnight is fast approaching.

Instead, he takes out his house keys. He shoves keys through his fingers and forms a soft, clumsy fist.

He shakes the fist at her.

She laugh-snorts. “What is
that
?”

“I’ll hit you. It’ll… the keys, the keys’ll cut you.”

“Did you learn that in a movie?”

“In a defense class.”

“In a defense class for
who
? I didn’t know you were a middle-aged housewife, Andy. You cover it up well.”

“Fuck you.”

“
There
it is. The anger. The resentment. Nobody likes being told they’re going to die. They struggle like a sparrow caught in a man’s hand. Flapping and scratching and pecking. You can fix this, Andy. Turn around. Go home. Whatever you’re doing out here in pissing distance of midnight, do it some other time.”

He kicks stones and slush at her. Like a child. He feels stupid for doing it but there it is; it’s already done.

“You’re a fucking lunatic!” he shouts at her.

The woman just shakes her head.

“Fine,” she says. “That’s the experiment, then. I’m calling it. Time of death: fifteen minutes. Go forth, spunky housewife, and meet your maker.”

She turns then. Pulls her hoodie back over her head. Flicks her cigarette off into the snow.

The woman recedes. A slow walk away.

She doesn’t look back. She’s done with him. Good.

He stands there for a little while. Shaking. He tells himself it’s just the cold.
Sarah. The ring. The ATM. Midnight
.
Man up, Andy. Andrew! Andrew. Damnit.
It’s like the woman’s insanity is contagious. Like she’s in his head, a spider spinning a web, catching flies. He lets out a plume of frozen breath.

Then he turns, hastens his step across the last two basketball courts.

Through an alley. Through puddles of dirty ice-mush.

There. Across the street, next to a small alley. Glowing bright, Superman red-and-blue: the ATM.
Almost there
, he thinks, as he darts across the empty street. Above, the sky glows Philadelphia Orange, a blasted burnt umber hue as if a chemical fire burns in the heavens.

Andrew digs out his card with cold-bitten hands, shoves it in the machine. He jumps through all the hoops. Presses all the buttons. Enters his PIN number – and suddenly he realizes it’s not a PIN number, it’s just a PIN, a Personal Identification Number, and the absurdity of yet another redundancy makes him laugh–

Whew
.

Tension flees.

This is OK.

It’s all going to be fine.

Except:

The machine won’t let him take out more than $200. He needs four times that amount.
Damnit!

He stabs the button. Fine. It spits out two hundred.

Then he crams his card into the slot again.