The Water Knife (29 page)

“I just keep thinking about Julio, and I don’t like it. I got rid of my car and destroyed my cell.”

“That Tesla?”

“Probably joyriding around the city by now.”

“You’re serious. You just threw that car away? Charlene would have bought it off you.”

He shook his head. “Nah. I don’t want that thing connected to me.”

“You really are paranoid.”

“No. I’m alive.” He went to the door and looked out at the gathering darkness. “It’ll do,” he said finally, and closed the door with a purposeful air. He hooked the padlock through its interior loops, securing the place. If he’d been Sunny, looking like that, he would have just successfully pissed on every car tire and dusty fire hydrant within a hundred yards.

With a start, she realized that Sunny was back at home. “My dog.”

He gave her a warning look. “Have someone else check on it. Not someone who knows where we are, though.”

“What do you think is going to happen?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head, frustrated. “I wish I knew more about what Julio was into down here. He was willing to kill his own guy for a payoff, and that makes me think he’d be willing to do other things for cash, too. Maybe sell out his network to the Calies. Maybe partner with some narcos…” He trailed off, studying the squat. “It’ll do,” he said again, mostly to himself.

He eased into a chair and set the dead Cali’s laptop on the table, started poking at it.

“Do you even know what you’re doing?” she asked.

“Just checking things out.”

“Look—” Lucy paused.

What am I doing with this guy?

“I can’t work with you if I don’t at least know your name. Lie if you want, but give me a name. Give me something.”

The water knife looked up at her. Smiled slightly. “Okay. You can call me Angel.”

“Really?” She almost made fun of it, but something in his eyes made her hold back.
It’s his real name
. “Angel.”

“Angel.” He said it in the Spanish way, the
g
making a soft
h
. Anhel. He caught her doubtful expression. “My mother thought I was going to turn out better than I did.”

“In Mexico?” Lucy prodded.

“Long time ago.” He stripped off his jacket, wincing and careful. The makeshift bandage she’d made for him was rusty with dried blood. He didn’t seem to care. He turned his attention to the computer again.

“And you were in a gang,” Lucy said. “Those are the tattoos.”

He didn’t look up. “Long time ago. Not in Mexico.”

“And now you’re a water knife.”

He shrugged as he continued to peck at the computer.

“Do you still see your mother?” she asked.

“She’s dead,” he said.

“Let me guess: a long time ago?”

He didn’t answer.

So much for connections. She went to the window, amusing herself by watching the traffic around the pump. People coming and going. Texans lining up with empty jugs. People lying out on the heat of the pavement, content to have a scrap of sidewalk close to the water.

At last Angel said, “I can’t crack this. Do you know anyone down here who does security work?”

Lucy glanced back, surprised. “I would’ve thought you had plenty of those people.”

“Yesterday, I’d say I could get anything I wanted, anytime I wanted. Now I just got this feeling that the place is rotten with moles. If I reach out to anyone who was in Julio’s old network, it feels like a good way to get the wrong kind of attention. So you got someone who can work this, or do I got to find a way to get this computer up to Vegas, just to get a look inside?”

Lucy frowned. “I’ve got a friend. He works the blood rags. He might have someone we can use.”

“That Timo boy?”

“Yeah.”

“He’ll be low-key, right? I don’t want to end up as page one.”

“Do you trust me or not?”

He smiled a little at that.

M
aria watched Toomie coming home from work, rattling down the street as the hot sun sank red over the abandoned subdivision.

She’d never been so glad to see anyone in all her life. She loved everything about Toomie in that moment. His bald head, gleaming in the sun. The man’s
pupusa
cart all hammered together with its red-and-white umbrella strapped across the top. His apron stripped off and folded neatly, so that he was just a man in baggy jeans, pushing his cart. Even the one bad rattling wheel sounded good to her.

Toomie startled at the sight of her sitting on his front stoop, but he didn’t act as if she didn’t belong. He came up and settled beside her with a groan.

“Hey, Little Queen.”

His voice was soft, not pushing, already knowing that things had gone wrong for her. He offered her water from a bottle with a scratched Coca-Cola label. His own water, she knew. Filled at the pumps closer to town, before he made the trek out to the middle of nowhere.

Maria sipped carefully, trying not to be greedy, fighting need.

She knew what he was seeing. Another sadass girl trying to make herself look like a woman. Maria wiped the mouth of the bottle and handed it back. As he took it, she was aware of how big his hands were. Those hands had built houses. These houses.

He sipped from the bottle and offered it to her again. “Go ahead. I got enough.”

She shook her head. “Sarah’s dead.”

She was surprised that her voice didn’t break. She felt torn to pieces, but her eyes were bone dry. It was like her body knew there
was still too much pain ahead to waste tears now. It knew she needed to save her tears for the pain still to come.

Toomie didn’t look surprised at Maria’s news. When she didn’t say anything else, he said, “Sarah was that girl you ran with, right?”

“Yeah. The one with the skinny ass. You told me once that she wasn’t playing smart.” Maria shrugged. “Should’ve listened.”

Toomie was quiet for a long time. “I’m sorry.”

Maria knew he was looking at her. And she knew that he could tell from her skimpy black dress and high heels that she’d been playing Sarah’s game, too.

She stared determinedly out at the dusty street, avoiding his gaze. She didn’t want to see the judgments. Of the clothes, or Sarah, or how stupid she’d been. She didn’t want to see someone judging Sarah.

I’m sorry
, she thought to her friend. Her girlfriend. Her…
I’m sorry
.

Maria hunched in on herself, feeling small and exposed in her party dress, sitting beside this big man with his tidily buttoned shirt. This man who somehow managed to keep everything about himself organized. He was like an island of calm in the chaos. Even now, with everything fallen apart, he was more peaceful than anything she’d been next to in years.

“You were right,” she repeated, pressing the issue. “I shouldn’t have gone with her.”

All Toomie said was “I’m sorry,” again.

“Why’re you sorry?” Maria shot back. “It’s not like you put the bullet in her. She got her own dumbass shot.”

Toomie recoiled as if slapped.

Maria didn’t want to push him away, but she couldn’t help it. It was as if she wanted him to react. To punish her. To call her out. To slap her down. To react in any way at all, instead of just sitting next to her.

She glared at him. “She fucked her own self up, right? Peddling ass like that. She deserved it. Dumb piece of Texas tail, right? She deserved it for being so stupid.”

“No,” Toomie said gently, “it wasn’t her fault. And no, she didn’t deserve it.”

“She sold ass, and now she’s dead.”

He looked away. He started to say something, then stopped. Started again. Paused. Finally, he just sighed and said, “It wasn’t always like this.”

Maria laughed bitterly. “You sound like my dad. Saying things didn’t used to be this way. ‘It’s going to get back to normal.’ ”

Suddenly she was mad. Enraged at Toomie and her father and everyone who talked about how their lives had been one way or another but never talked about how it was now.

“It’s always been like this,” she said. “And it’s always going to be like this.
Always
.”

Suddenly she found that she could look the old man straight in the eye and not care that she felt naked in Sarah’s borrowed dress, and that her feet hurt from the high heels, and that she’d left her friend to die alone because she couldn’t pull her under the bed fast enough, couldn’t save her, and maybe she was glad that Sarah had been there to take the bullet, because if they hadn’t found Sarah to kill, they would have kept searching for the girls who belonged to the scattered clothes, and then Maria would be dead, too.

“It’s like you can’t see what’s happening. You talk about how it was before, but I don’t know what that is. Whatever you had, I don’t got it—”

“I wasn’t—” Toomie started, but Maria raised her voice and rolled right over him.

“Everyone I know is dead. My mom, my dad, now Sarah…and…and…” She hiccuped a sob.

I’m so tired
.

“And…” She could barely get the words out. The grief was there, finally. All of it, welling up and overflowing.

She sobbed for her losses. Sarah, her family. Her perfect house in Texas. Bunk beds. School. Worrying about whether she was going to be allowed to get training bras. Wondering whether Jill Amos was her friend or not. Anticipating eighth-grade prom. Stupid small things—and all of it was gone.

She was all that was left. Maria Villarosa. The last bit of anything that she could remember. One person sitting in the middle of a ruined
city beside some old black guy who just looked at her sadly and who was the closest thing she had to a friend or family in the whole entire world.

Toomie’s arm encircled her.

At his touch, Maria sobbed harder, unbearably relieved to have him hold her.

Eventually her crying slowed, then stopped. She leaned against his chest, feeling exhausted and empty.

“I just wanted to earn some money,” she whispered. “I lost Sarah’s money, so I owed her. I owe the Vet a ton of money now.”

“Hush,” Toomie said. “None of it’s on you.”

And that started her crying again.

Eventually,
finally
, her tears dried for real. Grief as a hard, charred stone. She could feel it there. It wasn’t gone but seemed buried instead, under her ribs. Aching but finished.

Maria let herself lean against Toomie. For a long time they said nothing.

The sun sank redly over the hollowed houses that he’d built with his big hands and his optimism. Maria was surprised that she felt safe and wondered at the feeling, and why she had it, and if it could last, and then decided there was no point questioning.

A doglike form slipped across the empty street. A coyote, disappearing down an alley. Running easily, its legs a fast-trot blur. Tan and gray, lithe and purposeful. Speeding through the thickening dusk.

Toomie shifted. “The den’s over there.” He pointed farther down the street.

“Are there a lot of them?” Maria asked.

“At least four or five.” He was quiet for a while. “I was going to sell that place for 359,000 dollars. Now I’m trying to figure out if I can charge a bunch of wild animals some rent.”

It wasn’t a good joke, but Maria laughed anyway. She looked up at him.

“I was—” she started to ask, but found she couldn’t say the words. She looked away, not wanting to see his eyes. “I was wondering if you’d…” She trailed off, too embarrassed to go on.

Her father had always said that you stood on your own two feet and didn’t beg. You didn’t ask.

“I was wondering if I could stay with you,” she blurted. She shut up, then plunged on. “I’ve got some cash I could give you. I can work. I can help. I’ll do…I can do anything.” She reached for him. “I can—”
I’ll do all the things that Sarah was telling me I should do
. “I’ll—”

Toomie pushed her away. “Don’t. We’ve already been over that.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…I’m sorry—”

“Don’t think I’m not flattered.” He was shaking his head. “If I was a younger man or maybe a little less principled, then sure, yes, in a flat second.” He laughed uncomfortably. “But no.”

“I’ll go,” Maria said, feeling stupid.

Toomie looked puzzled. “Why would you do that?”

“You don’t want me,” she said. “I get it.”

“Hell, girl. Of course I want you.” He reached over and pulled her into a hug. “Of course I want you. But not like that. I want you to have everything you deserve. I want you to have a future. And a life. I want you to get
out
.”

Maria laughed hollowly. “You sound like my dad. There’s no way out. The Vet’s gonna come for me, and when he gets hold of me, he’s going to feed me to his hyenas.”

“Well, we’ll see about that. I know some people might be able to help you get out of here. Get across the border.”

Maria dug in her purse. “I don’t have the money for that.” She dug in the dead lady’s bag, pushing aside Ratan’s soaked bible, and came up with the yuan the scarred man had given her. “This is all I got. It would have been more if I’d gotten paid, but if it helps…” For some reason that made Toomie look even more saddened. “I should have taken you in as soon as your father died.”

“Why?”

The idea that anyone at all had been looking out for her made her chest feel tight again.

“I kept thinking I could help you.” He sighed. “Saw you on the street and kept thinking I would. But I was afraid. So I kept putting it off. Didn’t want to make promises I couldn’t keep. I didn’t want to fail you. Thought you’d had too many people make you promises and then fail you.”

Maria was surprised to see that Toomie’s eyes were wet.

He gripped her hands, enfolding them and the cash they held
tight. “We’re going to get you out of here,” he said fiercely. “You’re not going to die down here, and for damn sure, you’re not going to live here. Not if I’ve got anything to say about it anyway.” He stood up and beckoned her. “Now come inside, and let’s get you set up. We’ll figure out a plan. We’ll take our time, and we’ll think things through. And it’ll be a real one. Not a fantasy. We’ll find someone to get you across the river. Just leave it to me.”

She stared at him, confused. It was as if she’d cast witchcraft on him, a spell to make him do crazy things. Nothing about him made sense. Why did he suddenly want to help?

Quit worrying about it. Be glad
.

That was Sarah’s voice. Practical. Sarah took what she could get and didn’t ask why.

Look where that got her
.

But still, Maria followed Toomie inside and let him fry up a
pupusa
on a hot plate in his kitchen, and then she watched as he made up a bed for her in one of the many empty bedrooms of the house.

“Why?” she asked, finally. “Why are you so nice? It doesn’t make sense. I’m not your woman. I’m not your people.”

“We’re all each other’s people. Just like we’re all our brothers’ keepers. We forget it sometimes. When everything’s going to pieces, people can forget. But in the end? We’re all in it together. You are my people, Maria. No question in my mind.”

“Most people don’t think that way.”

“Yeah.” Toomie sighed. “I used to know this Indian guy. Skinny dude, came over from India. Didn’t have a wife or family anymore. Maybe they were back there in India, I can’t remember. Anyway, the thing he said that stuck with me was that people are alone here in America. They’re all alone. And they don’t trust anyone except themselves, and they don’t rely on anyone except themselves. He said that was why he thought India would survive all this apocalyptic shit, but America wouldn’t. Because here, no one knew their neighbors.” He laughed at that. “I can still remember his head wagging back and forth, ‘No one is knowing their neighbors.’ ”

Toomie shrugged. “He called this city the coldest hot place he’d ever lived, and when he looked at the slums, he couldn’t figure out why people didn’t work together and build together and support each
other more. And then he said he thought it was maybe because in America everyone had left their homes in other countries, so maybe that was why we’d forgotten what it was to have neighbors.”