Throw Like A Girl (3 page)

Iris reached the top. She didn't hear any more kicking noise, so she guessed the lock held. She'd only been up here a couple of times. There was striped wallpaper with something wet soaking through part of it. Light came down from a high window at one end, white and smeared. The upstairs had a smell like boiled vegetables. “Hurry up,” Iris hissed. She could hear Rico stumping along and blowing like a horse. “Hurry,” she said again, uselessly.

When Rico finally reached the top stair he said, “Whew.” They went into his mother's room. It was smaller than Rico's and almost all the space was taken up by the bed. It had a pink bedspread and some fancy pillows with fringe. There was a closet with a chest of drawers inside it. Rico pushed the clothes on hangers to one side and then the other.

Iris went to the window. She could see the street in front of the house, and some of the yard, but not Jovanovich or Goombah. She guessed they were on the porch. Mr. Ortiz was still up in his tree. He looked a lot closer from here, almost like you could have a conversation with him. He was sitting on a big limb, riding it like it was a horse, and pulling his ropes up from the ground. It looked lonesome up there with nothing but the sky and the bare branches.

Rico was scraping around in the closet. “She must of moved it. The gun.”

“Uh-huh,” said Iris. She watched Mr. Ortiz take his gloves off and blow on his fingers. It was probably real cold up there. She wished she was him. She wished she was a hundred miles up in the sky, away from everybody else in the world, and that all along she had been somebody else.

Iris opened the window. It was stuck shut, and she had to bang on the frame and push on it one side at a time. She unhooked the screen, knelt on the bed and stuck her head out. She could hear Jovanovich and Goombah walking around on the porch. She looked for something to throw to get their attention, but all she saw was pillows.

“Hey.” Rico was on the bed, trying to squeeze in at the window. “Quit hogging.”

“There's nothing to see.”

“Well let me see it.”

Iris let him take a turn. With his knees up on the windowsill, he looked like something the window couldn't swallow. He backed out again, carefully, and unrolled his shirt to show her something he had tucked away in his stomach folds. “What'd I tell you?”

The gun didn't look real to her because after all it was just Rico holding it. But once she held its dense, heavy weight, heavy like it was made out of some metal that came from deep inside the earth's core, once she rubbed her finger along its oiled, dull shine, it was the realest thing in the world.

“Is it loaded?”

“Course it is.”

“How can you tell?”

“Give it back here.”

She didn't want to let it go. Her hand liked the feel of it. But she allowed Rico to show her how to pull apart the barrel and see where the bullets were, nine of them, each one in its little slot, like seeds. “It's a revolver,” Rico said. “A twenty-two. You could play Russian roulette with it because you can spin the bullets around.”

Iris said she wanted it back. She stuck her head out the window and looked around for something to shoot. “How are you supposed to aim it?”

“Just squint along that little bump thing at the end.”

Iris pointed the gun at a car parked across the street, and then at an ugly fancy lamp in somebody's picture window. She swung it toward Mr. Ortiz but she decided she liked him and wasn't even going to pretend to shoot him. She backed away from the window. “So have you shot stuff before?”

“Sure,” Rico said. “Lots of times.”

“Liar. You lie like a rug.”

“You don't know shit,” Rico said, but Iris knew she was right. Rico never did anything he said he did. It wasn't exactly lying. It was only things he wished he could do.

Jovanovich and Goombah started making their racket again, banging things around on the porch. Iris leaned out the window. “Hey!” She wanted to get them out where she could see them. “Hey donkey dicks!”

The racket stopped. They were probably surprised to hear her from upstairs. Jovanovich's head popped up at the edge of the porch. Iris couldn't see the rest of him. It was like his head really was on a stick.

“Guess what I got,” Iris said.

“A face like a bucket of worms.”

“Ha. Ha. Ha.” Iris brought the gun up to the windowsill but kept it close in so Jovanovich couldn't see it.

Rico was making his asthma sounds again. “I left my inhaler downstairs.”

“We can go back down in a little.”

“I seriously need it, dude.”

Rico wheezed and choked some more. Maybe he really couldn't breathe, or maybe he was just scared of what she was going to do with the gun. Jovanovich was still grinning up at her. He had a pushed-in, piggy kind of face. He would never be anything other than ugly. If she shot him, nobody would ever have to look at him again. That would definitely be something real. Or she could take the gun home and shoot her mother or Kyle.

Rico was making snoring sounds. Something squeezed inside of her. She bet she had her dumb period again. Rico's hands were paddling, one on each side of his face. His eyes had that goldfish look. “Oh all right,” Iris sighed.

She spun the barrel of the gun Russian roulette-style. She shook the bullets out into her hand and showed them to Rico. “See? It's no big deal.” She threw one bullet down at Jovanovich and it hit the gutter and bounced off. “Bang!” she said. At least the bullets were real. “Bang!”

In the corner of her eye she saw Mr. Ortiz struggle briefly to keep his balance, then topple over and fall with his arms outstretched and the ropes curling and snapping around him like banners.

H
aving
exiled herself forever from her old life, she looked into this new one and found nothing to recognize.

Here was the ocean. It wasn't what she expected. Instead of the frill of blue you saw on postcards, it was this enormous swollen rolling mass, gray, like some shaggy wild animal. Jessie—that was her name—had not realized that the ocean was always trying to climb out of itself, out of its space, a brimming cup. And it was huge. She remembered, from school or somewhere, that most of the earth was covered in ocean. Yes, and it wanted the rest of it too.

It was cold, she hadn't imagined Florida being cold, that was another thing. She'd left her winter coat back in the room, thinking she didn't need it, so she walked along with her fingers curled up in the sleeves of her sweatshirt. The sky had no depth or shape to it. Cloud or fog, she couldn't tell which, or maybe its gray was just the color of cold. Nobody else was out walking as far as she could see. It was just a strip of less desirable, gravelly beach across the highway from the motel. In one direction, far off, were fishing piers and restaurants and the fancy hotels that had their own beaches. At the other end, a scrubby tangle of trees blocked your way. Jessie felt stupid out there alone. She wished she had a dog or something. With a dog you could at least throw sticks.

She looked for seashells, but the only shells she found were flattened, ordinary, and when she picked up one that was two halves still joined together, she could see something dead inside. Something dim, webbed, and sticky. “Oh God,” she said aloud. “R.B.?”

But of course he wasn't there, and if he knew she was getting weird again, something she had promised to quit doing Well it wasn't just an act, she was weird, she couldn't help it, you might as well try to stop yourself from vomiting as try to keep the weirdness from coming out. Her hands felt soiled. She rinsed them in the gray water and dried them on her pants.

R.B. was still asleep back in the room. He didn't like getting up early or walking just for walking's sake. He was full of such things, little prickly dislikes. People who went around acting like theirs didn't stink. Certain movies, the stupid ones where they didn't do anything but talk. Certain kinds of foods. It was all Jessie could do to get him to drink orange juice instead of orange soda. He only ate when he was hungry, didn't make a big deal out of it. He didn't care about a lot of things other people thought were so important.

He was proud. He didn't like her paying for things, even when it was her own money; she had to slip it to him beneath the table in restaurants. It was as if all the ordinary hungers he didn't have or couldn't be bothered with went into being proud. She understood that about him, she had reached out with her heart and soul and touched that hard, hungry part of him.

Jessie turned her back on the ocean and crossed the road, wondering if he'd want something to eat once he woke up. There was a doughnut shop a couple of blocks down, she didn't mind going into places like that where nobody noticed what you looked like or who you were. Jessie stood patiently in line, flicking her eyes over her reflection in the mirrored panels. An average-to-plain girl with long straight hair falling in her eyes, no one you'd remember, and for the first time in her life she was glad for that because nobody was supposed to know where they were. She bought six doughnuts and a large iced tea which she balanced carefully on her way back to the room. She couldn't believe they were staying in a real motel.

R.B. was still asleep. He slept like he was a puppet dropped from some great height. Arms and legs flopped everywhere. His head was flung back and his mouth was open. Watching him sleep was still new to her, so she just sat there for a while. How amazing that when he was asleep, not talking, moving, watching things and working them around, he wasn't really R.B. at all. He was this long, blue-pale, skinned-looking creature, like a shell, but she had to stop thinking about those.

Jessie drank her iced tea and ate one of the doughnuts and then because she was getting bored she made some small, experimental noises to see if he might wake up. Scootched around in her chair. Ran water in the bathroom. She had already learned that if she wanted him to get up she should go about it in this roundabout way.

Finally his eyes fluttered and he regarded the ceiling. Then he rolled over. “Hey,” Jessie said.

“What are you doing?”

He meant the doughnuts. Jessie held the bag out to him and he rummaged around in it. “Chocolate. All right.”

And she was happy, because the doughnuts made him happy. R.B. got up to go to the bathroom with half a doughnut still clamped in his mouth and that was both funny and awful, to think of him doing both those things at once. Well, this was her new life, she should get accustomed to all manner of strangeness.

When he got back into bed he patted the space next to him, meaning she should lie down with him which also felt strange, since she was dressed and he wasn't wearing anything. She rested her head on his chest and R.B. ran one hand down her back and underneath the top of her pants while his other hand worked at getting a cigarette going. Once she heard the snap of the lighter and smelled smoke, Jessie said, “So what do you want to do today?”

“Here I just woke up and you're already after me to make plans.”

“I was just asking. Come on.”

There was a little while when the smoke drew in and out, then he said, “I think I'll go get me a new girlfriend.”

“Oh sure. Funny.”

“Hot car, long blond hair, killer bod. Plenty of money.”

“How are you going to work that, hypnotize her?”

R.B.'s hand administered a little slap. “One that's not so damned sassy.”

“Oh, I'll show you sassy. Wait and see,” she said, knowing that he liked it when she pretended to talk back. She kept her ear on his chest, listening to the muddy bumping of his heart as he put his cigarette down and used both hands to pull at her pants. Jessie wriggled out of one leg, then kicked the other loose. She understood what he wanted, which was for her to get him hard with her mouth and then climb on top. It was different for guys, the things they liked.

When he was done, he said, “You're sweet, you know?”

“Do you like me that way? Sweet?”

“You know that I do.”

Then that was what she would be. In a new life you could start over, change your nature. R.B. was her new life. It was that simple.

He clicked the television on and Jessie figured this would be another day like yesterday where they stayed inside doing nothing and they could have done that anywhere, there was no need to come such a long way.

But R.B. got up to take a shower and when he was dressed and had his hair dried he said she should get ready, they were going out.

“Out where?”

“Outside, Miss Worry Wart.”

He was in that kind of mood, pleased with making secrets out of nothing. So Jessie put her clothes on and got herself outside. The sun was shining now, and just like that it was instantly warm and the glimpse of ocean she caught was blue, changed all of a sudden like a magic trick. R.B. was walking fast, she had to trot to keep up with him. The sun made the inside of the car hot and kicked up all its scruffy smells, vinyl and cigarettes and whatever R.B. had tracked into it. The car was the first thing her parents had not liked about him, before they even met him. Of course he hadn't bought it new, so there was another layer of grit, smells, stains that didn't belong to anyone they knew, only more of the lurking filth of the world, stupid dirty vomit-making horrible stop that. She pinched her nostrils shut and breathed through her mouth.

They followed the main road into town. With the sun out, things looked a lot more like Florida. There were palm trees and hibiscus and houses painted pink or blue or mint green in little square yards of crimped grass. Once they reached the business district, R.B. found a place to park. He led her down a sidewalk as if he knew exactly where he was going, although when they'd come here they'd driven straight through town. He was like that, confident.

He steered them into a House of Pancakes. R.B. got pecan waffles and a Coke and Jessie ordered a salad because she couldn't remember the last time she ate anything that qualified as a vegetable. She poked around in the mass of watery lettuce. They didn't talk much. R.B. didn't like talking at meals. He said it wasn't the way he was raised up. Jessie was trying to figure out a good time to ask him some of the important things like where they were going and what they were supposed to do from now on.

“So don't you trust me? Don't say yes just because you think it's what I want to hear. I can tell.”

Which confused her, because if he knew that much, wouldn't he know if she trusted him? She lowered her eyes. She didn't want to look at him and have him see something she hadn't really meant
.

“Yes or no. I'm not gonna get mad at you.”

“Yes. I trust you.”

“You better be sure about what you're saying because this is absolute, this is no halfway, half-assed contract between you and me, this means you trust me with your life and I trust you with mine and there's no going back. The bastard world hasn't done right by either of us but that's about to change. Come here. Don't be scared. Don't you know we're one person now?”

R.B. finished his waffles and shoved his plate away and got another cigarette going, his eyes shut against the sunlight. It was strange sometimes, here they were so close and yet she could examine him as if he was someone she'd never seen before. It felt disloyal to be doing so, but she couldn't help it, couldn't always stay in the zone of closeness, be half of one person with him. It was the weak, untrusting part of her. She loved his face but it was not at all a good-looking face, once you took it apart feature by feature. His skin was patchy and his eyes were too close together and his hair never sat right. But even his looks were something he could work around to his advantage. People underestimated him, dismissed him as common, underbred, some dumb hick with his head full of wrestling and beer. She'd seen them do it, stare right past him, and then be as surprised as hell when they wound up losing out to him.

R.B. was for Ronald Boone. She'd known him most of a month before he told her what the initials stood for, that's how much he hated being Ronald Boone. Ronald Boone was a slow learner, a discipline problem, a bad influence, a mug shot, a loser. It was a name with a permanent bad record. R.B. was somebody he could make up as he went along.

R.B. put his cigarette out and said, “You get enough to eat? That didn't hardly look like a mouthful.”

“It was fine.”

“I don't want anybody saying I can't take care of you. I don't want you thinking I can't take care of you.”

“You know I never would. Come on.”

“Because if it's a matter of money, that's the next thing on the list. I know you're used to better.”

“Come on,” Jessie said again, embarrassed when he brought up money and the house she'd grown up in and all the things in that house, so different from the way he'd lived, and why couldn't he believe that none of it mattered or had ever made her happy? She was afraid her old life would turn out to be something he always held against her.

R.B. put the cigarette out and dug for his wallet, fished out a twenty-dollar bill. “This is for if you want more to eat. I gotta go do something.”

The worry in her started up again like a clock. “Where are you going?” she asked, knowing that he wouldn't say. The more she asked, the more he wouldn't tell.

“No place you need to fret about.”

“When—”

“I'll be back when I'm back. My job today is taking care of business, yours is to wait right here and eat pancakes. Now who has the tougher job? Nope, not that face. I don't want to see you getting into a mood. Try looking like you're on the vacation you always wanted to take. That's my girl.”

Then he was gone. God she hated this. He'd go off somewhere she wasn't allowed to be and she'd sit for hours, maybe, never knowing when he'd take it into his head to come back.

The waitress stopped at the table and asked Jessie if she wanted anything else and Jessie said she'd have coffee, not looking up. They wouldn't kick you out if you were drinking coffee.

But what if they did make her leave before R.B. came back and she went looking for the car and it wasn't there? Even if she found a ride back to the motel, she didn't have the room key. Even if she was brave enough to show her face at the office and talk them into giving her the key, what was there in that room to make a life of? What if she never saw R.B. again? She had nothing to go back to and no way of going forward.

“Honey? I know you don't want to believe me, but he is really not a nice boy. I don't just mean that he comes from a different kind of home. I'm not even talking about manners, although those are
important also and from what I've seen he doesn't have any. He doesn't know how to behave around a nice girl. You know that if someone doesn't respect themselves, they can't respect other people. Maybe it's not even his fault, since he hasn't had the advantages you take for granted. Now you think that because he's hanging around and paying attention to you, you have to pay him attention back, but sweetheart, I promise you there will be other boys, you are a wonderful, beautiful, intelligent, special girl—”