Sarah Cortez - Houston Noir

There was a jumble of flotsam on the lawn ahead. A closer look showed it to be a pair of red sneakers, a plaid flannel shirt with tag still attached, a pair of black pants. Two feet from the clothes was a blue loose-leaf notebook — GET AN EXPERT PERSPECTIVE ON AN HIV TREATMENT printed on the cover. As if the occupant of those clothes had been raptured away right before she walked by.

She loved neighborhood mysteries.

Her friends from the suburbs thought she and Kenneth had lost their minds, moving to this ghetto corner of the Heights.

The Rose Garden parking lot was full, and light and laughter streamed through the cracks in the blinds. Another night, she would go in and sit at the bar and nurse a Shiner Bock. Visit with Rose, who owned the Rose Garden but hadn’t named it or been named for it.

See, her friends couldn’t get this — how cool it was, this old beer garden in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

A block from the Rose Garden, the Tiki House was hosting a klatch of young men, some straddling bicycles, all with their heads shaved, all wearing white wifebeaters and baggy low-slung jeans. They were raucous as grackles, but went quiet when they saw her, leaving just the click click of her heels. She tapped one of Jamie’s cigarettes out of the package and walked over to them, smiling at the way they pulled themselves up and leaned back without giving way.

She held out her cigarette. The boys exchanged unspoken words and then one stepped forward, eyes on hers. Took the cigarette, put it in his mouth, lit it, took a puff, and handed it back to her. She didn’t look away. She put the cigarette between her own lips, drew on it, and slowly blew out a stream. Sucked in, gave a puff. A perfect O of smoke drifted away.

The boys exploded in laughter and applause. As she walked away, she added sway to her hips, listening to the catcalls her high school Spanish couldn’t translate.

See, she wasn’t afraid, walking into the night. This felt good, and the cigarette... She inhaled deeply. Why had she ever given this up? This was all kinds of good — the taste, the feel, the nicotine rush, the rising feathered plumes of smoke.

Okay, so now the shoes were hurting.

A pit mix pressed his ugly face against the nearest fence. This part of the Heights, there were those who wouldn’t dream of leaving their dogs out all night, and there were those who had bought dogs to be left out all night. The pit watched until she reached his property line, then sighed gustily and returned to his porch.

She should get a dog. A big one from the SPCA. A rescue dog, in case someone needed rescuing.

There was a rescue injection. NPR did a story on it. You had to be the police or an EMT to get one — she’d checked. She couldn’t get this magic EpiPen that could draw your child back to life when he slipped into his dreams, deeply, deeply, and loosed his hold on the tether that bound him to the world, where you waited for him, sending out your love and your longing and your terror and your fury like hounds that could sniff him out and find him, find him and drag him back to your arms before he was...

Jamie was very far away. She couldn’t find him anymore when she looked in his eyes.

Or maybe he was still there. She couldn’t see him, but maybe he was still inside.

She used to plan his funeral. Couldn’t stop her mind going there. All his friends would come. Walker and Taylor and Nick. They don’t come now, but they would come for the funeral and hug her, and the girls would cry and even some of the boys. They don’t come now, because he’s already dead, as good as.

She turned the corner onto Airline Drive and the roar of the nearby freeway rose to greet her. Airline was lined with Houston’s produce suppliers. Avocados and onions and bananas and pecans. The sidewalk was littered with peels and the golden tissue of onion skin floating like shed skin cells. This superfluity of a wealthy, vulgar, living, striving city that could give you life or give you death, and it was all yours, you choose — this road or that one?

Or maybe God chose. Maybe the city chose.

Probably it wasn’t that simple.

Oh, here’s something she loved: Before it got this bad, every Friday she would take off early and treat her boy to lunch at Liberty Kitchen. He would start with a dozen raw oysters. Gulf oysters, big as a baby’s fist. She taught him to pick up the shell and drink the sweet, salty brine. It was something she’d read about. She couldn’t eat raw oysters. She’d sit across from him and watch him eat, fill himself, anything he wanted. That was just... good.

After, they’d go to Mam’s House of Snowballs and he’d get two or three flavors of syrup with a ball of vanilla ice cream under the ice.

That was good.

Off Airline, the freeway was a roar of blare and flare and it bothered her not at all. She was part of this night. She belonged, and she belonged here.

The appointment was behind the Airline Service Station and Grocery. Where she’d stopped for gas that time they’d been propositioned. Tonight, she had a proposition.

It was late. Grizzled and gaunt, a man slept open-mouthed as a baby on the sidewalk in front of the store, bathed in the light of a Texas Lottery sign promising that you, too, could be a winner. His life was nested in shopping bags around and under him, spilling out. He stank.

She took a last draw on the cigarette and crushed it with the toe of her shoe. She didn’t pick it up.

Behind the station was the man who was killing her son.

No point in being mad at him. You don’t get mad at tornadoes or cancer or lightning strikes. It’s not personal — it’s business.

She closed her eyes for a moment, pulled up her chin, balancing the sea in her eyes. This was good. And this was right. She stepped into the dark.

Her heeled pumps with their black glove leather were no protection on the closely mown stubble and concrete rubble and shed condoms and Pepsi bottles and dog shit and fire ants. But she didn’t turn back. She made her way to Jamie’s appointment under the watery light of the twenty-foot neon sign.

The man had his back to her. He was small and his head moved rhythmically.

She said, “Hey.”

The man spun around, popping black earbuds out of his ears.

He was a boy. Black-haired, black-eyed in the dark. Not fifteen. Maybe fifteen, but not older.

He said, “Fuck.” He looked past her like he was expecting someone else.

His cheeks were smooth. That boy’s mother put her hand against that cheek when he was sick. If he had a mother. Probably he didn’t, if he was out here so late.

This wasn’t the man who was killing Jamie. This was a boy, and he looked hungry. He needed someone to sit across from him and put good food in front of him. Cold milk. Good bread with soft butter. Some soup.

She smiled at the boy like he was a shy woodland creature and she wanted to show him he didn’t need to be afraid. She reached into her purse for some money to give him for food and milk. She dropped her purse and fives and tens and twenties spilled out. Her gun spilled out. It was a mean thing, small and threatening. She looked up to reassure the boy.

He wasn’t looking for reassurance. Fear bloomed in his face.

His arm, loose and jointless, swung to the back of his oversized jeans. It snapped back, now rigid and straight, with a black-and-silver gun that was bigger than her own.

The air went dead — there wasn’t enough to breathe. She couldn’t hear the traffic. Couldn’t hear her own voice. She held up her hand, unfolded her fingers to say stop. Wait. I won’t hurt you. I was going to, but that was when I thought you were someone else. When I thought I was someone else. Before I knew you.