Sarah Cortez - Houston Noir

His daughter or his wife? Maybe a sister or a niece. Was it cancer or heart disease? Something rare? A brain injury? Something like Macy? Mr. Larson was going through troubles too. That we might share a pain warmed me like hot pudding.

“Sorry,” he said, sitting down. He checked the applications on his computer with shaky hands.

Should I or shouldn’t I ask? I found myself asking: “Who’s Janine?”

“Our bichon frise. The vet has been trying to figure out what’s going on. He was half suggesting I put her down, but the money we’ve already poured into medical costs... If we do this gallbladder surgery, she might have another year. That’s worth six thousand. We’re probably throwing good money after bad, but... Sorry about that,” he said again, though nothing about him seemed sorry for me. I doubted he had any idea what six thousand dollars would do for our family. I’d never heard people talk so lightly about so much money before I came to this school.

“Maybe I could speak with someone else?”

“They’re just going to tell you the same thing. You always have the option of a loan.”

“I can’t take out any more in federal loans.”

“I was suggesting a private loan.”

“My dad doesn’t want me to... We don’t want to do that.”

“I appreciate that. That position, and it’s a special one to take. It’s your education, after all. College is an investment and, I understand, an expensive one for many families. All families have sacrifices to make. You don’t have to decide this second.” He handed me his card to end the conversation.

It was easy enough to get his address. Where could I send a Get Well card for his dog?

A grackle floated off the bus stop. An Oxford-blue suit, European cut on a big man, approached Taco Heaven. Dad called suits this nice revenge suits, purchased after a first paycheck or on the occasion of a breakup. But this was probably one of many revenge suits. Did the suit’s owner have a face? Sure. But all I saw was a smudge where eyes and a mouth should be. God had licked his thumb and rubbed this man out from the neck up. White hair and a bushy mustache came slightly into focus.

For the last ten minutes, an older woman with a light shawl had struggled with her order. She was peering at the menu when the suit cut in front of her. He gave me the up-and-down, the same look I get in bathrooms. Angus was on break.

“I believe the lady was first,” I said to the suit.

“She doesn’t look ready to order.”

I recognized Larson, back from vacation. I should have placed him right away. Did he recognize me? I was wearing gloves, so he couldn’t see my name.

The woman raised her eyebrows. She said, “Actually... ”

“Give me a Jamaican jerk taco, a bahn mi taco, plus an agua—”

I said to Larson, “Let me grab her order and then I’ll take yours.”

“But I just told you what I want.”

Ice cracking over a thin puddle — that was the expression traveling across the woman’s face. “I’ve lost my appetite.” She put a five-dollar tip in the jar and walked away.

When Larson placed his order, he spoke slowly, insultingly. It was the kind of voice kids used to mock Macy last summer.

“I heard you twice the first time,” I told him.

Angus came back inside, scraped down the grill. “Everything good here?”

“Maybe you want to think about who you have up front,” Larson said.

“Or,” I said, “maybe you want to think—”

“Why don’t you take your break now?” Angus interrupted. “I can take this one. You’re so wet you’re shaking, Re.”

I was sick of it. So sick. Of the cutting in line. The looks people like Larson gave people like me and Macy. My school. The heat and the rashes on my arms from sleeping on the ground.

A bronze sculpture of a ripped man walking with no arms and no head. Who knew where? The sorry bastard. A giant had pinched off his limbs and left him to wander around with no strength. The bubbles in the Topo Chico popped in my mouth. I hadn’t changed. My shirt clung to my binder.

“I thought you said you were good with people,” Angus said when he came out, throwing a dry Taco Heaven T-shirt on my shoulder.

“That guy wasn’t people. He works at the college.”

“Do you know him?”

“He didn’t even recognize me. What a dick!”

“Can’t you avoid him at school?”

I shook my head. “I don’t even know. I don’t think I can go.”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

We sat beneath the magnolia, suffering. I took out my phone, went to the gallery, showed Angus two pictures of Macy. A before and after.

“I’m sorry for your sister.”

“Maybe I should go home.”

“You never know,” Angus said. “I knew a kid like your sister. We were all out together in Austin, off the Greenbelt, and people were diving, drinking. It was getting dark. You had to know where to jump and he didn’t know. Broke his neck.”

“My sister’s neck isn’t broken. What do you know about my sister?”

“Nothing. I’m just saying.”

The guards let us use the bathroom on the first floor. I wanted to cry in private, to change clothes and rinse my face after. As I walked into the men’s room, Larson came out. He looked at me with the same cocked head Angus had at my interview and that day he said I was lucky to be a girl.

In my stall, the same stall I always used, I changed shirts. Just outside the door, a pair of shiny brown leather shoes came into view. There was a knock and I heard Larson’s voice: “René Garraway?”

I didn’t respond, hardly breathed.

“Is that you, René? I think you’ve made your point.”

I put my face down in my lap so he couldn’t see me through the space near the hinges.

People like Larson make life harder. They hang around asking questions, making assumptions. They think I’m trying to make a statement when I piss. I’m not. I just want to piss. Is Larson trying to make a statement when he pisses? No. How much time lapsed, I don’t know. The glare off his polished shoes disappeared. I heard a faucet, then the door opening.

“Miss. Please use the other restroom.” The voice of a security guard from the door.

I wondered, as I sat there, waiting for them to go away, what Cecilia was thinking when she put the poison in Uncle Ross’s chicken cacciatore. Not enough to kill him, but enough to make him think.

Dad always said that in the fall, men either want to fuck something or they want to kill. Fall was two months away, but I had the urge.

At the Y, I did a search for cyanide. This led to a search for tasteless poisons. A stunning catalog of horrible deaths people had imparted to their wives, animals, coworkers, lovers, and rivals greeted me. In England, a man made ricin from castor beans and used it to kill his boss and another business partner. Cyanide came in powder form and the gas worked just as quick. Uncle Ross should have died. She just wanted to scare him, because she could have killed him easily. Arsenic, for instance. No taste, no odor. For many murderers, those qualities weighed heavily in arsenic’s favor. Antifreeze. In one article, there was a picture of a green street gutter. A tabby cat tipped its face down to drink its death. How small a dose would I have to give to hurt without really hurting? The information on wikis and websites contradicted each other. Two teaspoons for a child. So, a tablespoon for an adult? I wouldn’t do it. It wasn’t real. A curiosity, that was all.

On my day off, I walked to H-E-B to buy a money order. Four hundred dollars to send home. After the money order, I walked the aisles, imagining what I would buy to eat when I had money someday. I grabbed a sample tortilla at the bakery — warm, oily, and salty — and ate it while touching fruits and vegetables. Pink salmon and frozen scallops and lobster tails. Waters. Milks in the dairy case. In the aisle for home goods and insecticides, a yellow antifreeze bottle. I left the aisle for a sixteen-ounce Mountain Dew, went back for the antifreeze, and paid at the self-checkout.