Tom Piccirilli - Headstone City

Knowing his flaws didn't help him most of the time. The indifference could lead him to do stupid things.

He wanted to ask Angie about her sister, see how Maria was doing. If she was still going out to the clubs every weekend, if she had anybody serious in her life.

Angelina reached forward and touched the back of his neck, fingering his scars. “These the ones you got when you and my brother went through the windshield?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus Christ, there's metal!” She knocked twice on the plate. “I didn't know you could actually feel it, with it sticking right out like that. Man, that's freaky! I thought safety glass was supposed to keep people from getting cut this bad.”

“It wasn't so much that as rolling thirty feet down the street.”

It made her smile for a second, seeing the humor of two guys bouncing down the road after doing something as foolish as trying to ram a roadblock. But then the image must've cleared up for her, seeing the blood and their bodies skittering into the gutter, and she looked away.

“How'd it happen?” she asked. “I mean, I know some of it, but I never heard the whole thing.”

“Why would you want to hear about any of that? It happened while you were still in the crib.”

“I'm curious.”

Dane told her almost everything, leaving out the part about the girls in the sand, but without really knowing why. Like she'd think less of him because of that? And did he really care?

Sometimes it seemed like nothing mattered at all, then a minute later it was like everything did. Every moment of your past, every inch of your body.

“You going to tell me where we're going?”

She gave him a few more directions, leading him along Fulton Street through Bedford-Stuyvesant.

“Almost there, make the next left, pull over to the right, middle of the block.”

Playing with his hair, she traced the scars down the back of his neck, probing as far as she could go beneath his collar. It started to excite him, the way she did it, as if she had a perfect right.

“What is this?” he asked her.

“Don't you know?”

“You out of your mind? Quit it. I'm practically an older brother to you-”

“Is that what you tell yourself?” Flicking her nails now, digging in too hard, trying to make him howl. “Why is it you never break the rules, soldier boy?”

It took Dane back some. You could say a lot of shit about him, but he never got the impression that he followed anybody's rules. If he did, he wouldn't be a third-rate hack driver living with his grandma.

He found the place she wanted halfway up the block. A four-story apartment building with a red awning over the door and flower boxes filled with petunias hanging from the bars on the windows of the first floor. The front door, stairs, and railings had all been recently painted. A sign read Welcome to Our Block Association. Please Help Us Keep It Clean, Quiet, and Safe. Next door was a vacant lot with an abandoned car in the corner where some kids were playing house, the hood up and no engine inside.

She hopped out and said, “I'll be back in a minute.”

“What are you doing?”

“Seeing a friend.”

“You want me to go with you?”

“No. Don't get all overprotective now, big brother. I wouldn't want you to strain yourself trying to climb out of the fuckin' cab. Since you don't have a watch, just count by Mississippis. If I'm not back by the time you get to five thousand, you might consider looking for me.”

“Which friend is it?”

“No one you know.”

“Let me come with you.”

“Hang tight, soldier boy.”

She ran up the front stairs, hitting each one hard and fast like a little kid, bop bop bop bop, and walking in without pushing the buzzer.

Dane sat there thinking about his options again. Grandma Lucia had told him there was an opening at the bingo parlor, calling out the numbers on the Ping-Pong balls. It about tied with being a cop or a Monti goon.

The radio screeched. The dispatcher wanted to know where the hell Dane was. Pepe tried to buffer the boss, yelling at Dane in Spanish that was supposed to sound like Italian. Lightening up the moment with some of the other drivers pitching in, laughing and being wiseasses. Dane shut it off. Maybe he should go back in the army, argue with the shrinks some more.

After five minutes he realized why he'd been dumb enough to let her go inside alone. It was the petunias. They'd thrown him off. Even more than the fresh paint and the sign. Here they were in Bed-Stuy, poverty-stricken, segregated. Abandoned buildings right around the block, the whole place fallen to shit, and he'd just let her walk in.

Dane threw open the door and moved around the back end of the cab. He started for the building and then he saw Angie walk out onto the stoop. Sort of smiling like she was happy to see him, but stumbling down the steps.

Her face crumpled then as she tried to hold back tears and failed. A dapple of blood smeared her chin. He launched himself and caught her in his arms as she pitched forward.

“I screwed up,” she whimpered.

“I knew I should've gone with you,” he hissed. “Fucking hell. What is it?”

Eyelids fluttering, she coughed violently, bringing up black phlegm. Her breathing went ragged and her chest heaved violently. She grinned at him, and her teeth were red.

“Bad stuff.”

“Ah, goddamn it, Angie.” Those goddamn petunias. “What stuff? What did you take?”

He felt immensely stupid, trapped where he stood, uncertain whether he should head back inside the house and call an ambulance, or throw her in the cab. He wanted to kill someone.

Bed-Stuy, he didn't think an ambulance would even come out this way, no matter how many coffee shops you put up the road.

Hauling her to the cab, he was surprised at how light she was. All those muscles and curves, and she didn't break ninety. She really was only a kid.

Before putting her in the backseat he hugged her tightly. He slammed the door, jumped in, gunned it, and held his fist on the horn so the noise tore up the block. So everybody inside that building would know he was screaming through his machine and he'd be back. Someone would pay.

“Angelina, don't fall asleep. Sit up.” Weird that he could shriek through the cab horn, but his voice was almost lethargic. “Tell me what you took.”

“… fake…”

“What?” He turned his ear to her lips. “Angie, what was that?”

“Flake.”

All his life on the street but he'd never so much as smoked a joint. Just something he never got into. Here she's saying flake and all he can think of are breakfast cereals.

“The fuck's that? Why are you doing that kind of shit? Hold on.”

“Doesn't hurt. I'm swimming.” Letting out a giggle that made the back of his neck tingle worse than when her nails were brushing against him. “It's too… late.”

“Like hell.”

She slid down so he couldn't see her in the rearview anymore. “It's nice.”

“Talk to me, Angie.”

“You love me?”

That got him stomping the pedal even harder, swinging through traffic as it thickened around them. “Yeah, of course.”

“I mean… me.”

“You.”

“Not just 'cause I… look like Maria.”

“You, Angie.”

“She thinks you're… funny… but not tough enough-”

He grimaced and clenched his jaws until it felt like his fillings were about to buckle. “I knew I should've gone inside with you.”

Smiling, the foam smearing her face. “You love me.”

He'd been working the lights pretty good, catching them as they turned green, but Brooklyn always had to do what it could to make you go insane. As he wheeled to the top of a rise, an ocean of brake lights in front of him, all the signals as far as he could see all went red at once. The cars piled up while he tried to make it out of this shithole neighborhood, still unsure of where he was going.