C Box - Below Zero

She was nearly through the door when she heard Stenko say, “Who is that one?”

It was as if a bolt of electricity shot through her.

“April!” Geno shouted harshly. “Stay here.” He seemed happy to change the subject.

Shawanna let go of her hand at the shout, and April stopped short of the open door. Before the door shut ahead of her, Shawanna said, “Sorry, girl,” and sounded like she meant it. Alone again.

“Turn around,” Stenko said. His voice was soft.

She turned, blinking through tears. She wished she could stop them. Geno was looking at her, angry, imploring her to stop crying.

Stenko looked at her and gently shook his head. There was something soft in his expression. Sympathy, pity. Or… recognition. As if he knew her.

Geno said, “You want her? We can make a deal. She’s absolutely fresh-the freshest. Inexperienced, though. No skills at all I know of. I just want you to know that up front.”

“How old are you?” Stenko asked her, ignoring Geno.

“She’s…” Geno started to say.

“I’m fourteen,” she said.

Geno stared daggers at her.

Stenko said to Geno, “Fourteen?”

Geno held his hands out, palms up. “Hey, she claimed she was eighteen earlier. I believed her. She looks like she could be eighteen.”

“Look away, darling,” Stenko said to her.

At first, she thought he was asking her to turn and pose. She hesitated.

“Avert your eyes,” Stenko said. She turned. But in the reflection of a glass picture frame, she saw him reach behind his back under his jacket. That was the first time she saw the pistol. Stenko wheeled on Geno. There were two loud pops and Geno slapped his forehead like he’d just gotten a major idea instead of two bullet holes. Then Geno pitched forward onto the hardwood floor.

“Don’t look,” Stenko said, approaching her and taking her by the arm. “We’re leaving, and I don’t want you to see him.”

THEY WENT OUT of the building the same way she’d come in, being pulled by her hand by a man saying, “Follow me.”

There was a big dark SUV out front, double-parked. Some of the street boys had gathered around it, and they parted as Stenko came out with her. One of them said, “Nice ride, dude.”

Stenko flashed his pistol, said, “None of you ever saw me here.”

The boys scattered. She could hear a couple of them say, “That’s fuckin’ Stenko!” Recognizing him. Making her feel special despite her tears, despite the circumstances.

She climbed into the passenger seat and Stenko roared away. As he drove, she stole looks at him. He looked purposeful, determined. Like a man who knew where he was going and would stop at nothing to get there. She was scared, but only because she didn’t know what would come next. And even though she’d seen what he could do, she wasn’t sure she was in danger. For some reason, her intuition told her to calm down. But why else would he single her out, take her like that?

He drove for a half an hour through the city, down streets she’d never seen, finally off the street into a park where there were dark leafy trees and a huge rounded ancient building with a sign reading GARFIELD PARK CONSERVATORY. He pulled over to the curb on the farthest corner of the lot from the conservatory. She looked around: they were completely alone. Whatever was going to happen, she thought, is going to happen now.

He turned toward her in his seat. She could feel his heat.

He said: “Don’t worry. Don’t be scared. Here, dry your eyes.” He handed her a handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket. As she dabbed at her face, trying not to ruin her makeup, he said, “When I saw you in there it was like I was looking at a ghost-the ghost of my daughter. Her name was Carmen. What an angel she was. You could be her twin, I swear to God. Poor Carmen-she got mixed up with the wrong people. She ended up in a place like you just came from, but I wasn’t there to rescue her. And on her last day on earth she called me twice on my cell phone, but I was in negotiations and I couldn’t break free to call her back until that night. It was too late by then. She was gone.”

She saw moisture in his eyes, and the corners of his mouth twitched.

He said, “We’d been on the outs and I was getting tired of her calling me only when she needed money. I blame myself for what she did that night, because I know in my heart if I would have been there for her, I could have saved her. I could have checked her into rehab again…” His voice trailed off. He stared out the window for a full minute before he turned back to her with a crooked smile. “But when I saw you there tonight I thought, Damn! There she is again. It’s like I’m being given a second chance.”

She didn’t know what to say.

Said Stenko, “I’m going to treat you right. I’m going to feed you whatever you want to eat and buy you clothes you want. Like you’re my daughter come back to earth, that’s how it’ll be. You’ll stay in nice hotels and you’ll never have to see the inside of a place like that”-he chinned in the general direction of where they’d come-“for the rest of your life.”

She shook her head quickly, as if she’d imagined what he said, that he’d actually said something different.

“Really?” she asked.

He smiled. He had a nice smile. She thought if what he said was true-and it probably wasn’t-the first thing she would want to do would be to rescue her special stepsister from the Voriceks. With money and a place to live, they could be together, care for each other.

“I will never touch you,” Stenko said. “It isn’t like that. I don’t want you in a sexual kind of way.”

“What, then?” she asked. Her voice sounded weak to her.

“I want to be kind to you,” he said simply.

“Why?”

It took him a moment to answer, and he glanced outside at the trees, at the conservatory. “Because I haven’t always been kind. I’ve hurt a lot of people-innocents, like Carmen. I didn’t really think about what I was doing most of the time. But now I think about it every minute.”

She asked, “Why now?”

He said, “I’m dying fast. It focuses the mind.”

She didn’t know what to say.

“Look,” he said, “I know I can’t really redeem myself. I don’t have enough time. But when I die, I want someone to say, ‘He was a kind man to me.’ Believe me, it will be a lonely voice in the room. But it’s one I just gotta know I might hear.”

She was confused.

He said, “I don’t expect you to understand all of this. I’m still sorting things out myself. I mean, it isn’t unusual for a sixty-year-old man who can pound down an entire deep-dish to have digestive problems. But when you find out it isn’t the pizza but advanced bladder cancer that’s spread to your liver and you maybe have a month to live, well, like I said, it focuses the mind.”

“That’s why Geno said you were sick.”

He nodded. “He never thought he’d see me again, either, that jerk. He never thought I’d show up at his place like I said I would.

“Anyway,” he said, shaking his head, shaking away his thoughts about Geno, “forget what happened. I’m a little… volatile. The morphine and the meds keep me going, but I have the feeling that if I slow down and think about it, that’ll be the end. So I gotta keep moving. And I gotta do things right, make things right with the Big Guy,” he said, glancing upward.

“So,” he said, “when that doctor told me nothing would help, that it was time to make peace with the world, I thought of two things right away. The first was to reconcile with my only son, Robert. That’s step one. After we leave here, we’re going to pick up Robert in Madison, Wisconsin. He has some kind of crazy-ass environmental foundation there he pays for through his trust fund…” She couldn’t see that well in the dark, but she thought he rolled his eyes when he said it. He said, “I was a little surprised he agreed to see me, so I’m excited. I haven’t even talked with him in a coon’s age. But he said right away he’s got a way for us to get back together. To become father and son again. And you-you’re like Carmen. The three of us will do it all over again, and this time I’ll make it right. This time there will be a happy ending. Ain’t that cool?”