Victor Lavalle - Lucretia and the Kroons

“Stop! Loochie, stop!”

Sunny threw herself at Loochie, sending her best friend tumbling over. Loochie and Sunny fell into a heap. The racket handle dropped from Loochie’s hands.

“What are you doing!” Loochie shouted.

Loochie tried to shake free, but Sunny gripped her close. She held Loochie’s wrists and looked down into Loochie’s eyes.

“She’s my friend,” Sunny said.

Loochie struggled some more.

“She’s my friend,” Sunny repeated.

Finally Sunny released Loochie’s wrists. She slid away from Loochie and Loochie sat up. Nothing that had happened in 6D had stunned Loochie more than those three words. Loochie watched Sunny, dumbstruck.

“ I’m your friend,” Loochie finally said.

Before Sunny might react both girls heard heavy breathing behind them.

Sunny moved toward the sound, toward the female Kroon. When Sunny stood right next to it (her?) they looked like a jockey and a horse. One big enough to stamp the other into dust. The sight made Loochie want to pull Sunny away. Loochie scanned the ground for that tennis racket dagger, which she could still plunge into the monster, like stabbing a vampire with a wooden stake. But it had landed behind the Kroon.

Sunny pressed her body against the Kroon, hugging its big arm and resting her head against its shoulder. How could she stand the smell? That’s what Loochie wondered.

“Are you okay?” Sunny asked quietly.

The Kroon sniffled but nodded.

“Can you stand up?”

Sunny stepped back and the Kroon rose to her full height. To Loochie the thing seemed to be seven feet tall. She looked into that face again — that missing jaw, the dribbles of spit rolling down its neck — and wanted to turn away. But now there were also two small gashes in its forehead, and a bump already starting to rise on its scalp. Hard for Loochie to believe she could’ve done such damage to something so powerful.

Sunny pinched her lips tight. “I want you to say sorry to Alice.”

Loochie didn’t mean to, but she laughed a little. “Her name is Alice ?”

The Kroon dropped her head. It almost seemed embarrassed.

Sunny crossed her arms. “Loochie’s better?”

That stung a little bit. “My name is Lucretia ,” she corrected.

Sunny pointed at the female Kroon. “And hers is Alice.”

Sunny set her lips tight and squinted her eyes and leaned forward. It was her gangster pose. The one that had scared the Doberman pinscher away years before. Well now Loochie understood why that dog had panicked. Despite Sunny’s nearly bald head and her body worn down by cancer treatments, even with a monster standing right there, that girl looked like the fiercest thing in the world.

“Fine,” Loochie finally muttered. “I’m sorry.”

But that didn’t seem to be enough. Sunny said, “I couldn’t have saved you without Alice’s help, do you understand that? Who do you think pulled those bars on the fence apart? Me?”

Now Loochie looked up at Alice, but Alice looked away.

“You did that?” Loochie asked. “Why?”

“She used to be as bad as the others,” Sunny said. “But she doesn’t want to act like a monster anymore. Now she wants to be friends.”

Alice opened her hands and extended them so Loochie could see the scrapes on the palms and fingers. Proof that tearing open that hole in the fence hadn’t been easy. That Alice had done something kind for her friend Sunny. And for Loochie, too. Wasn’t that all she’d been hoping to do for Sunny in her apartment that afternoon? To be a good friend?

Alice left her hands out and Loochie walked closer.

“It’s going to be okay,” Sunny said calmly. She uncrossed her arms, relaxed her face. She was cooing at Loochie, the way you might call a skittish cat.

Loochie inched closer. Alice’s big hands remained outstretched and open.

“I promise it’ll be okay,” Sunny said, and the words were so quiet it almost seemed like Sunny was speaking right inside Loochie’s head.

Loochie raised her two hands and set them flat on Alice’s. Loochie’s hands were so small, by comparison. Then Sunny set her hands, even smaller and frailer than Loochie’s, on top of theirs.

“Friends,” Sunny said.

They stood this way, and remained quiet, for a little time.

“Let’s go home,” Loochie finally said with a smile.

But in a moment they heard the great, echoing yelps of the male Kroons again.

“They’re back,” Sunny said, looking at Alice. Strangely, Sunny didn’t sound scared. She sounded tired.

Alice stood straight. Alice pointed behind them, toward the Unisphere.

“We’ll have to hide,” Sunny said. “Let them pass by.”

Loochie looked up at the stainless steel sphere. She’d always been amazed by the size of it in Flushing Meadows Park, and it was just as impressive here. Twelve stories tall, twice as high as Loochie’s building. You could actually see through much of the sphere, which was just a series of crossing lines, like longitude and latitude lines, welded together into the shape of a globe. Only the continents were solid steel, sitting just inside the lines, matching their real positions on the earth. It was a beautiful construction, a work of art, and even here, at its cockeyed angle, the Unisphere made Loochie feel secure.

Alice picked Sunny up in one arm then she extended the other arm to Loochie. Loochie almost couldn’t do it, let herself get grabbed again, but then the squeals of the males came louder. Getting nearer. Loochie climbed into Alice’s embrace.

Then Alice ran toward the Unisphere. She hopped over a concrete barrier that surrounded the base of the sphere, landing in a pool of mucky, murky water. As Alice ran the pool got deeper, the water coming up to her ankles at first, but then her knees, even the middle of her thighs. Loochie gazed down into the water, which looked like sewer sludge. The smell was just as hideous. She pressed her face into Alice’s shoulder, preferring the scent of burning plastic to whatever might waft up from the pool. As Alice ran the sound of splashing water drowned out the other Kroons.

They reached the base of the Unisphere, a concrete pedestal. Alice stepped up onto it. She moved around the base until they were right below the continent of Australia. Sunny pulled at it. Australia swung open like a door. They scrambled inside the Unisphere.

Sunny was inside now, walking along a latitude line, one foot in front of the other, with confidence. Her arms hung out slightly for balance. She made it ten steps before she turned to find Loochie stuck right at the start.

“I was scared the first time, too,” Sunny said and she smiled as warmly as she had since they’d met in 6D. “You can do it.”

Loochie looked at the latitude line again. She had to be calm. She breathed quietly. But the barks of the males were so loud it seemed as if they were shouting right into Loochie’s ear and the tremors in her legs got stronger.

Sunny had made it all the way across, to the next continent. Africa. She called out. “I don’t want to rush you, Loochie, but Alice needs to get in, too.”

Loochie looked back. Alice stood outside the sphere, on the concrete pedestal base, her body still, but her forehead had gone reddish and sweaty. Alice seemed to be as scared of the other Kroons as she was.

Loochie decided she would walk across the line like Sunny had done. Follow Sunny’s example. Simple. No fuss. No hesitation. Sunny hadn’t even seemed to look down at her feet as she crossed. Loochie would do the same. That sewage water in the pool sloshed a foot below her. If she fell in there she’d probably drown or die of disgust, but she wouldn’t pay that any mind.

Just walk. Just walk. Just walk .