Jesse Goolsby - I'd Walk with My Friends If I Could Find Them

“We’re back in our room. Emma’s — they’re in,” she says, interrupting herself. “The other one’s in the screened porch and the man at the front door, he’s knocking again.”

“Lock the bedroom door and call 911,” Dax says. “Do it now.”

“But Sim—” she says.

“Lock it now. Call 911.”

“Don’t hang up, damn you.”

“I don’t hear Emma.”

“She’s here.”

“Where’s Sim?”

“He’s down there. They’re screaming.”

It was twenty bucks a month for the alarm whose wires probably dangle unconnected. Dax pictures its white box under the stairs. Then the blue safe under their bed.

“Get the gun,” he says.

“I’m putting the phone on the bed.” Over the line Dax hears Emma’s labored breathing. It sounds like she’s trying to put the receiver in her mouth.

“I have it,” Nicholle says. “Okay.” A pause. “They’re fighting. God, they’re fighting.”

“Like we practiced. Put the magazine in. It should have rounds in it.”

“Crashing downstairs.”

“Pull the hammer back,” Dax says.

“What? What’s the hammer?”

“I mean the slide. Shit, the slide. We’ve practiced this. The top part, throw the slide back.”

“It’s sticking. On the stairs now.” She whispers. “Up. The. Stairs.”

“Yell out to them, ‘I have a gun.’” She does.

“And again,” he says.

She says it again, and “I will shoot you.” He hears her say the words, and she says “motherfuckers.” Emma cries.

“It’s sticking,” she says to Dax.

“Do you remember?”

“Yes,” she says. “I know what to do, but it’s sticking.” Her pitch rises. No one is on their way to them.

“Got it,” Nicholle says. “They’re talking on the stairs.” Her voice lowers even more. “They said Sim. My God, they know us.”

“Say it again.”

“What?”

“The gun,” he says.

“I’ve got a gun,” she yells.

“If they open the door, you shoot until the gun stops firing and then load the next magazine.”

She hears the finality in his voice, because she says, “No. No.” Dax hears her right before he hangs up and dials 911. He slings information as fast as he can to the operator and pictures the safety tab on the gun Nicholle holds, turned down, the red fire dot hidden. His sight goes wavy, the ceiling lowers on him, and he thinks of the locked trigger. He hangs up, calls his home phone, and the metallic tone pulses off and on until the answer machine engages. It’s her morning voice: “You’ve reached Nicholle and Dax Bailey,” and his voice in the background, “and Emma,” she squeaks. “We’re not in right now, but please leave a message and we’ll get back with you. Thank you.” He listens to the entire thing, thinks about leaving a message, his voice loud on the machine, but hangs up. She won’t be able to hear him, no matter what he says into the phone. He calls her cell phone, and when he gets her cell-phone message — just her voice — he hangs up immediately. He stares at a dark stain on the hotel carpet. Someone’s on the way. Someone’s on the way. He calls the home line again. This time he lets the whole message play and stands with the phone in his hand, a beam of light from the hotel window now shining through. Dax closes his eyes. The muffled near-silence records him listening, and he thinks there’s a chance, if he’s loud enough, Nicholle might be able to pick up one word, through the drywall and beams and carpet, past Sim’s body, past the men knocking on the locked bedroom door. He breathes in through his mouth and nose and screams “Safety,” over and over and over, until there are no more words, just his machine now recording his empty lungs.

IN HIS HOTEL ELEVATOR Armando fingers the executive-level key card and stares up from his wheelchair at the four-inch screen showing the Israeli prime minister at a podium with the red breaking news headline “Israel Prepares for War with Iran.” The screen flashes to a police sketch of someone Chicago authorities search for. Armando wonders how one slides into the position of sketch artist. His local police department — where he volunteered briefly — lacked the money, so when necessary they would bring in the high school art teacher, Trent Kellogg. He would show up with his charcoal set and pound the paper. He wasn’t an accomplished artist, and most of the time the department would be embarrassed to put the sketches out, but what Armando remembers in detail is Kellogg’s face while he drew, the bundled forehead and contorted mouth, saliva leaking out.

This sketched suspect on the elevator screen is a white or Hispanic male, twenty-five to thirty years old, five-foot-eight to six-foot-one. A moment passes before Armando recognizes the absurd range of people who fit this description, but when he does, he recalls the details he slung at Kellogg: a red-haired female in a blue sweatshirt. At least he could describe the car, the brown Buick LeSabre that ran the stop sign on his early-morning jog and smashed him. A day after his spinal surgery Kellogg came in and they walked through it — the thin nose, the haircut, the chin — and Armando realized he didn’t know as much as he thought, but he overheard himself dealing out a description that barely registered, and before he knew it, he and Kellogg had created someone. Kellogg was into it big-time, shaking and groaning, using the side of his hand and fingertips, whipping the charcoal lump like a madman. He finished and Armando sat up in the hospital bed and studied the bust of a woman he half recognized, so he nodded and sent Kellogg on his way and returned to the dreaded wheelchair catalogue.

In this elevator, on the small screen, the artist has conveyed an androgyny and universality that denote everyone and no one. Armando considers his own features, and someone softly touches his shoulder, then his neck. He twists around awkwardly, and a smiling, attractive woman brushes his cheek with her hand. She leans back and settles comfortably against another woman. The space is packed, and Armando turns back to face the front, trying to neutralize the confusion that erupts. What just happened? In his dreams he has neared this experience and he always has something witty to say, but here, in the moment, he freezes. Pity? Desire? My cheek? His fingers throb, and in what appears to be a miracle, he feels a twinge in his groin for the first time since his accident. He tries to summon the courage to acknowledge the feeling, to turn back to them, but what would he say? Thank you? Let’s go? I’m married, but she’s lost interest? The problem is, he wants everything to be easy: no stories. He wants one of them to invite him to her room, where they’ll undress him and lick each other before they take control and use him, but as he imagines the scene he has already lost their faces. There was a time when this squeeze and cheek brush was all his body needed to respond with an uncontrollable erection, but tonight a twinge means more than anything in his past. He smiles and a surprise desire fills him. He’s uncertain where to reach or how to breathe. Chatter fills the elevator: a feminine voice murmurs of a bad back to a friend, two teenagers about Derrick Rose and the upcoming season for the Bulls. He has three floors to go, with no plan, no idea of what he’s capable of, and then he’s at his floor. The doors open. He takes one look back to get the faces and they look right back, and seconds before the doors close on his healers, one of them nods and smiles. The elevator doors close, and he turns to watch the numbers scroll upward, noting the pauses (23, 27), until the elevator starts back down.