Losing You

Victor had the luck to walk in just as it was happening. The second floor bathroom was not usually a place anyone wanted to visit- what with that bad plumbing smell, the floor tiles never cleaned- whom was to clean them?- the cracked mirrors, the graphite. Public school bathrooms, what could he say, and this was the worst of them. But the urgency was there, and he didn’t have time to run down a flight of stairs. As much as he’d like to, Victor couldn’t just pull his jumper out and piss on Mr. Maroney’s face. Damn 10th grade history.
         Victor walked into the bathroom hoping for a peaceful piss, but alas, the boys were there. Anthony- dark hair pulled back in a tight ponytail like an old world mobster, Leon, or Lia, or Lion, whatever his name was; hood up … And that other one, Victor thought for a second searching for a name he knew was irrelevant. David? Danny? Dickface, that was it.
         Victor approached the urinal, even though he wanted to just back out, like he’d walked into the men’s bathroom by some horrible mistake. What would they say though? Fuck, even his dick couldn’t get him into a bathroom!  He noticed the mural. Mural, was not the word, he thought, looking at the spray painted porno. It wasn’t bad work, he thought.
         “Really Anthony?” He said, about to unfasten. But the air was tight, Ant was tense.
         “What?” He said, high stepping closer to Victor, uncomfortably so. Suddenly Victor didn’t have to go so much. “Gonna tell your daddy?”
         “Who said I was a sn-“
“All rich boys are snitches,” Dickface said, in that squirrely voice of his. Victor thought about saying something about was this the appropriate venue for his business, seeing how it was a men’s bathroom, but didn’t.
         “You’re picking the wrong fight Anthony,” Victor said, gathering himself.
         “Yeah?”
         “Yeah?”
         Oh these petty boys.
         “Bring out your gold knuckles, honey boy, money,” He pointed at Victor’s face, “To money,” He pointed to his crotch.
         “Get lost, Guido.” He walked out, Behind him, he heard Anthony spit.
**
I have math class with that clown, Victor thought as the ball rang and everyone clattered and rushed out of history. Can I skip, can I just skip? But he knew how it would look, Mr. Money not wanting to deal. So he sat down in Math class- assigned seats, like imprisoning kids isn’t enough, you have to chain them to one spot too. And hey? Put victor Manning right between Mr. Danny Devito and Anthony the Guido.
         Victor threw his back pack down, glared at Ant and sat.
         “Where’s you golden thrown, money bags?”
         He held his tongue, hoping it was not obvious that his teeth were clenched tight. Oh I’ve got a golden thrown- to go up your ass!
         “Anthony? Could we start class? Because this is a class room! Huh? I know you kids are in public school, but you gotta know that much!” Mrs. Wood.
         The class quieted under her smooth tongue. Halfway through the class, and all Victor had heard was the ticking of the obnoxious “pi”/Pie clock.
         “Anyone? Anyone want to share? Anyone even do the homework?” Victor hadn’t. Next to him Anthony snickered and he smelled trouble.
         “Well Victor showed me and easy method to figure out the angles on a triangles, did you?”
         Ms. Wood smiled. “Come on up!”
         “No, uh, no thinks, its really not that great.”
         “Don’t be modest!”
         Behind him, Victor could hear Agnes, his best friend shaking with laughter. “Something funny?” he growled, and sulked to the front of the room.
         “Sometimes if you smiled while doing equations x will equal half of y.” He sat down again. The class laughed, and Ms Wood gave a tight smile. “Victor, why don’t you see me for coffee after class.” Not a request.
         “As long as it’s as irish is you are.” Not a joke.
         “Fuckin’ hate math,” Victor muttered back at Agnes.
***

Victor rode back home, on his blue ten-speed, through the ragged ghost town where nobody moved, just an old cougar hound bounding up and down the road, paying no mind to Victor. Pas the down town, down the dirt toad, where his bike bounced and his tires felt the wrath of every stone.
         He was surrounded by anuncompassed, unclouded sky, and tall, flowering corn, on both sides of the road. He passed an old shack, and kept his eyes on it for a little even when he was 5o yards past. The Walker shack. He laughed, swerved, kept on.
         His house was a mile from the walker shack, and its opposite. Wide, French doors, carved pillars ordered from Germany holding up the house- awkward rectangular beings with dusty maroon curtains serving as windows. The place was as hideous as ever, and Victor let his bike drop on the front bath, with an ironic disdain.
         He lived here for God’s sake, how could he hate is so much? Hate the stainless steal kitchen where no one cooked, hate the cold mosquito’s swimming pool where no one swam, hate the high ceilings, and plush rungs.
         “I’m home,” he said, not knowing why. Who would care? His dad? Surprise me, he thought, tossing his bag on the glass coffee top, and continuing into the kitchen.
         OK, I’m surprised.
         His dad was in the kitchen, an open book in front of him. Victor walked past, stole a glance. The fucker was playing Sudoku. “Dad.”
         “Son,” He said, not lifting his head.
         OK, I’m not.
         Victor opened the fridge, crouched and shuffled containers about. “We lack cottage cheese.”
         “I have three 2’s in one box!”
         Victor laughed and turned back to the fridge. “Did you hear me, chief? We don’t have cottage cheese.”
         “Tell prince.”
         Victor closed the fridge door, and remain with one hand on the fridge hand, legs crossed, the other hand neatly clenched. Daddy’s nose was in his puzzle book, and couldn’t appreciate the subtle or not so subtle display of anger. Victor uncrossed his legs and stepped across the room, down the stairs, to the den.
         Inside burgundy curtains colored every strand of light. The air was thick with burgundy dust. The room used to be his mother’s- the piano still sat in the corner, next to the tuba. Who wants to play the tuba? What kind of person wakes up one morning with the yearning desire to play the tuba? Only my mum, Victor thought.
         “Are you going shopping?”
         Prince looked up at him and smiled over buck and a goatee. “No.” He returned his eyes to his work.
         “Does that mean you hadn’t planned on it, but now that you think of it, you’d like to?” Victor continued in from the doorway, noticing that it smelled like bubble gum.
         Prince threw his pen aside. “”Christ kid, slavery’s illegal you know!”
         “Mr. Mahoney said something along those lines. But really Prince, we’re out of cottage cheese.”
         Prince swiveled in his chair, and bent over for a second, surfacing with a hand out reached to Victor. “Ride into town.”
         Victor grabbed the card Prince held between two fingers. “Platinum. Nice.”
         “Use some of your father’s million.”
***

His house was not such a far ride from Percy, your typical Arkansas town, where idiots could live, sleep and die, untouched by any rationality. He rode past the beaten down houses, saying their names in his mind. The walkers, the Chamser’s, the Hawkins, the Bradley’s, and he envied them. They were poor and n could not leave, he was rich and could not leave. He rode past the houses with chipped paint and tarp over hangings, the boys in the street playing foursquare, the girls jumping rope. They would never get out of this place, no one ever got out.
         After the house the shops started. Manny’s butcher, with Christmas lights still hanging limp on the lamp outside his door. And its April, not February or November, nothing excusable like that. The smell of blood always hung in thick reams around his shop. People said that you could slit a cows neck in England and Manny would smell it.
         Next to the butchers was an old plastics factory, made out of big granite blocks- but it was empty now, and the homeless crept in at night to sleep somewhere dry. Down the road a bit stood a Chinese food restraint, but the people who worked there were Mexicans.
         Then there was the grocery where Victor stopped. Percy’s. It was on of those old Fashioned places with the apples in a box outside. Twenty five cents a piece. He grabbed one and went inside.
         The air condition is broken, Victor could tell the second he stepped in. Smelled like beef jerky, and he thought of his mom.
         He walked to the back, but there was not cottage cheese, and he grabbed a yogurt. Back at the register, he saw Anthony and Tanny, or Tanya, or Tanasi, the name again irrelevant. The fact was not.
         “hey sunshine,” Anthony said, stepping behind me in line. He had a smile on his face, and he was trying to impress because his girlfriend was there.
         “Greetings asshole.” Don’t provoke him, why’d you say that, I don’t know, just came out.
         Antony smiled, again, polite almost, and took a step close to Victor. “I get the feeling that asshole is not your cute pet name for me.”
         Victor retuned half a smile, praying that his would end well. Not like last time. With the burrito. “And where do you get that idea?”
         Anthony shrugged.
         “Hey Ant, lets just go,” Tanny said, veiling her attempt at ending whatever it was that was about to go down.
         Anthony brushed her to the side. “Nah, that’d be rude. Gotta keep sunshine here company while he buys his produce and dairy, huh.”
         Victor was in agreement with Tanny or Tanya at that point.
         “Saw Agnes the other day.”
         “Did you now.” There was a quite a line in front of Victor, and he kept peeking up to the front. The owner was speaking with an old lady. Old bitch. I need to get out of here. He could have just walked out, dropped the yogurt, he didn’t even like yogurt that much anyway.
         But it was a fight, and he didn’t walk away from fights, not usually.
         “Yes, I did. She’s a funny girl.”
         “Yes.” As soon as Victor’s mouth closed his teeth were grinding. Keep it together.
         “I heard a few stories about her daddy.”
         “Really.” Hurry hurry hurry.
         “Yeah, heard he’s in the clinker for raping her and killing her mom.” He laughed like it was antidote he didn’t believe. Tanny walked off, giving a slight wave. Anthony didn’t budge, didn’t even look at her.
         “That’s not true.” He gripped his apple tighter. “She lives with her momma, how could her momma be dead?”
         Anthony held up one hand, grinning with white teeth and too-red lips. “Hear me out. Story goes that the woman she lives with isn’t her mother, just some witch she shacked up with.”
         Victor turned to face him, and from there… no going back. ‘Nice story. Now screw off.”
         “Aw, what? Daddy’s money couldn’t buy you a sense of humor ? Just a story.”
         He’s had enough. Victor hurled one fist into his laughing face, dropped the yogurt contained and walked our. By the time Anthony ran after him, screaming that Victor’s whorish mother was playboys centerfold, Victor was already on his bike, peddling away.
         It wasn’t until he hit the dirt road that he realized the apple was still in his hand.

***
He walked in the house, and his dad was waiting. Sitting there. With the phone in one hand. Impatience in his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth, like he’d been waiting too long.  Victor tried going up the stairs, like his dad wasn’t there, couldn’t see.
         “Sit down.” Oh daddy. His voice was calm, unrushed, firm.
         He sat.
         Dad rubbed his gray beard with one hand and stared at Victor for a few seconds.
         “The sheriff’s coming over.” He took a sip from a coffee cup on the entable. “Something about you and your rowdy fist.”
         Victor nodded, head bent, eyes on his yellow shoes.
         “Didn’t really catch the details though.  Care to refresh my memory?”
         He shook his head. “Nope.”
         “Refresh it anyway.” His tone turned brittle.
         “Just kids being kids.”
         Dad nodded. “Of course.”
         They both heard the knocking at the door, but Victor was the only one relieved. Dad stood up and went to let officer Timpson in.
         Timpson looks like a walking stereotype; golden sheriffs badge and brown uniform stolen right off of Woody Allen’s dead body . He stepped into the living room, and placed his hat on the glass entable. “I have to come here too often, Victor.
         “What can I say, I’m a demanding guy.” He untied the shoelace on one shoe, then relaced it.
         Timposon look at Victor’s father. “Can I talk to him alone?”
         His dad gave a shrug and walked out.
         ‘Look at me son.”
         Victor pried his eyes from his Nikes.
         “Sometimes the best thing you can do for her is to back down. NO argument or punch or witty come back is going to stop the rumors. People in this town talk.”
         Victor was shaking his head before Timpson finished. “No, you know the worst part about her life is? No, not that it’s been ruined by something someone else did- but people in this fucking town just can’t seem to stop talking about it.”
         Timpson sat down across form him on the couch, and leaned forward. He put one hand on Victor’s shoulder. “you’re not helping anybody. ‘specially not you. And in the mean time, I gotta deal with brats like Anthony  and their mother’s squealing in my ear about you did this you did that.”
         “I didn’t even punch him that hard.!” Victor shrugged Timpson’s hand away.
         “Level with him, Agnes never asked you to stand up for her, and her family, whatever’s left of it. So don’t.  I’ve known her family before it was a pile of shit In a shack making illegal moonshine. And I’ll tell you, neither Agnes, nor her mother, nor her father, have every asked for help. And they don’t like it when people give it to ‘em.”
         Victor stood up. “Are you finished? I’m sorry. OK? My father with pay off whatever Ant’s mum wants; I’ll stop punching townies, whatever, problem solved.”
         Timpson stood. “I’m not the one to apologize to.” He swung his hat unto his head in one neat motion, and strode into the kitchen.

**

Victor sat outside on the patio under the old maple. The backyard used to be a garden, before mom left, and his dad put in the swimming pool. There was a huge herb path, with an ivy tower- four sticks propped together, and hollow space inside. He remembered sitting inside of it, the cool shade of the ivy leaves, the tinted green light, he used to read, or just listen to his parents screaming at each other. There used to be a goldfish pond, and he would throw pennies in and watch them drift to the bottom. Now just a stone hole filled with murky water, mosquitoes, and tadpoles. The herb garden was a graveyard for Rocky.
         From inside, Victor heard them talking about him.
         “He’s a boy, give him time. Try to be a father.”
         “You think I’m not?”
         He laughed, listening to their bantering. Then he picked up his bike and left.

***

Once their family use to work. With the family dinner’s and the happy holidays and the merry Christmas’s. Mother would make dinner at night, he’d be sitting in the den, playing the piano to Prince, trying to earn acknowledgment, or at least a smile. The smell of enchiladas, or friend chicken, or lasagna would rift throughout the house, and everyone would end up congregating the kitchen, even Prince, with his penguin’s suit and silver platters. Dad would be the last to arrive, but he never read the stocks during dinner, never brought up work or money. Mom, she was beautiful. A dainty lady, with polite facial features and small hands- like a nymph’s, but she was fiery. One couldn’t tell by just looking at her, but he remembered sometimes she just wasn’t a mother, a cook, or a babysitter. Later on, she never was. But that was later, after the days of quiet meals at six o clock sharp.
         Of course no one ever told Prince to pick up a spatula and a spoon- we were a simple family; the butler was tradition, not necessity. He babysitted me, he answered the phones, the door, an d later, when Victor was older, he was just his Father’s secretary.
         But that was after mom left. She changed a lot of stuff.
         When Victor was ten, they fought for the first time- Victor was out on the balcony, but he could still hear his father’s rough voice, his mother’s sullen one. A princess and her captor. That’s how he thought of the two of them. She wanted to fly, soar, swim, and he was her captor, the mansion was her cage.
         He thought of two many dinners with his father’s silent presence, his mother too cheery.
         One night Victor left the table early with his dessert and when into the den. Then he came back up, to the small room next to the kitchen, with the washer and the dryer. He used to like to lay on top of the dryer. It was warm and smelled of hot clothing. His parents must have thought he was back in the den. They didn’t know that he was on the other side of a then wall.
         “Pass the salt.” His father’s dry voice.
         “Ok.” A second of silence. “I had an affair with my tennis instructor, and now I’m having an affair with George.”
         He didn’t know what it meant at the time. He didn’t know the importance of those words, only that they made his dad angry, like a storm, a pummel of words and screams and plates thrown.
         But first he only said, “Suddenly I don’t want any salt.” They fought for hours. Divorce, no divorce, leave, stay, stay, go, kill you, kill George, kill tennis instructor, kill all of them, leave, go, stay, divorce.
         Victor fell asleep to the sound of clothes thumping against the roof of the dryer.

**

He spent a lot of time alone in that house with Prince. One day he spent every moment with him in the Den playing poker. Prince smoked a cigar until it was just a butt and then tossed it into a dirty glass ashtry, while Victor put three chips into a pile and said “Gonna fold yet?” Like a grownup. He was eleven, a little boy, without a mother or a father. Both of them were running away to argue this and that; my house, my car, my kid. No, my house, maybe your car, definitely not your kid. Broken record players.
         Well the butler was his best friend, and he was alright with that.
         Until he met Agnes.

***

Zelu’s Bookery was another store in Percy, one that never made much money. Or hardly any, because no one ever went there, and because Zelu sold books no one wanted to read and because Agnes worked there. I went to Zelu’s, figuring I”d find her. I mean, that was usually where she was, sometimes even during school hours. The book store was a brick house, three stories. It had two windows facing the street, little gray window panes with naked Barbie dolls marked black hanging in them like Manny’s Christmas lights.  A homey touch. I went inside, and a little bell rang above me. Rock the parrot creaked, “Customer! Customer!” and I laughed.
         The bookstore was dark- there was a single florescent bulb hanging from the middle of the room, bare. Mahogany metal,  and plastic shelves lined the walls, looking like men representing foreign countries. Some are tall and dark, tall and green, short and green, short and blue, blue an d tall. Every shelf is lined with books wedged in, dusty books, new books, ugly, and old books. The rest of the room is dedicated to a long plastic table, like the kind you’d see in a flea market. Around it were metal fold up chairs. But would sit in Zelu’s?
         I walked up the two steps into the next room. Zelu’s used to be a house, and this part was clearly an old kitchen, used as a register. One desk, with a cash register sat to the side, in front of a green 50’s fridge. Agnes sits in the chair behind the desk.
         She was a year younger then Victor, five inches shorter, a thousand time uglier. She smiled at him, with her bitter parenthesis. A rare, sweet smile.
         “Hey.” His voice is small in that dusty room. He sits down by the stove, and Agnes follows him with her gray eyes.
         “What did you do?”
         “What do you mean?”
         “You walk in her like a brat that just pissed his pants during potty training.”
         He raised the palms of his hands to the air and shrugged. “You don’t miss much.”
         They were silent for a second. Upstairs they could  hear Zelu singing, the rhythm of her footsteps.
         “So what?”
         “I punched Anthony again.”
         She waited a second and then laughed. “Good for you.”
         “It was in defense of your honor.”
         She stood up, and walked over to him, no smile this time. “Victor, if you knew anything about honor, you would know that it something doesn’t have to be defended.”
         “Yeah well,” I muttered.
         She turned in a half circle. “I don’t care what this town says about me.” Like she could convince herself if she said it loud enough.
         “What about your dad?”
         “What my dad says about me? Even less.”
         “No I mean what the town says about your dad.”
         She sits back down, one hand rubbing the edge of the fake wood desk. “So they tell stories. Let them tell stories. You sit down with me sometimes for an afternoon tea I’ll tell you a story or two myself.”
         “But the things they say-“
         She brought one fist down on the desk, but its wood so it don’t make a sound, and she felt foolish. “They say! They say! They say all kinds of shit that don’t really matter in the whole scheme of things.”
         He laughed. “The scheme of things. Like there’s a scheme. There is no scheme. Anthony says your daddy raped you and killed your mom when she tried to stop you. And that your living with a witched, what scheme is there?”
         Agnes looked away.
         “It isn’t true though?” Half question, but he didn’t want her to answer.
         She jerked her head so she was looking straight at Victor. “My mom’s not dead she ran away. And I’m not living with a witch.”
         Victor sat back down. “So-“
         “Does it matter?”
         “No… it really doesn’t.”