“Your father wouldn’t ask you to marry a man you don’t love.”
“Enrique’s father helped my dad get his films distributed in Mexico. Enrique’s hinted to my dad that if I don’t marry him, he’ll report his use of underage, undocumented girls. Dad told me I have a month to accept Enrique’s proposal or he’ll cut off my allowance.”
“Allowance?”
“How else could I afford this place?” She rose and studied herself in the mirror. “Do you know, not a single boy ever asked me out in high school. Now men won’t leave me alone. All you guys care about is how a woman looks.”
“We’re victims of our testosterone.”
“No, Nick, we’re victims of your testosterone.” She turned to face me. “I need your help.”
The urgency in her voice made me uneasy. I fished beneath the sheets for my jockey shorts. “What kind of help?”
“I need you to get some basic information about my father’s company: bank account numbers, tax ID, the names and addresses of his creditors. Then I can apply for a loan under his business name and use the money to open my ice-cream parlor.”
“Jessica, I can’t betray your father.”
“You already have. There’s a camcorder on top of the armoire. It recorded our little scene here and uploaded it to my server. You have twelve hours to decide whether you’re going to help me. If you decide not to, I’ll forward the video to my dad.”
“Let me think about it.” If Vance saw that scene, he might feature me in his first snuff film. I retrieved my jeans and shirt from the floor. “I’ll call you in the morning; we’ll work something out.”
If I were smart, I would have taken my time leaving, kissed her goodbye, given her some sign that I cared. Instead I dressed and left so quickly, Jessica must have realized by the time I reached the elevator that I wouldn’t be calling her.
I sped back to my motel, threw my clothes into my bag, tucked my forty-five into my boot, and hit the road.
An hour west of Houston, the floodlit shopping centers thinned out and disappeared. On either side of the interstate, ranchland melted into the blackened horizon. Not a single light shone in a single farmhouse window.
Shortly after four, I pulled into San Antonio’s downtown maze of one-way streets. The city’s familiar smell greeted me as I parked outside my second-floor office. San Antonio smelled like the homes of my boyhood friends, the morning after their grandmothers had made tamales. Steamed cornhusks. Charred chili peppers. Lard.
I unlocked the street door and hurried up the termite-riddled stairs to my office. By the light of the bail-bond sign outside my window, I dumped the contents of my desk and my clients’ files into cardboard boxes, emptied my safe, and carted everything down to my truck.
It was still dark when I pulled up in front of my apartment. Insects swarmed the outside lamps with all the enthusiasm of college students swarming a keg of beer.
I let myself in without turning on the lights and was halfway across the room before I smelled his aftershave. I turned towards the hulking silhouette of a man and ducked as he raised a baseball bat and swung it at my head. My hair rose as the bat passed over it. The intruder spun full circle and struck my left arm with a loud crack.
As I yanked my pistol from my boot, a second man lunged out of the shadows. My left arm refused to bend at the elbow. My right hand alone clutched my forty-five, my wrist taking the full force of the recoil as I fired the entire round. Bullets traced molten streaks through the air.
I shoved the gun into my pocket and, supporting my left arm with my right, stumbled down the stairs, climbed into my pickup, and tore out of the parking lot.
“Nick Gallagher.” An aide takes me down the hall for X-rays, then leads me to an examining room. The blue paper lining the examining table crackles as I sit down. Several minutes later, a nurse appears with a cup of water and an even smaller cup containing a single white pill. “We’ll give the Demerol a few minutes to take effect. Then the doctor will give you a local and set your arm.”
I wash down the pill. As the pain in my arm recedes, I drowsily recall drinking iced tea in my sister Paula’s kitchen. Outside the window, two of my nephews picked up sticks and started beating the shirts on the clothesline.
Paula frowned. “Boys are worse than girls, but I’d take a bad boy over a bad girl any day.”
“Why’s that?”
“A boy will be bad right in front of you: kicking his brother, hanging from the ceiling fan, tossing your cell phone in the toilet to see if it will float. But bad girls are devious. Sneaky. They do things when you aren’t looking and they cover their tracks. There’s this girl down the street I won’t even let in the house anymore.”
“Is her name Jessica?” I mumble as the nurse and the doctor file into the room.
The doctor studies my X-rays, then examines my arm. “How’d you break it?”
“I tripped over a Tonka truck someone left on the stairs.”
“Anything else hurt?”
“No.”
The clear fluid the doctor injects into the crook of my elbow burns a path through my veins before my arm goes numb.
An hour later, I leave the emergency room wearing a fresh cast. Ignoring the doctor’s instructions not to drive for four hours, I climb into my car and head south to the International Bridge.
As soon as I’ve crossed the Rio Grande, I buy a map and mark the best route to Guadalajara. Once I get there, I’ll have a barber cut my hair short and tint it a salt-and-pepper gray. Then I’ll find one of those plastic surgeons who caters to Americans and check into his clinic, or body shop, as Jessica would call it. I’ll order wider eyes, a cleft chin, a Roman nose.
Afterwards, recuperating in some hidden courtyard, I’ll have plenty of time to come up with a new name, a new birthday, a new life. The Outer Banks. Key West. Baja.
After all, I have nothing left to lose.
Copyright © 2006 Terry Barbieri
There’s a Girl for Me
by Tom Tetzlaff
Tom Tetzlaff, a doctor from Reno, Nevada, is the author of many nonfiction works in the medical field, including textbook chapters and journal articles. His fiction debut in our Department of First Stories comes on the heels of his completion of a mystery novel, which we hope will soon see print.
I saw her stroll from the ladies’ underwear store, and I said to myself, now there’s a girl for me.
Tall, lanky-thin, hair black and shiny like a mink coat. The flip of her curls bounced off her shoulders; the shopping bags swung in cadence with her certain stride.
She is coming my way. I know I shouldn’t stare, but I can’t help it — that’s who I am.
I’ll call her Barbara. I like to name the women I watch after old girlfriends. She reminds me of Barbara.
She wasn’t my first love, but I loved her deep and true.
It was in college — wild days of Jim Beam, sloe gin, hot jazz, and easy virtue. I was a straggler. I actually studied my freshman year — a country bumpkin trying for the American Dream.
My new Barbara stops where I am seated and looks right at me. There is no recognition of shame in her large brown eyes.
She speaks: “Excuse me — is this seat taken?”
I can’t respond. I am frozen and mute. I can only blink “no”. She drops her Macy’s and Victoria’s Secret bags next to me, pirouettes, and plops down with a big sigh.
I wonder if I can look in her bag without her noticing, but I am afraid to look. Is she staring at me, at my deformity? This is a brave girl to sit by a bizarre stranger in a deserted mall.