I dropped the bloody robes. Washed my hands. I wasn’t getting anything here.
I went back in Eileen’s crowded room. I leaned against the bathroom door. “Ray,” I said.
Ray looked at me. He looked me up and down, took me in with his eyes, and when he did, it was like he was stealing something. Something I didn’t want to give up.
I reached for Tino. I gave him the longest, deepest kiss I could. I let his lips crack against mine, let his blood seep, so full of salt, find its way to my mouth. I ran a hand over his hair. I breathed in Tino, drank his sweat and salt and alcohol, and he gave in. He put a hand to the curve of my back, put a cold beer to the side of my neck.
Because when there’s nothing else, there’s comfort in skin.
I had barely pulled away before there was the crack of Rebar’s fist, Tino’s tooth breaking. Tino fell backwards, hit his head on a steel tray on the way down. It was that car wreck all over again, like metal on metal. Eileen screamed. She screamed, and flung an arm so fast, her IV pulled out. Blood ran from her arm where it tore. It marked the white sheets.
“Now whose the friggin’ asshole!” Rebar yelled. He yelled at Tino on the floor, and at his own shoes. But then his face went white, his knuckles red. He pulled back. He’d lost it. He knew he’d lost. He knew the answer to his own question. And Tino didn’t get up. I kneeled, and called his name.
I said, “Get a doctor.”
Ray was too stoned to move fast.
Eileen hit the buzzer on the wall beside her bed. Tino pooled a slow leak of blood on the floor.
When the cops got there, they’d cleared the room out. Tino was in Emergency. Rebar was in a cop car, on his way back to jail, the psych ward, or Hooper Detox. I didn’t know which. Eileen had gone back into testing, something about blood pressure, busted veins. Only me and Ray stood in the hallway, answering questions.
A cop asked, “What’s the victim’s name?”
I said, “Tino Schmino.”
He said, “Tino Schmino? What’s that, a joke?”
“It’s for real. His folks were Pig Latin, maybe. I never could figure it out.”
He said, “Listen, lady, we’re not playing. If your pal doesn’t come out of that sleep, somebody’ll be looking at murder.”
I said, “That’s the name I knew him by, the name he gave me. If there’s more to it, get one of your gumshoes to sort it out.”
He said, “Tell me what happened.”
I said, “I have no idea. We were all getting along famously. I stepped into the ladies’ for powder.”
Eventually they left me and Ray there, outside Eileen’s room.
I said, “Tino’s a good man.”
Ray said, “You always have been an idealist.”
“What do you mean?”
He said, “A good man? There’s no such thing.”
I shrugged. “It’s just you and me now.”
“Is that what you wanted?” He reached out, ran a calloused hand over my cheek.
I said, “I don’t ask for anything, you know that.”
“But you want something, don’t you?”
Rebar’d be back in the slammer for a good long time. Tino, who could say. I leaned against the doorway. “There’s one thing I want.”
Ray looked at me. I reached out, brushed his hair out of his eyes, let him catch my hand and hold it.
“Come with me, Ray, back to my place.” I wouldn’t have to pack for a good long while, now. “The one thing I want is to not be alone, not again, not tonight.”
COFFEE, BLACK BY BILL CAMERON
Seven Corners
Twenty-five years a cop, seven working homicide, and this is what I’ve come to: staking out Starbucks in the middle of the night in the hope of catching a vandal in the act of bricking the windows. Welcome to retirement. I’m parked in the shadows outside the food mart at Seven Corners, a tangled confluence of streets at the southeast edge of Ladd’s Addition. Starbucks is across Division, part of a corner development that includes a day spa, a pasta restaurant, and a cramped parking lot apparently designed in anticipation of the oil bust. Three nights, and the most exciting thing I’ve seen so far is a half-naked couple humping in the cob outside the kitchen shop on the opposite corner. I snapped a few pics, but even with the shutter wide open, it’s going to take someone with more Photoshop voodoo than me to make the shots Internet ready.
Just after midnight, as I’m thinking about taking a piss behind the dumpster next to my car, I catch sight of a figure approaching down 20th. He high-steps across the parking lot, elbows flared, as if he learned his ninja moves off Cartoon Network. Jeans, black hoodie pulled tight around his face, medium height, medium build. Cigarette held behind his back, a smoldering tail light. About what I expected, some nitwit tweaked on vodka-’n-Red Bull who thinks he’s striking a blow against insatiate corporatism.
I slip out of my car and rest the long lens on the roof, sight through the camera’s LCD. The light isn’t good, a silver-jaundiced mix of mercury vapor and sodium streetlights, sky-glow, and the gleam from the quickie mart. It’s adequate. I’m not shooting art photos. I just want to capture an identifiable face.
As I snap the first pic, I hear the scrape of a shoe and turn as a broad, dark shape swoops across the roof of my car. I duck, but not fast enough. Fabric nets my face and shoulders. Hands grab me from behind, shove me hard against the car. A sound whuffs out of me, half shout, half gasp. I drop the camera and thrash, grab the cloth on my head, realize I’ve got the arm of a jacket. For an instant, I’m in a tug-o’-war, unable to see my opponent. Then the sleeve starts to tear and someone hisses, “Just leave it, doinkus!” The hands release me and I windmill backward onto my ass. As feet slap pavement, fleeing, I hear the sharp, brittle crash of breaking glass.
I shout, yank the jacket off my head. My assailants are gone, the camera with them. No sign of the ninja either, but across the street I see a fresh lattice of cracks in one of Star-bucks’ oversized windows.
My employer is an insurance company, a circumstance I see as having the moral equivalence of working for the Russian mob. They’ve been buying glass at least twice a month since Starbucks went in. They bought me for five nights, about the cost of one double-paned window. The camera and lens have to be worth two windows easy, maybe three. Helluva lot more than me, anyway. I’m not looking forward to explaining to the adjuster how I not only failed to stop the vandal, but also let some miscreant make off with his company’s camera rig.
I drag myself to my feet and lean against my car. All I’ve got to show for myself is the jacket in my hands, and it’s nothing to get into a twist about. Blue, softer and darker than denim, white cotton lining, one sleeve half ripped off. I check the pockets, find a matchbox embossed with a logo-a pair of stylized legs suggestive of wisps of smoke-and a happy hour menu from the Night Light Lounge, a louche neighborhood joint two blocks down on Clinton. Stakeout blown, I figure it’s the only lead I got.
The Night Light isn’t my typical hangout. Smoky, dense with poseurs and reckless youth. Local art on the walls, dim light the color of old cream. I find an empty table next to the open door-a nebulous link to fresh air. Eventually a waiter approaches, drops a Bridgeport coaster on the table, and stands there. I think I’m supposed to order.
It’s the kind of joint that’ll sell you a Pabst Blue Ribbon for a buck and a half or a microbrew for five. I refuse to pay five bucks for a beer, but I haven’t absorbed enough Southeast Portland self-conscious irony to drink shitty beer from a can. I order coffee, black, and settle back to survey the crowd.
I see a lot of piercings and even more tattoos, some more artful than others. The best peek out, mostly hidden, around the edges of straining wife-beaters-de rigueur uniform for most of the girls on hand. The music is loud, the voices louder. Cigarettes trend toward Camel straights and American Spirits. With the state-wide smoking ban due in January, everyone around me seems desperate to take advantage of indoor privileges while they can.