“No! With you! Here! Now! Why do I keep letting asshole men ruin my life?”
“I don’t know,” Nicky says. “Just-go.”
In this merciful moment in time, there is no one in sight, not even through the rear windshield.
“What do you mean?” Her voice softens. “Walk away?”
“Run.” He means it. “I’ll take the heat. Forget this. Me.”
Her lips quiver. She blinks out waves of tears that tumble down her cheeks. It’s too late. In the distance, light spills from doorways, onto stoops, as slumped silhouettes make their way toward the wreckage.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean what I said-about you.”
“Get in the back,” he hisses.
Her grace has returned. She understands the plan. In one swift, elegant gymnastic feat, she becomes one with the leather, heaving herself through the narrow gap between seats, hips twisting, legs and heels and toes all pointed in their mission to clear the way for Nicky, who with undramatic haste removes them from the scene of the crime.
Even in these dark streets, there is no way for this car to be discreet. Curious, envious eyes flash from the sidewalk, as Nicky wraps around a corner or two before quietly pulling over.
“Why are you stopping?” Stacy whispers nervously.
“We won’t get far in this thing,” Nicky states. “We’ll go to my brother’s. It’s right around the corner.” He gets out and offers his hand, scanning the empty sidewalk, as one stiletto boot follows another onto the concrete.
When she takes his arm, crossing the street, a shiver of recognition shoots up his spine, his chivalry tainted.
She looks back, puzzled. “What about your car?”
He forgot that the car is his. “I’ll call it in as stolen.”
She seems to consider this. “Okay,” she says softly.
He nods and remembers what a real thief would remember. “Wait here.”
The passenger side is wounded with depressed streaks of ugliness and, at the shoulder, an awful black spot-an absolute absence of something that once existed, severed at the root-marking the trajectory of that brief ride. Inside, the light dissolves around him. He glances at the beautiful woman waiting by the trunk of a tree, cupped hands at her elbows. She could run, as he’d urged her, but she is waiting for him-and this is something good, he tells himself. There may be hope. He stuffs the bag of dope into the puffy pocket at his knee, a perfect fit, slips the gun into the slim pocket at his hip, along with the keys-he adds the Zippo and alights.
When he reaches her, a distant siren pops and goes silent. She squeezes his arm and pulls herself close. “Did you call?” she asks.
“That car is officially stolen,” he assures her.
Two more blocks, and they ascend the stoop and stairs to his apartment. Inside, she heads straight for the living room. When he comes from the kitchen with a damp washcloth, she’s facing the window, legs tightly sealed, poised steadily on those two impossibly tall, thin pedestals he hadn’t noticed give her at least an inch on him. She appears unsure at first, until he gestures toward her forehead. Her whole body sinks, softens, under the warm pressure, and just like that the thin line of dried blood has vanished.
“It’s gone,” he says, and for a moment pretends he has erased their troubles. He can see a million miles in her eyes, infinite stretches of sun-baked highways and yellow-ribboned roads that go on forever. She must feel discovered. Her eyes close and lips descend. When her tongue meets his, he finds the bare small of her back and pulls her against him. He travels to her neck, her shoulder, the hidden downy hair behind her ear. There is a line, he imagines, joining his two hands, and that line is the golden zipper he delicately fingers. As they shift toward the couch, he thinks, I can die now, just as she whispers, “Stop.”
“What is it?”
They sit, fingers entwined on their adjoining thighs.
“What about your brother?” she says.
He shakes his head. “God knows where he sleeps every night.” He frees a hand and touches her cheek, her forehead.
“I can’t,” she says, and turns away. “Not like this. Not tonight. I should go.”
“You can’t go out there.”
“I don’t live far.” She’s already up. “Please don’t get the wrong idea-I am so grateful. You saved my life tonight.”
“I’ll walk you.” He follows her to the door, where she pauses.
“Please…” She touches his face, takes his hand. “Thank you.”
“You want to get high?”
“No,” she laughs. She must think he’s joking-one last crack for the road. “I’ll call you,” she grins, dabs bashfully at her forehead, “1-800-INJURED, right?” and slips from his fingers.
Her smile lingers in the room, the memory of it tangible, like molecules of goodness dissipating in the air, as dingy reality returns and he sinks into the couch. 1-800-INJURED. He contemplates the implications of a single phone call. God knows how Chris will work his magic once the sordid tale unfolds.
Nicky hits the lights, lies back on the couch, unloads the weighty goods from his pockets. He rolls a fat one, sparks the Zippo.
In a dream, it’s Nicky’s office. She’s in her anchorwoman skirt suit; he’s in Armani. They are just back from lunch, from a real restaurant, one with no theme. He closes the door. She pulls him by the tie toward the big desk. This is their routine.
A knocking wakes him. The light from his phone glows. Sirens ring out. Windows and walls flash. He sits up, stares at the door.
Phone in one hand, gun in the other.
“Open the door, Nicky!”
“They’re coming for me,” he mumbles.
“Everything’s gonna be fine.”
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“Don’t be stupid, fuckhead. Listen to me. It’s your brother, who loves you.”
In his mind he can see him out there, pounding, head against the door, and then it’s as if he’s out there himself, feeling what it might be like to be left alone. “I love you too,” he blurts, and when he leaps for the door, to let his brother in, it’s as though he’s racing to save them both.
“CANNOT EASY NORMAL DIE” BY CARLIN ROMANO
University City
If every block in Philadelphia had only one resident, Isaac figured, lots of things would be different. Parking would be easier. Mail carriers would stop screwing up. Next-door neighbors too dumb to pack their garbage in plastic bags might disappear, because you wouldn’t have a next-door neighbor.
Isaac saw the downside too. Infrequent block parties. A pathetic neighborhood association. Ratcheting up of that lonely feeling Isaac used to get when he lived in Vermont and wondered how people in isolated houses survived the big snowstorms.
One-person blocks might even stir up aristocratic leanings, a sense of “to the manor born” that might lead people to consider getting their streets closed off, and their fiefdoms turned into separate municipalities.
Anyway, it was just empty, abstract theorizing, because so far as Isaac knew, he was the only person-at least in University City-with a block of his own. And even the neighborhood historian couldn’t tell him exactly how St. Irenaeus Square-not that it was a square-had turned out that way.
“There used to be a stable there, where your house is, in the late nineteenth century,” ventured Mildred, the old woman with semi-encyclopedic knowledge of Spruce Hill, at the last block event to which she’d limped her way. “I think that put some potential builders off.”
Another theory, ventured by Irina Butova, the realtor who’d first showed the structure to Isaac years ago, was that his unique, detached, slope-roofed oddity of a house had been built in defiance of neighborhood logic.
401 St. Irenaeus Square, after all, sat surrounded by backyards. To Isaac’s right, when he exited his house, lay the well-maintained yards of the celebrated Queen Anne homes on Spruce Street, the area’s architectural gems. To his left, beyond his own impressive yard with sixteen trees, loomed the leafy expanse formed by the backs of Pine Street’s solid row houses, the first two being the lovingly manicured creations of Derek Gombrowicz, the friendly architect who owned them.