"You don't want to see this," he said, without taking his eyes away from the window, but he didn't object when she came to stand beside him. That was when she heard the sound again, a sharp cry from outside.
She was aware first of movement, a confused motion in the middle of the lawn just at the point where the light cast from the house met darkness, two figures moving on the edge of visibility. It took her a moment to decipher the scene.
There were two men in the backyard. For a moment it was almost a balanced fight, both men punching, but then one fell to his knees and seemed to retreat into himself, curled up on the grass in a ball, and the other— Paul, she realized— struck the fallen man again and again and again.
"He's going to kill him," Anna whispered.
"He won't," Daniel whispered back. His eyes were very wide. "The last thing a guy like him wants is to get in trouble with the law."
"We have to stop him," she hissed, but neither of them moved and the blows continued until Paul gave his victim a final vicious kick and turned toward them, stalking back to the house, sweat shining on his face and soaking through his shirt. Knuckles bleeding and eyes bright, his tattoo slick on the side of his neck. Daniel pulled her away from the window.
Anna woke late in the morning and wondered if it had perhaps been a dream. Daniel had left for work already. She looked through the gap in the curtains, half-expecting to see a body on the grass, but the yard was empty. When she went outside she saw the blood, spattered here and there, less than she was expecting for the violence she'd seen. There was a pine tree in the back corner of the yard by the fence, a wooden picnic table beneath it, and she liked to sit out there sometimes when the air in the house was too close. Today she walked past the blood and lay on her back on the table, numb, staring up at the patterns of pine needles and branches against the overcast sky. She closed her eyes and still saw the patterns on the inside of her eyelids.
"What are you thinking of?"
Anna hadn't heard Paul's approach over the dead grass. She started when she heard his voice and sat up on the table.
"Nothing," she said.
It was difficult not to look at his hands. He'd wrapped both knuckles in gauze and she remembered the impact of fists on ribs, the fallen man's cries.
"I've seen you out here before," he said.
She shrugged.
"So you just lie there on the table by the hour, thinking of nothing?"
"Yeah," she said, "that's sort of the point."
"Cigarette?"
"Yes please."
He hesitated a moment before he lit it for her. "You supposed to smoke when you're pregnant?"
"No." She inhaled slowly. "But I figure the occasional one can't hurt." He shrugged and sat down on the other end of the table. "I like your tattoo," she said. Perhaps this was adulthood, this feeling of danger, smoking a cigarette far from home with a man who'd beaten another man almost to death the night before.
" Thank you."
She hoped he might have a story to tell her, but he sat smoking in silence until she asked, "Why a goldfish?"
"My best friend drowned when we were kids," he said. "I got the tattoo of a fish to remind myself to fear water."
"Oh," she said. "I'm sorry."
"It's okay. I thought, I'll put it on my neck, where I'll never be able to forget it's there. Other tattoos, you put on a long-sleeved shirt and forget about them."
She wanted to ask for the rest of the story— Did your friend fall into a river, swim too far out into the ocean, hit his head in the bathtub? — but it seemed rude to pry, so she just smoked her cigarette and wished Daniel were there.
"So you're from here, then?" she asked, just to break the silence.
"I'm from Spanish Fork. You know where that is?"
"No."
"Gary Gilmore lived there for a while."
"I don't know who that is," she said.
He didn't seem to want to tell her. He blew a series of smoke rings into the cool air. "And you," he said, "I hear you're from Florida."
"Sebastian," she said.
"Where's that?"
"Near Boca. North of Miami."
"The whole state's north of Miami," he said. "Your parents know where you are?"
"I doubt they've noticed I left," Anna said.
"I have parents like that."
"It's a big club." She stubbed out her cigarette on the silvery wood. "You have a nice house," she said, but as soon as she said this it seemed like a stupid thing to have said. She had no idea if the house was Paul's or if he was just renting it, and it wasn't really all that nice.
He laughed and glanced at the house— gray stucco, pale in the dead brown lawn. "It's not a nice house," he said. "What it is is inconspicuous. I've come to value that more than niceness." He blew another series of smoke rings. She watched them dissolve into the air and thought of Sasha. "Don't take offense," he said, "but I look at a girl like you, pregnant, fifteen or sixteen or whatever, and I just have to wonder, what's the plan? What brings you to the Kingdom of Deseret?"
"I'm not sure what you mean." She didn't know what the Kingdom of Deseret was.
"Sure you do. You finish high school?"
"I've only got a year to go. I was thinking I'd get my GED."
"Yeah, and then what? You'll work at a McDonald's?"
"I always thought I'd do something with music. Maybe be a music producer or something."
"Come on. With a GED?"
"I don't know," she said. She found herself on the verge of tears and had to look away quickly. "I don't know what I'll do. I'll think of something."
"Sorry, I didn't mean to upset you. I see a girl like you, it's just something I wonder about. Who am I to talk, right? It's not like I ever went to college."
"What happened to your hands?" It was a bold question and for an instant she thought she'd made a horrible mistake, her stomach sank, he'd probably buried the man from last night behind the garden shed and now he'd kill her too and no one would ever know what had happened and Sasha would never see her again, Daniel would come home from work and she'd have disappeared into thin air, but he only smiled and looked at the bandages.
"I took care of a problem," he said. " Messy work."
"I should probably go," she said.
"You got somewhere to be?"
"I have to get to work soon."
" Where do you work?"
"The doughnut place down the street," she said.
"I'll give you a ride." He stood up from the table. She didn't want to
be in a car with him, but she didn't know how to politely refuse. He waited for her while she went into the house and changed into her uniform, the regulation t-shirt tight across her body. "How far along are you?" he asked, on the short drive down the hill.
"Four months."
"Boy or girl?"