Heartbroken (6 page)

D
ean Freeman watched the bus pull away, knowing that Emily was on it, that he had let her down again. Something about the way it lumbered off, spewing black smoke from its tailpipe, merging into traffic, made him ache. He didn’t want Emily riding the bus. She deserved so much better. He was going to be the one to make sure she got it sooner or later.

He went inside the restaurant anyway. Carol looked up at him from the register as the little bell over the door announced his entry.

He didn’t like the way she looked at him, as though he had done something wrong or was about to. It was the look of teachers and principals, truant officers, cops. Like they knew you, like they could see right through every lie you hadn’t even thought of yet. Like they knew it all. People had been looking at Dean Freeman like that all his life. He couldn’t wait for the day when he proved to them all that they didn’t know shit about him, couldn’t begin to guess who he was or what he had in him.

“Hey, Carol,” he said. He put on his sweet face, the one he used for Emily’s mom, potential employers, or anyone he needed to win over. “Is Emily still here?”

“Hi, Dean,” Carol said. She took off her glasses and let them hang from the beaded chain around her neck. They rested on the cushion of her wide bosom, which—even though she was way old—he couldn’t help staring at. “Her shift ended over an hour ago. She ate and left.”

“Ah,” he said. He pulled his face into a disappointed grimace. “I got hung up at a job interview. I’m late to pick her up.”

Carol gave him a slow nod, a narrow up-and-down stare. Did she seem skeptical? What right did she have to doubt what he was saying to her even though it was, in fact, a lie? That was what he didn’t like about her. She thought she was better than everyone, had that way about her that rich people always did.

“How did it go?” she asked.

“What?”

“The job interview,” she said. She gave him a patient smile. He could never tell when people were mocking him.

“Um, good, you know,” he said. “The business is hurting a bit right now because of the economy. But people still need contractors, right? I’m sure I’ll find something soon.”

“Well, if I hear of anything, I’ll let you know,” she said.

“That would be great,” he said. “Thanks. Hey, mind if I use your restroom?”

He walked back down the narrow hallway, used the restroom, and on his way out took one last look at the place. The back outer door opened directly into the kitchen; it was always locked from the inside. The long wood-paneled hallway led to the office. He followed it and stood in the doorway. Paul was there, head in hand, tapping hard on a calculator.

“Hey, Paul,” said Dean.

Paul looked up and gave Dean a smile—a real smile, not that fake shit Carol was always beaming on him. “Hey, Dean,” he said. “How’s it going?”

“No complaints. How’s that ride?” asked Dean.

“Man,” said Paul with an admiring shake of the head. “That baby’s bad to the bone. I just love driving it.”

Paul had one of those new Chargers, triple black. Dean had seen it parked in the lot on the way in. It was so sweet. Dean wondered if he’d ever have a car like that. He hoped he’d have one while he was still young, not an old man like Paul. He knew it was about forty grand, fully loaded. To Dean that seemed an impossible sum of money; he couldn’t come up with what he needed right now, which was a fraction of that amount. He’d had to resist the urge to key that shining black paint.

“You still owe me that spin,” said Dean. He scanned the room. He knew the safe was under the desk and that they rarely used it. He
knew there wasn’t a security camera. He could see the empty canvas bank envelope lying carelessly next to the computer. Just checking the details one more time.

“You’re on, man,” said Paul. “Take it easy.”

Paul looked back down at his work. Dean felt like he’d been dismissed, and it made him a little angry. Who did these people think they were? He walked back through the restaurant and gave a quick wave to Carol as he exited.

Brad was waiting in the car, looking antsy and agitated. It had been his idea to scope the place out one more time, even though Dean had told him everything he needed to know.

“Where’s your girl?” Brad asked as Dean climbed into the driver’s seat. Emily’s old Mustang looked cool enough on the outside, but it was a piece of garbage. The interior was a mess, even after he tried to fix it up a little bit with a leather repair kit. It smelled of cigarettes and fast food, mainly because he and Brad had been smoking and eating McDonald’s in it a little while ago.

“She left,” he said. “On her way home, I guess.”

Dean thought again of that bus pulling away. He tried to keep the wave of emotion off his face. Brad was not the guy to whom you wanted to bare your soul. He was a junkyard dog; you didn’t dare let him smell your fear or sadness or anything else soft inside you. If he got his teeth into you, you’d have to break his jaw to get free. Brad gave Dean a look that he couldn’t read.

“That door unlocks from the inside only,” Brad said. He reached to the dash and took Dean’s last cigarette. He lit it with the last match. Brad always was a selfish piece of shit.

“You checked it out?” asked Dean. “What if someone saw you?” He was more offended than worried. Brad didn’t trust his judgment. Never had.

“If your girl’s not in,” said Brad, “we have problems. We can’t come in through the front, not unless you want things to get ugly.”

“I don’t,” said Dean too quickly. He took a breath before he spoke again. “No one gets hurt.”

Brad issued a sharp exhale of smoke. He regarded his cuticles as if he didn’t know they were chewed to the quick, split and bleeding. “Then your girl better be on board to open that door.”

“She is,” said Dean. “Of course she is.”

Emily had no idea what they were planning to do. Even Dean hadn’t known he’d been planning it in the back of his mind when Brad showed up early this week. From his old Florida days, he owed Brad some money. Brad had told him that one day he’d show up to collect, not to worry until then. The time had come. Unfortunately, Dean was flat broke. Not that he wasn’t always broke. Not that he wasn’t
born
broke.

He was
trying
to get his act together, but it felt like everyone and everything conspired against him. For a while he’d been doing okay. He’d been working at Constance Construction, a successful local company that everyone with money called when they wanted houses built. He liked his boss, Ronny Constance, who’d given Dean a chance even though he had a record.

“I don’t care who you were then,” Ronny had said the day he hired Dean. “I only care about who you are now. Are you going to show up? Are you going to be careful? Are you going to do a good job? What do you say, Dean, are you?”

The only time Dean had ever been calm and happy in his whole damn life was when he was building something. In school, he’d been bouncing off the walls. Too much talking, not enough doing—he just couldn’t listen while someone was up at a board rambling on about things that meant nothing to him. He couldn’t stand to read; the letters seemed to swim and jump before his eyes. They got tangled up, made no sense. Shop class had saved him. When he had his hands on something, making it into something else, all the anxiety he’d had for as long as he could remember seemed to go still and silent.

If he’d finished high school, he liked to think, maybe he’d have had a business like Ronny’s. But after his father died, Dean fell in with Brad and Brad’s brothers. From there, things went from bad to worse. There was the armed robbery. Luckily, he’d been a juvenile, though he’d still done time in a detention center. They had classes, vocational training, all kinds of shit like that, which was great. But it was in there that he started taking pills. The place was lousy with drugs; anything you wanted you could get from other inmates, from guards. With the pills—mostly, Oxy was his thing—there was that easy quiet again. And it was a lot less work to take a pill than it was to build a bookshelf.

After juvey, he moved up north to get away from the old crew. His uncle gave him a room over the garage for a while, introduced him to Ronny. And then Dean met Emily. She was the prettiest, the sweetest girl he had ever known. For a while, his life had been perfect. He had a good job, he was totally clean and sober—he found he didn’t need the pills when he was working with his hands. He had Emily, and he had started living in her cute little house.

That was the brief time when he thought he’d figured it all out. But that wasn’t the way things worked for him. It wasn’t the way things worked for anyone he’d ever known. Something always went wrong. That’s what had happened to his dad. Just when he’d gotten clean—bam!—stage four lung cancer. Just when he’d stopped being a crazy, violent, scary motherfucker who beat the crap out of Dean and Dean’s mom, some doctor told him he had three months to live. It turned out to be two.

It was Dean’s temper that always screwed him up. The truth was, his memories of the fight with Ronny and what it had been about were fuzzy. He just lost it like that sometimes. It had something to do with a cabinet he’d installed. He’d put the door on wrong, maybe, a little thing. Ronny had laughed at him. If there was one thing he couldn’t fucking stand, it was being laughed at. He felt the rise, the red swell he used to have when he was younger. After that, it was a
literal blank in his memory. Ronny didn’t press charges; Dean was lucky for that. But he lost the only good job he’d ever had.

From there it was one big downward spiral. He started doing stupid shit for money, which led to him starting with the pills again. Brad showing up? Well, Dean knew rock bottom when he saw it.

He pulled out into traffic, and in the rearview mirror, he saw the big blue hen on the restaurant sign. The sight of it got him to laughing, he couldn’t have said why.

“What’s so funny?” asked Brad.

“Nothing.” The laughter dried up in Dean, and he started to feel a little sick. He always felt this way with Brad, a kind of wobble between edgy excitement and abysmal despair. Being with Emily gave Dean permission to connect with all the good parts of himself. Being with Brad connected him to everything that was rotten and black inside. Dean was worried that there was way more of the bad stuff, that it was sticky, like tar. If he dove into that place again, he wouldn’t have what it took to claw his way back out. It would pull him all the way under, and this time he would take Emily with him.

“Maybe this is not such a good idea,” said Dean.

Brad was quiet, just flicked the cigarette out the window. Then, “You have another way to get the money you owe me?”

Dean didn’t need to say anything. They both knew the answer. As they pulled onto the highway, he heard that rattle in the engine. The car wasn’t long for this world.

chapter four

W
hen Emily got home, Dean wasn’t there. But from the look of the place, she could tell that he’d been lying around most of the day. The television was on, tuned in now to
Oprah
. There was a pile of dishes in the sink. The microwave door was ajar. He hadn’t taken the garbage out, like she’d asked, and it was starting to smell. Every light in the living room, bedroom, and bathroom was on. His underwear was on the floor. He didn’t pay rent here (or anywhere else). Nor did he contribute to the utilities. But he seemed to feel very much at home. Emily supposed it was her fault. She didn’t ask much of him. She’d found it was better not to ask too much from people.

When he’d first started staying at her place, she’d come home to find that he had dinner ready or that he’d brought her flowers. Every day she still hoped he’d done any of the small things he used to, like the laundry, or making sure there were no dishes in the sink. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d been romantic or even considerate.

She set about tidying up. She really hated it when things were a mess; it made her think of her mother’s house. Since Emily started renting the small one-bedroom cottage, she’d managed to get herself some cute pieces. Nothing expensive. She’d purchased a soft gray couch and a coordinating red and gray chair on sale at Pier 1. It had a rip in one cushion, so it was marked way down. She flipped the cushion over and forgot the tear was even there. Things didn’t have to be perfect to be okay for Emily.

Dean brought her a beautiful rug that tied the pieces together. She didn’t dare ask where it had come from. She’d refinished an old coffee table she found at a garage sale. Dean had installed some track lighting. She was proud of the living room. In the bedroom, she had a white platform bed and dresser from Target. She’d framed some pictures of her and Dean and hung them on the wall. She’d painted the walls a honey-beige. The little house was comfortable and clean. She liked it that way, and Dean knew that. He obviously didn’t care.

“I’m working on something big,” he’d said this morning. “Something huge.”

How many times had she heard that? His first “big” idea had been buying and flipping houses right as the market crashed. Not that he had anywhere near the money for that venture. Next it was a Jet Ski rental company for a nearby lake, but he couldn’t find the money to get the skis, or the permit, or the insurance he’d need. She didn’t know what it would be this time; he wouldn’t say. He hadn’t said last time, when he’d taken the tuition reimbursement. Nothing, of course, ever came of that money. She had a bad feeling about this recent thing, whatever it was.

When she met Dean, he’d been working for a contractor, making a good living. He was great at that, building things, fixing things. He’d seemed hardworking, reliable. Truthfully, he was—when he was motivated, when he felt he was being justly rewarded. It was his temper that got him into trouble.

Emily heard a car in the driveway. She went to the window and watched Dean get out of her beat-up old Mustang. Another man got out of the passenger side. She hadn’t seen him before. She had the odd urge to run to the door and lock it. She didn’t do that. She was standing near the television, holding the clothes she’d collected from the floor in her arms, when the two of them walked in.