Number 8 (24 page)

Finally, after we've had a holding our breath competition (I won), a finding 2% of $12.56 competition (Asim won), and who could name the capitals of Uzbekistan, Libya, and Norway in four seconds (Asim got that, too), Mom and Mehmet wander over.

“Come, Asim, it is late,” says Mehmet.

Asim grins at me, rolling his eyes. Mom and I watch them as they walk across the parking lot to their car.

When we climb into our car, Mom points to the gas gauge.

“Damn,” she says.

The little green arrow is pointing to empty. In fact, it's pointing below the red danger zone of empty.

“Maybe we'll get away with it,” she says hopefully. “Home is only five minutes away.”

“No,” I say firmly. “Tomorrow you'll forget to look and be on your way to work and suddenly there'll be that coughing, choking noise of the engine and the car will stop. You might be doing a right-hand turn in the middle of traffic. The service station is on the way home. Let's go.”

“You're right,” says Mom. “It's a bad habit of yours.”

She starts the car and switches on the radio. The baby boomers' station, 101.7. That's specifically for people in the middle-aged bracket like my mom. Sometimes the disc jockeys try to pretend that young people listen to it, but everyone knows who the real audience is. Van Morrison is singing “Brown-Eyed Girl” so Mom sings along, getting so carried away that she nearly forgets to stop at the gas station.

“Turn here!” I yell and she brakes suddenly with fright so that the car behind nearly crashes into us.

At the gas station I go into the little shop while she fills up the car. I wander along the aisles, looking at all the candies and mints and cereal boxes. I get absorbed in reading the marketing stuff on the back of the boxes. The cereals are all full of iron and vitamin B and folate, whatever that is. But it makes you feel healthy just reading it.

Then I hear Mom telling the service station attendant all about her night. Her voice is loud and I see another young guy look up toward the counter. My ears start to go red and I decide to stay down here among the breakfast stuff. Maybe no one will ever know I am related to her.

“Jackson? Jackson, where are you?”

Mom's voice is frantic. The whole shop stops and looks around.

I rush up the aisle toward her.

The man at the counter grins. “Do you want that?”

I realize I'm still holding the Wheaties.

Mom grabs me so hard in a bear hug I can hardly breathe.

“Oh, Jackson, I thought some horrible man had kidnapped you!”

“It's okay, Mom, calm down.”

She smiles. “It's just—I guess it was such a wonderful night, I can't believe I can really have it. You know, without something awful happening to punish me.” She smiles at the attendant. “Do you know what I mean?”

“Not really, lady. But are you going to take the Wheaties?”

When we get outside and no one can see, I take Mom's arm. “You really were wonderful tonight. I was so proud of you.”

Mom throws her arms around me again and I can feel the Wheaties box suspended between us.

“I was so scared in the store,” her voice is loud in my ear. “It came over me like a tidal wave. I saw it all—all my past horrors grabbing you, taking you away from me.”

I think of the smashed bike in the garage and the blue Mustang and decide not to tell her that the Wheaties box is crushed to smithereens against my chest. “Remember Miss Braithwaite?” I say instead. “How she told me that no matter what happened, I could take the good numbers with me? Well, same for you. You'll always have tonight. Nothing will ever change that.”

The clock in the car says 12:37 when we turn into our street. Mehmet's car is already parked outside their house. Their porch light is on, the only one in the street. I turn to Mom and see she is looking at number sixty-four as well. She smiles as we clamber out of the car.

Before I go in, I glance up at Esmerelda's window. Her bedroom faces onto the street and sometimes when I've woken at 1:11 or 3:33, I've wondered if she is lying there sleepless, too. But no light is shining from her room. I stare up at the dark window and imagine what it would be like to tiptoe in there and sit on the bed and gently wake her up with a story about tonight. I could tell her about the guitarist's dreadlocks and Mehmet's surprise performance and how mom shimmied and sweated like Tina Turner. We could whisper about it all until the sun came up and then I could kiss her on the cheek or maybe the lips and she'd be all warm and soft in her nightgown.

Mom is standing at the gate, smiling at me. “Do you remember Rapunzel, that fairy tale I used to tell you? Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair…”

I make it to the gate in two lots of eight steps. “Yes. She was kidnapped by a witch when she was just a baby, wasn't she? And imprisoned in a tall tower?”

“Mm. And the witch used to climb up the rope of her golden hair to reach her. But one day a prince heard Rapunzel singing, and her voice was so beautiful he fell instantly in love with her. He came back every day to hear her and one day he saw the witch come and call, ‘Let down your hair!'

“So the next day when he came he called out ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!' and she did and instead of the nasty old witch climbing up to her window, it was the
handsome prince!” Mom grins. “Do you remember how you'd always clap your hands over your ears then? You never wanted to hear what happened after. How the witch found them and turned the prince blind and abandoned the girl in the forest—”

I clap my hands over my ears. “I still don't want to know—”

“Love really hurts without you,” sings Mom. “Billy Ocean, d'you know it? Great dance song. But listen, Rapunzel and her prince did find each other, and Rapunzel's tears of love healed the prince's poor eyes and they lived happily ever after.”

We open the gate and walk down the path together. Mom takes a deep breath. “Summer nights are magical, aren't they?” She does a shimmy with her shoulders and breaks into an old dance routine, the Swim. She even holds her nose as she does the dive part. Just as well it's dark and no one else can see her.

I can't help laughing.

“When I was a girl, I always used to think there was a lesson in Rapunzel for me,” she says as she puts the key in the lock. “You know, that you've got to let your hair down, take a risk, or you'll never live.”

“And if you're a boy?”

She stops for a moment to think. “I don't know, maybe you've just got to climb up and find out.”

Badman goes first down the concrete stairs. He takes one careful step after another like an old man. I suppose we're thinking the same thing. This cellar might be the last place we'll ever see.

The room is bare except for rows of filing cabinets and a square table. Rocky is leaning against a cabinet, his arms folded. He points to two chairs lined up at the table. We sit down and watch Rocky take a couple of cans of tonic water from a small fridge.

“There's your drink,” he says to Badman. “Enjoy it.”

Badman suddenly leaps up, knocking over the chair. He starts to say something but Rocky slaps a heavy hand on his head, rights the chair, and pushes him back down on it.

“You be quiet and don't make no trouble. You've already caused me enough pain tonight.” He runs a hand through his hair. “
Amoeba
,” he mutters. “Honestly, I'll never get over it.” Then he bends down and glares into Badman's face. “You and your damn stories.”

“I'm sorry for your trouble,” I say to Rocky. “But was it you who made those phone calls to Valerie's house? You know, with all the heavy breathing?”

“Who else do ya think, the Holy Spirit?” Rocky thumps the table, making the cans jump.

“But how did you find them? Jackson told me they even rented their house under a different name.”

“You can't fool Tony—no one can. And, 'course,
I
helped track her down.” He thrusts out his chest. “I'm good at undercover work, always have been. Even Tony says that.” He frowns suddenly. “If only she'd behaved herself and made the payments, we wouldn't be in this mess now.”

“So the phone calls weren't just silent. You were threatening her,
black
mailing her!”

“Uh yeah, numb brain. After she said that about going to the police, what do you expect? I heard her myself.”

“But that wasn't
Valerie
! I know, I was there that day. Didn't you hear the change in pitch?”

“In what?”

“In tone—
voice
, whatever. It was a kid who said that—Mitchell, from school. Valerie tried to snatch the phone away from him. Now I understand why.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know that? Anyway, soon as the cops get a mention, we make a move. That's just the way it goes. Tony's a professional. Got a business to run. And he don't believe in a promise unless he sees some dough.”

“But Valerie doesn't have any money!”

Badman kicks me under the table.
Enough
, he mouths at me.

“Of course she doesn't.” Now it's Rocky's turn to treat me like a moron. “Tony just
re-quest-ed
a small percentage of her wages each week. As an act of goodwill. He wanted her to do a little trans-ac-tion for him—just once or twice. Is that too much to ask? He told her he'd invest her money in his other sideline interests. She might have gotten a good return on it, if she'd taken a gamble. But no, stupid bitch
refuses and she talks about the police and now look where we are!”

He takes another can from the fridge for himself. Rum and Bacardi. But I'm thinking, here are those percentages again, multiplying like germs until there's a full-blown crisis. I see Mom and Dad sitting at the kitchen table, adding up the percentage of their salary each week that goes to the mortgage and food and electricity … Imagine if you had to budget for Tony money, too—
oh yes, and here's the money for keeping my son and me safe
. It'd make you want to go to sleep and never wake up. No wonder Valerie's been looking so ill. And we all thought it was Badman.

Rocky pulls the ring open and sips, then without another glance at us he pounds heavily up the stairs. The clang of the trapdoor closing over our heads is loud and final.

We both sit for a moment listening to the silence. I hear Jackson's voice telling me how happy Valerie was about the chance to sing again. He said she woke up like a different person. It was only this morning—heavens, by now it's
yesterday
morning. I wonder if she thought Tony would just give up after a while? Like, if he saw she was making a new life, keeping quiet, he'd leave her alone. Maybe she thought if she made a life in the suburbs, the memory of the casino would disappear like a bad dream. And singing would keep her safe. Sometimes you can hope so much for a thing, you almost believe it.

The walls are cushioned in a squashy kind of leather and lined with filing cabinets. On the one bare wall hangs the Picasso—a woman with an eye coming out of her forehead. She looks all broken up like pieces of glass. It's not a comforting picture.

Badman has gotten up and is examining one of the filing
cabinets. There's a round dial on each of them, like the one I saw on the trapdoor. He fiddles with them for a while but nothing happens. I watch him give up and trudge back over, slumping into his seat. He looks all around, at the windowless walls, the concrete ceiling, the sea grass matting on the floor. He looks at anything but me.

I guess he feels embarrassed as well as everything else. His leg must be cold and wet. I'm chilly already in this cotton bathrobe.

“In second grade, you know what happened to me?” I wait for a moment. He says nothing, but he stops playing with his glass. “I was in the front of the class, getting in trouble with Mrs. Hatfield, and I had this sudden urge to pee. I couldn't cross my legs or hold my breath or anything because I was in full view. Anyway, there I was struggling, trying to think what to do when suddenly, the dam burst. I peed right there in front of everyone. They could see it all gushing down my leg, everything. It's amazing really that I ever recovered.”

His eyes are wide, staring at me. Then he looks away. “I don't remember that.”

“No, you were doing detention in the principal's office. So,” I go on, “if you happen to take a leak when some gangster is threatening to make us into cold cuts, it's hardly worth mentioning.”

He goes on looking at me. “So you're not going to blab about me?”

I think that we'll both be very lucky if I have another chance to blab about anything, but I say, “We'll have much more interesting things to tell.”

Badman frowns. “Right.” He starts to drum his fingers on the table. I recognize the beat. He's jiggling his leg under the
table. “Feels like a coffin in here, huh? You wouldn't want to be clostro—whatever that word is.”

“
Claus-tro-pho-bic
,” I say. “Fear of
en-closed
spaces.”

Badman grins for a moment. “Is that guy for real?”

“I wish he wasn't. It's so strange but I've had a feeling all night that none of this is really happening. It's like a bad dream. Makes me want to laugh—or scream.”

“Same.” He stares at the Picasso. “I think we just don't want to believe it.”

“Yeah.”

Badman gets up and starts to pace. I notice he's not trying to hide his wet jeans anymore. “So, what are we going to do? This is some strange kind of cellar. Aren't there supposed to be stacks of wine bottles growing old in here? I can't see any, can you?

“No. I think it's more like a safe room. I remember Jackson talking about a trapdoor, and a small basement like this where they keep all their money—and other things.”