Save Yourself (30 page)

There it was. “So none of that’s happening because of me?”

Mike spread his hands, lifted his shoulders. “Like I said. You did what you did.”

Jack’s was crowded, the room was warm; the bottle in Patrick’s hand, which he’d been holding for over an hour, felt warm, too, having taken on the heat of the air and his hand. A hole in his right sock bound uncomfortably around the tip of his second-smallest toe. Mike’s coppery hair was starting to creep back at the temples, he noticed. Just like the old man’s. He had the old man’s long earlobes, too. Patrick felt calm. Not angry, not upset.

“So what if I hadn’t done it?” he said.

“Then we keep living our lives, brother.”

“What about the car?”

Mike blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I mean the Buick. We couldn’t just leave it there, close the doors, and pretend it doesn’t exist, like
Garage? What garage?
So, what?”

“Wash it.” Mike’s voice was uncertain. “Fix it up.”

Patrick shook his head. “The minute we touch that car, the first dent we take out, we’re accomplices,
brother
. And then it’s our asses in jail, too.” And everything the world had said about them, everything Mike had managed somehow to ignore—all of that would be true. If it wasn’t already.

“Sure,” Mike said, “if we get caught.”

“You couldn’t even look at that car. You closed your eyes when they towed it out of the garage. You expect me to believe you could have washed off the blood and scraped the hair off the bumper?”

The big muscles in Mike’s jaw tightened and worked. “You think you’re better than us. You always fucking have. But he’s worth ten of you, you little shit, and because of you he’s in a goddamned prison cell and I have to spend all day every day not punching you right in
your fucking face. And don’t think it wouldn’t feel good, you selfish prick.”

Mike had always been the one with the temper. The smooth places in the walls where the drywall had been repaired, a lot of those belonged to the old man but a handful of them were Mike’s. Mike was bigger and stronger than Patrick, and he’d fought more and harder, but Patrick was unafraid. “So do it,” he said.

There was a long pause and Patrick saw, with some incredulity, that there were tears in his brother’s eyes. If Mike was turning into a weepy drunk, that was another way in which he was like the old man. “Everything’s just so shitty right now,” Mike said.

“I know it is,” Patrick said, but then Mike said, “What the hell is wrong with her?” and to that, Patrick said nothing.

The next night, Mike wanted to do it all over again. The minute he walked in the door from work: pointing a finger at Patrick, dropping his thumb as if firing an imaginary rubber band. “Come on, man, Jack’s ain’t Jack’s without at least one Cusimano in it, and I ain’t drinking alone.” Then he went to take a shower.

Caro, getting ready for the dinner shift, watched him go, her brow wrinkled with worry. “I’ve never seen him this way.”

“I have,” Patrick said. Thinking of those bleak months after the accident, when Mike had done almost nothing but drink and brood, and burst out into poisonous, abbreviated rants. The old man’s rants just washed over you after a while, like the way you could be in a room thick with cigarette smoke and not realize how bad it was until you went out in the fresh air and smelled your clothes. Mike’s anger was more like a brick through a window: loud, startling, and afterward the room was cold.

Fucking people. Who lets their fucking kid play in the fucking street? They deserve what they get. Fucking praying in the courtroom. Why didn’t Jesus swoop down and save him, huh?

“I don’t know what’ll happen if he gets drunk and you’re not there to take care of him,” Caro said.

“Screw that, Caro. I’m dead on my goddamned feet.” And, it was on the tip of his tongue to say, he was tired of taking care of angry drunks. He’d been taking care of angry drunks his whole life. “Last night he threatened to punch me in the face.”

“He won’t do it,” Caro said. “Go. For me, okay?”

So he went. Thursday was payday almost everywhere, and Jack’s was hopping: crowds of drinkers dancing, laughing, having a good time in that live-fast-die-young way that people had when one day was just like another and if you weren’t living for the moment you weren’t living for anything. Mike and Patrick found stools at the bar and ordered two beers from Lecia. They hadn’t been there ten minutes when some drunk girl leaning over to order fell against Patrick.

“Hey, there,” she said. A little horsey, a little pudgy, too much makeup but the whole package was cute, nonetheless. “Come dance with me, slugger.”

Patrick smiled despite himself and pushed her back upright. “No thanks.”

“Your loss,” she said, merrily, taking her fluorescent-pink drink from Lecia, and then the crowd swirled and she was gone.

“You should have gone for it,” Mike said.

“Not my type.”

“You can’t see her face when she’s sucking your dick.” Mike laughed. “Man, the girls at Jack’s. Remember when we used to call this place Jack-offs, Blow Jobs, and Sandwiches?”

“Yeah, I remember.” And then, on some malicious impulse, Patrick added, “Hey, isn’t this where you met Caro?”

Mike stared down at his beer. “Yeah.”

“Guess you got an okay look at her face,” Patrick said, and even as he said the words he wondered what was wrong with him. Pushing Mike. It was almost like he wanted to fight and as soon as the thought rose in his brain he realized that it was true. He wanted
Mike to hit him. He wanted to hit him back. He was tired of living in this weird paralyzing stasis, tired of listening to Mike’s sad line of shit, tired of seeing Caro worry. It was the jump-in-front-of-a-train thing, all over again.

Mike’s face turned surly. “That was different. Don’t talk about her like that, anyway.”

“Sorry,” Patrick said, and he was—but for Caro’s sake, not Mike’s.

The music was loud and for a few minutes they didn’t have to talk. Mike finished the rest of his beer in one long pull and then leaned against the bar. His face blandly pleasant, he scanned the crowd. “You see that drunk girl around anywhere?”

“Why?”

“Why not? Caro’s sleeping around on me and you’ve got your little high school girl, which makes me the only one of the three of us not getting laid. You want to come? Maybe she has a friend who won’t land you in jail.”

In Mike’s expression, Patrick read both challenge and plea, and with a sad frustration he realized that as much as he might want to go straight home and tell Caro that Mike was cheating on her, he had no intention of doing it. “Actually, I think I’m done for the night. I think I’ll head home.”

Mike nodded. “I’m just so tired of losing,” he said. “I’m so tired of being the one getting screwed.”

Patrick went home, watched some television—he wanted the machine to distract him from his own thoughts but it failed—and then took a shower. When he turned the water off, he heard music playing somewhere in the house, music he hadn’t left on.
Dark Side of the Moon
. Caro listened to sentimental indie rock and Mike liked country and angry over-produced Top 40 crap. This music was coming from down the hall. His room.

Layla. In the house. In his
room
. Hands not quite operating
smoothly, he pulled on his clothes. He considered grabbing the can of Raid from under the bathroom sink but, ultimately, went unarmed.

She was sitting cross-legged on his bed, reading one of his horror movie magazines. The room had an intimate, bedtime vibe, which he realized after a moment was because the only lamp she’d turned on was the little one next to his bed. The dim bulb treated her kindly. When she looked up at him, he could almost see the girl she’d once been, under the makeup and hair dye.

“I’ve decided to forgive you,” she said.

The fragile bubble of sympathy inside him popped. He turned on the overhead light, flooding the room with surgical illumination. “You got a funny way of showing it, breaking into my house.”

“I didn’t break in. I came in. The back door was unlocked.” She held up the magazine. The page showed a young woman being decapitated. Arterial spurt, wild staring eyes, the whole nine yards. “I have to say, I’m surprised that someone with your taste in entertainment was thrown by a little blood.”

“That’s not blood. That’s corn syrup.”

“Whatever. I saw you with your brother’s girlfriend, you know.”

He waited, warily.

“On Monday. I was out driving around, thought I’d go by Zoney’s and see what you were doing, make sure you made it back from the woods okay. And what to my wondering eye should appear?” She looked back down at the magazine. Flipped a few pages. “I have to say, you move pretty fast, making out with her on Monday night when you’d fucked me the Friday before. I assume you didn’t tell her.”

Her tone was casual, but he didn’t trust it. “I told her.”

Layla’s camera-lens eyes fixed on him. “Let me guess. Your love was just too overwhelming to be stopped by such petty details. Don’t worry, stud. I won’t tell your brother you’re porking his girlfriend.”

Jesus. Patrick hadn’t even realized that was on the table. He should have seen it coming long ago. “Why not?”

She tossed the magazine down. “Why do I need a why? Can’t a girl just do a favor for a friend?”

“You broke into my house to tell me that you’re not going to do anything?”

“I told you, I didn’t break in.” Staring down at her hands now, picking at her nail polish, she looked like a little kid in time-out. When she finally looked up, her face was carefully set—the practiced half smile that he found so infuriating, the lowered lashes—but the act seemed off tonight. Like a wig that was just crooked enough to feel wrong. “You know, you never gave me my new name. Remember, that night at the SuperSpeedy?”

Patrick stared at her. “Are you serious?”

“As a heart attack.” She stood up. She was wearing a short skirt, her leather jacket, and a top that was a little too short. A strip of flesh showed above the band of her skirt, just below where he knew the hidden scars started. She came close to him, stopping an arm’s length away. “Give me a name.” Her words came too quickly now, as if she thought that she could convince him by not giving him a moment to think. “You give me one and I’ll give you one and we’ll run away together. I’ll sell my car. We’ll go to Mexico, live on the beach.”

“No.”

“You hate being who you are. I hate being who I am. Let’s be other people.” She took a step closer. “If it’s the scars—they’ll fade, they’re not that deep—”

What a horrible mistake he’d made with her. “Layla—”

“I can’t live here anymore. I want away. I want out. Justinian”—he saw the way her eyes skittered at the very sound of the guy’s name, the way her tongue licked at her lips—“I told him about you. Look.”

She lifted her shirt and Patrick didn’t want to look but he felt like he had to. On Friday night there had been four cuts. Now her ribs looked like a scratching post. Gashes over gashes in various states of healing and nonhealing, red and inflamed. Her hand fluttered near the wounds, as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to touch them.

Patrick felt sick. She dropped the shirt. “Every day. He says he has to get you out of my blood.” Her voice was trembling and rough. “I can’t make him stop. I can’t tell him no.”

He put his arms up toward her, but he didn’t know what he planned to do with them. Downstairs he heard the faint sounds of somebody working the stuck front door—then the squeak of the hinges—then footsteps. For a moment the two of them stood frozen together, listening as the creaking floorboards sung of two people moving through the house: one into the kitchen, one into the living room. They didn’t hear any voices.

Layla’s face was pleading, almost desperate. “Do you know what I did tonight?”

He didn’t know. He didn’t want to know.

“I sucked my dad’s assistant’s dick. And he’s lame, he’s a pathetic little hypocrite, but—”

“Then why did you do it?”

Her eyes shone with tears. “I don’t know. One minute we’re talking and the next minute we’re making out and he’s telling me how hot I am and then—I don’t know how it happened, I don’t know.” The despair in her face was like smoke, clogging the air, choking him. “My parents hate me. School’s a disaster. Justinian hurts me but he’s the only one who loves me besides my sister, and she—He has her now, too. I guess I thought if there was somebody else—”

“Layla,” he said. “You need help.”

She took one of his hands, like she had in the car, and he stiffened. But she only brought it to her face, closed her eyes, and then opened them again. “Then help me. Let’s get out of here. I’ll do anything you want. I’ll
be
anything you want.”

The toilet flushed. As gently as he could, he pushed her away. “No.”

He may as well have slapped her, the way she looked at him. “No?”

“No,” he said.

Her eyes narrowed. “What were you planning to do instead? Be
homeless and fuck your brother’s girlfriend?” She bit savagely at the words, close enough for him to see the smears of lipstick on her teeth and the purplish-gray patches under her eyes. “Are you two going to run off to Mexico together? Whose car are you going to sell?”

“I don’t know,” he said evenly.

“You two. Your brother. It’s all going to blow wide open, you know.” She bared her teeth. “Maybe I’ll blow it open for you. I’m amazing at blowing things. Or maybe I’ll just go to the cops. That’s what you’re really afraid of, isn’t it?”

“If you do that—” he said, instead, keeping his voice calm, but then he stopped. He couldn’t say what would happen if she did that. He could barely even conceive of it. “It would be bad.”

“Stop me.” The bravado in her voice was Hollywood-perfect but when he looked at her all he saw was desperation.

He knew he should be scared, and some distant part of him was, but mostly he just felt sad. “Layla. Honey.” It was the first time he’d ever used such an endearment with her. He didn’t mean to, it just fell off his lips. Even now, even as far gone as she was, her mouth and her eyebrows twitched and she took a hopeful step toward him.