CHAPTER 19
CARTER
The problem, as I saw it, was that I had two areas of concern with Emily. One was the fact that she was my job. My specific job. She was what I did for a living to support my family. Phin’s mother’s residual checks got smaller every quarter and did little more than cover his education. So I had to work. If I started fucking Emily, I wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t protect a woman I was sleeping with. If I was doing my job, and I always did my job, we’d both be vulnerable at the same time.
The second concern was Phin himself. He was everything, and a relationship would divert me from the attention he needed. I’d made the decision long ago that my mother had raised my sister and me already, and it was too much to ask her to raise Phin full-time.
I had two hours to really think about it.
Two hours of pacing the property inside and outside the gate, getting angrier with every step. Who was I pissed at?
Yes. I was just pissed. Me. Vince. The lapsed order of protection. The circumstances. My decisions. Darlene for putting me on as principal. Me and, again, myself. I spent an extra five minutes standing outside her dark bedroom window. Was she sleeping or hiding from me?
This really didn’t have to be so hard. I didn’t have to tell her about Phin. Not yet. He could stay an anonymous Los Angeles kid for another few years. As far as her being my principal, that could be rectified.
And Vince?
He was going to have to get rectified too. Every time I thought about all the things keeping me away from Emily, my brain held up a picture.
Emily clutching the fabric of her dress, hiding the X.
The look on her face.
The shame. The humiliation.
The fact that he’d gotten close to her.
He could do it again.
Everything else got pushed out.
Vince had to be rectified.
“You fell down a flight of stairs.” I turned Vince over with my foot. He flopped onto his back. I’d taken out the light at the top of the garage door, but the streetlights filtered in through the trees. The blood bubble forming at his lips looked black. I crouched by him when he tried to get up and pushed him down.
“Once your face is healed,” I said, “it’s time for you to find yourself a girlfriend. A new girlfriend. One who likes you.”
I might have gone too far on him.
“Fuck you, man.”
I kept my voice low so he had to keep quiet to hear me.
“I want you to consider me her order of protection. If you’re in my eyeline, I’m going to assume you’re there to hurt her. There will be consequences.”
He smiled, and his mouth was so blood-soaked he looked toothless in the blue-cast light.
“Sucks dick like a champ, doesn’t she?” His smile was blood red. “I taught her that.”
I stood up. The heel of my shoe could come down on his face so hard, I could break his jaw before he could even think about another dick-sucking comment. But I got control of myself. If he wound up in the hospital, I’d have to answer questions.
“You really should hang on to the railing when you come down the stairs. Good habit.”
I turned to go without looking back.
“She’s always mine. No matter how much you bang her. She’s mine.”
I almost turned around and gave him a final kick in the face. Emily wasn’t his. Not even a little bit. And she wasn’t going to get “banged” by me. She was better than a quick knockoff.
I hurried to the car. My right fist ached and the knuckles were raw. They’d be so stiff in the morning I probably wouldn’t be able to move them. Worth it. All worth it.
But not to be repeated. I couldn’t do this again. Not unless she was in immediate danger. I’d avoided a life of violence, avoided prison, the wrong side of the system. I could just as easily get sucked back in.
I’d had a rough time in high school, getting into more fights than I should have. Detention was my stomping ground. My sister was busy getting eaten alive by Hollywood, and my mother was busy crying over my dad leaving. Detention meant I didn’t have to go home to see it. Mom’s tears made me want to kill my father and any man who ditched his family. Getting into fights kept me from going home and gave rage a release. By the time I was old enough to come and go as I pleased, I was just getting into fights because anger was a habit.
My sense of injustice and entitlement started with my neighborhood. Torrance sat on top of swank Rancho Palos Verdes and right below Redondo Beach, but Redondo was cut into a weird shape so it got all the beachfront. Torrance got a token mile of beach, but the rest was landlocked. Not that we couldn’t go to Redondo and cause trouble. But I felt a kinship to Torrance. Like the shape of the world had been cut to my disadvantage.
I made my own way. I was the king of Borrance and Crenshaw. At sixteen, I’d avoided getting arrested. I was ready to drop out of school out of boredom, and yeah, I was obviously as dumb as a box of rocks.
Devon Muldoon was a classmate on the days I showed up to school. He was as much of a little punk as I was, but he didn’t have the chops to back it up. He came around the parking lot I pissed in and talked trash in front of all of us, and I took him down. Not too hard, but enough to send a message.
His father showed up at my door in full uniform and punched my clock before I’d even swung the door open all the way. My mother screamed and clawed at him. He brushed her off like a gnat and stood over me. I knew exactly who he was. His son had his snarl. He took me by the back of the collar and dragged me to the police cruiser. Threw me in like a sack of potatoes.
We were driving ten minutes before I could shake the stuffing out of my head.
“My son tells me you’re quite the tough guy,” he said from the front. There was a metal screen between us, but I heard him as perfectly as if he were staring right at me.
“He’s a little bitch,” I said, because you don’t back down, even when your life depends on it.
“That may be.” He wasn’t mad at all. I thought he’d pull to the side and work me over for calling his son a bitch, but he didn’t seem flustered. His calm unsettled me. I didn’t know what to expect. “But he’s mine, and I protect what’s mine.”
I had plenty to say about how well he protected a son who got close enough to the likes of me to mix it up, but I didn’t answer. Just looked out the window, watching the night city. He’d book me for assault and resisting. Mom would cry and blame Dad. My sister’s last acting job would pay the legal fees. I’d want to die, but instead of dying I’d just wake up and do whatever/nothing/the same.
“I’m going to make you a deal, kid.”
“Oh yeah?” I acted bored, but I wasn’t. I was curious.
“You go two rounds with me, and you can go home.”
“Two rounds? You mean boxing?”
“Yeah. Boxing.”
“With gloves?”
“You ever use gloves before?”
“No. What do I look like?”
“No gloves, then.”
Two rounds. Six minutes with this old fart who got in a single sucker punch? And for that I could just go home without a record?
I had no illusions about turning my life around, but why get a jump on a criminal record? Why not put it off until the next time I did some inevitable bonehead shit? I’d rather go home and go to bed. Give Mom a night off crying. She could use a break.
“I’m not going to take it easy on you just because you’re a cop.”
“Don’t expect you to.”
“Or because you’re old.”
“That’s the spirit.”
He pulled into a parking lot off Madrona, right in his police cruiser like he had nothing better to do. Like his time was his own. He opened the back door for me.
“Great gig,” I said. “My mom leaves the register five minutes every three hours to piss. You just park wherever and go to the gym whenever.”
“Benefits of not being an asshole, kid.”
He indicated an open door at the other end of the lot. Men shouted from inside. Above the doorway was a hand-painted sign. ACE OF SPADES.
“Name’s Carter.”
“You can call me Officer Muldoon.”
I went up the stairs and stepped into manhood.
Phin wasn’t in bed. He was hunched over his computer, freckles glowing in the bright light.
“Where’s Grandma?”
“Bed.” He didn’t take his eyes off the screen. He filled in little squares with color, clicked shit I didn’t understand, moved boxes around. “Wanna see?”
“What is it?”
He hit the spacebar, and a little green snail undulated up and down as if it was moving across a leaf. Its smile went from a straight grin to a toothy D when it was highest.
“Cute,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. I moved it off when I saw my torn knuckles. I didn’t want him to notice them. But Phin didn’t miss a goddamn thing. Ever.
He put up his fist. “Show me the size of your heart, Dad.”
I put up my left fist. “This big.”
He put up both fists. “Double bump.”
Too clever. I couldn’t say no to a double without it being called out. And it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen my knuckles anyway. I put up both fists and we bumped.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Nothing.”
“Did you not tape your hands?”
He thought I’d been boxing. I hadn’t. I’d been fucking shit up. My life revolved around being a good example for him. Beating the hell out of a stalker and lying about it wasn’t going to cut it.
So I made it worse.
“Just a scrape. How was school?”
He shrugged.
“What? Not great? Not the best ever?”
“Today was twins day.”
I kicked my shoes off and sat in the chair by his desk.
“What’s twins day?”
“It’s for spirit week. Everyone dresses like someone. Never mind.” He turned back to his computer, changed windows, and started working on some gobbledygook of letters and symbols. The chattering kid had disappeared with his first growth spurt.
“Did you wear your Emperor Palpatine costume?”
“No, not like that. Like someone else in homeroom.”
“Ah.”
He typed like lightning. I let him code. If I pressed him, he wouldn’t tell me shit.
“Everyone had a twin but me.”
“There is an even number of kids in the class.”
“Cooper, Leshawn, and Jarred went as triplets. I was no one. I called five people, and they all said they had a twin already.”
I clenched and unclenched my fist. It was getting tight already. The wrist ached. Going after that douche had been a huge mistake. He could go away, but he could come back harder. I was going to be responsible for Emily whether she was my principal or not.
I’d known it, and even as I said I didn’t want that, once the anger cleared, I knew she was the size, shape, and intention of my heart whether I liked it or not.
“It’s hard to find people who understand you,” I said. “Not just you. Anyone.”
“Everyone else had someone who understood them.”
“They had someone to dress like them. Not the same.”
He shrugged. All the explanations were in that shrug. He wasn’t complaining about how people understood him. He just wanted to belong. That was all any middle schooler wanted.
“Do you want to switch schools?”
“No. I’m fine.”
I watched him for a minute. Coding had predictable outcomes. If he made a mistake, something went wrong. If he corrected the mistake, the code worked. There were no secret social cues. No people calling themselves your friend, then excluding you. No stalkers hiding behind people who said they loved you.
He went back to the black screen and hit the spacebar. It exploded in orange bubbles, which popped, creating yellow bubbles, which popped and became green, and on and on.
“You’re going to be okay, kid.”
“Yeah.”
“If you get to bed. It’s late.”
“What time is it?” He’d gone back to the code to correct some flaw I hadn’t seen.
“Ten thirty.”
“Ten minutes.”
“None.” I reached over to the keyboard, he fought me, and we wrestled for control of the computer for a few minutes before I declared victory.