Don’t Let Me Go(6)

“Just in case you ever needed anything.”

“Then I would ask my mom.”

“Well, just in case she wasn’t around, or you couldn’t ask her for some reason.”

“Like what reason?”

“I don’t know, Grace. Anything. If you were alone or something. Or if you were having trouble getting her to wake up. If you got scared about anything, you could call.”

That was when Grace decided not to ask any more questions. Not even one more.

“OK, thanks,” she said. And she stuck the phone number in her pocket.

“Don’t tell your mom.”

“OK.”

Stop talking, she was thinking, but she didn’t say it.

Then Yolanda gave them a ride home, which was good, because it’s scary riding the bus home in the dark, and Grace was already scared.





Billy



Billy woke suddenly, hearing someone shout outside. It had come from the sidewalk in front of the apartment house.

Just one word.

“Hey!”

He squeezed his eyes closed again, mourning the sudden loss of his expectation for the new day: simply that it would be suitably quiet, and without conflict.

Then, being a realist at heart, he jumped up and slunk to his front lookout place, the big sliding-glass patio door, and peered around the curtain.

The girl was still there. No, not still. Again. Again, he meant.

Felipe Alvarez, one of his upstairs neighbors, was squatted down next to her, apparently engaging her in conversation. And Jake Lafferty, his other upstairs neighbor, was trotting up the walk to intervene, as if he found the scene quite unsatisfactory.

Then again, from what little he had been able to hear and observe over the years, Billy gathered that his gruff neighbor Lafferty found precious few situations to his liking. In fact, Lafferty even took it a step further by wearing that dissatisfaction on his sleeve, a misguided badge of…well, something. Billy tried to decide what, but found he couldn’t imagine.

Now Lafferty trotted to the base of the stairs and called out, “Hey! Jose! What are you doing with that little girl?”

Felipe rose to his feet. Not combative, so much — well, not quite, Billy gathered — but ruffled, and on guard. It made Billy’s poor tired heart hammer again, because it smacked of conflict, his least-favorite life element.

If only that little girl would go inside! Her presence there on the stairs, day in and day out, was like a wild card thrown into Billy’s day, dealing him terrifyingly unpredictable hands.

But, terror or no, he wanted to hear what came next. So, ever so quietly, he slid open the patio door about six inches, the better to watch and listen.

“First off,” Felipe said in his fluent but heavily accented English, “my name is not Jose.”

“Well, I didn’t mean that it was,” Lafferty said. “It’s just an expression. A nickname. You know.”

“I don’t know,” Felipe said. “I don’t know at all. Here’s what I know. I know I’ve told you my name prob’ly ten times. And I know you told me your name once, and I don’t never forget it. It’s Jake. Right? So how ’bout I just call you Joe instead? I mean, most white American guys are named Joe, right? So that’ll be close enough, don’t you think?”

Billy glanced down at the little girl, to see if she looked afraid. But she gazed back up at the two men with an open, almost eager face. As if what happened next could only be entertaining and fun.

She was plump, that little girl. What was it these days with kids and extra weight? In Billy’s day, kids ran around. There was barely such a thing as a fat kid. If there was, it was a rarity.

Then again, he’d spent nearly his entire childhood in dance class, which is hardly the land in which you’d find a plump kid — if there was such a phenomenon. Oh, he’d gone to school, of course. What choice would he have had? But he’d blocked those memories as best he could.

“I know his name!” Grace said. Well, shrieked.

But Felipe held up one hand to her and said, “No, wait. Let’s just wait and see if he knows it.”

“Listen you—” Lafferty said, signaling that he’d had quite enough.

Billy’s heart hammered faster, wondering if one of the men would strike the other. But Lafferty never even managed to finish his sentence. Because, no matter how firmly you corked the mouth on that little girl, it didn’t stay corked any longer than just that moment.

“It’s Felipe!” she shouted, obviously proud of herself.

“Fine,” Lafferty said. “Felipe. How about you answer my question now, Felipe?”

“Oh, yeah, and that’s the other thing,” Felipe said. “I was just asking Grace how come she’s not in school, and that’s all I was doing, and I don’t appreciate your suggesting otherwise.”

“You really are always looking for a fight, aren’t you?”

“Me? Me? I’m not the one looking for a fight, compa?ero. Every time I see you, you got that same chip on your shoulder. I don’t fight with nobody. You ask anybody who knows me. You just carry that same fight with you every place you go, and then dress it up to look like the other guy’s fight. You musta had that chip on your shoulder so long you don’t even see it no more. I bet you don’t even know what the world would look like without that great big chip blocking your view.”