The Big Kahuna (Fox and O'Hare #6)(75)
“What the fuck does it matter?” he said.
“It doesn’t bother you that she didn’t have anything to do with this?”
“You don’t know that.”
“You don’t know that she did, either.”
“One of our guys is dead and you want me to worry about her? Go the fuck to sleep.”
At chow the next morning I sat next to Fletcher, found a way to bring the conversation back to the night before, but he only shrugged and said the wife had gone crazy when he’d told her he’d find Badawi no matter how long it took, and that’s when she’d reached for his weapon. “And you couldn’t stop her?” I asked. “A tiny woman like her?”
“I did stop her,” he said with a frown. “What’s the matter with you, Gorecki? Take some time to think through what you just implied here. Think it through carefully; you might have a different perspective.”
My perspective wouldn’t have changed if I’d stayed where I’d been ordered to, in the living room with Fierro. I wouldn’t have seen or heard anything. But I’d taken four inquisitive steps down the hallway, and those four steps made me doubt everything. Fletcher wasn’t trying to win the war—that was something for the higher-ups to worry about. He cared only about protecting his men. And he wanted to avenge them, too. But my questions had clearly irritated him and I found out just how much when he posted me on shitter cleanup duty for three days. Three whole days. I remember pulling out the first tub, pouring fuel over it, and before striking the match to light it up, doubling over to puke.
“What was her name?” Nora asked. “The woman Fletcher killed.”
“I don’t know. He filed a report, but I never got to see it.”
At some point while I was telling her the story, she’d turned around to face me. Somehow, she had removed all my pretenses. It was as if she had found the right key to unlock a rusty old safe, and the contents spilled out. But I couldn’t tell if I had gone too far, told too much. We were quiet for a while. Eventually, she closed her eyes, and I held her until the morning, when she got up to go to work.
Nora
I was wrestling with the lock on the medicine cabinet in the storage room when Veronica walked in with a half-empty bag of Dixie cups. She tied it in a knot and hoisted it easily onto the top shelf, where it landed with a loud, crinkly sound that set my teeth on edge. My head was throbbing, and the lock wasn’t cooperating. Veronica watched me for a minute and then, in a practiced gesture, readjusted the key and opened the medicine cabinet for me. “There,” she said. “It gets stuck sometimes.”
“Thanks,” I said. Inside the cabinet were bottles of antiseptic, antibiotic ointment, and bandages of all sizes, but no painkillers. “We don’t have any Ibuprofen?”
“We must’ve run out.”
On the wall next to the cabinet was a framed picture of the Pantry staff, taken the day my father had opened for business, twelve years earlier. Marty, still with a full head of hair, held a menu, and a younger Veronica, looking prim in her new uniform, smiled shyly at the camera. From the kitchen came the clatter of glasses being loaded into the rack.
“Ask Rafi,” Veronica said. Her tone suddenly turned vicious. “He’s always helping himself to stuff around here. Maybe he took it.” Then she pulled a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from her apron pocket and stepped out.
I slammed the medicine cabinet shut. Managing the restaurant these last few weeks had opened my eyes to all the petty grievances the workers nursed toward one another: Veronica didn’t like Rafi, who had a crush on Renata, who was sleeping with José, who thought Marty was out to get him. I couldn’t keep up. I walked back to the dining room, where a couple with three young children was being seated, the toddler screaming, refusing to sit in the high chair. My head throbbed.
I poured myself a cup of coffee and sat down at the counter to drink it. The night before, Jeremy and I had stayed up late talking, and I had gotten little sleep. I didn’t know why I was spending so much time with him. He wasn’t the sweet kid I knew in high school; he had fought in a brutal war, a war I hated. Hearing about the terrible things he had seen or done in Iraq made me feel implicated, something I hadn’t grasped until it was too late. I didn’t know how to navigate back to my state of ignorance. There was no map I could follow.
I was taking the trash out to the dumpster later that morning when I saw a blue station wagon pull up in front of Desert Arcade. The car had a broken taillight, a yellow ribbon decal on the back window, and a bumper sticker that said PROUD PARENT OF AN HONOR ROLL STUDENT. A family of four got out. Father, mother, two girls. “Mommy, can I get a Skittles from the machine?” the older girl asked. Her hair was plaited and pinned on top of her head, in a style that made her look like a milkmaid. The younger girl had dark hair and walked blindly behind, her eyes never leaving the comic book she was reading.
A happy family.
I was so drawn to them that when they went into the bowling alley, I followed. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to Desert Arcade’s dimly lit lobby. A floor-to-ceiling advertisement for Budweiser Beer was pasted on the far wall, though its colors had dulled with age and one of its corners was peeling. On the stereo, the chorus of a pop ballad I didn’t recognize was playing at top volume. A huge flag hung over the front counter, where the family stood, waiting for bowling shoes. When they ambled away to their lane, the clerk turned to me. “Can I help you?”