The Sound of Broken Ribs(10)

It also seemed to be the only thing on her that was not broken in some way because everything else she ordered to act ignored her directives.

But, even though her right leg was the only one paying attention in class, it wasn’t going to do her much good. She figured this out when she jabbed her heel into the loam and grass and tried to drag herself toward the road. Every nerve throughout her body came alive and screamed in protest. It didn’t matter if her right leg worked. The rest of her body wasn’t going anywhere. Hauling the shattered bag of bone and meat she had become with her one good leg was on par with a toddler towing a semi-truck with ten flat tires.

So there was nothing she could do but lay there and wait for death. Wonderful. Or, like one of her girlfriends from high school, Maureen, used to say, “Wonderfail.” Just peachy keen, Jelly Bean.

Lei stopped moving for a while. How much time passed, she had no idea. She figured blood loss might be the thing that finally killed her, but she had no idea how much blood she had abandoned into the surrounding earth, or even if she was still bleeding. If an artery hadn’t been severed, she might live for a long time. In the end, it might be starvation that got her.

She’d punctured a lung, the blood that came up when she coughed was proof enough of that, but could still breathe. Although she was no doctor, she assumed this was because the puncture was either too small to be life threatening, or she had punctured only one lung and the other was working fine. Was that even possible? Again, she didn't know.

*

Belinda’s brother Tony was an odd duck. At least she thought so. His ranch house was littered with empty boxes from various monthly subscription outlets: Cult Crate, Geek Block, Nom Box, and even more. Belinda calculated that, given the variety of packages, Tony must spend upwards of two hundred bucks a month on his subscriptions. He wasn’t a hoarder. Not yet, anyway. But it was hard to move around his living room without stepping or sitting on a box of some kind.

Growing up, Tony had been a bit of an asshole. A bully to boys and a terrible boyfriend to any girl he dated. Thing was, her brother didn’t much care for human beings that were not family. But even family suffered when they approached Tony’s bad side. He’d beaten the crap out of their father one night after Dad told him he couldn’t borrow the car. It was a wonder Dad had left the boy the house when he passed two years after their mother died of ovarian cancer.

Now, the thirty-year-old man still had the same tendencies as the fifteen-year-old version of him, but his explosions were more contained. But he loved his little sister, and that was all that mattered right about now.

“Have a sit down and I’ll make some coffee.” Tony pointed at the only spot on his leather sofa that didn’t have a box piled atop it and then disappeared into the kitchen.

“I can’t drink coffee,” Belinda said, wiping away the last of her tears. “Makes me anxious.”

“Right. Forgot. How about water or… water?”

Obviously, all Tony drank was coffee.

“Bottled water?”

“Tap.”

“Never mind.”

“Whatever you say.”

Five minutes later, Tony returned with a steaming mug of joe and set it down on the foldable table that sat beside his littered recliner. He swept the boxes residing on the recliner to the floor and flopped down in the chair.

“Wan’ tell me what happened today?”

“Not really.”

Tony nodded. “Wan’ least tell me who you think you killed?”

“Not especially.”

“Then why tell me you done it?”

“It just kinda fell out of me. I wasn’t even bothered about it until I saw you, and then I broke down.”

“I gotta know—are the cops gonna be knocking on my door?”

“I don’t really know.”

“Did you shoot him?”

“Who?”

“Dan.”

“Oh. No. He disappeared and—Goddamn it. You tricked me.”

Tony cocked his head. “How so?”

“I said I didn’t want to talk about it and here you have me talking about it.”

Tony shrugged. “The force is strong with me. Just fuckin’ talk, Bee. I ain’t gonna rat you out. I hate cops even more ‘n I hate everyone else.”

Belinda exhaled at length. “Okay.”

She spent the next twenty minutes telling her brother everything, even going as far as assuming that the credit cards Dan had tapped had been tapped for a while. They weren’t the kind of accounts you could use to get cash at the ATM, so they’d likely been empty for some time. She could call and check the history of the balances, but she didn’t want to just yet. She then told Tony that Dan might’ve been fucking his secretary, the administrative-assistant-identifying Melody.

“I don’t think he was laying it to her. I think your man liked men. Think he enjoyed getting shit on his dick.”

“Dan gay? No. He liked having sex with me.”

“Then he was bilingual.”

“What?”

“Bilingual. You know, he liked fuckin’ on men and women and goats and whatnot. He didn’t discriminate against whoever wanted to snap into his Slim Jim.”

“Oh. You mean bisexual.” Belinda wanted to laugh, but she knew better than to laugh at her brother.